Learning What Lagom Is

I've been enjoying what might be the last weekend of the year that is fair-weathered enough to partake in enjoying my Sunday morning coffee outside on my deck. I write with mixed emotions. I'm reflecting on an onslaught of information which has been knocking around in my skull since I acquired it from my last conference I attended. I'm saddened that organized labour is coming under such attack from all sides by corporation controlled conservative politicians. How has it come to be that the labour movement has been made to look like such an evil thing, when all the policies that unions are trying to fight for are in the interest of fairness, equality, and access to a better standard of living? I'm at least grateful that the recent transit union lockout in this city was deemed illegal, and that these workers can proceed with their jobs. The impact of it has been making life difficult for many of my co-workers.

I don't usually like to climb on top of soapboxes and start tossing around my opinions on political things. However, I'm stuck with dwelling on the subjects of politics and healthcare, and how both our provincial and federal governments seem to be doing all they can to ruin the whole system, and I feel I have some need to process it all through some writing. It really sickens me to know that here in Saskatchewan, the birthplace of Universal Healthcare in this country, which has been noted through the polling of our population as one of our nation's greatest achievements, is now being threatened in various ways by the current provincial and federal governments in the very province from which it was born. Compounded with this is our governments' blatant attacks on the unionized workforces of this province and country. Here are some facts with regard to this province and nation as to the progression of their attempts to erode the healthcare and unionized labour. I could go on and on about the insidious activity of the Harper government: about how he slashed funding and staffing from Statistics Canada and put a gag order on the scientists of Environment Canada in regards to the reality of Global Warning, but I'd like to just remain focused on these things first*:

• Premier Brad Wall spent a ridiculous amount of our tax payers' money to pay a single American consultant to determine how to run the healthcare system instead of consulting directly and working collaboratively for needs assessment with those who actually operate and work in the hospitals and community clinics in this province. Why are we getting administration advice from someone in a nation that: doesn't have the same proportionality of organized labour in the healthcare system as ours does, has the most expensive healthcare costs in the world, no model of Universal healthcare to operate with, and a closer to failing grade in terms of a rating for health care services in a comparison on the international level? Compounded with the expiration of the healthcare expense sharing plan to the provinces set up by the Liberal government 10 years ago, and the Harper government's refusal to renew it, this provincial system will be deprived of several million dollars for our healthcare budget as of this year.
• What reason(s) do businesses and supposedly democratic governments have to really fear and condemn organized labour? Why don't we throw in another nation into the mix for comparison and contrast, someplace where the labour movement is highly present in a democratic country, and then see what kind of hardships are happening there with this extra presence of Unionized labour? So, I did just that. I found out that the nation with the highest percentage of unionized employees is Sweden: one of the countries on this earth that I really like besides my own. I'm using the percentage figure of unionized labour I was given at the conference (67.7%), but I have found other stats with the union membership there as high as 80%. Regardless, in either case,  either figure still makes Sweden the most highly unionized country in the world. I did a three way comparison with Sweden, Canada, and the place where Brad Wall foolishly spent our tax dollars for consultants: the good ol' USA.
  
   

Stat Category	Sweden	Canada	USA
Percentage of Workers affiliated with a Union (2011 -2012)	67.7% (highest in the world)	31.5% (Saskatchewan is province with the highest %age at 35.4%)	11.3%
Health care spending %age of GDP 2011	9.36%	11.81%	17.85% (incidentally, the highest medical expenses of all nations)
World Health Organization rating of Each nation's health system	23rd	30th (but declining)	37th (and declining even faster)
Universal Health Care system	Yes (even plans for coverage for illegal immigrants)	Yes (but being threatened) I learned that Canadians that were even born here and leave the country for a long time are subjected to denial of services	No
Human Development Index Score (Ranking) of 2006	0.949 (4th)	0.949 (4th) tied with Sweden	0.944 (10th)
Nation's rating in highest average longevity	8th	11th	34th
Percent population living below the poverty line	3.7%	9.4%	15%
Average Disposable Income after taxes (in USD, 2014)	$3,181.11	$2,773.50	$3,258.85
Corruption Perception Index (the higher the score the cleaner the government) Maximum good score is 100	89	81	73
Crime: Prison Population Rate (prisoners per 100,000 people)	57 (159th in the world)	118 (129th in the world)	707 (2nd in the world, also ranked number 1 nation for having the largest population of incarcerated people)
Paid Maternity Leave	420 days, 80% of wages paid	52 weeks (365 days), 55% of wages paid	No national program, but some benefits varying state to state. In 1993, a national provision of 12 weeks unpaid leave enacted
Free University	Yes	No	No

 
What can we learn from this?

