I feel like an old Windows PC with a blue screen of death. Reboot gets it going. Often or most times. I have not written for a while. From September the 13th to Halloween. Scary to scary. With even the scarier US elections going on today. Thankfully, this post will make it before the results are known. That is for another day.

It begs the question why the “Reboot”? Why does a grown man who is nearing the wrong side of 60 needs a reboot at all?

• Motivation and health issues all my life. The body and mind that keeps changing leading to retrofitting required to practices, routine, and to structure.

• Addiction to food. Live to eat rather than eat to live. Cravings drive me.

• Just a few months ago, I had an active exercise routine walking a lot from April through to September and then the weather turned. Fall and winter patterns have emerged putting a dent in my walking.

• My recent trip in October to India and Spain put a pause to my routine - coupled with sleep challenges from time zone changes, travel, food changes, etc.

• Every trip to India in the last few years I have put on weight each time without fail. And some of those have refused to come off. A cumulative addition of over 20 pounds over nearly 3 years.

There we are… reboot. Not necessarily for everything in life - that might be good after all, but there are portions that keep going on through external motivations like work.

The next fews months need active action, new routines, and sustainable food practices to stablise some of the above and make some accretive inroads.

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Musings #770 over 1384 days - Tuesday, 5 November 2024

It is the day that causes dread in people who believe in it. Two different phobias that drive superstitions - the fear of 13 (triskaidekaphobia) and the fear of a particular day as a fearful day (paraskevidekatriaphobia) - two hugely unpronounceable words that I struggled with.

I also saw an interesting movie describing the phenomenon while catching up on the BBC News this morning.

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0jq8p89/friday-the-13th-the-psychology-behind-the-superstition

It helped me learn that the fear of 13 comes from the people in the “Last Supper” and the author who further articulates:

Why do we believe in it? Magical thinking is probably rooted in our evolutionary biology. It had, and perhaps still does have, positive functions. It's a confusing, complex, unpredictable world that we live in. Magic gives the individual a sense of control - that 'my little part of this cosmos can be somehow shaped and controlled at least right now.'

They might not like to call it magic, but that's really fundamentally the way people think.

Fascinating isn’t this, our species called “Humans”. Enjoy it as I truly did.

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Musings #769 over 1331 days - Friday, 13 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

I spend a couple of minutes with NY Times Wordle with my morning coffee each day. This helps me pause and think for a moment and of course, the goal is to enjoy the trying.

The above one was from a couple of days ago and the word for “DEBIT”. It is strange that this word did not come to me earlier. Very strange indeed. I work for the company that runs the Debit network in Canada. And I don’t even think Debit or use Debit for the most part. It is like a cigarette company employee who does not smoke, a tea taster who does not drink tea (maybe that is a bad analogy as he is already drinking tea all day), or a die-hard vegetarian and animal lover working in a meat factory. I am a huge credit card fanatic working for the Debit industry, go figure…

And the next one did not come easy to me either. Even though I am a quintessential “REBEL” in everything I am and do. Oh my, again!

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Musings #768 over 1330 days - Thursday, 12 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

I love Jono’s work and enjoy it every time he publishes. The recent one struck a cord. Though the drawing points out that our attribution of something could be far simpler than we presume, the underlying problem in the scene above is not about who made the mess but who will pick it up.

It is far more important on who will pick up the mess and clean it up than who created it. If that is the case, the doing (picking up) is way more utility than the thinking (who did this?)

I see this happen every day I am out walking. It bothers me to see the litter and the bottles and the packaging that are strewn by the side of the roads and in the bushes. I am also part of the guilty party who does the thinking than the doing. Hats off to the volunteers who bag these from the side of the roads and from the bushes and gulleys a couple of times a year. They are the true (action) heroes.

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Musings #767 over 1329 days - Wednesday, 11 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

More at:

https://sketchplanations.com/hanlons-razor

I wanted to write this every time I saw this Socrates quote, so here goes…

When I read this quote ages ago, it felt like Socrates was being judgemental about all human beings. That he was advising everyone that if they did not examine life then it is not worth living. For a long time, I believed that too (this was years back) - quotes that are superfluous reading without context behind them and it did seem like advice for the masses. But it was not.

