Distractions, reflections

Distractions, reflections

David Ing, at large … Sometimes, my mind wanders

Fall from gold

April 21, 2006
For the first time, in maybe 15 years, I’ve fallen from the upper level status in frequent flyer programs. Last year, I was Aeroplan Elite (which is Star Alliance Gold). This year, I’m at zero. I’m so low, my Aeroplan card doesn’t even state a level on it!

Diana dropped me off at the airport for my 8 p.m. flight to Munich (on my way to Fuschl am See, Austria, for an IFSR meeting). Since I was late for my flight last fall, I made extra sure this time that I would be early. We arrived at about 5:30 p.m. for an 8:00 p.m. flight. I tried to check in, but the first agent said that I couldn’t be assigned a seat. She said that the equipment was being changed (i.e. one aircraft was being swapped for another), and that my baggage would have to be tagged as standby. Since this is a complication that could result in my luggage being left in Toronto, I declined, and she told me to come back in 20 minutes.

In 15 minutes, I was back in line. The second agent said that there wasn’t an issue with equipment being changed, and I still couldn’t be assigned a seat. My baggage was tagged as standby, and I went through the security check to get to the departure gate. (I normally would have stopped by the Maple Leaf Lounge for soup and sandwiches, but Diana packed dinner for me). At the departure gate, no agent showed up until 7:15 p.m., and then there about 40 people got into line. He told everyone to wait, and he would call them.

At 7:30 p.m., boarding started. At 7:45 p.m., I was one of two persons left sitting in the departure area. The agent finally called my name, and I got my boarding card. I lined up, and was right behind a person with whom the Air Canada agent was saying “Sir, there’s no call for that type of language”. I’m used to flying, so I wasn’t really worried about making it onto the flight, but it’s likely that others aren’t quite as patient.

I flew over in a middle seat of the last row of the second cabin (behind business class), and mostly dozed on the flight. I had my inflatable neck pillow and eye shades, and my feet fit on top of my bag under the seat in front of me. (It pays to be small on trans-oceanic flights). I woke up and caught the end of Aeon Flux — a good time-waster. Some more dozing, and next thing I knew, we were on descent into Munich. My baggage arrived, without drama.

Seat assignments are one of those behind-the-scenes things that work well for frequent flyers. I overheard the check-in agents working their way through the list of premium (full fare) customers, Super Elite and Elite passengers. If I had still been at one of the higher levels, I might have been offered a free upgrade. (The airlines like to fill up business class, because it’s a fixed cost, anyway). Unfortunately, Air Canada doesn’t give points for discount fares within North America anymore, so I’ll have to earn my Elite status on trans-oceanic flights. Since this trip, I’ve been trading stories with others who have lost their gold status, and are saying that they’ve been sent into the last class for boarding, as a penalty for falling from their levels of high status.

Pre-op, and connections to nowhere

April 18, 2006
In the small window of time before leaving for Europe, I had the pre-op for my cataract surgery scheduled. Since this was the day before an international conference that I’ve been working on for months, it was a busy day.

I find the hospitals, like most public institutions in Canada, to be interesting reminders of citizenship. Generally, the health care professionals are more than capable. Public services are an equalizer. Priorities (e.g. emergencies) are mostly driven by need, rather than social status (i.e. money doesn’t usually help jump the queue). In the best demonstration of Max Weber’s machine bureaucracy , pretty well everyone gets the same level of care and treatment. It’s likely that in the perverse Canadian way, the more a person raises his or her voice, the more he or she will be flagged as someone annoying. (In either the American or French culture, it’s probably a way of “getting noticed”).

The pre-admission facility at St. Michael’s Hospital, from a business perspective, seems pretty well thought out. On the one hand, it provides efficient pre-op services. The patient stays in a little room. Then, a nurse comes to take a medical history, various technicians come through (e.g. the blood technician takes a sample), and a doctor does a physical exam. From a function of bedside manner, however, the facility also seems to be on the path towards reducing anxiety in the patient. There’s a standard video that is played. (I was entertained by the shots of not doing anything requiring motor control on the day of anaesthesia, which not only included driving cars, but also cutting vegetables in the kitchen!) The doctor answers any final questions that the patient may have. I suppose that this is a last opportunity to back out, if the patient has any second thoughts about elective surgery!

