It was not an exception!

I am completely reconsidering my faith in the contemporary Homo sapiens!! I just don’t stop seeing very friendly messages of what should be the typical and common kidnesss expressed by our peers, the consideration of the other. That’s really unbelievable in our society where, unless you are in your neighborhood and know everybody, people often ignore each other and prefer to react as if they don’t see anything.

But here again, three examples: one on the at work-network, the others on the facebook island community. I love it!

Not to mention that nobody in this island is closing its car, that the houses I am visiting for rent are also half of the time unlocked (even when they are inhabited) – it is a back to the past when I was a child… I think I will get used to it, it feels soooo good!

We are Spartans

We, as a family, have been Spartans, maybe we’ll be again soon. I am talking about these races that crazy people do to have fun, this military-like workout that we do in times of peace. Just crazy. This all begun, if I remember correctly, because we wanted to motivate ourselves as a family, and just heard that there was “kids-spartan race”! We enrolled few other friends with us, so that was actually lots of fun!

And I am glad we did it! it installed a workout spirit, a sense of the effort, a discovery of our potentials, strength, and power, a need for imagination to be able to train at home, a complicity within the entire family, positivity all together! We were an example for our kids, we discovered what we were able to reach out our goals – although I was skeptical that we could. We also discovered that our body could change with time, that effort is a question of regularity and training, day after day, small steps one after the other.

It’s crazy how this is written everywhere but that these things you think you know for sure, they actually make sense only when you really experiment them, when you realize the power of it… as it is for everything in life!

Unfortunately, we, as human being, would never learn, unless we are experiencing it, feeling it, in the joy or in pain, in happiness or diseases; so maybe we won’t really improve with time, since each generation is coming back to the baseline…. Well, never mind, for now, let’s keep going, it feels good!

These are my trophees….

P.S. And I wanted to add that I am super hyper proud of my buddy who reached the highest milestone arriving the 2nd of all participants in the Ultra in Malaysia last November…. 50 km, 60 obstacles in 7h33min… no comment!

Little discoveries

It has been exactly 3 months that I moved to Maine. Three months only since I entered in the US to live there. In fact, I didn’t expect to be particularly surprised about the way people live here: I grew up in an island with lots of similarities to Mount Desert Island, I was exposed to different cultures as I moved in different countries, I speak English pretty fluently (and understand almost anybody with any English accent) and I interact often with friends and colleagues Americans and discussed often their customs and habits… so I was very curious about what would surprise me.

What I learned so far is described below. These “discoveries” are rather related to the winter season, the location (Maine) and the local community. I realized that the people are rather introvert, calm, open and patient and do not very much correspond to the traditional character that we may have in mind overseas (or maybe I had a biaised and false idea of the Americans, or maybe I become wiser – the older I get the less I tend to strictly categorize somebody). I am sure I will extend my observations in the future and discover other unexpected common behaviors, other strange routine habits that I was not used to experience before… and I am looking forward to that! For now, those little surprises are as follows, without particular order:

  • People engage: “Hello, how are you today?” await a real response! People would repeat the question and look into your eyes if you do not answer. This is not the same than “Hello, how do you do?” in the UK. Here the conversation can continue with “Did you have a good day today?”, or “What extraordinary things have you done today?”
  • Rhythm is slow, time goes slowly. People show an extreme patience in repeating with the same tone the question you didn’t get, they drive at 10 miles/h less than the authorized limit, but punctuality is the norm, although everybody says that everybody’s late (a mystery that I still need to uncover)…
  • When people warn you it will get cold, trust them! People don’t tend to exagerate, should it be about the wheather, a fee rate or even if they are selling you something.
  • They give you extra money if you bring your own bag (but you don’t need to pay if they give you one). BTW, the bag they will provide is most of the time a paper bag.
  • Wearing layers of clothes is the solution to stay warm, and socks reaching the knees are much warmer than the lower ones.
  • Four wheels cars are not fancy cars in Maine. Most importantly: remove the snow from your car when it is still soft, few hours later it will become ice!
  • Even clams can be fried!!
Left are deep fried dill pickles, right are deep fried clams!
  • American beers are excellent!
  • I don’t think Americans can live without carbohydrates. Sandwiches are common lunches – not picnic meals!

Happy Friday 13th!

Pour le plaisir des yeux *

It was snowing last night! I woke up before the sun rose – arrrg the sun is coming up later and later!- and slowly it became so white and bright everywhere! Then I realized that I needed to post some old pictures that I had in file before the real winter comes ….