I read the original Greek quote that was purported to have been spoken (documented by Plato his student) and the context in which he spoke it. He was speaking about himself. Given a choice between living in exile (without practicing his craft and thinking) and dying he preferred dying rather than being in a situation where he could not be what he wanted to be - a person who examines his own life to the fullest and has agency over his thinking and action.

Learnings from this - it is not all as it seems, context and situation matter to give nuance behind something that is said.

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Musings #766 over 1328 days - Tuesday, 10 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

more…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_unexamined_life_is_not_worth_living

This is the phrase: "ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ", which comes from Plato's Apology 38a. The literal meaning is "And an unexamined life is not worth living for man". So the "for man" was left out in your translation. Here are the meaning of each word: ὁ - the, δέ - and, but, ἀνεξέταστος - unexamined, without enquiry, βίος - life, οὐ - not, βιωτός - worth living, ἀνθρώπῷ - man, woman (singular, dative). There is no verb here, and that is normal where "is" is implied.

https://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3885

I read some eclectic blogs in my collection of stuff and one is from Ted Gioia’s The Honest Broker who posts predominantly things related to music. Recently Ted cross-posted one of his favorite blog posts from Chris Dalla Riva and his substack “Can’t get much higher”

Chris narrates how he validated his grandmother’s tales of Frank Sinatra visiting and singing at her high school in the early 1940s. Long after his grandmother’s demise Chris is consumed by curiosity that leads him to spend over two months deeply chasing down what happened until he finally finds that it was indeed true.

This tale of curiosity and diligence to get to the truth deeply resonated with me. I struggle with long-form reading but did spend half an hour digesting this interesting article.

How curious are you? And how far and deep would you go to satisfy your curiosity?

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Musings #765 over 1327 days - Monday, 9 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

Can't Get Much Higher

Did Frank Sinatra Really Perform at My Grandma's High School?

A few months ago, my sister graduated from college. She’s the youngest of our 22 first cousins and the final person to complete her higher education. Naturally, we were very proud and threw a big party to mark the occasion. As the drinks were flowing, my aunts and uncles began recounting family lore. One slice of that lore, stuck with me after the party…

Read more

2 years ago · 151 likes · 57 comments · Chris Dalla Riva

Peter Buffet son of the legendary investor Warren Buffet had Berkshire Hathway stock of $90,000 in 1977 which would have now been valued at $400 million in today’s money. However, he happily sold it then to persue a life focused on his passion for music, one that he wanted instead.

When asked, Peter informed that he had traded money “for buying time”. What a bold gesture. And what a way to have clarity and keep focus on one’s dreams.

What is enough? And, when is it ever enough?

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Musings #764 over 1326 days - Sunday, 8 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

More at…

If Warren Buffett's Son Didn't Sell His 90K Berkshire Hathaway Inheritance 47 Years Ago To 'Buy Time,' He Would Have This Much Today

https://www.benzinga.com/news/24/08/40533087/if-warren-buffetts-son-didnt-sell-his-90k-berkshire-hathaway-inheritance-47-years-ago-to-buy-time-he

A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to a Tim Minchin show downtown in Toronto breaking our life in the suburbia. I am a sucker for deep-dark comedy which flounders on the reality of the human race and its penchant for psychology and built-in biases.

I enjoy various comedians who are in this vein continuing the likes of the great now deceased George Carlin and the British comedian Ricky Gervais. These comedians are masters of the language, tropes, and nuances and bring out the best of it to enjoy.

I thoroughly enjoyed his exploration of terms like Hedonic Regression, Arrival fallacy, and maladaptive beliefs. If you want to know more on these click on each of the above links to read more.

