Letter from Phuket 2

There was a little cock-roach-y thing in my bathroom this morning. And if I leave an open bag of sugar on the tea tray (because I don't use a whole one) then a group of little bugs take up residence - always check before using it again!  But to be honest this being the 6th time I've been here I'm used to it and it doesn't phase me any more. Just so long as the friends of the now deceased cockroach thing don't come into my bed. There have been more mozzies about than usual, probably because it's been quite thundery with heavy showers, and is forecast to be the same for the rest of the week I think.

I got a bit of a lie-in this morning, having gone back to sleep and woken up at what I thought was 8.30am - what!? - but turned out to be 7.30 as my watch had clicked forward to HKG time. I had my customary breakfast of fruit salad and yoghurt, fried egg or omelette, and toast. I'm afraid I cannot stomach pate or spicy potatoes for breakfast. Lunch is usually either a rice or noodles dish with varying levels of spicy-ness and you have to watch out for the red and green bits....

So, it's Monday and I'm enjoying some time off although I do need to get on with some of my normal work. The wifi connection here is pretty dire though so there is much swearing, clenching of fists and hair-tearing going on. They are also doing some electricity works outside the hotel apparently so we keep having powercuts too. Those words 'your connection has been lost, trying to re-connect, attempt 3 of 20' are enough to turn the air blue especially when there is an owner waiting by the table for information.

Everything got pretty much sorted by the briefing at 4.30pm yesterday.  Last year we extended the measurement to 3 days from 2, and it has made a huge difference;  a lot of boats were done and dusted on Friday which meant that blood-pressure on Saturday and Sunday was a bit lower for everyone.

The opening party was last night, I was late to it because I had a sporadic Skype conversation with Mr H, which involved me having to sit on the floor just inside my bedroom door to pick up good enough connection, which then kept dropping. Still we managed a bit of a conversation and then agreed that email letters were going to be a lot less stressful. Anyway, I did get to the party in time to get some pasta and rice and red wine, and chat to a few people before heading off to bed (refusing an invitation to go out to a local bar since I'd already had my quota for the night!).

The political demonstrations up in Bangkok has meant that I am not really looking forward to my trip home on Sunday, since I change at Bangkok airport (although I am feeling quite homesick for my dusty little house, elderly dog and lovely husband). There is nothing I can do about it, but I am one of those people who imagines the worst in such scenarios - and I know where I get that from! Yesterday the race director here said that when he'd driven from home to Kata the road was blocked by police, and another road was blocked by a truck on its side, so it had taken 1.5 hours instead of 20 minutes. (He is the opposite to me and just takes everything in his stride from stroppy yachties to Thai political tensions, "Oh yes, they're off again, just the same as normal"). Anyway, Oh my god I thought, what is this, rioting on the Phuket streets? But no, the road was closed because of a triathlon that was on, and the truck was just someone not able to drive properly!

So, I shall try not to worry about it or let it spoil my week. Right, time for lunch then on with some work.

Unwinding

I will (try to) no longer:

- get wound up by people outside this office ignoring my requests in matters of consistency and admin. Things that make life easier but don't affect the important stuff.  Things I have been asking for at least five years and it's not happening. It's time to stop minding.

- get wound up by other people's problems which they try to involve me in.

- get wound up by other people's stupidity, where it does not directly affect my own or loved-ones' well-being.

- get wound up by apostrophe's.

- get wound up by people who think that because they are rich they are more important.

- get wound up by people trying to wind me up.

Wish me luck!

What's around the corner?

We went to watch a hillclimb in Devon again on Sunday, at the venue where I will drive for the first time at the beginning of September.

Mr H and I got a ride up the course in the back of someone's car (not at competitve speeds!) and it was so interesting to see how different the road looks from a driver's eye view, as we'd only seen it from a spectator viewpoint.

I think that psychologically my barrier is going to be remembering that there will NOT be a car / person / animal around those blind bends.   In normal driving, one never goes on a road where there is no risk of something lurking out of sight - even a seemingly deserted lane holds that inherent risk. On a main road there could be a bicycle or pedestrian, or a vehicle stopped or broken down (with no red flag waving as a warning to stop).  After the crash of course my psyche is constantly on the lookout.

