spider and fly

while showering a couple of nights ago, I was surprised to see a rather large fly flying about in the bathroom - it probably entered through the open window, attracted by the light - that usually attracts moths, but there's always a first, and this fly was it. while it was buzzing around one of the downlights, I noticed there was a single line of spider-web-silk that started somewhere else at the bathroom and ended at the light. nothing unusal about it, but the light made the web particularly obvious - so obvious, that I could spot the peturbation in the web, as the fly flew around it. it wasn't very clear if the fly flew into the thread or not, but it was clearly having many close passes at the very least, as it seemed to be flying around the light. there were a couple of rather big jerks to the web which were clearly the fly making contact.

shortly after that, the fly seemed to come to rest on the light. my first assumption was that it was basically as close to the light as it could get to and couldn't figure what else to do. I had also finished my shower, so I turned the light off while I dried myself off, so that the fly's movement from that spot might indicate if it was free to move about. I also noticed the the fly was not moving quite as a fly might be expected to - perhaps indicating that it was struggling with the web, although maybe it was also having some sort of seizure due to being so close to such a bright light.

dried off, I switched the light back on to observe the fly. it was still moving in that weird manner - it seemed like it couldn't move one wing in the same way as it could move the other, and same for one or two legs. I also looked around for any obvious spiders, especially around the web. there weren't any.

I switched off the light again and opened the window as wide as I could to air out the bathroom, and hopefully also give the fly as good a chance to fly out as it could have. I shut the door and went on with my evening, wondering what will happen next with the fly, and reminding myself to check on it when I bring the window to its normal ajar position.

about an hour later, I stopped back to check on the fly. to cause minimum disturbance to the fly, I switched off the lights outside the bathroom, opened the door as little as I could to get a look at the fly. I also didn't turn the room light on, but instead, I used my phone's torch. the fly was still there, and it didn't seem to be moving at all (unlike earlier when it was moving erratically). as my phone's light didn't seem to disturb the fly, I entered the bathroom and switched on the light. the fly was completely immobile and didn't respond to the light at all.

I was quite surprised. did a couple of encounters with the web (and not a big web, just one thread!) trap the fly to the point where it was unable to move at all, possibly dead?

how strong is a spider web, and is there something else to it like the stickiness, or the way it catches on the body of the fly, that causes even slight contact to get it into a more tangled position where it cannot move at all? or is there something on the web that paralyzes or otherwise affects the fly?

I spent a few moments observing the fly and thinking these thoughts, before I turned the light off, left the bathroom and shut the door. I considered taking a photo, as this blog post was definitely half-formed in my head (even the title, inspured by a memory of this animated series from my childhood!), but my phone was charging, and thought I could get a better photo the next morning.

next morning, I went to the bathroom, phone ready.

there was no trace of the fly. none whatsoever. not on the light, not on the ground. no trace of the web either.

since the window was left very slightly ajar (in fact it had shut enough overnight to not allow a fly to get through) it was impossible (or maybe very very unlikely) that the fly had revived and escaped.

the only other plausible explanation was that the fly had been completely consumed by the spider overnight.

RTFM

Someone gave me this pair of bluetooth headphones, which I was able to "fix" and start using with a few minutes of effort. Today, a few months later, I accidentally activated the redial function (at almost midnight - not even sure who I just called! 😨). It took a good 20 minutes to find the manual online, and it seems the headphones actually have 4 unmarked buttons, and each of them have multiple functions depending on the duration/number of presses! The manufacturer was really expecting their customers to RTFM 😂

PS: after having read the manual end-to-end (no feat, given it's all of 4 pages) it turns out there is absolutely no indication of which side is right and left either, so even RTFM doesn't help 😏

the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything

 ... is 42. or so the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy says.

it's obviously tongue in cheek, but it's also something more.

it means the answer doesn't mean much, if you don't ask the right question. and sometimes asking the appropriate question is more tricky than finding the correct answer to it.

