Second to the Last Word on UFO

Like a chronic persistent itch that comes and goes, visitations by UFOs - now revised with a more "acceptable" definition as  Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UAP  - preoccupy the public mind in intermittent doses at irregular intervals. We have it again lately as recent files were released by the U.S. government. Interestingly, neither  China nor Russia did the same nor did the European governments. 

The bottom line is that until such time that the label "unidentified" is completely peeled off without any shadow of a doubt, the idea of alien visitation from somewhere or anywhere outside of our planet or our solar system will remain just that - an idea, videotapes and personal accounts notwithstanding.  Until then, we speculate.  

But there is one strange story. From someone who claimed to be an extraterrestrial alien but a non-believer in UFOs or UAPs.  Please reserve your judgment until you read about what he had to say.

It was on an ordinary day under very ordinary circumstances at an ordinary place when I first met Theo. It was at first nothing more than a casual chat – one that was not likely to happen again because most conversations by happenstance are usually like that. People talk with each other for a while after a chance meeting and then they go on their separate ways never to meet again. On this one ordinary day, however, the conversation took a startling turn I could not have anticipated in the proverbial million years! Theo declared with the unexpected suddenness of a thunderclap that he was an alien – an alien, alien, that is.  Not the international-border-crossing one but a cosmic voyager of some sort.  He also claimed that he was at least many thousand years old.  

You, my dear reader, will not be acting on impulse if your immediate reaction is to wonder why or how I could ever have let the conversation continue, let alone keep a record of it. You may even be tempted to stop reading this right now.  

If possible, I like to swim in my own lane at the fitness pool.  It has four lanes so if I get there early enough in the afternoon on a weekday I get to do just that – have a lane to myself.  However, no matter how well I time it the pool does get busy even at odd hours, so lanes are shared.  It was a Wednesday and I was midway through my regular twenty lap freestyle when on the turn someone from the side motioned if he can share the lane.  There was really only one polite response - the hand signal that said “sure, okay” - and I kept on swimming without stopping.  On my return to the same end of the pool, this gentleman of about my height of five-foot-eleven but leaner, with thinning short hair, was already in the water. I figured I’d rest and resigned to not do all 20 laps continuously but instead swim 5 and 5 drills. I thought I’d observe him for a while and maybe he won’t stay for very long if he’s not such a good, efficient swimmer.  He didn’t seem to have an ounce of fat in him but he appeared to be in his seventies, almost frail looking.

I was wrong.  He swam with such ease and style that surely, I thought, he had to have been a competitive swimmer in his younger days.  His flips at each end of the pool were done with the precision of a trapeze artist.  He may even have made the varsity team in college, I thought.  I stopped longer than just for a while as I watched him go back and forth.  When I did finally resume swimming he was passing me like I was treading water.  Then he was done.  I rested briefly as he was about ready to get out of the pool. I asked him how many laps he did.  “Thirty laps”, he replied.

Jokingly, I said, “Wow, tell me what it is you eat or drink. If it’s legally and commercially available, I’d like to get some”.

By way of a response but ignoring what I just asked, he introduced himself, “I’m Theo”.  I told him my name and we shook hands.

Then he said, “You must be wondering how I am able to swim as I did with this 76-year-old body. What if I told you I’m really 76,000 years old?  I’m from another part of the cosmos, really”.  He smiled with the “I’m not crazy” expression on his face.  He got out of the pool and said, “See you around”. 

I felt foolish. I thought to myself, what the heck was that all about?  I went to swim a few more laps but my concentration was unsettled and my rhythm was erratically discombobulated.  I kept thinking about me and my idea of making small talk with just about anybody.  I thought it was a gift.  My wife hears this from me all the time that no matter whom it is I meet for the first time he or she will talk about his or her life in no time.  I have this genuine sincerity to listen and people sense that and they talk.  If psychiatry was all about listening I could have been a psychiatrist.  Or, at least, pass for one.  People would confess to me personal stuff in the first few minutes of talking.  But this Theo was something else.  He was not telling me about personal stuff.  He was telling me lies!  How could I have given him that impression?  Did I have “Mr. Gullible” written on my wide forehead? This is one episode I won’t be bragging to my wife about.