So I will need to over-ride my natural caution. Maybe having to concentrate on taking the right line and getting the gear changes smooth and in the appropriate place will help?

Here is a lovely picture of our Imp (the car I will be hillclimbing) outside a motor museum in Dorset - "Regular or Super, Sir?"

Shower thoughts

Thinking in the shower, often a mistake for me.  This evening I was mulling over some of the things said on Monday.

On Monday, Mr H and I drove 3 hours to see my solicitor and a barrister about my case, well worth the trip as the barrister was very nice and explained everything extremely clearly.  It is 2 years since the crash and my physical improvement (ie. discomfort and pain) over the last few months has slowed to a crawl; psychological improvement is better, with the odd relapse. As I have mentioned on here before, I detest spurious personal injury claims, but this one seemed to happen of its own accord after our crash, and it's not spurious in most people's eyes. Therefore however much I shy away from talking about it, I will because this is what I was thinking about - not the fact of there being a claim but some of the details, and the insight into how the legal system works (not having done this before).

Two things came out on Monday that annoyed me in the shower:

1.  The other driver's insurance company hasn't admitted liability yet.  This surprised me, since they have already accepted our claims for uninsured losses and made an interim payment.  So it is just them playing games - but to hear that they haven't admitted liability automatically opens up the possibility that they will suggest it was somehow partly my fault, despite all the evidence showing that it wasn't.  In the weeks after the crash, the grandparents of one of the passengers in the other vehicle put in a claim against my insurance... Mr H and I were gobsmacked - they had to be f*ing joking right?  I guess no-one had told them what actually happened...

2.  The barrister half joked that the law might consider a dog to be a 'chattel' and therefore argue against us claiming for the excess we had to pay on insurance for Django's veterinary bill.  I didn't think about this in the meeting, but how could someone argue that they won't pay up for that, yet not argue in the slightest about the cost of the replacement dog cage or a T-shirt? (chattels in anyone's language). The whole point of uninsured losses is to cover costs that we wouldn't have incurred had we not been hit in a head-on collision. And as for looking at Django as a chattel... well that upsets me a bit.  

Just thinking about the nitty gritty of things, now that we are likely to get to the arguing stages about wear and tear on my lost sunglasses and how much the pain I experience really affects my life, makes me want the whole thing over as soon as possible.

Then hopefully I will feel that I can truly move onwards and upwards.

Psychology of City Cats

As the furore over Barclays (and what other banks...?) and the Libor Scandal goes on, with discussions over resignations and the question of appropriate justice, I started thinking about the employees behind it.  To work in the finance arena, I'm presuming that you need to be a sharp, hard-hitting, manipulative type of person who is basically out to make as much money as possible (do correct me if I'm wrong - if you work in the City and are a fluffy type who knits at your desk and eats home-made lasagne every night).

I can imagine such a personality getting obsessed with performance, with working out how to make the bottom line look better (for the company and for themselves); at any cost, or without consideration of the cost...?   Did those who manipulated the figures stop and think for one moment about what would happen if they were caught?  Or do they think that they are above normal humans and untouchable, and 'getting caught' did not enter their minds? Did they even realise that they were doing anything wrong, or do they get so enmeshed in it that they are blind to that.

There is much talk at the moment of how it should be treated, of banks getting away with a large fine, and a few individuals resigning or being fired rather than being treated in the same way as others who commit serious fraud (or other more minor infractions) - ie. prison.


How do the untouchables feel when the axe falls?  Maybe they are losing some sleep now, now that this particular bubble that they were flying on has burst...

Chickens and eggs

I read a research article the other day about pain in the proximal thigh following femur IM nailling (ie. what I've got).  It was quite interesting although it was related to 1991-1993 surgeries so possibly things are done differently now.

Anyway, in amongst the research paper it mentioned that a) where litigation is involved the patients experienced more pain and b) when the litigation is settled the pain diminshes.

Well, that sound reasonable I thought. Where litigation is involved and it depends to some extent on how much one is suffering, and you have a constant reminder of it with contact from the solicitor etc., it is bound to have an effect on how much you think about the pain.

Then I thought, but if the litigation continues as long as there is substantial pain, but reduces when it is settled, surely this is a chicken and egg situation?   It still hurts substantially so the litigation drags on...?

