A song of changes

The genesis of this new song was a video from David Bennett Piano from 18 August 2021 in which he discusses 6/4 time. As he notes, this is a time signature that was used frequently in classical music, but rarely in modern music. These days no one initially publishes sheet music but rather recordings, and it is the job of a copyist to create the sheet music by listening to the music.

I admit that I have rarely encountered 6/4 time; Dave Stewart notes that the organ solo in National Health's "Dreams wide awake" is in this time signature. A very interesting case is the song "Love that conquers" by the Swell Season, where instrumental bars in 5/4 alternate with sung bars in 6/4. Towards the end, there are even a few bars sung in 7/4. Needless to say, I was not familiar with any of the examples that David played in his video, save 'Electric Feel' by MGMT, whose beat is very hard to pin down. To me it sounds like 4/4 + 2/4 but everyone has their own opinion (where is the 'one'?).

Anyway: I was charmed enough to attempt writing a song in 6/4. I confess that I cheated, in that the original tune that I recorded on my mobile phone whilst playing the piano was in 4/4. When I came to sequencing the tune, I added another two beats per bar. This worked out very well, except in one place where an instrumental bar of 6/4 in the middle didn't sound correct; in the end, I sequenced this as two bars in 4/4, thus adding an extra two beats to the verse. This mucked up the bar markings in Reason, although by the end of the song, it got sorted out as there are three verses with these extra two beats, thus an extra complete bar had been created.

Over the past month, I've been working on the arrangement. It was almost finished until a few days ago, but since then I made quite a few changes to the music, including the chord sequence of the coda, one instrumental link and even the sound of one of the instruments. Excessive polishing of the arrangement always means that I am having problems writing the words; in fact, I didn't have any ideas what the song was to be about which is why I couldn't write any lyrics. At one stage, the lyrics seemed to be pure prosody, describing the tune, but I cleverly deleted them this morning (I found a piece of paper where I had scribbled down 'A semitone raise, the tonal centre/Has lost its balance and then it rests', but I don't remember what came before that, something about smooth glissandi).

Yesterday after much effort I managed to write a coherent verse about a romance, similar in scope to my song 'This is how it all begins'; the first verse initially started with the phrase 'A summer romance', whereas the second verse would begin with 'An autumn cooling', and the third verse would have 'A winter break-up' somewhere. But this didn't work out exactly how I thought it might, probably for the best. In terms of rhythms, each phrase (one bar) had five syllables, as can be seen in those examples. This was slightly limiting, but meant that there are very few verbs in the lyrics.

This morning I worked hard and completed the lyrics, rewriting several lines in the first verse and then continuing with the rest of the song. Once I had lyrics, I could sing and record them; during the recording, I was still changing a word here or there. Now the song is complete and mastered; I need to listen to other music for a while in order to get this song out of my head. Tomorrow I'll listen with fresh ears and probably remix it.

An introduction: a slow beginning
Hearts full of flowers and hidden meanings
We take our walks here along the pathways
We talk sweet nothings, we speak of fair days
That bring on changes in our relations
We’re going somewhere, we’re growing closer
A summer romance, a slow enchantment
That promises so much

And so the weeks pass with mutual feelings
Nights full of loving, the mornings seeking
Some kind of balance, some type of order
A rearrangement, the days grow shorter
And bring on changes in our relations
We’re going nowhere, we have stopped growing
An autumn cooling, a slow detachment
That could have brought so much

I don’t know if I could see what I’d lost
All I’ll ever know is the pain that it cost

Now I remember the songs she sang me
I caught a whisper of some lost memory
Of conversation that yielded nothing
Of situations that called for bluffing
A song of changes, lost in the cosmos
A song of yearning for something better
A winter breakup, a spring revival
We live and hope for more

I still managed to get those seasonal phrases into the song!

A slightly hallucinogenic video of this song can be found here.

Dave Evans, RIP

I belatedly discovered an obituary for one time Bristol musician, Dave Evans, who died on or around 20 May 2021.

Dave was the performer on one of my favourite albums from the 1970s.

Popup menus: a misconception

In almost every Windows program (or form), right clicking will lead to displaying a context menu that provides more, but less frequently used, options for whatever is displayed. In programming terms, this context menu is called a popup menu because it pops up, as opposed to the standard menu that appears at all times. In Delphi programs, it's very easy to add a popup menu to a form: one defines the popup menu, adds options to it, then connects this menu to the form by means of the form's popup property.

In the 'ERP' program that I wrote (and continually develop) for the occupational psychologist, one of the forms that is used the most is effectively divided into two: in the top half are displayed dockets (i.e. customer files) and in the lower half can be displayed eight or nine different sorts of data, each connected to the current docket in the upper half. For example, one option is to display the people (examinees) connected to the docket, another is to show the meetings for that docket, a third shows invoices for that docket, etc. As a result of this rich amount of possible data, the popup menu for this form contained maybe twenty different possibilities, when only some of those possibilities are available at any given time (it doesn't make any sense to allow the 'delete examinee from docket' option when invoices are being shown). This requires continual updating of this menu, marking which options are available at any given time; this is confusing for the user and also is quite a headache for me to maintain.

It occurred to me yesterday that I could simplify matters by defining several popup menus for the form. As the form has a single popup property, it is easy to be under the misconception that only one popup menu can be defined for a form. In fact, most controls within a form, including a data grid, have a popup property of their own; defining a popup menu for a control will cause that menu to appear when right clicking on that control. I defined one popup menu for the upper data grid that contains four or five options that are always valid for a docket. For the lower data grid, I defined eight different popup menus: one for examinees, one for meetings, one for invoices, etc. When the user chooses which kind of data to display in the lower data grid, the grid's popup property is set to the appropriate popup menu, thus each menu contains three or four options that are always available. 

Actually, that statement '[all] the options are always available' is not true; first there is a check to see whether there is any data to be displayed (e.g. does the current docket have any invoices?) and then the options' availability is set depending on this check. After all, it makes no sense to offer the option to delete the current invoice if the docket has no invoices. 

