At a music festival in downtown San Francisco, there was smell of pot everywhere. In the crowd, there were police officers on the look out for suspicious activities.
An officer walked up to a man holding beer and smelling awfully green.
“What’s that in your hand?” he asked.
“Beer”
“Well, it’s supposed to be covered in a paper bag”.
That was it. I wonder how the November ballot will turn out? (Californians vote on legal status of medical marijuana)
The two year old boy I look after has developed an infatuation with Thomas the Tank Engine. He loves trains of all sorts, but he’s got a special soft spot for trains with faces. Just today, I talked to two women whose toddler boys are also obsessed with trains. “Thomas” is the first thing he says when he wakes up” one of the lady said.
The other day at a book store, I overheard a conversation.
“Nobody encouraged him to love trains this much”
“I really don’t understand it. Funny it’s always boys who get hooked on trains, and cars and things”
Come to think of it, what do toddler girls get obsessed about? Horses?
“In most forms society, be it a company, a school, a country, the rule of 20-40-20 applies: the top 20% of the population do much of the work, the middle 40% get by doing what they need to, and the bottom 20% find ways to feed off the group without any work input.”
Apparently, this is conventional wisdom taught at many business schools in Japan. They also add that “The same rule applies to a successful and hardworking company, as to an unsuccessful and mediocre company. The difference is the level of how hard they work as a group; so the bottom 20% of the successful company work at the same level as the top 20% of an unsuccessful company.”
My friend who told me this had observed many homeless people loitering in downtown San Francisco. She said that society can never rid of the bottom 20%, but can only accommodate them and rise up the ladder together.
Mum called a long-distant friend and encouraged her to see a specialized doctor.
“But I don’t know of any such doctors in my area” the friend replied.
Mum: “Well, use the Internet thing, it should tell you”
Friend: “But I don’t know how to do the Internet”
While my mum recanted her frustration to me over the phone, I got online, found a useful link and emailed it to her mobile all in 3 minutes. After a few hurdles, my mum managed to forward my email to her friend’s mobile, and in no time her friend had a list of 14 specialized doctors practicing in her vicinity. Mum was ecstatic, she had been wanting to help her friend for a long time, and she did it, all on her palm! Her excitement made me step back and newly appreciate the magic of Internet.
Mum: “So what have you been up to?” she asked me.
Me: “Writing a book, it’ll probably take me another 5 years, uber slow writer”
Mum: “By writing, you mean pressing buttons”
Me: “…? Typing?”
The video is back and running for all to see!!
I worked on a video for my friends whose wedding I couldn’t attend. This was a while back. I posted it on YouTube but it got taken down due to copyright reasons. Warner Brothers Music owns Red Hot Chili Peppers (along with most good rock bands), and I had used their song for the video. Well, thanks to a great many other folks who are united in the fight against WBM, I was able to successfully contest the copyright issue. I hope you enjoy!
Whatever we upload is stored in hubs free for (all) to see, for as long as this Internet system is alive and kicking. So with every post on a blog, email, or facebook update, I ponder.
A lot has happened in the past weeks; passing of an aunty, emergency illness, strengthened love, as well as bountiful amounts of happiness shared with friends, the most recent and significant event being a honeymoon visit where I took newlyweds around town.
So what do I write about? My emotions are scattered. Frankly, I can’t think of anything I’d like to share with people, because when I post something, it’s for everybody to see, and not everything is for everybody to know.
I am an emotional person, and I like to ride the tides fully. When there is something oozing, like an ill feeling, I like to dive down and stay there until that feeling is resolved. That can take a while.
One thing at a time.
There was an earthquake in San Francisco this morning, magnitude 3.5, relatively small in scale yet strong enough that, when I felt the house shake, I quickly stood up from the toilet, pulled my jeans up, grabbed the little boy I nanny for and ran out of the house. I felt quite proud of myself for acting so quickly. I squeezed the handsome little man and inhaled a lung full of cold, misty air.
