We were on TV!
Yes, we were called by Sunrise, the early morning program at Channel 7 and interviewed about house sitting. How exciting!
We had a great couple of hours with Luke (can't remember his last name) and Michelle Tapper from Channel 7. They came to the house and interviewed us, filming us cleaning the pool, Peter on the ride on mower, and me watering the pot plants, as they asked us about our house sitting experiences.
Click here to see the program. Its only a few minutes long.
We got this experience through 'Aussie House Sitters' a website where you can put up your profile and find people who need house sitters. They asked us if we would be interested in being interviewed and we thought it would be a great idea. It is a simple process belonging to a house sitting website, and we have had terrific experiences with house sitting from this site.
Haha, it is only five minutes of fame, but a great experience.
House Sitting Tails Etcetera
Saturday 13 September 2014
Soulful machines.
Soulful machines.
Someone
recently put the question to me, which is the most ‘human’ machine I own. This
got me thinking; after all we use machines all day every day in our modern
life.
It took me a
long time to consider this, about five seconds actually, and the answer? I blame my mother.
You see, I
am a child of the pre-flower-power sixties, growing up in the fifties. My
father was an airplane mechanic during WW11 and then a car mechanic until he retired.
My mother was a homemaker, a terrific cook, seamstress and grandmother, but
mechanically challenged. While my father learned the intricacies of pistons,
sparks and fuel injectors, my mother perfected learned helplessness. When
anything mechanical went wrong in the house she called out….”Fred, the dratted
washing machine won’t work again!” So dad ambled in with his spanner, screw
driver and mandatory dirty rag and twiddled and fixed it every time.
This heritage
of learned helplessness was passed on to me. Unwittingly I accepted the fact
that women called for men to fix things, and men fixed things. It was one of
the basic laws of nature. This problem was compounded when I married a man,
who, like my father, was in my eyes, a mechanical genius. It was the normal
thing for me to yell out…”Peter, the oven won’t go!” and he would toddle in,
fiddle with something and the oven would then happily purr along doing its job.
Now, when
you are talking about the old fashioned washing machine with wringers, ovens
with no automatic timers, and cars without computerised insides, machinery was
fairly simple. But today, machines know things. They have an inbuilt sense of
who is using them. They can tell the difference from a woman gently lifting it
out of the cupboard and onto a tidy bench to use, and a man yanking it off the
shelf and dumping it down somewhere after using his forearm to clear the
clutter off the bench. Machines just know this stuff now. And they will not
work for a woman.
I have had
so many experiences with machines, where I tried to use something, and it sat
there, showing passive resistance, not talking, just refusing to turn on. Occasionally
it would almost start, and then grind to a halt, never to move again. Well,
that is, not until a man entered the room. If you are a woman, how many times
has the man in your life come to ‘fix’ a machine, only to find that it works perfectly
the first time he tries it? How many times have you vented your justifiable frustration
on a stupid machine that is obviously ready for the heap, only to find that the
man of your dreams just has to touch it for the motor to work perfectly until
he exits the room? Frequently, I am sure.
The person
who put this question to me, has to be a man. No woman would ever describe a
machine as ‘soulful’. No, it must have been a man for whom machines just purr
along. So, after this rather lengthy explanation I have to say that I do not
own any ‘soulful’ or ‘human-like’ machines, although I could stretch a point
and say that many of them act like recalcitrant children, naughty in the
extreme. And I am sure that you will now understand why none of this is actually
my fault. Rather, I am the product of my parenting, and having been instilled
with the necessary female art of learned helplessness, I blame my mother for
this.
Friday 20 June 2014
New architects plans for China.
Here is an interesting article from Stuff.co.nz.
No longer content with building rows of nondescript
skyscrapers, Chinese developers are reshaping city skylines to look like
mountain ranges.
Construction is under way of the Nanjing Zendai Himalayas
Centre in the Jiangsu province in eastern China with completion expected in
2017.
These are artists impressions. The buildings are not yet up/ The sky will not be as blue as this I think. |
Referred to as a "live-in mountain range" by
architecture blogs, the design stems from the Chinese shan shui ethos: a
spiritual harmony between nature and humanity.
A series of mixed-use towers are joined by weaving
corridors and elevated gardens. The buildings, some as tall as 120 metres,
flank a low-rise village that is connected to them by footbridges.
