transposable element

am back in school, albeit facing the opposite side of the room than i previously planned. they call me a dozentin- –some sort of an affiliate teaching staff– for technical english. it took a while to unearth the aptitude for teaching which has been buried for more than 10 years. but it took just the whole of two minutes in front of the calss today to shake the jitters away. it suddenly felt like i was well, in my elements.

in the past, i’ve given the notion of teaching english not more than a casual thought. it’s just not something i can imagine myself to enjoy doing. many people have tried to push me, “surely, you can do that!” but see, i have this thing with committing only to tasks i’m fairly confident that i can make a good job of. for me, it’s simply not a question of whether i can accomplish a task or not. equally important is whether i am competent enough to turn out more than just a mediocre performance in it or not (i know, AnP, i’m really becoming german, haha!)

so i’ve always said, “no, it’s not my field. i studied life sciences, not languages.” my myopic and unimaginative view prevented me from exploring the possibilities. until the opportunity practically fell on my lap, i never thought of teaching technical english/scientific writing. until the offer came. and then i had no more alibis. i know it’s something i can do, and i know i can do it well.

what do they call it? serendipity?

does the fact that you haven’t done somethng before increase, or decrease, its appeal to you?

imagine you’re to do something new, something you haven’t done before. does it make you excited? or apprehensive? or both? which emotion wins most of the time? do you go ahead and do it anyway?

before you start to think this is some kind of test or psychological profiling, let me say that it’s not. i don’t know what it means if you answer one way or the other. i studied microbiology, afterall, not psychology.

i am about to embark on something new. not totally new, but new nonetheless. and i’m worried how it will fit right in with everything else i’ve got going on right now. will i like it? will it work out? or will it be, as we say in the filipino vernacular, just another stone to hit my own head with?

how about you? done something new recently?

recently, there have been numerous scientific articles written by sleep experts telling us just how many hours of sleep we need to rejuvenate our brains and body (doc emer has an informative entry on the importance of sleepinghere). but really, how many hours of sleep do YOU feel you need?

the last several days, i’ve been burning the midnght oil either to work on my blogs, or to get our laundry basket under control. come to think of it, i still manage to get up to about 7 hours of sleep, since I wake up relatively late, but I can’t help feeling that it’s slowly taking it’s toll. if i were to ask a business consultant, he’d probably estimate that my recent sleeping habits is decreasing my productivity by (insert a random number here) percent, which subsequently reduces my revenues by (insert anothr ridiculous number here) percent.

but i don’t ned a consultant to tell me that. i feel it. i feel slower and lethargic. not that I can’t be so even after a good night’s sleep, though. but i love sleep. i need sleep. someone chastised me before how i can i allow myself to squander my lifetime by sleeping, pointing out what an utter waste it is for someone to sleep through a third of their life. well, i’d rather “miss out” on that third and live the remaining two-thirds vividly, than miss out little, and muddle through the many waking hours i gained drowsy.

5, 6, 7, 8? how many hours of sleep do you need?

i’ve finished my set of shots for junnie’s memento around the world project:

This is the objective of MEMENTO Around the World! It’ll be your turn to show me your world through your eyes. We could’ve swapped .jpg’s or digital albums but heck that’s just too simple. I want you to share this with everyone else as we launch 5 (probably more, i’m just waiting for addresses) disposable cameras around the world and see how 5 friends who said YES first will capture their world in 2-3 images and pass the camera to another friend who then captures 2-3 images - of her going to school, of her backyard and how green (or brown) it is, bring the camera during a family gathering, or take a snapshot of yourself from the (bathroom) mirror, anything. We dont break any rules, because there aren’t any.

want to share how your part of the world looks like? send me an email at paruparongb(at)gmail.com, quick, and i’ll send you one of junnie’s cameras via snailmail.

when i tell stories, complain or make comparisons between my life here in germany to that in the philippines, i’ve always thought it was the pinoy in me making the comparisons. but a recent visit to an american facility here in germany made me realize how americanized my tastes actually have been. having had only small doses of the philippines the last five years, i’ve forgotten that americans indeed left more than their language as a legacy to the filipinos, and how much of what i think is “normal” is actually based on american, and not philippine metrics.

i like my brownies as moist, fudgy and chocolatey as possible; my pancakes thick and soft, oozing with maple syrup. i love root beer, and nobody can convince me that it’s comparable to malz bier. i like my coffee weak, watery and milky. with sugar, please. and ahhh..cinnamon rolls! a real comfort food and much more satisfying than crepe-mit-zucker-und-zimt. i want ice cubes in my coke, but skip the lemon. there are germans who say that the worst food in germany is mcdonald’s, but i think they still make the best french fries. ah, and bread! don’t get me started with bread! hubby’s happy enough that i’ve skipped white bread, but wheat toast is as far as i can go; i don’t understand why a loaf has to wiegh a ton and take 5 minutes to chew a mouthful of. i can go and on, and that’s not even going beyond food.

