What I've been reading

Watchmen
by Alan Moore (Author), Dave Gibbons (Illustrator)

"A ground-breaking graphic novel that chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin."

This is a book that made a huge impact on publication in 1986 - I remember the buzz about this novel for adults told in pictures, but never saw a copy until visiting a friend recently, who let me borrow it. I can see how it broke new ground, and it's a whole different experience reading in pictures in this way, but I found that I couldn't absorb the threads of the story as well as if it had been told in words, the way I'm used to. It's a bit like the radio plays I sometimes listen to - I don't remember who's who and so can't follow the plot as well as if I were watching as well as listening. I'm sure I could get used to it, but as far as I know there aren't any more graphic novels in my reading list.

Solitude and Loneliness: A Buddhist View
by Sarvananda

"Drawing on a wide range of sources – the poets Dickinson and Hafiz, the painter Edward Hopper, the sage Milarepa, the lives of Helen Keller and Chris McCandless, and of course the Buddha – Sarvananda explores the themes of isolation, loneliness and solitude from a Buddhist perspective and examines how and why our relationship to ourselves can be a source of both suffering and liberation."

This is my first e-book and I read it entirely on my tablet, and it's the strangest thing - not having the paper copy in my hand leaves me a little bit adrift. I can't judge where I am in the narrative. It turns out that I value knowing that I'm half way through, say, to adjust my attitude to whether the author is introducing new ideas or rounding off old ones, and although I only finished the book last night I'm struggling to remember what was in it. I think I enjoyed it while I was reading, so perhaps I'll have to have another go at it.

Brighton Rock
by Graham Greene

narrated by Samuel West

"A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold."

One of the first audio books I listened to was 'Travels With My Aunt' by the same author. Although I remember very little of the story I know it was fun to listen to, while his tales of sweaty civil servants having affairs were much less fun. This one comes in between - not exactly fun, but at least I understood where it was coming from. I'm not sure if it's the audio medium or the more familiar setting of Brighton rather than Vietnam or Cuba that makes me like it better, because one thing's for sure, it never ends well for the characters in Greene's books.

Brain strain #3 - Work lunches

Adhisthana, July 2019

The third in the 'Brain strain' series, and quite a different type of story compared with the first two. Instead of straining my brain to take in new and challenging ideas and convert them to something useful and valuable, lunch time at work often strains my brain in a way that makes me want to run screaming from the room. Every fibre of my body is telling me to get out of there, and only with the force of will do I remain in my seat, trying as hard as I can not to let my thoughts reveal themselves through my face.

Here's one recent example.

We all come together for lunch most days. Usually the chat is about what everyone did at the weekend, what the latest nonsensical rules are for Covid (recently: Teachers!! Schools!!), how rubbish various colleagues are, and what people have been watching on TV. And often there is talk of what I've brought for lunch (because I have quite interesting lunches), and how weird it is that I eat them at room temperature and don't heat them up. Which, I suppose, is a reasonable criticism, but I like food at room temperature, I think it tastes better most of the time. Except soup. I'll heat up soup. Except gazpacho, and come to think of it, vichyssiose, and there's a cold tomato soup that I love, and watercress...

Then MS told us, and I wish I could remember how the subject arose in conversation, that she carries two small stones with her, one of red jasper and the other black obsidian, in her bra.

"In your bra?" D asked.

"Yes, in my bra. Shall I get them out?"

Well, the consensus to this was obviously a resounding 'yes', so she fished out two smallish stones, about the size of quail's eggs, one dusky pink and the other shiny black.

"How do those help you?" asked R.

I must have lost consciousness briefly at that point because I have no idea what the answer was. Perhaps my brain yelling "Run away, now!" drowned it out.

"It's like crystals," said someone else.

"Oh crystals, yes," said R. "I've heard of that. They're really good. I believe in them,"

"Well, it's like that. And feathers," said MS.

"Feathers?"

