Two scores and fourteen years ago, I was born. Naked, cold and hungry.
Then it got worse.

Somewhere in this journey that we fashionably call “life”, I learnt how to crawl and then walk all over. It was a great feeling of freedom learning what this world feels like.
Then was told to sit down at a desk and not move. As I “learn”.

I learnt how to utter unintelligible sounds. Sometimes even put them in a way that meant something. I was delighted that I could tell others how I felt.
Then I was told to shut up and listen to teachers, elders, boss, wife (I think I just repeated myself).

Somewhere, I was taught that it was all about money. Financial freedom, social status is how I will be judged. Not just me – my family, my kids.
Then somebody told me I will die. Worse, I cannot take my bank balance and my family with me.

I asked – “when will I die”. They laughed and said “Any time”.
“Meaning it can be right now?”
“Sure”

Never wanted to see a doctor after that.

But apparently, I am supposed to put a notch on an imaginary tree – again fashionably called age – every time the earth heaves me around the sun one full time in an incredible speed of thousands of miles per second.

I asked if the earth came with clutch or brakes.
They said No.

So, every year, the world connives to remind me that one more notch has been marked on this day. Over 350 at current count have wished me to say (in computing language) n=n+1

Always the one to interpret it as n=n-1 (I am that much closer to death) and therefore realizing how many well wishers I have, I have tried to return their wishes in the way they reached out to me – phone call for a phone call, WhatsApp message for a WhatsApp message, text for a text….)

I know not how long I am here.

But it was so worthwhile being here.

To understand the worthwhileness, I cite one of the messages I got. See picture attached.

This is my “masi”. In Bengali, that means “sister of your mother”. Truth be told, she is not the real sister of my mother. But in Bengal, when we were young, we addressed any elderly lady as “sister of my mother”.

I have known her for nearly five decades. In the ensuing confusion, I understand that I even married her daughter. But she has remained the “sister of my mother”.

When it comes to technology, while she lives in India, she will identify with the Amish in Pennsylvania more than Bangalore. The last time she visited us in US, she was scared of holding the IPad wrong because it went all topsy turvy on her when she tilted it.

And then when it comes to typing out something, English being a (distant) second language to her, spellcheck squiggles and autocorrects are her veritable nightmares. You can literally see the struggle she had of not knowing how to undo once she pressed an “Enter” after Dear and before my name mistakenly. Or the spaces she had to put to comply to old habits of putting your name down in pen right justified in a letter.

And then for me to realize she WhatsApped this message from my father in law’s number – the one person out of four parents and parents in law that I had that I got along with most and yet was the first one to go…. that is a painful reminder that n=n+1 is as true as n=n-1.

You know, to realize that the same sister of my mother has figured how not to tilt a phone and right justify a birthday message to me from a place literally half a world away… I say “To hell with subtraction and addition… Let’s celebrate “n” “

In its integral and fractional forms. Every day.

This news article from USA Today talks about the twins born in two different decades. One was born on Dec 31, 2019 and the other on Jan 1, 2020.

First off, congratulations to the parents. I never had twins but I suspect they are awesome fun to raise (a little more work though, I presume). (Knowing me, I would have a large excel spreadsheet of similarities and dissimilarities as they grew up).

Now to my real point. The “spreadsheet numbers guy” in me is having difficulty with the thought that the kids were born in two different decades. Two different years, yes. But two different decades? Not so fast.

The Gregorian calendar starts from Jan 1, 1 AD. (Anything before that was BC. And the previous year was 1 BC. There was no year 0). That would mean, the first decade would have lasted from Jan 1, 1 AD to Dec 31, 10 AD. The second decade would have started on Jan 1, 11 AD. And ended on Dec 31, 20 AD.

If you keep going forward, you will realize that this current decade started on Jan 1, 2011 and will end on Dec 31, 2020. Therefore, we really have not moved on to another decade. That will happen this year end.

(Of course, the non-numbers part of me wants to disregard logic and call everything that is XXX0 to XXX9 to be a decade and just sheepishly admit that our first decade was a year short)

What do you think?

#firstWorldProblems

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/04/indiana-twins-born-different-days-years-decades/2814390001/

Was trying to check how the market did today and this popped up in finance.yahoo.com Really? We are surveying the public on whether somebody is guilty or innocent? Are we back to the medieval days of meting out justice? I bet most people who have an opinion on Ghosn do not even know how to pronounce his name. Also probably cannot point out where the country he has fled to (Lebanon) is on a world map.

Who cares about my opinion on whether he is guilty or not? Why not let the legal and jurisdiction system take its course?