I got out of the pool after completing however many laps I did because I lost count.  Before I could gather all my stuff, the door that led to the shower room opened and there was Theo all dressed up in his street clothes, smiling or grinning, looking dapper like he was on his way to a book club.  I thought to myself, “Oh no, he found a sucker and he wants to pile some more on me before he leaves”. I’m being duped into providing amusement for this guy. But his engaging smile forced my sentiments to shift to neutral.

He said, “Listen, I was not being facetious or even joking.  I certainly didn’t want to make you feel foolish.  You seem like a very smart guy so that was not my intent.”  I smiled and kind of mumbled some futile words.

Sometimes we are compelled to listen when someone makes claims like Theo’s purely for its entertainment value, I began to rationalize.  We allow this kind of conversation to continue for a bit longer than it should until we’re completely assured of our own normalcy and recognize those who are not.  However temporary it may be, it makes us feel good about affirming our own sanity.  Once I’ve established that I was actually okay, relatively speaking, then it was just going to be an amusing anecdote and what a tale it would be to tell my friends.  So I let the conversation go on for a while.  He looked so ordinary for such an extraordinary claim.  

“I was hoping I’d piqued your curiosity enough and you are dying to know more about your first extraterrestrial.  Or, you may just want to know if I’m nuts or I’m for real.  So, can I buy you coffee, and a pie, perhaps? That café a couple of blocks from here has at least three kinds of pie to choose from.  It’s my treat, what say you?”

If there ever was a perfect moment to get out of an awkward situation, it was presented to me right there and then.  But I was caught between being rude and searching for  polite words to decline. But then this gift of mine to listen to people was compulsively pushing from the other end, tilting the balance.  

“Take your time to shower.  I’ll go ahead, get a table.  Two minutes and you’ll be there.”

And the best I could come up with was, “Are you for real?” He did look normal with a speaking voice of a learned man to match. Those could be deceiving but there was no reason to be fearful of him.

“Over coffee and pie is the best way to answer that.  I know you’re dying to know.  See you there”. 

When I arrived at the cafe a few minutes later, Theo waved me over to a corner table.  His steaming cup must have just been refilled because the saucer on the side had nothing but crumbs and a used fork on it.  He already had his pie.  I ordered. When the waitress left, Theo said, “So, you want to know if I’m for real”.

“Look Theo, coffee and pie is a fine way to have a conversation.  Honestly, you don’t have to explain anything to me.  I’m not one to judge and I don’t have any reason to be concerned but if you’re just wanting to talk I’m listening.” 

"First, dispel the idea of space travel as envisioned by human science fiction writers or even by Elon Musk. The universe is unimaginably and unforgivingly huge. UFOs or UAPs, or any kind of space vehicles will not survive or are survivable during any interstellar travel. It is impossible, it is infeasible.  In other words UFOs are fiction! Period. I leave you to do your own research on that".  

Theo began his story. 

“The world where I came from did it this way.  I trace myself to a trillion of exact clones, each a mere one hundred times the size of a virus, released almost one to two million years ago from a double star system that was at that time a few  light years from your solar system along the same path circling the Milky Way.  The planet of my ancestors orbited a medium sized star, slightly larger than your sun.  Its partner star two hundred million miles away had a much bigger mass - a hundred times bigger. The bigger star as most stars that size had a shorter life span.  My ancestors’ advanced technology knew that and had actually predicted its end and the consequent fate of their own star system as well.”

“They embarked on a huge scientific project to insure their survival. So, they started sending out payloads aboard billions of space probes for the sole purpose of finding a new home. As good as the science was, the scientists and engineers were not able to target specific points in space.  For propulsion they used the partner star’s impending implosion and subsequent explosion to scatter the probes across the galaxy. So, billions of probes were sent out to orbit the dying star.  The probes orbited the rapidly spinning star, at least for a few hundred years, until some of them were sling-shot into unknown directions at very high speed.  Some were propelled even faster as they caught tongues of plasma ejected from the big star at unimaginable velocities.  The exploding star sent the rest of the probes even further away.  That ushered the abrupt end of life for my ancestors but not before sowing seeds through those probes.”

“Aboard each probe were hundreds of spherical vials each with microbes.  I just use that term so you will understand the context.  They were actually organic microscopic data carriers – not unlike strands of DNA, except that they were carriers of highly advanced organic material with far more adaptive capabilities than DNA, a trillion of them cloned from one specific individual. There could have been billions of individuals cloned. I was one of those.  As was expected, many will not make it but if only one did, it was considered a success.  But the challenges remained astronomical, as you can imagine, pun intended”.