One personal downside of the medical system is, though, that western medicine doesn’t seem to recognize Chinese medicine. When I commented about my resting pulse changing from 84 to 60 in the past month, the doctor seemed to think that was normal. He said that a person’s pulse can change walking across the room. This feels a bit too much like denial of symptoms, and a potential blindness in a western philosophy of medicine.

The pre-op took 90 minutes, meaning that I was finished just in time to dial into a teleconference call. I’ve been taking the subway and bus to get to work, and getting on the subway would mean that I would miss much of the conference call. As a tactical decision, I confirmed with the subway fare collector that the College/Carlton/Gerrard streetcar runs to Main Street station on the Danforth line. From the Main Street station, it would be a few subway stops over to Warden, where I connect to the northbound bus. Thus, I could take the streetcar as a wending alternative to the subway, and continue to receive a mobile phone signal.

Thus, I got onto the Yonge Street subway at Queen, and went two stops north to College Street. I dialed into the conference call, and in 10 minutes, the streetcar pulled up. The right route … but a sign in the front said that the streetcar wasn’t following the prescribed route, and would turn south at Parliament and go across to Kingston Road and Victoria Park. Without more information, I decided that moving east was better than not moving at all, so I got on the streetcar.

It was a good idea to be on the conference call — there’s all sorts of minutiae that turns up the day before a conference starts. About 30 minutes later, I was at Kingston Road and Victoria Park. I got off. The streetcar went around a loop and returned westbound. I was still on the teleconference, but there’s no TTC service that connects at that point!

After walking around in circles for 10 minutes, I decided to take a taxi to a subway station. (The conference call went on for another 15 minutes after I got there!)

As a downtowner, we make jokes about being in Scarberia (i.e. the depths of Scarborough), but I usually don’t take the TTC there. This is probably more than I wanted to know about the transit system in Toronto.

Crap towns: British humour?

April 14, 2006
On my usual pre-travel preparations to somewhere that I’ve never been before, I thought I’d search the Toronto Public Library for some tour books on the UK. I was intrigued by the title Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places To Live In The UK, published by The Idler.

I’m scheduled to fly from Helsinki into Manchester on the morning of May 6. My friend Martin will be flying from Madrid to Manchester on the evening before, and will stay overnight in an airport hotel. The plan is for Martin to meeting me in the airport arrivals area, and we’ll take the train down to his, in Nottingham. I haven’t been anywhere in the UK except for London, so I asked Martin if there was anything worth seeing in Manchester. His reply was that he thought Manchester was “pretty grim”.

Without a frame of reference, I note that Manchester is listed on the Crap Towns list. Moreover, the comments on Hull aren’t too positive, either. In fact, the publication of the book was noted by the BBC in 2003, provoking some response from Hull as the place selected at the worst on the list. It’s possible that impressions on Hull are outdated — there seems to have been a lot of progress over the past 10 years — or else the development has been localized to the tourist areas. In either case, an update of the list in 2004 moved Hull from the position as worst to become the 19th. Manchester wasn’t on the 2003 list, but made position 40 on the 2004 list.

I take these ratings with a grain of salt, because it seems that only the British would write a book where they would publicize the worst. I assume that this has something to do with their sense of humour. Browsing the list some more, I did note one other place that both Diana and I have been: Slough. We used some frequent stay points, some years ago, for a week at the Slough/Windsor Marriott, which was the nearest hotel available to London when we tried to book. Most days, we would take the shuttle bus from the hotel to Heathrow, and catch the tube for an hour to ride into central London. We did go into Slough one day, to catch a train for a day at Oxford. It wasn’t a bad experience, probably just unremarkable.
I’m visiting the UK to visit at the University of Hull Business School, not primarily for tourism. The university appears to be away from the Hull, i.e. away from the harbour, which may mean something or nothing at all. As an urbanist, I’m interested in cities, both good and bad. Of course, I don’t have to live permanently in any of these places!

