Multi-tasking: Myth or The New Zen?

My family were trying to work out what to do over the school holidays while I am in San Diego. We were seated for dinner. ”Lets have a family meeting”, my hub suggested.

“Oh great. I’m glad we’re having the meeting during dinner time. It means we can multi-task”, said Sally beaming and proudly anticipating the beginning of the meeting so that she could “multi-task”.

This reply came from our nine year-old! How had Sally come to value multi-tasking as an end in itself? Is this practice widely acknowledged by modern children as worthwhile? I’ve been thinking about Sally’s response and brought it up as a topic of conversation recently with other parents. The result was a circular conversation, the logic of which went something like this:

Is the skill of multi-tasking a worthy aspiration? As an example of an alternative way of thinking, buddhism would emphasise the importance of being present in the moment. If you are sweeping the floor, then you are only sweeping the floor. You’re not also on the phone and cooking a batch of muffins and checking your emails. Being present in the moment, which I’m interpreting as doing one thing at a time, is the pathway to happiness and enlightenment. Only through being present in the moment can you achieve a state of zen.

Is it relevant that Sally is female? Has multi-tasking become something girls in particular have come to identify with and aspire to?

The myth goes like this: women can multi task and men cannot.

But this is just a myth, like any other myth. There are hundreds of myths and stereotypes that circulate unreflected upon in our common discourses. For example, the myth that all men ever think about is sex. For a start, why can’t women think about sex as often as men? And secondly, this cannot even be true. If all men ever thought about was sex, how could Bill Gates have created Microsoft, or Rupert Murdoch his media empire?

They could have been multi-tasking, I suppose…

Gastronomic Anticipation

My annual conference trip to the US approaches. This time I go with a sense of slightly more pressure than other times for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’m presenting. Its quite an achievement (I’ve been told) to get on the program. And secondly, I’ll be missing easter with my family for the third time and feel the pull to stay at home.

This year its in San Diego. I’ll be there for six days. Already I have dinner dates at the following restaurants:

el Agave, apparently the best Mexican restaurant in the Old Town. I have also been told it has an amazing variety of tequila. I’ve already posted about my tequila learning experience. Prior to this I thought tequila was a clear liquid, end of story! Now I know the Mexicans know tequila like a Melbournian knows wine. 

de’ Medici, an Italian restaurant. I haven’t heard anything about this one yet, but the name Medici is infamous. This I discovered on my relatively recent European holiday during a guided tour of the Uffizi Gallery.

A reception aboard the Berkeley Ferry Boat at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. I’m not sure what to expect of the meal here but I do anticipate live music and dancing. The consortium of universities that hold this reception annually have musical staff members who provide the entertainment for the evening. Two years ago I attended the reception in Chicago, danced the night away and was inspired to write about meeting a self-taught pole dancer.

Rama on Saturday night.  Candelas on Sunday night. Both of which I know nothing about (yet).

And two breakfast dates. These are at Cafe Choe and Bondi Australian Beer and Food. I’m looking forward to experiencing how the people of San Diego do “Australian”.

Action in the kitchen

My daughter Sally, who is nine, has a terrific little cookbook that has been inspiring her in the kitchen.

Lately she’s been flicking through this book and ‘independently’ making stuff. On Friday after school I found her sitting at the bench with her apron on. “I’m going to make garlic bread!” she announced.

“Great, we have half a baguette left from yesterday. How much butter do you need?”

“One hundred grams”. Sally took the butter out of the fridge and placed it on the cutting board. She took a paring knife out of the drawer. 

“Do you know how much one hunderd grams is?”

“Yes. This much”. She indicated her estimate with the knife and tried to cut the firm block of butter”.

“Perhaps only make half the recipe”, I suggested, “we only have half a baguette”.

“Yeah, great idea”.

“So fifty would be there. Would you like me to cut it?”

She moved back and allowed me to cut the butter for her. She expressed her relief. It was quite solid just out of the fridge. 

With the precarious job of cutting over, I decided to let her work independently. I knew she’d call me if she needed me. I flicked the oven onto preheat and went back to my study.

A little while later, she called out to me from the kitchen. “What colour is garlic?”

I keep the garlic together with onions and shallots in a wooden bowl in a drawer. We had red onions. The shallots are red.