And now that i recovered my phone and can upload all my pictures, I really have no excuses to share with you the wonderful landscape of Maine in the fall season – basically from my arrival till today 🙂 ! Enjoy!

*”Pour le plaisr des yeux” means “for the pleasure of our eyes” literally, “for your viewing pleasure” in good english….

Winter symptoms

I am sick. That’s quite usual to pass some illnesses in a winter. Great! 😦 I am discovering the winter again!

So, yes, it begun with sore throat. At this point I thought I was mirroring my daughter’s state who was actually sick last week in Singapore and that I caught the surrounding virus that is spreading these days at my working place. Then I thought it would rather go towards a kind of “angina” or pharyngitis, which, psychologically, means a lot about how things are stuck in the throat and can’t be expressed. (Bertrand, do you copy?).

But nope, it went on its way towards just a light flu-like disease : I felt weak with a bit of sore throat and heavy running nose this morning. My voice has mutated and I am sneezing all the time. I am lucky though: no fever, nor bone pain.

Because I trust my body I will just let it express and discharge what it needs to, and be sick for few more days, accompanying it on the way. My medication will be warmth, sleep, tea, soups, lemon, and patience. And maybe this is the good time for me to relearn my basic steps of Tai Chi, which I have a couple of time tried again since I am here in Maine. I like particularly the 13 steps taught in Singapore by my former masters May and Daniel. It is a three and a half minute complete exercice that can be repeated 3 times in a raw, daily. You have a video right here:

Also, my runs have been postponed since Sunday because I had trouble breathing and felt so cold in advance! but I have continued a daily workout with warming up exercices, push ups, Russian twists, and of course the 32 burpees for the challenge! I’ll take it just a little bit easier until I recover.. and tomorrow it should be snowing! Yeah!!

About human brain evolution

I’ve attended the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) local Chapter conference in Waterville last week. It was a very small symposium of about 70 persons, where the researchers based in the local surrounding universities and Colleges working in Neurosciences shared their new projects. Since it doesn’t touch a large community, the meeting is generally attended by young researchers and undergraduate and graduate students. On my side, I wanted to meet up with new faces, the geographically close investigators in my field, and introduce myself.

There was some interesting papers, and I could interact with few people during the poster session, so it was relatively fruitful. Two seminars given in the plenary session by seniors were quite interesting:

One from Prof. Alan Rosenwasser, from University of Maine, talking about the discovery of the “non-image forming” visual system and the underlying cellular functional unit which explains a lot about how the light is important in setting our circadian rhythm, among other functions. The implications of understanding how this works is huge: the dysfunction of this system in our brain may be the trigger of many diseases such as seasonal affective disorder, migraine, glaucoma or sleep dysregulation of aging. If you wish to know more about this, there is a good review on the “Clinical implications of the melanopsin-based non-image-forming visual system”, by Ksendzovsky et al., Neurology. 2017 Mar 28; 88(13): 1282–1290.

The second talk was rather curious, dealing more about neuroscience philosophy: “K-conjecture and Human Brain Evolution”, by Prof. Leonard Kass, from University of Maine. Briefly, he first introduced his concept of the K-conjecture, a concept built to facilitate educational purposes among the population, in particular within the Sci-Fi community. Then, he explained the weak and strong forms of the K-Conjecture demonstrating that the human intelligence has reached a plateau and will not increase or improve with time, but that we may be the only creature with such a higher level of intelligence. We are the most advanced species and it has been thousands of years that our intelligence has been settled. What we do and how we as human being evolve is another story but our IQ cannot grow. (By the way, our IQ should also be measured otherwise to transcript our real intelligence, which may be composed by much more abilities than what is quantified in the test, but that’s a small part of the story.) The concept he was trying to explain was quite difficult to get in 30 minutes but I could feel something interesting behind, just to think about evolution a bit deeper … but if you wish to know more about this, you can have a look at this assay by the author: K-Conjecture – the future of Biology. https://www.medwinpublishers.com/IZAB/IZAB16000126.pdf. I wished there was a longer time for questions at the end of the talks. But somehow I am not sure we were ready for that kind of deep or provoking concept at this time of the day in this environment. Anyways, this was the kind of discussion I liked to have as a student, mostly around a table with a glass of wine… Santé!*

*”Santé” means “cheers” in french.

