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Just avoid it

Original date: February 10, 2006

I decided yesterday and forgot about it. My friend reminded me about it today and now it has to be an active negation.

I decided that I would try to avoid the winter games completely this year. There are a lot of reasons to avoid it not the least of it being the way it gets covered on television. Anyway tonight was going to be a test of my will.

The fact of the matter is that I love the olympics. I stayed up well into the night for the Nagano & Sydney olympics looking things over on their web sites. I think the Athens olympics did such a bad job with their web content that I started lose my interest.

It's probably the same with television as well. The coverage has changed so much from raw information and events shown the way they happened to glossy productions and presentations. I feel like there is much less emphasis on experiencing the reality of it all and focussing on the telling of it - words, images to emphasize what other people want to emphasize, not what I feel as a direct result of viewing the raw event. How lazy do people think I am that I need to be told what to feel?

I have to admit I did break down at the start - I switched to the channel to the networking carrying what I was avoiding. They decided to help me out by starting out with a long intro of the city and country. It probably was a very interesting intro, if only I was paying full attention. And then they said they were going to spend the next 30 minutes on just 3 athletes before going to the opening ceremonies. That was enough for me.

The other channels helped me out too. You know about my obsession with "That 70s Show"(see My first thoughts...) already. I haven't said too much more about it since then. I started writing something more about that yesterday but couldn't get enough good stuff and let it go. Maybe it'll be revived at some future date. And on Fox, there was "Arrested Development." I've only seen a few episodes of this show and only this year. It's a funny show - not great, but still a nice relief. Thank you very much for pitching in to help me out. Even though he didn't show up today (as far as I noticed in my distracted way while working on this and other such activities), how can a name like "Bob LobLaw" not be funny?

I can just avoid it, at least today.

A quick look at their web site indicates it may only be on par with the Athens one. Oh! Well. At least they do have some good pictures so far and they do have the results. And I'll read the newspaper too, of course.

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Copyright © 2006 S. Kumar

There are reasons, aren't there?

Original date: February 7, 2006

Do you wonder about rites, rituals, customs, etc? How do they get started and why do people continue doing them? There are reasons, I'm sure. The original reasons are almost always lost and they become things that people do. Habits.

Oftentimes, the value changes too. They still have utility, just not the original one. That doesn't matter so much.

Other things that aren't rituals that are still habits are very interesting in their own way. People classify them as good habits, bad habits. Some even call them unavoidable habits. Now that's an addiction, for sure, even if it isn't harmful to the person doing them or to others. I'm losing track of my main issue here. Let's get back to that.

A couple of things triggered this. My habitual behaviour under certain circumstances, be they riding the bus, reacting to certain things and even in certain ways in meetings and with certain people. Or even talking to myself and it comes out aloud once in a while. Doesn't that happen to you? Are you embarrassed when it does? Even if no one was around to notice? Now, what does it mean if you're not embarrassed even if people are around and noticed. Most of the time, people pretend that they didn't notice anything anyway.

The main thing that triggered this thought process was the coverage of a funeral of a famous person today. It was an important person. But why the ceremony? It certainly is a celebration of the life. Making their family feel (or only now realize) how important this person was is certainly one of the reasons. Setting an example for others is another. Hopefully, it their greatness that would inspire people and not the fact that there was such a big deal made about them. It doesn't even matter as long as they actually do good things that benefit others.

I started doing some web searches on funerals and found a large body of work related to this.Here's a good quote: "The funeral declares that a death has occurred. It commemorates the life that has been lived, and offers family and friends the opportunity to pay tribute to their loved one." (source: http://familyestate.com/main/funeral.html) Many of these talk about closure, acceptance, etc. Those most of us recognize. Most of these views are from sites that provide services for funerals.

It is interesting that none of these articles (at least the few that I read) talks about setting an example and that's the most obvious one to me.

We need to have some semblance of a feeling of control over our lives. That's the reality we understand, need for our sanity. Ignoring them is always an option, I suppose. "what you don't know won't hurt you" is a common expression. Trust me, I don't know many cases when that's remotely true. What you don't know comes back to bite you most of the time.

Yes, there had better be reaons.

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Copyright © 2006 S. Kumar

Not too bad a Sunday

Original date: February 6, 2006

Not too bad a day after all.

The running wasn't too great, but I completed it anyway. I guess leftover tiredness from Friday's 10K run. It wasn't a race, just decided to do it as I haven't run the Super Bowl 10K in Redondo Beach since 2003.

Watching the Super Bowl with friends was great. Plus the fact that the Steelers won made it nice. That doesn't matter too much when all's said and done. What's the connection, anyway? The fact that you lived in Pennsylvania, lo those many years ago. You've lived in the West coast considerably longer. It is still hard to give up your early experiences. Pennsylvania was your first home in the states.

Why the sudden switch to the second person? I'm not sure. Probably still a little less pretentious than using the third person, I suppose. I'm sure, I'll use the 3rd person too in one of these. Just try to look past that, alright?

The Steelers played pretty well but not great. Seattle played less well. I guess the Steelers were able to overcome more than Seattle is what makes it more interesting. In most of the statistics, they were worse off, but still came ahead. Which means that they did pretty well when it counted the most. They didn't let the opposition take advantage of the 2 interceptions and did take advantage of theirs. Take away the return for a touchdown and the interception so close to the goal line and the end might've been the other way around. Isn't that how sports go? Some lucky breaks for sure, but taking advantage of the breaks is where it seems to make the final impact. Now, that's a life lesson for us all.

So, what makes this day a "Not so bad" one? It was mostly because I was able to see some people who I haven't seen since last year. And, the children too. That makes it especially nice.

Not too bad a Sunday. Definitely.

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Copyright © 2006 S. Kumar