The other thing the article took into account was whether the patients had had the IM nail removed because of pain or 'irritation'.  I really don't want to go through another surgery, and if they suggest it then it's going to be a difficult decision to make. Oh well, I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.

In the meantime, every time I think "Oh *** it hurts today!"  I will psychoanalyse myself ;-)

Going doo-lally

I was just thinking how easy it would be to persuade someone that they are going mad / senile even if they weren't.  I'm sure it's the sort of thing that awful people in novels or films do to their parents in order to get their hands on the dosh. Such an easy way to mentally torture somebody by sewing seeds of doubt in their mind.

Mr H and I sometimes have disagreements about what we have told each other, or accuse each other of remembering something wrongly.  We are both convinced that we are remembering correctly, although it cannot possibly be the case (and it's not in writing so neither of us can prove it). 

Right now I am hesitating about passing on some casual news in case he says "I told you all about that the other week, don't you listen to a word I say?"  I'm wracking my brain in advance and I don't recall knowing anything about it... aaggghh I'll just have to risk it! ;-)

After effects

One of the things the psychologist definitely got right about me was my sense of vulnerability since the crash, both on behalf of myself and others. 

Life is threatening. Anything could happen, from anywhere, without warning. People's behaviour isn't to be trusted.  I'm not talking about meteorites hitting earth but physical vulnerability in every day situations.

When I am driving, or when I cycle or walk towork, I am so much more wary of what cars / cyclists / pedestrians may do. It may be something that would affect me, or the thought of seeing a crash happen to someone else. People driving fast (too fast in my mind), or overtaking in a bad place, set my heart a-thumping. The other day I saw someone playing with their dog by the road, it kept running out in the road and back again. I wanted to shout at her, and my nervous reaction shocked me.

Mr H can tell you that my reaction if I think he is driving too fast or close, or taking (what I think of as) risks is that of a nervous wreck. 

Yet when I'm driving, or in control of a situation, or feeling relaxed, I can forget about it.  Until that car in front decides to overtake on a blind bend, nooooooo!

Control freak?

I look at my colleague's desk next to mine, and how she is pinned in by piles of old paper, mugs, files, various office staplers etc., nail polish remover (!), boxes of... not sure what, and generally just STUFF.  I can't understand how it doesn' drive her nuts working in that environment (I have another colleague who is even worse, but I don't have to see it for 8 hours a day so I will leave that one out of it, for now).



I want to pick up the largest pile of paper, most of which probably hasn't been relevant for about a year, and go through it and chuck most of it out.

Picture from this article

Now Mr H will say that I am not the tidiest person in the world, but I do fairly regularly go through stuff on the table and either file it or chuck it, and my office desk is really tidy as we don't produce much paperwork in here these days.

So now my colleague has left work early, and my fingers are ITCHING to clear up her desk (actually to put the entire contents in the bin, if I'm honest). 

What does that say about me, psychologists!?  (or them, for that matter)

Different shoes

Having raided the social science section at the library, I am reading a book called "Dis/connected. Why our kids are turning their backs one everything we thought we knew" by Nick Barham .

The author travels around talking to teens and trying to find out 'what makes them tick', have a look at the reviews in the link above for more description.

One of the things that I noticed reading it was my reaction to some of the activities described in the book, such as groups of 150 souped up cars gathering in a public car park with music blaring, or large groups of teens hanging around with Death message t-shirts on, drinking Vodka RedBulls.  He talks about how some city centres have become no-go areas at night, and I'm thinking 'too bloody right, I don't want to be beaten up or vomited on thanks!'.

I realised how ingrained my middle-class-ness is by my automatic response, namely that many of the described situations would make me anxious or disapproving.  At some points I felt anger towards the author for generalisations and suggesting that kids behaviour should never be threatening, when clearly sometimes it is. Then again, is that me jumping to my own defense, because does he actually suggest that?   The book doesn't suggest everything these kids do is fine, and that we should all accept their behaviours as unproblematic, but it is trying to explain the reasoning behind it and does a good job of that.

Maybe it's not just that some of us have inbuilt prejudices caused by a) our upbringing and b) the media, though this is undoubtedly the case.  Maybe some of it is fear of people who enjoy themselves in a different way to us, who get a kick out of doing things that are illegal (or borderline legal), who make people like me seem 'boring'.

