A great way to escape the present is to close your eyes and listen to some wonderful piece of music - there are some really great ones, like Chopin's Nocturne and the music by Albinoni - I forget what it is called. Just pump up the volume, close your eyes and listen and feel the heavens open up around you and lose yourself in the beauty and the feelings of the music.
It is interesting to me how our mind can often times be our worst enemy.
You see, I have a very active imagination - and not always the good kind. I get worried, very worried about people I love when I don't know how they are. If I don't hear from them when I am supposed to, my mind starts imagining the worst, scenarios rise up in my head and they don't let go. This is specially bad when you think about the fact that all of my loved ones live away from me. My lovely husband is on the other side of US and my mother is in western Canada. At least this is better than when she was in Australia. If she doesn't call me in the morning, I get worried that someone has happened to her - did she have an accident while she was driving home? did he have an accident when biking home? did she simply get dizzy and hit her head against the desk, like last time when she hit her chin against the desk and broke her teeth?
I need to hear from them at least once in the morning and once at night. Just so I know everything is ok. Nothing bad has happened.
But then I was thinking, what if something bad did happen? something happened to them and i didn't know and i just continued my happy day while they were.. not well.
It has happened to me before - every morning H. used to call me, for him to say good night and for me to say good morning. and then one morning he didn't call and I wasn't worried because I had a day long meeting at school and what is one phone call - he was busy, he was tired, he went to sleep. I went to school without calling him to make sure everything was ok. To see why H didn't call me. Instead I went to school and then I got the worst call ever at school. While i was happy and excited about the meeting, bad things were happening in Australia and I didn't know. I didn't even think anything was wrong, me who is so cautious.
Would it have made a difference in the end even if I had known? no. Logically I know it would have made no difference. He was in Aus and I was here. When I should have been over there. But I wasn't. anyway.
So what can happen when I don't hear from someone? That they need me and I don't know about it. That I am happy and laughing and carefree and they are not. That I am losing them from my life and I don't know about it, That is the hardest thing. That this person, this someone whom I love and they are essential to the very fabric of my life, is slipping away and I am not aware of this monumental, earth shattering fact.
Given this, it quite amazes me at times that I can bear live away from all of my loved ones. That I haven't yet learned my lessons and that I am a glutton for punishment.
This is a very interesting article in Nature, about the problems scientist couples face, including the infamous two body problem. There are a lot of interesting ideas in the article, including the question of the two body problem on females versus males.
One question the team hopes to answer is are such marriages tougher for female scientists? Besides being a minority in their field, female physicists struggle with the two-body problem more often than their male counterparts. A 1998 survey by the American Physical Society found that although only about 6% of its members are women, 43% of these are married to other physicists. In contrast, only 6% of married male physicists have a physicist spouse. Other studies have found that almost twice as many women chemists are married to or partnered with another chemist as compared to their male colleagues, and 80% of women mathematicians are married to other scientists.
I really recommend everyone to read the above article.
Now for some fun, read the following article about why smart girls date in parallel and not serial! :-P That is, dating explained by circuit theory!
read more | digg story
This is a funny blog about a commentary from NPR about how the Wii offers "a false sense of what it's like to compete in the world" from NPR.
From the blog: National Public Radio posted a commentary from Kelly McBride, a concerned parent, regarding her children's frequent use of the Wii. Rather than relishing the fact that the new toy has them off the couch and swinging their arms, Kelly worries that her children are equating the game version of the sports with the real-life counterpart; that is to say, the children are gaining "a false sense of what it's like to compete in the world."
It is actually quite hilarious if you think about it - violent games are too violent and non-violent games are too... wussy?!!
But the funniest part were some of the commentaries from this Digg user:
[mazerrackham]I'll never forget the bitter disappointment of losing my first war after trying to take my chess skills to the streets. The other guy's horses ran in all crazy patterns around my helpless pawns, slashing at their throats. And then when I tried to switch places with my castle to hide it wouldn't even move.
Now look at me -- dead-end job, low self-esteem...All thanks to my proficiency at chess.
Anyway, the best part of this post was this guy's comment. Very funny indeed!
What an idiot we have for a prime minister! I mean really, how the hell did he get re-elected? I hope Kevin Rudd wins in the coming election. Here is the main article, and this is the Digg commentary.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has involved himself in the US presidential race by stating that Al-Qaeda is "praying" that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), and the Democrats in general, will win in 2008. An Obama spokesman dismissed the criticism as "cowboy rhetoric."
Obama himself said: "I think it's flattering that one of George Bush's allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced".
"I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops in Iraq, and my understanding is Mr Howard has deployed 1,400, so if he is ... to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric."
1. pick a number between 0 and 9.
2. multiply that number by nine.
3. if it is two digits, add the two digits together. eg; 14, 1+4 = 5
4. now subtract 5 from the now one digit number
5. match up their number with one in the alphabet. 1=a, 2=b,...
6. think of a country that starts with that letter
7. think of an animal that starts with the last letter of the country name
8. then think of a color that starts with the last letter of the animal...
look at the comments for something interesting....
If you don't know, I have just started taking Flamenco dancing classes. So far it has been a lot of lef work, there is a fair amount of tap dancing. Anyway I am hoping to one day dance like this hippo! :-P
Btw, here is a photo of my shoes - my xmas present from Alvaro :-)
For some serious stuff, watch this:
