" ... entire cliques do this sort of thing, creating, in effect, their own tribal medium and narrative.  Ms Ito [an anthropologist, researching the subject] has noticed a new genre of photography on the rise as young people use their phones to snap photos of everyday situations – the view from the escalator on the way to school, say – which mean a lot to their friends and nothing to anybody else.  They especially love photos that capture "dumb things that their friends do", such as getting drunk and falling into puddles, which collectively amount to "everyday, casual documentaries" for a circle of friends."

I am not sure how "new" this particular genre of photography is – people have been taking cherished photos of seemingly mind-numbingly innocuous scenes for generations.  You can come and sit through my last set of family holiday snaps to get that point.

You can reach Rachael using her email address:  rachael.hyde@cognitive-edge.com

For some reason he then gave the example of Britain and how graciousness had emerged there over centuries  ... why he chose the UK is beyond me, surely Australia would have been a better example?  ;-)

I think its too early to say that he should be elected - I'm looking for to seeing how he performs in a presidential campaign, should he get the chance - but I have to say that Barack Obama is possibly the most gifted public speaker I have seen in politics in my time.

I first saw him speak at the Democratic Convention in 2004, after reading an article on him in the Economist earlier in the year (unfortunately only viewable with a subscription!).  I was sitting in a hotel room in India preparing for the day and was lucky enough to catch it - listening to that speech made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

His Iowa speech is in a similar, rarified class.  Impressive ...

2.  Identical twins are identical in appearance only.  If you swaddle both kids and present only one of them to me, i have no better than a 50/50 chance of guessing which one it is ... but in personality, demeanour and habits we can already see that they are dramatically different individuals.

3.  Dave tells me that people cannot tolerate the chaotic domain in the Cynefin framework and will act to exit the space in the quickest way feasible, but I've learned that only applies to adults.  Newborns seem happy to exist there indefinitely!

Apologies for the infrequent posting.  Life has moved well and truly beyond my control and night and day have lost all meaning!  Both girls have been doing very well, putting on plenty of weight and are very prompt in reminding mum and dad that it is feeding time.  We're onto seven feeds a day (having started at eight, we realised we wouldn't make xmas unless we could get a longer stretch of time in there somewhere between feeds).

Next week we're off to the doc for a check-up, but we're not anticipating any issues.

The good news is that Georgia is home, and Tessa will be joining her sister at home on Wednesday this week.  Things are not quite as apocalyptic as the title of this post may suggest!  Although managing two newborns I expect will feel a little like the end of the world ...

This week began with the usual mixed bag of news - I'm happy to tell you this time it has ended on a positive note .. (touch wood!).

Tessa & Georgia hit one month yesterday and the last week was in some ways just so reflective of our journey over the last month as a whole - an emotional rollercoaster of extreme ups and downs ..

After my last post, the following day (Monday) brought the first procedure for the girls.  As I mentioned in that post, Dr Tan had been watching Tessa’s blood count for some time because her haemoglobin count was bordering on low.  Since she had had some trouble with her lungs, it was thought that perhaps a low haemoglobin count was making her work a little too hard to move oxygen around her little body.  The more energy she expends on breathing, the less she can devote to getting bigger and building the muscles that make all these processes more manageable for her, so it was felt that a blood transfusion would be necessary at some point and earlier was better than later.  The blood transfusion took place on Monday, after they had completed the necessary tests, and they gave her 22mL of blood to top her up.

An update on where our little girls are at, for those who have been following the story to date!

I left the last post about the girls on 22 Sept, which was the day Stacey and I left the hospital.  I hope you had a chance to watch the videos - its a weird thing, the first moment that a mum holds her child is almost never captured on video unless you are filming the whole birth (and we never had that as part of the plan!).  In our case, the doctor told us we could hold them, and my first reaction was "just a sec, I'll grab my video!" - its one of the few advantages of having your kids in the NICU from birth.  I'm sure the girls and mum will love revisiting that short couple of minutes for years.

There are many schools of thought and ideological positions about best practice in the design of questionnaires.  We have experimented with different ways of presenting filters in the past.  For example, we’ve used sliding bars to indicate the degree of presence of AVTs but there are concerns about whether or not it can be assured that the indexer has actually moved the sliding bar from its resting position when first presented.  We think this can be countered by using new technologies so the slider does not appear until touched by the indexer and will be introducing that shortly (though I don't think it will resolve the argument!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXHAW_VR38o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsmt57N0Z2g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUNn74e-bs4

We woke the next morning and met the neo-natologist in the NICU to assess the status of the girls.  Georgia was in surprisingly good shape.  At 1.33kg, she was breathing on CPAP but they hadn't needed to tube the surfactant into her lungs.  Tessa was the bigger worry.  She was born at 1.25kg, and they had immediately put in the surfactant.  The immediate concerns for the doctors were respiratory development for both babies, and to check that the excretion systems were working.

We found out some basic ground rules.  In Singapore, a baby can't leave hospital until it satisfies two conditions - it needs to reach gestational age of at least 35 weeks and it needs to weigh two kilos.  Our babies were not yet 30 weeks, and babies are expected to put on 10g per kilo of weight per day.  We learned they would be in hospital for at least 6 weeks, probably more like 8.

One rough, exhilarating, and exhausting week ago, our twins decided they had hit the end of the line on the inside, and it was time to enter the world ... there have been times in the last week when I wondered if we would make this day!  Today, to mark this very big day in our lives, I am going to indulge with a long blog post, to record what happened ... so forgive me.

On Friday 7 September, we came in for a CTG recording.  That was in the 29th week of the pregnancy.  Completing 28 weeks was a milestone for us - our docs (Dr Joan Thong and Dr Tony Tan) had told us that once we hit 28 weeks,  the babies were "viable".  Stats say that at 28 weeks, the survival rates of babies starts to improve, but before that it is a bit dicey.  Getting to 28 weeks suddenly vastly increased our emotional investment in these kids, in a way we could not have conceived.  Stacey and I had been celebrating each day since, but with increasing trepidation (for reasons I'll share below).