Category: News

Lead Kindly Light

Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom
The internet has been agog with the fact that sitting is killing us. We were meant to be standing up and we are changing something fundamental when we move towards sitting this long. Of course, I have been reading all this sitting smugly on my chair, sipping tea and resolve to fix it immediately. How, one may ask, but I could not answer for I do not know.

http://time.com/sitting/

There is a very sensible article that seemed to tell me exactly how to repeal all the horrible effects of sitting. Apparently, if I gave myself 3 small walks for every 3 hours of sitting, I could reverse the appalling effects of sitting. Though how I can throw in a dozen small walks a day is beyond me.

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20141109-26159.html : 3 short walks required for every 3 hours of sitting.

On another note, the son has been accessorized with a pair of shoes that light up. The sister of his came up with ridiculous arguments for the shoes:

  • He needed the light-up shoes because when he walks at night, the lights from the shoes can light the way.
  • It saves electricity because when he wear those shoes, there is no need for any lights in the room: This coming from a child who leaves a light bulb trail wherever she goes in the house, and I yelp behind her switching off every single light on the way. I, to prove a point of course, switch off lights in rooms before I have made it to the door and bang up against something unceremoniously only to have a cackling I-told-you-so afterward from the daughter. but it is all in a day’s work and I bear my grievances with fortitude.
  • If he is walking in a forest and the sunlight does not come through, he can help us out with his shoes.

The last reason may have been the reason I caved in. One never knows when one can get stuck in a forest where the sunlight does not reach the floor right? It turns out that he got to walk in a forest within a week or two of his new shoes. To give the little one his due, he walked and ran for miles on end in the forest. The novelty of the light-up-shoes coupled with a serene forest atmosphere no doubt.  But he did seem to emanate the ‘Miles to go before I sleep’ aura about him.

Maybe, I too shall get myself a pair like that and then parade up and down throwing in a dozen walks or more a day. In search of the light.

Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom

The Doodling Circle

The son walked into his new preschool talking like a man in control of his emotions. He yapped and clacked nervously telling us all what he can do in the school. His doting elder sister had told him of all the fun things that a school provides – friends, play areas, play doh, blocks, story time, circle time, the works. There was no denying the fact that he was excited. The poor fellow asked us repeatedly whether we will be coming to school with him. I assured him that on the first day, we would. We will walk him to his chair and then say ‘Bye’ and leave. He was not very happy with that, but I told him that the school was only for children and therefore, we would leave. His face fell a bit, but not much. I swelled with pride that my little boy was being a brave boy after all. He chatted happily as we made our way into the school classroom, we settled him in and turned to leave. It was only then that he realized that his sister was not going to be with him in class either, and she would leave too. He started to cry: silent, heaving sobs clinging on to his sister’s hands. He thought that when I said school was for children I meant his sister and he could stay.

Long story short, the fellow started preschool this week, and brought home his first piece of “work”.  The work is (un)helpfully labelled ‘I can draw a Circle’. In my opinion, they need not have done that. Because they said ‘Circle’ I was forced to look for one in the doodle that my son produced, and it was a daunting task.

ICanDrawCircle
ICanDrawCircle

A word about his lineage might be appropriate here. The son is the grandson of two Maths teachers, and when asked to draw a circle, he sees whether can he draw two and two square and two cube circles. He experiments with Venn diagrams. He experiments with non-linear curves without curvature. He tests the hyperbolic strength of a loosely held pencil. Or he just doesn’t know what a circle is and produces the hapless picture above.

First Work of Art

The d.sister took it and stuck it up on the wall proudly as his first art work. All fine so far. That is what a family does. They save the embarrassing first works of Art to show it to them when they unleash their creative works on you later in life as adults and show them the long path they have traversed and then smile proudly. What I was not prepared for was this.

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/childhood-drawings-may-indicate-intelligence-teenagers#wfpJDDkqfsksqPlK.99

Apparently, this study studies the first art work of children and then produces a moderate correlation to their abilities as teens. Luckily the article is as vague and under-researched and steers off clarity as a lot of articles on the Internet, and I am assured that the first piece of Art is nothing more than that. A Doodle.

Doodling does have its uses:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/13/first-female-to-win-maths-top-prize-describes-her-2-brainstorming-strategies/

Happy Schooling and Doodling Dear Son.

Fist Bump

Our little fellow is methodical. For example, if you find that he has done something good, like putting away his toys (read: moving his cars from high foot traffic area to under the sofa), we sometimes give him a high-five. Then, his sister taught him low-five. So, his ritual became high-five, low-five.  A few days later, the ritual included a high-five, low-five and a fist bump. Even if you only wanted to give a high-five, you had to do that high-five, low-five, fist bump routine or not at all.

