Curd Rice

It had been one of those days where there had been long and mentally exhausting. The kind of day that makes me reconsider my position on retirement. Since I work from home, I like taking a few minutes to put my lunch together and on a good day sit by the window in the living room to eat it. It is a minor pleasure but it sets the tone for how I feel about my day and over time it impacts my mental well-being. This particular day I could not even recall what I had had for lunch and was thinking about what do do about dinner. In times of stress I auto-default to curd rice served warm. This is a fix that never fails to settle the mental upset I might be feeling. If that is not the definition of comfort food, then I don't know what is. 

My earliest memory of this dish goes back to childhood, a friend's mother who often served it if I showed up around lunch time to play with my buddy. A few years later, I replicated the dish on my own amazed by how simple it the process was. Fresh out of college, living independently for the first time I relied on my tried and tested comfort food a great deal - it made me feel competent in a way few other things did at the time, I had about ten years of experience preparing this dish which was a big deal. I had acquired a reputation among those who had tried my curd rice. I cannot recall how many people I have converted to fans of my favorite comfort food - J is one of them ofcourse. When she visits me on breaks from college, this is one of the first things she asks for. It serves as a reset to baseline and home for her. For me it is a way to reconnect with my kid who is now a grown woman.

Alternate Meanings

Watching Stalker was a contemplative experience. What was most remarkable for me is how Tarkovsky is able to keep the viewer fully engaged in a movie that moves very slow and is also long. Every scene is replete with atmospheric details that gets you immersed into the enigmatic world that you step into with the the Stalker, Writer and Professor. What you make of each scene, the telling of the story or the conclusion feels entirely upto the viewer. their biases and life experiences. Given when the film was made, it is easy to imagine a political message - one of protest or an expression of subversion. 

Removing that layer, one might see a metaphysical perspective there about human beings being too afraid have their inner-most desires come true, the propensity to self-destruct instead of taking a chance on the unknown. The three characters who make it to the "zone" have curiosity in common but little else. It could stand for uneasy alliances we make in life to fulfill goals we share with those quite unlike us. 

There is also the idea of taking a chance on the unknown and unknowable, believing that it could lead to resolution. The movie left me thinking about how every viewer could come to their own conclusion about the movie and they would all be right. It is a lot like reading a poem, loving and it and never knowing it you even came close to understanding what the poet had it mind when they wrote it - that simply does not diminish the experience. 

Lavender Smell

One Friday on our way back from our usual post-dinner walk, I wanted to stop for ice-cream at a store we pass by all the time. It had been a long week and I had spent days worrying about my mother's health, not being able to accept that might be declining and there is no way to turn the clock back. The Wildberry Lavender ice-cream produced a soothing effect that I might connect to stress relief. This was my first time at the store and the flavor. As we walked back home I wondered what about the ice-cream made it so perfect for my downcast mood. Childhood memories of my mother include Lavender Dew talcum powder which was a her summer staple. 

I realized I am mentally preparing to lose her maybe well before it is time to do so(or  at least I hope that is the case) and creating some mosaic of memories to latch on to. Maybe there is a part of me that imagines by preparing and being ready, I can somehow move that day further out. There has to be smells, tastes, sounds and places that are imbued with her to make this possible and that is what I am striving to do. Yet to imagine there will be a time when I cannot hear her voice again when I call her is a truth I cannot accept. 

I turn over vignettes from my childhood like an infinite deck of cards, many spilling over and falling into chaos. I want to recall that instance of relief when the taste of the ice-cream hit my senses. It makes me want to make things right while I still can and I have no idea what that means or takes. How will I know that I have made right, undone the pain, mended all the fractures and even when all that is done, it will never be the same. I want to plant lavender in my yard and pretend there is eternity that I can physically connect with. 

Anti Ambition

Reading this NYT essay about anti-ambition being in the air, makes me think of how folks like me have been early to this trend by decades. It was harder then because the zeitgeist required an absolute devotion to work and trying your best and hardest to get ahead. I recall back in the day, seeing my peers getting promoted left me feeling confused, I was not even in the running and people were crossing finish lines. Was I doing something wrong? In my heart I knew I was not but rationalizing it mentally was a struggle. 

