Sylvia's Journal

Sita has arrived in China. I wrote on her Facebook wall to please not drink the milk. I don’t think she is much of a milk drinker despite her parents’ exhortations early in life. But now that seems like a good thing.

She is on the road with a crew of visual facilitators for the world economic forum. By drawing pictures of what the wise and powerful think she makes explicit what’s in their heads. Whether correct or flawed, once out in the open it can be connected to other thoughts, questioned and studied, then synthesized. This is the only way that we can address our increasingly intractable, complex and systemic problems without creating more winners and losers in the usual places, generating more problems, requiring more conferences, more Sitas. I suspect she will always have work, a good thing, while at the same time serving all of us, also a good thing.

As a result of all this exposure Sita gets, repeatedly and from different angles, a 30,000 or maybe 60,000 feet view of the state of the world. Last week she was surrounded by global financial experts in Vienna just when the shit hit the fan. She may well know more than is good for a 28-year old. Here, in Manchester we remain in blissful ignorance, as long as it lasts. Our retirement funds are tied up in stocks that are falling, but then again, our retirement is far beyond the horizon; Axel hasn’t even started his career and mine is good for at least another 20 years. Hopefully we are wiser stewards of our collective savings by then.

Instead of meeting Axel on the rocks with a fishing rod and a beer, I encountered him yesterday as we crossed each other on 128; he stuck in a traffic jam behind an accident heading southbound on his way to his branding class. We waved at each other while we talked on the phone. Fishing would have been better, but the class was great as I discovered this morning by the enthusiastic display of school work – the winning design – that I found on the kitchen counter this morning amidst other notes; a critical method of communication when we are all on different schedules.

My day was so hectic that I could not step out of it to go rowing – a shame again, the weather was exceedingly beautiful; blue sky, sun and calm. It is proposal season at MSH, so it seems, and I was called in on one just when my dance card was already entirely filled in for the day. I found myself sliding occasionally into a panic mode and had to concentrate on staying in the here and now and do, whatever I was doing, well without looking at the next task on the desk. I always thought that multi-tasking was a good thing, a capacity to be proud off but I am finally figuring out that it is a liability with much potential for mistakes and forgetfulness.

I stopped at trader Joe’s on the way home and stocked up on frozen foods. With Tessa now being away at work all day, Steve about to get a job, and Axel with his two courses, it is clear that the cooked meal I’d like to see when I come home is getting to be an entirely unrealistic expectation. But this week Steve is still home and so I found a dinner waiting for me and Tessa, cooked by Steve, all by himself. It was an unusual stir fry that was a cross between Chinese and Italian cuisine. Steve had been a bit worried when Axel, rushing out of the house, had tossed him the task of getting a meal ready before the women came home. This is not something Steve is very experienced in, but he did well. Not only did the meal include most food groups, it was also tasty.