According to MAD, the "towers along the edge of the
site act as a mountainous backdrop, while water features such as ponds,
waterfalls, brooks and pools connect buildings and landscapes to integrate all
of the centre's elements".
Shan shui, which translates into mountain-water, also
refers to a style of Chinese painting that depicts natural landscapes.
What MAD is calling "a fully realised shan shui
city" is certainly not the first eyebrow-raising design from the
Beijing-based firm.
Last year, construction of MAD's design for the Sheraton
Huzhou Hot Springs Resort in the Zhejiang province was completed. The curved
hotel rises out of Taihu Lake and resembles a glowing horseshoe.
MAD is also behind the curvaceous Absolute Towers in
Mississauga, Canada, completed in 2012.
Although Nanjing is one of the earliest established
cities in China, in recent decades it has been transformed into a modern
industrial hub.
Below is a picture of a typical scene in China these days. All the old
buildings are knocked down and acres and acres of new tall concrete and brick buildings go up.
Great for housing large numbers of people, but hardly beautiful.
Tuesday 17 June 2014
Hedges and stuff.
This house
sit is on an acre with lots of trees and gardens. The gardens don’t need a lot
of attention, mostly set out in hedge formation around the house. When we first came here the hedges in front
of the house were quite high, but when the home owners came home over the
summer they attacked them with a vengeance, cutting them quite low, and it has
made a huge difference to the amount of light that comes into the house.
Over the
past few months we have not had much rain, so the grass has not grown a great
deal but the shrubs and hedges still seem to find enough water to flourish.
He's really getting into it here...... Note the winter clothes, here we are in sunny Queensland, with fleecy trousers and fleecy sweatshirt. |
The finished height |
It makes short work of the hedge around the pool... |
So yesterday
Peter decided to get out the hedge trimmer and give the hedges a haircut. Previously
Peter did this job with the normal hand hedge cutters, but when the home owners
were here last summer they bought a small hedge trimmer, just a lightweight
one, but it makes a huge difference to the job, making it much easier and
quicker to trim the hedges and it makes a really nice level job.
The hedge
trimmer is a ROK brand. Peter found it really easy to use, and said it has some
great safety features. Apparently you need both hands on the handles to make it
work. If your grip goes from one of the handles, then the motor stops, the
blade stops and there is little chance of injury.
ROK brand. Goes really well according to Peter. He's the outdoor expert here, I don't know much about these things.lol. |
One of the
advantages of keeping the front hedge area low is that we get a much nicer
outlook. Previously we couldn’t see past the hedge, but now we can see right
over to the other side of the little valley we are in, and actually right to
the top of Mount Tambourine too.
Winter is
also the time for soup. As long as I can
remember Mum made vegetable soup every winter. She had a base recipe that only
changed a bit in the last ten years or so of her cooking life.
Soup is an
integral part of most winter meals, and even here, in Sunny tropical Queensland
where others might think it is hot all the time, well, once you have lived here
for a while you acclimatise and now we are really noticing the cold winters. So
soup is a regular meal for us, cheap, can be made in bulk and frozen and quick
to make.
Using a kitchen whizz makes the slicing and grating easy and quick. |
Soup mix, buy it already mixed from the supermarket. |
I think
soups are a bit of a family tradition, recipes passed on from mother to
daughter, because most mothers seem to have their own way of making soup, and
it is just the way it is done in their households.
Mum, about 1985. When you have five children there is a mountain of washing and ironing to do, not to mention baking and cooking to feed the bottomless stomachs of the boys. |
My mum passed
away early this year, but she would have been making soup for about 60 years I
reckon, and although I have had many soups in many homes, none have been quite
like this. I don’t know where she got the recipe. I don’t remember my
grandmother making soup, but she used to belong to the CWI in the 40’s and 50’s
so maybe it came from there, I don t know.
Anyway the
basic soup recipe is dead easy, so here it is.
In a large
pot, a proper large stock pot half fill it with water and add either a bacon
hock, a couple of knuckles of mutton or some chicken. You can pretty much use
any kind of meat or bones really, I have also used beef bones and pork bones,
but they don’t have so much meat on them. If you are vegetarian, then leave the
meat out. I often buy 4 or 5 skinned chicken legs and
add those. I bring that to the boil, then I add soup mix, about one cup. I let
that simmer for an hour or so, until the soup mix is soft and the meat is
tender. The soup mix contains pearl barley, lentils and split peas, its cheap
to buy from the supermarket all mixed up.