Fighting your way out of privilege

April 2, 2006
While working away on the new online registration feature for the ISSS web site, I was watching our free DVD for the month, which I selected as Beyond the Sea. It’s an entertaining biopic, and it’s always good to watch Kevin Spacey. (He’s influential on the script, following Howard Stern’s mindset to “suspend disbelief”).

One line struck me as particularly true, for middle class parents. In moment with his son, Kevin Spacey (as Bobby Darin) says:

I had to fight my way out of the Bronx, but not nearly as hard as you’ll have to fight to get out of Beverly Hills.

We do have discussions like that around the dinner table, and I’m glad that my kids appreciate how well off their childhoods have been. We had one conversation was about how many of their friends will or won’t be going to university or college because they can or can’t afford it. We’re in a neighbourhood where there are still a lot of immigrant parents, and some are more motivated than others about pushing their kids to post-secondary education.

I’m still an admirer, as well as beneficiary of free university education (even at the graduate school level!) in Finland.

Living in a mixed income neighbourhood has helped (at least) to give our sons some perspective. Studying Mandarin in Beijing is a privilege that we expect will give them even more perspective.

My cataract surgery is scheduled!

March 31, 2006
The opthamologist called me with an appointment.  The next available date for an operating room at St. Michael’s Hospital for Dr. Squires is Monday, May 15.  I’m scheduled to be back from Austria / Finland / UK on Thursday, May 11, so the timing is good.

I was assessed as needing the surgery on February 17.  From February 17 to May 11 is 87 days.  (This didn’t include the span from December 1 until February 15, which was how long it took just to get the consult with the optometrist!) 

I had previously commented on the Ontario wait time web site.  Here’s a snippet from scorecard, most recently and with some history.  (In addition the measures for all hospitals and St. Mike’s, I’ve included Don Mills Surgical Unit, which I see on the list as a privatized alternative).

  Hospital Median Wait Time (days) Average Wait Time (days) 90% completed within (days)
December 2005 – January 2006 All hospitals (65 of 77 reporting) 99 142 311
St. Michael’s Hospital (Toronto) 74 148 345
Don Mills Surgical Unit Ltd. (Toronto) 149 173 299
October – November 2005 All Hospitals (66 of 77 reporting) 93 138 314
St. Michael’s Hospital (Toronto) 85 134 335
Don Mills Surgical Unit Ltd. (Toronto) 117 141 272
August – September 2005 All hospitals (65 of 77 reporting) 99 142 311
St. Michael’s Hospital (Toronto) 74 148 345
Don Mills Surgical Unit Ltd. (Toronto) 149 173 299
July 2005 All Hospitals (61 of 77 reporting) 85 139 315
St. Michael’s Hospital (Toronto) 58 103 322
Don Mills Surgical Unit Ltd. (Toronto) 166 144 251

Although there’s some that might believe that privitization might fix the wait time issue, it looks like Ontario’s implemention of it doesn’t seem to make things much better.  

My wait time appears to have been within the ballpark, not only for St. Mike’s, but for the province.  I wonder why there’s variability month by month.

From cataract to pulse

March 27, 2006
Over the weekend, I had a headache, which is unusual. Unprecedented, however, was that my hands and feet were so cold, that I needed to get into bed — twice — to warm up. I phoned my naturopath / Chinese doctor, David Lam, and went over to see what he could do.

I’ve been under the care of Dr. Lam since 1996. He’s dean of the Institute for Traditional Chinese Medicine, the oldest teaching school of its domain in Canada. Dr. Lam was a pediatrician in a hospital in Shanghai, and has the advantage of being able to explain symptoms and problems in the contexts both of western and eastern philosophies. Since I’ve had eczema and allergies since childhood, I know that western medicine doesn’t have any answers. For most maladies, I generally prefer to see Dr. Lam and get some herbs. They seem to clear things up in a few days.