• A country that makes it easier to people to access education seems to have less of a need to incarcerate them.
• More investment in starting a child off in life with receiving the proper care might have a lot to do with keeping this person out of jail as an adult
• A greater unionized population seems to have less, or tolerates less, corruption of its own government
• If you have a system that implements a fairer living wage in that country, you'll have less people under the poverty line
• Healthcare spending seems to be occurring a lot more efficiently the more the country is unionized, at least in this comparison
• Even though Sweden still ranks 23^rd on the WHO healthcare ranking, the average life expectancy there is dramatically higher than that of the USA which has no true Universal Healthcare system
• The USA may have the highest take home pay out of the three after taxes, but an accident without the proper insurance through one's HMO down there, or some denial of coverage through some bureaucratic loophole which private insurers often pull will dwindle that pay down really quickly.

So, the nation with the largest number of union affiliated employees has come around to developing a society with: less crime and therefore less tax money used to feed and shelter prisoners, free university to keep fewer people enslaved to paying off student debt, a better rated healthcare system; yet with less GDP used for healthcare spending, less social poverty, and more relief to parents for rearing children. Not included on my table is the fact that Sweden has universal daycare. So why then is Brad Wall consulting with a nation whose healthcare system is rated more poorly than that of Canada, where the average life expectancy is already lower than that of Canada, an inefficient one where your access to healthcare solely depends on your own ability to pay/insure yourself for it, a greater division between its rich and poor, has a more dystopian society that has brought them to having the degree of crime, and their policies to deal with it which results in exponential spending on militarized police forces and wars on drugs, and having one fifth of the entire world's prison population incarcerated in their country alone? Isn't that an indication that their society is breaking down? Is it not then a ridiculous notion to be consulting with them for some means of improving our healthcare system? The only reason Brad Wall went this course was to try to learn how skirt around the organized labour in our hospitals and clinics for the sake of making cutbacks, not giving a hoot in hell about patient and client care, or the needs of the people who tend to them.
    
To be fair, Sweden also has this thing going on in its society that can't be conveniently pasted onto a table or chart. They have this unique word in their language called "lagom"; it means not too much and not too little, but just enough. Exercising moderation is held as a high social standard of appropriateness there. It is a cultural concept they have that is applied to a wide range of things, from their diet, to their resource consumption. I also imagine that it can also be applied to things like a common sense of fairness, environmental issues, social justice, and weighing of consequences on a person at a social level. It probably has a lot to do with making people there not so motivated by greed, and more geared toward fairness and equality. It's one of the few places left in the world where the middle class isn't facing extinction as quickly, and a bigger divide isn't being widened so dramatically between the rich and the poor. Over-the-top displaying of affluence and material wealth is generally regarded in their culture as absurd, obnoxious, ridiculous, and even obscene.**I find this attitude deeply engrained in myself already, and am appreciative of it. It makes me want to visit Sweden all the more to give it more exploration. If given an opportunity to be sponsored to be part of making a social documentary in this country for Canadian television or for my own union, I'd jump all over the chance to do it. The social fitting of lagom somehow probably correlates into how and why there is such a notably high preponderance of unionized labour in Sweden, but because this is a correlation it doesn't indicate cause and effect or determine how which begat what, the unions or the social attitude of lagom itself. Whatever the case, the two ideas seem to work interdependently and function well enough together for the Swedes. Union or not, healthcare or not, we would all do better by learning this same ethic from them.

Sweden also has a higher number of their female population representing their constituents through their government offices than either Canada or the USA. Perhaps that's another reason why there is a greater social mindfulness to allow for a long maternity leave for proper childhood development. With less of an old boys club to deal with, and less influence of some other patriarchal or some other old school theocratic oligarchy ruling them, this has a chance to happen. I wonder what the reaction of the Swedes would be to the senate scandals that happened here since the Harper government took power.
 
*- Statistics Canada used to be the envy of the world with having a publically accessible information for civic leaders and developers, public institution planners, scientists, activists, and businesses to use alike, but through the reign of the Harper government, 20% of its staff were let go, $30 million of its operational funding was slashed, and now measures of privatization and deregulation no longer assure unbiased data processing. Along with the short-listed census, this makes this a war on science, and cripples the Canadian public to having the freedom to access information.
 
**- This social attitude even prevails with the richer capitalists from there like of Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA. Despite being one of the richest people on the planet, he still flies economy class, drives a mid-90s model Volvo, recycles tea bags and encourages his employees to write on both sides of the paper.