Menu de la semaine*

It is time to make some food for the week. Since I try to make it with what the season is bringing there is not much choices. I made some groceries yesterday, and this morning, between a bit of cleaning, laundry and the daily workout (that includes the 32 burpees!!), I put the local Maine Public Classical Radio and let go my imagination….

Here it will be: (i) Pumpkin soup (again???!!!), heum, actually not, it is a butternut squash soup, cooked and blended with potatoes, carrot, white onion, garlic cloves, salt and pepper – a bit too much pepper in fact – ; (ii) a left over of wild rice pan in a wok with celery, onion and garlic, red capsicum and white mushrooms, salt, pepper and Provence herbs; (iii) Pasta Penne with fresh tomatoes on the wine, a quarter of sliced red onion, kalamata olives cut in 3, fresh basil in pot from my kitchen and the left over of the mozzarella used for the pizza, olive oil salt and pepper; (iv) another soup with leek, celery, turnip, sweet potatoes, white onion, garlic and salt, pepper and other spices (to be cooked tomorrow…); (v) salad for sure for my lunches as well with red cabbage, tomatoes, kimchi, avocado, green salad, sunflower, chia and/or pumpkin seeds, pickles, olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper; (vi) and I may defreeze red beans or chick peas, I am not sure yet. Maybe I will update this post these few days with more pictures.

Et voilà!

Now it is evening already. I’d like to go to bed with my book. It is really not the best book I’ve read, but still, I feel I spend way tooooo much time when I’m at home with my iPad, phone or computer either being on this blog, google-ing shops to get installed or on the local community pages, when not emailing. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some book review soon! Talk to you later!

*”Menu de la semaine” means “weekly menu”, in french.

Nobody is perfect

Few days ago I watched the documentary “Stink” on Netflix. It is an american documentary from Jon J. Whelan (2015) that explores the chemical industry for clothes, parfumes, household products and other cosmetics. Interesting!

Interesting because he explains why there are toxins and carcinogens hidden in the products, legally.

Interesting because it says exactly what I wrote in one of my posts : a baby is born today with more chemicals in its blood than its mum (see my post “consumerism”);

Interesting because it is just confirming the super-power of the industrial companies, once more;

Interesting because it comforts me about my household habits… and this is what I’d like to share with you today: I am trying to use only very few safe products at home: (i) I am cleaning bathroom, toilets, kitchen and floor with white vinegar, baking soda, borax, and lemon juice; (ii) ecological laundry liquid is mixed with baking soda, and the laundry liquid and the dishwashing detergent come from ecological recognized brand; (iii) my cosmetics are limited to 2 shampoos (I know, it is already too much!), soaps in bars, 1 face-cream, 1 body cream (only since I am in Maine, because my skin is so dry it just bleeds from the cold but I am getting rid of it because it doesn’t seem to help much…), 1 micellar solution to remove my eye liner and mascara (the only makeup), and an eye liner and a mascara. And that’s it! (I know, Jacqueline and Elise will kill me when they’ll know I am not using deodorant anymore as they have been providing this to me for years from Weleda and other natural shops… I am deeply sorry 😦 …). I am not fixed to one brand, so my creams change with time. Ah yes, 1 toothpaste, carefully chosen.

Most importantly I am scrutinizing the ingredients in the shops and supermarkets, until I find the right fit. No barbaric names, no Phtalates, no titanium in the toothpaste, hormones disruptors and other carcinogens, well, I have a long list of impossible-stuffs-to-be-in-there. Fragrance will be my next No-Go, which will reduce significantly my choices. But I am quite lucky: my job requires to use fragrance-free cosmetics as this increases the allergies on site. And it may be because my institution is a big employer in the region, but I can find fragrance-free products around. Great, no?

Disclaimer: I love my eau-de parfum from a well known French perfumer, and I will keep putting this perfume…but only on weekends, and on my clothes so that my skin is much less exposed… nobody’s perfect!

Feeling good

Most of the time I really think we are “just” human being, taking ourselves for the best creature on Earth and forgetting that we should live together.

But sometimes I recover faith….

Few days ago I came across a post on the local Facebook community (do not think I am an addicted to Facebook, I just need to check regularly because I am trying to find a year-round rental housing – but this is another story coming soon). Well, I saw this post (a bit edited to protect the identity of the person and the community):

Pretty awesome, no?

And yesterday, another nice message of thank you again:

What makes people want to share that good feeling? What makes that they choose to be honest? Sincere? Thankful?? Interestingly this was also happening in our community in Singapore… And it feels soooo good!