I don't know if it's a mid-life thing (aside: I wonder why the word mid-life is almost always used with crisis!), or if it's just a my-life thing, or it is a combination of both and the series of crises that life seems to be throwing at me with regularity.

but yeah, it's definitely a time to think about questions, as much as I think about answers. in fact, the answers to most questions I ask myself these days are quite obvious - which, to me, is a hint that perhaps I'm not asking myself the right questions.

one thing's for sure though, my 40s (so far) have been an exercise in crisis management. it seems to have started with the motorbike accident just 3 weeks before I turned 40 (or maybe the near-crisis career "bump" that happened a few months before it?), and it's just been one thing after another since. some positive things have happened as well, but it's fair to say that while the successes are welcome and lasting, they also seem to be few and far between, while the struggles, although not disastrous, do seem to knock me down with regularity - to the point where every single day seems to be a struggle I'm ill-equipped to deal with. some of those struggles are self-inflicted/self-exacerbated (mechanical problems with my motorbike and car come to mind) but the vast majority seem to be curveballs life/the universe is throwing at me.

one thing that stands out the most though, is that these crises have reminded me in no uncertain terms, that the most valuable of all things is health. the next is human connections. somewhere in the mix is things like discipline, persistence, consistency, etc.

but those are all "answers". it's been a while since I've even stopped to consider the questions, in anything more than an academic, philosophical, almost idle sense.

mom loved to say that one of my granddad's favourite expressions was "is life worth living? it depends on the liver" (an obvious pun on the organs/health of the person asking the question, as well as the state of the person themselves).

in my case, I can say, beyond doubt, that as a person, my life seems worth living.

my daily struggles have reminded me repeatedly of the privilege and opportunities I have - my support system (both emotionally and economically), my stress-free environment (if say 95% of the people I know were in the same situation I am in, they probably will not have the circumstances to easily deal with them!), and more... 

and yet, the struggle remains. a struggle so bad that I am sometimes jealous of people around me (obviouslt on a superficial level! I know my situation is unique and I cannot pick and choose aspects of others' lives - that's not how the universe works!). a struggle that I hope isn't going to occupy me for the rest of my life, although I am realistic enough to acknowledge that worse struggles do exist, and it's not a guarantee that things will get better quickly or easily.

I don't know why I am so fixated on this struggle. I don't know why I can't see the bright side of things. of getting the clarity to see life as it really is. without all of its assumptions and distractions. 

I've been advised to try meditation. but meditation in and of itself leads to idle meandering. I think I need something mroe directed. I think I need to ask myself more questions.

or maybe I just need to sleep on time (yes, there are actually 3 people who have advised me the same thing, and in fact it's the only thing that the majority of people who are closely aware of what I'm going through agree upon). damn, that would be an anticlimax if it was true!

either way, here I am, rambling along. a metaphor for my life, if there ever was one. 42 years old. happy birthday to me!

black roses

I came upon a rose garden. The rose garden had black roses, which I know fascinated my mom as she has mentioned them multiple times for some reason - I think she saw them once 45+ years ago.

I was going to go bring her to see to see the black roses when a friend arrived at the garden to tend to the roses. She told me they looked black because they were burned roses. She showed me the bit where the ends of the petals were still red, as that was the newly grown bit.

I didn't at the time question how burned petals could continue to grow and how the new growth was red, but I did think to myself that it would be very disappointing to explain to my mom that black roses are simply burnt roses.

And that's when I woke up.

Coincidentally, I completely forgot about this until I saw a video today, a tongue in cheek one about people who can't see colour in their imagination, which prompted me to describe my dream in the comments. I found the coincidence (that I would dream of black roses on the same day I'd come across a video of people with black and white imaginations) uncanny... or was it confirmation bias?

Either way, time to tell mom about my dream about black roses... or not.

the un-optimized life

A comment on a youtube video about watching everything at 3x speed (to keep your mind sharp and optimize the rate of flow of information) reminded me of something I've never blogged - a bit about my past, that very strongly shaped how I lived ever since. 

I'm not feeling like rewording my comment, so here it is, copied from the video:

Interesting thing about speed listening. I'm guessing there haven't been long term studies about this though. I have anecdotal evidence about speed reading as an analogy. I started speeding up my reading from when I was about 6, hitting my maximum at about 9 and sustaining that for many years - I never counted words per minute but it was 4.5 pages per minute of paperback novels. At that speed, I was reading between 2 and 3 books a day, literally running out of stuff to read. I kept that speed going till I was about 19. At that point, I think I got saturated with information (I had literally ready my entire school library, although my uni library was much larger and I didn't bother even trying to cover it). I can speed-read even now (I'm 42) but I find it very exhausting and not worth the effort. I have stopped optimizing the flow of information into my head and now focus on enjoying the journey, even if it's information for information's sake. It seems like youtube/podcasts in general are inefficient sources of information, so a person may not hit saturation point as quickly (or at all?) but given speed-listening to youtube has been with some people since childhood, I wonder if they may eventually reach the same predicament as I have with reading.

Just to add: while the first aspect of my life to be consciously de-optimized was my information diet, it's now spread to pretty much everything else. As recently as 10 years ago, I used to believe in packing every moment of free time I had with "things worth doing".

That's completely changed now. Well before Chronic Fatigue Syndrome took over my life, I had very much stopped optimizing my time. Everything has become about being "in the moment" even if the moment was something mundane. Kinda like climbing the same hill twice a week for 3 years - something I could never even imagine 10 years ago!

I still seek new experiences, and still enjoy change, but I have stopped feeling that pressure now. 

To put it differently, life doesn't feel "too short", life now feels "long enough" - a crazy thing to say when I can literally see weeks and months go by in a blink, just staying afloat - eat, work (not always - CFS has really impacted my ability to get things done!), sleep repeat. And no, I've not run out of things to do. I've simply stopped maintaining a ToDo list. I now do things as I feel like, when I feel like. I don't sweat the missed opportunities, the things I could do. Or even the things I could do better.

I don't know if this will ever change, but I can see this is simply what I learned in my late teens with regards to information and learning, spreading over to the rest of my life.

Anyway, it's 10:45pm. I'm off to bed!

Time

Waiting... first at the reception, then in a quiet tiny room. The "procedure" was booked for 4pm but it's now 5pm and no procedure has been started. I've been fasting since 10am, and not allowed to drink any water since 2pm. I started off feeling hungry but I'm not hungry any more - only thirsty. Desperately thirsty. But there's something I'm more desperate to do. To lie down and close my eyes. Ironically, the only thing in the room with me is a bed. But I have not been asked to occupy it yet. The bed looks more and more inviting as the seconds tick away. The seconds tick away loudly - the clock on the wall is really making its presence felt. I'm waiting for something to replace the ticks of that clock. Even silence would be fine. Silence would be great, actually.

The "procedure" took 7 minutes. The doctor said that's about as quick as it can be done.

And then, another wait. This time, in a different room, with a few patients in beds. Thankfully, I'm in a recliner chair. There is a clock, but I can't hear it ticking. There are louder sounds: something I can't see that sounds like a fan, and the beep of someone's vitals being monitored. At one point, the beep turned into a high pitched whine and the nurse asked the patient to take deep breaths. Back to beeping.

There is a TV on the wall. It's tuned to a news channel. The news is all about war.

It's interesting that even war is more bearable than that clock ticking. 

[kris.blog();] New comment on Adriana Jenkins left a message on your guestbook.

what are the odds that a really old blog post (14 years old, to be precise) poking fun of a spam message gets a comment 3 days ago... AND THAT COMMENT IS SPAM! like spamception!

ps: I am now waiting for this blog post to attract more spam 11 years later!