i am pinoy. or am i?

i’m not sure just exactly when filipinos started observing halloween. i just know that it’s something i myself did not grow up with, but my niece and nephew are all giddy and excited about. “we’re going trick-or-treating, tita!” huh?

what i do associate with the end of october are what used to be our yearly trail to my parents’ provinces, to be there right in time for All Saints’ Day. laden with dozens of usualy red intricately designed candles and tubs of gladioli and baby’s breath, the family will flock to the cemetery on the first of november to light candles and put flowers on graves of long-ago dead members of the clan. don’t ask me why we went on the first and not on the second of november, the second more appropriate being All Souls’ Day. but in the philippines, you do as your elders tell you to do, and you don’t ask questions.

the public cemeteries are hot, dusty and crowded. people are tired, stressed and sometimes, lost. people take the opportunity to catch up on the lives of relatives, the grave serving as a sort of venue for family reunions. it’s not unusual for people to bring food and radio (what would pinoys be without music!). children collect the dripping from the candles and make a bet as to who can make the biggest ball of wax ever. if there’s anything that day isn’t, it was sorrowful. which is a bit ironic and ridiculous, i have to admit, but hey, what can i say? pinoys are probably just a pragmatic lot.

as i grew up, those visits became more and more sporadic because it was simply too inconvenient to go. a trip to my dad’s province at the time took about 5 hours (or maybe it just *felt* like five hours to the child i was), and to my mother’s almost double. i guess my parents got over the deaths of their own parents eventually, and didn’t feel the need to go visit their graves anymore. i don’t know. as for me, how can i grieve for the people i never really knew when they were alive? or feel connection to the relatives i meet for only a few hours ever other year?

it’s almost that time of the year again and these memories are so so far away, both in terms of time and space. suddenly, i find myself missing those trips. even though they seem a bit nonsensical, those trips hold more meaning to me than halloween ever will.

if you get regularly exposed to something, does that numb you to the experience? if you ride roller coasters regularly, will it eventually cease to be thrilling? if you wear that ill-fitting shoe long enough, will your foot eventually get used to its shape and conform? how many years of marriage does it take til you begin to ignore the sensation of a foreign material circling your finger? how many deaths do you have to survive til you get numb from the loss of a loved one?

my oct 11’s daily om tackled the issue “accepting loss” and dealing with the cycle of grief. i’d like to share it especially with you:

When we experience any kind of devastating loss, whether it is the loss of a loved one, a dream, or a relationship, feelings may arise within us that are overwhelming or difficult to cope with. This sense of grief can also come up when we are separated from anyone or anything we have welcomed into our lives. And while it may feel like we are caught up in a never-ending spiral of sadness and emptiness, it is important to remember that the grief we are feeling is not a permanent state of being. Rather, grief is part of the process of letting go that in many ways can be a gift, allowing us to go deeper within ourselves to rediscover the light amidst the seeming darkness.

The emotions that accompany any kind of loss can be intense and varied. A sense of shock or denial is often the first reaction, to be replaced by anger. Sometimes this anger can be directed at your loved one for “abandoning” you; at other times you may feel outrage toward the universe for what you are enduring. And while there are stages of grief that people go through - moving from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance - the cycles of grief often move in spirals, sometimes circling forward and then back again. You may even experience moments of strength, faith, and laughter in between. While these emotions seem to come and go sporadically, it is important to feel them, accept them, and allow them to flow. With time, patience, and compassion, you will eventually find your center again.

As we move through our grief, we may find ourselves reluctant to release our pain, fearing we are letting go of who or what we have lost. We may even regard our movement toward healing as an act of disloyalty or giving up. Know that while the hurt may fade, the essence of what you had and who you loved will have already transformed you and forever stay with you. If anything, once you are ready for the pain of your loss to subside, their memories can then live more fully within you. Remember, that healing is a part of the spiraling cycles of grief, and that in letting yourself feel restored again, you are surrendering to a natural movement that is part of the dance of life.

someone passed away recently. someone i never knew personally, but whose death has shaken me. made me realize how fragile life is. at this moment, i wish i could i’d fly home and be with the people that, realistically speaking, i know i just have a few short years remaining to spend with. weird, isn’t it, how death makes you think about life?

finally, after several weeks of choosing and tossing, i’ve settled on a title for this blog. so yes, despite the new title, it’s still me, ruth. if you need to update your links, might as well change it to my new url, too: http://www.about-ruth.com. will soon have everyone auto-directed over there. AnP’s promising me a spanking new lay-out that will match my virtual persona. but, like my opa neighbor always say when he sees us rushing up or down th staicase, “langsam, langsam… we’ll get there, one at a time…”

so, what is a transposable element, anyway?

also called transposons, or jumping genes, transposable elements are segments of DNA that can move around to different positions within a cell’s genome. the process of ‘transposition’ is simply removal from one place to be relocated to another. sounds familiar? well, if you’re an expat, you’ll know what it means to be relocated, or sometimes more aptly, dislocated, from one place to another.