This is a large stock pot. I don't know how much it holds. Here, I have just added the veges. |
At this
stage the soup looks a bit murky, but that’s okay. When I am ready I slice
celery and onions, about 3 cups of each and add that to the pot. Then I grate
carrots, again about 3 cups and add that. Once you have made it a couple of
times you will get to know how much to put in.
I let that
slowly bubble away for an hour or so, adding water or vegetable juice as
needed. Towards the end I add salt to taste, pepper and usually some sweet
chillie sauce for a bit of a kick. Taste from time to time until it gets to be
how you like it. Mum would also add a
tin of Watties Tomato Soup (only Watties had the right taste) and a packet of
chicken noodle soup mix, but I don’t bother with those.
Eat it fresh
for the first meal, then you can put it in the fridge for the next few days and
I also freeze some to have whenever I need
quick meal.
You can make
smaller quantities if you want, but it seems a lot of effort just for one meal,
when you can do a big potful and get lots of meals out of the same amount of
work.
The finished product, hot and tasty and a good meal with a couple of bits of toast or cheese on toast. |
Give it a
try, you just might like it.
Sunday 15 June 2014
Winter and whipper snippering
Well winter
has more or less come. It is still quite
nice during the day, but getting colder at night and we have had our first
fire. This fireplace really warms up the
whole house. When the home owners were here over the summer they did quite a
lot of work to the grounds, and chopped down one or two trees that were
dropping lots of stuff into the pool. We have the benefit of that now with
plenty of firewood on hand for this year, although Peter and some friends chopped
down a couple of trees down by the road last year. So firewood is not a problem
for us.
The cooler weather also means the grass is not growing so fast, meaning less mowing. Most of the work is done on a ride on mower, but at the back of the house there is a bank and it is too steep to mow, so Peter does that with a whipper snipper, also known as a weed whacker or weed eater depending on where you live.
We have a
man called Jeff Higgins who is fascinated by weather, and lives in Queensland.
A while ago he started posting information on facebook, and he is pretty
accurate with his information. He is especially interested in storms, and most
of you will know that here in Australia we can get some really vicious
thunderstorms, not to mention the cyclones etc Queensland gets from time to
time. Anyway, Jeff puts up some wonderful photos, and here are two really good pics. I have also put up his Facebook page if you
want to check it out.
https://www.facebook.com/HigginsStormChasing?fref=nf
And here is his website...its's worth checking out.
Friday 13 June 2014
Come to the movies...just for 30 seconds...texting while driving....
So many
people are driving and using their phones.
It's illegal but most people still do it.
Just check out this 30 second advertisement…it might change your mind.
Everyone knows twiddling on your phone is one
of the most dangerous and stupid things you can do behind the wheel of a car —
yet plenty of people still do it.
This
Volkswagen ad uses a Hong Kong cinema and a location-based texting trick to
shock people into keeping their eyes on the road instead of on their mobiles.
So far it's stunned more than 1 million YouTube viewers.
If you're
still tempted to use your phone while driving, please immediately cut up your
license.
I can’t
embed this into my blog so go to this link…it is very short…
http://lifestyle.ninemsn.com.au/viralvideo/416128/texting-and-driving-ad-terrifies-1-million.glance
It says that more people die on the road when texting than any other accidents.
Wednesday 11 June 2014
These will put a smile on your dial.
Watch both of these....terrific. I couldn't figure out how to embed the first one...but it is lovely and the music is terrific.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201870505357473
Then watch this one......
Then watch this one......
One big swtich...cheaper petrol?
There is
revolution afoot....against high petrol prices.
There is something wrong, well in my opinion, with the petrol pricing
here in Aussie, the four main petrol companies seem to have the country over a
barrel, (forgive the pun) and we pay too much for our gas.
So something
is being tried for the first time here.
You might like to read about it...it is certainly gaining a following.
People
Power campaign seeks to build $1 million of buying power to unlock
Group-discounted Petrol.
In an Australian first, One BigSwitch has today launched the Big Petrol Switch, a national people power
campaign to unlock group-discounted petrol.
The Big
Petrol Switch aims to aggregate at least $1 million dollars worth of petrol
buying power in order to unlock a group discount of 5%.
On an
unleaded fuel price of $1.50 per litre, a 5% group discount would reduce the
cost by 7.5 cents per Litre.
