String Quartet by a SINGLE VIOLIN - THINKING OUT OF THE BOX!

 String Quartet by a SINGLE VIOLIN - 

THINKING OUT OF THE BOX!

String quartet is defined by Cambridge dictionary as consisting  of two violins, a viola ( a bigger violin) and a cello ( much bigger violin played by standing it on the floor)!

More than 120 years ago, at least as far as I could trace backards , a technique existed by violinists to play all the 4 strings at the same time.

In the modern era, this is not possible as the strings travel over a curved top...the so called 'bridge' before coming into contact with a bow, generally allowing one or two strings to be played…. well occasionally, 3 stings too. But all 4 strings is an absolute impossibility to play together for long durations!

The modern violin book books do not even mention this technique!

But this problem had already solved by the ancient old violinist, by thinking out of the box.

The ancient violinist took the bow apart by unscrewing and removing the screw. The small rectangular part ( frog ) of the bow comes off  holding all the hair at one end. This is kept on top of the strings, the stick without hair is kept below the violin. The frog is held along with the stick.

This allows all the bow hair to evenly touch all the strings held in a curved fashion by the bridge. When bowed, the tone is even and four string chords are played continuously.

Following is a small video demonstration of how it is done - this is my first attempt at it. The string quartet played by a solo violin.

Video can be viewed by copy paste of the url below in Google!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB4iB3LKdvQ

I learnt a long time ago from my surgeon teacher and mentor Dr Fenn - Always think out the the box. Always know the history of surgery to avoid mistakes or even to call anything new.  This applies equally to music. 

Musician associates who have only witnessed this video(but not performed this technique) have cautioned that the bow handling has to be gentle to avoid damage to the bow hair. In general, violin playing is associated with gentleness, care and soft hands!

Thank you for your interest!

CAUTION WHILE DONATING !

CAUTION WHILE DONATING !

 ‘Go beyond the heart-wrenching story that catches your attention to see some real data” - Minuitti

The charity we are going to discuss is not about the money you give the poor man outside temple, church or mosque! It is not about the old lady who requires alms at the traffic signal.

The charity we discuss is about large amounts of money like thousands to hundreds of thousands of rupees. 

I remember a very affluent friend of mine denying to sponsor the dinner for FRCS surgeons meet saying she would prefer to rather donate any amount of money towards an ambulance for a charity hospital! She made terrific sense!

Newspapers carry news ever so often about scams in the name of charity! Better be safe than sorry!

Why do we donate?

People donate for various reasons  - altruism, philanthropy, trust, social , egoism, or tax purposes.

I often associate with groups of dedicated philanthropists who by conducting large events, raise donations for charity. A large amount of money is collected and given out for charitable causes.

Lakhs and lakhs of genuine, charity money is however, spent on poorly run or fraudulent charities which we do not bother to research on.

There are very many people in our region, in our country , in our world, who require our help by way of money and resources. 

No doubt we need to help them financially! I am not saying no!

Let us make certain that our money goes towards the right cause . Let not our genuinely collected or hard earned money go to a middle man who will help himself to it.

Suggestions if you wish to donate

As a donor you may be a single person or head of an organization.

There are some suggestions to consider seriously, if you wish to donate major money to a cause.

Some of these 15 suggestions given below, follow the principles of common sense. Some of them need analysis and research in detail.

1.If charity needs only wired money to someone claiming to be a charity, it is probably a bogus!

2. If the charity is a new one, without solid reputation, be concerned.

3.The charity or nonprofit organisation should be registered. It must show good standing and should be a public record!

4. If the charity keeps calling  you, by quoting a dying kid or large amounts of money for a single illness, be concerned. Not all the money will be going to the person, but to the overheads of the institution!

5.If they promise that charity money is going 100% to the affected party, then this is most likely to be untrue. We know charities have overhead administrative causes. All we need to know is how much percentage goes to the patient. Charities should not spend more than one third of the donated money for overhead charges!

