ahh, happiest of fag ends of the year to all!
although i sometimes wonder what we celebrate on these final wintry december days?
being done w/ the tarnished emotions and experiences of the past year or thankful for the eternal hopes for next year.
with war and death in gaza, afghanistan, sudan, and the (occasionally) democratic republic of congo, it seems a sorry end to 2008, alas.
not to mention kathmandu's recent 14 hours of load-shedding (meaning no electricity) as a xmas gift from the politicians to the enduring people of nepal.
but, enough of that! why quibble with the realities of the world when there is so much beauty below & between. the sun shines on those we love and the stars sparkle at night, right immanuel?
actually, we are blessed (baruch barack) with our boyz here at home with us for these holidays. as we bump into their large bodies and larger souls, shaku and i are amazed at our own creations and gifts. they stroll these rooms and incline on the couches with an ease and comfort that can only make these longing parents proud.
this morning josh & i worked on his college applications. through his brief essays i find new aspects of my oldest son, his joys and his ambitions. i enjoy editing these brief glimpses into his world, thoughts and aspirations. he's become a fine writer and i can see how he stretches himself to find a way to be of service to this struggling world.
now, this afternoon,i just came in from working in the garden for a few hours, cutting down a deceased peach tree (om mani padma hung!), watering the citrus trees and admiring our handiwork of the past four years in our half-acre of orchard over on the western side of our compound (we go through a gate to get there...).
ms. leah, the dogs, gumbi, lapsi and pancakes acorn chasey, and i were out there w/ tek-dai, our man friday, who was burning new green compost and digging up old compost.
it's been a cool, cloudy day as i trundled around in my ersatz bangkok crocs, my toucan gap boxers and a warm fleece jacket scott bought in phnom penh and brought here on the millennium new year when he came with the whole family long before we moved up on our hillside.
such is my casual home attire for the wintry afternoons in kathmandu. a bit of a sartorial mish-mash that keeps me warm while enjoying the weak sunlight that still shimmers over the himalaya even in the depth of 'winter'.
as i listen to jeff buckley sing 'hallelujah' with the darkness settling in around us. the lights go off in 20 minutes for the next six hours. yet before they go off, it's such a joy to listen to the beauty of the human voice. this song 'hallelujah' happens to be on the english top xmas songs this year by two different artists.
if you find either the jeff buckley or leonard cohen (he wrote it) version, you'll find a sacred sound to carry us into the new year.
'maybe there's a god above but all i've learned from love is... a cold and broken hallelujah...'
sometimes, dear friends, that's enough.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Pinteresque or Simply Lifesque?
"The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear," Pinter once said.
"It is a necessary avoidance or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness."
"How can you write a happy play? Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life."
Harold Pinter
Playwright
1930-2008
"It is a necessary avoidance or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness."
"How can you write a happy play? Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life."
Harold Pinter
Playwright
1930-2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
Desperately Seeking Joshua and Ezra
well, i can safely say that our personal hostage crisis has now ended after 72 hours. our two big boyz have been freed by united airlines and sent on klm around the world to come home to kathmandu after six months away.
josh and ez had been stuck in boston since friday when they arrived at logan airport to find that they didn't actually have their paper tickets and that the flight left 50 minutes early. ouch!
as a result, we were in airline reservation crisis mode over the weekend.
yet all had seemed so promising... i called the boys on my cell friday night (their friday morning) to just check that all systems were set to go. they were at the airport with an hour to spare, so i put down my permanent parental guard (that something would go wrong...), and headed off w/ ms. leah to meet shaku, utpal & caroline for dinner.
alas, the problems began soon after when i got a text message from my sister saying that the boyz had missed their flight!! i was reduced to monosyllabic terminology for the next couple of hours. quelle drag!
immediately i got the boys on the phone at the airport, but they were having no luck with the united folks finding their reservations in the computer system and, even so, it was already too late. the flight had departed for san francisco and beyond. they were grounded in a snow storm in boston...
with no great options, they retreated back where they had started at 5 am that morning to my brother bruce's home in newton. although, unfortunately, bruce and family were going away for the w/end, so josh & ez decided to go to their kathmandu friends sashi & jigme's apartment to regroup.
