Life by Numbers

Numbers make things appear predictable and stable. Saying 'He is six feet tall' is more definitive than saying 'He is tall'. We like things to be measurable and finite. Go to any bookstore and look at the self-help section. You will see all sorts of topics reduced to a finite number of things - Seven Habits, Five Ways, Ten Values, etc., etc. It is comforting to find that things can be specified in this manner. They look manageable. 'Five Easy Fixes' is more attractive than 'One Hundred Ways' to do something.

We are so addicted to numbers that we have started to apply them even when dealing with intangible things. The nurse asks a patient to describe the intensity of his pain on a scale of 1 to 10. How does he do that? I have no clue but this is a standard question used by medical professionals now. I suppose if the pain is unbearable, the patient will say 10 and get medication. If on the other hand, he says 4, he may merely receive some words of comfort. The point is tolerance to pain varies widely from one individual to another. What is level 10 anyway? Do I even want to know? Instead of asking the patient, maybe the nurse can be trained to gauge the pain level by poking the part in question. If the patient merely winces it is level 3, if he swears loudly then it is 7, and so on. If he faints, then it is surely level 10.

It is now fairly common to employ a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 to measure almost anything. The problem is there is no reference point to know what this actually means. I am sure you have been to restaurants that want us to specify the level of spiciness in their dishes using this scale. Without a common basis, level 5 in one eatery may merely be 3 in another. One diner may find that level 10 hardly tickles his taste buds while another may feel like he is on fire with a mere 3. So the scientific sounding measure turns out to be pretty useless in this case.

Numbers can be used to lull us into a false sense of confidence. Advertisers know this well. An ad claims that four out of five people preferred product A over B in a blind study. But we don't know the actual sample size. What we may not know is that they actually surveyed 50 people and dropped many data points and used only 20 so that they could 'truthfully' claim four out of five chose A. The 30 people excluded may have chosen B! On the other hand, if they only surveyed five then it is a very small sample size and the result is suspect. As they say in many ads, your results may vary. So numerical data can be stated to appear more respectable than they are. Here's another example. If a job applicant says he was among the top ten in his class, it merely means that he was actually the tenth. If he was any higher, he would have been more specific. In any case, without knowing the class size, we cannot be sure if this is good or not.

Don't get me wrong. Of course, numbers are important. The human body needs many parameters to fall within narrow ranges. Small variations in certain hormone levels, for example, can wreak havoc on one's health. We are very much like Goldilocks in this sense. But extreme dependence on numbers is a little unsettling to me. My entire health is being reduced to a set of numbers and decisions are made on the basis of where they fall on a chart. Are my numbers within the range or outside? That is certainly useful to know. But now complicated formulae are used to arrive at a number and they in turn decide whether I should be put on a drug regimen or not. 'Your risk of a cardiac event in the next ten years is x %. So you should start taking this tablet (usually for the rest of your life)' - I am not sure I want to go that far. I wonder if doctors are being relieved of their responsibility with this reliance on digital diagnosis.

To be fair, one must also consider the plight of doctors. Research studies come out with various confusing guidelines now and then. The drug companies keep pushing medicines through intense advertisements that urge you to 'ask your doctor about' their new wonder drug. The internet is full of all sorts of articles that purport to give medical information. Second opinion these days most likely comes from Dr. Google. In fact, Google can help you obtain third, fourth or as many opinions as you want. I am sure many patients are bringing the wisdom gained online to the consulting rooms. I wonder how the poor doctor deals with them.

If you find comfort in the numbers, you may be disturbed by research that's constantly contradicting previous findings. Or moves the goal posts by changing the numbers. For example, saturated fats are supposed to be bad. Or are they? Lower cholesterol levels mean better heart health. Or do they? Statins work by lowering cholesterol. Or maybe their benefit comes from something else. Of course almost every study also says that we should not change what we are doing on the basis of the study. All a lay person can do is reach a state of learned ignorance after reading about different studies and their conclusions. This actually makes the case for asking your doctor who is best equipped to deal with the deluge of information.

I think it is fitting that I end with some statistics of my own. This piece is among my top 50 posts and as of the time of publishing, one hundred percent of the people who read it, have liked it. Now, if you would like to rate this post, may I suggest you use a scale of 5 to 5?

Cyber-Saws (Old Sayings Refreshed)

Shopper's Dilemma
To click or not to click, that is the question.

Online Existentialist

I tweet, therefore, I am.

Cyber Testament

Man does not live by email alone. Frequently there must be chat.