It was a nice day, so I decided to bike over to Dr. Lam’s office. It’s in the Dupont / Bathurst area, all the way cross town, so it’s ride over to the university and then beyond, about an hour in traffic. Dr. Lam is used to seeing me show up on a bike, and I could use the exercise, since I didn’t feel up to playing badminton on Sunday.

Dr. Lam asked about my symptoms. He first said that I must have a cold, and that a lot of his patients are coming in with colds because the winds have shifted. As we discussed more, he started the usual exam. The first step was taking my pulse. I don’t know how to read a pulse Chinese style — it’s a three-finger assessment on the right wrist and then the left wrist. Dr. Lam seemed to be taking a longer time on my right wrist. He then checked my left wrist, and said he wanted to check my right wrist, again. He opened up my file (which he usually doesn’t do).

On the last two visits, my resting pulse has been 84 beats per minute. That sounds about right, as the pulse I’ve had my entire life. Today, Dr. Lam said, my pulse was 60. This measurement was taken 5 minutes after bicycling for an hour. My energy is so low that it’s had systemic effect on my pulse!

The one thing that’s really unusual right now is, of course, the cataract in my left eye. Diana has pretty well taken away the keys to the car, and even drives Noah and me to badminton when we go. I’m not much in the mood to go out, and have been spending lots of time on the computer. I’ve taken the opportunity of staying at home to catch up on e-mail, and update my personal web sites, so I’m probably on the computer even more than usual. It’s productive, but since my left eye is a total blur, all of the information is coming through my right eye. I guess my body doesn’t like that. I assume that western medicine would say that there’s no connection between the cataract in my eye and my pulse. Diagnoses like that are why this is the third visit I’ve had with Dr. Lam since the beginning of the year.

If you’ve seen me at breakfast, you know that I usually have little canisters with lot of little pills — the modern way of taking Chinese herbs. I usually take an hour every two weeks to portion out the pills, because it’s annoying to count 8 of this, 5 of these, etc., every time. With this condition, however, I’m sticking close to Dr. Lam’s prescriptions, where I take some pills three times per day, and some pills four times per day.

Here’s what Dr. Lam has prescribed, this time.

wuchaseng eleutherococcus senticosus:
Dr. Lam says that this is a pseudo-ginseng. It’s not Korean Ginseng (that increases energy, but also increases heat massively), nor Chinese Ginseng (that increases energy and increases heat a lot), nor even Canadian ginseng (which would probably work, increasing heat while cooling). Wuchaseng is also known as Siberian ginseng, with an “anti-fatigue effect … stronger than that of ginseng” and published results in Soviet research showing positive results countering “heat, noise, motion, work load increase, exercise, [with] increased mental alertness, work output and the quality of work both under stress-inducing conditions and in athletic performance“.
dangshen and astraglal tablets
Since I had a “moss” on my tongue, Dr. Lam prescribed these for energy and digestion, reducing phlegm. Dangshen “promotes production of body fluid and blood circulation“. Astragali “warms the muscles and strengthens the striae as well as invigorates qi“.
semen ziziphi spinosae
I’ve been sleeping about 3 to 4 hours less each night, so Dr. Lam has prescribed this to dissolve the cycle of insomnia and fatigue. The herb “[nourishes] the heart to tranquilize the mind, promoting generation of body fluid and arresting sweating“.
qin qi huatanwan
Dr. Lam has prescribed this to take away my phlegm. It’s supposed to “clear heat, eliminate phlegm, redirect rebel qi“.
zhang yian ming
Dr. Lam suggested that these would nourish the eye. I think it’s less for the eye with the cataract, and more for the one that’s taking all of the load. (When I’m tired, that one gets blurry, too!)
cataract vision-improving pills
It seems a bit late for this, since I’m ready for surgery, but it “contain[s] mother of pearl, a calcium source, [and] blood building herbs … improve energy and circulation“.

I asked about the other herbs that I usually take, and Dr. Lam said that I should lay off them, until I get over this.

The primary symptom of being cold seems to have abated. I’m waiting for my energy to pick up.