Potassium levels in food

In Orwell's 1984, At some stage, Oceania is at war with Eurasia; later on Oceania is at war with Eastasia. As a result, history has to be changed to show that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. I left the doctor's office feeling something similar: until now, Potassium has been good, now it's bad.

I looked at a site that discusses the amount of potassium in milk, that begins Dairy milk is a good source of potassium. That's not good for me. I then learn that the amount of potassium is in reverse proportion to the amount of fat in the milk: One cup of whole milk provides 322 milligrams of potassium, or 9 percent of the nutrient’s daily value, while the same amount of either reduced-fat or low-fat milk provides about 10 percent of the daily value for potassium. I drink no-lactose 2% fat milk, so this should provide about 350 mg/cup. Yoghurt has higher levels of potassium per 100g product. I know that the site is trying to be pessimistic when it says that rice milk is not a good source of potassium and that a 1-ounce slice of cheddar cheese, for example, has just 27 milligrams of potassium. 

The site that I need is like this one: nine foods to avoid when your potassium is too high, listing potatoes, bananas, milk, oranges, dried beans and peas, winter squash, sports drinks, spinach and salt substitutes. Again, milk is the problematic food, followed by potatoes (maybe once a week).

I'll buy some 'rice milk' the next time I go shopping and I'll see how I get on. I read somewhere that all the 'milks' are worse for the environment than regular milk.

The next stage in the aldosterone saga

I wanted to make an appointment to see my nephrologist as he had been sent the results of the AVS test. To my surprise, I could make the appointment for today, a week before I am supposed to be seeing the endocrinologist in the hospital (I may well cancel this appointment). 

I have been left without one of the medicines that I had been prescribed for lowering my blood pressure; this was prescribed by the endocrinologist in place of one of the medicines that the nephrologist had prescribed. I don't want to assign any personal motives to the nephrologist, but he did take the opportunity to restore the medication that he had prescribed instead of what the endocrinologist prescribed. I still have some of these medicines in stock, so I'll take them until I can get a new prescription from my family doctor, who is supposed to be in charge of the process.

The nephrologist also prescribed a month of spironolactone that is the primary treatment for hyperaldosteronism. Unfortunately, both this medication and those that are being restored are liable to increase the potassium level in my blood; normally this is considered good, but as at the moment my potassium levels are quite high (but still in the allowed range), this means that I run the risk of having too high a potassium level, leading to heart problems. I'll do a blood test in the next few days (problematic because of the Jewish holidays) before I start to establish a base level, then again after a month to see what effect the drug has had.

So now I have to try and eat a low potassium diet: primarily this means no pumpkin, no bananas, no tomato sauce, no peanut butter and no milk! I can still have my yoghurt and fruit for breakfast, but no slice of bread with peanut butter; I'll replace this with an omelette. I will have to stop drinking the nut flavoured milk and drink more water, or maybe 'almond milk'. Looking at the list, there is a contradiction, as milk can be found both in the list of foods with high potassium and in the list of foods with low potassium. Unfortunately no value for potassium is listed on the nut milk bottle. I'll finish all my stocks during the coming week before I start the spironolactone.

Smart watch (2)

I wrote at the beginning of the week about my new Xiaomi Band 5 smart watch. Over the past few days I've been playing with the watch and discovering new functionalities. At the same time, I have become less and less enamoured of the watch, primarily because of the user interface and secondarily because of the inaccuracies in the data.

User interface: I appreciate the difficulty of trying to cram no small number of options onto a small screen when the only control functions are pressing the bottom of the watch, swiping up and swiping down. Of course, it would have helped had the minimal user manual include a map of the functions and how to access each one. I will return to the user interface later on.

Inaccuracies in the data: I already noticed the difference in the number of steps being counted by the watch as opposed to the steps counted by my phone. After I discovered the 'walk exercise' function on the phone, I decided to test this on a long walk; I forgot to start MapMyWalk at the beginning of the walk so I had no comparison at the end. The smart watch said that I walked 3.55 km when I'm sure that I walked more. The second evening I started both the watch and phone at the same time: they agreed on the duration of the walk (45.1 minutes) but on nothing else. MapMyWalk says that I walked 4.12 km burning 258 calories (no step count) whereas the watch says that I walked 2.93 km in 5855 steps, burning 372 calories. Big differences! I tried a third night; I started MapMyWalk about 200 m from my home and recorded 3.98 km whereas the watch says 3.16 km.

From a discussion of Reddit: Miband doesn't have GPS but while you're walking, it counts your steps, with that information it calculates an approximate distance. 

I thought that the watch somehow utilises the GPS in the phone to which it is paired via Bluetooth, but apparently not. Counting by steps is not a good method of calculating distance as the length of each step is not constant.

After having given up on the walking function of the smart watch, I was interested to see how the swimming function would work. I took my reading glasses with me to the pool yesterday so that I could see the menu options on the watch, but I couldn't see a thing because of the light. I guessed how to start the swimming function but guessed wrongly (I'm not sure what I did choose). This morning I started the swimming function before I left home so at least I could see what I was doing. I was asked the length of the pool and then the watch started measuring. When I got home, I looked at the watch again, trying to figure out what it had measured and how to stop it.

In trying to stop the swimming function, I noticed that it had at the bottom of the screen a small icon with an arrow pointing to the top of the screen where another icon waited. Sweeping the surface of the watch caused the icons to switch places; the arrow changed direction. When I saw this, I realised how the watch was measuring: one is supposed to sweep at the end of each length, and as the watch knows the length of the pool (because it was told at the beginning), it can calculate how many seconds it took to swim the length and from that how much energy had been expended. I can just see myself stopping after every length to change direction of the watch (NOT!).