Law of Karma
As you click, so shall you surf.

Optimist's Creed
Where there is a click, there is a page.

The Reluctant Surfer

You can take a mouse to the icon, but you cannot make it click.

Slow and Steady (Does Not Always Win)

The fingers are strong, but bandwidth is weak.

Contentment

My inbox runneth over.

Law of Generosity
It is far better to give than to receive (spam).

Spammer's Creed
One man's mail is another's spam.

Less Is More
Brevity is the soul of (t)wit(tter).

Celebrities Beware

Think before you tweet .

Law of Equal Opportunity

Into each mailbox some spam must fall.

Trojan Horse
The click that launched a thousand pages (and brought the PC down) 

The Smartphone Lament

The world is at my finger tips but it's all touch and go.

'Appy New Year

It is just over a year and half since I got rid of my old flip phone and acquired a smartphone. I think I have mentioned before that I am a laggard when it comes to gadgets. I held on to my little basic cell phone for many years and it was a curiosity for many colleagues at work. When I made the switch, or should say leap, it was a bit of news around the office. One person remarked that I had finally crossed over.

A curious fact about smartphones caught my eye recently. I found out that Nikola Tesla had proposed the idea of a smartphone (though he did not use the term) in an interview as far back as 1926 - he said, "we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone.  A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket." (there is much more in that interview on the phone and many other topics). In passing, let us note that it is not 'smart phone' but 'smartphone'. Does this imply something? I leave that for you to ponder.

Over the course of owning this phone, I have come to appreciate a few very useful things. Yes, these are all pretty obvious and are hardly new. Finding my way around new places for instance, is now quite simple. I can get to my email anywhere. There is also the app that tells me how many steps I walk and how many flights of stairs I climb. The camera on the phone is pretty good and ready to click at a moment's notice (I am just waiting to record the next viral video sensation). I can do my banking on the phone. So far so good.

I can play music on it but the sound quality over the earphones is still sub par. I can watch TV shows but I am not crazy about the miniature screen. And holding the phone in your hand to watch a show is pretty tiring. Stiff hands and neck are guaranteed. Ditto for playing games. To be fair, I never was fond of video games anyway. But a lot of people are fond of games and some even addicted to them be it 'angry birds' or 'fruit ninja'. And if you want to be rid of the addiction, there is bound to be an app to cure that too!

I seem to have quickly reached a point where I am not sure what else I can do with the phone. This is no doubt due in part to my own lack of embracing new trends. The picture of people constantly bent over their phones with the thumb scrolling the screen resembling someone rolling the beads in a rosary is after all quite common. While not exactly aspiring to join them, I am looking at expanding the use of my smartphone.

I don't even know where to begin when it comes to apps. I know there are tens of thousands of apps available for free or a small fee but do I need them? Many of the apps seem just a novelty and do not provide any real benefit. Take the many apps that have sprung up to let you track everything you do to keep fit. I don't know how they actually help you to exercise though. But if you do exercise, then you can record details of calories, distance, and so on. I was curious to see an app which measured your pulse rate. I took a look at the free version of the app which asked me to place my finger on the camera lens - probably not a good idea to smear the lens though. But the free version was not really free. There were ads and tons of them. They kind of made it almost impossible to use the app. Worse the annoyance actually caused my heart rate to go up. Anyway, with a stop watch which is already included in the phone, one can easily measure one's pulse so I really did not see the need for the app and I quickly deleted it.

I have tried a few other things. The other day I decided to take notes in a meeting on the phone. Surprisingly, this turned out to be very productive. The phone provides prompts and auto-completes which make for less key strokes and faster typing while occasionally providing a chuckle with some unintended corrections. And yes, you could quietly text, check the news and such if the meeting gets to be tiresome.

Determined to make better use of the phone, I wanted to go farther than these simple apps. With the new year, I resolved to learn a language using an app. Learning a language is one of the things recommended to keep the grey cells from decaying. With advancing years, I can certainly use all the help I can get. Besides, living in California, I think a little Spanish will be quite handy. So here I am, all set to go and hoping that this does not go the way of usual new year resolutions.

¡Feliz año nuevo!

'appy New Year!

The Night bus

I cannot say that I like travelling long distances by bus. But sometimes when I am on an international flight spending hours sitting, I tend to recall the bus journeys I have made years back almost fondly. That perhaps says more about the airline seats but buses were (and I think still are) convenient when we had to travel at short notice or when train connections were not readily available. I do not take the bus when travelling in India these days and my experience goes back a lot of years but I can still remember many such road trips of the past. The long distance express buses were fairly comfortable (though they were not, as the operators liked to call them, 'luxury' coaches) and relatively fast.

