Skip to main content

Birding, Reading and Eating

 All in a weekend's work.

Work had become non-sensical and we (as in my best half and yours truly) were feeling somewhat stressed out.   Just as the tunnel seemed too dark and long, a nice warm weekend presented itself in SF bay area.  

That made the weekend especially joyous.

Saturday was spent scouring our favorite haunt in South Bay for some delectable food, vadas and parathas and sweet gajrela.

All consumed in small tapas style.  First at a local park in the south bay then by a man made lake on the peninsula.

Stop Asian Hate rallies were being held in the locales we visited - citizenry pushing back at the scars being inflicted by an increasingly divided nation.  All in all the Vitamin D got a boost.  

Sunday was a gentle walk along a local lake with birds of a feather and then some spotted along the trail.  An egret and a grey heron stoked the atmosphere otherwise filled with 20 other species chirping and squawking by the lake.  Apparently the egret and heron are the same family of birds, one just is darker - much like us humans.






A side trail had a male turkey (called Tom) urging potential suitors to check his feather display.  

It all culminated with another good set of pages betwixt a hard cover, courtesy of our local library.  This one titled 'The Hidden Habits of Genius', by a Yale professor.

It seems the debate around Nurture vs. Nature is ongoing in trying to determine what creates genius.  A definition though succinctly contrasts Genius and Talent.

Talent is when someone hits the target no one else can.  Genius is hitting a target no one can yet see.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...

Of Jims and Johns

Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...