6.If information about the charity and their operating costs are unclear, then go ahead and ask them. If they are not clearly forthcoming, avoid the charity!

7.If the charity has not shown much of their spending details in the past on the money you had already given in the past, then avoid them!

8.If the charity does not have great reviews, by all means avoid them! Some of the so called charities may be collecting money from many sources for the same cause and same patients in addition to your contribution.

9.If the charity has a lot of money, then be concerned. The money you give is not really needed and will only sit idle, as for as charity is concerned!

10.If the charity is playing on your emotions and claiming to help children etc, do your homework before donating!

11.When it is claimed that money is needed urgently, be suspicious!

12.Avoid charities whose executives make a large income. As a devil’s advocate, it is not expected that the charity executive should work for peanuts. All you have to do is to make sure that charities are reviewed by a  committee on par with non-profit organisations.  

13.Another safeguard is a board of directors with at lease 5 independent voting members who should not be related to, or reporting to the MD /CEO.

14.If you or your organisation is in the habit of giving out charities, do not just give and forget. Always revaluate the money you have given in the past, financial details of how it was spent for the cause keeping, while maintaining maximum efficiency, ethics and effectiveness.

15. By and large, it does not make much sense donating a large amount of money to a single affected person for experimental  treatment / surgery with dubious results. It would be more prudent to know about the treatment offered and its possible efficacy before the large sum of money is donated.

In Brief:

In general, rather than responding to emotional appeals, determine what causes you are concerned about.  If it is about cancer, do you want the money to go for awareness programs, or to research or to patients.

In Tamil Nadu, where  the government resources are vast in health care. There are charitable trusts ( non-profit) and private institutions.

It is worthwhile finding out how the last donation from your organisation was exactly spent, before granting more money. 

Established industries like TATA donate large amounts of money for the designated poor , but they look before they leap. 

By all means, donate! That too, as much as you can! But ensure that it is well spent for the right cause!

Acknowlegement: Pictures from Internet

OUR PETS

OUR PETS

Recently a friend of mine queried the need for keeping a pet. This was raised in the context of a parrot dying and the owner feeling very disheartened and dispirited at the passing away of the pet bird. 

My friend queried if the habit of keeping bird pets (or any other for that matter) is healthy at all, as children would feel really blue at the death of pets whom they loved with all their heart.

ORIGIN OF THE WORD:

Since 1530, pet meaning animal companion, it was possibly from Scots and dialectal Northern England.

Did you know that a dog lover is called ‘cynophile’ and a cat lover is called ‘ailurophile’. The term ‘Phile’ means ’like’ as against the more familiar ‘phobe’!

PETS IN CHILDHOOD:

Though we associate pets mainly with children, all sorts of people keep pets. 

We have always had dogs as pets (Cynophile!) as far as I can remember. 

My sister and I, as kids, had a dog in particular - a mixture of cocker spaniel and dachshund - a black friendly being called Gilly . She used to come with us wherever we went, sleep under our beds and patiently wait for dinner time. We used to drop whatever food we disliked and she used to gulp it all from under the table from the prying eyes of my mother! 

I met the owner of the dog 30 years later; Molly's parents gifted Gilly as a pup to us. She recalled the dog after so many years with ease, including the name of the dog!

Keeping up with the tradition, my boys grew up with dogs too! as does my grandson now! My sister somewhere along the line has switched over to cats!

AS PETS:

Cats in fact are more popular than dogs all over the world.

Even in India, the incidence of pets have tremendously increased ass evidenced by a visit to a PET store or a Veterinary doctor. There are plenty of pet lovers with their pets for advice and for seeking help.

Other pets include fish, birds in India. I have heard of even pet leopards, snakes, alligators etc specially from abroad.

ARE PETS GOOD FOR YOU?

Pets afford us comapanisonship. There are studies to show that the physical and mental health of the owner improve. 