These days watching people get promoted makes me feel a tinge of pity for that person. They already worked 80 hour weeks, exceeded every impossible goal that was set for them in order to even get promoted. Now the goal post will only move further. They will need to need to make hard decisions about running or stopping because stopping may not be an option at that level. I get the feeling there are many others like me who don't want to take that next step, try and remain where they are or find an entirely different place where not being ambitious is normal and acceptable. 

Work is mainly, really, about making money to live. And then trying to make some more. A boring, ancient story. The future of work might be more like its past than anyone admits.

I am a firm adherent of this approach - work about making money to live and then some more for a rainy day, month or year. If I am working for more than that it is a crazy mistake that needs to be corrected. With age, I am more comfortable with my way and it being at odds with what a lot of my peers have striven more and achieved. 

Lime Green

It started with deciding to paint my nails lime green on a cold and rainy evening. The following morning we were able to find someone who was interested in a piece of furniture I had wanted to get rid of for the longest time - it was a purchase fraught with too many bad memories that remained embodied in the piece of wood and glass. It did not have a place in my home or life but there it sat without meaning or purpose for a decade. Later that day after the furniture had found a new home, I pulled out a hot pink coat I have not worn in over a decade and decided it to wear it. We went to a craft store and got myself sketch pad, some pencils and pens so I would have a way to doodle in a structured manner and see how things evolved over time. 

After spending a good hour sketching after we got home, I found myself thinking about a few light fixtures that needed to be updated around the house. It was interesting how a chain of change was triggered by the simple act of wanting to paint my nails green - something I have never done because I think of me as the kind of person who would not do that. And yet when I did, nothing felt off or out of the ordinary - absolutely nothing changed except my desire to see potential for change in areas that had been long stagnated in my life. None of these thigs have any particular consequence but if the momentum lasts something useful will come out of this trigger. 

Making Safe

The bit of advisory on micro-segmenting storage of data in a hospitals as a safeguard against ransom-ware attacks caught my attention in this article. Having spent my career with clients who need to get better organized around data to help them serve their customers better, this is counter-intuitive at first blush but then it starts to make sense. If there is no systematic way to connect the the dots between the data about a patient, their treatments past and present then it would be impossible to target anyone specifically or completely. There is definitely protection in that. All the medical devices if working in air-gapped mode are also similarly safe from attacks.

The more you fragment the data and keep each in its own bin with no way to connect multiple bins except via spreadsheet, then you have significantly reduced the risk of a ransomware attack. On the patient end of things, the experience will be horrendous with lack of a holistic view of what is going on with them. It will be ironic if the ransomware attacks get to the point where organizations decide to degrade technology to the point they cannot be victims. Not much anyone can do if your company goes off the grid entirely and keeps their data in local computers with back-ups in physical vaults. The speed of business will be greatly reduced, operational inefficiencies will rise but patients will likely remain safe even if the quality of care suffers.

Team Mother

One of the ways that toxic masculinity manifests itself in the workplace is the inability of many men to work in co-operative manner, manage their emotions (which they have plenty of) productively and engage like responsible adults working on a common goal. Frequently it falls to the "team mother" to bring order and harmony in the environment. The men who operate within this misguided concept of masculine are unable to give or receive help. The only way they feel in control of the situation is when they are in charge, when no ideas other than theirs receive any air time. Being in this environment is draining for women professionally just as dealing with this is in personal life. 

Lucky are the women who have male colleagues and bosses who are male but non-toxic. Luckier are those who have such men in their personal life. I had an amusing experience not too long ago with a man who was advocating we stick with the facts and not get emotional about a situation with a client that was causing the team an incredible amount of stress. Right after this conversation, the client was assigned the "team mother" to pacify, soothe and otherwise make comfortable. 

This woman put in a ton of emotional labor to make the men on the client's team feel better about the dumpster fire they had started and refused to do anything about. None of it had anything to do with facts even remotely. It was a prime example of men of a certain type failing to perform as well-functioning human adults and making society at large and women in particular become responsible for managing their tantrums and diapers. 

Word and Math

This post about a tweet is a great example of how once you establish yourself as a thought-leader or visionary, even a pedestrian observation in a sentence fragment can send the world into a bloviating tail-spin. There are people who are better with math-related things and others who are good with word-related things. The point of convergence is actually ideas and abstraction. One side will be able to describe it in words, the other might be able to make something with it that has digital or physical shape. There is no asymmetry and no pre-determined outcome at all. It just depends what the fight is about. But it does not even have to be this way.