Bus journeys by day used to be very trying - the traffic, the dust and the heat made them really unbearable. Air-conditioning no doubt makes the situation better now but the traffic has probably increased many fold to compensate for that. Night trips avoid the traffic and the heat so at least on two counts they are significantly more comfortable. Of course, such clinical analysis does not quite get to the heart of the whole experience which depended heavily on the route travelled, the condition of the roads, and many other factors.

Among the many road trips that I have made by bus, the memory of one I took from Bangalore to Tirunelveli decades back has somehow stayed with me. I was in college then and it was a sudden decision on my part to go home for Deepavali that year on a cloudy November evening. The trip would take some eleven hours. With recent rains, the ground was a little wet so there was very little dust. The air was quite pleasant.

As I boarded the bus, I bought some roasted peanuts, a perfect snack for the cool conditions. The peanuts were still warm and were wrapped in paper rolled to form a long conical shape. The only flaw in the whole scheme would be the inevitable rotten peanut inside. Once you bite into one, the only way to get the taste out of your mouth is to immediately eat a good one, as you surely have experienced. So I always make it a point to save a good one to eat last.

The bus rolled out of the bus stand as I was finishing the snack. I unrolled the paper cone for you never knew where that piece of paper had come from. Every piece of paper was recycled then. I discovered that this one was from a school notebook with arithmetic problems worked out in a neat hand. I settled into my seat and looked around. The seat next to mine was occupied by a burly man with a thick moustache and hair shining with lots of oil. I sighed to myself realizing that much of that oil was going to find its way to the seat. I hoped that he would not choose my shoulder to nod off during the journey and mentally prepared to defend my territory.

In my previous trips, where I was familiar with the route I knew where the bus would stop for meals. Usually, it was a some small town restaurant where the bus crew ate for free in return for bringing in a bus load of paying customers. I expected that it would be the same on this trip and I was not wrong. After a couple of hours, in the middle of apparently nowhere, the bus stopped in front of what looked like a house but bore the sign 'Rama Cafe' or some such name. Inside were separate rooms with marble-topped tables and chairs laid out in a line. This was no fancy eatery but very business like. You just found a vacant seat and sat down to eat.

The food was served on banana leaves. There was no menu. You had to settle for whatever they were serving. The waiters simply brought different dishes out and you decided what you wanted from those. You can call it the WYSIWYG menu if you like. I wondered how they kept track of who ate what and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was basically an honour system. You just told the person at the counter what you ate and paid the bill. The best part of the thing of course was the food itself which was exceptional - fresh, hot and delicious.

After this unexpected treat, we were back on the road again and it looked like the best part of the trip was over. The bus was equipped with a music system but most passengers wanted to catch some sleep and told the driver to shut it off when he tried to play some film songs. The lights were then turned off leaving just the glow of the blue night lamps. There is something about road trips in the night that is calming. The drone of the engine was somewhat hypnotic. The light traffic made for steady driving and less honking. The road was in decent shape and the ride comfortable. By and by most of the passenger were nodding off.

Nodding heads are apt to land on  neighbours' shoulders and that's just a law of nature. I soon found myself at the receiving end of this law, fending off the attack constantly. As the head alternated between my side and the other side, I had time to look outside. It was pitch dark but the sky provided an amazing view with bright stars that are practically invisible in a city sky. Eventually I too managed fall asleep only to wake and now and then with my neighbour's head on my shoulder. This routine played out a few times as the night went on.

The bus passed through many a sleepy town with streets that were mostly empty. Between the towns, you could smell the paddy fields in the cool night air. The occasional stops provided an opportunity to stretch one's legs. The bus stands were mostly deserted. The journey went on in this fashion and I finally reached my destination around 5:30 am. Although I was fatigued and stiff, I could not say that the journey was unpleasant. It was still dark but the bus stand was a bustle of activity. I rubbed my eyes and got off, threw the bag over my shoulder and looked for an auto rickshaw that would take me to my home but not before grabbing a cup of steaming coffee from one of the shops that was already open for business.

Buses have come a long way since then. They now look sleek on the outside and may even deserve the adjective 'luxurious' on the inside. You can find sleeper buses for a night journey and it must surely be much more comfortable to travel now. While I suppose it is still possible to encounter some oily heads, I am almost certain that restaurants like the one I ate at are extinct now. Even then I kind of knew that such places were a dying breed. So the feelings of nostalgia when I think back to that time are doubly poignant. Maybe I will try a bus trip next time just for old times' sake.