With the
threat of a petrol tax increase looming, One Big Switch is launching the
campaign to help families cut the cost of spiralling fuel bills.
The campaign
will work in 3 simple steps:
1. Consumers
register at www.OneBigSwitch.com and tell us how much group-discounted petrol
they wish to buy.
2. One Big
Switch uses the $1 million dollars worth of buying power to help unlock group
discount pre paid petrol cards.
3. If we
unlock a group discount of at least 5%, we will forward the details of the
offer to registrants, who can choose if the offer is right for them.
Average
petrol prices have almost doubled in Australia since 2002. For more petrol
facts, see Appendix A attached.
One Big
Switch co-founder Lachlan Harris said Australian households are fed up with
petrol prices going up and up without respite, “we want to use People Power to
help reduce the impact of the petrol tax increase, and give families struggling
with the rising cost of fuel access to group discounted petrol.”
The Daily
Telegraph’s Cost of Living editor John Rolfe “We saw the success of the Big
Electricity Switch in reducing the impact of the carbon tax, now we’re doing
the same thing with petrol. Consumers can turn their dissatisfaction into
action.”
Campaign
registration is entirely free, and obligation-free, at www.OneBigSwitch.com.
Registration closes midnight on the 20th of June.
Monday 9 June 2014
Coffee and sugar
My daughter in
law found a book in her local library which is very interesting. So she went
off and bought a copy. It is called The Fat Revolution.
It’s probably a bit
controversial, as so many health professionals tell us to cut out fat, go fat
free, use margarine instead of butter etc.
The problem with all this is that they seem to replace the fat with
sugar. So how do you cut out fat and sugar to keep a healthy diet? It’s really
hard. You end up with lean meat, fruit and vegetables, which is fine, but quite
restrictive. And others tell us to keep the meat intake low, and of course you need to restrict your salt intake so your blood
pressure is okay. It all gets a bit tedious.
Anyway,
Peter decided he was going to quit coffee. For almost all our married life he
has drunk copious amounts of coffee. We don’t have it strong, less than one
level teaspoon in a large mug would be usual, and we don’t keep percolated
coffee in the house much, which in my opinion is much stronger.
But one day he decided to go cold turkey and cut it out altogether.
But one day he decided to go cold turkey and cut it out altogether.
My daughter in
law thought he would find it really hard, with withdrawal symptoms etc, but not
a bit of it. He just stopped. That was about three months ago. He might have
the occasional cup now, maybe one a week if we are out somewhere, but otherwise
it is water. Now he has almost never drunk water in our 48 years of marriage.
Hardly ever. Sometimes if he was working outside and sweating a lot I would
take out a jug of water and he would have some of that, but just drinking water
throughout the day was not part of his routine. The thing is, that in the
coffee was the sugar, and over a day his intake of sugar was highish. And not
only his, but mine also.
Add to this the sugar we eat in food, cake, biscuits, icecream etc, not all the time but from time to time, the sugar intake goes up. So Christine Cronau’s book was very interesting.
She
advocates no sugar, or as low as you can go. But this is not easy when you have
a really sweet tooth and have been used to having it in your diet all your
life. But I must say, it has not been too bad. Christine does suggest eating
fat is okay, natural types of fat, for example full cream milk, cream, some
animal fats, and using butter rather than margarine etc. This makes life much easier, and avoiding the sugar has not
been so hard.
I have been
reluctant to just chuck out of my pantry all sugary foods, not that there
were tons of it anyway, but most of that food has now gone, and my own sugar consumption has
gone way down. I have to say it is not too hard. The one problem I had was this……how
to you get past the ‘get up and make a coffee’ first thing in the morning. I hate coffee without
sugar. And the first cup of coffee was always my start to the day. Well I have
replaced that now with Chinese tea, of which I have plenty still in my cupboard.
I bought a lovely teapot from The Tea Centre in Robina, and we have some double
walled glasses which I really enjoy using, so now it is a pot of green tea
first thing in the morning.
I love these shops, they have the most beautiful cups and mugs, tins and tins of fabulous teas, and some wonderful Chinese tea sets. |
In the picture the tea looks pretty weak stuff, but actually it is a lovely golden colour.
So far so good. I must say I have noticed a real improvement in energy levels. That's a plus.
Sunday 8 June 2014
Quadruple bypass.
