Wisdom by Hindsight
Just a note to let everyone know that my Father is still on a self-imposed digital break. He’s done with most procedures/surgeries and is recovering well. He himself does not want to deal with hundreds of people asking how he’s doing so: no phone, no computer, no crosswords. Only recently started reading the newspapers.
I suppose he’ll get back soon. Exactly when that soon will be, no idea. 🙂
Hello all,
This is just a note from my Dad, Rummuser. He realises that his absence may have caused quite some worry so asked me to do a guest post.
Dad has been in hospital for a few days due to some health problems. Had a surgery on Saturday and is recovering at the moment. He should be home soon and up to mischief as soon as he’s recovered fully. 🙂 Will keep you posted.
I will start this post with a bit of humour and end it on a very serious note. Both to drive home the thrust of this post.
I am a member of a number of WhatsApp groups and one of the problems of being so is the repetitions that one has to face every day. Some posts go viral so fast that I not only get to see them on various groups but, also through individual messages from contacts.
One such recent video is about a Super Senior gent who is past ninety and still going strong with daily physical exercises, marathon running, proper diet etc, etc, etc. In the clip he is asked about his longevity and he advices on how to be fit irrespective of one’s age.
Good for him but, my funny bones decided to have a bit of humour with this post as, the gent shares the same surname, xxxxxx as mine. So, on many such posts I commented : “xxxxxxs are crazy. I am one.”
The responses to my comment amazed me. 43% wrote that they totally agreed, or indicated their agreement via thumbs-up emojis or simply by a grinning image.
33% responded with frowning emojis. Need I also add that bar just a few, all shared the surname xxxxxx. I suppose that these indicated that all xxxxxxs are not crazy.
The balance 23% simply enjoyed the quip and indicated it via smile or grin emojis.
Innumerable contacts decided that discretion is the better part of valour and simply kept quiet.
I have concluded that most people in the world that I occupy consider me as crazy. So be it.
Now coming to the serious part of this post; Please visit Webwisewoman’s blog post I Was Never Old Before.
I hope that you will understand my response in the comments to that post – “No matter what one learns from others about ageing, one has to face up to realities of one’s own situation. In my case, my health issues prevent me from leading the kind of lives that many of my friends and relatives of about my age live. I have accepted this and have modelled mine to give me a contented life. And yes, blogging has been a great outlet for the creative part of me to operate.”
And just as I started to write this post, I received another message from a very dear friend who too is an xxxxxx and like me, a couch potato.
Nastik in Sanskrit means a Non Believer.
Now, you tell me whether I am crazy or not. Thank you.
A fellow blogger and well-wisher, Jean mailed me to ask if all was well with me as I had not been writing blog posts since early October. I had responded with:
“I am hale and hearty and enjoying being a couch potato.
I have not come up with anything to write about recently. I read your posts every day.
Thank you for asking.
Regards.”
Since then I had seriously been considering coming up with some ideas every now and then to blog more regularly and a golden opportunity presented itself with two running holidays for our newspapers following our five day long Deepavali festival.
As my readers know, my morning routine includes reading five newspapers and solving seven crossword puzzles. I was totally lost during the two days when the newspapers did not arrive and was quite frustrated trying to occupy myself with something else. It is a wonder that I survived.
The delivery of daily newspapers recommenced this morning and I am back on even keel. So much so that I indulged myself with a pedicure/foot massage and a hair cut/beard trim/ head massage as I was lucky to find a noon slot with the pedicurist.
I am feeling great with that indulgence and will now give serious thought to finding things to write about more often.
This series of posts has been inspired by Nick who suggested that I list my peeves. He calls his, “Petty Peeves” but, I prefer to call mine just peeves. Since my peeves will need explanations unlike Nick’s one-liners, I will use more than one post to list them all.
Let me start with my morning peeves. The first things that upset me are these:
My morning pastime of sitting out in the veranda with my mug of tea, gets spoiled by various thoughtless people.
1. Talking loudly on cell phones just outside my garden sitting atop a two wheeler with its engine running ranks the topmost.
2. Impatient sounding of horn to get a traffic jam cleared because some idiots do not know how to part or are in the process of offloading passengers near a restaurant near my home.
3. Noisy vehicles of all kinds with deliberately made so or defective silencers.
4. Vehicles with extremely loud music being played leading me to wonder if the driver and passengers want to listen to music or want to show off to people outside.
5. Cars with barking dogs with their necks outside the windows leading other dogs being walked to bark too leading to total cacophony.
The next are once I am inside and see folded newspaper pages to highlight advertisements like the following.
Reading the half page as shown in the first image, turning it and then folding it to read the rest of the paper is very annoying.
The stretched out piece of one page to encourage the reader to go to the page to open it to read advertisements, at least in my case, has exactly the opposite effect. I swear to myself not ever to buy the product or patronise the institution advertised.
Full page advertisements of ugly looking politicians selling their candidacy or constitution for whatever reason is another no no for me. Here too, that politico will never get my vote.
Next peeves will be unsolicited phone calls either selling something or scammers who must think that I am a moron.
Closely followed by those are SMS messages and WhatsApp messages of commercial nature which annoy more than create interest.
More to follow.
This article explains surrogacy as “is a legal arrangement in which a woman agrees to become pregnant and bear a child for the benefit of another person who will become the kid’s parent.
I am inspired to write this post as a friend, let us call him SMV, Â contacted me earlier today to share a family secret about which I was not aware.
I have his permission to write about this, as he hopes that there would be others who may benefit as he and his daughter did due to surrogacy.
His daughter, who I have known since she was a babe in arms was married when she was 21 and was unable to conceive for many years. After investigation, it was found that she had a medical condition that made it impossible to conceive in her uterus, and the couple were advised to get a child via the surrogacy route which is legal in India.
I have met the grandchild who is now a strapping young lad full of beans and good cheer and I never knew that he came into their household thanks to the surrogacy programme available in India.
So, what inspired SMV to share this information with me after all these years? He compared the surrogacy process to the Koel in my blog post Invasion, begetting its chicks via the surrogate route using the Bulbul as the surrogate mother!
Strange how one innocuous thing leads to another!