Recently I seem to keep reminding myself of that phrase about "walking a mile in another man's* shoes", I guess we should all try to do that when we start judging others on their behaviours or attitudes, it's a good start at least.  


*I refuse to change it to "person's" for the sake of political correctness!

Global or International?

My course book asked an interesting question this week: "When you think of 'global', what does it mean to you?"   I hmm-d and haa-d and could only think 'well, worldwide'.  They then had a photo of the earth from outer space, and a map of the world showing the divisions of countries.

The earth photo represented those who thought of 'global' as meaning one society of which all human beings are members; no national divisions, we're all in this together no matter what language we speak, what colour of our skin or whatever.

The map, however, they interpreted as representing 'international' rather than 'global'.  In other words the world is made up of lots of separate entities and we each sit cocooned in our own comfortable (we lucky ones) country where we know what's what, and being separate from 'the others'.

Of course we all know that clothes we buy in the local department store are made in another country; and occasionally we think about whether the workers in those countries are exploited or just grateful for a job. Likewise with much of the food from the supermarket.  But still, We are Here, and They are There.

Even within our own nations, towns, streets there are the divisions of Us and Them.  The North/South divide of England for instance - no doubt there are equivalents in all countries.

To think of the world as a single, global society.... those links from one side of the world to the other, remembering that what you buy today was probably made or grown thousands of miles away yesterday... remembering that we are all humans... is not something most of us do regularly.

I am here in Phuket, Thailand surrounded by local people, but also a plethora of nationalities from Australian to Swedish to Russian. Partly that is because I am at an international regatta, but it is also the type of place that is bursting with ex-pats. After a while one hardly notices what accent people have; yesterday somebody asked me if I was from Australia or New Zealand, despite my very English accent.

It's a good exercise occasionally to zoom out of your life, out from your office, house, town, country, continent, until you can see the whole earth and remind ourselves that the only boundaries are man-made.

This is your Captain speaking...

Tomorrow morning at 7am I fly to Paris for our meetings.  OK fine, apart from the being picked up at 5.30am  part.  But this morning I took Django out for a walk in thick fog and started thinking "Oh no, what if it is like this tomorrow?".

You may already know that I am not a brilliant flyer. If the weather is fine, dry, perfect temperatures etc. and the pilot has a nice accent then it's not too bad, but if there are any negatives then I'm not too happy until we are safely on the ground. Well, the flying is fine, it's the landing that I hate.

So, if tomorrow morning is foggy again, but the airline is running the flight, would I refuse to fly?  Probably not.  After all, we trust the airline to know when the conditions are safe or not - they safely fly hundreds of trips a week after all.  

There have been psychological studies such as Milgram's which look at how we obey and trust authority figures, or even those we consider to be an authority figure. Likewise, we trust those we consider to be experts in their field - they know better than us. We trust doctors to know what they are doing, and we trust airlines to know when conditions are safe and when they aren't.  I can't understand people who complain because their flight was delayed due to bad weather or a technical difficulty. Would they rather die?

The other aspects which run through my head are - which airline is it?  is it a reputable one or a budget Sierra Leone one?  Once on the plane, what does the pilot sound like?  It's totally unreasonable, but we do judge people on their voices and accents when they are in charge of our lives, even though we don't have details of their skills.  I always feel safer when the pilot's name is Chris, simply because a previous 'Chris' managed the smoothest landing ever on a flight to Glasgow.

I do wonder though at what point I would miss a booked flight, through my choice. Would it depend on the reason for flying in the first place, and the importance of getting to the destination? or would it be down to things like some flights being cancelled and some not, and there being a general feeling of doubt in the air. And of course, whether I was in my home airport or half-way across the world.

And then there is always that nagging feeling that if I decided not to take a flight, people would be cross with me or laugh at me, or even worse be upset with me.

And that might be harder to take than the thought of a scary flight.

What's your car called? and are you sorry?

Anthropomorphism, for those of you who don't already know, includes the bestowing of a human personality on a non-human thing eg. an object or animal.

We all do it all the time, without even thinking about it. We swear at inanimate objects which won't co-operate - just like I almost did at my watch which was clacking on the side of the laptop until I threw it off in annoyance.  We expect our animals to understand when we've had a hard day at work, and why we don't want them dragging their water-dribbling mouths across our study books.   We name our cars (well, sometimes) and talk to birds and plants as if they understand what we're saying.

