The price of agelessness.

Everyone would like to be ageless – or so they might think to themselves. However, agelessness comes at a price.

Now, anyone who has ever viewed a photograph of my wife, Syahidah, cannot but be struck by how young she seems. Yet, she is much older than people think. The fact is, though, that she hasn’t aged since I met her: she got stuck in her late teens and seems essentially unchanged, since then. Fourteen years have passed, since we met but not one of those years appears on her face or body. It is as if she were a latter day Dorian Gray (though without the dissolute behaviour!)

Of course, this strange stasis leads to much confusion.

A few days ago, Syahidah took her three sons, Ainan, 11, Fintan, 8 and Tiarnan, 5, to the cinema to see the latest Transformers film, Dark of the Moon.

As she queued up to buy the tickets, Syahidah overheard an enthusiastic voice behind her –
“Look at her! Isn’t she a good sister, to be taking her brothers to the cinema!”

A quick look around revealed no-one else but Syahidah who could be described as a “sister” with her “brothers”.

Syahidah was too embarrassed for words, even though this kind of comment had been heard before.

She bought the tickets and took her “brothers” into the film.

It would be funny, were it not the source of much puzzlement on the part of others. You see, those fourteen years have seen me change, whilst Syahidah has stood still. So, now, the apparent age gap between us seems greater than it was, when we first met – yet, of course, it is the same, to the very day. What makes this situation more acute, is that it is Asians who judge Syahidah to be so young. How young would she seem to Caucasian eyes? No-one but myself and her immediate family know the truth: that Syahidah stopped any outward aging, in her late teens and looks the same now, as she did then. Yet, people who see her now, mentally subtract the age of her children, from her, now, and conclude that she must have looked much younger in the past: not so. She looked the same when I met her, as she does now. I can’t help but wonder what strange things people think, when they appraise her present appearance and make such age calculations. They have no idea how wrong they are.

Of course, I do wonder how long Syahidah will maintain this stasis of appearance. Her great grandfather was famous for not having aged much (relatively speaking, that is) – despite reaching 104. So, it seems, she takes after him. If this carries on, the day might come in thirty years time, when people think she is my granddaughter!

I am left to wonder how much our sons will inherit this curious attribute: are they going to be seemingly ageless, too? Will they look like spritely teenagers, well into their thirties? How odd it would be, for them, if this turns out to be so. We shall see.

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Natural hairstyle and individuality

As regular readers will know, Fintan, four, has curly hair. Yet, we live in Singapore - a "Land of the Straight-Hairs", as I call it. Basically everyone, apart from foreign visitors, has straight, black, flat hair.

A few days ago, Syahidah took Fintan to the Science Centre, in Singapore. This is a kind of interactive Science Museum - though not as extensive as the Science Museum in Kensington, London, that I remember from my childhood, it is still worth a visit, particularly for children.

While wandering around the exhibits, Syahidah noticed two children who looked rather surprising: they both had curly hair.

"Look Fintan!" she pointed them out to him, "They are like you."

He looked and he saw and then he spoke a little disenchantedly, "Yeh, but who is the father?"

His arm picked out a man far away across the room, amidst the bustle of many people coming and going - a curly headed man. How he spotted the man in such a crowded, busy, poorly lit, room is a marvel - but being sharp of eye is typical for Fintan.

There was too much separation between the children and the "father" so Syahidah watched him for a while. Soon enough she saw him close the gap between them and interact with the kids: sure enough, he was the father.

This was one of the only occasions that Fintan has ever seen another curly headed person. Two things are interesting here: first, he was very quick to scan the environment and link the distant curly headed man as father to the nearby curly headed children. But also, it is telling, perhaps in a sad way, the conclusion he drew from this: that those children had reason enough for their curly hair - but he did not. You see neither his mother nor his father have curly hair - but we both have slightly wavy hair. It seems that two genetic doses of "wavy" is enough to make hair curly.

Why do I write this? Well, Fintan feels set apart by his appearance here, in Singapore. No other child of his acquaintance looks remotely like him. He doesn't look Malay (but is half-Malay), he doesn't look Irish (but is half-Irish), he doesn't look Chinese (but speaks it a little), he doesn't look Indian (but occasionally eats their food!). He has no real visual affiliation with any of the basic groupings of Singapore. Being of two different racial lineages, he looks only like his brothers. Allied to this disparity of race, is his hairstyle - abundant, never straight, curls, with plenty of natural body - and this makes him feel marked out from his fellow children. That feeling is unlikely to ever leave him, unless we live somewhere else.

Even Syahidah's attempt to make him feel that there were others, by pointing out the curly-headed children fell flat - because the father's appearance made it clear where their appearance comes from: Fintan has no such understanding of his origin. He cannot say to himself: "My hair looks like Daddy's" or "My hair looks like Mummy's". The fact is, it looks like neither's. Perhaps, then, he feels a little unanchored, a little set adrift. He needs to be moored to the facts of his origin - in a comprehensible visual way - but, owing to his mixed genetic lineage, he cannot really have that. The admixture has obscured his origins - and made something new.

Yet, I am happy for him that he is different. He is different in many ways - and not just hair. He is very much himself and unlike any other. In time, I think he will come to appreciate that and learn to be content with the way things are. It is just that, at four years old, finding common ground with one's fellow youngsters is a big social issue.

I look forward to the day when he is happy to be a stocky, curly headed, half-Irish, half-Malay, handsome man!

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and nine months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and two months, and Tiarnan, nineteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Valentine Cawley Celebrity Look-a-likes part two

It is difficult to be impartial in the matter of appearance. Now, however, one can let a computer make the judgements. In the previous post, I ran one photograph through a site that correlates one's features with famous people. (Its purpose is to find lost relatives, actually, through finding genetic resemblances between people reflected in their features.)

Below is the result of trying another photograph. There is variation between them because a different photo will catch one in somewhat different way. It is interesting to note that Jacqueline Bisset comes up again, despite the change of angle. Albert Einstein also correlates to me, at 52%. I hope it is not my hair that did it.

I am not displeased to correlate with Vince Vaughn and Tom Hanks: amiable souls both.

Have fun all.

Celebrity look-a-likes: famous faces

It is said that everyone has a double, somewhere, somewhen: but is that true? In my life, I have met several people who look somewhat like me, some male, some female - but who, of all the world's famous people do I look like?

There is a website called www.myheritage.com that purports to match genealogy using face recognition. One side effect of this is that it can match any face to its databases of celebrities. Clearly this database is not complete since there are a number of celebrities that I have been said to remind people of at various stages of my life, that did not come up as results - such as Ewan MacGregor (who I was more than once mistaken for, when I was younger) - and Ricky Martin (except one of us is plumper...wonder who?!!). However, given the limitations of the database I thought it a very fun exercise to see who, in the world, one looks like: according to the impartial judge of a computer program that measures faces.

The results are served up here. Apparently, I am a sixty per cent match for Donald Trump (I could do with 60 per cent of his wealth, then...) and a 73 % match for David Bowie. Interestingly, I also resemble Jacqueline Bisset - a woman - and Coolio - who is of a different race. I find this refreshing. In going beyond our ways of categorizing people by race and gender and looking at the actual proportions of the face, this software should give a truer reflection of who we actually look like. The results can be very revealing.

The results depend very much on which photo you upload: different photos may give slightly different results if you are caught differently - or were a different age at the time, I suppose (or weight, I would guess: though it managed to see through my poundage and match the features of ultra-slim David Bowie - so I think the software is pretty good at overcoming such impediments).

I will see if I can check other photos for my family members and post the results for you.

So, who do you look like?