while back in k'du, not seeing other otions, with my sister claudia's help in philadelphia, we'd booked them on a gulf flight over europe to come on sunday -- but shaku said we might as well try to get the united tixs rebooked and save alot of $$$.
so, we spent much of the w/end trying to get them on a united flight on the 23rd (tuesday) which, to be honest, on friday & saturday seemed an eternity away. but, for a half a dozen reasons, by monday proved impossible.
so, in search of a united reissue, ezi trudged through the snow and sleet of a winter new england storm on both saturday and sunday. he literally spent 5-6 hours/day at logan airport waiting in 1.5 hour lines trying to get the tixs reissued, it wasn't happening. i would get up 2 or 3 times at night to speak to ezi while he waited in line or was speaking to the united staff. but for some reason (or none...), what we were being told in k'du by our travel agent was not squaring with the united agent's computer.
it was all one giant (and expensive...) glitch.
finally, on monday morning when shaku & i went to the travel agent on durbar marg, one quick look at the reservation and i suddenly realized that they were trying to book the boys on a flight on the 23rd when the tix actually expired on the 22nd. they were doing their best, but had missed the fact that the six month tix expired on the 22nd.
so, even with the best efforts and time passing, i gave up and gave in.
'ok, ok, ok, get me the quickest, cheapest flight as directly as possible to get my sons here ASAP.' all i could say was, 'i want my sons here with us'. it was the holidays. shakun's birthday was on the 25th.
not to mention that they only had two weeks vacation and they had been working so hard at school since august. they deserved their vacation here with us in kathmandu. they desperately wanted to be home and we desperately wanted them with us.
ezi at 16 had been doing an adult's work (and so compassionately) at the airport, while josh was assiduously filling out his college applications back in the apartment. when i told ez on sunday that he may have to go back early on monday to try one last time, he said, 'dad, i don't mind, as long as it's useful this time...' what a guy!
so, finally, when we realized that the missing united tix was more confused than we knew earlier, we punted. within a minute, we wrote a check to get the boys back on klm/gulf ASAP.
i just wanted josh & ez to wake up on monday morning knowing that they would, at last, be leaving boston and coming home.
and home they are!!!
they came in on wednesday afternoon, tired, beat, exhausted but thrilled to be back in nepal.
their mother and father are simply in parental heaven with the sound of their voices filling our home, once again.
joy!
whoever created family was truly a wise and compassionate soul...
being together again is the best xmas/hanukah gift we could imagine.
joy!
josh and ez had been stuck in boston since friday when they arrived at logan airport to find that they didn't actually have their paper tickets and that the flight left 50 minutes early. ouch!
as a result, we were in airline reservation crisis mode over the weekend.
yet all had seemed so promising... i called the boys on my cell friday night (their friday morning) to just check that all systems were set to go. they were at the airport with an hour to spare, so i put down my permanent parental guard (that something would go wrong...), and headed off w/ ms. leah to meet shaku, utpal & caroline for dinner.
alas, the problems began soon after when i got a text message from my sister saying that the boyz had missed their flight!! i was reduced to monosyllabic terminology for the next couple of hours. quelle drag!
immediately i got the boys on the phone at the airport, but they were having no luck with the united folks finding their reservations in the computer system and, even so, it was already too late. the flight had departed for san francisco and beyond. they were grounded in a snow storm in boston...
with no great options, they retreated back where they had started at 5 am that morning to my brother bruce's home in newton. although, unfortunately, bruce and family were going away for the w/end, so josh & ez decided to go to their kathmandu friends sashi & jigme's apartment to regroup.
while back in k'du, not seeing other otions, with my sister claudia's help in philadelphia, we'd booked them on a gulf flight over europe to come on sunday -- but shaku said we might as well try to get the united tixs rebooked and save alot of $$$.
so, we spent much of the w/end trying to get them on a united flight on the 23rd (tuesday) which, to be honest, on friday & saturday seemed an eternity away. but, for a half a dozen reasons, by monday proved impossible.
so, in search of a united reissue, ezi trudged through the snow and sleet of a winter new england storm on both saturday and sunday. he literally spent 5-6 hours/day at logan airport waiting in 1.5 hour lines trying to get the tixs reissued, it wasn't happening. i would get up 2 or 3 times at night to speak to ezi while he waited in line or was speaking to the united staff. but for some reason (or none...), what we were being told in k'du by our travel agent was not squaring with the united agent's computer.
it was all one giant (and expensive...) glitch.
finally, on monday morning when shaku & i went to the travel agent on durbar marg, one quick look at the reservation and i suddenly realized that they were trying to book the boys on a flight on the 23rd when the tix actually expired on the 22nd. they were doing their best, but had missed the fact that the six month tix expired on the 22nd.
so, even with the best efforts and time passing, i gave up and gave in.
