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Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz |
It seems you all have learnt a lot in the last week.
We've learnt that finally petrol prices are edging down, close to the $2 a litre mark for the first time in two-and-a-half years. We've learnt that it may pay to shop around; readers report a lot of difference such as eight cents/litre between a couple of local stations on the same street.
We've learnt that sirens on Tuesday night might not be a bad thing; emergency services are backing the Sallies foodbank, with a drive to collect food on December 9.
Police area commander Clifford Paxton tells us donations for the Salvation Army Foodbank can also be dropped at police stations in Katikati, Tauranga, Tauranga South, Mount, Papamoa and Te Puke, up till December 10.
Rain frustration
Ruth Jack reckons that after feeling very frustrated with hearing time after time 'It's going to rain” only to find it doesn't, she got up at 5.45am in her nightie with the hose and gave the garden a good watering. 'By 6.30am I wondered ‘why am I wet?'”
'YES it was drizzling and did so off and on for the next few hours. Next time I'm going out in bathing suit and staying there so the garden can get a good soaking!”
You drive what?
Rob Gordon was going to work early Friday when he saw a red car with its bonnet blazing furiously at the new Papamoa overbridge. BUT he says he was wrong, according to the Australian-owned paper, page 3 ‘Briefly' column, it wasn't a car, it was a 'mobile property”.
Finding the positive
Marj: 'I have learned this week that finding and seeing credit in others is positive and therefore self-fulfilling. That finding and believing criticism becomes defaming and destroying of oneself.
Criticism is a negative, self-destructive force, for which it can be difficult – even impossible to find a remedy.
Criticism of others is like a psychological cancer which grows and destroys its own body.
Let's be positive. The power of the mind has huge strength. Let's discard criticism and search for creditable instances and characteristics for a happier NZ – both politically and humanely.”
Moral re-education
As if ukuleles weren't a hazard in their own right, now they're in the hands of miscreants.
Brent Clough, our Sydney correspondent, reports punk is not dead, they've just taken up ukuleles.
Brent points to a link on radio national to Indonesia's thriving underground punk scene.
The website reports: 'In 2011, the government of Aceh, the only province of Indonesia that practices Sharia law, declared punk 'the new social disease.” Sixty-four punks were arrested, held without charge, and were forced to attend a 10-day moral re-education camp.
Going overboard
Tracy Hardy: In regard to the 84-year-old guy falling off the cruise ship. In total 239 people have been lost overboard on cruise ships since 2000, according to the cruisejunkie.com website.
The website states 16 of those cases were from Princess ships. This year, 19 people were lost overboard, two from Princess ships. What are these people doing? How many were playing scenes from the ‘Titanic' movie?
Eating healthy
Rocky Shaw tell us he's learnt ‘Five plus a day' does not include hops or fermented beverages. Apparently we need to keep up the 5+ A Day eating habits through Christmas, when it's easy to get sidetracked with other goodies.
We've learnt that we'll be happier and healthier with a good nosh of fresh season summer produce.
Weird Chicken Department
Tim Simcock: 1. Eggs don't bounce.
2. There are no slow learners, only quick forgetters.
Alison Verran has learnt that hen's eggs can come in all shapes and sizes. She brought in a couple of weird ones to the Sun office this week. One of her 12 chooks at Bethlehem regularly lays a wrinkly shelled egg.
Normal size, normal taste, but very thin and brittle. The other was a small egg, weighing just eight grams, only two grams heavier than the ‘Guinness Book of World Records' and 2mm larger than the smallest recorded. (Pictured below, Alison's eggs)
Poultry strikes back
Emma Norgrove would like us to learn better food safety. She says one-quarter of the nation will fall sick during the year due to poor food preparation, many of those through summer.
And raw meat, especially chicken are the main culprits. She's urging cooks to aim for a stress-free Christmas, by following some simple guidelines: Clean, chill, cook and separate.
After you've eaten your dangerous chicken, avoid being caught out, as Colin Smith did. He learnt this: 'Don't turn on your electric tooth brush until it's in your mouth, especially when wearing a black shirt!”
Parting shot
The last word, from Ben Rogers, who learnt a Neat Nature Fact. 'If we took every elephant in the world and laid them end to end into space… did you know that all the elephants would die?”
brian@thesun.co.nz