Now I’ve come back home, I don’t remember if I flushed the toilet.
By golly what a chain of events it’s been the past week. I’ve stayed up working on two videos (one for a friends’ wedding which I’ll upload in July, and another for a family reunion).
Flatmates got together to paint the walls of the living room, now it looks like this:
(I’d be admitting to living in a rat hole if I posted a before picture. With dark blue walls, a dusty, out of tune piano, and a mound of junk, it truly was a gathering place for sobbing vampires that didn’t make it on Twilight).
I’m taking off on a road trip to Wyoming tomorrow, for one week, to attend Paul’s family reunion near YellowStone National Park. It’s the first family reunion of any kind I’ll be attending. Big family. Camping under the stars.
Let’s see, so in the neighbourhood where I nanny, there are a tad more than a dozen boys ages 4- 8. Their recent screaming fad is playing what’s called a NERF war, shooting at opposite teams from evening to dusk. The arms race is no joke, now everybody has a gun and a bazooka.
One of the boys told me his little brother had to be hospitalized because he ate mum’s “I think it’s called birth control pills”.
Oh! I got braces! Invisilign, it’s invisible (same price as normal braces). The biggest challenge is that I must keep them on for 22 hours a day, which is okay, but I need to take them off every time I eat or drink anything other than water, and brush and floss before putting them back on again, snapping a new set of rubber bands. The outcome is that I can’t be bothered to snack, and so for any of you wanting to go on a diet, getting braces might just be the thing to do.
I’ll leave off at this, and come back probably with photos from the road trip and reunion.
Past nights I’ve been coming back with my face aglow, fueled to the finger tips with, what shall I call this, love? Connection? The full moon effect? Two days back, my impetus was karate; I pumped a good gallon of blood that circulated well into the night. Today, my rush is from Wednesday night poetry reading and music that took place at a friend’s house. Wednesday because, as the architect of the soiree told me, “let’s not to get sucked up in the work week, it’s hump day, gotta get back in touch”.
Two things I want to share with you, one is the woeful sins of Chevron Texaco, whose human rights and ecological abuses I came to know by happenstance; one of the housemates of the flat which the poetry reading took place, was arrested earlier today in Texas for voicing his indignation at a Chevron shareholder meeting. Read about Chevron’s abuses at Chevron Toxico. (Read here if you want to read about the arrest.)
A side info to that, a more positive one, is that the Wold Business Council for Sustainable Development has come up with a plan –carefully put together by 29 leading world companies– that calls for action to achieve the goal “9 billion people living well in 2050″. This I stumbled across earlier today, while I was taking the boy I nanny for on a stroll.
The second thing I want to share with you, (and I have a tendency to save the best for last), is a short video about a man, an amazing man. His name is Jerry. Please enjoy the following short film: Jerry’s Map.
A 10 year old girl I know has been acting glum recently, I asked her why and she looked away. I’ve talked with others who know her, and it seems the problem is her amount of homework, and the pressures associated with “doing well”.
Besides school, she takes four different lessons; math, swimming, piano, and a second language. I’ve heard her mother comment on how well / poorly she scored in a subject, comparing her to other children in her class.
I wish to convey to the parents and/or the child a picture when I have a chance, of a person holding a tool box. My story is this:
Everybody is born with a tool box. We collect tools in it, like reading, writing, counting, singing, what ever it is that we choose to put inside it. Some tools we might hone, others we might let dust gather on. Some people may have lots of tools, others may have a few, but they may be well maintained and of shining quality.
The tools and the person holding the toolbox is not the same. Just because a girl’s got a poor grade in math, it doesn’t mean she’s a loser. Same goes the other way around too. Just because someone scored a 100% on a test, it doesn’t mean that he’s better than everyone else. They’re only tools! They do not define the person holding it.
The most important thing is that she makes a few tools completely hers, so that they are no longer tools but a part of the body, and not be burdened with a toolbox too heavy or too light, nor feel defined by what’s in the box, but rather be a person who can define the road that she walks.