My grandfather was a humble university professor, a victim of partition who raised a big family on his meagre means. When he died he did not even have a bank account, the kids took care of him to the end, he took pride in the fact that he was like a collect-call - the sign of a life well-lived, his children were vying for his time, he was not a burden to anyone. Yet for all that, he was an absolute nobody compared to Mr. Andreessen but his words of wisdom have served me and anyone else who heard them very well. My grandfather used to say - if you can be as good at math as you are at writing, you will go far. If you are extraordinary at both you will be unstoppable. He had this way of saying things that made a deep impression. 

All of us grandkids made an effort to be atleast equally good knowing that extraordinary would be out of reach. It is the wisdom we have passed on to the next generation and it has served all concerned reasonably well. The point is, any average kid can be taught to be a strong balance of both - there is no magic involved, just application of regular effort to achieve the outcome. The idea that you can only be one or the other is plainly misguided. 

Climate Anxiety

Not sure if I have experienced a full climate anxiety attack as this article describes but the very visible effects of climate change leave me feeling blue. The lack of fall foliage, flowers blooming ahead of time or not at all, the ceaseless rain leading to dreary days and ashen skies, untimely snow, crazy heatwaves - and the complete unpredictability of how the day or the week will shape up to be. 

I do notice all of these things and experience a sense of sad hopelessness about them. To overcome, I do the small things that I can - reduce my consumption footprint in every way. Small format stores with limited inventory make me feel way more comfortable than some national chain with endless aisles. When shopping online, I leave things in my basket for days until there is enough to ease the guilt getting stuff delivered to me. 

She understands how privileged she is; she describes her anxiety as a “luxury problem.” But still: The plastic toys in the bathtub made her anxious. The disposable diapers made her anxious. She began to ask herself, what is the relationship between the diapers and the wildfires? “I feel like I have developed a phobia to my way of life,” she said.

The notion that such anxiety is a "luxury problem" is not lost on me. I have seen poverty up close growing up in India. Every choice I have and am agonizing over is a huge privilege to have in the first place. Not knowing where your next meal is coming from is what can and should induce stress and anxiety. It is not on par with whether the two largely useless things I am ordering online can arrive together in one box with way extra packing materials or two such boxes. Yet there is something to be said for having "developed a phobia to my way of life". That is a relatable idea for me. 

Gag Gift

The idea of bologna face-mask is silly and attention-grabbing. And it pokes fun at the fancy skin-care products made of super-esoteric stuff that is meant to connect you to the eternal fountain of youth. This is the kind of advertisement I would totally click a banner-ad to watch - it's plain amusing and makes a great gag-gift for the person in your life who loves make-up

“Oscar Mayer has a legacy bringing levity to things that have gotten too serious, and beauty is a ripe territory to playfully subvert,” says Oscar Mayer Sr. Marketing Analyst Lindsey Ressler in a press release. “This is the latest in our brand movement to create work that feels more like pop-art and less like traditional commercial advertising—inspired by the old, modernized for today.”

Being that it was sold out within hours of launch goes to prove that the marketers have great instincts and at least for now, this campaign is a winner. Once the novelty fades they will need to come up with something else just as quirky. They have set themselves a high bar with this one.

Almost Fairytale

Reading this story was a great way to end a long day. It's about a creative young boy who wrote and illustrated a story about Christmas and really wanted to share it with the world. He found a way to do it quite successfully. It's such a charming way to accomplish what any wannabe writer would kill for - a five year waiting list to read their book. 

The staff librarians who read Dillon’s book agreed that as informal and unconventional as it was, the book met the selection criteria for the collection in that it was a high-quality story that was fun to read. So, Hartman asked Helbig for permission to tack a bar code onto the book and formally add it to the library’s collection.

Dillon’s parents enthusiastically said yes, and the book is now part of the graphic-novels section for kids, teens and adults. The library even gave Dillon its first Whoodini Award for Best Young Novelist, a category the library created for him, named after the library’s owl mascot.

Great idea, perfect execution and a very happy ending for all concerned. Almost a fairytale.

One Size

An omnipresent Big Brother keeping scores cannot be anyone's idea of a good time but every system will gain its adherents given time. 

People with good scores can speed up travel applications to places like Europe, Botsman said. An unidentified woman in Beijing told the BBC in 2015 that she was able to book a hotel without having to pay a cash deposit because she had a good score. The outlet also reported that Baihe, China's biggest dating site now owned by Jiayuan, is boosting the profiles of good citizens. Citizens with good social credit can also get discounts on energy bills, rent things without deposits, and get better interest rates at banks.

