Allergies

For about a month, my lips have been very dry. Cracked. Flaky. Constant applications of lip balm gave relief for a while but in the morning it will hurt like I've been kissing sandpaper the whole night. To worsen things, the sandpaper gave me an STD - it got swollen and itched. So I tried cutting down on salty foods, drinking lots of water and all but it got no better. Eventually I realized that my lips were a lot itchier right after I brushed my teeth.

I'm allergic to the toothpaste? Heh? I just bought this toothpaste a few days back. Some more this is the second tube I've bought and I've been using it for ...oh.... a month. Ahh...

It made a lot of sense after that - like why the lip balm had no effect even after so long. I immediately bought another toothpaste and almost overnight the symptoms disappeared. Its still a bit dry and it'll probably take some time for it to go back to normal but what am I going to do with the full tube of toothpaste? I could throw it away. Or I could remind myself to never buy that toothpaste again..

I've decided to keep it.

New Skins

It took a month of patient waiting, but my new camera skins finally arrived!

I decided to go with a custom made skin for the Oly Trip 35, and if it looks familiar that's because you've seen it somewhere before.

The old skin needed to be removed and the body cleaned before the new skin can be applied. It's so simple that even I (with multiple bubbles of dirt under my iPhone screen protector) can apply it almost flawlessly.

I ❤ Oly Trip

There may have been 10 million Trips that have passed through the manufacturing plants, but I'm sure there's only one like this. I have an idea for another skin design, we'll see in a couple of months time! 

Gotong Royong and Precisa CT100

I've been spending a lot of time cleaning in the past few weeks, both at home and at the office, I don't really know why but I feel like I have to. Some kind of paternal instinct kicking in maybe? We've been cleaning a lot of places that we don't usually cover in our weekly cleaning, like the grill and under the bed (my God! The amount of dirt!).

On another point, I've been testing out the Agfa Precisa CT100 film recently.

Scorching sun is good for...

...doing the laundry

I've been shooting film almost exclusively for quite some time and should have tried this film sooner. It has that greenish-yellowish-bluish tinge to it with the super saturated blues when you cross process it. In other words, its the 'lomo' feel.

It is a very light hungry film, and the effects are best achieved on a bright sunny day. I had a couple of indoor shots with flash but it turned out quite ordinary, save for a slight yellowish hue.

I like it! I think I'll be using this film more often.

Fructose - Something To Worry About?

There was this middle-aged man who was so frustrated with having many episodes of gout attacks. He told me that he's already cut down everything imaginable - no red meat, no kacang, no seafood and no alcohol at all. Still, he will be needing painkillers and gout medication almost every other week. When I pressed further, I discovered that he has quite an active lifestyle. Eventually we traced the problem down to his consumption of 100-plus. He drinks two 1.5L bottles everyday...for as long as he can remember. I read sometime back that there's a link between sweetened/sugary drinks and gout and suggested he stop the 100-plus. He did. The incidence of gout attacks totally reduced and he's bought  painkillers just once in the past year.

The keen business mind might point out that I just killed off a source of repeating income and that gives me a lot of food for thought. More importantly there's all this buzz going on about sugar and fructose in particular. Check out the video by Prof Lustig from UCSF, it's a full length lecture but a very compelling case against fructose.

Unfortunately fructose is very common in our modern diet and it mostly comes from High Fructose Corn Syrup (55% Fructose - 45% Glucose) and table sugar / sucrose /gula (50% Fructose - 50% Glucose) used as sweeteners in many beverages and foodstuffs. Recently due to the bad rap against HCFS, they've changed the name to corn syrup (sirap pepejal jagung), but its the same thing. So how exactly does fructose increase uric acid?

Eh? Whadaya mean bollocks?

It does far more damage than just increasing the uric acid concentrations in the blood. There are links between high fructose intake and blood pressure, increased triglycerides, diabetes and quite possibly cancer. But before we go overboard with an ascetic lifestyle and totally swear off sugar, I'd like to say a few things in defense of fructose.

i) It is present in a lot of fruits. Dates, raisins, prunes, grapes, pears and apples are a few with high concentrations of fructose.
ii) Our bodies are made to handle fructose.

So what's the fuss about? Looking at a typical Malaysian diet -

Breakfast: Tausa pau, Dim Sum (dipped in ketchup), Coffee (with condensed milk)
Morning Snack : Apple and Kiwi
Lunch: Sweet and Sour Pork Rice, Soya Cincau
Afternoon Snack: Yogurt Drink, Tiger Biscuits
Dinner: Baked Beans and Tuna (with mayo) with lettuce in tortilla wrap, Mixed fruit juice
Dessert: Cheesecake
Supper: Roti Telur and Teh Ais

Do you see the problem here? And this is on a relatively healthy day, not yet including soft drinks, various types of snacks (chocolate/ice cream) or fast food meals. We mostly focus on eating healthy 'main meals' but we tend to forget the hidden sugars present in the small titbits and condiments that accompany it. The obvious ones are the drinks (including the fruit juices with no added sugar printed on it - not so healthy after all). Another thing we can see is that almost all processed foods contain sugar.

