Screen Time, Cookies, Languages

Screen Time 

How many hours do you spend on the internet?

I wrote an article this week about concerned Apple investors who want the company to do something about children's addiction to their iPhones. But as I read their letter, I thought about my own internet habits, and how I worried ten years ago that I was addicted. I thought it had something to do with the short wait between pressing a button and getting the information (or email) I wanted, and made a resolution never to play a slot-machine.

However, now that a growing number of people are worried about children and the internet, and concluding owlishly that parents have to be better models of screen-use, I hypothesise that all human beings are potential internet addicts.

If I don't have a computer around, I don't break into a sweat if I can't check my email. Minus a computer, I can go for days without the internet. However, it feels like a nice treat to pop into an Internet cafe and see what email is waiting for me.

It's weird, isn't it?

Yesterday I started to track my screen time, and I thought that it wouldn't be very much because it was a Sunday, a day off from work. At the end of the day, I totalled up 4 hours, 45 minutes, plus 1.5 hours of watching television. So that was 6 hours, 15 minutes.

It's been 32 minutes today already.

Cookies

The Christmas cookie eating ended when my parents went back to Canada. It was lovely while it lasted, but now it is time to repair the damage. This year's method of post-Christmas slimming involves intermittent fasting (16-8) and a low-carb diet. If the scale is correct, I have lost almost 5 pounds so far.

We have a friend who is an intense keto dieter, and this entails eating a lot of meat and abstaining from sugar, grains, potatoes, etc. I looked up "keto desserts" that eschew artificial sweeteners as well as maple syrup and date syrup, but in the end the only ones that don't sound awful involve Greek yogurt or whipped cream and raspberries. I was hoping that I would find something clever involving carrots or celeriac, which both taste very sweet to me now. However, I think the most thoughtful way forward, when one has invited a keto dieter to supper, is to serve the cheese course at the same time as the pudding, assure the keto-er that they need not have any pudding at all, and supply him or her with a square of 90%-100% chocolate with their coffee.

One difficulty I have with the temptation to "go keto" myself is that B.A. and I are going to Kraków later this month, where there are such delicious rose-jam doughnuts, potato pancakes, cream cake (the kremówka so beloved by Saint John Paul II), and pierogi that it seems a shame not to eat them. Of course, being already on a low-carb diet, I shouldn't eat them anyway--unless in small amounts so as not to get sick. Maybe I will let B.A. do the honours to the carbs, and I will pay my respects to the vast range of Cracowian meats--oh, and the grilled oczszepek cheese.

Languages

I have now read Chapter 11 of The Magician's Nephew in Polish (i.e. Siostrzeniec Czarodzieja), and will spend the next few days looking up the words I don't know and memorising the ones that seem most useful.

Something interesting happened last week--it took me a much shorter time to read and to finish looking up the vocabulary for Chapter 10, and then Chapter 11 had significantly fewer words I didn't know. I have read that language acquisition involves sudden jumps in improvement, and my experience bears that out. This seems to be one of them.

Meanwhile, I have begun memorising the Urdu alphabet.

I have now spent an hour on the internet, so off I go.