“A trillion copies might seem like a lot but relative to the cosmos, it was like a droplet in the bottomless ocean of deep space. If one clone landed on a habitable world it was to latch on to a living organism.  It had to “learn”, and what I mean here is that it had to do the arduous task of adaptation and evolution through that living organism.  I estimated that I arrived on this planet about two hundred thousand years ago.  By the way, planets like earth are plentiful in this galaxy alone but unimaginably far in between. Believe it or not I latched on to a microorganism – a bacterium.  That hastened my development more than, say, if I landed on a fern.  That would have taken a far longer process if I were to be a human species as I am today.”

“My awareness which was programmed to develop over time was limited by my host.  I saw what a bacterium “saw” or sensed.  Then slowly as I moved from one host to another my senses developed with the host organism.  Recycling is universal. So, much of how I transferred from one host to another was through that process.  My senses and awareness built up over time so that as host organisms moved up in scale – say, from a shrew to a porcupine to a wolf to a bear, my intelligence was enhanced accordingly.  Remember, my potential intelligence was built in and all it took was for me to keep moving up until I got to the level of the dominant species on whatever planet I was in.  Obviously, the planet’s environment was the upper limit as to how high up I can develop the host species. It was meant for me and anyone else of my kind to take the dominant species to as high a level as it could achieve. It is possible that some of my clones landed in more advanced civilization while others to this day remained in very primitive development as when earth life was a billion years ago in another planetary system.  By the way, once we latch onto an organism we become discrete individuals.  In other words, we become that organism until we move to another.  However, I do not know of anyone else who came this way, at least not another that I am aware of.  But I must conclude that if I made it then there are bound to be others.  They had to have taken different paths”.

“Are you with me, so far?”  Theo had to revive me from the effects of a mental wrecking ball that struck my unbelieving mind, jolting me once again but worse than when he first told me he was an extraterrestrial.

It took me a full ten seconds before I could say anything.  “You know how unbelievably incomprehensible this is?”  

"Yes!" Theo replied.  He stood up. "Look, we may not see each other again but thanks for listening".  He shook my hand then turned and headed for the door. I can't remember what I said, if I said anything at all. 

I never saw him again to this day.

Seriously, Why?

The USA is about  to celebrate two hundred fifty years of existence as a republic where  it had become a dominantly successful super power during the last seventy five; yet, why the nagging question about the uncertainty of its ability to hold on to it for the foreseeable future. 

Seriously, why? 

"At the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, "well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" He gave a trenchant reply that resonates today: "A republic, if you can keep it."

Why did Ben Franklin say it and what was he thinking then? But let's first make sure we understand what a republic is and how it is different from how democracy works.

"A republic is a form of government where representatives are elected to make decisions on behalf of the citizens".

In a democracy decisions are  made based on majority rule, reflecting the will of the majority of the populace. Decisions may be reached either through direct participations of all citizens or by proxy representatives they elect to represent them.  So, why is that different from a republic?  The majority always rules in a democracy; "a republic emphasizes the protection of individual rights and minority interests, often through a constitution.

Make note: "Democracies can exist within a republic, but not all democracies are republics".

Did Ben Franklin have a premonition about  a republic's ability to sustain itself? Or, had he read and believed that the fate of empires seemed to have had predestined shelf lives throughout history? Had he known that all powerful empires that emerged could only manage on average 250 years or merely ten generations before they succumb to gradual decline, first from internal pressure and self-inflected turmoil before another empire takes over? The process was always a zero sum  game, it always seemed.  One empire declines as another emerges to take its place. Is that what's about to happen? And why?

Seriously, why - to get to the heart of what seems to ail this country - is the theme of neo politics these days focused on fundamentally changing what this country is all about?  After 250 years from a fledgling union of thirteen original colonies to fifty united states of almost 350 million people, why the call for change that is deemed to radically pivot from the course that so far has been guided by what its founders wrote on the 1776 document that they signed virtually with their own blood.  For 250 years the country has done very well. It attained unprecedented wealth and wield influence like no other country before it, saved much of the world twice during two world wars, so, seriously why change what had worked for 250 years?