Well, recently, that schedule has increased some more to include a high-five, low-five, fist bump and ting-ting-ting (that is a spot on either cheek with the middle-ting being for the nose). 

Even the ting-ting-ting seemed okay till I heard that the fist bump is fast replacing the handshake as it is cleaner.

http://www.webmd.com/news/20140728/fist-bump-may-beat-handshake-for-cleanliness

The fist bump has evolved Darwinian style – going from being perceived as an aggressive gesture to a acceptable, even sweet one

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/18/fist-bumps-natgeo-psychology-video_n_5688725.html

What if the ting-ting-ting becomes a thing too? I am not sure I am up to having random people ting me on my nose. It is precious to me.

Oh well.

#Direnkahkaha

Getting the folks in our family to laugh is easy. Most times, a lame joke about three-men-in-a-boat type of joke is enough, and there we are,  rolling on the floor. But the occasion demanded something sterner, that is the reason three generations of women were seen tickling each other on the street after a hearty meal and laughing hard, while an amused son looked on trying to figure out what was going on. Tickle parties are fun and tickle parties are necessary he seemed to say earnestly.

direnkahkaha
Resist direnkahkaha

A Turkish minister has a protest on his hands that has people laughing their heads off, after a remark at his Ramadan speech. He said, “A woman should be chaste. She should know the difference between public and private. She should not laugh in public.” He says that his remarks were taken out of context, but if it gives people a moment to stop in their day and laugh, why not?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/30/turkish-women-defy-deputy-pm-laughter

The Harry Potter star and newly named Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women is just one of thousands of women who have been protesting the politician’s remarks and even included the hashtag #direnkahkaha, which translates to “resist laughter.” Thousands of women have posted pictures of themselves cracking up with laughter.

http://time.com/3069703/emma-watson-turkey/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/11005428/Emma-Watson-joins-protest-against-Turkish-politicians-claim-women-should-not-laugh-out-loud.html

Enough people have joined in on the backlash against Arinc’s remarks that both the hashtags ‎#direnkahkaha and #direnkadin (“resist woman”) have become trending topics on Twitter.

Laugh on folks!

The Headache Machine

We all know that the use to which a particular technology can be put is only in your hands till such time that it becomes public. I wanted to find some weird uses of technology. This is what I love about the internet I tell you. Every time I want to find some weird examples, somebody has already helpfully written an article on it, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs and stand around. I love the one where the egg is fried on a hot laptop.

http://www.zdnet.com/weird-tech-12-geeky-uses-for-technology_p12-7000010007/#photo

Anyway, the product I am about to touch upon today is the Fitbit. Fitbit might have modeled its products for a range of uses such as measuring activity, promoting a healthy lifestyle or a move to encourage active living. I don’t think they saw it as a Headache Machine.

A friend of mine who works with preschool and elementary school children on a regular basis got herself a Fitbit. All day long, the curious children wanted to know what it was, why it was used and were thrilled with the fact that every time they pressed the button, a number bigger than before came up. In a few hours, the situation was encompassing a wide spectrum of emotions such as :

* Competitiveness (It must be 500 more. Nope: she was not walking while drinking that cup of water. Want to bet? )

* Entitlement (She will show it to me whenever I ask. I am a good boy.)

* Pessimism (Maybe it is only 2000 steps now – she sat for sometime, so it should have reduced steps said the algorithmic expert)

* Altruism (I am tired but I can walk with it for you to increase your step count)

Headache machine
Headache machine

One particularly persistent child asked to see the device about 7 times every 15 minutes.  It was at the end of this long day that she told them all that it was a headache machine. The children looked at it in awe and shushed themselves. Reminds me of this article I read a while ago on the Fitbit.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/30/140630fa_fact_sedaris?currentPage=all

Sounds about right. A headache machine it is. Ever since I acquired one, I hold 10,000 steps as a holy grail. I don’t want to run because it records less strides for the same distance. I would rather sidle up to the daughter to get her to bring me the Fitbit from upstairs or invent a huge contraception to get me the Fitbit when I no longer have it, than to waste those steps in going to get it. Do unrecorded steps help in your statistics? No, they don’t! Yoga? Swimming? Cross-Fit? Don’t bother mentioning those forms of exercise that don’t count towards my step goals. The worst is when I am really tired and hit the bed and see 13689 on my fitbit. Just 311 steps more to make it a round 14000? Come on! I tell myself and off I go.

There are ways I could help myself I suppose, like not taking Fitbit with me, but what if I want to use it the next day? My weekly average numbers would take a toss.

What would really help is the calorie counter. The Fitbit helpfully counts the steps I take to forklift a load of <insert healthy or unhealthy snack here>, but does not tell me how much I ate? What it needs to do is detect the chomp rate and prorate the step counter accordingly. A headache for the company maybe ….

