breispace

I did it too, although with me it hasn’t stayed in its little box for some geeky reason:

Your rainbow is shaded violet and red.

What is says about you: You are a passionate person. You appreciate beauty and craftsmanship. You get bored easily and want friends who will keep up with you. You are patient and will keep trying to understand something until you’ve mastered it.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

About to enter the last week of my vacation, which will mostly have to be spent on prepping. I’ve been a bit of a recluse this summer, and I must say I’m reluctant to get back to work and studies. My work is interesting and seldom boring, and I am slowly but surely getting better at it, but there’s many a weekend when I’m not looking forward to jumping back into the fray. Fray being the key word here; I don’t like stress. My Mondays off are gone for the coming semester too, meaning I’ll have to both prep and study on the weekend. until now I always managed to keep one day of the week devoid of work- and study-related things, but that’s going to require even tighter planning now. I don’t know how I’m going to pull that off yet. If I won the lottery now I seriously think I’d retire and find ways to spend my time that would be both useful, less stressful, and more fun.

Okay, enough with the gloom. I did do some fun things this week. For one, I finished the Arrowheads jumper/sweater/jersey/pullover and the pink scarf (can’t show that pic yet, sorry) for my colleague. Two Olympic goals achieved, yay!

I also harvested and partly processed the flax. first, I had to make a ripple to separate the seed-buds and leaves from the stalks:

then I rippled (combed, sort of) the stalks. Now they’re lying in the back of the garden, retting (a fancy name for letting the woody bits rot). Marion may have to finish the processing later.

I invented a new liquid breakfast: very filling. The recipe:
- about a handful of blackberries or other tasty fruit;
- 2-3 heaped tablespoons of crushed porridge oats or Weetabix;
- liquid or powdered sweetener to taste.
Blend thoroughly with yoghurt (up to 1 litre) and keep in the fridge until hungry.

According to this BBC programme calcium helps to pass some fat through the body undigested, and blending your food to a soup with water will help you to ward off hunger pangs for longer than just having a glass of water with your food does. Plain water passes through the stomach very quickly because there are no nutrients in it, and so it hardly expands the stomach, which is what makes you feel less hungry. Conclusion (unless you want to eat goo every day): have a glass of low-fat milk with your meal. I may try that for lunch at work, or even on the tea-break.

I always love it when dragonflies visit my garden. One of my neighbours has a pond, although she doesn’t maintain it. Which is good: wildlife usually doesn’t (don’t?) like manicured gardens. My excuse for leaving things a bit of a mess in places.  Maybe the brown frog will stop by tomorrow.

Today is “Nationale Gedichtendag” or national poetry day. (World Poetry Day is on 21 March in most places), so here’s a small verse I made up during one of the rare quiet moments in class, i.e. during a test.

A3 Grammar Test

I stand here and invigilate,
your one-pack pressed against my small.
My neck is nuzzled in my head;
I happily facilitate.

The following may not constitute a traditional Christmas message as such, but it is about war, tolerance, peace, fanaticism, etc., so I think it applies. Originally put on mail by someone called Roy, I (and many others in the Mulligans crowd, I’m sure) got this from Brigitte, who moved to Oz recently (I hope it’s not a trend; all the nice ones seem to be leaving). I wanted to send it on, but Kees said there were bugs attached. So I decided to blog it instead. My readership may not be as big as my mailbox, but I think this is important stuff. I worry about the direction things are taking in my neck of the woods nowadays, and I find that if there’s one lesson to learn from history it’s that people don’t seem to be learning from history.Somebody suggested I put a Dutch translation up as well; I may yet do that.   Read. Listen. Be aware. Speak  up. Vote. Do what you can, however small. Don’t let the fanatics win, whichever side they’re on. 

A German’s point of view on Islam   

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.’Very few people were true Nazis ‘he said,’ but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.

 We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the ‘peaceful majority’, the ’silent majority’, is cowed and extraneous.

 Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were ‘peace loving’?

 History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

 As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.Lastly, at the risk of offending: anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.

 Roy

Happy Holidays everyone!