"Yes," continued MS, "seeing a white feather means that someone who has died is looking out for you. Whenever I'm having a bad time and I think of my brother, I always see a white feather. I've got one on the picture in my room."

"And seeing a robin. That's supposed to be someone who's died," chimed in R.

"There's a robin at my house keeps crapping on my car," said D.

"Well, who's died that has something against you?" asked MS.

"Nobody I can think of has died recently," said D.

"It doesn't have to be recent, could be any time. Who's dead and would have wanted to piss you off?"

"Ooh, can't think of anyone!"

At this point I felt I'd sat there long enough to be able to make a decent exit, so I left them to their bra stones, crystals, feathers and robins. Makes a change from hearing about the latest TV reality show, I suppose.

Brain strain #2 - Mr MXF

A calming picture of Ozzy at the bottom of my stairs, September 2019

When I've mentioned that I'm doing some work for Mr MXF, it's not surprising that people have asked what it is that I'm doing. They have had to make do with very scanty information up to now, including the phrase "it's complicated." Well, I'm going to put that right, here and now.

So, let me see. It's complicated.

Mr MXF did the same engineering degree as me 35 years ago, and he must have enjoyed it more than I did, and understood quite a lot more than I did, because unlike me he then went on to apply what he had learned to the world of the electronics and technology standards that sit behind our broadcast services. Back then it was the BBC. Nowadays it's Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Fox, YouTube, IMAX, TV, and the little screen on the back of the plane seat in front of you.

MXF stands for Material eXchange Format, and it is one of those technology standards. From what I understand, Mr MXF had quite a key role in creating the standard, and I think it's quite an important standard, and now I'm guessing that it would be a good thing if all these different media and film people told their technologists to use the standard. 

The standard relates to the fact that broadcast media, let's just say movies to make things a bit simpler, are predominantly distributed in digital format. Their destination is the cinema, or your television, or your desktop, laptop or tablet computer, or your smartphone, or the little screen on the back of the plane seat in front of you. All of those different devices have to know how to deliver the digital information contained in the film in a way that your device can display on its screen. So the same film content may need to be encoded in a different way for all of these platforms.

Then there are different soundtracks and languages and subtitles and audio description. Different countries may demand certain material to be cut, or added - the actual content and running time of a movie on a plane may be different from the same movie shown in a cinema which may be different again from the version you stream or download from the Internet. 

Putting all this together, there may be a hundred different versions of a movie. And what you don't want is to have to digitally store each of those versions in their entirety. Digital storage costs money, and some versions may never be needed, and 90% or more of the digital content will be the same, it's only the language, or that 3 minute scene in the middle that had to be cut for the China market, or the Netflix anti-theft coding (now I'm making things up) that will be different.

So what I think the MXF standard does is to allow the core content of the movie to be stored once, and all the adjustments and differences to be stored once, and when a particular version is needed, all the right pieces are put together to make the version that is delivered. And Mr MXF is the Standards Vice President for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (a voluntary, unpaid post), and at the same time sells his consultancy - a unique blend of knowledge, creativity, enthusiasm, silliness and wisdom. And you also need to know that everything I have written in this post so far may be completely wrong. We didn't even do the same engineering degree - our choices in the third year were very different.

So what am I doing for Mr MXF?

It all boils down to the fact that Mr MXF is very good at what he does and probably has even more ideas than I do (and I have a lot of ideas) but only a certain amount of time to do things. However, I have time to do some of the things that Mr MXF does not have time to do but are within the scope of someone who has no broadcast technology knowledge or experience but quite a lot of brain that isn't being used to its fullest extent. And he only has a certain amount of money to spare, and I only have a certain amount of time to spare, and at the moment those two match up quite nicely.

So Mr MXF came up with a long list of things that he wants to do but doesn't have time for, and we skimmed through them together with me making notes like my life depended upon it, because while I have a lot of brain that isn't being used to its fullest extent, actually using it to its fullest extent is a challenge all of a sudden. And I chose a few different tasks to have a go at, and it's been incredibly satisfying to stretch my brain.