The Elephant In The Head

A long time ago, in a remote corner of the world...

Dima approached the shaman's house and knocked on the door with some trepidation wondering what the shaman would do. Would he give him some drug and put him in a trance? Or would he perform a ritual cleanse? He wished he did not have to do this but Rini, his wife had put her foot down. Either he went to the shaman and got cured or she would leave him. After all it was all his own doing. He could not really blame her.

The house was somewhat isolated almost at the edge of the forest. The shaman opened the door himself. He was a tall man with a flowing mane and piercing eyes. "You must be Dima. Come, I have been expecting you", he greeted Dima who was taken aback. 'Wow, he is good', he thought but he did not know that his wife had met the shaman previously and told him Dima was coming.

"Here, have some tea", he offered. "It's just chamomile, relax", he added sensing Dima's apprehension. As Dima took the cup and had a sip, the shaman asked, "Tell me why you are here". "I am addicted to drinking and I want to stop", replied Dima. "Do you really want to stop drinking? Give up alcohol completely?", asked the shaman and Dima hesitated and said rambling, "Yes, I mean... if I can have a drink now and then, maybe..but I don't want to get drunk. I can't seem to help it...".

Dima's alcoholism had gotten so bad lately that he often passed out at what passed for a pub in that remote place situated in the middle of nowhere. His drinking buddies would usually take him to his house and leave him on the door step. He would wake up hours later only to face Rini's wrath. On one occasion, he actually fell into a ditch while walking home and slept right there. The local kids had painted his face while he was passed out. It was mortifying and that's when he resolved to seek help.

It was generally the custom in his little town to approach the shaman for help in many matters. The latter was an expert in driving evil spirits away and curing all kinds of ailments both physical and mental. He had a huge cache of herbs and other substances and dispensed them with a deft touch. His curative powers were well known in the region. So Rini had made Dima seek his help in ridding him of the evil habit.

After some more questioning, the shaman seemed to smile mockingly as he declared, "You are tricky. You really don't want to quit, it seems...I don't know if I can help you...well maybe, I can", he continued and thought for a while. After a couple of minutes, his face brightened and he said, "I have got it. But I must first have your assurance that you will follow my advice without fail". Dima nodded tentatively and wanted to say something, but the shaman cut him off.

With a mischievous look, he said, "You may be surprised to hear this, but I think it is alright for you to drink on one condition". Dima was indeed astonished. The shaman continued, "You can have a drink provided you are not thinking of an elephant". Dima was now confused. 'This man seems cuckoo and he's going to cure me?', he thought to himself. "What do you mean elephant? And why should I not think of it?", he asked.

It must be noted here that Dima lived in a part of the world where there were no elephants. He had no idea what an elephant was and so you can appreciate his confusion. The shaman replied, "I did not say you shouldn't think of an elephant. Just that if you are thinking of one, you absolutely must not drink". Dima mulled these words carefully and felt that this was a simple enough thing to follow. It was not likely that he would be thinking of elephants, he concluded. So he thanked the shaman and told him that he would follow the prescription diligently. As he was leaving, the shaman spoke again, "Remember, no drinks if you are thinking of elephants". He had a way of speaking that exuded some mysterious compelling power and made a real impact on the listener.

So Dima went his way and was quite pleased with the results. Such a simple prescription! He stopped at the pub on his way back and ordered himself a stiff drink. As he raised the cup to his mouth, he smiled as he said to himself, 'Elephant!' and then suddenly realized that he was indeed thinking of elephants. In fact, he found that he could not stop thinking about them because he kept wondering what they were. After a whole day's struggle, he regretted that he had not asked the shaman what elephants were. 'Once I learn what they are I shall put them out of my mind', he thought and went straight back to the shaman.

The shaman told him all he knew about elephants. And he seemed to know them well. Dima got totally fascinated. "Have you seen one?", he asked and the shaman replied that he had. When he was young, he said he had travelled with his father to a distant city in the north where he had seen some elephants perform in a circus. Dima peppered him with questions and learnt all he could about elephants. He was quite excited as he walked back home. Unfortunately, now that he knew so much about them, he could not get elephants out of his mind! Worse, drinking and elephants had become inextricably entangled in his mind and he could not look at a drink without an elephant popping into his head. After a couple of weeks of intense struggle and suffering, he had indeed quit drinking.

