Hazel Ceej

Sepia Saturday    "Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. " ~ George Carlin Photo Courtesy: LMCF This week's Sepia theme takes me back to those afternoons when I was putting together a research proposal (Re: Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen). The project focuses on integrative complexity (IC) defined as a measure of intellectual style used by individuals or groups in processing information, problem solving, and decision making . The IC construct is used to measure complexity levels of government leaders during periods of crises.   Cognitive studies in communication examine changes in leaders' IC levels, i.e. world leaders in the war against terrorism, Middles Eastern leaders during the 9/11 crisis, German parliamentarians on the Gulf War.  The theory is that IC complexity levels decline during conflicts and increase during resolutions of conflicts. A notable finding from a prev...

In a bid to make CJ follow his morning routine before going to school, i.e., eat, brush teeth and shower on time, I offered him a deal he could not say no to: his own mobile phone. He is mainly after the games so I bought him this China-made, disposable Nokia something. And a mild addiction began surfacing. More worthwhile activities are put on hold. Yaya could hardly coax him to eat. Wasn't I told in previous talks with the Grandma that CJ was so keen on this sort of gadget? So I learned yet again. The fun is on sending each other messages when we are actually just a room apart, no matter how terse replies to my full sentences are. Some indulgence during a two-week vacation when distance between us shrank could not be very bad. Gradual phone use restriction should be in order now that I'm back to reality, a.k.a. work.

Monday, June 11th was CJ's first day in first grade and the next day I was still on the phone, hungry for updates. My foremost concern was how did he find and take it. Any friends? The first day, I was told, they did mostly orientation stuff. What I liked hearing best of all was that CJ found a friend and behaved just fine. "Oh, that's good," I said to the Grandma. "Who is that kid?" Like any mom I am interested to know who are my child's friends. CJ's new school friend, I found, is a transferee student from Cebu. "Looks like a smart kid," Grandma observed, "he and CJ hit it off quickly as they have one thing in common - they both speak English." Apparently, CJ's English language training has benefited him. And I have yet to 'unboggle' my mind about all this talk of local dialects in Philippine schools being adapted as medium of instruction , translations to English, and back to conversational lingo. Sometimes it seem...

It's a challenge; and understandable enough: if it's hard getting adults to eat healthy, how do we go about this business on kids? I check what I am doing or not or have don e against professional advice that I read.  MedicineNet nutrition experts suggest ways for parents to guide their children to eat a sound diet. Avoid power struggle "Do it because I'm the parent" or worse, "Eat or else..." Have you said something like that to your kids during a meal? Once I told my son, "no eat, no play." I realize it could be a form of slight power struggle. He ate but couldn't have understood why he had to eat in order to play. Author of The Parent's Toolshop Jody Johnston Pawel explains that this rationale does not work for long. Expose I had no idea children have to be exposed to a new food 10 to 15 times before they accept it. If they play with a berry on their plate, parents are advised not to give up but keep encouraging them to eat. Sug...

Top Gun glamor Tom Cruise. Not new. Einstein, Currie, Edison. Entrepreneurs and nobel laureates - believable enough as research links dyslexia with high cognition and creativity. When Cher acted in the Mask as a mom who could not read, I didn't know she was also dyslexic in real life. Names like Kiera Knightley, Andy Warhol and George Washington made me go 'they too?' Now some 13 other biggies: 1. John Lennon . It was his voice singing "you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one" I was hearing while traipsing the killing fields in Cambodia. 2. Nigel Kennedy .  ... all those violin music I have been fortunately subjected to lately 3. Leonardo da Vinci .  Just huge. 4. Pablo Picasso .  Portrait de la tante Pepa 5. Hans Christian Andersen.   Fairy tales are so alive in my world! 6. Agatha Christie . I wanna get my hands on The Body in the Library 7. Terry Goodkind, author of The Sword of Truth series. 8. F. Scott Fitzgerald . Hmnn... I have...