a diddakoi and her travelling caravan

Having been on the side of 'being supervised' in my thesis for the last 3 years, I have forgotten how hard it is to be on the other side. Call it the 'bad side'. Giving a person feedback is not easy. Just now I had to have a 'talk' with the cleaner, playing the role of a 'bad' cop, where my partner is the kind one. The cleaner had been missing a lot of work in the house and last week left all the gas on. My partner came home to house smelling of gas. The fact that the lady had helped herself to snacks from the cupboard was also a bit irritating. So, I had the chat. Was it hard, my friend. Trying to have an even tone, being fair, and still sticking to the point, all not easy skills to express. It creates a lot of stress in a person who generally wants to please, be kind. Yet I have to keep reminding myself that kindness does not equal weakness. In the face of bad behavior, carelessness, general laziness, kindness does not mean that we turn...

The blue dot is the earth taken 6 billion kilometres away from it, right at the edge of the solar system Carl Sagan, an astronomer who had this picture taken had this to say about it: "From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our speci...

I watched some ted videos randomly while doing my referencing and came across this one. I thought it would be corny at best. An ok distraction to working out whether a government policy counts as a document or a report. But I was surprised. The journey these kids went on the mountain bike ride sounded exactly mine with my PhD. I fit pretty much into the category of intellectual juvenile delinquent because despite having some feral intelligence, my pre-PhD life was generally one of undisciplined intellectual wildness. Always above or below the law (in my head, in my research, in my writing style, in my referencing, in the organization of my ideas), I had been contained in the Israeli prison of cultural and mental mediocrity. Yet, when I was released for a short break from this prison, given a mountain bike and told to shoot off, each time I had a fall, I was pretty much like these kids. I raged and stormed at the bike, kicked the stones around, and cursed like a fisher wom...