This month,
May 2014 is the tenth anniversary of Peters heart operation. He was always fit
and active, but in 1997, after a day moving house, (something we seemed to do
on a regular basis) he had a heart attack, went into Wellington Hospital and
had a stent put into his heart. The effects were instantaneous, and he came
home to his usual busy life.
In 2004 he
had a hip replacement at the Bundaberg hospital, and a couple of days later had a small heart attack while
still in hospital. After further tests etc, he was told he needed open heart
surgery, a scary proposition at the best of times. He was booked into Prince Charles Hospital in
Brisbane.
Prince Charles Hospital...generally specialises in heart patients. |
At this
point I will digress a moment, I think it is probably only in Aussie that you
can get a road with the name of rode.
The hospital was on Rode Road….however pronounced Rode ee Road.
The
operation went well and the staff were wonderful. One day after the op he was
on his feet, feeling pretty wobbly, but every day after that he was walking and
getting stronger. I can’t remember the doctor’s name, Dr Standford or Stannard
I think. He was terrific, took every care and, Peter had a quadruple bypass
done.
At this
time, we were living in Bundaberg, but our oldest daughter was pregnant and we
were half way through packing up and moving to the Gold Coast to be nearer her when
we got the call…..we have a bed, be here tomorrow. Oh boy, the timing couldn't have
been worse.
So we packed
up and drove to Brisbane, 5 hours away. I stayed at a hostel next to the
hospital, and my youngest daughter came up from Melbourne to be with us which
meant all the kids were close at hand.
Just a couple of days before discharge we had a family dinner at the hospital. |
Sue and Steve, who came to help me move house while Peter was recuperating. |
Medical
science has come a long way, and they do research into some weird and wonderful
areas, but in this case, they save many many lives. Without it I would probably
have been a widow many years ago. Instead we have had ten years of travelling,
teaching, seeing our families grow and prosper, more grandchildren born,
and house sitting all over the country. He probably would not be here to play with his grandchildren like this.
As things stand, he has many more years ahead of him. I'm very grateful.
Friday 6 June 2014
Pots and pans.
We have been
house sitting in quite a few homes now and we have had kitchens of various
sizes and quality. One or two were pretty scummy, but mostly they have been
nice kitchens and in some cases, just lovely large kitchens to cook in.
This house
on the Gold Coast has a really nice kitchen. It is not large but it is very
well designed and easy to work in with plenty of storage. I still have my own
kitchen gear in storage, but also have brought some of it into the house here
to use too.
The house
sit owners have left a fully equipped kitchen but a few of the pots and pans
are past their best now, and mine also are fairly old, so I have been watching
for sales so I could get some new saucepans for myself and also use while we
are here. I finally took the plunge last
weekend. Robins Kitchen has got a really good sale on, and we were up on the
Sunshine Plaza on the Sunshine Coast for the day to visit some people. We went into the big shopping
plaza there, it’s a huge area and very nice. We found Robins Kitchen and after
fossicking around for a while I bought a set of three saucepans, stainless
steel, Baccarat brand, known for good quality, and reduced from $300 to $139.00.
Repacking ready to take back. |
The first
time I used them I had trouble with them. I used the large one for spuds,
mashed them and then used a normal spoon to get the mashed potato onto the
plates. As Peter was washing up he brought the pot into me and showed me the
scrape lines all along the bottom where I had used the spoon. I was not
impressed at all.
I rang the
shop and they said to take them back and as I was on the Gold Coast I could
take them back to a closer shop, in our case the one in the Runaway Bay
shopping centre.
The manager
there was really good…..she was as shocked as I at the scrapes on the bottom.
She offered a full refund….but I still needed a set of saucepans so eventually
decided on another set of three Baccarat pots but the black non-stick type.
So I hope
these will be okay.
Over the
years as the family size increased I have had quite a few different pots and
pans, some of the cheap and nasty ones, and a few expensive ones when I could
afford them. The expensive ones are always worth their money, they just outlast
the cheap stuff. So I am slowly replacing my old stuff for good quality new
stuff, with the intention that they will last me until the end of my cooking
days.
Still going after 48 years. Peter put a different handle on the middle one, it cracked and was unsafe. |
The first
set of saucepans I ever had were a wedding present from my uncle John. They
were Murray Brand, made in Australia, copper bottom and had a really good
reputation. I have used them for years and years, and eventually handed them on
to my daughter when she was first married and setting up her kitchen. She is still using them after 48 years use. Not bad eh?
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