“The garlic is in the drawer with the onions”, I replied.

“Yeah I know, but what colour is it?”

“White”. 

This was all the information she needed and things became quiet in the kitchen. After a few minutes I decided to go in to help her with the garlic press. I found her microwaving the butter. She was reading the instructions aloud. “On high for forty seconds”. She was engrossed and busy. I picked up the clove of garlic and while I sliced off the excess skin asked her if she’d like me to show her how to use the crusher. She looked confused. 

“Oh, I didn’t know you had to use that part of the garlic”, she said.  I suddenly noticed little flecks of white garlic skin in a bowl that she’d carefully peeled off the bulb and desiccated. “Ah Sally, this is the skin!”. I demonstrated to her which piece of the garlic is of interest and placed the skin in the compost. I showed her how the press worked and demonstrated the removal of the skin from the inside of the press. She watched me with a serious expression on her face but said nothing.

“Well, you learn something new everyday!” I said, jollying her with the cliched expression. She replied with a half-smile,”No, I don’t! Not everyday”.

She watched me crush the garlic into her melted butter, then she stirred the mixture vigorously. I hung around because the next step was to slice the bread. 

“Don’t slice it all the way through”, I advised.

“I know that. It says so in the book!”.

I watched her use the bread knife. 

“Just use a butter knife to spread on the mixture”, I suggested. 

With the butter knife in her hand she hesitated over the runny mixture. I suggested that she spread it on both sides and demonstrated it quickly. I went to leave, but she said “I just need that paper stuff to wrap the garlic bread in. Where’s it kept?”.

“Don’t you mean foil?” I corrected as I opened the drawer.

“No! Its a microwave cookbook mum. I need waxed paper because you can’t put foil in the microwave. That’s the point of the book! Its all microwave! Kids can do it all by themselves! All the recipes are safe! No hot oven!”. 

“Oh”, I said, standing corrected. I handed her the roll of waxed paper and turned off the preheating oven. 

She finished it off by herself and called me and her sister into the kitchen when it was ready. She had placed it on the table and put out three plates. It was actually delicious. I was most impressed and so was her sister. Sally puffed up with pride.

I’m pleased because we often have day-old baguette that ends up in the compost. Now we have a handy solution to prevent waste and a willing little cook.

That was Friday. On Saturday her sister made Brownies. On Sunday Sally was back in the kitchen again. She had begun making marmalade from her microwave book before I was aware of any action in the kitchen. She called me in to help when she needed to use the blender. She was in her apron and she’d already peeled and sliced carrots, chopped oranges and a lemon.

I showed her how to operate it safely and prepared to give her a demonstration, but the blades seemed to get stuck over the slices of carrot and in the skin of the citrus. It was with much frustrated effort that we worked out that it wasn’t the size of the pieces she’d cut that was making the blades stick, but that the motor in the blender was broken. 

My plans for the morning were forgotten as I took out my cooks knife and resolved to be her “blender”. I have a wonderful new knife (from the Japanese range ‘Global’). The work of chopping was strangely satisfying. I ran the knife quickly over and back through small portions of fruit and veg she’d already cut into small pieces. These I scraped into her mixing bowl in increments making room on the cutting board for the next small portion. As I worked Sally watched, half mesmerized. 

Halfway through the process the door bell rang and her grandfather (my father) entered the kitchen. He’d been on a cycling tour in country Victoria. His impromptu visit was on his way home from our local station. He sat at the bench in his cycling gear and had a cuppa and spoke of his trip whilst I chopped. Sally supervised the growing mound of chopped stuff in her bowl with satisfaction. Her grandfather took an interest in what she was making and asked if she had enough jars. She’d found one she told him. He offered to drop a couple off for her, which he did an hour later.

I watched her as she added the sugar to the chopped ingredients and followed the cooking instructions, which included stirring after an initial blast in the microwave on high. Finally the mixture had to cook for thirty minutes on medium. “When its cooked, Sally, don’t take it out without supervision, will you? It’s going to be very hot”.

I’m pleased to report that it was another cooking success. She scooped the marmalade into the jars after it had cooled. I tasted some on bread and it was delicious. I told her so and had a second piece. “Try some”, I offered, holding out my piece of toast for her to bite.

