January 1st week
Jan 2nd
Travel is 90% thinking and doing the same repetitive action over and over again .You get to your actual destination to see something cool, this big grand thing. We travelled a whole day to Madurai, to see a temple. It was some mind boggling architecture. Even in sitting in one place for a long time, it’s still fun. On the way to Madurai, I was practicing my Tamil to my parents, and singing along to Tamil songs.
Jan 3rd
I saw my old mentor and we caught up. He said you should study everything you can take notes on it, while trying to understand from everything around you.
Jan 5th Angamaly
We left at 4:30 AM to a hospital and we checked in and sat down in the eye ward. There were so many people on a monday, on a random monday, there were more people in just the eye department than what I’ve seen in our hospital’s in Canada ever. It’s amazing that there are enough doctors for all the patients. Kerala’ s healthcare is one of the best in India.
Jan 4th - 6th
I spent with my maternal grandparents though I spent 3 years in India ( grade 7 - 9 ). We only only went to my moms house during breaks. I felt like I didn’t really know my maternal grandparents that well. This time around I got to spend so much quality time with my grandparents. My grandad loves reading books he knows a great deal about the Formation about the catholic church as well as Indian history. Two things that I learned via school, never an active effort to learn about the history that makes me. My grandpa even gave a picture of amsterdam that he had from 20004. It’s a picture of a highway beneath a restaurant, that’s still pretty cool today so it must have been an engineering foresight back in the day.
[ADD THE PHOTO OF THE BRIDGE]
Me and my grandma were talking about why married couples in kerala aren’t staying together ( I don’t know why we got to this ). She said it’s because both parties aren’t ready to compromise and that since now women are also contributing financially, you don’t really need to be married to enjoy life. I asked her why they aren’t comprosming and she said the parties don’t really need each other, back in the day. If you left your husband and moved back in the your parents they might have not had the finances to support you, and furthermore you would be taking away from your siblings, back in the day you would have like 5+ siblings. Now that everyone is somewhat independent there isn’t incentive to tough it out and see the marriage to fruition.
On the flipside, if you get married and your spouse wasn’t really everything they said they were, you would have a miserable life. Stereotypically It’s the guy that drinks a lot or doesn’t take care of the family. In my humble opinion the current system does eliminate the extreme cases by a significant amount, so we may be headed in a better direction for everyone.
In all fairness , there are cases where the guy stops drinking and starts taking care of the family, purely because of a good wife. I’ve seen this happen in real life, and now they are doing really well. I think in general, all relationships can do well, if you both parties love each other, but what do I know?
This is on the way to my Mom’s house in Erumeli. There’s a pilgrimage that Hindus partake in, where they go to Sabarimala. I’m don’t know too much about it, but they go through a Mosque, and they’ve been going through that Mosque even since my mom was child. It warms my heart to see Hindus & Muslims getting along. It might seem normal to us, but I can’t say the same for the rest of India. (Sorry for the video, I didn’t want to see it through a screen so I was watching it live)
Jan 10th
I’m definitely going to regret not writing as much down in my trip to India. Everyday has been super busy.
Anyway this is a half eating Bonda, might be the most underrated Indian snack, I have see it mostly in Kerala, and it’s so good. The best Bonda I’ve had was from Ooty, in Tamil Naidu. It was big, a perfect sphere and delicious I could write a poem about it, inside it was white and fluffy like you just bit into a cloud. It wasn’t overpoweringly sweet like cotton candy, just right. Did I mention there was also crunch to it too 🤤. This was like 10 years ago so I might have forgotten some of the details.
Origin of species
This paragraph isn’t tied to a chapter in the book, but an interesting idea called Division of Labour
Why do we have genders? The book doesn’t really break this down, it more so touched upon how even in species have an advantage in cross breeding every couple generations even if they can propagate by themselves (hermaphodites). Breeding from two different individuals increases fertility and vigour so it makes sense that male and female exist so they can maximise good characteristics every single time they breed. That’s really smart since it would mean propagation would always mean more fertility and vigour.
Another reason we evolved in this way is Division of labour as pointed out in the book. The reproductive organ is very complex, and having both female, and male organs would take away from an organism’s ability in other areas. The idea of division of labour is concept most know from economics, namely Wealth of the nations by Adam Smith. The truths present in evolution must also be present in everything after evolution if that is the reason we can think, and do these things. If Natural selection is how every evolved then it must carry a key insight to how knowledge itself evolves. There should be patterns that must be followed or atleast parts of it should explain variation/evolution in everything. The patterns that form the foundation are ever present in the system that arises from it.
Happy late Valentines day!