It has come to my attention that I gave the impression that I didn’t like the 4-day meditation retreat I did. I guess it’s easier to talk about the challenges than the benefit, both because some of it is so personal and some of it is hard to describe. By observing your mind, the good [...]
American Aero
I got an Aero bar today from the grocery store – I forget they started selling them here. It’s ok but I swear it tastes different from the ones in Canada. Not as good. Has anyone else tried them?
Posted by Shubha on April 15, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1836
How to turn an old computer box into a drawer…
We’ve been clearing our office of the decade of old junk that seems to have accumulated and I saw this and decided we just could not throw it away. The colours and the look are too amazing. It cries to be turned into a drawer or storage unit (either you should pull the front out, [...]
Posted by Shubha on April 13, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1813
American consumption of new technology during the Great Depression
This is a couple of years old but I just saw it now. It’s a graph of American consumption over time. What I find the most fascinating in the bottom graph is what took a hit during the depression: phones, and automobiles are the most obvious and immediately hit. Electricity didn’t seem to reduce, but [...]
Posted by Shubha on April 11, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1797
Indians vs everyone else
Bloomberg maps some ethnicities of Americans relative to each other. You can also map one ethnicity, but since it’s not as a percentage of population that map is pretty useless. Not surprisingly, the west coast tends to be have more Chinese-majority counties and the east has more Indian-majority counties. The middle section is interesting [...]
Posted by Shubha on April 8, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1791
Post-retreat poetry
Now I’m on to the Poland part of my two weeks, so I haven’t had time to reflect on the 7 day silent retreat. I did cheat a bit. I wrote 3 poems. The Notice Board Clean, white messenger. Notice board, like an iPhone. Addictive power? Its rare, precious offerings. For me? Nope. Next time. [...]
Posted by Shubha on April 1, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1786
The return of “Minnesota Nice”
Kedar alerted me to this recent series on Minnesota Public Radio about how Minnesotans treat their newcomers. It’s always great to be able to validate my experiences – I did, in fact, have several people (never people in Minneapolis though) suggest that maybe I wasn’t friendly enough or wasn’t putting out the right vibes. This [...]
Posted by Shubha on March 27, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1755
7-day meditation retreat
This Saturday I start my 2nd silent meditation retreat. My last one was four days (read this and this), this one is 7ish (it’s like…6 3/4 days). The extra length of time doesn’t scare me…too much. I’ve been told that it takes 3 or 4 days to get into it so that the longer retreats [...]
Posted by Shubha on March 22, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1782
Parental Leave Around the World
(Click to enlarge) Since living in the US, I’ve noticed that although many Americans know that parental leave sucks here, they don’t realize just how bad they’ve got it. Media reports often compare the US just to Sweden or Germany and all social services are better there, so it’s hardly a fair comparison. What people [...]
Posted by Shubha on March 19, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1759
Parental Leave Around the World – data
To examine parental leave around the world, I needed a way to rank and compare countries for creating my graph. I calculated the equivalent paid days of work and ranked them based on this value. For unpaid days, I pretended there was a 1% of income pay, since unpaid days needed to count for something [...]
Posted by Shubha on March 19, 2012
http://shubhabala.com/archives/1668