Just recently in the words of U.S. congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio Cortes, otherwise known as AOC, in a recent interview, a quote below:

"The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez answered a question about potentially running for higher office in 2028 by declaring: “My ambition is to change the country.”

Eighteen years ago was when it may have started:

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” So declared Barack Obama in Columbia, Missouri, on Oct. 30, 2008, on the cusp of his historic presidential election.

Those are just two troubling indicators echoed by many voices from other politicians such as the newly elected mayor of New York City, to the one in Seattle, to a very vocal and popular senator from Vermont and many others who claim to prescribe socialism as the new political elixir. Troubling times indeed, according to those who'd rather conserve the old ideals of two hundred fifty years against the liberal application of remedies that have  been tried in many places that all, without exception, ended in dismal failures each time.  (Please refer to an earlier musing, "Are We Still Talking About Socialism?", March 8).

"Tax the rich" has become a tired mantra from the very same politicians whose campaign donations depend on rich supporters. 

"Most of the government’s federal income tax revenue comes from the nation’s top income earners. In 2023, the top 5% of earners — people with incomes $272,209 and above — collectively paid over $1.27 trillion in income taxes, or about 60% of the national total".

Seriously, why attack the sector of the population that pays 60% of the country's annual revenue?  That is either crazy talk or plain and simple politics of envy.  Another recent AOC quote follows"

"You can’t earn a billion dollars," Ocasio-Cortez told Glazer. "You can get market power. You can break rules. You can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws. You can pay people less than what they’re worth. But you can’t earn that, right? And so you have to create a myth... you have to create a myth of earning it."

So some of her ardent supporters like Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and George Soros did not earn their billions? Did they break all kinds of rules? These are just a few examples of phenomenal accomplishments achieved in a free market system that she and her ilk would like to abolish. Yes, that's right, only in a free market economy that college dropouts like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Zuckerberg, Hewlett and Packard were able to build billion dollar enterprises; that AOC and Bernie Sanders want to demonize. Has she even given it a thought that her iPhone was just a generation from its birthplace in a California garage on the efforts of Jobs and Wozniak?

In the world of these radical politicians, "rich" is an evil word, yet private jets that they routinely use to spread their ideology are products of "rich" corporations that pay the 60% that the government collects. For someone who went to college with a degree that dabbled in business AOC was clueless about her reason for opposing the Amazon business proposal to build a new headquarters in New York that would have benefited her district in Queens, an idea favored by the majority of her constituents.  She seems to exhibit also an illiteracy in history for claiming the American revolution was against the wealthy. Here's a newspaper quote: “The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time, and we are declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and the state,” claimed a clueless Ocasio-Cortez..." It was in fact about a revolt against taxes that her party is pushing today so, seriously why?

The fundamental question that Ben Franklin may have anticipated was that a republic can be enslaved by the very same politicians chosen by the people to represent them by doing everything they can to remain in office without term limits.  The founding fathers did not anticipate that politicians  were going to make public service a career but for just a period of time before going back to vocations they had before volunteering to serve, not as an occupation until well into their 80s.

This republic instead, to the dismay of the signers of the Constitution if somehow they can see it today, is festered with career politicians corrupted by greed for power and a cozy livelihood with very little to account for.

That is what happened to a republic that takes more into account the loud voices of even the few who choose to change what had worked for two and a half centuries. Term limits will never become a remedy because the very same politicians who opt to remain in power will never write such a law. In a democracy, a plebiscite can vote to impose term limits by the power of the rule of the majority.  But not in a republic. 

The state of Texas, once the Republic of Texas before gaining statehood, is the model of a republic government and the nation can learn from it. 

. Texas legislators are part-time officials, serving in the Texas Legislature.

. Many legislators maintain regular jobs outside of their legislative duties.

. Common professions include lawyers, business owners, educators, and healthcare professionals.

. Some legislators may take leave from their jobs during the session to focus on legislative responsibilities.  

Ben Franklin has nothing to worry about "if you can keep it", because today's career politicians will make sure to keep it.  The republic clearly works for the likes of AOC, Schumer, Sanders, McConnel, and Pelosi, etc. who surely will want the republic to work in perpetuity to perpetuate their grip on power. The people will simply have to endure. One significant note: among the list of long serving politicians on an average of 55 years in office, Democrats outnumber Republicans by a huge majority (check it out). And what is interesting is that these political parties are labeled Republican and Democrat.