Rini was very pleased with the result even though Dima went on a bit about elephants constantly. They say the elephant never forgets. In Dima's case, the elephant turned out to be unforgettable too. If only he could knock back a few drinks, he was certain  he could manage to forget the elephant. The delicious irony of the situation made him sigh wistfully. He now drank copious amounts of herbal tea. Chamomile, anyone?

Some Assembly Required

If you are a parent, you probably have at some time faced these dreaded words. You just bought the much coveted bicycle for your child. Now all that stands between the said child and bliss is your ability to assemble the bicycle. And then, you read, 'Some assembly required'. While 'some assembly' sounds innocuous, it is actually 'some assembly' (emphasis mine). It usually requires unspecified dexterity with tools or three hands or something else. It is never simple. This may be the moment your child realizes that after all daddy does not know everything. It takes all your ingenuity and skill to get that bicycle put together but you are still left with a lingering worry that the thing may come apart any time landing your child in a ditch.

Of course it is not just children's toys. There is a whole lot of furniture that is available for those of us who believe we are handy enough with tools to put them together or want to save some money by opting for the ready-to-assemble stuff. I have had my share of adventure with these over the years and I am sure many of you can relate to it.

The great looking entertainment centre that you decided to buy is delivered to you in flat packs. The delivery men make them look like they are filled with foam the way they carry them. But trying to move them from the garage (they cannot deliver the boxes inside owing to some insurance limitation) into the house proves to be a non-starter as the boxes are monumentally heavy. So you decide to open them in the garage and carry parts into the family room where the furniture will ultimately stand. This itself is quite a project.

You break into a sweat at the sight of the instructions that run to pages and the bag of screws, bolts, nuts, washers, wing nuts, in short, all kinds of thingummyjigs that are collectively termed 'hardware'. The instructions are often in the form of pictures. What's that? A picture is worth a thousand words, you say? Exactly. Way too many words and you don't have a clue as to what those are. Seriously, I mean you are not interpreting art here. You just want a few precise, well-chosen words telling you what to do. But the company in its infinite wisdom decided that pictures transcend the language barrier. In other words, they are too cheap to provide textual instructions because that would require that they be provided in different languages. The stick figure in the booklet that somehow resembles a dolphin and is supposed to represent you looks cheerful enough, though. So what can go wrong?

You allocate a weekend afternoon and gather up all the parts spread them out along with the hardware. You look at the ridiculous tools that came with the furniture - all that you need to assemble, the package says, usually just a couple of Allen keys, and you decide that you had better break out your own tools. You look for your tool set which probably has the wrong set of spanners (metric instead of US) or missing a few that you loaned to the neighbour who has since moved without returning them. With this rag-tag resources, you plunge into the mysteries of the entertainment centre which is strewn around flat on the ground as various parts.  You peer at the picture to make out if the line there represents the groove in the piece you are holding. Which is outside and which is inside seems hard to make out. What size screw is that, you agonize. While the parts are assigned a number each in the pictures, the actual piece has no such thing on it. So you have to make a guess and hope for the best.

Progress is agonizingly slow especially in the beginning as you hunt for the right part and figure out the right orientation for the pieces often having to turn them around without hitting a window (or maybe hitting it) or the light fixture or the TV. Lining up the pieces to match proves to be tricky in the room which you now wish were larger. Maybe you will need to move that sofa out of here to make room. Then there are the moments when you realize that you made a mistake some steps back and have to pull things apart and go back. The afternoon you allocated for the job is woefully inadequate and in fact you realize it could take a couple of weekends to finish it. You start wondering if you bit off more than you could chew. Just then your wife suggests that maybe you should call in a pro, rubbing salt on the wound. The place looks like a war zone trying everyone's patience and presents tripping hazards to all.

After hours of toil, a lot of sweating and a few broken nails and possibly a crushed finger, at last you finish the piece. A few parts are still left but somehow they never seemed to come up in the instructions. The doors and drawers are serviceable though they look just a little misaligned. But you are done. Finished. There is a sense of relief and even elation at the completion of the project. Now all that is left is to move the whole thing to the wall where it belongs. Of course this requires three or four persons and a lot of swearing and cursing. Inevitably, one of the walls in the house is scratched in the process. Ultimately, everything is in its place and the entertainment centre is ready to serve!

The instructions estimated three hours (ha!) to complete the assembly but it took you the better part of a whole weekend and a day. You have moved all the parts and pieces from the floor but you can hardly pick yourself up. Every bone and muscle in your body is aching. Bruised and cut everywhere, you feel like a wounded warrior. 'Never again', you tell yourself. You somehow manage to get on the couch and collapse there.