“No. I hate marmalade”, she admitted.

“Why did you make it if you hate it?”, I enquired, laughing.

“It was the only thing in the book without butter”, she said matter-of-factly. (We’d run out because her sister had made the brownies with the block that was left).

Sally was proud of her work. She made labels, set one of the jars aside for her grandfather and informed him by phone.

A Day of Good Omens

What do you make of your life when a vacant parking space in front of a terraced house (converted into specialists rooms) at eight thirty in the morning on a rainy Thursday after a stop-start journey in on the freeway whilst time ticked too closely for comfort to your appointment time of eight thirty signals a good omen for you? 

You pull up to the vacant spot and think to yourself, ah this is going to be a good day!

Well, actually, you don’t just think it, you express the sentiments to your sixteen year-old who is sitting in the front seat next to you (its she who the appointment’s for). You turn towards her and express your almost spiritual belief in vacant-spots-as-omens as you complete a perfect reverse park, and note that its not even a metered site. The parking gods are shining down on you.  It will therefore be a good day. She grunts in reply and you realize she has her ipod earphones in. But she takes them out because of the look on your face. “What?” she asks in a voice drained of life. Her expression is your antithesis at that moment because your face is lit with the light of a believer. “Its going to be a good day!” you repeat. She rolls her eyes. “Whatever”.

The specialist is a sleep specialist. She prescribes a special hormone tablet for sleep for your daughter and gives you the address to go to. You wonder whether to go before or after driving your daughter to school. The two places are in opposite directions. Your daughter says to go before, because arriving at school at recess makes more sense than half way through lesson two. So you reach for your new Melways (which you are thankful for because your old one wouldn’t have a Docklands address in it, and it so happens that your hub had only put it there for you last weekend).

On the way there you take a call from your friend on long service leave and arrange to meet later in the day for a movie and lunch. 

You arrive at Docklands and its still raining, but you find the place easily. You turn into the narrow street and there is a parking spot right out the front of the place you have been sent to. Fifteen minutes (no coins required). Beside yourself at the double omen, you express your delight to your daughter. She doesn’t reply to you, but a smile escapes her lips this time. 

Back at the car you notice  she doesn’t reconnect herself to her ipod. Driving from the Docklands to school she begins to chat. She talks about her recent good grades for English. “If I can do well eventhough I’m drained then I’m starting to think that I must be smart”. (She has insomnia). “I’ve always said you’re smart! Didn’t you believe me?” She says that she didn’t believe you, but that she’s decided to “do a reality check” on her belief that she was dumb. She’s understanding concepts in psychology, she’s getting A’s in her assessments in most subjects…

She tells you that when she gets back to school there is a meeting at recess for all of the arts students who applied to go on an art tour of Central Australia over Easter. She handed in her application last Friday. They’re only selecting a small group to go. They will announce the successful applicants at the meeting.  She is super keen to go (not just for the creative inspiration). “I want to establish myself in art at the school and get to know the art in-crowd”. “Great idea”, you tell her because you and she have already had a discussion about making a career in art and the need to make a name for yourself. 

You ask where she wants to be dropped off and she directs you to the closest point to the Art building where her meeting is to be held. As you pull up you ask what time her meeting starts. She tells you ten twenty and both of you look at the digital clock in the dashboard saying “10:20″ and smile. At this point both of you have a good feeling, but neither express it in words. You feel connected and you notice it because it doesn’t happen all that often these days. You ask her to text you if she makes it into the tour. You think that she will make it because it is a day of good omens. But you don’t say it just to be safe.

The rest of the day is unusual. You meet your friend, catch a movie together, have lunch and you forget about the stress you have been feeling about the paper you have been writing for an upcoming conference that your supervisor has already critiqued and that you have almost rewritten. The movie was The Reader and you enjoy it immensely. You’d read the book but couldn’t remember everything about the story. You felt transported.

In the car again you turn on your phone and a text from your daughter comes through. “I’m going on the art tour”. You drive by her school on the way home from the movie just in time to give her a lift home. You get home and reflect on the day and write this post. What are you to make of your life when good days happen like this, foreshadowed by vacant parking spaces…?