Women

I have always gotten along better with men than with women. I do have many women friends but it's always very complicated, emotional and sometimes maddening. I picked up a book from the library hoping to gain some insights and understanding, since there seems to be a book for every topic under the sun. Instead of gaining understanding, I am now terrified at all the viciousness documented in the book. It truly does seem like women are women's worse enemies and some women think nothing of lying, stealing, gossiping and back-stabbing to get their way. The more I read, the more I feel like escaping to some all-male world... as if that were some utopia. As if!

Quote

My cousin sent me this quote recently via email.

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them."

I am not sure what the context was, but it is a pretty awesome quote all the same. I can think so many different relationships in my life I can apply it to - from my son to my friends. Very insightful indeed!

Of course it works both ways. I do feel resentful when others try to run my life for me, which for some reason they seem to want to do ALL THE  TIME. Gee, thanks, I am flattered but back off people and I'll back off too! But then again, don't you  really want all my superior knowledge and wisdom? ;-)

Water supply

Tomorrow apparently there will be a hearing at city hall to decide if fluoridation of the Calgary drinking water supply will continue or not. I don't claim to know much about this issue but intuitively I am not in favor of fluoridation.

Fluoride is there in toothpaste and if all we want are better teeth, why ingest the stuff internally and possibly let it affect our bones and who knows what else?

Of course there is a ton of other stuff in the drinking water that we can't remove because they're not added deliberately. They're just side effects of our lifestyle. Like the xenoestrogens generated from people ingesting birth control pills or Prozac residues from people taking Prozac. Birth control pills are hailed as one of the best inventions of last century because they freed women from endless birthing and allowed them to do other things. Empowered them!  Didn't come free though, did it? The residues from the pills release estrogenic compounds into the environment  disrupting the endocrine systems of  fish, animals and humans. It comes around, back to us in the form of cancers and whatnot. But we see only the initial convenience and the freedom. As with everything else...

Happy 2011

Hoping this year is nice for you and for me...and everyone one else of course!

Feeling a bit low since the day started with a self-destructive announcement from a friend. I can't reveal the specifics of her choices here. All I can say is I feel impotent rage because I can do nothing to influence her choices. I suppose everyone has a right to self destruct.

I was listening to the radio last night and they were talking about all the destruction that happened last year - Haiti earthquake, Haiti Cholera, Pakistan floods etc. Those are disasters where the people didn't have a say. Couldn't avoid the destruction...

But when there is a choice, why march towards it? Why?

Small and white

Idlis were never my favorite food when I was growing up. I complained a lot when these were made, although that didn't seem to stop my mother from making them. And then I grew up, moved away etc. As with most things, absence did make my heart fonder for  idlis. By the time I was a grad student, a plate of idlis with hot sambar and spicy coconut chutney was among my top food desires. Sadly this wasn't a desire that could be fulfilled often, given our crazy schedules and lack of culinary knowledge and equipment. We did buy the instant idli mixes occasionally when we made it to the Indian store but that was rare.  Mostly we stuffed our faces with cereal and bread.

Then I got married and acquired an electric grinder and a good blender (mixie) too. Suddenly I had the equipment. I still didn't have the time or more importantly the motivation. The thought of cleaning up after the grinder did its work was somehow a huge mental block. In addition, I had absorbed some of the 'diet' wisdom floating around and was trying to up my protein levels. Seen from that point of view, idlis seemed hideous - just blobs of flour, a veritable eating disaster. So I even had a good reason to back up my laziness ;-). So we stuffed our faces with a different kind of cereal (made with soy protein isolates and other such trash) and  bread that tasted simply terrible. The things we ate in the name of nutrition!

These days idlis are back in favour in our household. Why, you ask? Long story. Basically we are trying to eat more 'real' food and less processed stuff sold as food in the grocery store. To hell with all the other things - high fat, high protein, low fat, whatchamacallit. It's just another way of looking at things...a view that might change if things don't suit us. For now though, this is the view and the grinder is back at work.

If you are one of those protein conscious, idli-shunning, cereal guzzlers - here is a link that might make you pause between your spoonfuls of cornflakes.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/05/traditional-preparation-methods-improve.html

Basically the author (who seems to know his stuff) writes that traditional ways of preparing grain reduces the level of toxins and anti-nutrients which are present to some degree in almost all grains. This renders them more nutritious and digestible. What traditional methods? Grinding and fermenting specifically seems to have been common among several traditional cuisines (such as ours). Fermenting action by the bacteria fills in the missing amino acids and elevates the protein quality considerably.  Pretty smart of our ancestors to have figured that out, don't you think? Yet another reason to not discard our traditions, just because the western ones seem more right..

In a world full of battles, how many do you pick and how do you decide?