Inflammation Blaster Recipes

I found myself using my day off to do some inventing in my kitchen again; not because I really wanted to. The prolonged period of more idleness due to injury, the extra stress, and being at work too often and eating the cruddy food there is all taking a toll on me. I won't go into any more specifics than that. The resulting poor medical evaluation I got is forcing me to prepare for some dietary and lifestyle changes. I don't want to be relegated to start eating like a tofu-munching hippie, but I'd rather have some compromise and do that with some moderation than be setting myself on a course of being dependant on expensive medications, and then be perhaps afflicted by adverse side-effects from using them.
   
The stuff I made should be useful in countering many types of inflammatory problems in general, not just specifically my issues. Inflammation of one type or another is the major symptom of most chronic diseases. The challenge is to not feel deprived, and to use and substitute with stuff that I already like (or can at least tolerate). Because I was weighing and calculating proportions and quantities, I decided to translate all my activity into the following three recipes for sharing. The MyFitnessPal app on my smartphone did the rest of the calculations for any really anal people who need the specifics about the calories and nutrition, which are also transposed here.

Smokey Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

4        Red Bell Peppers, halved with cores, seeds, and green stems removed
2 Tbsp        Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Coat the bottom of a heatproof dish with olive oil as well as brush the outer skin of the pepper halves. Place and arrange the halves with the skin side up in the dish and put into the oven on the broil setting. Cook until the waxy skin of the peppers begins to blister and turn black. Remove from the oven, and then put the pepper halves into a ziplock bag. Press out the air, seal the bag, and allow the peppers to cool until lukewarm or cooler. Peel off and discard the blistered and blackened waxy skin away from the flesh of the pepper halves (the back of a knife works well). Once skinned, chop the pepper halves into fine bits. While the peppers are broiling, sauté

1        Small Onion, finely chopped in
1 Tbsp        Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and

Small pinch of salt

 

Once the onion is sautéed until translucent, add it with the peppers into a pot of at least 4 litre capacity* with

1 ¼ Cup        Chicken Stock
200 mL         Tomato Sauce

Heat the mixture to a boil, and then turn the heat down to a simmer. Using an immersion blender, purée the contents until it is a smooth and even consistency. While simmering, use a whisk to blend in

1 Tbsp        Smoked paprika
 
The whisking will also help remove some remaining bits of waxy pepper skin that may have been left on the pepper flesh.

Add salt to taste. Makes about 3 servings. Recommend serving with crackers or croutons.

Nutrition per serving:
Calories: 188; Total Fat (g) 10.9: Saturated (g) 1.7, Polyunsaturated (g) 1.3, Monounsaturated (g) 7.3, Trans (g) 0; Cholesterol (mg) 3.0; Sodium (mg) 844; Potassium (mg) 278.3; Carbs (g) 17.2; Fibre (g): 4.4; Sugar (g) 9.5; Protein (g) 5.2
Daily Percentage Value of: Vitamin A – 25.1%, Vitamin C – 9.7%, Calcium – 1.8%, Iron – 8.5%

 
Cauliflower and Roasted Garlic Dip

Take a whole garlic bulb and slice off the root end, and on the exposed root end drizzle about a teaspoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and a small sprinkle of salt. Wrap the bulb in a square of aluminum foil and place on a heatproof dish with the cut end facing upwards. Broil for about 15-20 minutes or until the bulb begins to soften. When cool enough to handle, remove the aluminum foil, and then peel the skins away from the cloves.

Add all the roasted garlic cloves to

400 g        Cooked and mashed Cauliflower, and
½ Cup        Plain Greek Yogurt, with a
Dash of salt and a sprinkle of Cayenne Pepper

Blend together with into a thick consistent purée. Chill before serving with crackers or raw vegetable sticks. Makes about 4 servings.

Nutrition per serving
Calories: 83; Total Fat (g) 2.3; Cholesterol (mg) 1.7; Sodium (mg) 350.8; Potassium (mg)72; Carbs (g) 12.7; Fibre (g) 2.1; Protein (g) 4.3
Daily Percentage Value of: Vitamin A - .5%, Vitamin C – 87.6%, Calcium – 8.4%, Iron – 4.1%

 
Lentil Hummus
 
500 g         Cooked Green Lentils (preferably grown in Saskatchewan)
½ Cup        Chopped Cilantro leaves
2 Tbsp        Tahini (Sesame Seed) paste
15        Pickled Hot Banana Pepper Rings
½ tsp        Ground Cumin
1        finely minced clove of raw garlic
1        Lemon's zest and juice
 
Drain lentils thoroughly, and then add the remaining ingredients in a high sided bowl. Use an immersion blender and whiz the mixture into a thick and even consistency. Use for dipping veggie sticks or crackers. Makes about 4 servings.

