Catching a wake-up

First wake up

For about the last 6 months I have had really bad pain in my hip and/or back when I take my daily walk.

My walk is 5km and usually around the 30 minute mark the pain starts with a little niggle and by the time I finish I want to roll on the ground in agony. It goes after about half an hour. Like it never happened.

After one 8km walk it took a lot more than ½ hour to recover and gave me quite a fright and I scuttled off to the orthopod who did my hip replacement 8 years ago; the x-rays were perfect – nothing had moved. He blithely suggested I just walk 3 kms then which irritated the hell out of me having just shelled out a small fortune and anyway, there a few expedition walks I still want to do.

I decided to have a rest from walking. When I started up again the first day was fine but by the end of the first week the same pain returned. Persist I did and carried on walking but I was feeling quite distressed.

Yesterday I went to see Stephan, a biokineticist. I did the tests for strength, flexibility, balance and failed just about everything. I have always been physically strong and was horrified that there were things I just couldn't do or really battled to do. Muscle weakness may very well be the problem with my hip/back.

So now I have been grounded from my daily walk for 2 weeks and have to stick to hectic strengthening regimen and then, very slowly over 7 weeks, build up to 5kms.  9 weeks to achieve this…quite a long time!

The one bit of brightness was Stephan saying I have get back to being an athlete –just like I was when I did the Camino!

Can’t say how much happier I feel today albeit a bit stiff in strange places. There is no guarantee that this is going to sort out my problem but I certainly need the strengthening exercises and wouldn't have known how weak I have got in the last few years if I hadn't seen Stephan.

Moral of this story: If you feel pain have it seen to straight away. It is not a bad idea to have yourself checked out and to make sure you are doing the correct exercises for the activities you are doing. Keep fit and keep strong.

Second wake up

Since January Lisa and I have been doing online university courses. They are interesting and fascinating I have just signed up for another 2, one starting next week and the other in few months time.

So what is the wake up about this?

Do you know how much you just don’t know? Do you know how much amazing stuff is out there? I have had so much fun listening to awesome people from really great universities teach and share what they know; following links for reading assignments and related lectures, finding new information, ideas and expanding my world which somehow got quite small over the past years.

Moral of this story: like keeping your body fit and strong do the same thing with your brain.

So many contradictions

Violent cyclist:

I want you to have a look at this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmasBlGellY&feature=youtu.be It shows at least 6 Cape Town cyclists beating up a taxi drive. I think it was taken on Sunday.

I picked this up on facebook and couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing..

There are also lots of ‘shock/horror’ comments on facebook and I read that these cyclists have been banned from riding in the next race. Harsh treatment indeed (my sarcasm).

But my ‘shock/horror’ is that there were other motorists and quite a few people on the pavement watching all this going on; and it was being filmed. But no-one helped the taxi driver. Now I quite understand that the taxi driver may have driven a bit close or cut them off (I make this assumption because a lot of taxi drivers are fairly awful drivers), and one might say he ‘deserved’ this beating but WOW…what a reaction from the cyclists and spectators.

Imagine the fall out if 6 taxi drivers beat up on one cyclist.

Oscar

The big bookie chain in UK and Ireland, Paddy Powers,  has offered money back if Oscar walks – not sure if the pun was intended but yes, you get your bet cash back if he gets off.

There are quite a few mutters about this advert being in bad taste.

I am not sure why people are being sensitive - the whole Oscar story is in bad taste including some of our own adverts (not a real Nando's advert BTW)

(http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/4009648.article?cmpid=mwbreak_154525)

Captcha and Family History

Captcha

Have you every wondered about these funny words?

Primarily they are to authenticate that you are a human and not a machine.

And they have a couple of secondary functions that are world changing/world enhancing! Yes, indeed. Have a look at this TED Talk to see the extent of how we are all contributing to digitizing books – one word at a time! And how we can translate the internet into every language.

http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration.html

Even more exciting are these people asking the most amazing questions and coming up with answers – this is really ‘out the box’ thinking at its best.

Family History

I have been researching and collecting old information about my family – in particular my grandfather.  He went by a couple of names during his lifetime and prior to where we are at the moment with the Internet, tracking the family history was nearly impossible. Now, if you know a few pertinent sites all you need do is go there and search on names and words! So much information and so many records in so many countries has now been digitized – can you imaging the size and scope of these exercises?

Australia has digitized their newspapers back to about 1800 – which has provided a feast of information about my family, not just my wayward grandfather. Interesting, a lot of people these days would be quite pleased to have as many Google hits as my grandfather does in the old newspapers.

On the newspaper site, you can make corrections to the standard text where the OCR has not been able to translate properly. The more people who access the records and make corrections will result in improved standards and information – just like Captcha – one word at a time!

Back to School

I signed up for an online course with Duke University (free). It started on 13^th January and is set to run for 12 weeks.

Each week I get an email to tell me the next set of lectures is available and I am now into week 3. I am a bit behind; that is I still need to complete 2 lectures from last week and the associated test for each lecture. They cutely refer to them as quizzes – probably so we don’t get too stressed out. And during the lecture one gets little ‘quizzes’ thrown in to ensure we understand, at least up to that point.

I haven’t done anything like this for ages and whilst it is all online and quite impersonal I have been concerned to keep on top of things and do well. I know that if I don’t keep up to date I will find it difficult to catch up later. I have also been concerned, for no apparent reason and quite illogically, that my lecturer is keeping a beady eye on my progress – imagine my relief when I saw that there are 5,000 people doing this course…he cant possibly check up on me each week!

