Thursday, June 26, 2008
So long, farewell and goodbye
Tomorrow (Friday 27th June) will be a bit of a sad day; one that I knew was near. It’s the last day any of us can call this old house the family home. That familiar feeling that can only come from a home you have lived in for a long time will be gone. You get to know every creaking board every scratch and who made it. You know what needs fixing but never seem to get it done. As I enter the lounge room (I rarely go in there now) and look at the bare mantle and photo free walls I feel a little bit alone as though I am leaving a friend behind. I can remember the cold and wet Saturday morning we first moved into 1215 main road kalorama way back in 1967 and seeing this house of many doors, its seemed so big and I guess it was when compared to our other home. The yard was overgrown with walnut, lemon and apple trees, hydrangeas and rhododendrons where scattered everywhere. Now the new owners will make it their home and they want to renovate rather that rebuild that makes it ok. Now we move on, lets see what tomorrow brings.
Friday, June 20, 2008
A nation of fatties
Australia is the world's most overweight nation, ahead of the supersized Americans. "As we send our athletes off to the Olympics let's reflect on the fact that we would win the gold medal problem now in the world fat Olympics if there was such a thing.
A topic that’s always I the news is obesity and today they say Australians have the highest percentage of obese people in the world. My question is why is this so? Is it the foods we eat or the amount we put on our plates? Blaming it on to much time on the computer is wrong; kids do in fact play more organized sport now than we ever did.
I have my own ideas on why we are so overweight; these are not facts but beliefs. We now have these huge dinner plates, a few weeks ago I found some plates that have not been used in years and was surprised at how small these where yet we seemed to get by on the smaller portions .We also snacked far less on things like potato chips, it was more like a piece of fruit or if we had a sandwich it was not over filled and the bread in our house was usually a rye bread.
That’s not to say we ate a low fat diet, foods like sausages or fried eggs where part of our weekend diet, it was just done in moderation and to a large degree we ate in seasonal foods. This is where I maybe completely wrong. I think a major cause to our allergies comes from the preservatives we put in our foods. It gives the food a longer self life but I believe its one of the reasons so many kids have things like asthma, when I was a child very few kids had things like asthma, diabetes or where obese, yes we walked everywhere and we ate less. We also had roast dinners and dipping bread into the roast juices was a treat, I even had dripping on toast with salt. We did not however have a pantry full of snack foods like chips party shapes biscuits (cookies) or huge bottles of soft drink in the refrigerator
The bottom line was we ate what was in season we ate less of it and did not snack an hour before dinner an after school snack was something small not a meal, I see kids eating hamburgers on their way home from school at 4pm its little wonder we are in so much trouble.
A topic that’s always I the news is obesity and today they say Australians have the highest percentage of obese people in the world. My question is why is this so? Is it the foods we eat or the amount we put on our plates? Blaming it on to much time on the computer is wrong; kids do in fact play more organized sport now than we ever did.
I have my own ideas on why we are so overweight; these are not facts but beliefs. We now have these huge dinner plates, a few weeks ago I found some plates that have not been used in years and was surprised at how small these where yet we seemed to get by on the smaller portions .We also snacked far less on things like potato chips, it was more like a piece of fruit or if we had a sandwich it was not over filled and the bread in our house was usually a rye bread.
That’s not to say we ate a low fat diet, foods like sausages or fried eggs where part of our weekend diet, it was just done in moderation and to a large degree we ate in seasonal foods. This is where I maybe completely wrong. I think a major cause to our allergies comes from the preservatives we put in our foods. It gives the food a longer self life but I believe its one of the reasons so many kids have things like asthma, when I was a child very few kids had things like asthma, diabetes or where obese, yes we walked everywhere and we ate less. We also had roast dinners and dipping bread into the roast juices was a treat, I even had dripping on toast with salt. We did not however have a pantry full of snack foods like chips party shapes biscuits (cookies) or huge bottles of soft drink in the refrigerator
The bottom line was we ate what was in season we ate less of it and did not snack an hour before dinner an after school snack was something small not a meal, I see kids eating hamburgers on their way home from school at 4pm its little wonder we are in so much trouble.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
My movie review
I saw this movie today and did not have expectations. All I knew before seeing the movie was it is not meant to be an accurate depiction of Mongolian history or the history of Genghis khan. The story does however give us a different look other than that of Hollywood. I did find that parts of the story were glossed over ‘not considered important I guess’ like how he got his followers, I think we are meant to use our imagination there. The actors did a good job and for those who worry about literal translations in the sub titles, stop thinking about it so much, its very hard to translate from one language to another accurately. I am told there is not much written in history about Genghis khan,
The movie was worth the price of admittance and is the first installment of the trilogy so go see it and be your own judge after all you might spend two hours watching a good movie.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
There's a change in the air
Barack Obama,
Here is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, a Democratic black man defeating a white Democratic woman then him running against a conservative republican runner, the mind boggles at the money that has been spent just to decide the runners, its a pity they have that kind of money to put into telling the people how great it will be under them.
What all of us have to put up until November is these two leaders telling us why the he is not the right person and I am the one to lead America .we have to listen to more diatribes from both Barack Obama http://www.myspace.com/barackobama and John McCain. Its not just the American people who will have this on the nightly news in the paper etc but all of us will get our share, true the lions share will be directed to voter.
One of the things I do not understand is why a president can not run for more than two terms in the US If he/she is good enough why not let them be re-elected, that seems to be more democratic way of doing things. After all a president is in effect a lame duck in his/her final two years the way things are now, still it’s a system America seems to enjoy, now if only they put a higher value on their voting. Maybe they will get more out to vote this time around.
I guess only having two terms it stops dictators, then again many free countries do ok with a choice. Just think you may rob yourselves of a great leader and replace him/her with a not so great one and that has been done before
The other thing that’s always bothered me about the US system is you can be mayor governor or leader of the largest company but if you where not born in the USA you are not concidered good enough to be president which is odd when you think about some of the past leaders. This is NOT anti-american ,its just my opinion.
Here is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, a Democratic black man defeating a white Democratic woman then him running against a conservative republican runner, the mind boggles at the money that has been spent just to decide the runners, its a pity they have that kind of money to put into telling the people how great it will be under them.
What all of us have to put up until November is these two leaders telling us why the he is not the right person and I am the one to lead America .we have to listen to more diatribes from both Barack Obama http://www.myspace.com/barackobama and John McCain. Its not just the American people who will have this on the nightly news in the paper etc but all of us will get our share, true the lions share will be directed to voter.
One of the things I do not understand is why a president can not run for more than two terms in the US If he/she is good enough why not let them be re-elected, that seems to be more democratic way of doing things. After all a president is in effect a lame duck in his/her final two years the way things are now, still it’s a system America seems to enjoy, now if only they put a higher value on their voting. Maybe they will get more out to vote this time around.
I guess only having two terms it stops dictators, then again many free countries do ok with a choice. Just think you may rob yourselves of a great leader and replace him/her with a not so great one and that has been done before
The other thing that’s always bothered me about the US system is you can be mayor governor or leader of the largest company but if you where not born in the USA you are not concidered good enough to be president which is odd when you think about some of the past leaders. This is NOT anti-american ,its just my opinion.
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