I have recently been reading too much about environmental toxins and all the possible ways they get in. The air, the water, the carpet, the food packaging, the food... the list is endless and all pervasive. All this has done, is drive me crazy and paranoid.

What all can I do really? Can I with 100% certainty exclude all the toxins from my life? No. I have made some changes - buying less processed food, buying more organic foods when possible, cooking more, using far fewer cosmetics than before, eliminating non-stick cookware... They make me feel like I am doing something. And yet maybe all this is nothing. Maybe the jet fuel doses we get from living close to the airport are more potent than any of these positive changes. I'll never know...Makes me question the wisdom of even making the changes I've made. If we're headed to hell anyway, why bother?

I've probably repeated this kind of thing in my blog over and over...But some days the pessimism is just too much to contain within..

Buying

I bought a new computer recently. It was kind of thrilling, waiting for it to arrive, to open it up, install all my software, give it a name..whatever. So I understand the craziness happening all around me. All the spending and the buying...Gives a temporary high!
And then there are days when it gets overwhelming. All these discounts and giveaways and promos. Special discount days. Cyber Mondays. Friends and family days. Pre-Christmas sales. Boxing day sales. Holiday sales. End of the season sales. Winter sales. Stop this madness, I want to scream. Stop. Just stop. Breathe.

Kindness

I just read an article online about random acts of kindness and it got me thinking. I have received several such acts of kindness from complete strangers - like help in pushing my car to a parking lot and lending me a cell phone(mine is never charged when I need it) when it broke down in an intersection. In Belfast last year, any time I went on a train or a bus, there was always someone who helped me with carrying my stroller (with my son strapped in) up or down the train/bus as needed. When I was a student in Troy, plenty of kind people invited us over for Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving and such. It was nice to be so welcomed by people who didn't know us to begin with. So plenty of  things like that. One relatively big incident happened about 13 years ago.

I was a student-intern in Ahmedabad with more emotion than reason (that part may not have changed much). Weekdays were for working and weekends were for roaming around, taking in the sights. And there were plenty of sights, especially for a student of architecture. I was lucky in finding friends who were also interested in roaming around, looking at buildings. One weekend we had planned a trip to Modhera to see the sun temple. The previous weekend we had gone to Adalaj to see the stepped well. It was a fantastic trip and cost us all of 10 Rupees each in bus fare.

We were supposed to leave at 9am that morning for Modhera. These were the days before cell phones. My friends lived in an apartment with no phone connection at all. I lived in a hostel with no phone connection either. I had to cross the road to get to the tea stall/STD booth if I needed to make a call. At any rate if I didn't reach their apartment around 9am, it would mean that I wasn't interested in joining them. I did get delayed that day though because of various reasons and I arrived around 9:30am to find them all gone. I was angry. Very angry.

I didn't know the language. I didn't know where Modhera was or how to get there. All I had was my fury. How dare they leave me behind? Especially when they knew I was so excited about going there? I had Rs.30 in my bag and figured that would be enough, based on how much our trip cost the previous week. I had no idea that Modhera was considerably further away. I headed to the bus stop and took a bus to the junction that we went the previous week. From there I assumed I'd find a bus to Modhera. However, at the bus station I came to know that I'd have to catch a bus to a place called Bechraji and from there to Modhera.

After I got on the bus and bought the ticket to Bechraji, I realized with a shock that it took more than half the money I had in my hand. What if the remainder of the journey cost just as much? I didn't have enough money to go back from Bechraji. If I made it to Modhera and didn't see my friends, how would I return? Perhaps my best bet would be to get down at some intermediate stop before the bus reached Bechraji. That way I might be able to get back. If I needed money, what could I do? Could I sell my watch? I had scratched it and beat it up to a degree that it was a marvel that it still worked. I doubted anyone would pay me money for that.
Panic!

An elderly man sitting opposite me observed my confusion. I saw that he had a kind face. So with my broken Hindi I enquired where the bus would stop next and how much it would cost me to get back to Ahmedabad. Instead of answering, he asked me why I wanted to know and where I wanted to go. My story came tumbling out in bits and I didn't want to reveal too much about my situation. What if he was a creep?  He assured me that he would put me on the right bus to Modhera. When I tried to explain I wanted to get back to Ahmedabad, he didn't seem to understand. He did mention that the ticket to Modhera would be less than Rs.10. That was a relief of sorts. Hopefully I'd find my friends at the temple and everything would be fine.

So at the Bechraji bus terminal, he pointed out the right bus. I thanked him and tried to shake him off. However he was persistent that he wanted to come with me to Modhera and make sure that I met my friends. He also told me that if my friends weren't there, he'd accompany me back to Ahmedabad and revealed he had a daughter the same age. I don't know why but I trusted him. He insisted on paying my bus ticket to Modhera despite my protests and also insisted on buying me hot 'Chaa' (tea) from a tea stall in the bus station.