'ok, ok, ok, get me the quickest, cheapest flight as directly as possible to get my sons here ASAP.' all i could say was, 'i want my sons here with us'. it was the holidays. shakun's birthday was on the 25th.
not to mention that they only had two weeks vacation and they had been working so hard at school since august. they deserved their vacation here with us in kathmandu. they desperately wanted to be home and we desperately wanted them with us.
ezi at 16 had been doing an adult's work (and so compassionately) at the airport, while josh was assiduously filling out his college applications back in the apartment. when i told ez on sunday that he may have to go back early on monday to try one last time, he said, 'dad, i don't mind, as long as it's useful this time...' what a guy!
so, finally, when we realized that the missing united tix was more confused than we knew earlier, we punted. within a minute, we wrote a check to get the boys back on klm/gulf ASAP.
i just wanted josh & ez to wake up on monday morning knowing that they would, at last, be leaving boston and coming home.
and home they are!!!
they came in on wednesday afternoon, tired, beat, exhausted but thrilled to be back in nepal.
their mother and father are simply in parental heaven with the sound of their voices filling our home, once again.
joy!
whoever created family was truly a wise and compassionate soul...
being together again is the best xmas/hanukah gift we could imagine.
joy!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Darkness, Darkness, My Old Friend...
Ten hours a day of load shedding from today
In what is certain to cripple normal life and industrial activities, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has announced a fresh calendar of load shedding deciding to cut power by ten hours everyday.
From the 45 hours a week load shedding, there will be 63 hours of load shedding every week – ten hours a day for six days and three hours a day for one day in a week.
The fresh routine has come a few days after the 70 MW Middle Marsyangdi project was inaugurated.
Due to the onset of dry winter season, the water level in snow-fed rivers have sharply come down leading to severe cutdown in generation capacity of most of the run-of-the-river type projects.
The country currently has 619 Mw of installed capacity, but in winter only 400 Mw can be generated while the peak demand reaches 750 Mw.
On Wednesday, the cabinet had declared national power emergency situation and decided to explore building thermal plants to tide over the load shedding woes.
nepalnews.com sd Dec 18 08
In what is certain to cripple normal life and industrial activities, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has announced a fresh calendar of load shedding deciding to cut power by ten hours everyday.
From the 45 hours a week load shedding, there will be 63 hours of load shedding every week – ten hours a day for six days and three hours a day for one day in a week.
The fresh routine has come a few days after the 70 MW Middle Marsyangdi project was inaugurated.
Due to the onset of dry winter season, the water level in snow-fed rivers have sharply come down leading to severe cutdown in generation capacity of most of the run-of-the-river type projects.
The country currently has 619 Mw of installed capacity, but in winter only 400 Mw can be generated while the peak demand reaches 750 Mw.
On Wednesday, the cabinet had declared national power emergency situation and decided to explore building thermal plants to tide over the load shedding woes.
nepalnews.com sd Dec 18 08
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Elegy for Jerry Sternin, 1938-2008
‘If there is no one beside you when your soul embarks,
I will follow you into the dark.’
‘Death Cab for Cuties’
I've been in this space w/ Jerry the past few days. I hear his voice and see him lying alone in Boston. I don't want to believe that the end has come. It's beyond my comprehension right now. I want to have been there with him, Monique and Sam. It feels strange to be so distant when Jerry has already begun his journey between worlds. I can't believe that the end has come so suddenly.
Yet, I must be thankful as my time with him this year, while visiting Josh & Ez, gave us more time than we'd had for years… more time with Jerry’s affectionate, irrepressible humor, his irreverence, his wisdom, kindness and worldly self-assurance.
