Category Archives: Rants and reflections

Celebrations, Rants and reflections

C-Squared get married!

Last weekend, on Mar 21, I had the honour and pleasure of attending my dear friend Cristine’s wedding. We have known each other since the first week of University, when she sat next to me at a Frosh week orientation activity. Over 18 years later I still consider her one of my closest friends.

Unfortunately, for the last decade I no longer have the pleasure of living in the same city (or country for that matter) as her. We rarely have the opportunity now to spend selfish time physically together to just talk about nothing in particular, or share the minor tribulations and triumphs of daily life. It is in this other city that she met and fell in love with her now-husband Chris. (which of course generated the cute couple nickname, C-Squared) Continue reading C-Squared get married! →

Parenting, Rants and reflections

By which name should kids address me?

I’ve been volunteering at my daughter’s school recently and I’ve come to a little conundrum: by which name should I get the kids to address me? Right now they greet me as “E1’s mom” which really isn’t sufficient. (Gotta educate them early that there is more to a person than being merely defined by her relationship to someone else.)

Having the kids call me by my first name would be pretty easy, it’s the name I’ve grown up responding to. However, there is a part of me that thinks that as a parent, I’m not here to be friends, I’m part of the community of adults helping to raise these children. With that hat on, a level of formality helps establish and maintain a level of respect, especially if I’m going to be calling them out on improper behaviour. Mrs. Toh or Ms. Toh accomplishes that.

But Jen, you say, isn’t the name “Mrs. Toh” also defining yourself via your relationship to your husband? Didn’t you just say above you didn’t want to do that? Yes fine, technically it is, but I’m complicated that way. I’m of a mind that it’s up to each person to determine how they want to be referred to. I chose willingly to adopt my husbands last name, it’s on all my ID, so Mrs. Toh it is. I do not have “E1’s mom” on my ID.

This leads me to then think: how should I teach my daughters to address other adults, as a default? Continue reading By which name should kids address me? →

Rants and reflections

The darn colour of The Dress messes with more than my eyes

The above image is of #TheDress, the fiercely debated internet meme of Feb 26, 2015. I know the discussion about whether the colour of the dress is white&gold or blue&black is ancient history now, 4 days later. But, I’ve realized that the colour of The Dress has messed with more than my eyes. (I see white&gold, BTW, but the manufacturer of the dress indicates it is made in blue&black)

What we see with our eyes is a major part of how we view reality and frame our understanding of the world. Maybe it’s the largest part, at least for me. There are some people out there who won’t believe anything unless they see it with their own eyes, and that most everything else is a conspiracy or hoax. And while I’m not a conspiracist by nature, I admit that when I first saw this dress and claims by some people to see the colour as blue&black, I first thought it was some elaborate internet in-joke or hoax being played on me and half the internet, or that something was going on with my screen.

When I realized there was legitimate debate going on about the colour, I then started to doubt my own vision (which is also admittedly not razor sharp). Then that led to a bit of existential angst, because I realized that if two of us are standing together looking at the same thing, and seeing two completely different things, how can we trust our own perception of reality? This feeling is magnified even more so because the object that I am looking at (colours of a dress) is so trivial. If I can’t trust what I see about something so trivial, how can I trust what I know and see about more complex and important matters, like love, joy, disappointment, or meaning?

Then to extend further, if two people can’t agree on something as trivial as colours of a dress, how can we have any hope to agree on foundational facts to build towards agreements in conflicts over government policy, religion, our rights, or priorities? We can’t just “agree to disagree” on every single thing, that just leads to greater inertia where nothing changes. I was starting to get down on these despairing kind of thoughts, so of course, I went to look at this dress business some more on the internet.

There are several scientific explanations of what is happening (like here and here), which is comforting to know what is likely going on with my eyes. I am also taking some solace in reminding myself that this debate is over a digital image. Digital images that are at the mercy of the digital sensors for capturing the exposure and white balance, and that can be altered in a myriad of ways in post-production. It’s another reminder to be wary about anything we see on the internet.

So I guess if I think about it that way, I am someone who would have to see it in real life to truly believe it. Huh. Who would’ve thought.

Image source: Tumblr / Swiked

Rants and reflections

The Humans of My Family

The photoblog Humans of New York(HONY) has received a ton of media attention in the last couple of weeks. If you don’t know what HONY is, it is a photoblog started by a man named Brandon Stanton in 2010 as a sort of artistic project to photograph 10,000 random people in NYC as sort of a visual census. Quickly it evolved to be more intimate connections, as Stanton requests permission from his subjects to photograph them, and interviews them to include a caption or quote from his interviews to tell their story.

