Dr OZ - with good advice for H1N1 or OINK flu or whatever you want to call the damn thing!!!

The following advice, given by Dr. Oz, makes a lot of sense. A lot more sense that going out and getting shot at with their highly controversial vaccine. And I am still not buying into the hype about it, because the disease itself doesn't parallel the need for 'nations to act' against it.*

Read Dr Oz and stay safe :)

The only portals of entry (in the human body) are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature, it's almost impossible to avoid coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is.

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications).

2. "Hands-off-the-face" approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless you want to eat or bathe.)

3. Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine or Hydrogen Peroxide if you don't trust salt). H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/ nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don't underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.

4. Similar to 3 above, clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water, or hydrogen peroxide. Not everybody may be good at Jala Neti or Sutra Neti (very good Yoga asanas to clean nasal cavities), but blowing the nose softly once a day and swabbing both nostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population.


5. Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C (Amla and other citrus fruits). If you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.

6. Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can. Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.

* My friend Pierre Perera sent this to me. Thanks, Pierre :)

Are you ambidextrous, too?

A group of male lawyers lived and died for their Saturday morning round of golf. One transferred to another city. It wasn't the same without him.

A new woman lawyer joined their law firm. She overheard the guys talking about their golf round. She said, "You know, I used to play on my golf team in college and I was pretty good. Would you mind if I joined you next week ?"

The three guys looked at each other. Not one of them wanted to say 'yes', but she had them on the spot. Finally, one man said it would be okay, but they would be starting early -- at 6:30 am.

He figured the early tee-time would discourage her. The woman said this may be a problem, and asked if she could be up to 15 minutes late. They rolled their eyes, but said okay. She smiled and said, "Good, I'll be there at 6:30 or 6:45."

She showed up at 6:30 sharp, and beat all three of them with an eye-opening 2-under par round. She was fun and pleasant person, and the guys were impressed. Back at the clubhouse, they congratulated her and invited her back the next week. She smiled, and said, "I'll be there at 6:30 or 6:45."

The next week she again showed up at 6:30 sharp. Only this time, she played left-handed. The three lawyers were incredulous as she still beat them with an even par round, despite playing with her off-hand. They were totally amazed, but wondered if she was trying to make them look bad by beating them left-handed.

They couldn't figure her out. She was again very pleasant and didn't seem to be purposely showing them up. They invited her back again, but each man harboured a burning desire to beat her game.

The third week, the guys had their game faces on. But this time, she was 15 minutes late, which made the guys irritable. This week the lady lawyer played right-handed, and narrowly beat all three of them.

The men mused that her late arrival was due to petty gamesmanship on her part. However, she was so gracious and so complimentary of their strong play, they couldn't hold a grudge.

Back in the clubhouse, all three guys were shaking their heads. This woman was a riddle no one could figure out. They had a couple of beers, and finally, one of the men asked her point blank, "How do you decide if you're going to golf right-handed or left-handed ?"

The lady blushed, and grinned... "That's easy," she said. "When my Dad taught me to play golf, I learned I was ambidextrous. I like to switch back and forth.

When I got married in college, I discovered my husband always sleeps in the nude. From then on, I developed a silly habit. Right before I left in the morning for golf practice, I would pull the covers off him. If his you-know-what was pointing to the right, I golfed right-handed; if it was pointed to the left, I golfed left-handed.

The guys on the team thought this was hysterical. Astonished at this bizarre information, one of the guys shot back, "But what if it's pointing straight up in the air ?"

She said, "Then, I'm fifteen minutes late."

My birthday clock

This is me with nothing better to do! Hahahaha. If you go to the link below, you'd find this very same information about yourself - much of which you already knew, and some of which you don't know, some of which you wish you'd never known, and some of which you now know but it won't change your life :(

So, you can go here and find your 'Birthday Calculator' and discover lots of stuff about yourself.

I continue yakking right at the end **

Here's what I found out about me:

My birthday falls on the twenty-fourth day of July.

