Last Night at 16 Brandywine Drive

One always has more stuff than one realizes, and one only realizes when it is time to pack. I spent the day packing and I am tired and stressed about whether all my stuff will fit into the U-Haul tomorrow. But, as per tradition, I am going to write a short post as it is my last night in a house. It just occurred to me that this is the first time I am moving out of choice. My last move was because I was leaving the UK, the one before that was because I couldn’t wait to move out after finishing my PhD to escape house mates from hell. Which is a choice, I suppose. The two moves before that were because my live-in landlords soured on  me. This apartment is quite comfortable and my only major grouch is that its floorboards are very creaky, and my upstairs neighbour has a heavy tread. If they had agreed to move me to a top-floor pond-facing apartment I might well have renewed my lease. My job is only for another year, so there were perfectly reasonable reasons to stay put. But, I went with my gut and decided not to move out of this perfectly decent apartment to a city that I keep telling everyone is a mini Bristol. New car, new apartment, lots of changes happening in life.

A New Car and Adulting

I went and picked up my new car today. There are obvious reasons for getting a car in the US if you can afford one. Except in a handful of large cities like NYC, Boston or San Francisco, one’s quality of life is severely curtailed without one. But, one of my reasons is that I am turning 40 this year, and it felt like something I need to do before that happens. The traditional trappings of success—well-paying job, home, car, wife and kids—have never been a draw for me, and I am fine with the fact that I have not hit any of these markers. But, a couple of months ago, I suddenly started feeling like navigating the process of buying a car and owning a car would be good for not just for the quality of my life but also for my self-confidence. I remember years ago in Holland when I was sitting at a dinner table with my housemates. Everyone else was talking about what pets they had as a kid, and when someone asked me, I told them I never had any pets. “Then what did you take care of?”. That is when I realised that children are encouraged to have pets—ranging from dogs to something as low maintenance as a hamster—to teach them to be responsible. This is a trite example, but I feel like owning a car would be the grown-up version of owning a hamster. I have lived in three different countries other than the one I grew up in and I set myself up without knowing anyone locally in two of them. But, I still feel like I need this adulting experience. The process of buying a  car and all the hassles that come with it can be tedious especially if you don’t have a partner to accompany you in the process (or hinder you, who can tell?). And, in a world engulfed in flames it is easy to fall into fatalism and lament about the pointlessness of earthly pursuits. But, long-term singletons owe it to themselves to not let the absence of a partner stop them from living a full life.

I am not a natural at driving, just like I am not a natural at swimming. I am taking my time getting used to the speeds, the rules and driving on the other side of the road. Things that didn’t used to bother me while driving in India, such as staying at the center of the lane, have been an issue. And, I suck at any manouvere that involves reversing the car. But a least I have my own car, which I have fully insured, so I don’t have to worry about wrecking someone else’s car.

Men, Reciprocity and Care

In recent memory, there are two instances where I showed care towards male friends and was miffed by their lack of reciprocity and/or gratitude. I find it particularly annoying that some men are bad at taking care of themselves, but when someone offers them care, they lap it up without much thought. It might be the case that my expectations of care/gratitude are unreasonably high. And, one often, if not always, has the option of withdrawing care if one is not satisfied by how it is received. But, it is not secret that cishet men are bad at care/reciprocity. Many south Asian men, in particular, go from being pampered by their mothers or sisters to being pampered by their wives or girlfriends, or at least expecting to be. That said, I have nothing to say about why men are bad at care/reciprocity that hasn’t been said by wiser people before.

Obviously, one doesn’t want to keep excel spreadsheets of who did what in platonic and romantic relationships because then there is no difference between those interactions and business transactions. Care can come in many forms—physical, emotional, material. People may have differing abilities as well as inclinations to offer care and that is fine. Relationships can also fail over differing expectations of reciprocity and care, and that is fine too. But, I do feel one should be conscious of both the balance of acts of care and the ability of the other person to reciprocate, at least in the early stages of a friendship/relationship. And, especially if one is a man as most men are socialized to take others for granted. Else, it is easy for relationships to become lop-sided and/or wither.

Values vs Rules

Apologies if this post seems like it is all over the place. Ideally, one should live according to one's values, if nothing else, to stave of conscience troubles and according to rules to stave off practical troubles. But, this assumes that values are fully determined and unchanging. Even if we believe that values are unchanging, we might not even be aware of our values until confronted by situations that bring them into question. “Do what feels right/listen to your gut and if you are breaking rules, don’t get caught” seems like reasonable advice. Instinct lies at the intersection of mind and body, and can be a useful guide for action. “Our bodies leak truths all the time” as I read recently in a brilliant book. For instance, we feel uncomfortable in some people’s presence, even if there is nothing problematic in the words they use and their expressions are not hostile. Its our guts telling us to be wary of this person. But, a) our gut can be wrong  b) “what feels right, is right” seems like an inadequate moral code. We should allow for our gut to be overruled by our thinking mind, just as we allow the opposite. And, there should be some values that are beyond the influence of how we are felling on a particular day.

Swimming and Parallel/Reverse Parking

I thought I had blogged about how swimming is unnaturally difficult for me because I am among the minority of the population that are sinkers, but it turns out I have just talked about it a lot. Apparently, most people are floaters, whose bodies don't sink to the floor like stones in water. Swimming coaches say sinkers shouldn't feel too bad because it just menas they have low body fat and/or high bone density. But, that is scant comfort to someone thrashing about in the water. I have had swiming lessons twice in  my life---once when I was about 12 and the second time a few months ago. I could swim after the first set of lessons, but I can't swim to save my life. The chief lesson that I learnt during my second set of swimming lessons was to use a nose guard to prevent wqater from entering my nose. And I got that from a youtube video, not the swimming coach. When you are bad at something there are only two things to do--make epace with the fact or practice. I have made temporary peace with the fact that I am bad at swimming. But, in recent days, I have been reminded of another activity that I am bad at--reverse and parallel parking. I am a decent-enough driver, but when it comes to moving backwards, my brain freezes (which probably means I am not a decent-enough driver). I am twrribel at reverse parking, but fortunately, they dont' test that skill. I feel like people who reverse park are showing off because there are very few situations where you need to. But, they do test parallel parking, and the first time I practiced it a few days ago, I wasn't so bad.I got it right the first couple of time, hit the curb the next few times, and then got it right again. But, this evening, I must have practiced the manoeuvre ten times, and just got it right once. No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t land it. Ouch! The thinking mind knows that failing a driver’s test is no big deal, and that I should just take driving lessons before trying next time. But, the animal mind is a different beast, so cue a bit of anxiety. So, there is one other thing you can do when you are bad at something, in addition to acceptance and practice. You can laugh at yourself, lighten the mood, take the pressure off.

In Praise Of Pomodoros

Concentrating intensely has never been my strong suit, and I have been feeling that more than even in recent months. Some of the tasks I have been assigned are intensely tedious and I just can’t seem to keep my focus. So, I have started doing Pomodoros, which are 25-mins-long work sessions interspersed with 5 minute breaks. After four such sessions, you take a longer break. Twenty-five minutes is a manageable chunk of time. At no point of the session will you be left with a dismal feeling if you look at how long you have to go before the session ends. I did Pomodoros years ago in Bristol, when I would meet with other PhD students in a cafe for weekly group-writing sessions. That worked well, until i discovered that I preferred working on a desktop in the PhD office, which was a very pleasant room. I am not typically a fan of the glass-and-steel building it was housed in, but that meant it got plenty of light in dreary English weather. And, the walls facing outwards were all windows, and I love gazing out of windows. Pacing about the room and gazing out of windows were essential to my research process, and I keep asking myself why I don't do more of it. I also tried doing Pomodors by myself during my PhD, marking completed sessions with notches on a post-it note. With my current intensely dreary and ill-defined task, Pomodoros have been a godsend. Since the endpoint is not very clear, I have decided to allocate a set number of Pomodoros, and consider what I have at the end of those sessions as the finished product. 

Spring 2003 Energy

As the drums start to beat more loudly for war with Iran, a lot of commentators are pointing to the similarities with the spring of 2003, ahead of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld’s war with Iraq. I had just finished two listless years of high school or what they call ‘junior college’ in Mumbai. All parents believe their children are uniquely capable, but none more so than Indian parents, so I had I been coaxed to prepare for the notoriously difficult entrance test to India’s premier engineering colleges, despite having neither the talent or the inclination for it. Being the news junkie that I still am, the top-most thing on my mind was the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. I remember the telecast of the infamous UN security Council session where US lies about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction were given the imprimatur of evidence. Colin Powell, the least hawkish and the most dignified member of Bush’s inner circle, was trotted out to lie. The picture of him holding up vials to demonstrate Iraq’s chemical weapons capabilities is the defining image of war propaganda in the post-9/11 era. I remember my father scoffing at my grandfather, who believed the evidence presented by Powell to be credible. Even to the then-18-year-old me the evidence felt like something someone could just make up. Lessons are never learnt because no one—not Bush and Blair and their respective cabinets, not media pundits, not the New York Times--paid a price for lying about Iraq.  Powell was the only person to express public contrition and banish himself from public life.