I understand that some may be frustrated with the time taken by such systems or the system itself. But taking opinions from people like me who understand very little of the actual subject matter let alone the complications of inter-country jurisdiction and laws is just a way of whipping of passions for no good, if you ask me.

Happy New Year’s day to all of you. As in every year, I will “wish you enough”. But before that a couple of questions. Most people make (or attempt to, at least) New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps you will do too.

Here are a couple of look back questions before we look forward. These are for your self-reflection and no need to answer in the Comments section. But feel free to if you so wish.

Q1. How do you think the Jan 1, 2020 version of you is slightly better than the Jan 1, 2019 version? What habits have you grown, achievements you have reached in the last one year that makes you feel good about yourself? What have you learnt about yourself as a person thru this?

Q2. How are you going to make time for some of your resolutions in 2020? Specifically, what will you give up, reduce etc so as to free up time? It is certainly my perspective that without giving up on something, we cannot make time for something new in a 24-hour bound day.

May your New Years Resolutions come true!!

———

And here is my customary “I wish you enough” …

Again, credits are to Larry who had “wished me enough” for the first time many years back. On that note, Larry, an extra special wish for you this year – “Kick that cancer’s butt once and for all this year, my friend”.

“I wish you enough!”
By Bob Perks
———————–
I never really thought that I’d spend as much time in airports as I do. I don’t know why. I always wanted to be famous and that would mean lots of travel. But I’m not famous, yet I do see more than my share of airports.

I love them and I hate them. I love them because of the people I get to watch. But they are also the same reason why I hate airports. It all comes down to “hello” and “goodbye.”I must have mentioned this a few times while writing my stories for you.

I have great difficulties with saying goodbye. Even as I write this I am experiencing that pounding sensation in my heart. If I am watching such a scene in a movie I am affected so much that I need to sit up and take a few deep breaths. So when faced with a challenge in my life I have been known to go to our local airport and watch people say goodbye. I figure nothing that is happening to me at the time could be as bad as having to say goodbye.

Watching people cling to each other, crying, and holding each other in that last embrace makes me appreciate what I have even more. Seeing them finally pull apart, extending their arms until the tips of their fingers are the last to let go, is an image that stays forefront in my mind throughout the day.

On one of my recent business trips, when I arrived at the counter to check in, the woman said, “How are you today?” I replied, “I am missing my wife already and I haven’t even said goodbye.”
She then looked at my ticket and began to ask, “How long will you…Oh, my God. You will only be gone three days!” We all laughed. My problem was I still had to say goodbye.

But I learn from goodbye moments, too.

Recently I overheard a father and daughter in their last moments together. They had announced her departure and standing near the security gate, they hugged and he said, “I love you. I wish you enough.” She in turn said, “Daddy, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Daddy.”

They kissed and she left. He walked over toward the window where I was seated. Standing there I could see he wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but he welcomed me in by asking, “Did you ever say goodbye to someone knowing it would be forever?”

“Yes, I have,” I replied. Saying that brought back memories I had of expressing my love and appreciation for all my Dad had done for me. Recognizing that his days were limited, I took the time to tell him face to face how much he meant to me.

So I knew what this man experiencing.

“Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever goodbye?” I asked.
“I am old and she lives much too far away. I have challenges ahead and the reality is, the next trip back would be for my funeral,” he said.

“When you were saying goodbye I heard you say, “I wish you enough.” May I ask what that means?”
He began to smile. “That’s a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone.” He paused for a moment and looking up as if trying to remember it in detail, he smiled even more.”When we said ‘I wish you enough,’ we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them,” he continued and then turning toward me he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory.

“I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish enough “Hello’s” to get you through the final “Goodbye.”
He then began to sob and walked away.
—

To each and every one of you that have influenced me in so many ways over the years….. I wish you enough!

This apparently is the population of the earth (in 2000) by latitude. I knew that most of the earth’s population lived in the northern hemisphere – but what I did not realize is that more than half the population live north of 27 deg North! That is even beyond the Tropic of Cancer!!! That would imply that more than half the population in the world do not experience the sun directly above their head ever!!

(Source: Radical Cartography)

A few weeks back, I had gone for my annual physicals. For some reason, I look forward to this trip. A great chance to meet all the nurses and doctors there that I get to see once a year, go thru all the tests to look at the progress over the years (I have been going to the Emory Executive Physicals for 12 years now – so there are a lot of graphs for me 🙂 ) but the best part is sitting down with the doctor and understand in details how our body works.

