2020 it’s been a pleasure

2020 it’s been a pleasure, but now it’s time to say goodbye.

2020 Weight Graph

Personal highlights

I’ve seen a common question on social media over the last couple of days. “What have been the high points of 2020 for you?”

I’ve read many responses. The sad replies outlining the loss of family and friends as well as employment are heart-wrenching. However, it’s been refreshing to read that not everyone has had an altogether lousy year.

I can share three highlights for me in 2020.

  • A new friend has enriched my life and has been a sounding board, keeping me sane in this year of mayhem. This same friend is someone of faith and has helped me enormously reflect on my own spiritual life.
  • I have found 2020 to be professionally rewarding. This year has highlighted again, why one career can be limiting and how a diversity of skills through qualifications and experience can put you in the right place at the tight time. As a trainee pathologist, I assumed my working life would always be in a medical laboratory. Thirteen years in the Australian Public Service has allowed me to exploit my general and specialist medical training to work in ways I never dreamed would be possible.
  • The only measure I have for improved health today is knowing that I have lost about six kilograms this year. I started 2020 in the 78 kg range, and I’ve managed to end 2020 in the 72 kg range.

In the graph (above), I maxed out at 78.2 kg, and my nadir was 72.5 kg. The big dip was due to a week when I was out of sorts mentally. I lost my appetite while I was processing stuff in my head. It turns out I learnt I didn’t need to eat as much and at the same time and I’ve started reducing my portions to much smaller sizes. Mind you, I still think I have COVID-19 arse from spending almost every day sitting at my desk.

Some less critical highlights include an honorary professor appointment at the Australian National University in the Medical School, cooking different foods, increasing the variety in my diet and reading more books.

Personal low points

If there have been high points, there must also be some low points.

  • My daughters and brothers lost employment this year, (except for my youngest who managed to snag an extra job).
  • My parents felt trapped in their two-bedroom flat. While I was happy calling them more often I could hear in their voices their frustration at being together with nowhere to go and no one else to see.
  • Long work hours which I’ll never get back. After some years of self-repair due to some dark years that involved workplace bullying and stress, I’d got to a happy place with work-life balance. This year the balance shifted almost entirely to work.

Personal hopes for 2021

In line with my highlights for 2020, there are some corresponding hopes and ambitions.

  • I want to reestablish some friendships that I’ve neglected. I enjoy my own company, and I tend to spend too much time in my head. Being both shy and introverted doesn’t help. It will be good for my mental health to get out more and mix with others (in a physically distant manner of course).
  • While I’ve enjoyed the work in my main job, I’ve neglected my role as an honorary visiting medical officer in Canberra Health Services because of the pandemic COVID-19 work. I need to return to that part of my life again.
  • I want to get into a healthy body mass index range. For my height, a healthy BMI means getting below 70 kg. I’d also like a scaphoid abdomen. When I was a medical student, a favourite general surgeon would always emphasise that obesity begins when the abdomen becomes flat rather than scaphoid in the supine position.

As for some of the less critical points in 2021; I want to read more books, increase my cooking repertoire’s diversity, and get stronger through exercise.

More global hopes

Let’s hope we can continuously improve our containment efforts through quarantine measures and be realistic about improving population health rather focussing on the wealthy getting what they want.

While everyone hopes the vaccines will work, I hope we can maintain the constant message that people should stay home if they’re unwell, people should keep distant from one another and avoid unnecessary touching. We need everyone to be better at washing their hands all the time. Everyone also needs to cover their mouth and nose when they cough and sneeze. Not only will these measures help contain COVID-19, but they will also reduce the spread of other infectious diseases. It’s a sacrifice we all need to make to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

Final thoughts

What do you want out of 2021? Let me know in the comments.

Happy New Year!

May your 2021 be the best it can be.

Wash and rinse, wash and rinse

Hi there. It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Sorry about that but nothing new or different has really happened.

