The Bento Special ‘take away.’

 

With the heat wave of the last few weeks and being holed up in our air-conditioned home, we do try and go out each day. The usual procedure is to take a break and drive to the shopping mall close by. Both of us were born in cold countries. Finland has each year a winter that is now being experienced in the US.  Holland is mainly a rainy and wet place with gale force westerlies buffeting the flat landscape. Near the coast the trees lean permanently towards the east as a result of those winds.  The heatwaves in Australia make the birds listless and the dogs depressed. We don’t like this heat!

Last Saturday, again a scorcher, with the temperature gauge on my iPhone rapidly rising from 21C to 36C within an hour. We drove again to this shopping mall. We don’t do shopping there but this time we combined getting a new disposal bin for the kitchen. What we really go there for, is the Japanese Bento Special. It has been our daily lunch. While the relentless heat lasts we will continue to repeat this nice procedure.

Before we left we had a good fight about the necessity to buy this kitchen bin. The old one, a white plastic one with a swing lid was good enough for me. I am in charge of disposing kitchen waste that cannot be recycled, so felt it was fair for me to keep to the status quo regarding the bin. Helvi said that she can smell this bin and as she is a strong woman, felt we should buy another stainless steel bin. ‘I want a pedal one’, she said with determination. No matter what bin, it does need a plastic liner. Again, it has come about through marital habit, that I take out this plastic liner when full. I tie it up, go outside to the garbage bin and chuck it in. This, in the heat, is where I get hit with the bad stench. Helvi never does that.

We drove to the shopping centre in silence. I noticed a strange vibration on my steering wheel together with an unusual, and repetitive sound. I stopped the car and looked at the tyres and the rest of the car. It all seemed alright. No flat tyres. The car has an amazing array of warning signals. In the handbook between page 27 and 34 it explains all the different lights that can indicate a problem. A light came on which signals that I should ‘initialise’ tyre pressure. The car did have a problem. I explained to Helvi that the noise of the car was not very nice and worrisome. However, she was still showing signs of mulling about the bin. (I had already agreed and capitulated to go for the stainless-steel bin) I know her well and she knows me. In time it would come good. For the moment she wasn’t talking and could not care less about the car’s tyre situation. I hoped her mood would swing back to her usual good cheer.

It did, but only after we had eaten the Bento-special.  It is a lovely combination of raw fish salmon with some rice and various bits of health, wrapped in sea-weed. Of course, in the mall itself, and the ‘food-court’  many people were seen grazing out of those beakers and polystyrene containers full of KFC’s abominable chicken nuggets while drinking Coke or slurping smoothies.You could tell the ones on KFC and the healthier Japanese-Korean take away, just by their body sizes.

When we got home I discovered a huge bolt complete with washer embedded in the middle of my front tyre. I did not take it out and waited for the NRMA to change the tyre. The kitchen is now adorned with a new gleaming stainless-steel bin. It is a 25 litre one and pedal operated.

All is good and peaceful again.

Does Australia attract ‘hard-line’ diplomats now?

 

The appointment by America of Harry Harris as the ambassador for Australia is hardly something I would normally pay much attention to. Of late, community nurses and lymphatic drainage has been much more part of our world. Not a day goes by without a medical event. Even so, we try and keep up with the ‘real’ world. This morning we discovered through Barry Cassidy Insider program,  that the appointment of the Ambassador was welcomed with open arms by both the Libs and Labor. A warm bosom awaits Harry in ‘hard-line’ Australia.

Harry is known for his ‘hard-line’ approach to China. I would have thought that a ‘diplomat’ and ‘hard-line’ were a bit of a contradiction. But, not anymore it seems.  ‘Hard-line’ is very much in and with the Jim Molan as a new senator, also known for fondness of ‘hard-line’, many politicians are scrambling to be at the forefront of ‘hard-liners’. I fear the day both Harry and Jim will meet up. Can we expect more wars and pyrotechnical devices raining down on hapless populations in sandy regions? I think Harry had something to say about China’s sandy diplomacy referring to islands being used by China to build airfields. Not an unreasonable response seeing Asia is surrounded by the US military might.

