Today

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Today is a
Wintry
Sunny day.
The sun's
Warmth
I seek today.

Outside
It's very cold
And very
Breezy....
But inside
Our enclosed
Conservatory,
It's nice, sunny
Warm and cosy.

Poetry © Aparna Chatterjee

Happy 2025

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Best wishes to all of you for the year ahead. May you thrive, jive and feel alive :-)
Here's a new set of Quotes as my New Year gift to you. Some of these thoughts might resonate with you.


When you are surrounded with colleagues, peers that are smart but also show up with kindness and respect, consistently, it's truly special. It has been a privilege to know you, debate with you, but eventually come together to do what is right and fun. You go faster alone but go further together. -  Roshni Das

There was something so very welcoming about the man, and I’m not sure if generosity is the word for it. Generosity of heart or the heart of generosity — or just the madness of heart. In his presence, it felt as though you were sitting under the shade of a big tree, something I had also felt with another man called Jean-Claude Carrière, the great Oscar-winning screenplay writer. Raj ji and Jean-Claude both had the art of sharing their generosity and knowledge with a disarming naturality. -  Vijay Singh

It is difficult to put it in words but it is my strong belief that this madness of heart, this awaarapan, this spontaneous and reckless outpouring of empathy and social concern, was an element that played a defining role in the shaping of Kapoor’s films. -  Vijay Singh

Believe me, I hated to speak up in large groups. But over time, one realizes your voice, questions and opinions are meaningful, and they count. I was always heard, so thank you. I will continue to advocate for folks to speak up, listen and build an influential voice. - Roshni Das

We’re all on our phones, on our screens, so much of the time that we neglect each other, and we neglect the world around us. -  Dr. Robert Waldinger

I had taken time away from my phone before, on holidays, and found it difficult in much the same way that I had once found it hard to quit smoking. There is the same restlessness, the same twitchiness in the hands bereft of something to hold, the same feeling of being stalked by an absence. -  Rafael Behr

Nicotine activates receptors in the brain that release dopamine – a potent feelgood chemical that gets involved whenever you do something pleasurable. It is there when you eat delicious food, wake from a good night’s sleep, score a goal, have sex. -  Rafael Behr

The insidious genius of the cigarette is the way it mimics the gratification of getting things done. It whispers success in your mind’s ear.  By lighting a cigarette, you have indeed solved a problem – the problem of not having a lit cigarette in your mouth. -  Rafael Behr

In your thoughts and actions, you should be honest to yourself and your conscience. -  Aparna Chatterjee

Journalists are especially susceptible to Twitter because it satisfies two appetites – compulsion to know what is happening and the need for an audience. Even hostile reaction feeds the addiction, either because you feel obliged to defend yourself or because you don’t want to log out on a negative note. You have a bitter taste in your mouth after reading abuse, and kid yourself that more tweeting will rinse it away. -  Rafael Behr

It is a race to acquire friends and followers, likes and retweets. That quest for recognition, regardless of what is being said or shared, is the commercial engine of social media. The commodity is attention, and it doesn’t matter whether it was a cat picture or an anti-vaccine video that induced the click. -  Rafael Behr

Once I stopped doom-scrolling, I became conscious of a change in mental tempo that comes when you no longer interrupt your own thought processes with a luminous screen. The search for news had rarely been the real reason for taking my phone out of my pocket. Nine times out of ten, there would be no particular thing I was looking for, no destination, just a vague itch to scratch. -  Rafael Behr

Anger is to make you effective. That’s its survival function. That’s why it’s given to you. If it makes you ineffective, drop it like a hot potato. -  Philip Roth

So many men walk into therapy saying that they want to work on themselves because they don’t want to get divorced. They see their parents living separate lives even though they’re still married on paper and they want to do everything to ensure they don’t end up the same way. -  Tanya Vasunia

India has a divorce rate of roughly 1-2%, which is not to say that we’ve cracked the formula for happy marriages, but it does go to show how averse we are to the idea of divorce. Staying in toxic relationships and sticking by abusive families are far more normalised as opposed to openly supporting happy, divorced individuals. -  Shasvathi Siva

Women get to face a lot of criticism here, and I’m not saying the men don’t, but for women — be it your body, your hair, your life, your decisions, your career, or motherhood — everything is criticised. -  Hareem Farooq

When you've had your innermost feelings expertly manipulated by someone, trusting yourself again is probably the hardest thing to do. -  Anna Rowe

The fear of “log kya kahenge?” (what will people say) runs so deep that families insist that their daughters ‘adjust’ to difficult situations instead of welcoming them back home with open arms when they choose to walk out of a marriage which no longer serves them. -  Shasvathi Siva

I like being alone better than I like being in relationships. I don’t have to ask anybody for anything. If I want to sleep late, I sleep late. If I want to stay up and watch TV, I can. I do whatever I want to do. I love the independence and the freedom. -  Janice Chavez

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. -  Susan Sontag

My father died very unpleasantly of Alzheimer’s in a care home when I was in my 60s. He hated it, and he resented seeing the inheritance diminish as a result. It hurts that dementia is now echoed in my own life. -  Alastair Stewart

He lost his independence, and I lost mine too. But you have to keep going, don’t you? For him and also for our children. They don’t want to see their father not being well or see me feeling sorry for myself, or bursting into tears, so I try to be positive. -  Sally Ann Jung

Being in the public eye over all this is not something that I’m personally comfortable with. Some of my friends think we’re bonkers to be so open, and two of our younger children wanted it to remain private, but the older two agreed with us. It’s a relief to me that people know now. Being honest about dementia has made our lives easier. -  Sally Ann Jung

I twist and turn, curve and straighten often without aim or result. Just an escape, an escapist thing into painting impulsively, compulsively, endlessly, tired, tirelessly, with or without joy. -  Lancelot Ribeiro

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. -  Rabindranath Tagore

The psychologist told me, 'When you go to bed at night, try to think back on your day and find three things that have made you happy.’ And for me, they always involve being with my grandchildren. They are like my medicine. -  Alastair Stewart

I was a somewhat distinguished physician with a 60-page resume. Now, I’m ‘no one', a retired, forgotten old man who dithers away the days. -  Paul Rousseau

€57K

As per an analysis done by pension and life insurance provider Royal London Ireland, stay-at-home parent role has been valued at an annual salary of €57,140. The study analysed the daily tasks and responsibilities of stay-at-home parents and researched the cost of employing someone to do these jobs, based on current wage data. A survey of 1,000 adults showed that almost nine in ten people underestimated the monetary value of a stay-at-home parent. Just 11% of respondents valued the cost to employ someone to perform the duties of a stay-at-home parent at over €50,000. As per the most recent census data of Ireland, there were 272,318 stay-at-home parents in 2022 and 90% of them were women. Stay-at-home parents have a diverse range of responsibilities including childcare, household management, cooking, cleaning, budgeting, emotional support, and handling children’s transportation needs (taking children to events and activities) yet the full value of their work often goes unrecognised.

News Sources:

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2025/0109/1489793-stay-home-parent/
https://la.ie/2025/01/09/stay-at-home-parent-role-valued-at-annual-salary-of-e57k-study/
https://theirelandnews.com/news/2025-01-10/average-salary-of-stay-at-home-parent-is-57k/91487