Brown Motion

It is said one must focus on what one likes and have a positive outlook about life in general.  I say its worth trying.  In the spirit of that concept below I will share some of my simple joys that I can partake as I go through life. These also tend to actually improve the quality of my life.  In no particular order these are things I see, read or do.  Food or Drink I consume or people I meet.  I must say the latter is a relatively low percentage in attributing to quality of life but that's just me. I am sure people can figure out a similar matrix for themselves and figure out how to boost the engagement with things that matter to them most.  Perhaps we will all be happy that way! Humor is a big part of my life and I seek it out in many ways - sometimes it just happens to be in your face when you least expect it... While Bourdain is gone he left an amazing legacy behind.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching him delve into a new frontier using a...

America yet again celebrated Thanksgiving this Thursday.  A moment for families to attempt to get together and sit at the dinner table for some traditional or not so traditional meals as a family.  Which can be hard sometimes. We usually tend to eat as a family of three daily given the bulk of the extended family is a half planet away.   But we are thankful for a lot.  This time in California the big thanks goes to nature.  Nature who decided to shower this land with a bounty of fresh rain, a much needed downpour to drown out the fires burning among several communities and clear the air literally. Using that as an excuse to step out we went walking in a nearby wooded region to smell in the fresh moist air and give those stagnant limbs something to do.  Here are some pictures from that walk in the woods... Trading the indoor shopping craziness and clearances for the vast outdoors was and will remain the clear choice for us for any Thanks...

A hazy fall day in the bay area courtesy some seriously climactic climate to the north of us.  Left bunch of humans dead is how bad it got with a sudden wildfire burning out of control in a sleepy town north of Sacramento. There was poor air quality advisory prompting many to familiarize themselves with a hitherto unknown short form called AQI as in Air Quality Index in the area where they live.  Ours was showing air quality worse than New Delhi and that is saying something.  New Delhi as in India's capital, has its denizens burning wood and cow dung patties along with garbage as a source of fuel to cook food and bake bricks for construction sites.  Result is an atmosphere with cancer causing particulate abundant in volume so much as to block out the sun from shining through. So we scoped out some pockets of relatively clean air in the bay area and decided to hit the coast of Santa Cruz.  A former mission lends its name to the town that was established in ...

For five thousand or so years mankind has been making rules that are based on nothing more than someone's desire to control.  Control others. So as to convince large masses to obey and fall in line.   Some are in fact just stories.  Stories made powerful by clever marketing before marketing was a term.  Facebook has nothing on it. Here are some examples. 1. Monarchy 2.  Religion 3.  Sports - anything from the Pee Wee leagues to Major leagues to the Olympics 4.  Organization structures including those in Government like the Presidency etc. 5.  Marriage 6.  Divorce 7.  God 8. Taxes 9. Flags 10. Countries and smaller geographic zones 11. Money (anything from sea shells to digital) 12. Time Some rules and inventions were made to help the species thrive and actually not collide into each other - literally.  Examples are: 1. Define and develop pathways to get around (e.g. road, highway etc)  2.  Drive o...

A street in Las Vegas or Amsterdam or Mumbai.  A lonely soul looking for some action.  The sexual kind.  The purveyors of said service are many.  To the highest bidder go the spoils.   While the world's oldest profession has benefited humankind as being a pleasure or a vice (viewed differently) it is fundamentally about a transaction.  A transaction where just like buying eggs at a supermarket the buyer and seller exchange value. The value is determined in Euros or Dollars or Rupees and is considered legal or illegal depending on the lat and longitude of the location where said transaction takes place.  But in the end the parties to this transaction are left feeling adequately compensated.  This transaction also adds to the economic value of the society in its own way, again whether legal or otherwise. This is the ideal and easy to follow scenario. While human flesh and fluids are an integral part of the above described experience the...

These days you might have heard the phrase 'Peak Economic Activity', or 'Peak Apple' etc.  signifying a point in time that the economic cycle has reached a climactic and maximum efficiency threshold.  A 'Peak Apple' idea suggests that this trillion dollar machine cannot continue producing more i products and generate gargantuan profits at the same rate as it did before. This idea extrapolated tomorrow and decades from now are the primary thesis of historian Yuval Harari's writings.  In the primary narrative there is a concept that suggest our current political system has simply broken down.  Not broken to manage our current day to day activity but rather provide for a grand vision for the future. A future that defines what our humanity might look like and what the needs might be.  People in general will figure out that the civilization as an idea might itself not exist.  The idea that our very existence will be drastically different and might likely n...

This morning with the winds changing direction it was finally good air quality to take a morning constitutional.  So I did.  And I took my camera with.  Reason being that there is a certain park with flowering beds where a large contingent of west coast residers weighing in next to nothing inhabit.  And when the warm sun is out they come flying out with speed and put on a dazzling display. I present Anna's hummingbirds.  This amazing animal can rotate its head up to 50 times a second as it shakes of pollen and can flap its wings even more times to maintain balance as it hovers like a helicopter in one place. Morning Gossip Sucking nectar from the red blossoms all day they gain weight through the day and then go rest over night in the bushes surrounding these flowering plants.  Ever protective of their young ones or eggs in a nest they can dive and attack if they fear another species approach their nesting site.

Is frightful.   So goes one of the incessantly played jingles in American shopping centers during the winter months at the onset of Xmas. We took a stroll in our neighborhood as we had nothing to do on a weekend evening and wanted to try some food options in a new mall that opened nearby. As we strolled we realized that the intense wild fires burning 100 miles north of us was sending massive dust particulates south toward us and had turned the giant star, our sun into something like a large citrus painted in oil on grey canvas. Other spots in the mall were festively decked in string lights and play areas for kids, including fog machines and fountains - perhaps not that delightful on a wintry evening.

Dictionary definition reads that a Voice-over is a technique to add narrative not part of the original script to describe something.  Usually involves a voice that is not part of the main production.  The latest movie we watched called 'In a World' starring Lake Bell who is writer, director and lead character portrays the role of a female voice with the right sound attributes needed to do voice-overs. The movie which I picked from a recently returned film cart at the library was surprisingly funny in an oddball way and introduced me to a world of film making from an altogether new perspective. It can take armies of people to produce a film from the busboys serving beverages to the staff of a studio to the actual directors and producers and lead actors.  This enterprise also has to market itself successfully to its potential audiences worldwide and the role of the preview or trailers as they are called in India is to do just that. In a world - as the title reads -...

I might have pontificated on the subject of what America witnessed yet again but that was in the past.  The subject of Daylight Saving Time.  What a timely topic. Among the fairy tales man invented like Marriage, Religion, Money, Taxes there is one that is omnipresent and seriously unavoidable and that is Time. The other fantasies can be avoided religiously if one chooses to but no sir not Time.  It passes without you even knowing it and if you wanted to get something or from somewhere to somewhere you need it.  Or at least a vague idea of it. I just saw a movie about three US Navy sailors among hundreds flying to attack Japan in WWII who were thought to be lost at sea when their plane goes down in the Pacific.  Turned out after 45 days at open sea these three made it back to a Polynesian island on a raft.  They too counted time with a pencil and tally marks scribed on a life vest they saved.  Their very existence was at stake and yet they foun...