Expat reality, and sacrifice, is watching your loved ones age from afar.

Seeing my parent age made me question my expat experience.

For expats, seeing friends and family age while abroad can be surprising to see. Getty.

Expat life has taught me a lot of things – resilience, independence, and how to make a mean pesto spaghetti – but after more than seven years in Abu Dhabi, I still haven’t learnt how to accept the ageing process.

The realisation always comes to me while on holiday in Australia, where I go regularly to spend time with my family and friends.

Over the years I thought I had it all sorted: I would return to the family home in Melbourne every six months for three weeks or so, to live up to my role as an active son, brother, cousin and friend – not have them thinking I had shirked my responsibilities . While I am grateful to have succeeded in that regard, I remain unprepared for the steady march of ageing that greets me each time I visit.

At its most natural, growing older is similar to balding – it is a slow and subtle process that creeps up on you. Your loved ones sporadically pick up on it from the mixture of deeper insights you share and the audible groans and grunts that become common when playing sport or, more worryingly, trying to get up off the couch.

But as an expat, the benign nature of personal ageing is replaced by its flipside – the ageing of your parents and other relations.

No amount of video-calling can prepare you for spotting the first strand of white hair on a parent, in person. “What is this?” I pointed when I spotted the suspect follicles on my mother’s left side last week. She laughed it off, thinking I was being playful. But I was indeed outraged. It was akin to someone ripping out pages from my favourite book, and my mind began to race, thinking about whether or not I had missed any signs in recent months of my mother growing older.

Was there a time when I suspected she was slowing down? Is she quicker to get angry? Does she still have her tea the same way? I drew blanks on all of these and came to a realisation that might haunt many expats – that these things happen and we miss them because we live so far away and don’t see our loved ones every day.

The experience was similar when I saw my cousins and close friends’ beards speckled with grey s; they were also amused by how agitated I was as a result of this discovery. Then again, these jolting moments were tempered by the camaraderie and banter that can actually grow when living on the other side of the world. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I agree that one of the benefits of being an expat is how the relationship with your parents often becomes much better.

In my case, previously the stresses of daily life and cultural customs often created something of a hierarchical bond between my mum and I. That has now transformed into more of a friendship. A lot of it comes down to shared experience.

While my expat life is positively luxurious compared with my mum’s migration experience – she fled our native Eritrea in the 1980s for Abu Dhabi and a decade-long stint before reuniting with the family in Australia – she told me she also dealt with her share of seeing friends and family age and pass away while abroad.

I asked her how she dealt with it, to which she replied: “By asking myself what’s the point? Why am I spending this time away from the people I love? Was it the money, the experience and the adventure? Once you know, you stick to it and keep working towards your goal. Like everyone, you and I are getting older and that’s just life.

“But any sacrifice has to have meaning, or it’s just a waste of time.”

https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/comment/expat-reality-and-sacrifice-is-watching-your-loved-ones-age-from-afar-1.723103 

'Don't use cannabis when you are pregnant or breastfeeding,' doctors warn

Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada launches campaign to warn pregnant and breastfeeding women about the potential dangers of cannabis use.

THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis, crosses the placenta.

Many women were unaware of how cannabis could harm growth and development if used while pregnant or breastfeeding. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)

Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding should bear in mind the potential harmful effects of cannabis use, Canada's obstetricians say.

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (SOGC) said evidence-based studies point to how cannabis could harm growth and development if used while pregnant or breastfeeding.

Potential effects include:

Pre-term labour.

Low birth weight.

Lower IQ scores.

Impulsivity and hyperactivity in childhood.

In a U.S. study, about 70 per cent of pregnant and non-pregnant women who were surveyed believed there was slight or no risk of harm from using marijuana once or twice a week.

THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis, crosses the placenta into fetal tissue and can also accumulate in breast milk — whether from vaping, smoking, eating or smearing it doesn't matter.

The group launched its public awareness campaign on 420, the annual protest against marijuana prohibition. It was not a coincidence that the campaign is starting on 420, a spokeswoman said.

"In light of the current research, our message is simple, don't use cannabis when you are pregnant or breastfeeding, and please talk to your doctor."

The campaign includes educational videos and social media material that's been made possible with financial support from Health Canada.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pot-pregnancy-1.4629329?cmp=FB_Post_News 

Question of the Week: How can one refute the claim made by atheists, skeptics, and even some Christians that the Bible a flat-earth book?

My Answer: First of all, the idea that the Bible promotes a flat-earth doctrine presupposes that people living 2–3 thousand years ago lacked the capacity to determine the true shape of Earth. That presupposition is incorrect. The fact that at different locations on Earth different stellar constellations are seen and they are seen at different orientations was sufficient to persuade ancient peoples that they were living on a spherical body. Aristotle writing in the 4th century BC cited this evidence as proof that Earth is spherical. However, documented mentions of a spherical Earth by Greek philosophers date back to the 6th century BC. Erastosthenes in the 3rd century BC used the sunlight lines at summer solstice in wells at different latitudes to determine the diameter of Earth to 1 percent precision. Both ancient Greek and Egyptian astronomers pointed to the semi-circular shadow of Earth on the Moon during lunar eclipses as evidence for the sphericity of Earth.

The biblical texts most often cited in the claim that the Bible teaches a flat Earth are Job 38:5, 12-14, Isaiah 11:12, 40:22, and Revelation 7:1, 20:7. Of these passages, the most cited is Isaiah 40:22. The relevant part of Isaiah 40:22, referring to God, states, “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.” Whether the “circle of the earth” refers to a human on Earth or God looking down on Earth from above, in both cases the phrase would be consistent with a spherically shaped Earth. It is worth noting that only a sphere always looks like a circle when seen from above.

The Isaiah 11:12 and Revelation 7:1, 20:7 all refer to the “four corners of the earth.” However, even today, astronomers, physicists, and educated people around the world recognize and use the “four corners of the earth” as phenomenalogical language referring to the most distant parts of Earth from the standpoint of an observer at a specific location of Earth. It is clear from an examination of the context for all three of these passages that the most distant parts of Earth is the intent implied by the use of the idiom, the four corners of the earth. As the Theolological Wordbook of the Old Testament points out, the Hebrew word for “corners” used in Isaiah 11:12, kanap, in most of its appearances in the Old Testament is used figuratively.

The passage in Job 38:5 referring to Earth states, “Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?” The inference made by those claiming that the Bible is a flat-earth book is that the “measuring line” is a straight line which would be suitable for measuring a flat disk but not a sphere. This is an over-interpretation. Lines can be straight or curved. Also, it is customary to measure the diameter of a sphere with a straight-edge ruler.

Job 38:12-14 refers to the dawn seizing “the edges [or ends] of the earth” and earth taking “shape like clay under a seal.” What is interesting here is that for a spherical earth the arrival of dawn first shows up at the most distant horizon, end, or edge of the point of view of a human at a fixed point upon Earth’s surface. The taking shape like clay under a seal would apply to either a disk or a sphere and may be saying more about Earth’s rotation or its manufacture than its actual shape.

The irony of choosing Job 38:5, 12-14, Isaiah 11:12, 40:22, and Revelation 7:1, 20:7 to sustain the claim that the Bible is a flat Earth book is that these biblical texts better fit a spherical Earth than they do a flat Earth. While it would be an over-interpretation to conclude that these texts explicitly teach that Earth is a sphere, nowhere in the Bible do we find any text saying that Earth is flat. The Bible remains the only holy book for which we can say that it contains no provable errors or contradictions… (By Hugh Ross).