The rest of the family is happy now that the room is free once again and there is a handsome new addition to the furniture. Everyone congratulates you (never mind the complaining that went on for a whole week). The wife looks at the finished product admiringly and declares that from now on ready-to-assemble is the way to go. You merely sigh as there is no strength left in your body even to acknowledge. And you are too fatigued even to feel proud. But a couple of aspirins and a long nap restore your spirits and you start to feel that it was worth the blood, sweat and tears. On to the next project then!

Sportswatch

I am not one of those who follow sports avidly. I like to watch some - the Wimbledon finals, World Cup Soccer, the Superbowl, the basketball championship, and the like. Otherwise it is just some random game now and then.

Not every sport is exciting to watch. Take golf for example. You can only see bits and pieces of the action. If you are on site then it is even more frustrating as you simply cannot keep up with the overall standings or even the score of an individual player. On TV, you get to see some amazing aerial shots. The camera follows the arc of the ball for your convenience. Still, golf is hardly a spectator sport. It does not create enough tension and excitement. You are not likely to get to the edge of the seat seeing Tiger Woods attempt a putt from thirty-five feet. Even the commentary is subdued. But it has one merit. On a lazy Sunday afternoon, it is the ideal companion for a snooze. The green, the fairway, the sand traps and the lack of crowd noise all contribute to the soporific effect.

The Olympics just got done at Rio and this is obviously one time when I do watch a lot of sports on TV.  Unfortunately, this puts you at the mercy of the network which decides when to air and what to air. Being on the west coast always means a tape delay. In addition, the coverage focuses a lot on story-telling. I am not really keen on knowing all about the athletes' backgrounds, their parents or their ninety-year old grandma. I just want to see the actual performances. But the network spends a lot of time and effort preparing these back stories and you have little choice but to suffer through them. The coverage is naturally US centric. I wish they would try to shine the spotlight on others too now and then. Often, key events are shown late at night. And of course, everything is edited heavily to suit the breaks for commercials. Watching them online as they happen may be an option but you are likely to be at work then.

Despite all these shortcomings, much time in the past two weeks has been spent in front of the television watching the Olympics. It was annoying to wait while they went through all sorts of other sports before getting to the ones I like. Water polo and synchronized swimming leave me cold especially the latter where you mostly see two pairs of legs sticking up over the water. I do realize that this takes a lot of skill and effort, but I can't seem to get excited about it. Ditto for trampolining and other made up sports.

This year, swimming competitions produced a few close finishes and new world records. The dash and splash of the relays, the camera capturing the swimmers from above and below the water, and the roar of the crowd made for some good TV. The absolute excitement of the commentator his voice going higher and higher as each race went on at first felt way over the top but I actually ended up liking it.

To me, the Olympics are ultimately all about track and field. The sprints are electrifying and even in slow motion replay they look ridiculously fast. It was quite a thrill to see Usain Bolt dominate the sprints for the third time. The way the jumpers glide over the bar head first in high jump and feet first in pole vault is fascinating. I wonder if these techniques were inspired by the White Knight's ideas about jumping the gate in Through the Looking Glass. The relay races always provide some unexpected turns.

The 110 metre hurdles is my favourite event. There is a sort of poetic rhythm in this race. The starting gun goes off and the sprinters launch themselves from the blocks. They alternately sprint and fly (there is no other way to put it) as they jump over each hurdle. It is better than the 100 metres dash where the whole thing goes off like a blur. Here you kind of get a break each time a hurdle is cleared letting you savour the moment. When the camera follows along showing you the view from the side the effect is truly magical with the runners being almost synchronized. I can say that I feel quite athletic watching it practically jumping up from the couch.

At the other end of the spectrum is the marathon. The sheer endurance of the runners as they ran in high humidity this year was a testament to their physical and mental strength. This is where TV coverage is at its best with close ups and aerial shots. Surprisingly, it is not monotonous to watch this. It is quite absorbing to see the lead group slowly thinning and then completely pull apart over the last half hour. This year's winner  Kipchoge of Kenya who had been a picture of calm focus all along, reached the finish line with a broad smile on his face. What a fitting coda to the whole games!

*'I'll tell you how I came to think of it,' said the Knight. 'You see, I said to myself "The only difficulty is with the feet: the head is high enough already." Now, first I put my head on the top of the gate -- then the head's high enough -- then I stand on my head -- then the feet are high enough, you see -- then I'm over, you see.' (Through The Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll)