Food

I've read a couple of recent studies on food which have me thinking.

The first is a CBC article on food consumption as it relates to portion size. The study found that people eating smaller portion sizes were likely to eat more food than those eating bigger portions when it comes to snacking. The most fascinating idea in this study, though, is the psychology behind the eating choices. When faced with little temptations, people were more likely to give in, more often, and to a greater degree. Those faced with the choice of a large temptation were more likely to limit their complicity or completely resist the temptation. The real question for me is worth long term study: Do those "small snackers" eventually turn into "big snackers"? That is, if you keep giving in to little temptations, will you eventually be more susceptible to large temptations?

The second study looked at Kraft Dinner (Mac and Cheese for the uninitiated), and its perception by varied socio-economic groups. Interestingly, rich people think KD is an acceptable meal - tasty, filing, nutritious - to be donated to a food bank. The poor disagree. It is not tasty if it is all you can afford. Not to mention that the good taste often comes from the butter and milk added, which are not available to most poor families! Most organizations say that the best thing to do if you are planning to give to the food bank is to give money, or to give these items:

• Pasta Sauce
• Juice (1 litre)
• Canned Tomatos
• Baby Formula with Iron
• Pasta
• Canned Fish
• Peanut Butter
• Baby Food (jars)
• Canned Soup
• Canned Beans in Tomato Sauce
• Canned Meat
• Canned Fruit
• Canned Vegetables
• Rice
• Processed Cheese (jar)

Personally, we try to give things in jars (pasta sauce) and easy to open packages, just in case a can opener is not handy.

Leyenda

My favourite classical guitar piece is Leyenda by Issac Albeniz. Leyenda means legend in Spanish (it's also called Asturias, because a confused musician thought is was from Asturia in northern Spain, when it is really from Andalusia in southern Spain). It is also one of the few classical songs that I can play (well, attempt to play) on the guitar. I have made Leyenda my new clip of the month, since I think this particular version is very well done (there are at least 5 or 6 others on youtube, though).

Watching the video makes me want to go buy nylon strings and re-string my Yamaha classical guitar, but I just shelled out the money for strings on my Norman accoustic. If practicing becomes a habit again, maybe I'll fork out the cash. Who am I kidding? September is right around the corner. I'll be lucky to get off another blog post between then and Christmas knowing me!

Alex Baumann (WARNING: this post is all over the map!)

A recent article (read: ploy) by the CBC to get people discussing the Olympics was a forum on who is the better athlete: Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps? I think both are fantastic athletes, and I see no reason to compare apples and oranges. I will, however, say that I am more partial to swimming than track (although I love running). I have been ever since I watched my first Olympics -- the heavily boycotted Los Angeles games of 1984. In one of my first memories, I watched Alex Baumann win two gold medals in world record time in the 200m and 400m IM (Individual Medley - you have to swim all four strokes - back, breast, fly, free). Baumann was my first athletic hero, and the image that prompted me to learn to swim, and become a lifeguard. I comtemplate becoming a competitive swimmer about every four years thanks to him as well.

For that or some other reason, I've always loved the Olympics. I don't have cable TV, and I've been away on vacation, so I have seen very little of the coverage (despite streaming internet video!). I did happen to catch one of the commercials that the Olympics themselves put out about these athletes being the best of us.

I'm not so sure.

I wonder if the elevation of the human body to the pinnacle of beauty isn't really a symptom of the greatest problem that we as humans face. Exalting creation beauty over Creator is the sin that got Satan kicked out of heaven, and Adam and Eve booted out of Eden. It is the mindset that gives human physicality, sexuality and pleasure the revered position, the primacy and the urgency in society that it currently has. Our culture would say: "Get sex. Get it often. Get it at any price. Forget relationships or commitment. Sex is better."

Interesting, then, to hear that teenage girls are having less sex, and using more condoms. At least in Canada. Maybe, the whole Abstinence or bust program isn't the best way to tackle this issue. We haven't had many abstinence programs in Canada, and this is working. What I hope we have, is self-worth programs. I hope these stats show that girls are beginning to understand the value of their self and their bodies as a part of that self. That's my kind of feminism!

A Tough Day

I've been trying to figure out how I was going to get back into teaching mode. I generally have this problem - I easily become absorbed in work, and find it hard to shift gears to vacation. Time off is never really satisfying, because I expect myself to take that time for personal development. I rarely rest well, because I am preoccupied by what I am not doing to better myself. This has manifested itself before heading back to school, going on missions projects, staring a new job, getting married, etc. And each time something happens to jolt me back to reality. (Except the year that I had knee surgery. That in and of itself was the wake-up call.)

Today, I clicked on my work email to see if there were any more new messages that I wanted to avoid/ignore, when I received a bereavement notice that one of my students had passed away. He took his own life at 15.