This year it was about blood pressure. Before I go any further, I want to add that I am no doctor and a lot of my knowledge is from reading up on the internet (mostly documents from Mayo clinic). So, take this as a neophyte’s journey into understanding how our body works.

That said, one of the challenges I have been facing is sudden change of blood pressure. I have had pre-hypertension for a few years and take a daily dose of the minimum amount Losartan (25mg) allowed. I have kept meticulous records of my blood pressure throughout the day. And you can see clear patterns. The swings are predictable and pretty wide. Initially, I had difficulty convincing the doctor that I had no issue with my machine or taking readings. Till he took the pressure himself this time. Within a matter of three hours, my pressure came down by over 40 points.

That is what got us to figure out a strategy to understand what is happening with the body. Given that I had readings that came down to well within normal limits, he could not prescribe a higher dose. We are trying out some strategies to understand what might be causing this but that discussion led to my inevitable question…

“All this time you told me that controlling sodium is the best way to keep blood pressure under control. I get that. I remember in eighth grade learning that sodium chloride is hygroscopic and every molecule attracts and hangs on to many molecules or water. That would increase the blood volume and put pressure on the vessels.”

“That is accurate”

“But, how is that volume varying so much so quickly for me?”

That is when he knew that we are going to have one more of the “sessions”. He stepped out (my guess is he cleared out his schedule for some time) and then came back and sat down on the computer taking me thru pictures and some literature.

So, what I gathered about blood pressure is fascinating!!

My starting question was “Are there known long term effects of any blood pressure medicine?” (I wanted to focus on that aspect and see if I could take steps to counter that).

“Yes,” he said.

“What?” I asked somewhat concerned.

“You live longer,” he deadpanned! Yes, this is why I look forward to my annual visits.

After about thirty minutes, this is what I understood. If you are an engineer, it will be very easy to understand. Think about the blood vessels as pipes. They are built to carry liquid at certain pressure. Of course, if you suddenly send fluid at an astronomical pressure – it will burst. But if it is slightly higher pressure than what it is built for, it will not burst immediately. Over a longer period of time, the smallest part of the pipes will burst though. And they tend to be in our kidneys, eyes and brain.

But how does medical science control blood pressure?

The easiest – and the first medicine I was prescribed – are of the category ACE inhibitors. To understand this, you have to go back to evolution. When we were hunter gatherers, the brain often had to control blood supply to different parts of the body to focus on immediate preys or a lurking danger. To do this, it would send signals to constrict certain part of the blood vessels. To achieve that, the kidney would release a hormone (called angiotensin) in the blood. The hormones would be the signals for the muscle layer covering the vessel (called white muscle) to constrict itself.

The ACE inhibitor simply inhibits the kidney from producing that hormone. This prevents blood vessel to be constricted and raise blood pressure.

When I started taking Lisinospril (the ACE inhibitor), I started coughing. It took some time to realize that they were connected. But moment that happened, we switched to the next category of medicine – ARBs. Which is short form of Angiotensin Receptor Blocker. Instead of telling the kidney anything, this medicine works by blocking the white muscles from acting on the hormones. As the name suggests, it blocks the receptor signals. That is what I have now (Losartan is the specific one I take).

“My friend Anusuya takes another medicine – which is a beta blocker. How does that work?”, I asked.

To understand that, we have to realize that the blood pressure is not just about the volume of blood or the width of the pipe. How fast the motor is sending the fluid thru is the third factor. If the motor is furiously pumping the fluid thru, it will obviously creating more pressure. And that is what the beta blockers do. They get the heart to slow down a trifle bit. Of course, if you overdo it, there will be other disastrous effects.

There was a fourth strategy medical science takes to deal with specific blood pressure case. I cannot remember that now.

But the fifth case he described was fascinating. This is used mostly by gynecologists. I did not understand the method very well, but the problem is easy to understand. Basically, you are dealing with two human bodies now – the baby and the mother. They have different systems but any medication you put in one is going to reach the other. So, there is a more intricate approach to dealing with high blood pressure expecting mothers. (e.g. you do not want to slow the heart down – it might have verynegative effects on the fetus, as an example).

Later I came back home and was thinking if the body had any natural ability to get rid of extra sodium. Of course, for a person like me who travels five days a week, I must be consuming a lot of sodium – just from the preservatives of food eaten outside. Turns out you can help your body. Caffeine is a diuretic. And that prompts the kidney to dump sodium and water from the body. Tea, ginger and other plants help too. For that matter so does coke. (Coke has other terrible effects).

