2010-04-14 10:45 family and children
While reading TIME magazine I stumbled upon an interesting article1 about how kids that get spanked grow up to be more aggressive. Apparently children solve problems by mimicking their parents behaviour and not by listening to what they say — who could have guessed?
Groundbreaking as this insight might be for the average psychology student, it leaves an interesting question — What is the right way to teach children?2
Any method applied should not only stop the child from acting in an unwanted way, it should also set a positive example on how adults are supposed to solve these problems themselves. This raises a much bigger question for me:
How are adults supposed find a consensus, if one party is not willing to listen to logical arguments?3
How do I argue with someone that tells me my point of view is invalid, without giving me any reason? How do I break through that thick skull, without actually breaking it, or damaging the relationship in some other way?
A passive aggressive approach seems to work great, but it will poison a relationship really fast.4 So lately I find myself more and more drawn to the japanese way. Smile, nod and just avoid that person. If I can’t talk rationally with a friend, why talk at all and if I don’t talk why is he still my friend?
But I still wonder isn’t there a better way?
The flat I live in now has a charm of it’s own. Build in the sixties, when the architects still used the concrete recipes and outer wall thickness customary for flak towers and bunkers in WW2.1 Knowing this, the interior designers used construction rubble2 for the inner walls and hid it all under some garish colors3 and modern plastics like linoleum.
All in all an interesting mix — especially when you consider the master-builder who was obviously high on LSD when they erected this thing. A line that is parallel to the floor is not necessarily parallel to the ceiling and there are weird supporting structures all over the place. Most of the walls are also not parallel — or straight for that matter and I’m not yet convinced that we actually have one right angle anywhere.4
I noticed this all years ago. When I first moved in I was highly motivated and decided to draw a great floor plan. Finally — after days of measuring — every conceivable length, width and hight was accounted for, but when I finally sat down to enter everything in the great computer programTM I was using, I noticed the unspeakable. This flat was so crooked it was distorting space itself.
Now Georg has the same idea I once had — map this non-Euclidian geometry in a puny program build to help modern day architects realize their unimaginative ideas. But to make it easier he went to the magistrate and requested the building blueprints. Turns out some walls were moved some time ago and the plan also indicates these changes.
Wait the scale must be wrong, this plan does not fit the measurements written on it.
Snicker
No this must be a mistake — if they move the wall to make the room bigger, the length of the room must also increase.5
Sometimes I can even hear his sanity begging him to stop, but the voice is getting weaker and weaker. Now when his insane laughter wakes me up at night and I see him hunching over the floor plan with this wide grin, I just go back to sleep and say to myself: just till October — you can make it Alexander.
I hope you enjoyed your Easter Ham and are now stuffed and happily lying amongst the remains of what once was a heap of artfully colored eggs and chocolate snacks.1
Let me start off with an advise that might be specially suited to easter: don’t put all your eggs in one basket — unless of course you are absolutely sure about that basket is well guarded.
I love to watch small children hunting for easter eggs.
- There are those that stand around hoping for help from the grown ups.
- Some search diligently on their own, not resting until they explored every corner, because there might still be some eggs hidden.
- Others watch their friends to identify a pattern in how or where the eggs are hidden and then only search probable places.2
- And finally if a tip is too good all the kids will rush to that place, stumbling over each other and themselves to get to the egg first.
This easter egg-hunt is all about having fun and enjoying time together. Even if you don’t find anything there will be many more eggs, chocolate and ham on the table. But while I was sitting in the park the other day I witnessed one more type.
- The kid that stays near the common collection spot and steals the prizes, while the others are busy searching.
I was a bit shocked when I saw this. The fun — at least for me — always was finding the eggs and gloating on how well I did. There is so much food you will be eating it for days, even if you couldn’t find a single egg. At the end of the week you might even be hoping that no one forces you to eat another (chocolate) egg.
So why steal? Is it so much fun to hurt a friend? Can you enjoy something more if you took it from someone? Is the thrill worth loosing a friend? And finally are grownups the same?
We have some great traditions in Kärnten. For example Schappen, where young children are supposed to whip grownups with special twigs to wish them a long an healthy life.1 Easter, as the central christian feast,2 also comes with many nice traditions of it’s own. One of the cooler one’s is on Palm Sunday, where the last person to awake gets to be called Palmeserl3 and has to live with the shame for the next year.
So today — on my birthday — I stood up extra early, to make absolutely sure I was not going to end up as Palmeserl. I even took a photograph of my sleeping brother as evidence, but something didn’t feel right. Not only was it all too easy, but the customary call from my mother, to check if we were already up and who was the last one, was also missing. Then it dawned upon me — today is Easter Sunday, Palm Sunday was a week ago!
Oh well seems like I should not be the one to denounce other people for not obeying traditions, when I myself start to forget them. Sad but true how these little fun customs get lost in favour for more wide spread and profitable events, like Valentines Day or Hallo Ween, that were never a big thing when I was young.
2010-04-03 0:27 hair, Japan and prejustice
Recently I stumbled upon a quite funny rumor about European guys by Asian girls.
Switch your dirty mind off I’m not going to talk about presumably preeminent differences in male anatomy. Sorry to disappoint, but I’m sure the internet is chock-full of places with statistics related to that.1
No this rumor is about our Acanthous Hair!
Yes you read that right. My hard pointy European hair will supposedly hurt the super soft milky white skin of my cute girlfriend when cuddeling or kissing — and we all know Europeans like to cuddle and kiss all the time, so this is might be a real problem.
How true is it?
Compared to the average japanese guy I’m an ape. There are lots of tiny hairs on my arms and legs, many Europeans even have fur on their breast and back and don’t even get me started about the face. Some of us have to shave twice per day to keep their beard under control!2
The good news is that European hair is — compared to the average Japanese hair — super soft. ふわふわ just like that of a pet rabbit.3 Sometimes I felt like the main attraction in a petting zoo, but from time to time it’s actually kind of funny to indulge in things like this.
Since this rumor is exactly the opposite from the truth I’m left wondering how it got started. Maybe some asian guy tried to keep his girlfriend from touching these oh so cute Europeans. Sadly I’ll probably never know for sure.