Sports stars, trophy wives/girlfriends 3

More PBA players and their trophy wives/girlfriends.

Basketball player JC Intal and actress Carla Abellana were dating before she became Rosalinda

White hair chronicles XIX

I might have the chance to live long. My great grandparents from my mother side lived into their 90s. My father's father passed away in 2008 at 94. My mother was born in Lubang Island (where Onoda hid) off Mindoro, where people routinely live into their 90s. I eat healthy. I keep my body mass index right in the middle of the range. My blood pressure is 110/70.

I saw the interesting talk by Dan Buettner at TED.com about how to live to be 100+. Together with the National Geographic, he sought out the regions of the world where people commonly live past 100 years. Their quest brought them to 4 areas called the blue zones: Sardinia, Italy; the islands of Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; and Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica.

The people in the blue zones have common lifestyle characteristics that contribute to their living longer. Among the characteristics shared are shown in the diagram above.

Aside from what I learned about the people in the blue zones and what I know about the people in Lubang, I know what they do not have.

They do not have pollution. They live in remote rural areas where the air is ever fresh. They do not share the polluted roads with maniacal, stressed drivers. They do not have sedentary lives, ranting and venting out in blogs. And they do not spend geek long hours watching porn.

Now I'm not so sure about my chances.

Female power rise poses challenges

The Economist says that the gradual women empowerment in the last 50 years, though a welcome development for both sexes, have brought social consequences that will be the challenge of the next 50 years.

Hillary Clinton noted that her 18M votes in the primaries represent 18M cracks (pun intended?) in the ceiling. Women now make up half of the work force in many economies. In the other economies where it is not, the ratio of women in the work force is rising.

How did this come about? Politics (feminism) brought governments to pass equal-rights laws. Economics and technology also did their share. The demand for brain power grew as the world entered the post-industrialized era.

Demand has been matched by supply: women are increasingly willing and able to work outside the home. Women now have more time to work as the time for traditional traditional female work of cleaning and cooking was reduced by better technology at home. Additionally, the contraceptive pill and family planning became widely accepted. The pill has not only allowed women to get married later, it has also increased their incentives to invest time and effort in acquiring skills.

But the men still dominate the upper ranks of management. In America and Britain the typical full-time female worker earns only about 80% as much as the typical male. The article says prejudice may be the key but there is a deeper reason why this is so: many women are forced to choose between motherhood and careers. Childless women earn almost as much as men, but mothers with partners earn less and single mothers much less. The cost of motherhood is steep for women. Child rearing deprives the women of the time to gain the professional experience/education that they could have. The reason for the income gap may thus be the opposite of prejudice. It is that women are judged by exactly the same standards as men.

This Hobson's choice is imposes a high cost on both individuals and society. Many professional women reject motherhood entirely. Others delay child-bearing for so long that they later resort to fertility clinics. Some may opt not to work at all, thus depleting the collective investment in talent. But a choice must be made. Studies found out that, years after graduation, just over half of those who had chosen to have children were working full-time. About a quarter were working part-time and just under a quarter had left the labor force. Almost all of women who left work to have children want to return to work. But only 74% managed to return, and just 40% returned to full-time jobs.

While making women work leaves too little time for their children, this trend will continue. The rising cost of living and the empowered women's mind makes this a necessity. In the west child care takes a sizable portion of the family budget, and many childminders are untrained. The private sector can make more women-friendly and family-friendly work environments. Governments can make school hours coincide with working hours so the children can be at school while their parents work. But quitting work to look after the children can mean financial disaster.

This is where the Philippines' extended family system come in handy. Our extended family and the practice of grandparents staying with the family afford working moms to have caretakers for the children.

Just joking

Woman and the 3 Wishes

A woman was out golfing one day when she hit the ball into the woods.

She went into the woods to look for it and found a frog in a trap.

The frog said to her, "If you release me from this trap, I will grant You three wishes."

The woman freed the frog, and the frog said, "Thank you, but I failed to mention that there was a condition to your wishes. Whatever you wish for, your husband will get ten times more or better!"

The woman said, "That's okay."

For her first wish, she wanted to be the most beautiful woman in the world. The frog warned her, "You do realize that this wish will also make your husband the most handsome man in the world, an Adonis who women will flock to."

The woman replied, "That's okay, because I will be the most beautiful woman and he will have eyes only for me."

So, KAZAM-she's the most beautiful woman in the world!

For her second wish, she wanted to be the richest woman in the world.

The frog said, "That will make your husband the richest man in the world and he will be ten times richer than you."

The woman said, "That's okay, because what's mine is his and what's his is mine." So, KAZAM-she's the richest woman in the world!

The frog then inquired about her third wish, and she answered, "I'd like a mild heart attack."

Moral of the story: Women are clever. Don't mess with them.

Attention female readers: This is the end of the joke for you. Stop here and continue feeling good.

Male readers: Please continue reading.

Ok work hard, but work on the right thing!

I came upon a link shared by a Facebook buddy, about why working hard is overrated. Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr, argues that working hard is not really the magic thing that leads to great inventions or successful outcomes. She says working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard. She continues:

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.

But just how do we know we're working on the right thing? In her followup post, Caterina says the only way to gauge that is instinct, gut feel, or the spine-tingling sensation you feel when you encounter a great work of literature, as Nabokov (of Lolita fame) says. Getting the right thing generally requires exploring lots of ideas, fleshing out a few, ruminating on them, and throwing almost all of them out. She quotes Steve Jobs, "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the many things we haven't done as the things we have done."