We have had some follow up conversations, and Mr MXF is quite good at supplying as much information as my brain can take, and then shoves a bit more in. I get a particular sensation at the point of overload which I tend to describe as my brain melting out of my ears (although that's not what the sensation is like). Then I go away and try to make sense of it, and send some stuff over for Mr MXF to have a look at, and I'm pleased to report that so far it has turned out to be what he was hoping for.

I've had a go at three projects so far. One was around a set of short educational films, three to four minutes long, which need to be advertised and then delivered to a number of platforms (e.g. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter). After I'd rummaged around the equivalent of the back of the bins in Instagram alone I'd already lost the will to live, and we decided that perhaps this job wasn't for me. But the other two are going well.

One project is essentially a database of everything relating to the MXF standard - other standards, conference papers, journal articles, talks, everything. The idea is that not only will I assemble and collate all this stuff, but it will form a searchable resource, and to do this I have had to learn new things - JSON coding and Visual Code Studio and Github for starters. You don't need to know what they are, and I'm pretty sure most people would find it as uninteresting as I found Instagram, but I like it.

I've only just started on the other project, which involves Mail Hosting. On the face of it this is terrifying - having had to dig under the surface of Outlook mail for mum and dad I have met some of the deranged horrors that lurk in that abode. One misplaced digit and your email initiates a nuclear explosion in a poverty-stricken third world country instead of being delivered to the room next door. Or, more likely, your email just stops working.

Anyway, I dipped my toe very gently into a package called Postmark, which has the most comprehensive and well-written tutorials I have ever encountered, so I have a good feeling so far. What this package does is help you with 'transactional email' - messages that are sent to an individual that the individual is expecting. Like confirmation of a password reset, or an order confirmation, or a welcome email when you sign up for something. Mr MXF hosts a number of different websites, and getting the transactional email set up more robustly is a pressing need.

Then there is mail forwarding, which allows a message sent to a generic mailbox to be forwarded automatically to the people who need to see it - imagine what happens to the message addressed to 'sales@company.com' or 'info@company.com'. I have started to investigate Pobox, whose tutorials and FAQs are not as good as Postmark, but it's early days.

So that's where I am so far, and to be honest I'd like to spend more time on this part of my busy life, but what with camping and my Buddhist retreat and supervising the plumbers (update: still no wet room) and my diabetes work I haven't had as much time as I thought I would. So I'm going to stop writing this blog and give my brain a little more exercise now.

Brain strain #1 - Buddhism

Adhisthana, November 2019

I think it's time that I wrote a bit about what's going on with me and this Buddhism lark, given how much of my time it's taking up. If you imagine splitting all my waking hours into five, then one fifth is working as a Diabetes Dietitian in the NHS, one fifth is activity relating to Triratna Buddhism, one fifth is activity relating to my new employment with Mr MXF (or at least, it's fast growing to become that size), and the other two-fifths contains everything else - socialising, housework, cooking, exercise, home admin, LTRP, watching films, writing blog posts.

So there's a lot of Buddhism going on, and I've been wondering whether it's just because it gives me a project to put into that fifth of my life. While I was on retreat last week I tried to scale back on distractions, using social media as little as possible, not turning on the TV or watching films, no Internet, checking email and my phone as little as possible, and those changes weren't too difficult. The thing that was the hardest by far is that I decided not to distract myself with anything during mealtimes - no reading, podcasts, radio, puzzle books, planning, making lists, browsing the Internet. In fact, it was so unbearable that I had to pull back a little and allow myself classical music rather than silence while I ate.