Here’s the thing: This course is so well done – it does, after all, come from a top US university. You get about 10 lectures per week; each lecture is approx 15 to 20 minutes long. You are quizzed during and after the lecture. If you get something wrong you are told why it is wrong – if you get the question right you are told why it is correct (just in case you took a wild guess I suppose). And then you can take the test again and hopefully score 100%. They do keep track of how many times you have a bash at it.

 The place to go to for a list of free online courses is: http://www.openculture.com/

You will also find a host of other things at this site: free language courses (Lisa is doing a Spanish course which she says is amazing), business courses, maths courses, art, art history, music, archaeology, biology, economics …in fact just about anything. You can also get free e-books, films, text books ---- an amazing amount of free stuff.

Have fun!

2013: The year that whizzed by

It really did, didn't it? It flew and on this last day of 2013 I am left feeling very restless. I guess if I have to sum 2013 up: I did a heck of a lot of stuff but perhaps not quite what I wanted to do.

In June I stopped working at Bassline:

During the 3 years there I developed a wonderful appreciation for African music: reggae and its big grand-daddy – raga, kwaito, hip hop, township jazz to name a few – and stand up poetry was a winner. I was certainly shaken out of my tame musical ‘rut’. I found out that I love very, very loud music and I knew about twerking years before Miley Cyrus did her stuff on stage this year. The Bassline twerkers knock spots off Miley - her twerking would be classified as ‘novice’ by some of the Bassline gals!

The gaiter business carries on:

Our desert gaiters are becoming a firm favourite around the world. Quite a bit of business is word of mouth but a lot comes via Lisa’s website. www.ar.co.za. She gets 12,000 – 15,000 visits a month (her blog gets about 10,000) – with this audience our little business is doing well. An interesting thing is how different the markets are for each of the 3 gaiter products – the desert gaiters are by far the most fun; apart from standard stock items in very ordinary colours, we frequently get requests for the brightest, most flamboyant colours and designs you have ever seen.  This amazing photo of a team racing down a sand dune in Abu Dhabi shows our bright green gaiters (made to match the shirts) is a real winner!

Reading, reading, reading:

I read a lot this year – favourites that really stand out are: The Auschwitz Violin (very haunting), The Luminaries, The Goldfinch, The Signature of all Things, Silent House, The Book Thief, Big Brother. And lots of other bits and pieces thrown in for good measure.  

Travel:

Nothing to speak of this year but I do have plans for 2014 and 2015. Hopefully this will take care of my restlessness!

Bracken:

Our little tabby cat is still going strong – she turns 19 on 1 April 2014. She is quite vocal these days and sets up a howl of many decibels when she wants someone to go running to her. It amazes me that one little cat can generate such a huge sound! We really are blessed to have this little animal in our lives.

2014 plans/goals and resolutions:

My only resolution is to write down all the goals for 2014 – plan properly and make sure everything (well just about everything) gets done and ticked off.

With 2014 in mind, my very best wishes to you all. May it be a fun filled, productive and interesting year.

Conniving Kitty

2 years ago we decided to lock all the downstairs windows at night – thus keeping out the bully neighbourhood cats that came in to the house to steal Bracken’s food and beat her up if she happened to be having a midnight snack. At that time she was 16 years old and no match for some of the local thugs. She was in fact quite terrified and becoming a bit withdrawn.

The one problem we faced was with battening down the windows, was that she refuses to use a litter box – flower beds are the only things she will use for her toilet. But, within about 4 days she had trained us to respond to her standing with her front paws on the bedside table as a sign that she wants to go outside. If the response is not fast enough, a gentle tap on the head usually does the trick and gets us moving. Whoever has been chosen as the toilet maid for the night has to get up and go out into the garden with the little cat whilst she has a drink out the birdbath and then heads for the bushes. Then, with much ado about ‘what a clever girl’ and little pats, it is back to bed for the 2 of us. (NB: whilst writing this I realise that I am the toilet maid 99% of time – hmm)

In case you think this happens every night – it doesn't  If we get the timing right pre-bed time when we take Bracken out for a last pee, she can usually last until I get up at about 5.00….but now that she is 18, the night can sometimes be a bit long.

She also has me trained, when it is raining, to stand in the middle of the lawn with a large golf umbrella. She dashes out, stands on my feet and we shuffle to the edge of the flower bed where she does her business; then we do the shuffle back to the front door…thus achieving the least amount of rain splatter on the kitty back.

Now for the conniving kitty part:

Lately, when we take her out pre-bedtime, she just might not want to do a pee. But because she doesn't want us to know this, she dashes into the bushes and almost immediately exits about a metre from where she went in, hangs around for a little pat and praise, and then bolts inside. Because we cottoned on to this little trick, she is quite happy when we give her a little nudge towards the bushes again – she repeats the performance and comes out looking all pleased with herself and bolts inside and upstairs.

And we think they are just animals.

Customer Service

Just before Lisa went off to Argentina she decided that she didn’t want to take her down jacket. Not because it wasn’t going to be warm enough in Bariloche (it is about 1200 km south of Buenos Aires) but because it is really bulky and difficult to lug around. So she found an amazing Columbia jacket in a local store – this jacket is water proof and has special Omni- Heat thermal lining and insulation; and is not at all bulky.  The problem was that she needed one size bigger. The shop wasn’t all that helpful about sourcing her size and when she phoned around no-one had one in her size. By this stage it wasn’t even about the colour! The worst thing was that no one was really too concerned or helpful, even the local distributor.

So Lisa emailed Columbia in the US to ask about retail outlets in Argentina and guess what? They got back to her immediately, asked for her size, colour preference and address in Bariloche – it was waiting for her on her arrival at the hostel. All free of charge including the jacket. 

Lisa in her jacket