Recovery from the last post.

Yeah, ok I admit it that last post was rubbish. However, I am not going to edit it because firstly I will leave it as a reminder to you people and myself that I can't write that well. You can read it whenever you think to yourself; "Theresa could write an awesome novel." After reading that proverbial post I'm sure those thoughts will immediately disappear from your head.
Which brings me to one of the things I'm excited about! Yeah, you will never read it because of the afore said fact but I'm gonna do it anyway. Yes I am stupid but hey! this is what the website said:
"Art for art's sake does wonderful things to you. It makes you laugh. It makes you cry. It makes you want to take naps and go places wearing funny pants. Doing something just for the hell of it is a wonderful antidote to all the chores and "must-dos" of daily life. Writing a novel in a month is both exhilarating and stupid, and we would all do well to invite a little more spontaneous stupidity into our lives."
Just incase you wanted to know, I already wear funny pants. But yeah, this might be the last post for awhile.

My next little thing which I wish I could write more about is this ridiculous bill some MPs want to push through. Naturally restricting our rights to criticize MPs and any other Parliamentary group is taking away a fundamental human right. Dude! You cant take away my free speech! I had a look at this funky website opposing the bill and was enchanted by their advertising strategy. [I laughed so hard- those guys are genius!] Now I have a headache because I clench my teeth when I concentrate. So yeah, the future of NZ looks pretty bleak. Arrgh! Lets hope I have a pessimistic view of this and it turns out better than prophesied.

Something long about Mr Darcy.

It was a lovely sunny day at Pemberly. Mr Darcy was sitting in his bedroom eating an egg in his usual grumpy manner. He had just returned home the day before from a visit to his Catherine. His other AuntyAunty Helen was away in Sweden so their usual annual family get-together couldn't happen. Darcy was glad about that, because Aunty Helen was more of a know it all than Aunty Cath. Darcy was a dark character, although he was always as polite as was needed; everyone considered him to be proud and rude. Some might say he was spoilt. It was true, he admitted, that he had always had everything he wanted. That is what troubled him this find sunny morning, there was something he wanted and he couldn't get it. He couldn't buy it, he couldn't bribe it and he definitely couldn't charm it. Yes, you guessed it, the thing he wanted was a girl named Elizabeth. They would make a great pair, if only she would realise that she was as proud as he was. 'She was the real spoilt one' he thought, 'a woman in her position shouldn't be free to be picky in who she married!' He wanted her and would stop at nothing. A plan was starting in his head about how he might bribe his old mate Wickham into playing the "Evil guy" and thus win fair lady's hand through some intricately planned deeds. He sat down at his writing desk and started his letter to Wickham.
Two minutes later the butler came into the room. He ran to the writing desk, screamed a manly scream and called another servant.
Half an hour later the police arrived. "Oh you are so prompt!" the butler gushed. "Whats the problem old chap?" said the jolly looking police officer. "Well you see," said the butler, "my master seems to have disappeared. We have searched everywhere and found no trace." After saying this he held out a piece of paper. It was the letter Mr Darcy had just started writing a moment before he disappeared. It read; "My dear fellow, how long it has been since..." and then the ink made a big scribble on the page. "Good grief!" gasped the officer, "hecouldn't just vanish like that could he... What?"

His head hurt. It took his eyes a minute to adjust to the bright light. "EEEK!" He jumped up, looked around then fainted like a romance novel heroine. "Get the smelling salts!" someone shouted their voice echoing down the long white halls. Five eyes looked at Darcy, two belonged to the speaker and three to theother guy. A green hand reached down and pulled Darcy over holding the smelling salts to his nose. He did what anyone else would do in his situation, he freaked out. "GreatScott !" he gasped. "Greetings dear fellow! What?... I say!" said the guy with three eyes, Darcy could see that he was reading a phrase book. "Oh Shut up," said the first guy. "Lets keep this quick," he said to Darcy as he handed him a cup of tea, "The reason we brought you here is to make a deal with you. We want to experiment on you... give you a power that no one else on earth has, a gift. You will be allowed to use this for whatever you want, provided you allow us to watch you andmonitor how you fare." Darcy was slightly confused, but he was a quick learner. He could see that he might possibly use this to his advantage. "What kind of gift will you give me?" he asked. "Anything you want; mind control or whatever you want Fitzwilliam, just abide by our rules." The green guy replied. "Let me see the rule book and list of gifts." Darcy grabbed them rather greedily and started reading. "dude," the three eyed guy said in his ownlanguage, "we've got the right guy. Now out world domination is not far off!" They shared an evil chuckle together and patted their electric sheep.

"I don't know what to think." the butler said, "where on earth can he be?" "Who?" said a voice behind him. The maid he was talking too dropped her tea cup and the house keeper almost wet her pants insurprise. It was Mr Darcy, he had returned safe and sound. He wouldnt tell them where he had been and they didn't want to pry because they knew how angry he could get.