Let Children Play Outside

Please indulge me once more as I meander down the memory lane. After all, The business of life is the acquisition of memories.

The business of life is the acquisition of memories
The business of life is the acquisition of memories

Regular readers of my blog know that I grew up in a beautiful hill station surrounded by hills, forests, springs and tea estates. Obviously, I spent a good part of this time enjoying my life. I’ve tasted berries whose name I know not, played in the rain, walked through the fog not knowing whether I am heading for a cliff, I have walked and run so far away from home, but nature always guided me back to my home (well, mostly, folks who worked in my parents’ school and realized I was lost), drank water from fresh water springs, cycled on ‘bridges’ made of slender logs,  ran helter-skelter after spotting wild boars hiding in bushes.

Lovely Nature
Lovely Nature, Sweet Nature

Maybe, I could have died in a hundred different ways, but I also lived in a thousand beautifully different ways.

Which is why modern parenting makes me stop and think.  Do we structure our childrens’ time too much too soon to remove the true benefits of unstructured time? Are we over-protective? So many of the things this article spoke about resonated with me.

http://time.com/3005611/helicopter-parenting-chilhood-obesity/

I quote from the article:

But today, to keep our kids “safe,” we drive them back and forth to school. “Arrival” and “dismissal” have morphed into “drop-off” and “pick-up.” Kids are delivered like FedEx packages. About 1 in 10 use their legs to get to school.

Do we really need 599 cars dropping off 599 children in a school less than 5 miles from home every morning? What happened to biking, walking or taking a school bus to school? It is no wonder that obesity rates are spiking.

The fact that I don’t see residential neighborhoods filled with children playing on the street saddens me. The only way to change that is to open those doors and step outside. Let children play.

How to Pack, Write and Other Things

The world is full of nonsense if you will just open your minds up to it.  For example, one of my news feeds once thought it relevant to show me an article on how to pack when you have children and are going on a flight trip. Now, that is a nice title, knowing how we travel with children, and how often we have done it in the past with our own brood.

Maybe an example would help here. If you see us go on a week-end trip somewhere close by, you know drive for a few hours and get back sort of place, you would understand why I clicked on this link to read what novel piece of advice it had to give me. You see, once we had the car packed with the following among other things like suitcases and books:

1) Shoes (1 extra pair each for each member of the family)

2) Jackets (1 for every member)

3) 2 strollers (We only have one stroller rider, but I packed one in and the husband packed the other.) Both of us looked extremely proud of ourselves and told the other, “Ha! I packed something very valuable. The stroller. “

“What?! I packed it too. The red one.”

“I packed the blue one.”

Packing
Packing

I know what goes through the brain at this point in time. The stroller isn’t exactly a button. How then, does such a large thing get lost in the trunk? Well. Now, you know how we pack. If the place we are going to, has an attached kitchenette, the trunk gets fuller. Suddenly, rice cookers are jostling for space beside shoes and the curry powder is nicely sprinkling its aroma on the jackets.

Flight trips are another saga altogether. (http://nourishncherish.org/2012/04/23/never-awaken-a-sleeping-tiger-cub/) For, we manage all of this and more within the prescribed baggage limits.

We are planning on a small trip again and I wanted to gain the foolproof method of compact packing. I had enough of the  “pack everything you need, may need or may one day need during the trip” doctrine.

To be honest, it astounds me that tripe like this gets clicked on, read and paid for. There isn’t a single thing of note here.

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/things-parents-forget-plane-trips-kids/story?id=23102623&singlePage=true

But, such is the world of news and writing. The unimaginative jostles with the trite, the run-of-the-mill nudges the novel aside, while a few pieces of inspired writing sprinkles its splendor on the web.

PS: I read this wonderful article a while ago, on how story telling is the best method to activate our brains. (http://lifehacker.com/5965703/the-science-of-storytelling-why-telling-a-story-is-the-most-powerful-way-to-activate-our-brains), and another one on how the brain relates the linguistic with the musical (http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/6091974/computers-classics-and-cadenzas-making-math-music-from)

Maybe we need a story around packing while traveling with children and background music to match the process.

Happy Science Days!

There are some mechanics whose work I admire. They have an orderliness about them. They take out things packed in 30 mm space, spread it out over 100 sq metres and put them back in 30 mm with minimum fuss and mess. I have always admired such souls of toil. So, when the father and daughter were pandering upstairs with a laptop lying open on the desk, I went up a couple of times partly out of curiosity and partly to keep the toddler son away from the table. (The son thinks he is helping out on the task and gets sorely disappointed when told that he can’t place his toy cars on that convenient hole inside the laptop where the hard disk used to reside. ) Halfway through the task, I saw the pair of them chattering about something and come downstairs. “Commencing after lunch!” said the mechanics. “But you just had coffee and chocolate milk!” said I. This was received with a chuckle and no retort. A moment later, the pair of them switched on the Television.