At least, before going to the beyond, I'm so glad that Jerry saw Josh & Ezra as young men, since he had known them as such small boys. In fact, he may have cooked his last magnificent meal for our family in mid-August, the night before Shakun and Leah returned to Nepal; as that night that it was apparent that something was seriously wrong w/ his health and lungs.
A week later, I took Ezi & his Nepali friend, Suraj, out to White Pond on Suraj’s first day in America to see the beauty of the place and go swimming. I was surprised to find Jerry home, alone, weakened, actually gasping for breath while Monique was out buying him antibiotics.
That day, as the struggled for breath, Jerry knew there was something seriously wrong. He told me that there were only three times in his life when he hadn't had an appetite: when he left college, when he left Nepal and that late summer day when he was gasping for air. This time, although he wasn’t leaving anywhere he loved, he'd lost his appetite. He was afraid. He felt already that he couldn't control this illness, it kept coming for him, taking away his breath, filling his lungs with fluid, tiring him and never leaving him.
Within a day or two Jerry was in Tufts Medical Center. I saw him next in his private room with tubes in his chest and sedated.
After I returned to Nepal, however, he seemed to recover and life seemed more promising. When I saw him in mid-October, returning for the boys' parents' w/end, I was happy to see him healthier, having dinner with friends and hopeful – or so I wanted to believe...
For Jerry has been one of my closest friends, spiritual guides and life gurus for the past 25 years. I have loved, respected and admired ‘Jersey’ like an older brother. He was always there for me, in ways large and small, since we met in the early 80s, through our annual Save the Children Asia directors’ conferences, adventures in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bhutan and Nepal and well, well beyond those origins.
Even in his work or personal emails, Jerry was always playfully attentive, with double entendres, twists and turns, teasing and questioning in equal measure.
The other day Shakun remembered Jerry playing his recorder after our wedding ceremony in October 1988 in the garden of the Shangri-la Hotel in Kathmandu. The mellifluous sound still echoes in our fondest memories. I have so many such memories of our escapades together in Asia, meandering in markets, finding the odd and unusual, hunting antiques, good food or simply mere, joyful fun.
Now, at 70, Jerry has departed, going back to where we all have come from, into the empyrean, that space-less space in which we eternally exist beyond these all-too-human physical, emotional, psychological realms...
I feel so quiet, empty, emptied at the thought that I will not see him again, laugh with him again, hear his thoughts, ask his opinion, watch his attentive gaze. Jerry is gone. This is what I have read in the messages this week. That there is no way for me to be with him again, even when my life began to turn to regular visits through Boston to my sons' new world in western Massachusetts.
Is this the truth now?
I write because I don't know what to say. I’ve had this feeling in my heart, in my stomach, behind my eyes all week. I’ve heard Jerry's voice whispering to me at night as I lay in bed. What is he saying? I'm not sure. Is it important? I’ve heard his lips moving and seen his eyes staring, gently, toward me. Was this death that came across the seas to say goodbye? Was this the end we never expect nor wish to encounter? Does it come so soon when it is so unwanted. Tearing the fabric of our lives and the love that we cherish.
Must life be so unfair? Always coming for us, for our friends, for those we love, for those we never want to leave? This truth we never want to face.
How hard it must have been for Jerry to accept that he must go. He loved this world more than most. His Jewish soul knew how to play so exquisitely in this fleeting, suffering, inspired world. He taught so many of us the joy of that play: Sternin’s laws of motion -- full of beauty, compassion, irreverence and the essential ambience of food.
Our friend Jerry always seemed so aloof from fear, dancing in the face of uncertainties, observant of life’s mysteries and clever with its petty forms of power. Yet, by the end of the summer, he knew he was very sick, even though the doctors couldn't diagnosis it. Still he wasn't ready to leave. White Lake was so beautiful, their new home so charming, his walls of Asian art so comforting, Monique's love so palpable. Yet, as we looked out the windows, the trees were already losing their leaves and being blown away. Autumn was bearing down on Concord already, soon to be followed by the winter Jerry never enjoyed and always sought to escape. This year, there was no escape.
Now I write this elegy as winter has closed in on us. The g-ds of miracles chose not to allow Jerry more time among us in this world, this fleeting, effervescent, shadowy, ultimately disappearing world.