Two months later he was sitting on the sofa in the drawing room at Pemberly, his new wife sat beside him. "Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy!" a loud voice at the window interrupted his thoughts and her reading. They looked up, Darcy shuddered and Liz just sat there calmly, "What took you so long?" she said. The green thing standing at the window laughed as he walked towards Darcy and his wife. "What on earth are you doing?" he looked at Liz, "Ha, dumb joke." Darcy said. "I'm looking for my ray gun!" Liz exclaimed, she was reaching around underneath her extensive skirts obviously her gun was hidden somewhere in there. "What the?!" Darcy thought he might faint again, the truth had suddenly dawned on him. He reached for the smelling salts but Liz found her gun first. It is safe to say the Darcydidn't live for long and neither did most of the other people on earth. Aliens invaded and Liz and the one we only know was "the green guy" lived happily ever after.
However, hope for the humans was not yet lost. Hundreds of years later a fellow called Richard Pierce made a time traveling machine and went back in time with his mate Earnest Rutherford. It was because Richard was too busy on the time machine that hedidn't make invent the aeroplane before the guys in the USA, however him and Earnest saved the world.

My most recent episode of cooking.

Please bear in mind as you read this that I am in the process of cooking something when I write this, In other words I might have to get up to attend the food.
Because mum is out I have to make tea so I thought "hey, lets make little fish roll things - one each!" so in my usual attitude to cooking I put them together flinging in whatever ingredients I felt like, somewhat disregarding the recipe. I had heard that Tarragon goes with fish but after trying it with corn ages ago [silly me] I decided it was the worst herb I had ever tasted. However, I was feeling adventurous so put a decent amount in the mixture. 15 minutes later I took the rolls out of the oven finding them rather brown and oozing some of the filling onto the pan. So I scooped some up and tasted it... ahhh! It was good! Tarragon actually goes with fish and it tastes good! I am really looking forward to eating this.
I just got up to look at the potato wedges, umm... this is usually the part when mum arrives and tells me if everything is cooked. But she hasn't come yet and its 5:30! Yes I know, trust mum to stay talking for ages [like me I suppose] but still, I don't know if the spuds are cooked! And I'm starving, that smell of beautiful fish and potatoes is driving me crazy.
Come home soon Mum!
I have just turned on some sweet jazz in an effort to be calm. I think its working, jazz is the best medicine for agitation.
Well, Mum still hasn't arrived so I'm going to get up and dance around the room while I wait because the others [Grandma and John] are safely away in their rooms.
How ironic is it that my last post was about starving people? I should really start to think of some other things besides food and politics!
Ah! mum is here! So much for me dancing around the room but Huzzah for mums who know when a potato is cooked!

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

I'm sitting here sipping my Robert Harris coffee, looking at one of the many computers in our house. This one has a lovely big flat screen - and on my left is a sweet steering wheel that we use for one of the many computer games we play. I ate leftover Lasagna for lunch, and had a drink of Juice for afternoon tea. Yeah, we are pretty well off in comparison to lots of other people out there. We have two pianos, [though I have to say our non-electric one is pretty rubbish] a projector we watch movies on and a myriad of computers. Yeah, we are doing ok compared to most people.
'Oh shut up about your prosperity' you are probably saying. But don't click the little X on your browser yet because today is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The first commemoration of the event took place in Paris in 1987 when 100,000 people gathered on the Human Rights and Liberties Plaza to honour victims of poverty, hunger, violence and fear. So what are we doing about poverty eh? I'm thinking specifically of the degree of poverty that causes people to go hungry.


Think about it: NZ has a huge problem with obesity and lest we forget that the USA's problem is still bigger than ours. I did a bit of research and found out that in the year 2000; 64.5 percent of U.S. adults, age 20 years and older, were overweight and 30.5 percent were obese. In New Zealand its not that much different because in 1997 52 percent of us were overweight or obese. A bit further around the world however things are a different story: apparently 38 million Africans are at risk of dying because of hunger. A recent Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations report, "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2002," states that "widespread hunger in a world of abundance is essentially the result of poverty. So there you have it; the facts.

But to tell the truth even though we keep seeing the world vision ads on tv, we seem more concerned about global warming and who wins the Rugby World Cup than whether hundreds are dying of hunger on the other side of the world. You doubt that? Then who won the Nobel Peace prize this year? No it wasn't someone like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr or Albert Schweitzer. This year Al Gore got the peace prize for mainly making a movie about a controversial subject. Does this show us that we are loving our neighbor? I think not.

True, Jesus did say: "For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me." [Mark 14:7-8] He wasn't saying to forget the poor, but that He is the son of God and ultimately more important [he was only here for a few years] than selling some perfume and giving the money to the heaps of poor people who are always there. - ok here is a shocking statement for you: It is impossible to eradicate poverty because humanity is naturally sinful and greedy. There is always someone who is missing out.

So there you go, I just thought it was interesting how so many people are possibly dying from things that stem from their obesity yet there are heaps of people starving to death.
What a paradox.