Pets also gives the lonely elderly folks the desire to take care of someone, the need to exercise, someone to speak to and to feel the warmth of a living being next to them. 

Pets train the child owners the responsibilities of life - like feeding, taking care when sick, the need for exercise and the general hygiene, socialization and the need to train well.

Pets are known to decrease blood pressure levels, lower stress levels, lower triglyceride levels and even lower the incidence of heart attacks. 

For the blind, seeing eye dogs help to make them live  with independent mobility.

People in hospice and nursing homes too benefit by physical contact with dogs. These therapy dogs may of different types - facility therapy dogs, animal-assisted therapy dogs and therapeutic visitation dogs.

In fact having pets increases your love for any living beings ! Friends of mine Lydia(Mumbai), Tusna (Chennai) collect stray pets and shelter them till suitable families adopt them.

Many of us pet lovers leave food and water outside our homes for the stray animals on the street!

NEGATIVES:

There are negative aspects to keeping pets too - like lung disorders, fractures to the eldery by collision with friendly heavy dogs, bites or nail injuries, parasitic infestation of the pets.

I have in this blog, only covered the pets from the prospective of a companion and not as a working animal. That is very different. 

I do not keep dogs for breeding or for winning prizes at the animal (dog shows) , nor for selling! Many friends do ! 

DOES CAT HAVE NINE LIVES?

The average dog life is like 10-13 years, the smaller ones live longer than the larger breeds. Ours generally live long than this period! 

Cats live 2-16 years! 

And when the dogs pass away, it can be a heart wrenching experience! 

With the passing away of the pets , the child learns to grieve with the family and I guess this helps the child later on to overcome immense sadness, failures and to face such emotions!

Acknowlegements - Pictures taken from internet

‘TO BE OR NOT TO BE’-LIEVE ADVICE, THESE DAYS!

‘TO BE OR NOT TO BE’-LIEVE ADVICE, THESE DAYS!

A few days ago, I read in news about an important man advocating that all children should study in the local languages in schools; that this would enhance our heritage and culture. Extremely laudable sentiments!!

Except that I know for a fact, his grandson is studying in a posh residential private school in English medium! His own children graduated from Ivy League British universities also in English!

Not only him, but also scores of other people in high places exhort you and me to be honest, always speak the truth, never to bribe, to offer all our services free, to do any menial job however educated you might be and to lead a Spartan life! No dearth of such advice from the high and mighty guys! But they are good at only giving advice, while doing the contrary!

They often quote in the same breath, from Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Father of our Nation!

The gullible public gulp all they hear! But the shrewd ones see through the messages!

‘To be- or not to be’-lieve such advice is the question!

So whose advice are you really listening to these days?

INNER VOICE:

If you ask me what I do in these situations, the most important thing I do is to listen to my own ‘inner voice!’

The inner voice is a combination of all the advice over the years rolled into one! It is the voice, disagreeing with what you are about to do! even when no one is looking! Yes, we are talking about your conscience!

Your ‘good-self’ wants to study, the ‘bad-self’ wants to update the Facebook with a selfie! Or to get up at 5 am in response to the mobile alarm to jog, or blame it on the weather to continue in bed! Whatever!

PARENTS:

Parents always wish the best for their children! They give sterling advice to the progeny! No doubt in that!

But as you grow up, the cracks may show up, due to differences in age, failure of the parents to think along with the changes in the social environment, failure to give up some of their vacuous beliefs!

As a young, growing individual / adult, you have an innate feeling about what you work to do, to stick around in home town or go abroad for work, what to eat, whom you should hang around with or even whom you should marry!

This may create a dilemma, as parents may be operating on an entirely different frequency!

Such occasions occur in everyone’s lives! Either you cave in right away to their ‘apparent ‘vexatious demand for the rest of your lives or plead for time to think it over! Latter is the better option!  Given time, the best option will unfold itself!

TEACHERS:

Teachers too wish the best for you!