Then I tried to stop the swimming function. This was exceedingly difficult: every time that I swiped, the direction of the arrow would change but there seemed to be no way of actually stopping the measurement. Eventually I saw that a red button would appear briefly; somehow I managed to get this button to appear for more than a second and then pressed on it, finally managing to stop the watch. Terrible user interface design.

So I'm not going to use the watch to count steps and I'm not going to use it to measure long walks and I'm certainly not going to use it for swimming. Am I going to use it at all? The sleep measurements seem to have some amount of accuracy, although one day it showed me sleeping at 8 am when I had got up at 5:30 am. I can see the length of sleep along with how much deep sleep and how much REM sleep I got. I find it strange that the first night I had 8 minutes deep sleep and no REM sleep, whereas later on I have over an hour deep sleep and over two hours REM sleep. In other words, I have my doubts about this data too. The only thing that should be accurate is pulse measurement and even that does not agree with my personal sphygmomanometer.

So it looks very much as if I am going to abandon the smart watch.

Chicken and rice together in one pot (2)

After the success of last week's chicken and rice together in one pot meal, I decided to repeat the recipe, although this time I made a small change in the order of cooking.  Normally when I cook rice, I start with frying the rice in olive oil for a few minutes: this is supposed to bring out the flavour of the rice, although my taste buds can't sense any difference. Adding the rice as the final ingredient as I did last week would skip this, so I decided to add the rice after having fried the onions and tomatoes. I added the chicken stock after I could see the rice turning slightly brown, then I added the vegetables and finally the chicken drumsticks. Adding the rice earlier enables it to be better mixed instead of being stuck on the drumsticks.

On the left is a picture of the onion being fried; in the background is a Pyrex dish holding the drumsticks that I browned previously. They can't really be seen due to the steam coming off them.

Here are the vegetables waiting their turn to enter the pot. In the back are pumpkin chunks and frozen green beans; in the front is a cup of basmati rice and diced tomatoes.

The final product after coming out of the oven.

Incidentally, this is one of those dishes that taste better the day after having been cooked. Any excess moisture is absorbed into the rice along with flavours from the chicken and vegetables, improving the collective taste.

DBA: Pilot study

The last installment of the on-going DBA saga was at the end of April when I finished rewriting all the theoretical material in the thesis. Since then, I have barely touched the thesis because of all the personal issues that I have had since May. 

About ten days ago I went a long walk with the dog and wondered how I could get the thesis back on track; I decided to start with a description of my company and the initiatives that we have undertaken in the past year or so. As I wrote that a good ERP system reacts to changes in the company, it is only natural to discuss the various enhancements that I had to develop in order to express these initiatives. This is good material, but I had what I term a 'crisis of faith' as none of the enhancements seem to fall into what I could call 'classic enhancements' as per the thesis definition; they all seem to be one sided (receiving a file produced by an external program and creating a set of parts and a BOM from the file; developing 'batch' processing; creating a purchasing recommendation program based on data from the 'automatic warehouse'). It may be that I will consider the automatic creation of parts and BOM followed by the purchasing recommendation as part of the same enhancement, as the recommendations are based on the quantities expressed in the BOMs that came from the external program.

In the mean time, I have reverted to considering the pilot study. For this, I am using a 'classic' enhancement that failed: task and time management. This is something that started in July 2020 and collapsed towards the end of last year. I 'interviewed' myself in order to get as many facts about the enhancement as well as some analysis as to why the enhancement failed. I then started looking for documents and found several: some are specifications, becoming more detailed as time went on, and some are documents explaining how to use the enhancement. I also found several emails about the process.

After completing the self-interview, I started writing the invitation letter to colleagues who were involved in the development and deployment of the enhancement. This might sound very simple but it took several hours to get right; finding a logical order to talking about the research methodology then then the enhancement itself and what I am expecting of people was not easy, and I'm not sure that it's totally clear. After I finished writing the letter yesterday evening, I translated it into Hebrew and this morning sent it to about eight people who were all involved at some stage or another, some more than others.

The pilot study is intended to familiarise myself with the Action Research methodology and is not intended to produce any conclusions. That said, I surprised myself slightly when writing conclusions at the end of my 'interview': this enhancement had nothing to do with increasing the throughput/shortening through times of the furniture division which is probably why it failed; it was perceived as pure overhead that hindered more than helped. I think that enhancements that improve/shorten are more likely to succeed than those that do other things, probably because the direct value can be perceived whereas indirect value is harder to see. It will be interesting to read/hear what my colleagues have to say for themselves; I don't want to put ideas into their heads.

I have a chat with my supervisor tomorrow morning when I can update him with my work of the past ten days.

In the mean time, I have recently been approached (via LinkedIn) by two people (one in Australia and one in Japan) asking about the DBA programme. In neither case has a dialogue emerged yet, but this could be interesting. At the moment, I'm wondering how they heard about me.

Walking apps and smart watches

In the pre-historic age, I used to use an app called MapMyWalk to measure how far I walked. Whilst this app is useful when I walk abroad, it's less useful at home. Apart from the fact that I know my route intimately, it only counts my steps in a given walk, not how many steps I've taken all day. For this, I use the pre-installed app Samsung Health.

A few years ago, there was an item on the early evening news about an app that would give its users money in return for walking (I worked out that it was 1 NIS per 1000 steps). Fairly quickly I stored up a large number of points and was able to redeem them whilst purchasing a pair of enclosed gaming headphones (I'm not a gamer, but I appreciate the closed headphones for listening to music). Shortly after, I realised that this app was not really giving me money: it was giving me discounts for products that I don't purchase. 

A few months ago, a random conversation on this topic brought up the fact that our health fund has its own app; this tracks not only steps but also self-reported meals, meals, sleep and a few other things. This app sets ridiculous standards: 11,600 steps/day (I actually manage this most days) and 17 cups of drink (this is 3.4 litres, whereas most sources say that one needs to drink 'only' 2 litres a day. The app does not recognise other types of activity, such as swimming, which is a shame because the swimming season started at around the same time that I started using this app.