Your date of conception was on or about 1 November 1955 which was a Tuesday. (Oi! Too much information in the very first line! :(

You were born on a Tuesday
under the astrological sign Leo.
Your Life path number is 7*.

Your fortune cookie reads:
Your past success will be overshadowed by your future success. (I love this line!!! It's toooo yummy for my tummy!!!)

Life Path Compatibility:
You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 1, 5 & 7.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 4 & 22.
You may or may not get along well with those with the Life Path number 9.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 3, 6, 8 & 11. (Chuan is a 6! And, in his chart, it says a 7 is whom he'll be least compatible with! Oi!)

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2435678.5.
The golden number for 1956 is 19.
The epact number for 1956 is 17.
The year 1956 was a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/12/1956 and ending 1/30/1957.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Monkey.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Salmon; your plant is Raspberry.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Paopy, the second month of the season of Poret (Emergence - Fertile soil).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 16 Av 5716.
Or if you were born after sundown then the date is 17 Av 5716. (I was born in the morning ;)

The Mayan Calendar long count date of your birthday is 12.17.2.13.14 which is 12 baktun 17 katun 2 tun 13 uinal 14 kin

The Hijra (Islamic Calendar) date of your birth is Tuesday, 15 Dhi'l-Hijjih 1375

(1375-2-5).

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 1 April 1956.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 6 May 1956.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 15 February 1956.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 20 May 1956.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 27 May 1956.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Thursday, 6 September 1956.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Tuesday, 27 March 1956.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 14 February 1956. (None of this means much to this pagan, though. )

As of 11/4/2009 9:01:05 PM EST
You are 53 years old. (Geez, thanks.)
You are 640 months old.
You are 2,780 weeks old.
You are 19,461 days old.
You are 467,085 hours old.
You are 28,025,101 minutes old.
You are 1,681,506,065 seconds old. (Wei!!!! It's bad enough being told I'm 53 - cos in my head I'm still 26 - but in seconds, it makes me feel like Methuselah!)

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 7.61682974559687 years old. (You old hound dog, you!)

Your lucky day is Sunday.
Your lucky number is 1 & 4.
Your ruling planet(s) is Sun.
Your lucky dates are 1st, 10th, 19th, 28th.
Your opposition sign is Aquarius.
Your opposition number(s) is 8.

* from Numerology: The Life Path is the sum of the birth date. This number represents who you are at birth and the native traits that you will carry with you through life. The most important number that will be discussed here is your Life Path number. The Life Path describes the nature of this journey through life.

The Life Path 7 suggests that you entered this plane with a gift for investigation, analysis, and keen observation. You are a thinker of the first order. You evaluate situations very quickly, and with amazing accuracy. As a result, you are thorough and complete in your work, the perfectionist who expects everyone else to meet a high standard of performance, too.

A Life Path 7 person is a peaceful and affectionate soul. But you guard your connection to people carefully. It's easy for you to detect deception and recognize insincere people, and you avoid them. You aren't one to have a wide circle of friends, but once you accept someone as a friend, it's for life. It's as if you must get to know someone a lot better before you allow the wall surrounding you to be penetrated. Chances are you are a very charming and refined individual with great poise and a quick wit. Nonetheless, there is an exclusiveness about you. You probably aren't a very social person. Your reserve is often taken to be aloofness, but actually, it's not that at all. It is merely a cover up for your basic feeling of insecurity. There's no rush, It takes time for you to warm up to new friends. Clubs and organizations hold little interest for you; you are not a joiner.

You actually like being alone and away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. In many ways, you would have fit in better in much earlier times when the pace of life was less hectic. You need a good deal of quiet time to be with your own inner thoughts and dreams. You dislike crowds, noise, distractions, and confusion.

The overwhelming strength of the number 7 is reflected in the depth of thinking that is shown; you will garner knowledge from practically every source that you find. Intellectual, scientific, and studious, you don't accept a premise until you have dissected the subject and arrived at your own independent conclusion.

This is a very spiritual number and it often denotes a sort of spiritual wisdom that becomes apparent at a fairly early age. A built in inner guide providing a strong sense of intuition may set you up as being a law unto yourself. Whatever spiritual position you take, whether traditional or bizarre, you will cling to it with fervor. Once you have decided an issue, it is almost impossible to get you to revisit the question. Adaptability is not your style, and change for you is a rarity.