that’s not where the analogy ends. in the process of transposition, these DNA segments can cause mutations, or change, both in the spots where it came from and where it transfers to. ultimately, it has an influence on the traits expressed by the cell. i’d like to think that i am making waves, confined though they may be to the little communities where i play a role. i may be just a statistic in studies outlining population migratory patterns, but in my own small world, i make a difference (nothing big, i guess, but not completely negligible either). not only in the place i left, and the place to where i go, but well, you know… they say when you drop a pebble in a pond, you’ll never know how far the ripples go…

transposable element. bow.

now and again, i encounter scientific literature that goes against the grain, against instinct, if i may call parenting that. see, we’ve adapted the “attachment parenting” approach in bringing up jan: lots of physical contact and no cry-til-you-can’t-breathe-anymore and the you-have-to-learn-how-to-soothe-yourself disciplinary approach. together with attachment parenting naturally comes breast-feeding and co-sleeping; jan has been breastfed for more than a year, and is still with us on the matrimonial bed to date.

so being a breastfeeding advocate, i am confounded by a recent report saying that breastmilk cause more cavities than cow’s milk. i say, huh? and then there’s the new guideline from the American Academy of Pediatrics saying that infants should sleep in their cribs, not in their parents’ beds.

“The recommendations are very straightforward and clear: Babies should not be asleep in the same bed that their parents are sleeping in,” said James Kemp, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at Saint Louis University and a world-recognized researcher on SIDS.

so will I follow the AAP recommendation? No way!

SIDS is a syndrome that shold not be confused with suffocation. the root cause for SIDS is not even pinpointed yet, as far as i know. there was a theory some time back that it was probably a microbial infection, but as soon as jan was past the susceptible age, i lost interest in the SIDs issue. but now that it infringes on the concept of co-sleeping, i am aghast how this research dares to contradict something that is natural: for parents and their offsprings to stay together. the st. louis press release further says:

He also has found that SIDS is more common among African-American infants than in babies of other races because they are more likely to be put to sleep in adult beds or on surfaces other than cribs, such as sofas.

“There are varied reasons for sleeping with your kids. In St. Louis, we found that the practice was more common among families who could not afford safe cribs,” Kemp said.

The policy statement makes other recommendations about where babies should sleep: They shouldn’t share beds with other children, nor sleep with an adult on a couch or armchair.

not only do i find this racially insensitive, but difficult to believe. we’re not african-americans, but at any rate, our decision to co-sleep with jan had nothing to do with cost-cutting. in fact, we had a crib, a safe, sturdy crib, declared safe according to EU standards. all that emotional attachment parenting issues aside, we also had a fairly scientific ground to put him to bed with us: we figured that if SIDS was, indeed, an infectious disease, we would have had better chances of spotting the symptoms if he was right beside me, rather than if he was in his bed in another room. the ease of breastfeeding and the mammalian instinct to nurture their offspring by keeping close physical contact were difficult to ignore, of course.

i am not doubting the results of the study. afterall, i am neither a doctor, nor a medical researcher. but i wonder whether the study included population samples from asia and africa, where a crib is a rare luxury, if ever heard-of at all. in africa, babies are even borne on their mother’s backs the whole day long, on a sling (which i used, too, til jan got too heavy to bear). i wonder what the AAP has to say about this, in relation to the risk of contracting SIDS? and taking that further, i wouldn’t be surprised if they consider the mother’s arms as an unsafe place for an infant to sleep in!

september has been a wonderful transition from summer (if those wet and chilly july and august could be called summer at all) to autumn. the leaves are slowly turning colors and start to lay a crunchy carpet on the ground. over the past weekends, we’ve gone collecting black currants (makes wonderful jams!), apple-picking (made muffins, pies, and cakes, and still have a bushel to go) and collecting kastanien (inedible chestnuts, but great crafting material). pity that i can’t remember anything from my plant path course except that not all mushrooms are edible, otherwise we could have gone mushroom collecting in the woods as well, if i could distinguish one from the other. this time of the year, nature offers a lot of activities to fill up a pre-schooler’s day (ey, that’s the first time i used that word: goodbye toddler, hello pre-schooler!). even rainy days are no exception: completely outfitted in rain gear, jumping into puddles keeps jan filled with glee for hours! it’s been a wonderful autumn so far, and i don’t mind the drop in the temperatures (yet). funny that it takes this to realize how much i enjoy being outdoors. there’s a lot of varied things to do and jan’s enthusiasm for all these activities is just contagious!

autumn is also the time of the year i appreciate the four-season climate the most. when the leaves turn golden in the sun and the pullovers are again brought out of storage, it reminds me that time do pass by. another season over, another year will close soon. it prods some reflection, how the year has been, what the future holds.

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i just read lei and stephen pretty much doing the same things in california and lei brought up a comparison i was trying to quell: should we move back to asia, jan will be deprived of all these things. hm.