Be that as it may, over about eight weeks I managed to accumulate over 26,000 points and was able to order a smart watch. Unlike the goods and/or services from the previous app, this watch is completely free. There are other items that I can obtain from the health fund, such as exercise mats and balls, that are less useful to me. The smart watch, an Xiaomi Smart Band 5, arrived at a pickup location in Bet Shemesh a week ago. The instruction manual is so small that it was very difficult to read (I found an online copy but it wasn't more enlightening). Thus it took some time before I realised that I was supposed to charge the watch - then I had to find the charging cable that I had thrown out with the packaging. There was quite a bit of confusion and frustration regarding opening a "Mi account" but I eventually I managed to get past this.

OK, watch charged. Now it wants to pair with my telephone via Bluetooth. This took several days to achieve, mainly because I was making a mistake in the app on the phone. I can't restore the same screen now, but there was a choice of band/watch/smart shoes and something else; I chose 'watch' but eventually I realised that the correct choice was 'band'. Now the band and my phone are paired! Then came a stage that lasted about 15 minutes during which firmware and other things were transferred from the phone to the band, before the band finally lit up and said that it was ready.

What can I say after 24 hours of wearing this band (I'm going to call it a watch from now on)? I haven't got a complete day's walking yet, but until this minute Samsung health says that I have taken 3,611 steps; the health fund app also says 3,611 (that surprised me slightly as I thought that there were small differences between the two) and the watch app says 3,262 steps - quite a difference (that's only 90% of the steps as reported by two other apps).

More interesting is apparently I slept 6 hours and 37 minutes last night. I fell asleep at 21:53 (I thought that I fell asleep a bit earlier, but that's close enough) and woke up at 5:31 (the alarm is set for 5:30). But apparently I was awake for just over an hour during the night; I can't see at the moment how to get a list of times that I was awake according to the watch. I know that I got up twice during the night, the first time for about ten minutes and the second time for a minute or two; the watch shows that the first time was quite a bit longer than I thought. There are also a few other periods that the watch shows that I was awake that I'm not aware of. This doesn't surprise me too much as after all I suffer from sleep apnea; it will be interesting to compare these results to those of the CPAP machine, although the latter doesn't seem to measure how long I've been asleep (or awake) but rather how long I've been wearing the mask.

It will be interesting to compare my pulse as per the blood pressure machine to what the watch claims it to be. There are a few other pieces of data that the watch provides - stress and something called PAI (I imagine that it's Personal Activity Intelligence); it will take some time for this to accrue.

One thing that I checked on the watch's website is whether the watch is water-proof: it is! This means that apart from not having to take it off when I shower, supposedly the watch is going to measure something when I swim. I'm not sure when I'll be swimming this week (it's the Jewish New Year on Tuesday and pool openings are irregular) but I'll make sure to check. The swimming should affect the PAI, at least.

(Yet another) New chicken dish

I don't remember whether I actively looked for this recipe or simply happened to find it: a new variation on chicken and rice. The recipe that I have is in Hebrew, so I won't bother with the link.

1. Brown the chicken pieces (I used 10 drumsticks) with olive oil in a pan for about 8 minutes. I have my doubts about the need for this stage, as browning drumsticks is not the same as browning cubes of beef, because of the shape.
2. Move the chicken pieces to a side dish, then fry a large diced onion in the pan using the same oil.
3. When the onion is nearly done, add two chopped tomatoes and optional spices. I used paprika, cumin and oregano, but I think that I'll skip this next time. I also added frozen green runner beans to the pan. I think that I intended to add parsley, but I forgot.
4. After a few minutes of cooking the vegetables, return the chicken to the pan.
5. Add two cups of chicken broth (I used chicken soup powder dissolved in water) and cook until boiling.
6. Add one cup of rice (I used basmati) and two cups of water. This seems to be too much water, because of the two cups in the previous stage; I think that a total of three cups would probably be sufficient.
7. Cover the pan and continue cooking in an oven at 170°C for 40 minutes.

After placing the pan in the oven, I took the dog for a walk then had a brief cold shower. By the time I had finished, the cooking time was up. The result: a bit soggy (due to the extra water) and possibly a bit too greasy (the olive oil) but otherwise very tasty. 

I won't post a picture of what I cooked because it looks a bit like something the dog brings up, but it's much better than it looks! The picture on the left is from the original article: here, chicken thighs have been used as opposed to drumsticks. Also the rice looks somewhat different.

Once again, John Martyn

I am trying to like JM's output, but apart from a handful of songs, I don't understand why people in certain circles rate him so highly. Obviously I'm like the rest who couldn't care about him.

Rummaging around on his website, I found a very interesting paragraph in an interview from 1970: When John and Beverley tried to recreate their “Stormbringer!” sound on stage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall earlier in the year, they failed miserably; and John explained: “I was never happy doing that concert. We only had four days to rehearse with the band, although the other gig at Bristol was strangely successful."

Judging by the date of this interview, 'the other gig at Bristol' almost certainly was the concert that I attended in April 1970 and wrote about here. I see that I didn't write anything about J&BM apart from the fact that they appeared; it seems that they appeared with a group. It would seem that they didn't impress me otherwise I probably would have bought "Stormbringer!" at the time.

Adrenal venous sampling (3) - unofficial results

Three and a half weeks ago I underwent the Adrenal Venous Sampling (AVS) procedure; I was told at the time that there would be results after two weeks but so far I have not received them. This might be because the results have been sent directly to my nephrologist and/or because the hospital is currently reducing all non-essential activities because of a dispute with the Ministry of Health regarding the transfer of money.

In the mean time, I have noticed that my weight has been steadily increasing since my appointment with the endocrinologist at the beginning of July (coincidentally the morning of my father's funeral), when he changed some of my blood pressure medication. One of the medicines that he removed contains a diuretic so there exists the possibility that the amount of water in my body is increasing. I weighed myself last Thursday and was horrified to discover that I had added 3.5 kg since that consultation. I later checked my weight in the clinic; there is a small difference between the traditional scales there and my electric scale, but the readings at home are near enough correct.