I seem to have a big problem doing nothing (especially during mealtimes). Not that it's a good idea to do a lot of nothing, but surely I should be able to relax without having something useful to do all the time? Just sit, without referring to one of my lists to tell me what's waiting for my attention, what really needs to get done by the end of the week, what new job I ought to get started on? If I can't do that then the end of the LRTP plus retirement are going to leave me in a bit of a state, sitting in my beautiful house wondering what to do next. And I don't want Buddhism to become the thing that fills the gap for no other reason than my other projects are finished.

Having said that, one of the reasons I got involved with the Buddhists and with Mr MXF was because work was so unsatisfying, the LTRP, housework and admin (while necessary) aren't all that enjoyable, and I wanted a local group of friends with values and interests that are similar to mine. But the reason for staying involved is only partly to fill a gap in my social life and fulfil my need to have ideas and see them come about. It has also helped me understand a bit more about myself and identify aspects of me that I want to acknowledge and accept, and other aspects that I'd like to change.

The essence of Buddhism is that your actions have consequences. That's it in a nutshell. The idea is that 'skillful' actions are those that are helpful, constructive, have positive results, and not only that but they also make you feel better about yourself and the world. 'Unskillful' actions are the opposite. And everyone is free to choose whichever actions they wish to take, but if you are a Buddhist you commit to trying your best to be skillful. I'm very happy to go along with this, because it has been proven by experience time and time again in my life.

Of course there's also the Buddha, there's 2,500 years of writing and poetry and art and teaching, there's arcane ritual if you want it, but there are no rules, no Commandments, no tablets of stone, only guidance that is based on this fundamental truth - you are in charge of your actions, and your actions have consequences. There are suggestions about what skillful and unskillful actions look like, and how you might go about changing habitual responses to become more skillful, and that's where meditation comes in, as a way of reflecting and thinking about how to change your habits for the better.

The Buddha wasn't a god. He was a privileged man, the son of a local chief, who gave it all up because he thought there had to be more to life. Somehow he worked out what that looked like, and started a movement, taught a load of followers, but even then he didn't lay down laws or require obedience. Alongside all the teachings his core message was, "Don't take my word for it, try it out for yourself." I find that very attractive. I don't have to believe in a load of magical nonsense, although if you do want magical nonsense there's lots to be found in the Buddhist texts. I don't have to believe in an all-powerful god figure. I don't even have to believe in reincarnation, which is lucky because that would be a problem for me.

So a month or two ago I decided to take the plunge, and declare myself a Buddhist. In normal circumstances this would be confirmed by a ceremony (arcane ritual, anyone?) but for six months this hasn't been possible. So it has been agreed verbally ("yes, we agree, you can join our club") and we are planning some sort of hybrid ceremony in person and online where I become a 'mitra', which literally means a 'friend' within the Triratna Buddhist Community. It isn't ordination, where you make a much stronger commitment and get a Sanskrit name, and in fact nobody should notice the change if I don't mention it. It feels quite uncomfortable mentioning it here, because I didn't set up this blog to talk about personal stuff. But I suppose it must be important enough to write about because here I am writing about it.

So why the brain strain?

It's because it turns out that I am illiterate. I'm like a yokel brought up on a farm, making a living, doing very well, doesn't realise she can't read until someone gives her a book. I've always understood stuff - I've found some of it badly written, or uninteresting, and sometimes I've had to put some effort into working out what it means, but I've always understood written and spoken sentences before. 

Buddhist teachers can be using English and stringing words together where I know the meaning of all the words, but they are put in an order that makes no sense to me. Using metaphors of the heart, and the senses, and long words like 'integration' and 'enlightenment'. What I never knew was that there is a great big hole in my mind; after listening to a talk others nod wisely and offer comments and clarification that also make no sense whatever, and the teacher says 'Yes', or 'I would put it differently' or 'That's a good point' and I'm still entirely in the dark.

But it doesn't matter. There's no exam. I absolutely don't have to understand anything except that I have a choice of actions and I am responsible for the consequences. Anything I grasp on top of that is a bonus. And it's not all murky incomprehension, there's a whole lot that I do understand, and as time goes by I fit more little pieces into the picture. The challenge is that the picture is a million-piece 3D jigsaw with a blank image and no box lid to show what the end product looks like.