In mid January of this year, what started off as a profile of young teenager named Vidal continued to his inspiring principal Ms Lopez and snowballed into an outpouring of respect, admiration and financial support for some programming ambitions for her school in the troubled NYC neighbourhood it serves. The amazingly successful Indiegogo campaign is one of the largest ones on the site to date. Vidal and Stanton were even invited to meet the President of the United States this week.

Wow.

I have been following the HONY blog for some time now, and one of the main reasons that I connect with these are the captions Continue reading The Humans of My Family →

Self-awareness

So it’s good for my health to write blog posts!

Aside

Writing your way to happiness, Tara Parker-Pope [New York Times article]

The scientific research on the benefits of so-called expressive writing is surprisingly vast. Studies have shown that writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person’s health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits and even boost memory.

Now researchers are studying whether the power of writing — and then rewriting — your personal story can lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness.

I guess I should keep doing this writing thing then…for the good of my health. =)

~Jen

Rants and reflections, Self-awareness

The feelings you have when your friend nearly dies

My good friend nearly died last night* Thursday. His heart stopped on two separate occasions, and both times CPR and a defibrillator had to be used to restart his heart. So, one could argue the semantics about it and say he actually died twice.

He was coming out of surgery for a relatively routine, low-risk sort of elective procedure for his shoulder. That it turned into one of those medical dramas that you wish to only view on television is terrifying.

Continue reading The feelings you have when your friend nearly dies →

Celebrations, Rants and reflections

Thank you to my friend F, the Social Glue of our group

This past weekend, we went on a trip to Great Wolf Lodge at Niagara Falls. It’s a big indoor waterpark resort that has lots of different water features, slides and pools to keep us entertained for a couple of hours each day. The place also has an arcade, craft room, and Magic Quest, that my daughter E1 absolutely loves. But it wasn’t just any regular family weekend to this resort. We went as part of a large group of 20 rooms, all organized by our friend F, so that we could take advantage of a great group rate.

Not content with this organizational feat, F also went on to plan a group kids’ birthday party gathering in one of the resort meeting rooms. This pizza and cake party not only celebrated her two children’s birthdays, but all the kids who had birthdays in January and February. She made and brought in decorations for the room, and arts and crafts activities for the kids. F even made up loot bags for each child who was going to attend the birthday party, the thoughtful contents individualized by age and interests. And of course, there is the cleanup afterwards, the unsexy part of any party. It is readily apparent to me (and everyone else) how much planning and work went into this party, while the rest of us just had to show up to enjoy.

So why on earth would F volunteer her time, energy and mental space to do all this work for other people? Continue reading Thank you to my friend F, the Social Glue of our group →

Rants and reflections

Some things they don’t tell you about pregnancy, childbirth, or postpartum

Inspired by a conversation I had with some fellow mommy friends on Saturday, I’ve decided to list some things they didn’t tell you about pregnancy, childbirth, or postpartum in those pregnancy/baby books you read before having your first baby.

The size of your feet / hips can permanently change

Continue reading Some things they don’t tell you about pregnancy, childbirth, or postpartum →

Best of, Celebrations, Storytime

I did the 2015 Toronto Polar bear dip, and lived to tell this tale

I had missed hearing the countdown. The people in front of me just started charging into the waters of Lake Ontario. In the chaos of excited participants, wind, bare skin, and a belated realization that we should move closer to where T would be trying to take photographs, the countdown didn’t even register with me. My buddy A and I exchanged a look, and followed on in. The Toronto polar bear dip of 2015 was on. Continue reading I did the 2015 Toronto Polar bear dip, and lived to tell this tale →

Books, Parenting, Reviews

How To Be a Woman

In the last six months I’ve read a bunch of books, many of them by funny women, but none of them have impacted me as much as How To Be A Woman, by Caitlin Moran.

Book cover for

She lays bare many of the underlying reasons of the angst I feel about being a woman in these modern days. At least as a woman into her late 30s, because admittedly she hasn’t reached middle age yet. Best of all she does so in a thoroughly readable, entertaining, and often laugh-out-loud funny manner. The things she points outs here is so on point and truthful that I am going to make my daughters read this book when they are about 12. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any woman who thinks about her place in this world, and any man who wants to understand more about real women.

Continue reading How To Be a Woman →