The walk to the station is doing you good
Seems some people can’t see the trees for the forest.
A HIGH school has banned bicycles because it has no bike shed and it doesn’t want to encourage students who refuse to wear helmets.
Hume Central Secondary College’s policy has puzzled health and cycling groups amid growing concern about childhood obesity.
…
In the same newsletter, she [Principal Bronwyn Meek] complained about the dangerous congestion caused by too many cars around afternoon pick-up time.– Herald Sun: Hume Central Secondary College bans bikes
Meanwhile, a study by BusVic concluded that users of public transport get an average five times more walking time per day than those who use private transport.
- Public transport (all users): 41 mins
- Public transport, no private transport: 47 mins
- Private transport (cars, taxis, motorcycles), but no public transport: 8 mins
- Overall Melbourne average: 15 mins
And they looked at which areas of Melbourne have the lowest average minutes per day walking and cycling. Hardly surprising that it’s the areas which have the poorest public transport, where people are dependent on their cars for most trips.
And people wonder why there’s an obesity crisis.
I may not always enjoy the walk to the station, but I know it’s good for me, and because it’s built into my daily routine, it always happens.
I’m just lucky I live in an area where I’ve got that choice.
Tags:
14 comments
Bowen Belly
I haven’t been well for the last couple of days.
It kicked-off on Monday night, when a slight stomach pain, which I tried to quell with my usual remedy, a glass of lemonade. Because burping helps. Really.
It didn’t help — instead it set off a flurry of up-chucking, joined later in the night from the other end. This kept going in regular instalments until about 3am, by which point I felt like I’d purged 20% of my own body weight. Not nice. I tossed and turned for the rest of the night.
Given I’d donated blood earlier on Monday, I rang up their hotline to alert them that all was not well. The night duty bloke, also called Daniel, sympathised and made a note on my file. I think he said they could still he the haemoglobin, but not the plasma. Or maybe it was the other way round.
Cup Day, which in the past few years has been spent away on holiday (not this year; it wasn’t a “pupil-free” day this year) was pretty miserable. The kids kept themselves busy, as I tried to catch-up on sleep and fluids, though my stomach was indicating that food might not be a sensible option just yet. By Wednesday morning everything seemed okay except the headache.
At least, as far as I could tell. It’d be nice if you got some definite feedback on this type of thing, but I suppose we’re not digital, so it just ain’t gonna happen. So we’ll have to put up with a headache and a pain in the belly, rather than “Error 407.5 — dodgy curry.”
Not that I know what caused it. We joke about this type of thing in my family as “Bowen Belly”, but its depressing regularity makes me wonder if there’s some undiagnosed intolerance that’s lurking there, rather than it being a bug of some kind.
Years ago I was tested for lactose intolerance. I honestly don’t recall what the result was, and I didn’t blog about it (it may have been pre-blog; shock horror). But I do recall trialling going off most dairy food for a while. I stopped when I realised I’m really not that keen on soy milk. Lactose intolerance is actually pretty common amongst those of Chinese origin (of which I am half).
Whether it’s that or something else, worth talking to the doctor about, I think.
(I just tried a cup of tea with soy milk. If this is what I have to do, it’ll take some getting used to.)
How I discovered I’m a bit colourblind
I’m a bit colourblind. It only affects certain ranges of colours. I first realised this when I got a Vic-20. No, really. The default screen colour was white, and the default border colour was cyan.
I thought cyan looked like green. People tell me it’s really a light blue, indeed I remember reading an interview with some Commodore engineers who had debated about whether to call it light blue or cyan.
There were eight colors available; white, black, red, cyan (light blue), purple, green, navy blue, and yellow.
In real life my colourblindness is so mild it only seems to affect one thing: spotting the numbers in Ishihara tests.
Tags: colourblindness, cyan, eyesight, Vic 20
14 comments
No more boiled lamb’s brain for me
I recently had a bunch of blood tests done, a kind of overall health check thingy.
It was quite funny actually. M coincidentally went in as well for something, and while waiting in the Pathology place we observed what looked at first glance to be the most unhelpful receptionist ever known to mankind. A lady sitting in the chair, ignoring absolutely everybody, reading a magazine for the entire hour we were waiting.
It was towards the end of the wait that I twigged. She wasn’t a receptionist. She was another customer, having to wait a while between tests, and she had grabbed that chair because it was the only one left free at the time and/or she wanted the most comfortable chair due to being heavily pregnant.
Anyway, I got the results back. Everything checked out fine.
Except for cholesterol, which is at 5.9, certainly on the high side, though not high risk. (Over 6.2 is high risk. Under 5.0 is desirable level for men.)
The doctor asked if I eat a lot of cheese. What’s a lot? I’m not sure. I eat my share; I commonly put it on sandwiches and pasta.