My wife enjoyed his witty and quirky music and I enjoyed his jaunts in-between. And we both enjoyed his mad piano skills that he demonstrated throughout. And at the very end his ability to bring the audience together to participate in his rendition of Leonard Cohen’s "Hallelujah”

Tim had stopped performing his stage musicals and comedy in 2012 and back to the stage again. Once a performer you can’t take away the performer from the stage and the stage from the performance and the talented artists keep coming back to fulfill their destiny.

Overall a memorable evening for the two of us, if I can speak for my wife too.

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Musings #763 over 1325 days - Saturday, 7 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

Additional sources:

https://www.timminchin.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Minchin

https://masseyhall.mhrth.com/tickets/tim-minchin/

https://www.theatermania.com/news/tim-minchin-will-tour-north-america-in-august_1742008/

https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/matilda-musical-composer-tim-minchin-vancouver

There were a couple of spare buttons and thread in a small plastic bag tied to the inside label of a recent T-shirt I bought.

Except that there are no buttons on that T-shirt at all. How thoughtful?

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Musings #762 over 1324 days - Friday, 6 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

I read a few days ago that for a given similar category level of hurricanes people prepared more seriously for male-named hurricanes than ones named after women. To utterly devastating consequences…

Need we say more about human biases and embedded deep assumptions?

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Musings #761 over 1323 days - Thursday, 5 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_naming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir%E2%80%93Simpson_scale

A week ago Monday I had a couple of small wins that had a rub-off effect all day, though the actual success was trivial.

I had bought a $20 item at the nearby Walmart the previous day that I had scanned twice wrongly at the self-billing counter. The assistant manager the next day promptly refunded it without question, even though it was on me to verify the purchase.

Later that afternoon, I was able to pick seats for my travel to India for free. I had booked these flights through Lufthansa having paid for the seats for two of their segments and was slotted in the middle seats for the Air Canada code shares. However, when I logged into Air Canada I was able to switch the middle row seats to window/aisle seats for free - something that I had paid a sweet penny to the other airline.

The source of the joy was that they were both unexpected but still did happen. The learning’s were that unexpected experiences that pan out positively make mighty differences way out of proportion to the nature of the event. Small wins, big joy.

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Musings #760 over 1322 days - Wednesday, 4 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

I never get tired of reading this… so I thought I would share…

Once upon a time, there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away.

That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate.

They said, "We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away.

This is most unfortunate." The farmer said, "Maybe."

The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, "Oh, isn't that lucky? What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!" The farmer again said, "Maybe."

The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg.

The neighbors then said, "Oh dear, that's too bad, " and the farmer responded, "Maybe."

The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg.

Again all the neighbors came around and said, "Isn't that great!" Again, he said, "Maybe."

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Musings #759 over 1321 days - Tuesday, 3 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

The Cost of Information Overload

Emotional intelligence expert, Daniel Goleman, on the impact of information on attention.

"Decades before we began to drown in a sea of distractions, cognitive scientist Herbert Simon made this prescient observation: ‘What information consumes is attention. A wealth of information means a poverty of attention."

What are you focusing your attention on?

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Musings #758 over 1320 days - Monday, 2 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

Kobe is no more; it is nearly five months since he left us. I have refrained from writing about it, but he is very much a part of our lives still and in our hearts. He was with us for over 12 years and he was a unique dog in his own right. He had a great attitude and over the years he had his set of health challenges but within those constraints continued to be his positive self with a great vibe for life.

Dogs are more than family especially Kobe to us. In a way, Kobe was dependent on us for all his needs and I am sure would not have lasted one day on his own outside of the house. I heard a tale of two lost dogs who were found dead within days run over by a car and a train. However, despite that dependence, we had a co-dependent relationship with him, we were dependent on him as much as he was on us.

He continues in our memories and in our hearts and on this 143rd day from his departure, I can only say “I love you, Kobe!” - there might be other dogs in our lives in the future, but only one and only Kobe.

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Musings #757 over 1319 days - Sunday, 1 September 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

There are a lot of questions on my mind and often the most asked question seems to be “What are you going to do about it?”