To be honest, I'm heartbroken. He was one of "my regulars" who I worked with a fair bit this past year. A good kid, with lots of friends and a spunky personality. You should have seen the number of kids at his viewing!

His obituary said that he was lost in the transition from boyhood to manhood. How sad. His whole family is Christian, in the sense that they attend church. The kids had all gone to private Christian elementary schools, but since moving here they were enrolled in secular high schools. Did he really believe? I don't know. I couldn't find anything useful to say to the parents--what can you say? But here's what no one was able to say to that boy (from the Five for Fighting song 100 Years):

Every day's a new day...
15 there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to choose
Hey 15, there's never a wish better than this
When you only got 100 years to live

Goodbye, my young friend. You will be missed.

Underground

It was interesting to read the account of CBC reporter David Gutnick about his visit to an underground church in Beijing. It has been many years since my own mission trip to Asia, and yet I am still occasionally reminded of the massive crush of people, the attention on a tall, white man (some of it unwanted, as in the case of the secret police), the sea of humanity in front of me as I walk down the streets.

We in the Western world have no clue what it is like to be persecuted. It is interesting to read some of the comments on the blog. How ignorant we are to the workings of Chinese society. There is a real reason why people choose to be members of underground churches, rather than attend the state-sponsored ones. The state-sponsored church denies the supernatural -- no miracles, no creation (however you interpret that as having occurred -- I won't go into that topic now), no resurrection, no Jesus. Cut out the Christ, and you are only left with -ianity. Sounds like inanity to me.

Things have definitely changed since my last experience with the underground church. There is no way that they would have ever agreed to even meet with me when I was there. Now they openly allowed a foreigner to not only meet them, but worship with them. Doors are opening into China, and many seem to be opening from within. It is incredible what prayer has accomplished there in the span of a few very short years.

Water, water every where

In a recently declassified document, the Canadian government has determined that even Canada is not safe from the kinds of water shortages that have plagued Australia, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Incredible that a nation covered by fresh-water lakes and glaciers should be susceptible to such problems.

Perhaps it is time to cast of the proverbial albatross from around our neck.

Thankfully and finally, our own city council here in London has banned the sales of water bottles in municipal buildings. I haven't harped on this one since my rant with Ethos water bottles at Starbucks, but maybe it's time to open up old wounds. If our government is tackling this situation in the worst possible way. First, water should not be a commodity at all. Unlike many other things on the planet (read: oil), we all must drink clean water to survive. Our government feels it is OK for soft drink manufacturers to take water from our streams--even our municipal water supply!--and then package and resell it back to us for a profit. Second, if the government is foolish enough to allow this scam to occur (which it is), the least they could do is turn some kind of profit, a kickback for allowing our natural resources to be stolen from under our noses! Makes me glad that I switched back in high school (eons ago) to drinking tap water in a bottle. (I have graduated from using old Gatorade bottles to Nalgene, and how again to stainless steel - thanks Klean Kanteen! Hopefully all of the estrogen has worked it's way out of my system...:S)

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Bat in the Basement - Part 2

Judging from the fact that both bats have only made an appearance at night, I'm going to speculate that this species is nocturnal. As such, looking for the bat in the middle of the day today was probably a futile effort. I did figure out, thought, that there are a few places where a bat might be able to enter the duct work. Still no clue on how the bat got in unless through an open door! Maybe it got in while we were in Chicago....

A trip to the gym superseded watching the new Batman flick (probably just as well), and it will be delayed again with my brother down to visit. Oh well, there is always the weekend.

Bat in the Basement - Part 1

OK, so nearly a year to the day since my last encounter with a bat, and one is back in the basement. I was heading down to do some laundry, and just as I reached the landing VOOM! this black shape shows up out of nowhere. It's a little late, so I haven't figured out what to do in order to shoo the bat out of the house. I'm not sure that I want to open up the basement doors and let more in. (I'm assuming that there is only one in the house). Where is it getting in!?! I suppose this situation behooves me to finally put up insulation in the basement, and plug any drafts or points of entry. Here's to hoping that part two of this story is fairly uneventful.

And I was going to watch The Dark Knight tomorrow too. I had better have this situation dealt with by then, or I won't be able to make it back downstairs for a week! Now where is that metre stick?

Passing of an Idol

I was in grade 10, traveling across Canada and the U.S. when my dad first introduced me to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I was enthralled with his tale of life in the GULAG, it was one of those turning points in my life when I was turned on to the need to fight injustice. I have a very strong sense of justice and closure, and I owe a great deal of that to the late Solzhenitsyn and his works - The GULAG Archepelago, The First Circle, The Cancer Ward, and others. I wish I could have met the man that helped elucidate the horrors of Soviet Russia. That will have to wait for another lifetime.