I don’t know where this fondness for allowing extremism into our political arena comes from. I do admit not knowing anything about both those men. They might well be very nice and honourable. On our ABC ‘The Drum’ I once experienced Jim Molan giving vent to his rather harsh opinion of refugees, especially the survivors of boat people now locked in indefinite detention on Manus and Nauru. He seemed to have a very ruthless and, in my mind, a cold and heartless view, on how to deal with refugees. Recently he posted extreme right anti Islam videos on his blog. It all went through without too much upheaval. I reckon Dutton was heartened by it all. He too is a hard liner.

I so wish Australia would be kinder to China. I don’t notice the Chinese are trying to culturally impose on us. I don’t see the Chinese equivalent of KFC, or Big Quarter Pounder MacDonald’s plastered all over the place. Instead I notice that sometimes the top HSC students often feature students from Eastern backgrounds.

On top of that, I prefer a nice Chop Suey over a foot long Subway.

Read here about Harry. China’s Foe, Australia’s friend.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-s-friend-china-s-foe-new-us-ambassador-harry-harris

 

 

Plain Packaging of McDonalds and Coke!

Grapes, strawberries and figs.

It’s not often that good news greets one on awakening. I was still rubbing my eyes expecting the usual diet of slaughter of innocents or Trump tweets news on my IPhone when I read this article;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-05/australia-wins-landmark-wto-tobacco-packaging-case/8498750

I nearly broke out in a celebratory waltz. Sorry for the link but let me give you the more salient bits saving you to click on the link.

“Australia’s tobacco plain packaging laws are a legitimate public health measure, according to a World Trade Organisation dispute panel ruling reported by Bloomberg.It cited two people close to the situation as saying the panel had rejected a case made by Cuba, Honduras, Dominican Republic and Indonesia, which argued the laws constituted illegal barriers to trade.Such a ruling from the WTO has been widely anticipated as giving a green light for other countries to roll out similar laws, not only on tobacco but also on alcohol and UNHEALTHY FOODS.”

The higher-case my own.

The plain packaging on tobacco products has been in place for a number of years with enormous success. The poor die-hard addicts are now forced to go to the counter and whisper their brand to the sale girl, furtively looking around for any witness to their evil habit.

With Australia’s enormous obesity problems having overtaken the tobacco scourge, I hope to have enough years left to see a similar approach to unhealthy foods. The experts are pointing out that poverty and obesity are linked. Social disadvantaged rural communities having the largest proportion of overweight people. In cities it is the same, with suburbs far flung from the city-centre and cheaper to buy into, showing the same problems.

It might also be that educational differences play a role than just levels of wealth differences. I disagree that the obesity is just a matter of the poor not able to afford healthy food. A family of four eating at McDonalds with a ‘ Big Mac’ at $6.95 each, could easily buy them a bagful of  nutritious foods. But, at the local supermarkets awaits unhealthy food traps as well. It is not for nothing that the lay-outs at the supermarket usually puts the healthy choices well past the stacks of more profitable Coke cases, sugar laden rubbish with simmering sauces, instant foods, pre-digested microwave snacks etc. before the shopper gets to the vegetables and fruit section. Row after row of breakfast choco-pops, corn flakes, sugar muesli, soft drinks. Even babies are now corrupted readied to obesity when mothers can squeeze a kind of sugar laden ‘health’ pop-in tube inside its squealing little mouth.   All those tempting instant foods has to be trudged past in order to arrive at the apples and cauliflowers.

It is just as criminal as tobacco before the plain packaging came into place. Will it come to  killer foods being treated the same? Just imagine McDonald addicts huddling under railway bridges  secretly munching out of plain grey paper bags on their sugar and fat hits. The shy KFC merchants plying their pernicious wares from behind the counter all hidden and in plain packages from cupboards like cigarettes. Dietary advisers inside super-markets steering shoppers to good healthy foods. Clear simple labelling and according to their nutritional values. People can still buy sugar and fat laden foods but at their own well informed peril.

I am not so sure about those Strasbourg knobs or Salamis, Brat-worst and Black Pudding. Perhaps they ought to be excluded or given a neutral rating. I would definitely give 5 stars to Butter Milk.

What do you reckon?