Nutrition per serving
Calories: 140; Fat (g) 4.9; Monounsaturated fat (g) 1.7; Cholesterol (mg) 0; Sodium (mg) 86.3; Potassium (mg) 53.1; Carbs (g) 16.2; Fibre (g) 0.6; Sugars (g) 1; Protein (g) 8
Daily Percentage Value of: Vitamin A – 2.7%, Vitamin C – 29.6%, Calcium - 3%, Iron – 4.1%
 
*- More so to keep from splattering the entire kitchen with redness when whizzing with the blender.

Closing another Year of Age

I'm trying to get out of the habit of writing and thought-charting during certain conditions. I'm trying to avoid it while I'm under immense clouds of negativity and frustration, or at times when I'm trying to solve big predicaments, or whenever I've taken ill or have been afflicted by some sort of pain; but lately it has been getting harder and harder to find those gaps within my free time when I'm not cursed by any or all of such things. Generally, I've been trying to limit my assertion of vibes involving complaint (admittedly, I'm still doing a poor job of it). Thus, the lack of input into this blog has been a sign that things haven't been going as well as I want them to.
 
Still nonetheless, it's time for a due assessment. Today is the last day of the year of this particular age number I have right now. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm noting that it has been a cycle where it's ending with a few personal deprivations. Some brought on by my own volition, which I'm trying to ride out for a better outcome in the end; others are quite unwelcome and affecting me negatively.

I did manage to find some reprieve with some levity yesterday. By some weird impulse, I chose to collect a fiction book that captured my attention with its rather strange and lengthy title. It's a Swedish novel, and like many other titles of books that seem to come from that country, it didn't conveniently have a more concise title in English: perhaps due to some quirk of directly translating from Swedish, or maybe due to some cultural need on the part of their publishers for using long-winded bluntness and accuracy. The book is called The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. It's about an elderly gentleman who, on his hundredth birthday, becomes cantankerous and impulsive enough as to escape from his seniors' care home and his own birthday party and gets led into a pretty strange and madcap adventure. There are also some flashbacks along the storyline about his involvement in a Forrest Gump-like series of events that influenced history throughout his personal life leading to his centennial. This book was a real serendipitous find. I couldn't help to notice that it seemed like a sign for me to make it a point to take a radical break from mediocrity for my own birthday, and to be a lot more spontaneous, impulsive, and daring, and to not let some prescribed age number stop me from doing so.

The repeated message in the book is: "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be." It's the kind of book that I would recommend for everyone read just before whatever birthday they are celebrating, as a reminder to make the time count. Who knows, maybe by doing so you'll discover the elements in you that would change this world's history.

Toxicity Taking Away Toxicity

Neo Citron is a troublesome over-the-counter remedy for me because I make less-than-prudent decisions while using it, and I begin perceiving cause-and-effect events in a whole different realm*. It makes me more disinhibited in thought and deed: more so than alcohol ever does. I know I experience strange occurrences which have bizarre repercussions triggered every time I consume the horse-tranquilizer strength form of this cold medication, but after this time around, I experienced one of the weirdest series of consequences that I ever had under its influence. This time it made me realize how even my most passive involvement in things could unravel some wild series of consequences. For this time around, its use, along with being extra irritable and less tolerant to nuisances since I became sick, plus the lack of sleep due to coughing and sneezing all night which put me into my disinhibited insomniac state were factors in the equation that prompted me to make a 911 call.

A raging domestic dispute was happening down the block. Such things have been happening repeatedly during the early mornings of the past few weekends, and sometimes midweek, from this one particular house; sometimes so loud and wrathful that their arguments wake me even when my windows are closed. I just ignored all the previous battles as best I could. I wasn't even really able to pinpoint the source of all of them until that morning. So, this couple have been fighting and verbal feuding openly on various mornings, screaming and playing out their petty drama at each other taking it out on the street. However, this time it escalated to one them starting to destroy property: racing out and breaking down a staircase guard rail at the front entrance, and taking a large column of it and swinging it around and threatening to club the other with it. It seemed pretty obvious that they were intoxicated. After witnessing that, and knowing that there was a legitimate enough concern to report a violent outbreak, I jumped on the chance to call the police and end this ongoing loud and toxic bullshit once and for all. Even after the cops came, they didn't tone down their jostling and hollering. They were so oblivious to everything else that they didn't even notice the police arriving, so I felt pretty assured that they had never noticed me witnessing this drama unfolding from my distant vantage point. My blood ran cold when I heard the woman then screamed out, "He murdered my sister!" repeatedly. Another police cruiser came, a prolonged period of de-escalation and intervention ensued with more cops entering the home. The police didn't clear out of there until an hour afterward, taking away a guy in handcuffs. If there was a killing, I don't believe it happened at that site, since no ambulance came there that morning.