Over the years, from as early as 2015, I've written about democracy and socialism from time to time. My favorite and the favorite of many  is "Mountains to Molehills" and "99 Cannibals and 1". Please just copy the link to your search bar and click.

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2018/07/mountains-to-molehills.html

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2016/12/99-cannibals-and-1.html

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2015/07/democracy-of-ants.html

The Joys and Challenges of "Bleibzuhauseseniorenwohen."

I just recently made up that German word. Google will redline it all the time but it will not with Kummerspeck (?) which means (literally, grief + bacon): "A playful term for weight gained from emotional eating or comfort eating". Sincere apologies to  my German readers but they'd understand how I came up with Bleibzuhauseseniorenwohen.

The English language has a way of evolving that is unique to it, that makes it a model of efficiency when coming up with a new word, often using portmanteau - combining parts of real words, such as motel from motor + hotel; from smoke + fog, we get smog. Unlike in German which simply strings together several whole words for a new  lengthy compound word with either a more precise meaning, i.e., blitzkrieg which is from two German words: blitz - lightning; krieg - war, which means "lightning war" or rapid assault as a battle tactic or in playing rapid-move chess or as a defensive play in American football; or, indirectly implied as in  “Handschuh” (hand + shoe) to mean "glove" in English. 

Before we get to the heart of this musing, let's get a couple more real German words here. "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän: Translating to “Danube steamship navigation company captain,” is famously cited to show just how lengthy German words can become. How about, Backpfeifengesicht?, (slap + face): Literally, “a face in need of a slap.” A cheeky term for someone who’s being annoying.

Wasn't that fun? Just so the reader knows how I came up with my own new German word.

My made up word, Bleibzuhauseseniorenwohen, means "stay at home senior living" and that is where we are going. Folks with the good fortune of having lived long, thus far, who elect to keep their homes and stay in them, deserve the new lengthy made up word - an allegorical reference to long life. There are challenges, sure, but we find that those can be outweighed by a lot more joys if we seek and practice them.

First of all, anyone who has achieved  eight decades of being alive has at least earned the right to muse about the joys of a homebound life. At this point many of us octogenarians and over have had their shares of travel, of leisure outside the home, the obligatory social mingling, church and other forms of social interactions that no longer  need to be constantly padded or deemed necessary.

Advice to go out more, see "what's out there", find ways to be out of the house, usually comes from those younger by at least a decade or two, mainly friends and relatives alike. They are well intentioned but not necessarily "wohlmeinender Ratschlag", which means  literally, well meaning advice, again in German.

Instead, let's explore, literally and figuratively, the joys of a home-bound-life. But first, we are not talking about living as a hermit. We will still need to do the obligatory grocery shopping, trips to the hardware and garden centers, to the pharmacy, the much needed doctor's visit, the dreadfully but regularly scheduled moments at the dentist chair, and the regular exercise (walks around the neighborhood, at the mall or trips to the gym (for those among us who can). The good news is that we can be fair-weather-practitioners of all of these. There is absolutely no need to do groceries at the slight indication of rain, cold weather or when we're under the weather. I go  to the gym when traffic is the lightest, and not during the hour when young kids are let out from nearby schools or when I simply don't feel like it. Oh, the blessings of retirement and the copious amounts of not having to do anything.  

However, just the idea or reality of not having to do anything can also mean a lot of opportunities to do a lot of things. But it must begin with one thing. Attitude!  Attitude is the primer, the motivator and ultimately the power to move anything from anywhere nearby to somewhere nearby; from the state of idle restfulness to the beginning steps of a reasonable  journey not dictated by distance from home because there are things far deeper in home-bound living.

Guilt-free napping is one of the joys allowed, even encouraged,  in Bleibzuhauseseniorenwohen! However, one study had shown that naps do have health benefits even for active workers. Examples of big corporations that allow naps at work, labeled as power naps, are Google, Zappos, Procter and Gamble, Facebook, etc.  Actually, naps can be essential at recharging brain power or boost post mid-day cognitive ability.  Imagine that, seniors. Your favorite couch, between noon and one thirty today, is the most craved after by every hard-charging executive or every muscle-weary assembly line worker.  That alone is enough to give you power over countless folks who are prone to marginalize your existence, either intentionally or by omission.

