Berkeley :)

The cloudy skies, the sun that shines bright,

The misty terrain, the backdrop of it all

Uphill it is, the road to success,

The words of wisdom are nowhere else.

With its many paths and stairs up and down,

The looks of hope and goals focused on.

The world it represents, no barriers in between,

Teachings of predecessors, history beneath

Choices were made, decisions too many,

We are here now, cheering for Berkeley.

The differences that do exist

I always wondered when people spoke of discrimination between the boy and girl child. I safely assumed this a difference existent only in rural lifestyles, conservative households. I took it to be a difference long gone in modern society. But then it got me thinking - is the difference really gone or is the assumption another double standard we find easy to live by?

We have the tendency to look at the bigger picture and ignore the little details. But in the bargain we forget it is these minute details that also help define us and our society. Though on one hand it is true that today the difference between the education given to a child is irrespective of his sex. It is also true that both the boy and girl have equal opportunity to choose their career path. However, if we look closer into the day to day lives we find the disparities that are still existent. 

The boy can come home past midnight but the girl is expected to be in bed by the time the clock strikes twelve. When the boy leaves for university he is sat down by his father and given a lecture on safe sex. But for the girl going to university is a debate based on whether she is allowed to go for that hypothetical dinner date. On one hand the boy is encouraged to share a drink with his parents but on the other the mere mention of alcohol from a girl makes her parents cringe. The boy is told to go for that European road trip for it will help widen his horizons but the girl is required to be back home in vacations unless she chooses a place with relatives in the vicinity.

The list is not an exhaustive one once we begin to take the little things into account. These differences may never end up being deal breakers but they remain to be troubled differences nonetheless. Today we pride ourselves by being the forward thinking modern society but then are we really?