What makes my head spin, apart from the cold medication, is realizing that my simple expressing of a complaint with the intention to just have a morning peaceful enough to enjoy my coffee** outdoors on my balcony for one of the last weekends of summer, and to make it feel less like one of my precious few days off for summer was being stolen from me by illness and other intrusive frustrations, may have by some fluke led to a homicide suspect being taking into custody. There was nothing heroic in this on my part. It was dumb luck to have this kind of negativity simply cleared away in this manner. I hope it will ultimately bring some peace to that household and the rest of the neighbourhood. This time, I'm thankful that using Neo-Citron probably had a lot to do with setting off this particular chain of events, because truthfully, I don't believe I would have made that call if I wasn't using it. I would have probably just instead took the regular course of action of either ignoring it, or leaving my place to go elsewhere for some peace, failing to be around to actually witness the real implications and results of that feuding, and thereby allowing this crap to continue and having someone get hurt or worse. I thought this all was a story worth writing about because it's one of those weird ironies and rare cases where a disinhibiting side-effects of a mind-altering chemical was used to actually prevent a crime and possibly linked to solving, or leading to an arrest for another more heinous one.

Another thing to note to be thankful for is how the police here dealt with this situation, and comparing it with what has been going on in Ferguson, Missouri in the past few weeks. I can honestly say that I'm thankful for the fact that we have a police presence here that operates more with civility and less with brute force and active militarization.
 
*-The worst sentence I've ever written where I am over-using-hyphenation.
**- Actually, it was another dose of Neo Citron.

Thank You Robin Williams . . .

One person that always made me laugh with his lightning quick wit and intellect, and poignant observations was Robin Williams. It's especially bewildering and difficult to fathom something as abruptly tragic and shocking as the recent news of his death, and knowing that the word of it came to the world as a report of suicide. I don't know what else I could add to the words of loss and the sentiments for him that haven't already been said. I just know that this instance is a harsh reminder to be a lot more mindful in watching my own self when I'm feeling more blue than usual. Even though I've been having a good long stretch of days off, I've been in a rut, feeling very confined and useless, not knowing where to direct and commit my energy. I just don't know what fun seems to be anymore, and I've been only wasting my time avoiding the heat and brooding. I can't just conveniently escape anywhere because the repercussions of the fiasco that's now over a year and a half old continue to stifle me. The news of his passing has only made my spirits plummet even more. I'm surprised that I even got word of this tragedy at all in a timely manner, as I have been actively avoiding all the news links entirely with things getting crazier and worsening between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, Iraq, plus the increased local violent crime reports that the Ex season here inevitably brings.

I often fail and neglect to acknowledge just how sad and depressed I sometimes really get. I just try to hack and slash through whatever challenge I'm trying deal with at any given time; foolishly thinking that my own patience will be strong enough in the end to conquer whatever it is, forgetting that I need to come up for air once in a while. The feedback usually comes to me in the form of headaches, muscle tension, GI distress, and back pain, or with less afflictive cues like the expressions and behaviours directed to me by my dog, the most honest of creatures, whenever I'm disturbed by problems and bad news. Those are the signs of when I need some time out to process such things emotionally. More often than not, I'm left to face and deal with such demons alone. I rely on comedy and the thoughts of comedians a lot to get me through these ordeals. Sometimes it's a very necessary thing to use as a shield from all the suffering and struggles I witness and watch other people having day in and day out. So, it's an especially hard thing to digest when a true king of comic genius, who has had a brilliant and successful career on stage and screen and a reputation of generosity, goodwill, and kind-heartedness, gets toppled and crushed himself by the grip of depression. Perhaps it's selfish for me to say, but the loss of Robin Williams under these circumstances makes me question if I'll have enough wherewithal, fortitude, and resources to ever deal with the baggage if things take an even more drastic turn for the worse. He was a person who seemed to have had so much more than I do at his disposal in terms of a network and resources to maybe deal with his personal problems, and yet things somehow failed for him. How then, given my limits, would I ever be able to cope? 