Its like a story of consequences or training a monkey by a system of rewards and punishments to behave a certain way. In reality, the death by thousand cuts - slow internet, no plane tickets, being locked out of schools, jobs and more will likely result in a high degree of compliance from those who survive and that's when the metrics for good behavior can be tightened some more to cull the recalcitrant. 

The loop constricts further each turn until it feels like a noose to just about everyone. I would guess the powers that be will take a more refined approach and not push quite that far - they will strike a balance that keeps the vast majority in reasonable compliance and enjoying reasonable benefits for their good behavior. There is a moral question then about why that is unconditionally bad or wrong. If the overall outcomes are a net positive for society overall how much does it matter if such positive comes at the cost of greatly stifling the individual. 

White Collar

When I first started my current job, S and I were thrown into the same project by a random quirk of fate. She in a decade younger than me and more world-weary than she should be. Fifteen years on the road will do that to a person who does not particularly love living out of a hotel Mon-Thu. That was how she lived until the pandemic struck. Suddenly she was at home and loving it.

There was time to spend with her boyfriend it was possible to get a dog as she had long wanted to. Having had a chance to take pause and stay home for weeks and months at a time changed S in the most dramatic ways. She is one of the many people who I know transformed for the better by the pandemic because they were lucky to be in professions where their skills became even more valuable because of it. S and I get together for a chat every few weeks and each meeting I see a better version of the person - calmer, more thoughtful and deliberate about what she does or chooses not to. Reading these lines from Seth Godin's Linchpin reminded me of a recent conversation we had:

Most white-collar workers wear white collars, but they’re still working in the factory. They push a pencil or process an application or type on a keyboard instead of operating a drill press. The only grease they have to get off their clothes at the end of the day is the grease from the take-out food at lunch. But it’s factory work. It’s factory work because it’s planned, controlled, and measured. It’s factory work because you can optimize for productivity. These workers know what they’re going to do all day—and it’s still morning.

The forced pause in her ceaseless travels for work gave S time to process the fact that very little separated her from those workers who are commodity and therefore disposable. Its just the time of disposal varies by trade. She is fighting the tide by wanting to be an artist where the system would want her to be a skilled worker. 

Crucial Awareness

Reading this could not have been more timely. There is this individual (let's call her Q) that I need to deal with quite routinely in my personal life. She is one of those people no one particularly likes and each person has their own reason. Getting to the level of universal love or revulsion sets a person apart from the masses. Most of us are the mediocre in-between place loved and disliked by a relative minorities. For the most part those who know us can't summon up any strong feelings - they are largely indifferent. If we are lucky more people love us that not. 

But Q is not one of those average people. She is very easy to dislike and promotes more intense feelings than that among those who know her well. I am sadly in that mix. Recently something she did infuriated me to the point that I started to shake with anger just reading an email. It took me a minute to understand the effect she had on me and that prompted a great sense of failure - to give someone that much power over me is something to be shameful about. I tried to summon myself best I could and get on with my day and reading these lines brought some calmness

We must remember that we create our own anger. No one makes it for us. If we move from a particular event directly to our reaction, we are skipping a crucial awareness, a higher perspective on our own reactivity. What is that middle step, that deeper awareness? It is mindfulness about our own beliefs, our attitude, our understanding or lack of understanding about what has really happened.

I had indeed been missing that crucial awareness phase, not taking the time to think why Q was having such a severe reaction on me. Putting some thought to that question, I realized that her actions made me feel vulnerable - in the moment I could feel like my efforts to achieve certain goals were all in vain. In a sense she was able to generate that angry energy from my own insecurities. Where she stands out from the average person who can do just about the same things is the precision of her strikes - she is able to generate pretty strong responses from many people she knows well. That is to her credit and our collective lack of self-awareness. 

Data Stories

Love how these stories are interwoven with data to make them come to life. The fact that women are still making news at the same rate for various "firsts" is very telling:

Speaking of firsts, the first similarity we noticed between all the countries is the high frequency of the word FIRST. There are thousands of mentions, nearly 8,000 to be precise, of trailblazing women that shattered glass ceilings. In the recent past, outside Kamala Harris’ widely covered ascension to vice-presidency, Zuzana Čaputová became Slovakia’s first female President, and Ana Brnabić became Serbia’s first gay and first female prime minister.