My sister who is a mathematics teacher speaks proudly of all her students even years later! All my teachers at St Joseph’s high school and college, Tiruchirapalli did more than their best, to make us good citizens!

Teachers however can be opinionated and their advice in my humble opinion can be best deployed in the subject they teach. Their student volume is so large that they can only be expected to offer general advice on the rest of the problems.

MENTORS:

When you graduate and as you become a professional, you are still at the bottom of the ladder with reference to the career! You are probably in your early thirties by now.

The young lawyer, young doctor, young teacher, young businessman may need advice now and then! In need of solid advice which can make you or break you! Mentors can make a remarkable difference at this stage!

Mentors are generally older by a few or many years. They have had been exposed to similar situations and experiences. They may be in the same profession or even senior friends who wish the best for you at heart!

They need to keep your problems confidential! It is best to identify who your mentors are at an early stage and keep a long association with them! This relationship later on turns reciprocal, as they may seek your advice when you progress in your profession!

COACHES:

When you have reached late forties or early fifties, you think you own the world!  You think you have seen it all! You undertake big tasks, big risks! You then encounter a few (or unfortunately more) big disasters! Moreso if you are in the performance occupations!

To minimize your mistakes, you need continued coaching. Like Federer in tennis, like Messi in football! If you are a professional musician, you need a better musician to make you better! If you are a medical specialist, you need to keep learning the new developments by constant programs from people who are leading specialists!

At this stage, coaches you employ deserve a fee. You can afford it, and what you learn is top of the shelf stuff!

Coaches are about the same age as you or even younger than you! Pay them well for sharing their expertise and time! Coaches are cultivated, very experienced guys who may or may not have a solution to all your problems! But they have the character to sit with you, dissect all your defects, analyze them and offer solutions (whenever possible)! And you should be willing to listen to them- ha ha!

.  Good things to remember at this stage of your life are:

.  Age alone does not make you an experienced person!

.  Years of service certainly does not make you an experience person in performance jobs!

.  Experts need advice from other experts! No man is an island!

PERSONAL COMMENTS:

In reality, it is surprising how much I have learnt from junior doctors, nurses in my life. I am sure other senior surgeons too would vouch for this!

If only you keep your eyes open, ears too, you can learn a lot!

My 2 year old grandson likes playing with fans. He pulls an old, table fan wherever he goes. It does not work and even the wire for the plug has been removed. He complains often it ‘does not work’! We told him it is never going to work!

The other day from the corner of the room, he started yelling, ‘working, working!’ I rushed to see the fan was happily rotating the blades, pretty fast too! He had placed this old beaten up fan opposite to a live table fan on the floor. The wind from the latter was pushing the blades of the non-functioning fan! So something new to learn from a two year old too!

This story brings us back a whole circle that the ‘inner voice’ of advice has to be from inside you, even when you are only two years old! The whole world can be giving you advice, but you can bring out your own solution!

THE PROBLEM WITH TOO MUCH ADVICE:

Most of the time, many folks offer you unsolicited advice with conflicting ideas! One is forced to listen to all of them! At such times, it is good to have a built in filter in you, which should tell you the right from wrong decision!

The modern professional may ask for advice in whatsApp groups or email groups. He gets a load of conflicting advice from a large number of people. It is prudent to recall that most names which appear are just cyber personalities about whom you may know nothing! They may be having far less experience than you, but may be very vocal on the net! So be cautious on the advice in the cyberspace! No doubt such a discussion is good to upgrade the knowledge of the all the members.

SUMMARY:

The ‘inner voice’ is developed from

.  The time you spent on your mother’s lap, and her bedtime, moral stories,

.  Your parents’ behavior when then encountered similar problems and how they solved them (hence the term ‘the apple does not fall from the tree’)

.  Your teachers

.  Your mentors

.  Your coaches

Most of all from inside you – buck stops here!