It came to $41.20 without any sugar

Grapes, strawberries and figs.

The $41.20 was the total of our shopping adventure this morning. The day started early. With the change in day-light saving we seem to get up earlier instead of sleeping longer. That sleeping-in, so desired when young, evades us now. I am always glad the night is over. Unless we have to get out shopping and walking, we generally muck about till midday in our pyjamas. Now that winter is knocking, we might consider not even moving out of them at all. We shall see!

We are still reeling somewhat from a range of TV programs whereby eating sugar has been taken under the loupe. I hope millions have watched those TV programs and the dire consequences resulting from eating sugar. It is not just obvious sugar, no it is the hidden sugar in our foods. Most breakfast cereals, sauces, micro-wave foods and almost all processed foods have  lots of sugar.  I thought that a fruit yoghurt was a fairly safe food to ingest. Wrong! That too has ladles of sugar. So have all fruit drinks. Of course, a Coke drink is pure poison. If cigarettes are addictive, the experts reckon so is sugar. The present world epidemic of obesity is all sugar related. Yet,  apart from some brave souls exposing the evils of sugar, our government is eerily quiet. “A personal choice,” they might sometimes whisper behind closed doors.

We have never been fond of sweets and apart from one spoon of sugar in coffee we never take the stuff in anything else. We cook without shop-bought sauces. I suppose those lovely Italian tinned tomatoes have some sugar, as has most bread and pasta. We never drink lemonade or soft drinks, and reckon water is as good a drink as any. But…what about wine? I thought that the sugars in grapes convert into alcohol. Is that so? I hope so. I would not like to give up my love of the afternoon ritual sitting in the garden talking with Helvi while sipping wine.

Milo knows the ritual and we bring his cushion out. A creature of habit. He sees me filling a glass with Shiraz and he bolts towards the back-yard sliding doors. He loves us doing that. So, I do hope that there isn’t too much sugar in wine, even if just for Milo’s sake.

It is amazing that most of our modern dietary habits have been installed by the large Multi Corporations. I remember the large Coca Cola truck rolling into our primary schools in Holland giving all children a free Coca Cola. This was during the mid nineteen- fifties. It was the beginning of the end. We seem powerless against the intrusion into our lives by those large businesses that profit from spreading premature deaths to millions all over the world. Deaths that can easily be avoided by not eating so much sugar.  The health costs eventually will force government to act and stand up to the likes of MacDonald, KFC, Cadbury and all those other perfidious multi nationals. I noticed that some school kids during sport wear caps with the McDonald logo on it. How is that possible?  Where are the protesting parents?

In those programs the large corporations were asked about their responsibility in all that obesity. They avoided it by denying the evils of sugar. The same tactics used by cigarette companies.

But getting back to our shopping bill. The $41.20 included;  a man’s flannel pyjamas (XL), a bottle of Precious Earth Shiraz,  a four pack of salmon cutlets, a bar of Dove soap, a bunch of broccolini, three avocadoes, Cherri tomatoes, a tin of Italian tomatoes and four bananas. There might have been another item but I threw away the receipt.

 

Give us back our Country

 

It is so heartening hearing that South Australia is now trying to nationalize the Electricity industry. Remember Australia had a Commonwealth Bank, the GIO, the PMG and above all we owned our resources. It was all owned by Australia and its people, us. We were rich. Australia was a country who had it all. The envy of the world.

And then, the ugliness of capitalism reared its head. It started with lowering taxation. Government after government  got in by waxing and manuring greed by promising to lower taxation. The inevitable shortfall of revenue was fixed by  selling everything under the sun. Leases on vast areas of our resources were sold to individuals who started  companies specialising in selling our previously owned coal, iron ore, uranium, silver, gold, oil and much  more to the highest bidders. Enormous profits were distributed to shareholders but not to the people who previously owned it all.

And then after selling off the resources that Australia has almost unlimited ownership off to private individuals, our Government owned bank,  The Commonwealth Bank, was sold off, followed by our own insurance company , The GIO, followed hot on the heels by Post Master General, morphing into the present Telstra. The Government had once again some more  revenue, enough to prop up creaking infrastructures, health, schools, roads, public transport.