I can only imagine what Monique and Sam must have endured as they watched Jerry depart alone, far from his ebbing love and care. Yet they know better than we how much Jerry has protected them through the years in this chimerical world.
In this, the truth of his love will sustain them, always. Together they will stand even without that giant sequoia of a man to protect them.
For the power of his love, his joy, his inspiration will surely, wisely carry each of us further on these dank and dark waters.
Further on… into the elusive joy once again, then irrevocably, beyond even darkness itself.
Om shanti. Om shalom. Oh my g-d!
love you forever, Jerry,
your friends, Keith, Shakun, Joshua, Ezra and Ms. Leah
I will follow you into the dark.’
‘Death Cab for Cuties’
I've been in this space w/ Jerry the past few days. I hear his voice and see him lying alone in Boston. I don't want to believe that the end has come. It's beyond my comprehension right now. I want to have been there with him, Monique and Sam. It feels strange to be so distant when Jerry has already begun his journey between worlds. I can't believe that the end has come so suddenly.
Yet, I must be thankful as my time with him this year, while visiting Josh & Ez, gave us more time than we'd had for years… more time with Jerry’s affectionate, irrepressible humor, his irreverence, his wisdom, kindness and worldly self-assurance.
At least, before going to the beyond, I'm so glad that Jerry saw Josh & Ezra as young men, since he had known them as such small boys. In fact, he may have cooked his last magnificent meal for our family in mid-August, the night before Shakun and Leah returned to Nepal; as that night that it was apparent that something was seriously wrong w/ his health and lungs.
A week later, I took Ezi & his Nepali friend, Suraj, out to White Pond on Suraj’s first day in America to see the beauty of the place and go swimming. I was surprised to find Jerry home, alone, weakened, actually gasping for breath while Monique was out buying him antibiotics.
That day, as the struggled for breath, Jerry knew there was something seriously wrong. He told me that there were only three times in his life when he hadn't had an appetite: when he left college, when he left Nepal and that late summer day when he was gasping for air. This time, although he wasn’t leaving anywhere he loved, he'd lost his appetite. He was afraid. He felt already that he couldn't control this illness, it kept coming for him, taking away his breath, filling his lungs with fluid, tiring him and never leaving him.
Within a day or two Jerry was in Tufts Medical Center. I saw him next in his private room with tubes in his chest and sedated.
After I returned to Nepal, however, he seemed to recover and life seemed more promising. When I saw him in mid-October, returning for the boys' parents' w/end, I was happy to see him healthier, having dinner with friends and hopeful – or so I wanted to believe...
For Jerry has been one of my closest friends, spiritual guides and life gurus for the past 25 years. I have loved, respected and admired ‘Jersey’ like an older brother. He was always there for me, in ways large and small, since we met in the early 80s, through our annual Save the Children Asia directors’ conferences, adventures in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bhutan and Nepal and well, well beyond those origins.
Even in his work or personal emails, Jerry was always playfully attentive, with double entendres, twists and turns, teasing and questioning in equal measure.
The other day Shakun remembered Jerry playing his recorder after our wedding ceremony in October 1988 in the garden of the Shangri-la Hotel in Kathmandu. The mellifluous sound still echoes in our fondest memories. I have so many such memories of our escapades together in Asia, meandering in markets, finding the odd and unusual, hunting antiques, good food or simply mere, joyful fun.
Now, at 70, Jerry has departed, going back to where we all have come from, into the empyrean, that space-less space in which we eternally exist beyond these all-too-human physical, emotional, psychological realms...
I feel so quiet, empty, emptied at the thought that I will not see him again, laugh with him again, hear his thoughts, ask his opinion, watch his attentive gaze. Jerry is gone. This is what I have read in the messages this week. That there is no way for me to be with him again, even when my life began to turn to regular visits through Boston to my sons' new world in western Massachusetts.
Is this the truth now?
I write because I don't know what to say. I’ve had this feeling in my heart, in my stomach, behind my eyes all week. I’ve heard Jerry's voice whispering to me at night as I lay in bed. What is he saying? I'm not sure. Is it important? I’ve heard his lips moving and seen his eyes staring, gently, toward me. Was this death that came across the seas to say goodbye? Was this the end we never expect nor wish to encounter? Does it come so soon when it is so unwanted. Tearing the fabric of our lives and the love that we cherish.