The films: Good Will Hunting, The Dead Poets Society, The Fisher King, and Mrs. Doubtfire, are all there within my top 50 all-time favourite movies list. I am grateful for Robin Williams' contribution to all of them. The world of entertainment, in both comedy and drama, will be a more desolate place without his unique presence, spontaneity, heart-touching intellect, raw energy, and spirit.
 
Goodbye and thank you Robin; may you find your peace at last.

Hacking German/Deutsch Sprachehackung

 It's the first day of August. I can't believe how quickly summer is drifting by. This morning is calm and cool, but I expect 33 degree heat later today, and a thunderstorm by the late afternoon or evening. I hope I'm wrong about that. I have been learning some more German vocabulary and grammar for about 12 consecutive days now, using around 10 to 15 minutes per lesson.

Es ist der erste Tag des August. Ich kann glauben nicht wie schell der Sommer vorbei. An diesem Morgen, die Wetter ist sehr ruhig und stille, aber ich erwarte 33 Grad für Hitze später Heute im Nachmittag oder Abend, mit ein Sturm möglich. Hoffentlich, wird das nicht so sein. Für über zwölf Tagen, ich hatte mehr Deutsch Sprache gelernt. Ich arbeite für nur 10 oder 15 Minuten jede Lektion für mehr Vokabular und Grammatik zu lernen. Das ist genug jetzt. Zu schreiben mehr in Deutsch, muss ich mehr Kaffee (oder Bier) zu trinken.

So, why another language, specifically German? My outlined answers are as follows:

1. The obvious mission – I still want to travel to Europe someday, and it only makes sense to learn that which is most commonly spoken there as the primary and secondary language. Putting that together with my English and the French and Spanish I know, and I should be able navigate around most of Western, Northern, and Central parts of that continent well enough. One could be a hopeless dork and be confined to traveling around with a tour group full of complainers who can't think outside the box (my idea of hell) who wouldn't dare to speak a word of any other language of the visited nation, and not discover anything really different from what could already be found in a guidebook. I prefer doing the total opposite and going rogue: being like a Jason Bourne and heading off the beaten path; operating independently. To do this, knowing at least the bare essentials of more than one locally spoken language is a must.
2. To make learning the "cousin" languages easier – There are the other languages of the other nations I want to visit along Northern Europe (Dutch, Frisian, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian) in the same Germanic linguistic family that share a lot of the same cognates found in either English or German. Having this other German dataset should (in theory) make learning these additional regional languages easier just as knowing French, a Latin born language, made it easier for me to pick up on Spanish. Learning the complex forms of case articles, three forms of grammatical gender, and different word order would temper me up better if I really wanted to learn something even more complicated in depth like Russian or Ukrainian.
3. Cognitive Improvement – Studies are showing more and more that learning new creative skills, adapting to novelty, and solving puzzles (without too much stress) and testing the working memory are the best things that can be done for stimulating the brain enough to ward off things like dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Learning a foreign language covers all these bases. It's a cheap form of prevention that I can do now that may keep me from suffering hard later. I take the issue of preventing geriatric mental illness a little more seriously than most. It's because I currently don't (and possibly wouldn't) have a trusted life-partner around to take care of me if ever I should become chronically ill, or ever need help to guide me along if ever my mental gears started slipping due to anything age-related in the future. I've worked long enough in health care to see what the real personal and social costs of cognitive impairment are, and how I don't ever want to be rendered into some zombie-like, dementia-stricken elder with no grasp on reality, or left at that the mercy of a system whose only answer to deal with you in such a state is to over-medicate you and shut you away. My inspiration came from hearing about a lady who was in her nineties who was still learning other languages, and she was still very cogent and bright during her interview.
4. It ultimately helps me to speak my own language better (or at least makes me recognize the ways I use it poorly) – when I stepped outside my box to learn Spanish years ago, it struck me as to how badly I use the subjunctive tense in English when I compared the two languages. Learning German now helps me to clearly see the functional difference between accusative and dative cases as it is so much more necessary to be aware of using them precisely when speaking German, which I wouldn't have learned as readily or adequately if it was explained to me in an English lesson.
5. To fit my idea of personal betterment – when I take into account the most interesting people that I've ever met in my life that I had the pleasure to engage in amazing conversations with, they had mostly these characteristics: they were bright, but in a way that had nothing to do with the number of years they spent in University, they were "richer" people, but it had nothing to do with the measure of the material wealth that they had, some were less well off than me. The one overlapping element they all had in common, which I believe made them bright and "rich" with experience, was the fact that they all could speak more than two languages, which effectively made them wiser with a grander world view of things. To learn another language automatically puts you in the place of having to find another way of thinking or perceiving things. I find myself envying those who are able to think and dream in more than one language, I think that's a fantastic mental talent to have. I'm hopelessly inconvenienced with only being able to think and dream in English. To be able to speak another language or two fluently really is hard to do without a reasonable amount of social intelligence: another enviable quality to have, which is probably what made those other people's company so enjoyable. German's distinction in the role of human betterment, despite having a relatively small number of worldwide speakers compared to Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Arabic, and English, is that it's the second most used language for scientific publications. Using time to learn another language is the only time when I feel like my brain is actually growing, unlike other times when I'm just passively absorbing and then regurgitating other trivial stuff.
6. It forces me to become a better listener – something that I wish all people could learn how to do better (myself included).
7. Because learning another language is becoming cheaper and easier to do than ever – thanks to cross-comparing my ability with apps like Google Translate, and Duolingo, I can drill and test myself at my own pace.
8. A 30 day program project - It also all part of a 30 day program to see how much I'm able to learn, and to test my ability to commit to it that long. Learning German is challenging enough to force me to re-think things and to be transformational, and yet harmless enough that if I fail at it the consequences won't be too harsh.
9. I'll learn something that won't go obsolete – the only things that I feel I learned in school that have never escaped me and served me most practically were basic mathematics and the ability to tactfully and correctly use language, which is useful in a highly technical world for. . .
10. Building programming competence and confidence – making an effort to understand something which would ordinarily look and sound like garble to you and then putting into some functional and logical order to get something done is the very essence of computer programming. I strongly believe that you have to have some proficiency with practicing this with human languages first before you can even apply it into controlling something as stupid as a box full of silicon chips.