Everything did work out. My friends were still there at the temple when I arrived. Needless to say, I got a sound dressing down from them for my rash trip. My friend attempted to repay the old man for the ticket from Bechraji to Modhera but he refused to accept it. I was very moved by his kindness. He could have been a creep and things could have gone very wrong. But he wasn't and years later I still remember his kindness and calm reassurance in the face of my panic.

Apparently blog posts don't write themselves just as laundry doesn't wash itself or the house doesn't clean itself. I have been thinking a lot but somehow haven't managed to put those thoughts into words. Now I don't even remember those threads of thoughts. Maybe it was all terribly important but now we'll never know ;-)

Will write more often since I know from personal experience that writing almost always begets more of it. So is the case with a lot of other things. Reading about lighting begets more thinking about lighting which in turn leads to more reading and so on. When there is a break, there is more of a break and so on...laziness begets more laziness, but you didn't need me to tell you that. Or maybe you did.

Anyway I am still alive, still posting, still thinking my usual random thoughts...'Isn't that a pip?' (To quote my son's favorite TV show).

Relations and ships

Surrounding yourself with people takes the focus away from internal conflict and onto somewhat external conflict. Net result: Less angst from lonliness but more kinds of other angst such as interpersonal politics etc.

You need to be at some kind of internal peace with yourself, I guess.

Saw 'Eat Pray Love' yesterday and the message I took from it was that other people cannot make you happy or miserable, really. You need to learn to live in happiness with yourself before you can truly enjoy happiness with others. Not many of us get time to devote to this internal pursuit. Or have the necessary knowledge.

A guide to the good life

A couple of months ago I posted on a CBC radio program I had listened to on Happiness. I was finally able to locate the audio to it. Here it is.

Centsless

There has been some talk in my family about my working part-time, our family not meeting its earning potential, our lack of a fancy car etc. Call me lazy, but I like having the freedom to work part-time, having some time to spend with my son, being able to do other things without feeling crazily burned out. As for the fancy car, we (my husband and I) prefer having the money to spend some on healthier (organic? local?) food when we can. We also like traveling and probably travel more than some other families that we know. I guess it comes down to priorities. As long as our current car can get us from point A to B relatively easily, a new car is not a priority.

People assume that we must be kind of poor because our priorities for spending don't match theirs. People assume a lot of things. I guess that's okay, as long as I can do my thing and live in peace. Sometimes when all the mental clutter from people spouting their bullshit crowds my mind, I mentally draw a circle. Inside the circle is my son's wellbeing and my own. I ask myself "Does this external stuff affect the stuff within the circle?" No? Well then, why should I spare any further thought on it? A lot of the clutter was self-generated anyway based on my reactions to other people's input.

Steve Pavlina, a personal development blogger, whose blog I follow is living an interesting thought experiment right now. For 30 days he is going to live as if he was in a dream and all other charecters were all projections in the dream. Perhaps inspired by 'Inception'? While there is an external world out there, we are able to preceive it only because of our senses. I suppose if I were blind, deaf and unable through any other sense to perceive you, you don't exist (to me). Not realistic, but still an interesting thought experiment, just in terms of classifying sources of mental clutter.

Here is the link of the day. An article from NYTimes about how spending less might make you happier.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/business/08consume.html?src=me&ref=general

Everything changes

Everything changes for me, based on the lens (of knowledge? of truth? what?) I use to view it.

I cannot eliminate the lens. I can and do keep changing it though, and not consciously either. What I believed in a couple of decades ago, or a couple of months ago or a couple of days ago is not what I believe in right now. It keeps changing based on books, the internet, friends, family and my own experiences. While I don't reflect on experiences often enough(at least in a manner of inspecting my beliefs), it has happened a few times.

Sometimes I worry that I will never know 'The Truth' (if such a thing exists) but will instead sway one way or another depending on the lens I hold in my hand. Mostly though, I lack even that awareness, the awareness that there is a lens between me(the observer) and the truth. I just believe completely in whatever I believe in. I think we're all caught in that trap and our personalities (and perhaps self-confidence) dictate how tenaciously we hold on to a belief.

Low self confidence could either make you extremely permeable to new beliefs, since everything must seem superior to what you belive in at any moment. Or else it can make you fanatical, browbeating everything else, because you are superior in comparison.

I suppose a confident person will have some level of balance, at which point the self-confidence is a non-issue.

Just some random musings while I wait for my dwg file to load.

Ackkk...

The list of things to worry about just keeps growing and growing...Ignorance is bliss (kind of).
Bhisphenol A which was recently banned from bottles and such in Canada is found in much much higher concentrations in bills and receipts from stores (the kind I hoard in my wallet and handbags, so I can return something easily in the future). The culprit is ink from thermal printers. BPA can cause behavioural changes in children at even small amounts found in plastic water bottles.