Dr and the Health System

Its a widely acknowledged thing in NZ that our health system is pretty rubbish. Need I say more? Do I have to list all the ways our Health Services fall short? everyone who understands the words "Health" and "Hospital" knows what I'm talking about. I went to the Dr this morning for a blood test. It is very simple, stick a needle in and suck out some life blood to see if I'm as healthy as I should be. It only took 2 minutes. However, when we got to the desk the receptionist said we had to pay $5 just for that. This is with a Government subsidy. The $5 would be all good if I didn't go to the Dr yesterday and pay over $20 for a pretty routine appointment. But thats nothing compared to what it could have been without the precious community services card. I could be paying around 50 odd bucks just to get pills to keep me alive. Heck, its not my fault, its not most peoples fault when they have to go to the Dr. This brings me to another Dr who we all know so well. His name is Dr Cullen. Yes, our venerable finance minister announced this week that the government is sitting on a huge pile of cash. $8.6 billion to be precise. So why on earth is he still taxing us like crazy? Why are our health services suffering? Women who have just given birth are kicked out of hospital to make more room, and the necessary operations are not taking place on the thousands on our waiting lists. Apparently when Cully raised the 33% tax to 39% he said: “If you tuck in and pay this extra tax, you will get a heart operation when you need one.” But I can see through you Michael, you are saving all this surplus for an election bribe. I hope people wont be fooled again because we should all know by now that our dear Dr isn't about to give tax cuts, or any money to anything deserving for that matter. However take heart New Zealand, next year if you all vote with your heads Cully wont have any power over your money or anything else in this country.

Monday is music day.

For most "poor blighters" about my age today was the first day of the school term. But for me this morning only heralded another Monday on which music was the theme. I went and had my half hour piano lesson in which I played furiously so as to actually finish my song in the allotted time. I'm learning sonata op 13 by Beethoven. The whole thing is actually about 20 minutes long but I'm mostly concentrating on the first movement for now. I got home at lunch with aching hands. Its difficult when you have to play octaves really fast whilst having tiny hands. Seriously, my hands are still sore. It got me thinking, what if I pulled muscles in my hands really badly? I've done it before but now it would actually affect other people; because I've got to do the music at church for the next three weeks. Think about it, if a wanna-be athlete pulls a hamstring everyone tells them to 'take it easy and not make it worse by running on it.' But if a pianist hurts their hands people generally expect them to keep playing and not think about adverse effects that could occur by over doing it. I bowed out of playing once because of that, but no one seemed to understand. It makes ya think aye, how did Beethoven and others such as Rachmaninoff's hands last? They composed some pretty hardcore pieces in their time. Yeah, ok, Ludwig's ears didn't last, and Seregi's hands were about three times the size of mine but it makes you wonder how many scales they did and how many most of today's musicians are lacking.
[Random bit of knowledge: Helen Clark learned the piano when she was young. She was also home-schooled for about a year.]

my stint at the dentist.

I woke up this morning after a really uncomfortable and disturbed nights sleep. I was sharing a room with my two little sisters who have a talent for very loud breathing that verges on snoring.
In the middle of my shower mum called to me "you've got less than 10 minutes before you've gotta be at the dentist!" EEK! I'd forgotten, and I hadn't even had breakfast or brushed my teeth.

10 minutes later I was sitting in the waiting room listning to those creepy dentist noises and waiting for my younger brother to finish his check up. I was waiting for him to utter some kind of muffled scream, but all I heard was the dentist's voice. At first I thought he sounded like Sean Connery. My heart fluttered a bit, think about it; Sean Connery doing my teeth! Awesome! But I was disappointed when I listened closer, 'dud this guy has a random accent, and he doesn't sound like Sean Connery anymore' I thought to myself.
My brother came our smiling, "I have 14 Hygiene points! and wisdom teeth visible on the Xray!" he said through his relatively white teeth. I was like, "dude, I bet I will get 15 points, ha!" we kept talking about who had the best teeth until the dreaded moment came. I was really worried I might have to get a filling. I've never had a filling before! And I brag about my fantastic teeth [apart from the colour they are great!] but now the moment had come.
I walked into this white room and sat on the dentist chair thing, why is it that they are always too big? my head never reaches the head rest bit, ah being short is a curse in a world of tall people!
This guy wasn't like Sean Connery at all to my disappointment, but to my delight he was kind of like a nutty professor. He did this little chuckle after speaking, and had that accent you would expect from an insane professor [kind of south african/dutch]. He said he would do a little check up as he grabbed the little mirror thing. I lay back awaiting my impending doom. Going to the dentist makes me realize how vulnerable people are when they are lying pinned back in a chair with some random person's fingers in their mouth. Eww... that reminds me of that horrible few weeks when I had to go to the dentist heaps and he didn't wear gloves!!! eeeeeekkkkk! thats the stuff of nightmares.

I thought he was going to start singing as he poked around my mouth, he was that kind of guy. He reminded me a bit of the Dr Van Neuter [the surgeon who is going to suck out Gonzo's brain] in Muppets from Space.

Well, now I have updated my blog. Its not very exciting now, but I was hyped up about it this morning. Oh and I have to say that after all that discussion I tied with my brother for Hygiene points but forgot to ask what the maximum was. Did we have really bad hygiene? was it 14 out of 100 or something? I don't know, all I know is that this dentist will go down in history with all his patients as "that one who make me crack up when he was poking around my mouth."