My lemon tree is a lemon, and other non-gratitudes #gratitudes

Yes, my lemon tree is a lemon! After 12 years of hoping that it would provide enough juicy lemons to last for weeks, if not months, I am giving up hope. The first few years, there were lemons which provided a few drops of juice if lucky. Now the tree won't even provide any lemons. Oh well! I have to trek to the neighbor's tree with the tall-handled picker to get good lemons. My neighbor's tree has lemons big enough and juicy enough to provide half a cup of juice each!

It was an adventurous week with cooking ingredients. While shopping for mint, I saw Thai basil, and decided to try cooking Thai basil chicken. As is usually the case with my following recipes, I tweaked a few ingredients, but followed the instructions carefully for the basil as I had never used it before. Added it at the very end, and turned off the stove in 20 seconds. Well, the chicken was absolutely delicious but it didn't taste anything like Thai basil chicken. Since I had plenty of basil left over, I attempted it again, with the same result. With absolutely no faith in the third time's the charm nonsense, I added all that was leftover but after the stove was already turned off, and I could now taste the basil. But without the rest of the ingredients, it was not really what I was aiming for, but delicious regardless.

After a long hike on Sunday, I decided that it was going to be an easy pasta day. While shopping for pasta, I sighted egg noodles, and with my new found interest in Thai cooking, I decided to prepare pad kee mao. Things went rather well except the noodles I picked were the short ones meant for chicken noodle soup. Another delicious dish with a slightly off ingredient.

While I am writing about non-gratitudes, it's important to mention that I am still looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and have hiked hundreds of miles in my search. No pot of gold but I am in better shape than I ever was, have seen amazingly beautiful things, and best of all, made a lot of wonderful friends.

This week is off to a good start! Warm and sunny day, and coincidentally, date day with Sucharita. We had a wonderful time at the Half Moon Bay State Park Beach. We were sweating and regretted bringing jackets for backup instead of shorts! Finished the day with Fabiana and Oliver. Fabiana wanted to walk Oliver, but he walked us instead. Now it's time to finish the leftover partly authentic pad kee mao.

Making sense of what to post where #socialmedia

I went to LinkedIn, and they said, "This is a place for professionals, take your politics to Facebook where it belongs" 

I went to Facebook, and they said, "This is a place for pictures, memes and whining about family and friends. Take your politics to Twitter"

I went to Twitter, and they said, "You fucking bitch. I will smash your brown face into the pavement and send you back where you came from" 

It seems that many people have an opinion on what is allowed on a particular social media platform when the platform itself does not care. 

Let's start with LinkedIn. 

Does anyone have any doubt that the federal government is the single largest employer in the country? Is there any doubt that the trade and tax policies made by the government, whether federal or local, impact businesses and employment? Given that who leads the government and makes policies is determined by elections, hence politics, why is politics somehow not an acceptable topic on LinkedIn? What is not acceptable is the number of people who never have a policy-related argument but instead resort to personal attacks on the people publishing articles and to those with whom they disagree. If you don't like politics on LinkedIn, move on to the next thing, which most likely is the millionth article on how to improve something that reading an article will not improve. Or a meme that has been removed from it's original article and shared with a completely different context by thousands of people, who could not be bothered to read the actual article. Seriously, how many times do I have to read an article on a career site that tells me to sleep more and that money does not bring happiness?

And then there is Facebook. 

No, I don't get all my news from Facebook, but I do value the vast amount of information some of my more informed and politically savvy friends post. I find their activism refreshing, inspiring, and yes, challenging! It makes me a more informed and better person. I do find memes annoying, especially when more than 25 of my friends share the same one, but it makes them happy, and it's easy for me to ignore and move on. Facebook can be a reflection of your beliefs, and an easy way to share them. You don't like someone's political posts, move on, or better yet, delete them and let them know why. Like real life, there are those who talk the talk, and there are those who walk the walk. There are those who don't post, don't read, but judge others or stay indifferent. There are those who post and do nothing. There are those who post and take actions in small and big ways. Where you choose to be is up to you. 

That leaves Twitter. 

The platform where you can get the best and worst in information. Twitter is the place I follow newspapers, journalists, entertainers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and yes, commentators both liberal and conservative. I also enjoy reading responses to the opinions and articles. This, however, is challenging with it being impossible to filter out the hate speech in every thread, as Twitter is also the platform where you can attack people in cruel and vicious ways without consequences. Unless you are a celebrity with millions of followers and the visibility that forces the Twitter CEO to intervene. I switched to a private profile during the elections, which is fine as I am more interested in what others have to say than being followed by thousands (I barely made it to a 100 followers anyway). 

So, that brings me back to the beginning. If you are going to use social media, either learn to be tolerant, or learn how to ignore what you can't handle. People want to share pictures of their dogs on LinkedIn, let them. I will confess that I judge them, but I will keep it to myself. Keep judging if you must, but stop lecturing others on what they should and should not do on social media. If your responses on Twitter or any other platform begin with or include an insult, maybe it's time to get off social media and join a support group to address your hatred.

Now that I have this out of my system, time to finish my gratitude blog.