JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

The tags will be read by readers installed in school gates and other key locations to track the kids’ movements.
The chips will be put onto kids’ schoolbags, name tags or clothing in one Wakayama prefecture school.

Needless to say, the school our kids attend, the Leung Family Academy, does not have any plans to install RFID tags or readers…

Our mixed signals say, in other words, that for high-achieving women, having a baby is both an economic and professional disaster, and an essential life-task to be accomplished before they reach 40. Small wonder that so many women tend to put it off until the last possible moment, and then embark on it in circumstances that almost guarantee high stress, mixed feelings, and low fertility

I love this picture of life:

But the point is that private life – the erotic, the affectionate, the emotional, the sensual – does not respond well to this kind of control freakery, to the myth that life is a project to be planned, rather than a roller-coaster to be ridden with as much grace as we can muster.

A day or two later I read this article in the Seattle Times describing how China offers rural couples incentives for having girls.

Sterilization is part of the package deal. I didn’t realize that China’s restrictions on children also dictated the spacing between births. Our family would not meet the qualifications for a number of reasons…

The Scotsman piece also discusses dating:

Yet this is not entirely about a lack of time or opportunity to meet possible partners. It’s also about some deep change in the texture of our lives, which means that men and women spend more time working together and socialising together than ever before, but in situations that are often desexualised to the point of numbness, and where any attempt to shift the terms of the relationship entails huge emotional and professional risks.

And so does an article in today’s Seattle Times

With all the finger pointing, going on, it’s a wonder any of us even try to date. But we do. Why?

Because we love each other’s company. Because life’s short and Saturday nights can be long. And because now and again, when a surge of electricity momentarily connects that blonde with the cosmo and our shy hero at the bar, it’s the genuine article.

And that’s something to shout about.