You rely heavily on your experiences and your intuition, rather than accepting advice from someone. Your hunches usually prove to be very accurate, and knowing this, you follow the directions they seem to guide.

In the most negative use of the 7 energies, you can become very pessimistic, lackadaisical, quarrelsome, and secretive. A Life Path 7 individual who is not living life fully and gaining through experiences, is a hard person to live with because of a serious lack of consideration for others. There is such a negative attitude. Indeed, operating on the negative side of the 7 can produce a very selfish and spoiled individual and living with one can be a challenge. This may be why some 7s actually prefer living alone. If you have any of the negative traits they are very difficult to get rid of because you tend to feel that the world really does owe you a living or that in some way you are not being fairly treated.

Fortunately, the negative 7 is not the typical 7, at least not without some mitigating positive traits. This number is one that seems to have some major shifts from highs to lows. Stability in feelings may be elusive for you.

**

For the record, I don't believe in any of this! I don't believe in astrology and how the lineup of the stars and planets determine my future. I don't believe in the chinese zodiak thingy because it doesn't and won't gel in my brain no matter how hard I try to make it.

I don't believe in numerology, either, because it's too easy to make it work for you! However, having said that, I must admit that so much of what is said about for 7 is true for me; including the negative traits.

I don't believe in much the world seems to accept as right. I guess I am just weird.

I am not a religious person, and probably one of the most irreligious ones out there, but I do believe that I am spiritual. I believe that my spirit has wings, and that it can help me fly. And when I connect with another spirit, I feel a joy that knows no bounds.

And I do believe that I have a reason to be here. And that part of my 'job' is to be happy, and to make those I love happy. I do what I do because it is right. I don't do what I do because I await a reward in heaven - something else I have serious doubts about, like the line in John Lennon's song, Imagine (oh, go google it if you don't know it!)

I do believe this world would be a better place if more people were like me and did things for the sake of being just and fair and kind and good. And not because god told them to; and that if they did or didn't do something, it would be a sin; and they'd end up in hell in 2012 - another thing I'm wondering about, and I hope I'll be around to see it happen, or not happen ;)

English by the English

I'm going through another one of my desert-dry times again, and nothing is really inspiring me to write. Plus, last night, I received bad news about a blogger friend, and frankly, my mind is all wrapped up about him, and hoping that he is well and will be well.

So, to all the kind people who visit so regularly, and for you darlings who leave comments, I'd like to share this one.

A good friend sent me this and it actually made me laugh-out-loud. A real LOL moment! The English teacher in me was tickled, especially since this is written by English people. Ok, granted, many of those who live there now are immigrants, but not all are!! I can just see the oh-so-staid, stiff-upper-lippers writing just this!

English council complaints from around the country

These are genuine clips from council complaint letters:

(my comments are in blue :)

1. My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it. (Eewww. Another reason to rush out and get that brazilian, I suppose.)
2. He's got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it anymore. (Surely this is comment-proof!)
3. It's the dog mess that I find hard to swallow. (You think??!)
4. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off. (I won't ask what your knob was doing there in the first place....)
5. I wish to complain that my father hurt his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage. (And now I have a 'clean' way to say 'go shove it up your arse!')
6. And their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence. (The things 18-year-olds do these days!!!)
7. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other night that blew if off. (I tell you, uncle, dhall curry will do it every time!!)
8. My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand? (Ah hah! We've found him: the Malaysian who emigrated to London!)
9. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path? My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant. (I've heard of men refusing to believe that a child is theirs... but this is too much!)
10. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen. (I give up!)
11. 50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster and 50% are plain filthy. (See here people, do we REALLY want our Maths and Science taught in ENGLISH?)
12. I'm still having problems with smoke in my new drawers. (Aiyoh, undie talk again.)
13. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared. (Why didn't I think of that when Larnee and Dan were little? Soap them up, and flush! Done!)
14. Will you please send a man to look at my water; it is a funny colour and not fit to drink. (Eeeewww....)
15. Our lavatory seat is broken in half and is now in three pieces. (Again folks, rethink the Maths and Science in ENGLISH thingy, I say....)
16. I want to complain about the farmer across the road; every morning at 6 am his cock wakes me up and its now getting too much for me. (No comment.)
17. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous. (I don't see why it would be dangerous - if you just leave him and it alone. And why are you peeping at him in the first place? Can't you leave him alone and in peace?)
18. Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third, so please send someone round to do something about it. (I say man, you serious, eh?)
19. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night. (Lady, the solution is simple: don't let him in every night lah.)
20. Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife. (Ahhh, finally, a man who'll admit that another man could do a better job!)