This retreat I attended last week was for people who have at least three years experience as a mitra, so it's to be expected that I had a little trouble. But even over the course of the week I understood a tiny bit more and can put that to work within the bigger project of being as happy as I can in this life and doing as little damage to others as possible. And taking responsibility for my actions.

What I've been reading

The Full Cupboard of Life
by Alexander McCall Smith

"Mma Precious Ramotswe helps indecisive fiancé Mr J.L.B. Matekoni when orphan farm manager Mma Potakwani persuades him to jump out of an aeroplane, and a bullying dishonest competing mechanic calls."

Not much more to say about this one now that we're in the full swing of the series. As good as the others, a very enjoyable read.

Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine
by Hannah Fry

"Welcome to the age of the algorithm, the story of a not-too-distant future where machines rule supreme, making important decisions – in healthcare, transport, finance, security, what we watch, where we go, even who we send to prison."

I've learned a lot about algorithms here, but while I enjoyed the book a lot I haven't retained much information after reading it. It does have some very interesting case study narratives, and raises many of the issues that I am aware of - how does a self-driving car decide between two different fatality rates? why is it important for human pilots to override automatic pilots (this one surprised me - pilots weren't required to practise without automation until after a fatal accident in 2009). The book reinforces my belief that if human error puts you on the wrong side of an algorithm (e.g. identified as someone you're not, or having an incorrect credit score), you can be in as much trouble as if the algorithm were correct. 

A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire
by Simon Schama

narrated by Stephen Thorne

"This volume tells the eventful and exhilarating story of Britain’s rise and fall as an imperial power, from the political turmoil of the 1770s to the struggle of present day leaders to find a way to make a different national future."

He's picked a few subjects to focus on: India, Ireland and Winston Churchill spring to mind, but as he says, it's A History, not The History. I really should try and learn about the history of the United States next.

Change Your Mind
by Paramananda

"Buddhism is based on the truth that, with effort, we can change the way we are, and among the many methods Buddhism has to offer, meditation is the most direct. It is the art of getting to know one's own mind and learning to encourage what is best in us."

I first read this in June 2018, and wrote at that time that I would come back to it in about a year, when I'd probably get more out of it. It's been two years, but I was absolutely right - I understand many more of the references, and it's been a good reminder of some of the more basic principles of Buddhist meditation alongside this advanced level retreat I'm on.

Buddhism: tools for living your life
by Vajragupta

"The personal stories, examples, exercises, and questions in this book help transform Buddhist practice into more than just a fine set of ideals. They make the path of ethics, meditation, and wisdom a tangible part of our lives."

Very readable and pitched just right for the point I'm at, where I know a few things but not at great depth. So it reinforces things I've picked up and adds just a little more to think about. And it's nice having met the writer, who is also a great teacher.

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
by Alexander McCall Smith

"Not only has Mma Ramotswe suffered a mishap - a collision between her tiny white van and a bicycle - but she is also having to deal with a major personality clash between her assistant Mma Makutsi and Charlie, one of the garage apprentices."

This is probably the best so far, interesting stories that take the characters a bit further along their path.

The Triratna Story: Behind the Scenes of a New Buddhist Movement
by Vajragupta

"This is the story of a circle of friends dreaming a dream, and working to make it a reality. It’s a record of idealism and naivety, growth and growing pains, friendship and fall-out. It’s a celebration of how so much was achieved in so short a time, and a reflection on the mistakes made, and lessons learnt."

An easy read during my retreat, this tells the history of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order from its origin in 1960's London up to its change of name to Triratna in 2010. Of little interest to the general public, it's quite useful to me because I'm trying to work out how to grow the Warwick Group, and knowing a bit about the structure of the organisation may help me to understand where we might get a bit of help along the way.