So I decided to write to the endocrinologist, asking about the results and telling him about the weight problem.  In about two thirds of the cases of primary aldosteronism, both adrenal glands pump out the same amount of aldosterone whereas one third of the cases have one adrenal gland pumping out much more than the other. The treatment for the one third is surgery, whereas the two thirds have to manage the condition with medicine. The endocrinologist called me this morning to inform me that the results show that I am with the statistics: I am in the two thirds group and so there will be no surgery. Better to find this out before any surgery rather than afterwards....

I have an appointment with the endocrinologist in a few weeks (after the Jewish High Holidays) but at the moment it's not clear whether that appointment will take place (because of the industrial dispute). I think that I'll reach out to the nephrologist.

For some reason, I woke up five or six times last night, each time going to the toilet (normally it's only once a night). Due to the amount of liquid that I passed, I decided to weigh myself again this morning - about 1.5 kg disappeared overnight. I'm still 2 kg over what I would consider to be the maximum weight, but at least there is an indication of what the problem is. The endocrinologist said that I can resume taking the diuretic medication if I want to in order to see if it makes any difference.

New oven gloves

As strange as it may seem, I've had quite a few problems with oven gloves in the past years. I had one good set of gloves but they got burnt when I held them too close to the flame on the gas rings. This of course compromised their ability to shield the wearer from heat so I was forced to throw them out. I find also that repeated laundry causes the gloves to shrink slightly each time.

Since then, my wife occasionally comes home with new gloves when I complain, but these have all been unsuitable, primarily because they are too small. Last week she came home with a pair that looked like the mouth of cartoon characters: I could (barely) put my hands inside the gloves and have them talking to each other. Apart from their entertainment value, these gloves are useless as they are too small.

So I thought that I would try my luck on the Internet: a few nights ago I came across the gloves pictured above that are being sold at a reasonable price, although delivery costs almost doubled the cost. They arrived today at my home, about 36 hours after they were ordered, so at least the delivery was efficient. The gloves are nice and big, although a little bigger wouldn't have hurt. 

I looked at the gloves - and at the picture - and see that there is a problem regarding the picture on the gloves. Presumably to save money, all the gloves have the picture printed on what could be the inner side of the left glove (or outer side of the right glove); when one puts on the gloves, one glove has the picture on the inside and one the outside, instead of both on the inside (or outside). In other words, instead of producing enantiomers, they have produced identical copies. Oh well. I suppose that it doesn't really matter that much, but I'm surprised that no one has noticed.

I have just looked at all the oven gloves for sale on the company's site and they all suffer from the same printing problem. Obviously I'm finicky.

Back to the graveyard

My first kibbutz had a tradition that every newly married couple would receive a statuette from the couple who last got married. I don't remember now what the statuette itself was, maybe some pagan symbol of fertility, but I do remember that it stayed with us for some time. Of course, in those days, a kibbutz wedding was a rare event, not like today when there are so many weddings and none are held on the kibbutz.

This tradition found its way into my mind yesterday when I attended the funeral of a kibbutz member, Uri (almost 90 years old); I was the last kibbutz member to be bereaved and here I was, passing the bereavement onto another family. There was a certain similarity between my father's condition and Uri's, who actually was hospitalised in the same hospital as my father, albeit a floor above. Both his wife and one of his daughters came to visit us during the mourning period and all of us recognised that there was no return from Uri's condition.

At the beginning of Uri's funeral, I felt some of the emotions that I had tried to repress during my father's funeral; I felt tears in my eyes. But unlike my father's funeral, eulogies came from the widow, from all four children, one grandchild, a few other kibbutz members and even a few songs sung by the family (who sing well but were accompanied by a slightly out of tune guitar). In other words, this was one of the l-o-n-g funerals that cause 'the audience' to lose interest and thus respect. I fully understand why the family members felt compelled to speak, but in such cases maybe it would be better to restrain some of the unconnected kibbutz members who like the sound of their own voice.

This was not my first visit back to the graveyard since my father's funeral, but actually my third this week! I went up on Monday to see whether the stone had been laid on the grave; it had not. Then again on Tuesday when I saw the the stone had indeed been laid.

One of the Jewish traditions regarding mourning is that male mourners do not shave until the stone is laid, 30 days after the funeral. I developed quite a full white beard in this time that most of the time did not bother me, but I found it annoying when wearing a mask, so it was with some relief that I shaved most of the beard off this morning. It still needs thinning and trimming but at least wearing a mask won't be so itchy.

Adrenal venous sampling (2)

Yesterday I underwent the long awaited procedure that I described a few months ago; actually I only made the appointment 12 days ago so I didn't have to wait too long in that sense.

As instructed, I arrived at the clinic within the hospital at 7:30am, after not having eaten or drunk anything since the previous evening. As I was the first to arrive, there was no delay in processing, although a lack of curtains around the cubicles meant that I had to wait before changing into a hospital gown (the curtains are washed over the weekend then put back on Sunday morning - I was simply too early for this). Despite having done a blood test on Thursday for potassium (an element that is expected to be low because of the hyperaldosteronism), I suspect that the staff did not believe the good level that my test showed and so I had to do another blood test. Nothing could proceed until these results returned.

At about 10:30 am, the blood test results returned: the potassium level was slightly lower than it was on Thursday, but still a good value. The next step was being hooked up to an infusion containing artificial aldosterone; the nurse said that infusing the hormone would cause my body to create even more, thus improving the level of detection in the test. Here's the explanation: Some diagnostic centers prefer to pharmacologically stimulate the adrenal glands with an infusion of cosyntropin (a synthetic version of ACTH) to ensure that veins are adequately sampled. I had been reading a book on the Kindle, but as the battery had died, I switched to listening to music via a pair of headphones that I had brought with me. Looking back on this period, I realised later that I had fallen asleep for a while, as there were songs that I had missed hearing. It's good that I slept as it shows that I was relaxed.