Without a doubt for everything that matters and does not matter and the spectrum in-between, the question is always the same. And the onus is on me to answer the question in any which ways I want to.

H/T to Stephen for his blog post for triggering my thinking and helping me break my impasse to start writing again after more than 100 days

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Musings #756 over 1318 days - Saturday, 31 August 2024, daily writing rate of about 57%

Waking up is a different experience in Coimbatore where I grew up. Each day I woke up in the morning to a cornucopia of sounds from the Peacocks living in the trees that spread above my house to the the distinctive sounds of the Cuckoo birds interspersed with the chirping of the local squirrels. What makes it different here is the lack of road noises, we being further away from the nearby major arterial roads.

This is a different experience to the one at home in Burlington where we live by a creek - with its own support eco system comprised of rabbits, squirrels and local Canadian birds added to the mix.

Thinking deeper on this subject, the eco system difference is actually enabled by the density of trees that support these birds and animals, so in spite of the hot sultry year round weather with a paucity of rains, the animal and bird eco system is supported by the dense growth of trees. The picture above shows that trees that have grown within the last thirty years being the foundation of what thrives here. That might very well be the difference and what a difference it makes.

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Musings #755 over 1214 days - Sunday, 19 May 2024, write rate 62.19%

Of course, it is all about airlines and their ability to monetize things and provide optional extras. But this seems to go too far. The categorization and class systems. Recently, when I flew on British Airways they were calling for an unadvertised Zone 0 to board before others. Talk of following the money. What next? The Zone -1 class? Where is the end to segregation? Can we get a discount option to board last in Zone 99 instead?

But for now, the seats that were removed (the old Business class) and replaced with lie-flat Business class has made a full circle comeback in fresh disguise as Premium Economy. Are these innovation for us as passengers or just to take care of the airline companies?

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Musings #754 over 1213 days - Saturday, 18 May 2024, write rate 62.15%

I finally realized that home is not a place. It was not something to own. Certainly not a property. It was being home. To be more precise, being at home. Being at home amongst the people I want to be with.

Being at home is a social construct. My close family in Burlington. My generation above, below and my peers in India. My fellow schoolmates that I in touch with for the last four decades. The HKG meetup colleagues I grew roots with over the COVID years and that which continues today. Some of my co-workers over the years and clients who I have worked with who have transcended the boundaries of work relationships.

I am home. I am at home with people that I consider a privilege to be belonging with and hopefully belong to.

I am a human being at home in circles where I belong.

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Musings #753 over 1211 days - Thursday, 16 May 2024, write rate 62.17%

I confidently predicted that when I come in a few weeks time the weather would turn out to be better. And indeed it did. All this week I am here in Coimbatore it is rains and the highs have dropped to 32 and lows to 25’s. I am vindicated and that powerful. The weather Gods are influenced by my presence.

Actually, the answers are simpler than that. Yes there is global warming and high temperatures are higher and rains more severe. But the fundamental seasonal patterns remain. For over 20 years I have been picking May and September/October to travel to India, the milder months in the place I grew up. All one needs is a cognizance of patterns… there are patterns all around us if only we are looking for them.

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Musings #752 over 1210 days - Wednesday, 15 May 2024, write rate 62.14%

One of my favorite songs over the last year is “This Bitter Earth” by Dinah Washington from the 1960’s. I found her while listening to the works by Max Ritcher and is probably one of my most listened to.

Of course, the interesting question that this song raises to me is “Is life answering your call?” or “Is it your responsibility to answer the question about what life is to you?” and the realization that it is indeed the later. Enjoy the songs if you have a few minutes to spare.

More:

Max Ritcher: On the nature of daylight

Dinah Washington & Max Richter- This bitter earth - On the nature of daylight

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Bitter_Earth

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Dinah-Washington-Max-Richter-2/This-Bitter-Earth-On-The-Nature-Of-Daylight

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-meaningful-life/201709/answering-lifes-call

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Musings #751 over 1144 days - Sunday, 10 March 2024, write rate 65.65%