Evidently other high cholesterol foods include eggs and butter. Switching from butter to some kind of canola oil spread might be the go there, if I can find something that tastes half-decent.
The top one on that chart, with 1900 milligrams of cholesterol per 100 grams, is boiled lamb’s brain. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble avoiding that.
What about foods that can lower cholesterol? This page lists some which I could get more of into my diet pretty easily: Oat bran/oatmeal (but not the instant kind), walnuts/almonds, fish with plenty of Omega-3 (baked or grilled), olive oil.
And of course exercise helps. I don’t do terribly or brilliantly at that, but the kids and I have started taking regular evening walks around the place, which will help.
Tags: cholesterol, food, Health
9 comments
Doctor Where?
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer is Doctor John Carnie.
So I’m wondering… Where is he?
I’m sure acting CHO Rosemary Lester is doing a fabbo job, but if the state has a WHO-recognised pandemic on its hands, shouldn’t the actual CHO turn up? Shouldn’t it be all hands on deck?
Tags: pandemic, swine flu
2 comments
Some thoughts on swine flu
I’m not panicking about swine flu. From the cases in Australia so far, it appears to be reasonably easily treated, with minimal effects for those who catch it.
Quarantine? Well I don’t think I’d enjoy it much, but I guess I’d get a bunch of tidying and video-game-playing and DVD-watching done. I’d certainly try out online grocery shopping at last.
Now, I’m not an expert by any means, but it does appear to be spreading rapidly now, and at this rate, may be close to going expontential:
Source: Age and Herald Sun reports each morning noting confirmed cases.
One thing some are suggesting is closing all schools for a week or two. Certainly a lot of the spread so far seems to stem from school contacts. The authorities seem reluctant, citing the disruption it would cause.
But wait a minute. The next school holidays aren’t far away — they start on 29th of June. Why don’t we just move them forward by three weeks? Do it sooner, and nip swine flu distribution in the bud?
School holidays have been moved before. In 2006 they were moved to coincide with the Commonwealth Games. Admittedly if done now there’s much less advance notice, and it might catch some people on the hop.
But I wonder if the payoff — stopping swine flu before it gets entrenched — could be there?
Or is it too late?
PS. Interesting list of confirmed swine flu cases by local government area.
Tags:
10 comments
No more flavoured instant noodles
Us Bowens occasionally get an upset stomach, something we have dubbed Bowen Belly. Recently it’s been less frequent for me, thankfully.
But on Monday I was foolish.
I was passing through the supermarket and bought one of those instant noodle meals. I wanted a quick cheap easy meal. I must have temporarily forgotten about “tasty” and “nutritious”.
It might sound innocent enough, but in this one was a sachet of chicken-flavoured chemicals which seems to have done me no good at all.
Monday night was not pleasant. My stomach was groaning, gurgling, and painful. The nausea kept me up much of the night. Not nice.
Tuesday morning I was suffering from lack of sleep, and still feeling queasy, so decided to work from home, at least periodically, in between bouts of sleep. Happily most of it had gone by the afternoon, and I was able to venture out of the house.
Now I know why in old Britcoms they take the mickey out of pot noodles. For example, Red Dwarf’s Dave Lister saying he’d rather eat dog food. I note from the Wikipedia entry that one flavour, “Bacon Sizzler” was withdrawn after health concerns…
The lesson here: don’t eat crap. If I want a quick easy noodle meal (at a not unreasonable place) there’s a perfectly good noodle place near home which will do me a freshly cooked meal for about $9 — as well as several other options on the way home from the station.
Tags:
9 comments
Brief things
Computer: I like it when computers reach the point at which a good upgrade is cheap, quick and cheerful. In this case on my two-year-old box, tripling the RAM cost me $45, tripling the hard disk space cost $130. And as the new disk is faster than the old one, I’ll take the opportunity to re-install everything onto it, and clear out its sinuses in the process. … Would have helped if I’d bought the correct hard disk cable, of course.
Cluster headaches: They came back for autumn, but the medication has pretty much got them under control.
Solar hot water: It’s been a year since I got solar hot water installed. From a user point of view, there’s absolutely no difference. By the time it reaches you at the tap, it’s just hot water. I’d love to tell you it made a clear and noticeable difference to the gas bills, but looking through them, I’m not seeing it, in part because water, heating, and cooking is all tied up in there, and also apparently (at least according to some BOM figures I cast my untrained eye over), 2008 was slightly colder than 2007.
The toe: It’s healing. Most of the swelling has gone, but it’s still a little uncomfortable to walk in shoes.
Star Trek: Booked for Sunday in Gold Class. Looking forward to this.
Tags:
6 comments