It is also always essential to have

.   ‘Good people’ around you – small number is enough

.   To be in touch with ’good people’ even from afar

.   Cultivate a long term relationship from them!

                 You will never regret it! Never let them regret it too!

Acknowlegement: Images from internet.

THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY!

THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

Was it a trip to my hometown, or a luncheon in Trichy with cousins-only group that triggered my emotions on how my childhood days were spent. I met old friends in my former street, after so many decades and we recalled with nostalgia, incidents of how we spent our non-school hours in the streets, at each others’ homes!

We could, after games, walk into any house in 7^th cross Thillainagar and were readily treated to water, coffee and snacks!

On my return journey to Coimbatore, I was musing on how things have changed.

WHY?

Was it the games that we played which prepared us for life? Partly true!

Was it the interaction with our playmates, sometimes in joy, sometimes in anger… but always prevailing as friends which helped us in later life as professions? I certainly think so!

THE CHANGE OVER

I do not recall much of violent crime among the public, in the yesterdays!

I don’t need to recite examples in our present era… all you have to do, is to switch on any TV news channel, any day, any time! And you are exposed to so  much horror - violence of humans against humans, humans v  against animals, humans against nature!

THE FACTORS

The underlying factors for this behavior may be in the ways we bring up our children! 

At least it may be an important, if not the only factor!

That has to do with the school and non-school hours!

We have changed over the years. Change is good! If you don’t change, you don’t survive!

COMPARISON OF TIME SPENT OUT OF SCHOOL

I have compiled and compared the games we played as kids, and the games the kids play nowadays!

Games of the last 30 years!-

• Police and robbers
• Flying kites
• Marbles
• Playing wooden tops
• Gilli Danda
• Hopscotch (Nondi)
• Playing tap within a square
• Pallankuzhi
• Street cricket
• Street football with tennis or rubber ball
• Skipping rope ( 1, or 1+2)
• Kabadi
• Musical chair
• Match box telephone on a string
• Making string patterns with both hands
• Running races on the road
• Bicycle races on the road – slow and fast
• Ball badminton
• Swimming in wells

Games after 2000-

• Mobile – checking FB, Instagram, reading & forwarding whatsApp messasges
• Television serials, movies
• Mobile , TV games with console
• Motor bike rides
• Cricket in stadiums
• Shuttle badminton in courts
• Gym – indoors
• Swimming in pools

WHY DO CHILDREN PLAY GAMES?

Importance of games:

• Games are there for several reasons. Mainly to :
• Have fun
• Prepares you for life
• Prepare of physical skills, motor skills
• Compete
• Aim to be the best and being magnanimous in victory
• Accept defeats and being graceful in failure
• To exchange directly with opponent both in co-operation as well as in disagreements
• To develop good spirits of sports – winning and losing is only in a game, remain friends after that

 

Negative aspects of games, some of which are:

• Introversion in just immersing oneself in mobile
• Curiosity in others activities like in FB
• Shallow emotions, false emotions – like thumbs up when you really don’t mean it
• Physical immobility for long periods
• Being a loner with a mobile
• Eating while watching mobile, TV leading to obesity and other diseases
• Sending forwards – more to be in the group rather than saying what you really want to say
• Loss of self expression and self assertion – internet immersion rather than being physically in a group.
• Let others dictate to you how to spend your time (programs on TV, movies).

AS WE GROW UP INTO ADULTHOOD

As we grow up, we want to do things on your own

• You do not get bored when alone!
• You do the things you love best!
• You change – I write blogs of my experiences. I don’t know if anyone likes them, but hope someone will!
• You are equally happy with people as without people!
• You have aims in life and try to do your best to achieve them!
• You spend enough time with family!
• People miss you when you are not there!

What more do you want in your life! What more, Indeed!

Change is indubitably inevitable!Intelligence is the adaptability of the surviving organism to the surrounding changing environment! So we as parents, better change for a better life! But keep the good parts of the game going!