Must life be so unfair? Always coming for us, for our friends, for those we love, for those we never want to leave? This truth we never want to face.
How hard it must have been for Jerry to accept that he must go. He loved this world more than most. His Jewish soul knew how to play so exquisitely in this fleeting, suffering, inspired world. He taught so many of us the joy of that play: Sternin’s laws of motion -- full of beauty, compassion, irreverence and the essential ambience of food.
Our friend Jerry always seemed so aloof from fear, dancing in the face of uncertainties, observant of life’s mysteries and clever with its petty forms of power. Yet, by the end of the summer, he knew he was very sick, even though the doctors couldn't diagnosis it. Still he wasn't ready to leave. White Lake was so beautiful, their new home so charming, his walls of Asian art so comforting, Monique's love so palpable. Yet, as we looked out the windows, the trees were already losing their leaves and being blown away. Autumn was bearing down on Concord already, soon to be followed by the winter Jerry never enjoyed and always sought to escape. This year, there was no escape.
Now I write this elegy as winter has closed in on us. The g-ds of miracles chose not to allow Jerry more time among us in this world, this fleeting, effervescent, shadowy, ultimately disappearing world.
I can only imagine what Monique and Sam must have endured as they watched Jerry depart alone, far from his ebbing love and care. Yet they know better than we how much Jerry has protected them through the years in this chimerical world.
In this, the truth of his love will sustain them, always. Together they will stand even without that giant sequoia of a man to protect them.
For the power of his love, his joy, his inspiration will surely, wisely carry each of us further on these dank and dark waters.
Further on… into the elusive joy once again, then irrevocably, beyond even darkness itself.
Om shanti. Om shalom. Oh my g-d!
love you forever, Jerry,
your friends, Keith, Shakun, Joshua, Ezra and Ms. Leah
Monday, December 8, 2008
The Law of Procrastination: U=EV/ID
Prof Piers Steel, a Canadian academic who has spent more than 10 years studying why people put off until tomorrow what they could do today, believes that the notion that procrastinators are either perfectionists or just lazy is wrong.
Prof Steel, who admits to becoming distracted by computer games himself, argues in a new book that those prone to putting things off suffer from a vice of their own - impulsiveness.
Chronic procastinators, who make up 20 per cent of the population, are more impulsive and erratic than other people and less conscientious about attention to detail and obligations to others, he says in his forthcoming book, The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow.
The psychologist, from the University of Calgary, has subsequently formed an equation for why people procrastinate, which began by studying 250 college students.
The equation is U=EV/ID.
The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.
Prof Steel says procrastination is becoming a bigger issue because many more jobs are "self-structured", with people setting their own schedules.
This means that people tend to postpone things with delayed rewards in favour of activities that offer immediate rewards.
"Procastinators tend to live fro today rather than tomorrow. for short term gain for long term pain" he writes.
Until now, psychologists have generally linked procrastination to perfectionists who avoid tasks rather than produce less than perfect products.
So, instead of people being too lazy to care about the task, he believes that most procrastinators believe they can complete a task and also care about it.
Lazy people, by contrast, are not bothered whether they can finish the job – they just do not want to do it. Both can come up with excuses such as a dog eating the homework.
Famous procrastinators include writers Marcel Proust and Douglas Adams, who famously said he loved the "whoosh" of missed deadlines passing over his head.
The Telegraph
By Urmee Khan
08 Dec 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3660232/Academics-invent-a-mathematical-equation-for-why-people-procrastinate.html
Prof Steel, who admits to becoming distracted by computer games himself, argues in a new book that those prone to putting things off suffer from a vice of their own - impulsiveness.
Chronic procastinators, who make up 20 per cent of the population, are more impulsive and erratic than other people and less conscientious about attention to detail and obligations to others, he says in his forthcoming book, The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow.
The psychologist, from the University of Calgary, has subsequently formed an equation for why people procrastinate, which began by studying 250 college students.
The equation is U=EV/ID.
The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.
Prof Steel says procrastination is becoming a bigger issue because many more jobs are "self-structured", with people setting their own schedules.
This means that people tend to postpone things with delayed rewards in favour of activities that offer immediate rewards.