Life is pretty much work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep, wash and rinse, and repeat.

The best example of the periodicity of life is in my weight chart for this this year. You can see every weekend my weight rises as I cook and eat more. During the week because of a lack of time and motivation, the food I’m eating is more plain and less voluminous and my weight goes down.

Weight Chart Sunday 2020-07-26
Continue reading “Wash and rinse, wash and rinse”

Going to the doctor to be tested

Lake Ginninderra

No, I don’t need to be tested to look for SARS-COV-2 (which is the virus which causes COVID-19). I did have to see my GP though last week. Someone asked, are you going to get tests from the doctor? It’s amusing to me when someone assumes primary health care practitioners do the testing.

Chain mail safety glove.
Chain mail safety glove.

Where is most of the diagnostic testing done and by whom?

Continue reading “Going to the doctor to be tested”

Is close enough, good enough?

In diagnostic pathology we want tests to be precise, accurate, reliable, reproducible, sensitive, and specific. In life, I’m a bit like that too. For cooking though, I’m pretty much close enough is good enough.

Belconnen development

Why I don’t bake

Baking though requires precision. Baking is more like a chemistry experiment. Getting the right answer means being precise with measurements, timing, and understanding your oven like it’s the back of your hand.

I haven’t baked in anger since I left Brisbane in 1995 to live in Darwin. Ever since leaving Brisbane I’ve never had a lot of confidence in the ovens in the places I’ve lived in.

Mandolin and safety glove
Continue reading “Is close enough, good enough?”

Weekend sport is coming back

XXXX Maroons Shirt

I was on a teleconference the other day with colleagues from the United States of America, Canada, and the United Kingdom. One of the American participants on the call asked if ‘footy’ had returned after everything was suspended earlier in the year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Weekend footy

XXXX Maroons Shirt
XXXX Maroons Shirt
Continue reading “Weekend sport is coming back”

Another trip around the sun

Birthday cheesecake

This week I hit another milestone. Last year I started planning what I might do this year. It sort of depended on the health of my parents. If it were likely, I’d need to be close to them at this time I was thinking of a week in Brisbane. Otherwise, I was thinking of flying to Melbourne, renting a car, and driving across the Nullarbor to Perth. I’ve never done a long drive like that, and I’ve always wanted to give it a go.

I had thought about renting a Ford Mustang with a 5 L V8. I wasn’t sure if I’d go alone or do it with someone.

I may just have to do this later in the year or perhaps next year. At some stage I want to do it. I like a road trip.

Birthday muffin
Birthday muffin
Continue reading “Another trip around the sun”

Chef Pete Evans and COVID-19

Regular readers know that I’ve no fondness for chef Pete Evans after his remarks about iodised salt. His erroneous thinking, if it caught on, would leave Australia as a land of cretins.

This is a photograph of a packet of SAXA iodised salt flakes
This is not an advertisement for SAXA

Get Pete Evans off My Kitchen Rules (MKR)

This week, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) issued Mr Evans’ company with an infringement notice after the TGA found Mr Evans’ company breached the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989.

I mentioned this on Yummy Lummy yesterday. Apparently Mr Evans went hard on his supplements complementary and alternative medicine (SCAM) services with an alleged cure for COVID-19. I shudder when I think about a gullible person buying that device and then thinking they were cured and going out into the community potentially infecting others.

Continue reading “Chef Pete Evans and COVID-19”

Weekend working

Lake Ginninderra

How are you going with the physical distancing, staying at home unless you have a good excuse to be somewhere, enhanced hand washing, and respiratory hygiene?

Working from home

I’ve been able to cook while on a teleconference. A schnitty is best cooked in butter.

Pan-fried Chicken schnitzel in butter with cherry tomatoes, carrot, celery, and onions.
Pan-fried Chicken schnitzel in butter with cherry tomatoes, carrot, celery, and onions.
Continue reading “Weekend working”