Finally at 1 pm I was wheeled in to the room where the procedure would take place. After moving onto the fixed bed, I was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey: my arms were tied and heavy blankets  placed on all my body. Of course, it would not be good if I started moving once the procedure started, but after a while it became very uncomfortable. Because the catheter is inserted in my groin, I had to be shaved in this area, a not particularly pleasant operation. Again, because of the point of insertion, my "meat and two veg" (as Austin Powers called them) were on show for all, although they may have been covered up at some stage; I couldn't see anything, lying flat on my back. After shaving, the area had to be washed with soap and alcohol.

Eventually the procedure started via an ultrasound scan to locate the femoral vein in my right thigh; once this was located, I felt two sharp pricks that were due to local anaesthetic being injected. From this point on, there was no pain, but now and then there were uncomfortable moments that are hard to describe. There was a similar feeling to when I've had BCCs removed: again, local anaesthetic and then a feeling of pulling and pushing. The only pain came from my arms and eventually from my lower back as they complained about not moving. At one stage, breathing in caused a feeling that I can only describe as "fire in my right lung"; I reported this at the time and was told that it was natural to feel this. I asked the doctor who performed the procedure and he said that this happened when he injected some contrast into the veins; it also showed that I was definitely not allergic to iodine (there was some doubt about this).

Eventually, after having taken eight or nine blood samples, the doctor announced that we were nearly finished. A few more minutes of pushing and pulling and back pain and then it was all over. I looked at the clock and saw that it was now 2:30 pm; the procedure had lasted an hour and a half. Judging by other patients who were wheeled out and back in to the cubicles, my test lasted about three times longer than theirs.

I was told not to move my right leg for another hour which was fine by me; I was able to drink some water and even eat a roll that the hospital kindly provided for me. While I was eating the roll, the consultant whom I saw a month ago came in to see how I was, which was kind of him. He said that it will take about two weeks for the results to appear and will be sent to "my doctor"; I asked who my 'lead' doctor is: him, the nephrologist or even my family doctor, to which he smiled and said that we'll sort this out later. 

After an hour of not moving, I was allowed to move my leg but still stay in bed; only after another hour was I allowed to get up and get dressed. After a short exploratory walk, the doctor who performed the procedure appeared with my discharge letter. As hinted on the PA page (Because the right adrenal vein originates in the inferior vena cava (IVC), it is usually more difficult to canulate), the doctor noted that he was unable to canulate this vein but took samples from four surrounding veins. As the adenoma is on my left adrenal gland, this might seem problematic, but I assume that the doctors know what they are doing. 

I left the hospital at about 4:45 pm, which meant that I was there for just over nine hours: a good day's work. I felt weak but that was because of the stress and having been lying down all day. There were a few minutes in the evening when I felt a slight twinge of pain in my groin, but this was just the anaesthetic saying goodbye. I didn't sleep well yet again, but otherwise I'm fine and underwent the procedure with no problems.

Now I wait the results.

My father's eyes (slideshow)

After completing this song and recording it over the last weekend, I began to wonder what I could do with it. My first thought was that it would make a good candidate for the Yom Kippur evening of personal songs, should it take place this year, so I set about making an edited version of the song, or as I tend to call it, the 'single' version. Eight bars of introduction were cut along with the solo section in the middle and the guitar solo at the end. Even with the edits, this version plays for 3:50 minutes, making it a long 'single'. I removed certain parts from the MIDI file as they weren't needed in this version, and in so doing, I inadvertently removed a guitar part that I later put back. Adding the vocals to this version proved easier than I expected; the vocals are the same as the 'extended' (or original) but they appear at different places in the song (because of the missing eight bars of the introduction and the missing middle).

A later thought was to create a slideshow containing photos of my father, displaying them to the background of the song. At the normal time setting of five seconds per photo, I would need 230/5=46 photos, although in the end, I set the display time to six seconds per picture (38 photos needed). Whilst I have some photos of my father stored as jpg files, these are only from the past fifteen years and I really wanted older photos. 

So I set to work going through the photo albums that we salvaged from my father's flat. At some stage, someone (probably my mother) put photos in order and even wrote either in the album or on the photos' back when and where the photo was taken. But some of the albums were complete hodge-podges with no guarantee that photos on one page would have any connection to those on the next page. At least, the "early" years were consistent; I would take a photo out of the album (the earliest, from the war years, had special 'corner fixtures' to hold the photos; whilst it was fairly easy to extract a photo, it was hard to put it back) and scan it. 

I tried to get pictures from all eras of my father's life; I couldn't find anything pre-RAF, but there were plenty of pictures from the RAF of which I scanned only representative examples. The next photos were from my parents' wedding in 1952; these were in a fancy album and could not be extracted, so I had to place the entire album on the scanner's platen and hold it down during the scan. I was pleased to find some photos from their honeymoon and one or two of my parents outside of our old house in Cardiff. I was especially pleased to find a photo of my father and grandfather from this period, and one or two of my father with a young child (I couldn't tell whether this was me).

There were only a few pictures from the '60s that I could use; most of them were group pictures that I didn't want. Similarly, there were only a few from the '70s, at least in Britain. But there were plenty of photos from the various cruises that my parents went on with much variety of backgrounds.

After scanning all the pictures that I wanted (over a few evenings), I started putting together a slideshow in the old Movie Maker program. Indecision regarding the time that each picture be displayed caused me to create the slideshow three times; the second time around, I was sufficiently alert to write down the sequence of pictures that I had chosen so that the third time would be easier. I also miscalculated the number of pictures that I included originally, so I had to add more pictures to fill out the 3:50 minutes.

After completing what I would consider to be the 'first version' of the slideshow and sending a rough copy to the childen, I prepared to go to bed. On my way, however, I realised that the slideshow was missing a few essential photos from the past few years, so I jotted the names of the people in the photos on a piece of paper then tried to sleep. Indigestion and having the song play on endless repeat in my head meant that I didn't have a good night's sleep.