Depending on perspective, you could see that number at high or low. 8000 firsts is not really enough, many more glass ceilings need to be broken to come anywhere close to parity. If you are being more optimistic, you could see that as a sign of plenty of glass already broken and tremendous progress made so its only small numbers left to go - that's why 8000. 

With the right analyst, any data can tell any story- something I learned decades ago and with that came a healthy skepticism of any story told with data. But in this particular case, I am looking more at the beauty of the production rather than veracity or authority. Ultimately it is up to reader to make what they might of this.

Turning Invisible

For women of certain age and history the storyline of Who You Think I Am can feel uncomfortable. It reminded me of single years when J was little and how I tried to date men under conditions that made a real relationship an impossibility. My reason was that I had to be present for my child as I was the only parent she had and if that presence was impaired in some way by a serious relationship then I would fail at my primary and only job. 

Truth is that being alone was hard, I longed for company and love and more. My efforts to deny myself all that did not always serve J well but no one could have talked me out of that entrenched way of thinking about what was right and wrong for my family unit of two. In the movie, the character of Claire is mentally absent while physically present for her sons - it is uncomfortable to watch how that works out for the children. 

Even more uncomfortable to know that there were days in my child's early life where my worn out physical presence without mental engagement was not the way to do my parenting job right. I am grateful to have had resolution in my life and for it to have made things much easier for J. The other theme in the movie is one of loss of youth and becoming invisible and replaceable. 

I loved the scenes in the railway station where the young man Alex who is completely infatuated by the concept of Clara simply does not see this very attractive but older woman right in front of him. It is as if age gives her invisibility that intelligence, wisdom and even real beauty cannot overcome. This is a reality women of that age know too well but it is makes for an impossible situation when that woman is alone and needs to be visible if she ever hopes to find love and companionship. 

Future Cars

I am hanging on to my car which is going to a decade old soon because it does not bristle with technology that I don't want. Given my options in the market today, not sure if there is a path for a buyer like me to get a new car that leaves them alone. I don't much like the sound of where cars are headed:

How would you feel about paying $5 each month for the ability to lock and unlock your car from a distance through an app? What about a $25-per-month charge for advanced cruise control or $10 to access heated seats? What if those charges continued long after your car was paid off?  As vehicles become increasingly connected to the internet, car companies aim to rake in billions by having customers pay monthly or annual subscriptions to access certain features. Not content with the relatively low-margin business of building and selling cars, automakers are eager to pull down Silicon Valley-style profits. But unlike with Netflix, you won't be able to use your ex-girlfriend's uncle's login in your new BMW. 

There are a lot of car buyers like me who only need a reliable and cost-efficient way to get from one point to another. The car is not a form of self-expression or fulfilling higher level needs that go beyond transportation. All of what is being proposed for the future of cars excludes customers like me entirely. 

Seeing Data

I am not sure what to make of this piece of analysis that got folks buzzing on LinkedIn (that's where I first saw it). The data used for the story is here and the analysis is a classic case of manufacturing insight. The Axios story claims to have spotted a trend with CD sales based on the numbers in that industry report. There are two take-aways from the author

• CD sales grew to $584.2 million nationally last year, up more than $100 million from 2020. By comparison, 2021 vinyl sales increased to $1 billion annually, up from $643.9 million
• And CD Sales increased for the first time since 2004

The graph shows a decline percent of CD sales from 2020 to 2021. It went from 4.0% to 3.9%. The other data point that the author ignores in the analysis is the huge spike in total revenues across all categories from 2020 to 2021 - the rising tide lifted all boats and that contributed to the higher revenue from CD sales despite the drop in % of the total revenue contribution relative to total. The same data set shows LP sales volumes growing year after year 28.3% in 2020 compared to prior year and 67.3% in 2021 compared to prior year but trend is not a decade long explosion as the story claims either. There was a 12.3% decline in 2013. 

Once someone (with certain degree of credibility) throws out a manufactured insight supported by data that checks out at first blush, that insight becomes reality. In a time of influencer marketing, it only needs to be picked up and a few more folks with some credibility of their own to this reality to triggers actions. It will be interesting to see who bites on this one and starts to build a business around CDs. Would be best to make a go of it before the 2022 numbers are out. 