But when all that money  went, poverty crept in once again. It became harder and harder to find the money. Increasing revenue through taxation  was electoral suicide. It was easier to allow poverty to creep into the masses. Pensions were cut, social services were cut, queues at hospitals became longer. The divide between the haves and have nots became wider. Educational levels lowered, students are now struggling to get basic language and numeracy skills. Skilled jobs were filled by importing overseas workers and so the list goes on.

The States too, got onto selling stuff. Water was privatised, and electricity. Poles and Wires with both water and electricity prices going through the roof. Shareholders are rubbing their hands in glee. Riches are made but only to the few. The money made out of selling public utilities are only short term solutions. It should never have happened. Australia should have kept control of its country. Why are French companies now running and determining the electricity prices in South Australia? It is crazy.

Is it time to take it back? Nationalise what previously was owned by us, the people. South Australia is on the way of doing that. We should applaud that. Did anyone watch the ABC’s Four Corners program on the state of the US. People earning such low wages, whole families living in tents or single rooms. Kids being fed packets of chips or stale pizzas. All those glittering advertisement, miles of MacDonald’s signs and the insane grinning Colonel Kentucky chickens running amok.  They are now the largest employers of people who get payed so little they are reduced to dismal poverty. They try and smile so heroically; what would you like with your chicken/ hamburger sir, they say while wearing a cap?

Surely proof of terminal capitalism in its death throes.

Another week-end in the past.

During the late sixties.

Week-ends were always looked forward to. The main part was the sleeping in, especially on Saturday. How I loved it. The Sunday church used to be a problem. But growing up realizing that no water ever changed into wine, nor did water allow to be walked upon, I took charge of that issue around the year sixteen and stopped going. It also coincided by taking up smoking. Graven A, ten cigarettes to a packet, and eating potato scallops from the local Fish & Chips shop, wrapped in The Daily telegraph! Till this day, whenever I smell Rupert’s Telegraph I smell more fish than chips.

Of course, Saturday night was movie night. I am not sure if cinemas were actually open on Sundays in Australia during the fifties. I do know that Sundays were pretty dead. It used to be the major complaint by European migrants. The first movie that I can remember apart from a few Don Camillo movies watched when still in Holland, were the climbing of MT Everest and King Salomon’s Mines. In Holland my mother was forever urging us to see movies featuring the priest, Don Camillo. A character who was forever falling out with local communist mayors in Italian or French villages. She must have been hoping I could be saved from decadence and resulting hell-fire and brimstones. They were very funny movies and I remember them fondly. But alas, I was not to be saved.

The Drive-in also needs to be dug up. They were popular between the fifties  and seventies, well before KFC and MacDonald’s started to tentatively test the waters. The Drive-in had speaker boxes on posts which by a lead you attached inside the car. It wasn’t unusual to drive off after the movie with the speaker box still inside the car. Some Drive-ins had buttons on the post to order Mars bars, snacks or Cokes which would be delivered by furiously pedalling boys on bicycles. Whole families used to go in pyjamas and I remember seeing women with hair curlers queuing at the milk bar waiting for their malted milkshakes at the Drive- in during a break.

Boys and (hopefully) some girls would of course take the opportunity to slip a hand here and there and many a muffled shout or sharp slap used to do the rounds. I don’t know if the hair curlers would inspire any romance. But who knows? Cupid’s arrow has mysterious targets. There was an enormous uptick in pregnancies when John Travolta and Grease were released in the late seventies. It was also the beginning of the end of Drive-Ins. Helvi and I went just once and there were no slaps or muffled sounds. It was a boring movie. Helvi did not think that sitting in car watching a movie was a good night out at all.

Now, in my galloping years, the week-end has lost some of its lustre. In fact, all of its lustre. I am always happiest when the Monday gets around. There is still some of that earlier Sunday deadness about. Have you noticed that in the centre of towns or cities, the Sunday goes in rapid retreat or decline between 2.45- 3.15 pm. All of a sudden the streets empty themselves of people, dogs start scratching and shops looking so forlorn. A paleness is creeping in. Perhaps the towns and cities still lack people living in them. People live mainly around but not within cities. Sunday afternoons are probably used to top up the Opal Card or with summer knocking, a late afternoon lawn mower. I believe many now also go to Sunday Gym and do push-ups. I must say that men and women over sixty, and especially when pear-shaped, should resist wearing those black tights on their way to the gym. It is really an unsettling sight, even on a Sunday afternoon.