This morning, I asked the family if they had any good photos of my father along with our grand-daughter, and with his carer. My wife and daughter sent me several photos, some of which were better than the ones that I had, so I removed the less good pictures and inserted the new ones. After a few iterations of this (each time I would receive a new photo), I decided that I had the final version. I converted it to mp4 format and uploaded it to YouTube, where it can be seen here.

On the left appears a honeymoon picture, showing my father in a completely different light from the man that I knew (or thought I knew). 

It occurs to me that I could provide the video for the Yom Kippur evening (should it take place) as opposed to the audio. I originally intended the slide show for those that knew my father, but those attending the YK evening might well appreciate it as well.

Third covid-19 vaccine shot

Last Thursday, the Israeli government decided that in view of the rising number (again) of covid-19 infections, citizens over the age of 60 should have a third vaccine shot. As opposed to the first and second shots, this one is supposed to be effective immediately, multiplying the number of antibodies by at least five.

Some clinics started giving the vaccines on Saturday evening; on Sunday I booked our shots for Wednesday morning. I've now had the shot and I can feel the antibodies increasing as I type this (I jest). For some reason, my son seems to have joined the anti-vaccine group and queries why we had the shots 'without thinking'. It's still the same vaccine, and as nothing untoward happened as a result of having the first and second shots at the beginning of the year, there is no reason to suspect that something will happen now.

My current lifestyle makes getting infected an unlikely proposition, although my wife does go out more and of course she is in close contact with me. I'm still working at home and intend to carry on doing so unless 'ordered' to return to the office (I popped in for a few minutes the other day to print something and saw that nothing has yet been done with regard to erecting full walls around my workspace, so that won't act as a catalyst for my return). Apparently there is some possibility of yet another lock-down which will not affect me very much.

Yesterday was my 65th birthday! I can now travel on public transport for half price, provided that I get a new travel card. I had to retire my original travel card some years ago as several machines at the exits to railway stations had problems reading it; I then obtained an 'anonymous' card which has given me no problems. But my age (or something similar) has to be imprinted into the card so that it will 'know' that I am entitled to travel half price. Actually I won't be the primary recipient of the discount as I rarely travel for myself; 99% of my rail journeys are for work (I get refunded for tickets), and I've travelled only three times in the past 16 months.

The 'adrenal vein sampling' test will take place on Sunday, four days hence.

My father's eyes (song)

The morning after we finished sitting shiv'a, I took the dog for a walk and considered the fact that I ought to write a song somehow commemorating my father. Almost immediately, a phrase entered my mind, "If I could see through my father's eyes", along with a hint of a tune. When I got home, I made a very rough recording of the tune as it stood onto my mobile phone, so that I would have some form of reference.

The next day I made a demo sequence of the verse, figuring out what the tune should be, along with the accompanying chords. Early on, I established that the time signature would be 6/8 with two bars per chord (most of the time). Using the sequence Dm/Am/Bb/G, I developed a tune then extended the chords so that they would be more interesting (Dm add 9, Am add9, Bb maj7, Gsus4 to G). At times the Dm add9 is replaced by F6/9, Am add9 with C6/9 and Bb maj7 with Bb maj9. Over the past ten days, I've been working on the arrangement; at first, I knew that it was incomplete, but even when it did reach a state of being complete, I still found things to change. The song sounds very cool, due to the loping beat, subdued chords played by violins in the background and a guitar obligato, but now after two days of the same arrangement, I am having my doubts about the orchestration of the first verse. 

But no words! I was stuck on the second line - if the first line is "If I could see with my father's eyes", it would be extremely clumsy to have a second line like "I would see.....". I couldn't think of a synonym for 'see' that would make sense. Sitting in the kibbutz clinic this morning (waiting to arrange blood and urine tests, if you must know), I had a small breakthrough - "The world would seem to be a vast surprise". Once I had this couplet, it was as if the flood-gates had been opened and I quickly figured out what I thought were the words of the song. Being totally modern, I tapped the words into my mobile phone and saved them before I lost track.

After coming home, I looked at the lyrics and tried singing them to the music. Apart from noticing that there are problems with the accompaniment to the first verse (as noted above), I discovered that I had written precisely half a song - there should be three verses of eight lines each, but I had written three verses of only four lines each. Something similar happened before when I wrote four lines for a song's bridge, only to discover that the arrangement allowed for only two lines; that was easier to fix! What was the second verse became the second half of the first verse; I wrote a new, complete, second verse starting with "If I could hear through my father's ears", then extended what was the third verse to a complete verse. Then I started rewriting, changing words here and there. Here are the words as they stand at the moment:

If I could see through my father's eyes
The world would seem to be a vast surprise
Devices that he can't recognise
Communications transmogrified
He fought a war for democracy
Still half the world lives with tyranny
What was so clear is now ambiguous
All moral sense has deserted us leaving no fuss

If I could hear through my father's ears
There'd be the sound of suffering and of fear
The quiet Sundays of yesteryear
Have been replaced with shouting and with jeers
Politeness no longer means a thing
And courtesy has no sound, no ring
Now all the masses are wearing bling
Reducing standards thus losing grace and quality

He's tired now, he has lived too long
He barely hears and now his sight has gone
At least he knew what was right, what's wrong
He leaves this world with his descendants strong
One hundred years filled with so much change
What have we learnt? Tell me, what now remains?
I sing a slow and resigned refrain
Salute the man who taught me modesty, no private gain

I'm not convinced about the final line of each verse, especially the last.

And now the obligatory discussion about the scale of the song. The tune mainly runs on the notes D upto A, with the occasional C below the D, meaning  that the scale is probably D minor. The harmony doesn't help much: the Bb chord suggests the note Bb, meaning that the scale is  D minor, but the G chord suggests the note B, meaning that the scale is D dorian. Only once per verse does the tune escape the narrow range of D to A, when it goes up to C (an octave above middle C) then descends to B natural - so the scale is D dorian. Listening to a playback of the track with vocals, I think that I am going to lower the track by a tone, leaving it in C dorian. This will probably be easier for me to sing.