Take the ordinary cup of hot coffee. Remember when you were still an aspiring climber of the corporate ladder or pipe welder or bean counter in accounting when a cup of coffee was merely a required elixir to get you going from a state of forced wakefulness to a partially functioning commuter or carpooler? Now, you are enjoying the rich and full bodied aroma of steaming coffee, the warmth between your two cupped hands as the sun begins to filter through the window on a cold morning. Or, how about enjoying the coffee as the news on TV confirms the kind of morning weather to expect as you listen to the distant rumble of thunder and the intermittent flashes of lightning from somewhere over the horizon.

One early and chilly April Monday morning in 2007 I woke up to the unmistakably heavy pitter patter of raindrops on the roof. I was pulling the blanket away from my body to get up when it suddenly dawned on me, pun heavily intended, that I had just started a new way of living. It took some getting used to for a while but I did eventually get the hang of it. I realized I just retired two weeks earlier, after thirty five years.    

Like a lot of retirees, there were the usual travel itineraries, the company alumni get-togethers, organized luncheons and theater and sports attendances that later became less and less regular for  my wife and me as the years piled on.  

Then a complete halt to those activities when my wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's four years ago.  I had to mention that as a way to make note for the readers of a certain age that sometimes a diagnosis has an untimely way of intruding like a rude awakening to spoil the view of the sunset of  our lives.  But that is okay because, again, we go back to what I wrote a few paragraphs back about what could be our silver bullet - Attitude!

From a previous musing I wrote about embracing the role of caregiving after my wife's diagnosis. That role naturally became the linchpin that made Bleibzuhauseseniorenwohen the natural segue to the new stage of living. Of course, the transition for me is made less difficult because my woodworking hobby is a home-bound past time, caring for orchids indoors is even less distant and naturally household chores speak for themselves. Cooking may not necessarily be a chore if one turns it into a hobby of discovery. Other than the other chores mentioned earlier, my time at the gym to swim gets me out of the house for just an hour at a time.

The relatively wider financial legroom we have now - something we never fail to be grateful for - makes it possible for someone to come every Saturday to clean the house and help with the weekly laundry. She is actually by now  a part of the family we get to see every week. There is so much to be thankful for, indeed.

I can't possibly go through every example so if I must put everything in a nutshell, I go back to Attitude! I turn unloading the dishwasher into a time and motion study.  Someday I aim to unload it in less than 4 minutes. That includes putting them back in their proper places in the cupboard.  So far, I am not breaking the 4-minute mark but it's a challenge. Woodworking is for now an infrequent activity except for the occasional project.  I have not updated it lately but the blog : https://easywoodworking-tolerba.blogspot.com/  is still getting a lot of views.  Soon, readers will see the latest knife project on the Damascus blade.  I've always wanted to have one but not until I found a blank blade for sale that required fashioning a handle for it. It took longer than usual to pull off but it's done.

Damascus blade is made from forging two different steel material - one soft and the other hard steel, folded over many times during the forging process that result in the distinct wave patterns on the face of the blade.

Now, how do I manage to spend time at the workshop and able to respond when my wife needs my help.  Commercially available are several alert gizmos that come with a caller at the press of a button and a doorbell ringer plugged into strategically desired power outlets. I put one in the workshop and another in between the living and family rooms.  My wife has a caller she wears around her neck.

As a household project, I recently installed additional LED sconce lights in the family area that allows for a bright but soft daylight in the family/breakfast area.  For anyone my age, I must say, please take great care with this undertaking where ladders and electricity are involved. Trust me, I did it at a virtually glacial pace. My fascination, almost an obsession with lights, as I explained to my wife, goes back to the time growing up in the Philippines when we did not have electricity until halfway through my high school. It meant that for a good part of our education, my sisters and I studied and did our homework under kerosene lamps. The reader will note from my woodworking blog several projects on light fixtures.

Cooking I do not find to be a burden but one to be taken up just like any hobby.  The motivation is actually strong; after all, I have to eat too.

Below is my own version of a ginger-based Filipino meat and veggie soup - "tinola" - that, if I may say so myself, has become one deliciously sumptuous lunch fare, served with white boiled rice on the side with air-fried eggroll or some chicken adobo.

Again, it is Attitude!  Attitude!

Happy "Bleibzuhauseseniorenwohen" everyone!