Blockchain Wedding

Being the bridge generation between my parents and J is complicated business. There is very little they have in common to hold a meaningful conversation. They default to acting like she was still in kindergarten - that is the last time they probably felt comfortable with her and could relate to her world. They started to see each other less over time, J lost the language skills she once had with them and her life changed in ways that is hard for them to fathom. These days I feel like I am translating between two foreign languages using the usable parts of my language that both sides can understand. Every attempt demonstrates my limited abilities. Neither side is much closer to comprehending the other. 

Reading this story about India's first blockchain wedding was oddly comforting. I cannot imagine this couple has parents or grandparents who can understand what this is all about. As time goes by, the marriage will settle into a steady state and start resembling other marriages including those of the parents and grandparents - the twain will meet in the end. I hope the same is true for J and my parents. As time goes by, J starts to live an independent life, make decisions similar to others in her life stage - things might start to compute for my parents. Maybe they will see some of the struggles on their early life in her world, the trade-offs she makes will not seem that different from the ones they made at a conceptual level. The rest is noise and will fade away as familiarity emerges. 

Gift Exchange

Nice article about the benefits of gift card balances to Starbucks (or any other purveyor of in-store gift cards). When J was in middle school, the single most popular birthday gift seemed to be gift cards. She got plenty of them and was prolific about giving them out too. 

Lack of planning and bit of laziness might have contributed - last minute this was likely the only choice. Kids were coming in from different elementary schools and had limited history which each other so coming with a personalized gift idea was harder. Many a time, we would make a mad dash for the grocery store right on the way to the birthday party so J could pick up a card, chocolate and the gift card. 

The ease of trading gift cards made them popular too I guess. Someone with a Starbucks habit could trade the other person for a card of the same amount from a store they would never shop at. All the benefits of money without exchanging any cash - a good old-fashioned barter economy but the tax implications could get complex at times.

Holding Close

I never understood why any parent would let their baby cry and not hug and soothe them. 

The pair examined childrearing practices here and in other cultures and say the widespread American practice of putting babies in separate beds — even separate rooms — and not responding quickly to their cries may lead to incidents of post-traumatic stress and panic disorders when these children reach adulthood.

The early stress resulting from separation causes changes in infant brains that makes future adults more susceptible to stress in their lives, say Commons and Miller.

Despite our efforts to comfort our babies and be there for them when they are hurting physically or emotionally, we cannot ensure that they will be able to withstand stress that the real adult world with throw at them. They will struggle with decision making, make bad ones that make them unhappy and against their better judgement do things that are not in their best interest. As a parent you watch from afar without the simple remedies of hugs and kisses to comfort them anymore. You wait until they resolve their problems their own way as painful as it is to watch.

Eating Right

I hope I am in the 10% here for eating healthy. For me that has meant shopping for produce exclusively from ethnic grocery stores - we have one here that caters to a diverse set of ethnicities and is my favorite place to browse and learn about sauces, spices and condiments. This place carries an assortment of fruit, vegetables and greens so its possible to create some variety in our meals. If my only option was the larger grocery chains, it would be a lot harder. There is not enough to work with given what I grew up eating. People stay with what they know as a baseline and add new things to it. Without my favorite grocery store I could not have established the much needed baseline where I can combine comfort with eating healthy. With that, it is possible to venture further afield and try new things that are also good for me. 

It may well be that a lot of people in this 90% set are unable to establish a baseline of healthy and comfortable with the options they have easy access to so there is tendency to veer towards convenience which may not always be the healthy option. Recently, I decided to recreate from memory a wonderful pulpo a la gallega dish I had in Barcelona a while back. It took me many hours to get to the final product having to rely on how I remembered the taste and finding a way to get close to it. This was just as rewarding an experience as cooking hilsa with mustard sauce for a friend a few months ago. 

Unlike the octopus recipe, I can cook the hilsa like my grandmother effortlessly - I have muscle memory of every step of the process. What both experiences have in common is the mental immersion into the act of preparing food that is well loved. The higher the degree of effort the less likely we are to eat mindlessly - you want to enjoy the fruit of your labor. That is a big part of eating healthy and I try to create as many opportunities to do this part right. 

Downward Slide

Reading these lines from You're Leaving When? made me smile: 

I was drowning in doodles, sketch pads, and DIY manga. The walls were already decorated with favored pieces. Ezra was talented, but no Picasso. Even Picasso’s mother might have had the same thought when culling the most precious of his childhood drawings: “Pablo’s talented, but he’s no El Greco.”

