Listen to the chattering (day 148)

bacterial update: I did manage to heat up the kombucha ferment with a hot water bottle and a cozy.  It may be too hot and I have no way of testing the temperature.  The only thermometer I have is a candy thermometer which will take forever to give me a temp and won't be accurate enough.  It's interesting how much anxiety this tea is causing me.  I'm paranoid about killing the scoby, contaminating it, having it at the proper temperature, etc.  Too much information combined with a long testing time requires a lot of calm, patient waiting.  I'm perplexed by the consensus that fermentation should take about eight days and mine has been fermenting for thirteen and is still nowhere near the pH it should be. Granted, I was not scientific with my starting proportion of tea/water/sugar but somehow I thought the process would be more robust.   I'm now preparing for my next batch in which I will use Pu-erh tea, honey and malt, and spring water.  I'm sticking with my deadline of tomorrow evening for proper pH for the currently brewing tea.  I did read that a tall jar such as the one I'm using could have a longer brewing time simply because it is exposed to less oxygen.  I will have better data with a measured start.
I ended up having to strain the Kefir at the 17 hour mark instead of the usual 24.  This probably means it was too hot or I didn't have enough milk.  Probably the latter.   I added more milk to the next batch.  The Kefir-Leban firmed up nicely.  I jarred it and put it in the fridge to mature a bit.  I'll taste it again in a few days.  I noticed that I had mistakenly left some kefir grains in the kefiran.  With some sorrow and a silent apology I ate the grains.  There was not much taste to them and the texture was a bit rubbery.  Not bad at all, just not what I would call a delicacy.

There has been some discussion lately about politics and social media.  Recently, the Minister of Industry dismissed the Facebook group against the proroguing of parliament as being irrelevant and populated by the elite and chattering classes (heavily paraphrased).    The upshot is that he does not want to use social media as a barometer for political sentiment in the country.   I don't even know what the chattering class is or if I'm part of it but let's assume that both it and the elite class are composed of Canadians of voting age.  On that basis alone neither should be dismissed by our representatives.  In actual fact, polls show that the FB group is mostly older engaged Canadian voters.  So again, no reason to dismiss.   I think what we are looking at here is a symptom of social media being perceived as a diversion from real life, a place where only idle chatter takes place.  "If the people are really upset, let them take to the streets or sign (physical) petitions" is the underlying premise.   I admit I had internalized this message until very recently when I starting thinking about transparency and non-violent communication.  As a Canadian, simply stating that I don't support prorogation should be enough.  And stating it in electronic form should be enough.   The Minister explained his statements later by saying that he was comparing it to the number of phone calls he received during the first and second prorogation.  Again, phone calls being given a higher priority than other forms of communication.  Escalating communication to protests is only needed because any 'easy' communication is dismissed as being 'too easy' to be meaningful.  When the bar of communication is set so high, it produces frustration and confrontational styles of communication.  I suggest that he broaden his views on how his constituents communicate.  We could all be happier.

A song for this post.

Talking peace (day 117)

This is the first post away from home.  After spending the last 10 minutes trying to remember my brother's wireless password, I've given up and I'm writing in Evernote so I can post the entry tomorrow.

It took almost seven hours to go from my doorstep in Kits Point to my brother's doorstep on Bainbridge Island.  That's a cab ride (15 minutes), a wait/customs/wait(1 hour), a train ride (3.5 hours), a wait (1 hour), a ferry ride (30 minutes), and a car ride (20 minutes).  That's long enough to listen to an audio book almost in its entirety ("Speaking Peace") and get through a big chunk of a physical book ("Open GL Shading Language").

"Talking Peace" is an audio recording about non-violent communication (NVC) that was recommended by a couple friends of mine (independently).  NVC is a fascinatingly simple yet effective way to communicate without judgement.   At its core is the belief that human beings like to make other human beings happy, and also like having their own needs met.  It's an optimistic belief but I reason that it is less depressing than the alternatives so why not.   Plus it seems to work.  The idea is to state what we feel, need, and want (in that order).  Then listen and empathize.  And repeat. 

One problem is that most of us have poor vocabularies with which to state what we feel and need.  Another is that we often want to state our wants in terms of negatives ("don't do that") and demands ("if you don't...").  So NVC is hard and requires a lot of mindfulness and awareness, not to mention trial and error.

I wonder how many people come to a point in their lives when they realize that they could use better communication skills.  When they realize that conflicts never seem to quite resolve and relationships stagnate because of it.  Is this the same as coming to the end of my twenties and realizing that now the expectations were going to be much higher going forward?  In my forties, I believe I'm expected to have better communication skills. 

A song for this post.