The Art of avoiding bad dietary Habits

Nestle
The latest news to alarm us is that obesity is threatening to outperform malnutrition. The numbers of overweight in this world are overtaking the underfed and hungry. How can that be? At the same time I read an article whereby it was suggested that at cinemas there ought to be healthier snacks available. The suggestion seems well intentioned but would it not be better to avoid snacking altogether? It can’t be that hard going without eating for just a couple of hours. Is it true and a fact that eating has become part of all our physical activities? We can now only walk, drive, catch buses and trains, talk, read, watch TV and movies and even lose weight, but only if we continue lifting our arm to mouth to put something in it. We are as yet not eating while sleeping but I am sure the Multi National Sugar & Fat and Salt (SFS) merchants have their best scientists working on it.

Go to the chemist and the window display will have dietary advice that mainly advises buying more food from them. Sure, it is food the chemist (on his podium) claims slims, but this can’t be as effective as refraining from taking food altogether. They are not there to tell you not to buy anything from them, are they? This is the problem; obesity is so much part of our well oiled and lubricated economic machinery. The giants of Coca Cola, Cadbury, Nestle, Mars, PepsiCo, Big M, KFC and many others would take a dim view if fingers were pointed at them being responsible for one of the most serious health issues of all times. Tinker with those boys and next you’ll have an ‘OECD Spring revolution’ as well. It is not all that farfetched to envisage thousands of the very large bodied on the streets, yielding petrol loaded Cokes and giant Chico rolls rioting, causing mayhem and destruction. They are now totally addicted to eating, chewing, masticating and getting larger and larger. Both the SFS Multi Nationals and their addicted disciples have a vested interest to keep the status quoi.

It will be one of the most interesting future events to watch. How will health organizations tackle this perplexing dilemma? It will be a fiercely contested battle with the western world already fighting a severe economic wilting; it will take brave politicians standing for health above economic growth risking further shrinkage of their voters consuming habits. The problem is that those consuming habits are so consuming it is killing them. At some stage we might have to consider the possibility that our lifestyle of consuming endless SFS products can’t be beneficial if many die as a consequence. What’s the point of economic growth if the country is littered with the dead or premature dying of millions from the effect of a booming economy that approves known deadly foods?

Of course, there are some signs of brave politicians emerging from the cauldron of indecisiveness and loathsome neglect, willing to take action. Was it Denmark who was first of the block cunningly raising revenue on fat, and lowering obesity? The Danish SFS merchants screamed blue murder, enraged with the imposition on eating habits. This is a censorship of some kind, they shouted. Where is the freedom, our freedom to eat what we like? No, said the sage Government, not if it kills.

On the train yesterday was a large man whose stomach was rolling over his shorts. He seemed in a deep sleep while resting his left hand on a bottle of Coke which was balanced upright on his enormous knee. Every now and then he would wake up somewhat startled take a sip out of his drink but promptly went back to his slumbering state again. I couldn’t help but feel but feel that the sugary drink was his umbilical cord keeping him still alive. At the railway platforms the machines that sell those drinks charge $3.20 for a coke and an astonishing same amount for plain water. What would happen if the Coke was $ 6.40 and the water free? The extra $ 3.20 raised could go to those thousands in hospitals with the results of Coke poisoning. The wiser ones would quench their thirst on the free water and be so much the healthier for it, having beaten their addiction. Those pernicious tuck shops at school, the bane of my mother’s discontent when we all went to schools. What’s wrong with my cut sandwiches, she asked? If we were really brave, surely those tuck shops would have disappeared by now. They are nothing but a stepping stone to obesity. Why, have those at all? Is snacking in between meals not one of those physical habits that have become so entrenched? In no time at all, does the snacking school kid turn into a full blown victim of bad dietary habits.

If we are serious about good eating habits, let’s get rid of snacking, just for starters mind you!