J's childhood artwork can be found around the house specially in my office. Some of the pre-elementary production was repurposed into collage or compacted in other ways to preserve. The abundance of the early art is indeed a challenge to deal with. 

The book is a breeze to read and though the author's has more than her fair share of troubles, she is has a fantastic sense of humor about her situation and is also very self-aware: 

As is typical, when faced with a truly important decision, I approached it with all the planning of someone fleeing a burning house. I’ve made several major life decisions in this way—moves across the country, marriages—reasoning that if I think too hard about it, I’ll never do it.

I would imagine a lot of people who have made big mistakes in their life look back at those moments when the bad decisions were made and feel much the same way as Gurwitch does. 

Reading Dreams

There are dreams we remember upon waking up and much that we forget. Some linger fleetingly in that place between sleep and wakefulness. To be able to record and replay all of that could reveal so much about who we are.

The researchers now want to look at deeper sleep, where the most vivid dreams are thought to occur, as well as see whether brain scans can help them to reveal the emotions, smells, colours and actions that people experience as they sleep.

Dr Mark Stokes, a cognitive neuroscientist from the University of Oxford, said it was an "exciting" piece of research that brought us closer to the concept of dream-reading machines.

Maybe having access to such technology would get us to focus inward, try to answer the question "Who Am I?" instead of wasting our lives trying to keep up with friends and strangers who over-share about their lives while taking care to edit out the flaws and blemishes to the point the most mundane moments in their day project the level of perfection we cannot achieve on our best. 

Breathing Right

I first heard of Maus when J read it in school. It definitely made an impression on her and she highly recommended I read it to. Sadly, I have not so far but now in light of the ban, I feel that an obligation to do so. When I first read about the ban, I made a mental note to ask J next time we spoke, what might have prompted it, but learned about it on my own:

..Maus was awarded the Special Award in Letters Pulitzer Prize in 1992, the only graphic novel ever to do so to this day. Alas, these merits weren’t enough for the McMinn County Schools board, who voted to ban the book from their eighth-grade curriculum due to its use of swear words and a naked illustration of a mouse. Spiegelman himself says he is baffled by the decision and even referred to it as an “Orwellian” measure. 

I had imagined far more complex reasons than a "naked illustration of a mouse". Following that standard, innumerable illustrated children's books will be prime for the chopping block. Only Disney has animal characters in clothes and if memory serves also Jemima Puddle-duck and the cast of characters in the Beatrix Potter books. The "use of swear words" is an even more dubious standard because its upto the censor board's sensitivities to define which words are likely to given young children offense and what they need to be protected from. I feel for the kids growing up these crazy times of political and other forms of correctness where one day we may come to a point of needing to breathe just the right way or not breathe at all.

Tender Bar

Watching The Tender Bar was the uplifting experience I needed after a hard week. My problems faded away as I got immersed into the story. The character of Uncle Charlie was my favorite. It takes one person like that in a child's life to make a real difference. He is able to pull the main weight of the void in JR's life so the surrounding cast of characters can do their part to move this kid's life in a positive direction. Without Uncle Charlie things would quickly fall apart. Yet he carries his significant responsibility and influence on JR's life with a deft, light touch.

And that makes all the difference - his words of wisdom have staying power, he is able to navigate his nephew with an ease that parents would find enviable. The forces of adversity shaped the literary talents of this writer. A normal, suburban family upbringing would unlikely be able to produce the same outcomes. The grandfather was an interesting character too - depicted as not being generous with his love. So while he provides what he can to his family including two adult kids who seem to drift through life, he is not there emotionally. It is as if the kids are waiting for their quota of love, care and affection from their father to gather the strength to strike out on their own. 

The family configuration in the movie brought to mind one that I know well. The two children on in her late 40s and the other in his early 50s live in their childhood home with their old parents, playing out the rites of childhood and young adulthood ad-infinitium. The father now in his 80s was a provider but emotionally frozen to his offspring. 

Making Home

Such a great idea for these two women to pool their resources for the greater good for their kids. Ofcourse any number of things can go wrong but for them to be brave enough to try this is amazing. Being a single mom should not entail not being able to build home equity and financial security. What one woman could not afford alone she can with the "platonic spouse". When women pull together and help each other out real magic happens. 

I wanted to live in a familial community. Furthermore, I knew it was possible.

When my marriage fell to pieces, I vowed to be open to unique opportunities. 

Serendipitously, one of my closest friends shared my "commune dream," and she had separated from her husband around the same time I had. 

A failed marriage does not have to destroy all hopes for home and family for the kids impacted by it. I have been there for the longest part of J's childhood and have a keen appreciation of what a child's can lose out on for no fault of theirs. These ladies have made the best of a bad situation and their children will be better off for it. 

Changing Style

I was able to fit a walk in between meetings right around the time students from the neighborhood high-school head home. It was interesting to see the evolution in their clothing choices during the pandemic. Many paired the PJs with a a fleece or a tee-shirt of some kind. Some girls were had shawls covering them like blankets and so on. I did not see a single kid dressed in the kind of clothes kids used to wear to school even a few years ago. It seems as if after many lock-downs and months spent remote learning, things had changed for good in terms of back to school fashion. 

From what I could see, most kids were dressed cozy and took their remote learning wardrobe with few changes to the classroom. Overall everyone I passed by on my walk look relaxed and comfortable about how they were dressed. Back at work, I have not seen most of my co-workers in business casual clothing since the beginning of the pandemic. Athleisure is the the most common dress-code. Even when meeting with customers online, most people seem to be comfortable being casual. 

Red Balloon

What a perfect treat to watch The Red Balloon. It makes the viewer want to return to childhood, relive that ability to find magic in ordinary things. It was easy then to imagine stories and characters from stories coming to life, being part of the here and now. Pascal find a loyal friend in a red balloon and to a child that is the kind of magic they dream of and so its completely possible. The storyline is amazingly simple yet captivating - the child and the balloon become friends and inseparable. 

The other kids act in envy reminiscent of adult behavior - they can't befriend the red balloon like Pascal so they will not allow him his unique friendship. The balloon dies a sad death towards the end of the movie at the hands of its tormentors but Pascal wins even bigger. This is story is for kids and has the suitably uplifting end. For the adults jaded by the harsh realities of life, it is an invitation to imagine what if. Best half hour I have spent on a screen in a very long time. Highly recommend watching the movie. 

Replicated Mother

Picked up Coders after a pause and chuckled when I read this line :

Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of Mother Jones noted in a tweet, “So many Silicon Valley startups are about dudes wanting to replicate mom.” It’s also a symptom of how coding has evolved.

The way Clive Thompson describes it, there is method to the madness when it comes to the nature of apps being created

The blizzard of “do stuff for me” apps is what you get when you populate a tech hub—San Francisco—with a plurality of young men just out of college, and give them the tools of optimization and geysers of money for start-ups. The odds are high the “problem” they’ll decide needs most urgently to be solved is the re-creation of the conveniences of dorm and home-life—where everyone prepared their meals, cleaned up after them, and ferried them around in vehicles.

If instead of privileged boys replicating their mothers it could be about the rest of the world making interesting and useful things. Such a cohort of builders and makers would be interested in solving problems that went beyond mother-replication. 

Big Dreams

The story-telling in The Space Barons is engaging and offers interesting insights into why the commercial space companies came into existence. Millions around the world are fascinated by space exploration, science-fiction, the possibility of life beyond earth yet only a handful have the wherewithal to convert that fascination to a commercially viable venture. This book is about that ultra select minority and the origin stories of their space companies. Much closer to the earth and for way lesser mortals there could be some useful lessons to learn. If you are able to hold on to a big and impossible dream close to your heart for a very long time, chances are you will make the incremental moves to be able to give that dream a shot at reality. It does not have to be about colonizing Mars. There are other dreams that could feel just as outrageous when adjusted to the scale of the person dreaming that dream.

These men stayed tethered to their big dream and found ways to realize it. That was one thing I took away. The other was about timing and readiness to seize opportunity. Come to early and no one is ready for you, come too late and the train has left the station without you. Come unprepared and even the best of times can't help you with speed to deliver. Assessing timing and readiness to execute are key to realizing audacious dreams. As I read the book, I thought of some young people I know who have very "outlandish" ideas about the life and career they want. Most adults think after getting some hard knocks of real-life these folks will come to their senses. It sounds like they would be best served not coming to their senses but forging ahead assuming their plans will come to fruition, preparing well and hard to seize the window of opportunity when it does open.