Which is an irony. I gave up on coffee just six months back. Completely a tea-totaller now (not teetotaller though 🙂 ).

“You know doc, what I am going to do when I take the next year off?”

“Study medicine?”

“Yes”

“Let me know if you need a reco letter. I have had a student who started at the age of 50. She is practicing medicine now.” (My doc is also a prof in Emory).

“Well, I do not want to practice. I just want to learn.”

I came back home – somewhat excited and told Sharmila –

“I want to study medicine after I am done with this job. My doc thought it would be a great idea. I think I should have become a doctor.”

“Yeah! Right!! You would have gone around telling people how to build self driving cars then”.

I was this close to calling my doctor to increase my Losartan to 50 mg!

… when you have finished your video call but keep up with the stupid grin because you cannot find how to shut your video off…

If you have been unfortunate enough – and apparently with absolutely no opportunity cost of time – you might have read my blog or Facebook posts. If you have followed them with some level of regularity, you would have undoubtedly noticed that I get a boat load of birthday wishes on multiple days in a year. In 2014 alone, there were six days that I received birthday wishes on. In fact, the three most common questions on my blog would be: who is the photographer taking my running pictures, where is the dog when I am playing the tabla and what is my real birthday?

Re-birth theories of Hinduism be danged, it actually started as an innocuous April Fool’s prank. I had simply posted “Thank you to everybody who has made it my day so far or will so by the end of the day”. Somehow, that translated to me thanking everybody for my birthday wishes. In fact, I was thanking them – proactively – for all the chuckles I would get for falling into the trap that it was precisely devised to be.

Certainly having a random day as birthday in Facebook did not help maters. That one took me some time to comprehend. One fine September morning I woke up to a lot of birthday wishes. I had to re-check the date on my iPhone to make sure I had not gone thru a Rip Van Winkle episode. Much later, that day I connected it to the FB birthdate.

Of course, then there are well-wishers like Amitesh who gets on to the game once in a while and randomly posts a Happy Birthday message on my Facebook. That starts another deluge of birthday wishes. I guess in this day and age of social media, nobody wants to be left behind. As a matter of courtesy, I do not correct people and simply thank them for the thought behind the calendar-agnostic wishes.

The good news is that over the years, most of my readers and friends have gotten fairly accurate when it comes to the month. The date is a whole different thing. I get wishes from about four days before my real birthday and lasts for another couple of days after the birthday. It does not help that my younger daughter and I have consecutive birthdays leading to more confusion among even very close friends and family.

While reading a book on math – of all possible things – I found out that my birthday is somewhat unique. No, I am not going to bore you with historical events on this day or famous and infamous persons born on this day. Having to carry my name is enough of a burden for the day, I reckon.

What I found out is that there is a human gene that is named after my birthday! I will be even more precise – it is the tenth gene in the human chromosome.

I looked up Wikipedia which confirmed that but then threw a slew of minimum-thirty-letters-long biological words at me. I struggled through some of it but gave up when I had to deal with one “dash” too many in those freakishly long names. Went back to my math book.

So, there you go. You will never forget my birthday again, ever. It is in your genes.

I question your priorities though 🙂

I can’t even remember how many years it has been that I have been wishing people on their birthdays. It used to be mostly by emails – and that was pretty unique till Facebook came along and everybody started wishing on FB. That is when I had to up my game by moving away from email to making phone calls. Today, it is much easier for me to call and wish than email and wish.

It is a routine now – morning before going to office, I finish off the wishes to people in the eastern half of the world. After lunch or during lunch break, it is usually the folks in Europe. And after office or evening are the folks in US. Still averaging about 8 to 9 phone calls a day.

Today, I had two of the more interesting phone calls.

The first one was to a lady who I caught today in the middle of her lounging in the San Diego sun in her retirement years. She seemed genuinely thrilled to talk to me. She asked me how I had such a great memory. I admitted that I did not have a great memory – I just write birthdays down. We chatted for over fifteen minutes. She insisted that we meet two weeks from today when she would be visiting Chicago. I am going to test her and see if she remembers how we met the first time about ten years back. The truth is she was our customer and the only time I had ever seen or talked to her was when she had called me to her office to fire us!! I am sure we will get a great chuckle.

The second was a colleague that I had met once in Brazil. I had kept up with him thru my birthday calls and then one day, his numbers and emails stopped working. Later, I tracked him down to Utah – of all places!! Today, I called him. Took him two minutes to remember who I was. Then it hit him!!!

His follow up message says it all!!

Birthday wishes are about making the recipient happy. In a weird way, that happiness came back one full circle today!