"Procastinators tend to live fro today rather than tomorrow. for short term gain for long term pain" he writes.
Until now, psychologists have generally linked procrastination to perfectionists who avoid tasks rather than produce less than perfect products.
So, instead of people being too lazy to care about the task, he believes that most procrastinators believe they can complete a task and also care about it.
Lazy people, by contrast, are not bothered whether they can finish the job – they just do not want to do it. Both can come up with excuses such as a dog eating the homework.
Famous procrastinators include writers Marcel Proust and Douglas Adams, who famously said he loved the "whoosh" of missed deadlines passing over his head.
The Telegraph
By Urmee Khan
08 Dec 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3660232/Academics-invent-a-mathematical-equation-for-why-people-procrastinate.html
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Chani's Best Friend
we just came from seeing our friend, chani, the rabbi's wife at the chabad house. chani lives in a very simple apartment in the heart of thamel, right near the chabad house, where her husband, chezky ministers to the lost & lonely who seek a sense of home far from their own.
a few years ago, before their bar mitzvahs in haifa when they were 13 and 14, chani taught josh & ezi hebrew once a week for nearly two years in her home. she's a trained elementary school teacher and has the heart of a angel, always calm and humorous with the boys as they struggled with that strange tongue, so far from their daily realities.
ahh, chani, such a sweet, religious, kind-hearted maternal young woman who wants to have 5 kids by the time she's 30. a very gentle soul. her hair tucked back under a scarf like a 19th C. russian peasant. always hugging her three children and softly admonishing them while praising their character and resilience.
alas, what we didn't know was that the rabbi's wife in mumbai was chani's best friend. they spoke or skyped twice a day. chani spoke w/ her two hours before their chabad house in mumbai was brutally attacked last wednesday.
we knew that chani must have known the mumbai chabad family, but had no idea how close they were.
chani says she hasn't slept or eaten since last week. she looks so frail to me, like she's aged five years in a week.
of course, these religious women are frontier fortified, as they already live out on the edge of modern culture, holding true to ancient truths and ways of living that most of us have cast out on way to our modern vision of secular sanctity and freedom.
yes, chani's a strong woman living in a strange country. she will get through this, but there is this air of unreality about her as she comes to terms w/ her best friend's death at 27. 'she had so many dreams...', chani says solemnly.
another act of ceaseless violence...
sad, no? how cruel we human beans can be to each other.
such blind fury.
or, as ezi asked, 'how can people hate so much?'
as nick cave and the bad seeds sing, 'people ain't no good', in his somber, mellifluous voice.
vat a vorld we live in...
sometimes you just want to slip inside your own private amplitude
and disappear...
a few years ago, before their bar mitzvahs in haifa when they were 13 and 14, chani taught josh & ezi hebrew once a week for nearly two years in her home. she's a trained elementary school teacher and has the heart of a angel, always calm and humorous with the boys as they struggled with that strange tongue, so far from their daily realities.
ahh, chani, such a sweet, religious, kind-hearted maternal young woman who wants to have 5 kids by the time she's 30. a very gentle soul. her hair tucked back under a scarf like a 19th C. russian peasant. always hugging her three children and softly admonishing them while praising their character and resilience.
alas, what we didn't know was that the rabbi's wife in mumbai was chani's best friend. they spoke or skyped twice a day. chani spoke w/ her two hours before their chabad house in mumbai was brutally attacked last wednesday.
we knew that chani must have known the mumbai chabad family, but had no idea how close they were.
chani says she hasn't slept or eaten since last week. she looks so frail to me, like she's aged five years in a week.
of course, these religious women are frontier fortified, as they already live out on the edge of modern culture, holding true to ancient truths and ways of living that most of us have cast out on way to our modern vision of secular sanctity and freedom.
yes, chani's a strong woman living in a strange country. she will get through this, but there is this air of unreality about her as she comes to terms w/ her best friend's death at 27. 'she had so many dreams...', chani says solemnly.
another act of ceaseless violence...
sad, no? how cruel we human beans can be to each other.
such blind fury.
or, as ezi asked, 'how can people hate so much?'
as nick cave and the bad seeds sing, 'people ain't no good', in his somber, mellifluous voice.
vat a vorld we live in...
sometimes you just want to slip inside your own private amplitude
and disappear...
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