Friday lites

Two nun jokes - what else?! I was a convent girl :) The first one: The head nun in a convent tells the two new nuns that they have to paint their room without getting any paint on their clothes. One nun says to the other, "Hey, let's take all our clothes off, fold them up, and lock the door." So they do this, and begin painting their room. Soon they hear a knock at the door. They ask, "Who is it?" "Blind man!" The nuns look at each other, then one nun says, "He's blind, he can't see. What could it hurt?" They let him in. The man walks in, does a double take, and says, "Where do you want me to hang the blinds?" The second one: A soldier came to a fork in the road and saw a nun standing there. Out of breath he asked, "Please Sister, may I hide under your skirts for a few minutes. I'll explain WHY later." The nun agreed. A moment later two Military Police came running along and asked, "Sister, have you seen a soldier running by here?" The nun replied, "He went that way." After the MP's disappeared, the soldier crawled out from under her skirt and said, "I can't thank you enough Sister, but you see ... I don't want to go to Iraq ." The nun said, "I think I can fully understand your fear." The soldier added, "I hope you don't think me rude or impertinent, but you have a great pair of legs!" The nun replied, "If you had looked a little higher, you would have seen a great pair of balls... I don't want to go to Iraq either." Very tame, eh? Hahahaha! Have a good weekend, folks. Be good ;)

Maid's death in Malaysia

Of all the stories I read online about this, this one, in the New Zealand Herald, was the shortest, and said the most:

Malaysian police make arrests over maid's death

6:15AM Tuesday May 26, 2009

Malaysian police have detained a man and his sister for allegedly beating their Indonesian maid to death.

Hospital authorities were alerted to an accident on Saturday, and upon arriving at the suspects' home, found the maid dead with bruises on her head and body, the Star newspaper said.

Police have detained and placed in custody the employer's two children, aged 28 and 30.

The district police chief said they would be investigated for murder.

Last night, I watched the news in horror as a senior minister in our government referred to this as 'an accident'. How on earth could he possibly deduct that?! The death had only just been reported. The police had not even begun their investigations. And no way in hell would their preliminary findings have been 'accidental death'.

I hear noises about Malaysia making the headlines again, for all the wrong reasons.

But we need to be clear here, folks. Someone has died. And, it seems to be that this happened at the hands of one, or two, of our fellow Malaysians.

It will be years from now when this case makes the courts, and we'll hear a garbled version of the truth, and how she was anything but the best maid. I don't think I am going to be listening.

I think we're lucky that we don't have the jury system here. I don't think I would make a good juror in this case. I don't think I would be able to come to the court with a clear mind, and look at the evidence objectively, and then decide accordingly.

I think I'd just wait for the end and vote: Guilty as charged.

And, it's murder 1. Not an accident. Not culpable homicide. Not manslaughter. It's murder 1 when you hit someone, lock them up, and leave them to die.

A kitchen oil fire

If you've got 35 seconds to spare, watch the video. It tells you how to stop a kitchen oil fire. The correct way. In fact, the only way, I think.

If you can spare 1:55 seconds, watch the second version. It is the same video, only expanded. It tells you why and how it works. It's not the clearest copy, but it does the job.

We all think we know how we'll react in an emergency. Until we're in the middle of one. Here's hoping we'll always remember this - even though we all feel we knew this already.