  • Translate

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • RSS on Coevolving

    • Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption | IJOTB (2025)
      Two years after submitting an academic manuscript and responding to double-blind reviews, “Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption” has now been published in the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior (IJOTB) as earlycite. The article has a DOI (Document Object Identifier), and should be streamed with an official volume and issue number soon. The […]
    • Evolving Styles for Learning Systems Thinking | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-02-13
      The 128th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was convened in person.  The classroom was filled with current students, alumni, our regular participants, and a few curious newcomers. Moderated by Zaid Khan, the conversation was sparked by Stephen Davies and myself (David Ing) on the evolving styles in learning systems thinking.  Stephen has been leading SFIN-6011 […]
    • Systems Approaches (Project Language + Literature Reviews with Generative AI) | OCADU | 2025-01-20
      The “Understanding Systems” SFIN-6011 course is a requirement in the master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCADU.   For winter 2025, the class is now led by Stephen Davies, breaking the incremental evolving of content since 2008.  While still on faculty at OCADU, the original course designer Peter H. Jones is now a Distinguished […]
    • Generative AI and Inquiring Systems: Ways of Patterning and Ways of Knowing | Systems Thinking Ontario | 2025-01-08
      In the 1970s, five ways of knowing were established by C. West Churchman in The Design of Inquiring Systtems. In the 1990s, his student Ian Mitroff carried on the tradition and extended that work in The Unbounded Mind.  Now in the 2020s, the technology of Generative AI opens up opportunties to query or request responses […]
    • STPIS 2024 Proceedings: Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes
      For readers with an interest deeper than the 15-minute presentation given in August, the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in Information Systems (STPIS 2024) have now been formally publishied. The invited paper on “Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes: From rearranging objects to repacing rhythms” was reviewed by the […]
    • Systems Thinking Ontario as Systems Convening | ST-ON | 2024-10-21
      The 125th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario coincided with the closing day for the RSD13-RSDX online program.  As a regular systems convening group, we’ve had monthly meetings since January 2013. Zaid Khan moderated  a discussion including me (David Ing), Tim Lloyd, Allenna Leonard, and Kelly Okamura. We recollected starting as a spinoff from Design with […]

  • RSS on Media Queue

    • 2018/04/17 Susan Rogers on Prince, production and perception | Ableton
      Rhythm and pitch are primordial to language. Susan Rogers, after a career becoming Prince's recording engineer, turned to complete a PhD in psychology focused on music cognition and psychoacoustics.Read more ›
    • What to Do When It’s Too Late | David L. Hawk | 2024
      David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
    • 2021/06/17 Keekok Lee | Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 2
      Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
    • 2021/06/16 Keekok Lee | Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1
      The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
    • 2021/02/02 To Understand This Era, You Need to Think in Systems | Zeynep Tufekci with Ezra Klein | New York Times
      In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
    • 2019/04/09 Art as a discipline of inquiry | Tim Ingold (web video)
      In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›

  • RSS on Ing Brief

    • Installing WordPress Studio on Manjaro Linux
      In 2024, WordPress Studio was released, making installation on a local computer simpler. The instructions were modified from MacOS to Ubuntu Linux, by Daniel Kossmann, “How to install WordPress Studio in Ubuntu Linux” | Jun 15, 2024 at https://www.danielkossmann.com/how-to-install-wordpress-studio-ubuntu-linux/ I already had NVM installed, but in Terminal, with the result “command not found”. In the […]
    • Notion of Change in the Yijing | JeeLoo Lin 2017
      The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
    • World Hypotheses (Stephen C. Pepper) as a pluralist philosophy [Rescher, 1994]
      In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
    • The Nature and Application of the Daodejing | Ames and Hall (2003)
      Ames and Hall (2003) provide some tips for those studyng the DaoDeJing.
    • Diachronic, diachrony
      Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
    • Introduction, “Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2”, edited by F. E. Emery (1981)
      The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]

  • Meta

  • Powered by FeedBurner

     Feedburner

    • Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
    Theme modified from DevDmBootstrap4 by Danny Machal