We often don't understand why others react in situations differently from how we would react.   'How could they have done that?' 'Oh my goodness what possessed her to buy that coat'.  'Look at the way that idiot man is driving' 'That woman was so rude'.   We attribute other people with our own values and beliefs and assume everybody thinks the same way, but they don't.  I suppose we think that our way of seeing the world is the right way, so people who don't are somehow inferior.

Today I heard on the news a judge describe a murderer as displaying an "extraordinary and chilling lack of remorse". Oh really?

Reading the news story, Andrew Lindo strikes me as having psychopathic tendencies or similar.  None of his behaviour was that of a 'normal' human being - from the double life, to the murder to the huge lies he told to family and friends.  Yet the judge was surprised that he showed no remorse?  Did he expect Lindo to turn round and say "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to do it"?  Did he really think it extraordinary that he did not?

Is it realistic to expect a psychopath to show remorse - I suspect not.  By definition, a psychopath does not have the same social values or way of thinking as the average person. Why then do we expect them to suddenly react like an average person?

Is that not the same as expecting a dog to apologise for coming in without wiping his feet?

Gregory was right

This morning I woke up and realised what it was all about.

MEANING.  We all need it.

I'm not talking about the deep 'what is the meaning of life, why are we here, what's it all about?' questions.  No, I'm talking on a day-to-day level.   Think about it.

We are constantly categorising things, either consciously or unconsciously, into - well, categories.   Everything we look at belongs in a category: clothes, furniture, colours, mine, theirs, good, bad.  There's no getting away from it.

If we come across something and don't know what it is, do we just put it down saying "I don't know what that is"?  No, we want to know.

While we're trying to work out what it is, we will call on our own resources - previous experience and prior knowledge of other items (known in psychology as 'top-down knowledge').  We will also look at things differently depending on the context if there is one, and our own background and history.  "It looks like a wine bottle stopper", for the above object, is not something a 10 year old child would suggest (hopefully!).

We scratch our heads, we ask other people, and when (if) we find out then we have a sense of relief.  If we can't find out, it bugs us. We have no category to which to allocate it.   If we can't work out what it is, then we may just say 'well it's beautiful' - but even that is categorising it, into a piece of Art.

Gregory and Gibson had differing ideas about perception - Gibson thought that the world around us is rich enough in sensory information that no previous knowledge was needed to make sense of it.  Gregory, on the other hand, said that how we perceive things requires constant interaction between sensory information and 'top-down knowledge'.  I'm with Gregory on this one.

On the subject of needing to give things meaning, take the picture above - what do you see?    I could not see anything but black and white ink until I was given some hints. However, now the picture has a meaning, it is impossible for me to revert it back to a series of meaningless blobs and blurs.  

Another example is language and words.  Some cognitive psychologists take our recognition of words very scientifically, looking at the individual features and matching them with the database in our brains to recognise words.  But when it comes to sentences and conversations, things get a lot more complicated, and again we need to allocate meaning.

If we come across a word we don't know, we will again use our prior knowledge and more importantly, the context of the sentence, to work out what it means.  We may go back and re-read the sentence or paragraph, and if the meaning is ambiguous, some of us will need to look up the word to satisfy ourselves of the meaning. Like strange objects, an English word we don't understand leaves a little niggle of dissatisfaction.  If we see foreign words we can still make sense of them by simply categorising them as 'French' or 'Dutch' or 'Italian' or whatever, and that is sufficient.

"Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" is a phrase a chap called Chomsky came up with, to illustrate how a grammatically correct sentence does not necessarily make sense. It's an oddly irritating sentence, because it has no meaning.  On the other hand, "skid crash hospital" is totally ungrammatical, but we all understand exactly what it means, because of our 'top-down knowledge'. We can fill in the gaps to make it meaningful.

To get deeper into the meaning of conversations takes a social constructionist approach, which is too much to go into here.  Maybe I'll come back to that another day!

All through my revision I have kept coming up with the phrase "Humans Crave Meaning", and this morning it all fell into place.  I can go to work satisfied, now that I understand why I find it so unsettling when 'something doesn't look right' or doesn't make sense.