I'm doubtful that I'll ever learn enough German to be fluent enough to understand the great intellects like Goethe, Thomas Mann, or Einstein; to read their actual thoughts in their own words. That's not my ultimate mission. I just hope to know enough to be understood when I need to make requests, or ask for directions. If I re-translated my little composition above, I'm sure I'll find glaring mistakes. The case articles and genders are the hardest things for me to understand as an Anglophone learning German, but I'm trying. I'll see if and how I'll improve after the 30 days has past. 

Re-Motivating for More Clicks

For myself, guilt was the prompt to make me examine the subject of psychological motivators for running more closely. It follows from last night after making the mistake of having my first, last, and I'm sure to be my only experience of dining on poutine. The spell of a sluggish indigestion is still haunting me. It seems funny to admit this now, especially being that I'm Canadian and that it's this late in my life for doing so, but I have never actually sampled poutine before (for which I'm now grateful). I either need the constitution of a much younger man, or I'd have to be completely wasted to dare myself to eat this kind of crap again. For those Non-Canadian readers who have never heard of this stuff before, let me explain to you what poutine is (pronounced "pooh-TEEN", not like the current Russian president's last name). I'm ashamed to say that it was invented here in Canada. Some while ago in Quebec, some bozo of a chef took a look at a plate of ordinary and already greasy fries and gravy, and thought to himself: "Hmm, let's see, what else does this need . . . Aha, I know, MORE ANIMAL FAT WITH THE ADDED POTENTIAL TO OBSTRUCT ONE'S BOWELS!" (Perhaps that idea sounded better when it was said in the original French). And he thence and thusly proceeded to plop on some nice gooey cheese curds onto this warm greasy mass, and TAH-DAH, poutine was born. In summary, poutine is the one of the most perverse ways to introduce the greatest possible number of calories in a single mouthful whilst instantaneously elevating your body's blood triglyceride index to levels of lethality. It's like the "fugu"* of the world of French fries. Consuming this stuff falls just slightly short on the spectrum of calorie ingestion depravity as drinking an entire litre of melted butter followed by another litre of whipping cream; or just taking a short cut to bypass digestion altogether, and getting a liposuction done in reverse, with the cannula inserted directly into your aorta and filling it in with 100% pure whale blubber. I sheepishly admit that the curd and gravy component of the mix was rather tasty, and that is what halts me from completely branding this stuff as downright obscene. I could only finish a third of the portion I was offered. I'm not really a fan of French fries to begin with, and yet I stupidly chose this avenue of having a dish which should best be served with a side of nitroglycerine tablets.