Do I really need to hoard those receipts? How many things have I actually returned in the past couple of months? How many store surveys have I actually completed? Hmm..

This quote from the original article sums it up.

"The uproar over nanograms and micrograms of BPA leaching from water bottles took place while millions of people casually handled receipts with thousands of times higher concentrations of BPA. Parents shudder over the prospect of a baby picking up a used cigarette butt, while a receipt on the floor may pose a more dangerous health threat."

Read more at Suite101: Bisphenol A Cash Register & Credit Card Receipts: BPA Free Baby Bottles & Canned Foods, but Thermal Printing is Source

Interesting podcast

About weight gain/loss factors. It's rather long but very interesting! They talk about the concept of an adipostat, essentially an internal mechanism that regulates fat loss/gain (kind of like how a thermostat regulates heat), and discuss various factors that impact the set point of the adipostat. They go into some detail on low-carb diets but it's not just that. There isn't always just one thing, is there? They talk about omega-3s versus omega -6s, about the possible role of gut flora and so much more. 

http://thehealthyskeptic.org/podcasts/THSpodcast_episode1.mp3

Highly recommend listening to this, even if you're not struggling with weight loss issues.

Another couple of links

Pertaining to my favorite topic these days - Food (as it pertains to health)
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/
http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/

The first one is by a cardiologist, the other two seem to be researchers in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
When I have time to kill (or don't, like now), I visit their blog and almost always learn something new!

Couple of links

Baby shampoo is not as safe as we think:
http://safecosmetics.org/article.php?id=221
Have to check today if Kuttipa's shampoo has these nasties. One more thing to worry about.
I did buy something for him that was supposedly 'Natural and Organic', but apparently that's no assurance of anything..

I do have the good stuff at home. Snana powder prepared by my mother-in-law. It is all natural and safe. I just need to get rid of my 'soapy bubbles = clean' mindset, and use this powder instead more often.

Another article in the same site discuss lead in lipstick. Something to keep in mind, especially since lead accumulates over time. Yet another article discusses perfume, which is actually pretty scary when I glanced through it. But I don't want to read it thoroughly. Go figure.

Sometimes I wish I could say...

My plate. My food. My problems. Leave me alone ya'll.

Why did I write this?
http://redvinylshoes.com/blog/2010/05/as-fat-as-i-wanna-be/
Totally struck a nerve, it did!

Almost always when things go well, we underestimate how much luck has to do with it. Unless something crazy extraordinary happens like winning the lottery or escaping alive from a near-death accident. But think about it. Isn't it extraordinary that you made it back home safe today? Some people weren't lucky enough. Isn't it crazy lucky that you have a roof over your head tonight and food to eat? No sudden earthquakes or floods disturbed your life today. The people who went through stuff like that - sure they had bad luck, but I believe we don't appreciate enough how much good luck we experience everyday. Until we hit the bad luck, and lament about it..
How many times did we NOT die today? Just today alone..

Are we appreciating the life that we have gained repeatedly? That's a different question.

I am not saying its all about luck in life. Sure there is talent and hard work and free will and a gazillion other things. But it's also luck, is what I am sayin...

Feeling a bit angsty today as a former co-worker got recognized with an award. There are several issues resulting in the angst but the main one seems to be 'How come she got an award when I have done better work and never did?'

And of course one reason is I've not followed up and actually applied for the award, during the time I worked there.. Another reason is that at that time I didn't think my work was worthy of an award. In fact, it is only when I compare my work with hers that I find mine to be worthy too. Heck, yeah! Third reason- I've not marketed myself enough. That seems to be critically important today. Especially when you navigate through office politics and different personalities. When you are nice and agreeable and just going abt your business, it probably gets you liked but not necessarily anything else...There are exceptions especially when the management is intelligent and can spot value. But mostly it also seems to be about marketing. 

That doesn't mean puffing up and acting arrogant and jerky. But I am thinking, even that's not too bad. Sure, you're known as an arrogant jerk, but I bet most people wont say that to your face. And most people will bend over backwards to accomodate you, because you're inflexible and are being a jerk. Of course, the assumption here is that while you're also a jerk, you deliver value. The comparision here is a jerk versus submissive person who both deliver value. And there is a golden mean I suppose - the person who is not a jerk but is assertive and makes his talents known, and who also delivers value. 

Again, the question is why is this award so important? It's the recognition. The need for respect and recognition seems to be a basic human need. Especially recognition by someone who you respect, means a lot. 'Vashistar vaayal Brahmarishi' as my mother says. Some people mix this up with the need for love and intimacy and they say that all you need to do is go and have more friends/loving interactions. But the two needs are separate. And I don't know if that's such a bad thing. If most people have this need, it seems to be a part of the basic human condition.