:) (\! @, >+ ; #^ to emote or to punctuate?

I think that internet/text messaging emoticons are responsible for lots of misunderstanding and likely broken or troubled relationships; a cyber wink to me may be a tic to you - a sheepish smile, ;) may be misconstrued as a pained expression-- What does :) mean? Is :0 a chuckle? awe? invitation?

can we go back to the day when people actually talked rather than hide behind the cyber world where anonimity and punctuation turned symbols are the new way to express emotion--how cowardly can we be? what happened to honesty, and taking chances? what happened to eye contact and conversation? real time exchange of ideas?

in internet inspired connections, we can simply choose to respond to whatever we feel like without considering the impact on the other person; are we creating entire generations of people who feel free to emote cautiously or vigorously with nary a care to the other person? without the slightest ability to read the cues from the other side?

perhaps I shall stop my rant; see the beauty of the internet/email? I have no idea if you are bored, disagree or agree with me, perhaps you find me amusing; it doesn't matter. I want to say something, I can say whatever I want and well :) and <) and ;)*

My shower

Harmonizing, pure performance restore and protecting, gentle positively radiant, pampers and more harmonizing and hydrating and repairing.  Am I taking a shower or in some sort of affirmation cloud??

Fascinating research!

Ig Nobel Award 2006:
MEDICINE: Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, for his medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"; and Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel, for their subsequent medical case report also titled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."
REFERENCE: "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage," Francis M. Fesmire, Annals of Emergency Medicine, vol. 17, no. 8, August 1988 p. 872.
REFERENCE: "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage,"Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven, Journal of Internal Medicine, vol. 227, no. 2, February 1990, pp. 145-6. They are at the Department of Internal Medicine, Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
REFERENCE: "Hiccups and Digital Rectal Massage," M. Odeh and A. Oliven, Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery, vol. 119, 1993, p. 1383.
WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY: Francis Fesmire

Ipad-ists

I went to the Apple store, in -person.  No, really.  I did. 

I walked in with my iPad and was directed to the "Genius" bar.  Seriously, what 15 year old came up with this name.  "We are geniuses and can help you with your electronic device because you are obviously not a genius"  I explained the issue with my iPad of only 2 years and he responds, "how sweet.  You know the newer ones are a quarter the weight, right?  I'm not even going to send you to the genius bar.  Let me help you"  and gave me a pitying little smile. As if that wasn't bad enough, I had taken in an old ipod music player to be recycled (less than 6 years old).  The look on teen genius was too much.  He laid a hand on my arm, tilted his head with a gentle smile, lowered his voice, and said, "  aww, they don't even make these anymore.  that is so sweet.  Do you mind if I show the other staff?"  - dumbfounded and sort of mortified, I was surrounded by teen geniuses who were peering over each others shoulders to get a glimpse of this ancient relic.  

I feel like a dial up person in a high speed internet world. 

body parts...5 years old

Kaveer: Mommy, it's scary when someone doesn't have a penis. 

ME: Why

Kaveer: Scared cause if you don't have a penis, it will bleed-- somebody told me that

Where do the puppies come out of? Her butt? 

Where IS her vagina anyway?

Do what we can do...

Objective: take my 94 year old grandfather to the beach

Caveat: we are taking Auto Rikshaws and he needs his wheelchair

Task: you bring the wheelchair and I'll bring Grandpa

The result is priceless!

Food, water, shelter, safety and a laptop.

Not that I've studied in-depth Maslow, but here are the basics as far as I know.
You need to have a safe place to eat, drink some clean water, crap, and fornicate. Then, you can have friends and compete with them for the best place to eat, crap and fornicate. As you ascend the hierarchy, you can decorate your place, eat too much, have great medical care if you can't crap and send the consequences of your fornications to fancy colleges.

I must have missed the part about the laptop.

So, MIT is giving thousands of Thai children laptops with built in wireless. Some of these rural children don't have decent running water; are they supposed to watch the clean water on the internet? virtual food? virtual college scholarship funds and medical care?

Is maslow's hierarchy becoming taller or fatter? Or is it like the children's board game, Chutes and Ladders; if you roll the lucky dice, you can skip the in-between steps and go straight to the top. And what does that do to a child psychologically if you skip the basics but have ubiquitous access to the internet?

We can. Poverty Museums

Muhammud Yunus, on accepting the Nobel prize, thanked everyone on behalf of the poor. He accepted the award and referenced "our work". Truly great people don't need to promote themselves; they focus on the idea, the concept or endeavor. He thanked everyone for supporting "us". Amazingly humble man. He also went on to say in his acceptance speech, that if mankind wanted to end poverty badly enough, we would do it. He contends that as a human race we have come to accept poverty as an established fact, though there are ways and means that future generations of "children would only see poverty in museums". Yunus states that every human being is born with the seed to express their innate creativity; its the environmental conditions that determine whether they have the chance to express their creativity or not. The micro loans give people the chance to express their inner creativity and energy.

I long for a simple cup of Chai

Tea drinking has become very confusing.  My grandfather and I used to share a cup of tea.  It went like this: take a simple yellow Lipton teabag, immerse in 1 cup of boiling water.  After 3-5 minutes remove teabag and toss.  Add milk to taste and a bit of sugar.  Voila !  Then we would each take a biscuit, sip our tea and chat.  Perfect.

Now, I can get a vente soy chai tea latte.  What is that anyway?  A ginormous soy milk tea tea ??  Translated into English, its a carafe of soy milk with a few teaspoons of some processed powder.

Buy  herbal tea, be prepared for the un solicited self-help tips. Relax.  Unwind. De-stress. Calm.  Sleep.

Be careful; its natural

We didn't read the fine print.  Our mistake.  My new husband (see previous blog entry) and I  enjoy those sweet little oranges so we bought the economical bag last week.  In my post-work, what shall we have for dinner haze, I happened to glance over at the bag and read the warning disclaimer, " may contain occasional seed"  --- um, its an orange; where I come from they ALL contain seeds, sometimes many of the!  Now, looking on the positive side,  it is a useful hazard awareness tip for the very young and very old and those who have swallowing problems; (though they may or may not be able to read and understand the fine print).........

What is next?  Will my banana have a sticker affixed that says "slippery when peeled?"

Weddings and Marriage in a Digital Age

Something borrowed, something blue, something old and something new.........

Well now, its something interactive, URL, CD, invariably starts with www and doesn't even rhyme!

It all started when I didn't know where to get "Indian wedding cards" Lo and behold, "Indian wedding card dot com!"   Then we had a wedding website at wedsimple.com, (a sarcastic moniker as I now know, weddings are never simple ) with photos, music, descriptions of our ceremony.  People we are not sure we know knew more about the ceremony than one could imagine.  They were able to buy bindis and Indian clothes on-line from links on our site!

The tablescloths were found on a website from Petaluma.  The table chargers and lily bowls also ordered from a website.  The engangement announcement cards, the thank you notes, the programs, wedding favors, bags, tissue all found on cyber searches.  We took virtual tours of many reception sites before finding the right one.  We needed plates that would suit Indian food and thought that Thali plates would be perfect;  as fate would have it, we ordered 1000 plates from plastic.thali.com.  Cups, bowls, cutlery, napkins were all from http://www.something.com/.

Our registry was on-line and we virtually suggested we wanted trivets, backpacks and frying pans.  Our Thank you list is being partially kept by Wedding channel and the rest is at amazon.com under the "Your Thank you list" tab.   My parents', his parents' and Keith's invitee lists are very handily saved as excel databases and can be exported into labels.  My addressess were scribbled in a little book which was unceremoniously stolen when my car was broken into 2 weeks before the wedding.  I resolutely resort to the Indian tradition of hand-delivering invitations and the soon to be written thank you notes.  When we had no idea about a gift card so generously given to us,  we logged in to macys.com to check the balance on our gift cards. 

Our photos are on our friends' iphones, picassa links, and the expensive photographer sent us a CD in a very nice box.  My parents and 95 year old Grandfather want to know where the old fashioned "photo album" is - that thing you hold on your lap and flip through.  I tried to explain that they are photoshop-ing my blemishes out.  We have yet to view any video as we are transferring the little tapes into DVD's.  If we want to show any of our friends pics of the wedding, we must first drag them them to the nearest computer.   People have stopped asking to see photos now.

Luckily, I registered at the all-you-need-to-know-about-planning-a-wedding site "The knot" .com  They have now thoughtfully continued our subscription to "The nest" .com which has many helpful lists on how to set up a household. Should things go as we hope, we could soon find ourselves with a complimentary subscription to "the bump" .com. 

We have logged in to the SF county site to order an extra copy of our marriage certificate and I have logged in at work to download the latest benifiary form for my new husband.   It turns out the more important announcement is on Facebook!  When my then fiance changed his status to engaged, I had to "accept" his invitation.  No worries, I had a real time proposal prior to the virtual question, "Do you accept Keith as your fiance on facebook?"  After our wedding, as a testament to my commitment to our marriage, I changed my status first.  Keith graciously accepted my facebook invitation "to be married" and we are officially wedded according to our mutual 200 plus facebook social network.  

Something borrowed: my father's printer to print our lists and drafts
Something blue: the screen when my laptop overheated
Something old: the version of microsoft office I have so I couldn't read the draft of the program
Something new: a husband

I guess the cyber world has its place in love;  after all, despite having mutual colleagues and working 2 blocks away from each other, we first met when Keith gave me a virtual wink on http://www.match.com/

European sports announcers in the World cup......

I had started watching the world cup for the global football sportsmanship.   I continued to watch because I was rooting for Spain and the sports announcers were so entertaining!!

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

1. He gave so much notice, He fairly sent a telegram that the ball was coming
2. we are watching a 90 minute drama
3. This is stranger than fiction
4. Well, if the referee is going to be so persnickety
5. He is fit but not so sharp
6. he was a bit too cheeky
7. The player fell in such an unceremonious fashion
8. That is some obdurate defense
9. Its beginning to look as though even one goal would be enough
10. It loks as though the referee was going to blow his whistle and thought better of it
11. He serves his country nobly
12. I think he is trying to sort his feet out
13. the promiseland of world cup winning is still in never never land for netherland

and my personal favorite:
14. It would have been a glorious goal, had it been forthcoming

Can you imagine this sort of announcing for the Patriots or the SF Giants??

Sachin's Green Birthday Party

Sachin's been around the sun 7 times!!

It was such a lovely birthday celebration for Sachin today....all the kids had so much fun in the redwoods in Saratoga--they were all exploring the woods and trails! I was so proud of how my sister raised her kids; they are so comfortable and happy in nature! And she told the other kids to only make things for him-no gifts -- and he was so happy with that--so kids made him drawings and poems and gave him flowers. Then she gave them all herb plants as party favors--the kids loved their plants and were so careful to already start nurturing them. Nature and its inherent purity is a child's natural state--it was so wonderful to see them a part of the outdoors, smiling, learning, exploring --as it should be.