“Going to watch Television? “ I asked in that tone that mildly encourages one to finish up the laptop work. Among other things I was worried that a small thing will go astray and I will be called upon to get down on all fours and search.

“TV Amma. Not television. Television sounds so formal and then you don’t feel like relaxing with it.”

“Well, what happened to the laptop?” I asked.

“We watched a you-tube video on how to do it Amma. Relax. So, I know everything. We just could not do it because Appa wants to take another backup of the disk now.”

I launched into what I call my Science Teacher mode. “You can learn more by doing than by watching you-tube videos. “ I went on in this vein for a few sentences, and then let the thing rest.

A few days later, I caught her again and told her about the Science experiments that the President lauded, and how these children had taken simple problems and solved them.

http://www.indiawest.com/news/global_indian/article_5de64612-f01a-11e3-afbe-001a4bcf887a.html

It was a lovely afternoon chat, and I asked her what I could do to help her along in her ambition to become a biologist.

“You can buy me a pet!” said she before I had completed my sentence.

“WHAT?!”

“What amma? You just said that I will learn more by doing than by reading books or watching documentaries. So, in order for me to become a biologist, I think a pet would help me nicely. Maybe a dog, or a duck or a parrot.”

“I like snake.” said the toddler son playing with his toy cars.

“Or how about some fish?”

“I want bumblebee Amma” said the son.

Pets : Bumblebee, Butterfly, Parrot, Dog, Duck, Snake
Pets : Bumblebee, Butterfly, Parrot, Dog, Duck, Snake?

I want respite.

Happy Science Days to all of you.

Release Your Inner Cupid

I wonder what is being said about us in the animal world newsletters this month. We have articles on animal behaviors don’t we? This article on the various techniques adopted by animals is an interesting one. Some techniques are funny, some scary and some for which I can’t think of the right adjectives.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/13/weird-animal-courtship-displays_n_4761381.html

Life is full of interesting tidbits of information.  For example:  The efforts of Sir George Archibald who loved the ways of the whooping crane. I quote:

When whooping crane populations dropped to fewer than 100 individuals in the 20th century, ornithologist George Archibald stepped in to try to get one whooping crane in captivity, Tex, to mate. To initiate ovulation, Archibald danced with her, and after several attempts, she successfully hatched a chick in 1982, according to Audubon Magazine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Archibald_(ornithologist)

I was glad to have read this. Now, I know not to judge a person acting like a babbling baboon or an aggressive tiger harshly. We don’t know what their journey is about.

Like Jane Austen says, “There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.”

I wonder why we exemplify Valentine’s Day to be a Lovers Day only. Let it be a day of showing love. Bring out your inner whooping crane or wake your dormant flamingo and have fun.

valentine's day

Solvitur Ambulando – It is solved by Walking

We all know that exercising has all round benefits and yet, it is good every now and then for an article to bump us into action, or merely to reinforce the importance of an active lifestyle.

This article talks about what the author wants her daughter to know about working out:

http://wellfesto.com/2013/11/19/10-things-i-want-my-daughter-to-know-about-working-out/

There have been times when I have come into the house after a stroll in the neighborhood at night, breathless with cold, a slight sweat from the swift pace I have tried to keep, only to bundle my daughter up and take her out so she can enjoy the enormous moon or listen to the leaves rustling or watch the stars on a clear night. I know the moon is a beautiful object for her, and she shares a liking with the husband for the night sky. I want her tales of imagination to leap from it and they do, often surpassing my expectations.

I love telling her stories from my childhood as we take walks. She knows it is the best time to ask me for one, because I am so willing then, not trying to do a dozen different things all at once. I am there enjoying my time with her walking and swapping stories. I grew up in a place almost magical to describe. There were heavily wooded Eucalyptus groves,  tea estates in the horizon not to mention the crisp mountain air. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that I love a good walk that can heighten the senses and sharpen one’s thinking.

The article describes a good workout, and I have mostly written about  walking because it is my favorite form of exercise. Another one of those gifts from my father who enjoys his 3-5 miles almost everyday. I find it to be a stress reliever, a soother, a pacifier, an exhilarator, an ideator and a mediator of  internal conflict.

Many greats before us have extolled the virtues of a good walk:

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130829191440-143695135-hemingway-thoreau-jefferson-and-the-virtues-of-a-good-long-walk

I quote: Solvitur ambulando — “it is solved by walking.”  Words by the Greek philosopher Diogenes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvitur_ambulando

I am extremely thankful also to have family, friends and colleagues who will take a walk with me every now and then.(You all know who you are :))

Joys of walking
Joys of walking