Bish-a-lu-la

In 1970, I started attending a semi-exclusive youth club that was attached to a church near my primary school; this was where I used to be a cub scout. I write "semi-exclusive" as I was invited to join by someone who I had known in the Scouts; certainly the club did not advertise itself. The club's activities were listening to music (enter Abbey Road, ITCOTCK, early Pink Floyd, etc), playing table tennis (one year we even played in some local league) and in the first year, the occasional philosophical discussion (after all, this was technically a church youth club). 

At one of these discussions, I was talking with the vicar, who told me how much he admired the Jewish people. Somewhat surprised, I asked why and he said that although Judaism has formal services, it is celebrated mainly in the family; Christianity lacks this, he said. 

One example of such is called נתינה בסתר, "netina beseter" or "hidden giving". My parents used to do this, and so did I: for example, several years ago, one of our neighbours died, leaving a widow and a daughter. As by this time the kibbutz dining room had closed, I decided to cook for these neighbours their meal for Erev Shabbat (i.e. Friday night) as there is nothing worse than returning from a funeral to an empty home with nothing to eat. There was also a long running case of a family whose eldest daughter had some form of cancer - I used to cook for them every couple of weeks. The 'hidden' part of this is that the benefactors might not know who was providing the meals, but certainly the community at large did not know, and this was not something that one would broadcast (modesty).

A few years later, some one took it upon themselves to semi-formalise this arrangement: when a mother comes home after giving birth, people volunteer to cook meals for the coming week or more. Similarly, when someone dies, people volunteer to cook meals for the week of "shiv'a". So throughout this week, every day someone will prepare a hot meal for us. The tendency is to provide more than enough food, so I suspect that our fridge will be overloaded by the end of the week and there may not be a need to cook on Friday night (by which time we will have stopped formally receiving people).

We call this "bish-a-lu-la" (like "Bebop-a-lu-lu") although our daughter pointed out that it should really be pronounced "bishlu la" (בישלו לה), "they cooked for her", where "her" is the mother who has just given birth. As written Hebrew doesn't have vowels, sometimes a word can be mispronounced, especially as this word should really be two (in which case there would have been no problems in pronouncing it).

Eulogy

Father, if I had to describe you in a few words, I would choose concepts such as "dedication", "principled" and "modesty".

My father's first test with dedication and being principled came at the end of his secondary school education in Cardiff (capital of Wales) in 1940 when he was 18, when he volunteered to join the Royal Air Force. Britain was suffering from continual waves of German bombers and only the steadfastness of the RAF prevented an even harder blow. Already in those days my father had heard about the suffering of the Jews in Germany and Poland, and his principles led him to devote his life to their memory.

In 1942, my father's older brother died in Malta while he was serving in the Navy on a mine-sweeper. At this moment, my father's life changed and he turned his dedication towards his grieving parents. This dedication continued until their deaths in 1964 [IIRC my paternal grand-mother died first, her grieving husband a mere three weeks later. My maternal grand-father died before I was born and my grand-mother died three months after I was born, so basically I grew up without grandparents]. We had moved a few years previous to Bristol in order to be closer to his parents, and after their deaths, my parents realised that despite their desire to return to Cardiff and a better Jewish community, they were prepared to sacrifice a few years so that I might be able to attend a high ranking secondary school (aka Bristol Grammar School).

For some reason, I don't remember my father being a dominant figure in my childhood, although there is one incident from the snowy winter of 1963 that is incised into my memory and points out how principled my father was. I had gone to visit a friend and my father had come to take me home. For some reason that I do not remember, we had to travel that day on the bus. As opposed to Israel, there are a fixed number of places on a British bus, and the conductors strictly enforced this number. The bus came, people piled on and on and on, and by the time that we alighted, there was only one spare place. I suggested that my father should sit and I would sit on his lap, but he refused as we would be exceeding the maximum number of passengers. So due the strong principles of my father, we were forced to wait for the next bus in the freezing cold.

I wasn't aware of this at the time, but my father translated his dedication, his being principled and his modesty to positive actions within the small Jewish community of Bristol: he worked for the Jewish burial society, and on Christian holidays would volunteer to work in the major hospital in the city so that Christian workers could be with their families.

After I left home, my father dedicated himself to my mother, following which that dedication grew and grew as my mother's health declined. This dedication grew to the extent that he would not allow anyone else to take care of her. After my mother's death, my wife and I were very apprehensive about how he would continue without his wife after 50 years of marriage.

My father's main hobby - if not his sole hobby - was gardening. Somehow this love of gardening passed over me but was transferred to my wife [this is a self-deprecatory joke]. We had a large garden in Bristol with a few trees and many well looked-after flowers. When my parents moved back from Bristol to Cardiff in the mid-70s, they lived in a bungalow, also with a large and well-looked after garden. Possibly my father's major contribution to Tzora was the large garden that he developed and tended next to his house, until his physical capabilities no longer supported this.

As opposed to my mother, who suffered from serious medical problems, and myself, when sometimes it seems that my best friend is the flu virus [another self-deprecatory joke], my father was never ill. Nine years ago we celebrated his 90th birthday with a party at the Tel Aviv port, and he was lucid and in complete control of his senses. I recently discovered that I had written the following on his birthday card

It's an honour and a privilege 

To have a father such as you

Always caring about his fellow man

With barely a thought for himself

The values you have instilled in me

Are the best a son could ever wish

The only way to repay you

Is to wish you all the best on this

Birthday of Birthdays

But a year or two later, an infection, that for a younger person would be considered trivial, managed to scramble his brain and from that point on, my father began traversing a slope that was at first shallow, but as time went on, became steeper and steeper. It's the slope from which there is no return.

Let us not forget: we must remember and cherish the 95 good years of his life.