With Friends Like These...

You learn a lot about friends when things change.

Obviously when they change for the worse, we all know how that works. But also when things just change, period.

It is interesting at that point to see who can change with you, follow you into a new situation and who suddenly has nothing to share with you any more. Question: why are we friends? Is it because the factual details of our lives are the same, and once I am no longer "the same", our friendship has nothing left to hang on? Is it because everything I do, you would do as well? So the moment I do something that you would NOT do, you cease to understand? You can not imagine or accept a world where people - friends - do things you would not do?

And if so: is that friendship?

That's an honest question by the way, I'm not being rhetorical. Is it friendship? Is it a valid friendship? Can it have even been a deep friendship until the point of change?

Taxation and “Fairness”

I direct you to DumbAgent.com for my first ever DA article:

http://dumbagent.com/taxation-and-“fairness”/

Brain Re-wiring II

In case you were wondering: I was prescribed anti-migraine pills.

Anti-climactic, I know.

Alonzo Edward "Ed" Cady

Ed Cady was a relative of mine; more precisely my father's cousin's wife. He passed away a week ago. I never knew him well - my father's family is huge and spread out across the US, while I grew up in distant Switzerland - but amongst the many names and faces from my hundred + relatives at family reunions, Ed and Carolyn's were two I could always place. Not least of all because they were always, constantly and without fail smiling.

I just read Ed's obituary and it made me realise how little I knew about him and his wife. Or rather: that I knew nothing about them and their life. This reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a friend of my parents' about the importance of sharing family history. There was quite a backdrop to his particular story, but it did resonate with me.

As mentioned I grew up a fair distance from both of my parents' families, and I knew both my mother and father in a context foreign to that in which they themselves grew up. When my grandmother Anita passed it was the first time I realised how much about her life I would never truly know. I don't feel completely detached from her history, rather I like to think that I am a product of it, mixed with many others. But it's another world I will never truly enter.

Would more stories have made up for that? I don't know, possibly not. I guess there is always a sense of lacking at a time of death, no matter what. On the other hand everything I can learn about her makes me smile. It all fascinates me as something I have only known from fictional stories, and yet here it is real, here it is part of me.

This post has ended up being more depressing that I had meant it to be. Look at it the other way: how wonderful is man's life. How full of joy the every day life we ignore while we live it. How beautiful the life of this man, Ed Cady, as he passed through life day by day, ending each sunset with something more than he had at sunrise.

On April 27th friends and family in Fort Collins, CO, will gather together to celebrate Ed's life. An exercise that should take place every day during life, at the time of death and still every day thereafter.

Brain Re-wiring

In a few hours I will be seeing a neurologist. Not because I am neurotic- actually, perhaps yes I am. But if I am then I have yet to discover it.

In any case, this visit is because of headaches which have been plaguing me for the last few months. I know: headaches? Really? Like that is an illness? I agree, if I am to see a specialist medic I would also rather it was for real damage, like a severed leg or brain trauma. However these headaches have been strong enough that, deny them as I may, I am still pretty much locked in bed whenever they hit.

I have seen a doctor, a physio and a dentist (the teeth-grinding saga) so far, and all have told me to deal with my stress (really, people: what stress?!). Acupuncture, massages, meditation (with the last suggestion I almost fell out of my dentist's chair). As my colleague says: it's a bit like in the middle ages and whatever ailment you had, you were bled; now it's dealing with stress, "take a holiday" and all your problems will disappear.

So, well, wish me luck. If all goes as I hope it does, the neurologist will poke inside my brain and say "Ah, here, it is just that you have been drinking too much French wine. Substitute with Italian reds and you will be fine".

Geekiness

In case you doubted my geekiness, I actually read through all of this:

The New Guy's Computer
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2855-the-new-guys-computer

Tiger Farms

Yesterday was the second meetup for our International Professional Women in London group. It was a stunning day and warm straight through to sun-down, so a double thanks to those of you who made it indoors to join us.

And to those who didn't: you missed learning about tiger farms. And other fascinating tiger conservation facts. One of the problems with tiger conservation is when these cuddly animals wander in to towns and villages, and the local population, of course, kill them (to protect themselves and their livestock).

I was thinking about how the most dangerous animal you risk meeting in a Swiss village is a depressed cow. Actually there are of deer but otherwise you mainly encounter farm animals. And boom: we are told about tiger farms. Yes, they are real: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703455804575057101418533006.html

Not to mention tiger corridors (they are civilised animals aren't they).