 
But I'm digressing. Back to the subject of running. I finally returned (after a whole flippin' week!) to a pattern of recuperative sleep again after this past cycle of insomnia; enough such that I thought I could finally get back into the swing of running again without risking some serious injury to my already stiff legs, back, and neck. My physical conditions for it are improving, but I also realize that I've been rather lax in setting the right tone for the mental ones. Any real honest runner will tell you that the activity is more mental than physical. So, what I thought I would do is slap down some reminders in print to keep me focused on why I should continue to keep up with it. Some are carrots; others are sticks. I hope to be listing more of the former than the latter. They are as follows:

1. A Pound of Butter (stick) – It was brought into mind after what I wrote about the poutine. For accuracy, I should be using a pound of pork lard for an example, but I don't handily have any around the place to serve me with a visual. The grams per litre density of butter is roughly more or less equal to that of human body fat. Butter is about 911 g/L, while human fat is generally about 918 g/L: that's about two of these 1 lb bricks of butter in a litre. Now, having a concrete visual of what this actual volume is like, and imagining having 14 more of these things being pressed, packed, and tucked into me subcutaneously gives me more of a disturbing and disgusting picture of what would result if I just let myself go for half a year, because knowing from past experience, 15 pounds of extra weight is what I can easily acquire through an entire winter of idleness. It's also a disturbing picture when I imagine how much of a substantial proportion of matter with this consistency and density might be actually be coating my arteries and heart. The seven kilometer run I did today used about 685 calories, and that can be computed as to how much volume of fat which that run potentially shredded away, assuming there is approximately 3,500 calories in a pound of adipose tissue (again, roughly the same as butter), amounts to cutting away about a fifth of that pound of butter you see there. This is perhaps the most depressing calculation to make for this entry: knowing that I'd have to run 35 kilometres to make that entire block of butter, representing the same volume of body fat, completely disappear given my age, mass, height, and metabolism.
2. The Views (carrot) – I'm fortunate to have a lot of great vistas around this town that can only be seen from the running trails, like this one on the pedestrian deck of the North CPR Bridge with the view of towering over the weir of the river. The torture of running to there from my place and then scrambling up the stairways to get up there is sometimes really worth it just to feel the breeze. The Bessborough is also a nice feature that is omnipresent from most views along the trails between the University and Broadway bridges.
   
   
   
3. Encountering Random Spontaneous Social Events (carrot) – I occasionally spot free public events, like this one I found in Rotary Park while on my way home. I participated with this group for a little bit, practicing some outdoor yoga long enough to discover just how seized up and inflexible I really am.
   
4. Sleep (carrot) – We generally tend to underrate sleep too much. When you sleep, you aren't spending money you don't have, nor are you mindlessly cramming your face full of excess food, you're not stuck listening/arguing with annoying people and being in toxic relationships, and generally not finding and creating more reckless ways of sinning and hurting yourself and others (unless you fall asleep while operating machinery or a vehicle). It heals both body and mind. The Dalai Lama says that it's the best form of meditation. If we all thought this way, we would all try to nap/sleep more. Running is a great way to snap you back into a pattern of a more relaxing sleep. Soreness usually (inevitably) finds you the next morning, but believe me, it's a hell of a lot better than getting no sleep at all and then waking up repeatedly to the same kind of pain knowing that you've done really nothing to acquire it other than just staying awake too long.
5. Beer (carrot and stick) – I try to avoid drinking my calories as much as possible, but when I do this is my favourite way to do it**. I like beer too much to stop drinking it, but I can't drink it as liberally as I used to without some bad physical consequences if I don't exercise. So long as I continue to like beer, I'll have to run more to keep it off of me. There is an entire site devoted to people like me who are geeks who can brew beer, and are around this certain age/maturity where they have this cyclical carrot-stick relationship with their beer consumption and appreciation/need for running so they can drink more beer. The site is called Brew/Drink/Run http://brewdrinkrun.com/ , in which the title itself is a pretty obvious and brief mission statement. In a fitness perspective, I'm lucky that my favourite pub is in a Goldilocks Zone, not too conveniently close; yet not so far away that I can't walk or bike there. I can leave my car at home, and still not have to trouble myself with calling cabs. The walk there and back usually amounts to the exercise I'd need to burn off the couple pints I had. Thus things balance out.
   
    

*- In Japanese cuisine, fugu is slices of sashimi trimmed from a pufferfish, which contains a highly reactive nerve poison called tetradotoxin, concentrated in some parts of its skin, flesh, and organs. Even small residual trace amounts of it can be lethal. The supposed thrill for diners eating such fare is knowing that if it wasn't cleaned and prepared by the chef properly, the next bite could be your last, sort of like a sushi Russian roulette.
**- I just realized I said that sentence in the same way the "Most Interesting Man in the World" would in the Dos Equis beer commercials.