I'd like to state that there's nothing wrong with having sugar in our food, the problem happens only when there's chronic overconsumption and this is where Prof Lustig hits the spot. We're eating too much of it because we didn't know that its everywhere. And we're wondering why the metabolic syndrome and cancer rates are going through the roof. 

It is also not just about 'oh, I'll go do more exercise and burn off the calories from sugar'. If you have 120kcal from a piece of white bread and 120kcal from a bottle of coke, the white bread contains mostly glucose and that can be utilized by every cell in the body. Coke on the other hand, has 45% glucose only and the 55% of the fructose have to be broken down by the liver thereby placing an extra burden on it, not to mention the by-products of fructose metabolism (uric acid, triglycerides). It is like telling an alcoholic to do more cardio exercises to burn off the calories from the bottle of whiskey he's just polished off, it doesn't work that way.

A few years back, I would have probably said 'Life is short! Control your food for what oh? Eat what you like!' but I don't subscribe to that view anymore. Earlier this year one of my in-laws passed away due to complications with cancer (quite ignorant of lifestyle modification advice by the doctors I heard). Another family friend has just spent RM300,000 in 3 months for cancer treatments and I am hearing firsthand the suffering and difficulties they are going through. Tragic isn't it? You've retired and are supposed to enjoy life in the golden years, but what little you have left of your entire life of hard work goes to keeping you alive. Instead of traveling the world with your loved ones, you're contributing to your doctor's vacation fund instead. Or traveling around looking for a cure.

I'm probably not going to stop eating sweet stuff like cakes and ice cream but I'm definitely going to do it in moderation. No one can say for sure now how much is too much, but one thing's for sure, we will benefit from eating less sugar.

Beach Outing

It's been a long time since I had a beach picnic. I think the last one is when my mom came over and we went island hopping. Last weekend was a long weekend and when my wife's colleagues organized one, I was looking forward to it.

We had a couple of hours with nice blue skies before it started getting cloudy. It rained after we left.

My wife's company bought an inflatable boat as their location always suffer from bad flooding during the rainy season. So I had a go in it.

With the new addition coming to the family, it'll be quite a while till we're able to have an outing like this again. This was quite a timely trip.

(all pics taken with Oly Trip 35 and Ektar 100)

Work/Play?

Home cooked meals are usually prepared by the lady of the house, until late last year when the thought of food made her retch. So I had to step up to the plate, literally, and have been the household chef for half a year.

My second office

The last time I did any sort of regular cooking was during uni days in Scotland and even then, we were more like line cooks putting out dishes from a small deli with a very limited menu. Every evening my housemates and I will all take our places in the kitchen/pantry and automatically carry out our roles - there will be a fella to chop the garlic, onions and sausages (we put sausages in a lot of things), peel the potatoes (if necessary), prepare the chicken (toughest job I think, because its always frozen) or cook the rice (hmm...I don't remember ever doing this). For one year, we ate more or less the same thing over and over. I didn't mind.

This dish turned out messier than I expected...

Now that's something my wife finds hard to accept. She yearns for variety in her meals and it shows in her cooking, she has never cooked the same dish in the same way twice if she can help it ... and its a good thing I can eat almost anything. So I felt the need to reciprocate and tingle her taste buds.

Initially it was hard for me. The focus of my cooking was 'I hope it is edible'. Or 'God, let there not be food poisoning'. After a while, I started getting better at organizing the workflow and deciding how I'm going to attack the ingredients and transform it into a nice meal. Only then did I think about other things like trying out new ingredients and giving thought to the presentation.

I didn't expect to say it but I enjoy cooking. I was thinking of handing the portfolio back to my wife after the delivery and all, but I'm thinking otherwise now, maybe we'll take turns. I love planning the meals for the upcoming week, looking for new recipes to try and especially seeing the finished product, whether it succeeds or fails.

I've been thinking about why this is so. Maybe its because I work in the service industry, where you clock in at a certain time and then use a few liters of your saliva throughout the day. Then close, recuperate and repeat the next day. For all the efforts put in, the results are intangible and usually only a figure on a piece of paper at the day's closing report. Also the amount of saliva used is NOT PROPORTIONAL to that final figure.

It's different when doing the things I enjoy - lets say photography.
1) The result is tangible. It can end up as a printed photo in a frame or photobook.
2) The result is proportional to the creative input. It also inspires more intrinsic learning and researching to improve that result.
3) I have complete autonomy over the whole process...this last one being one of the most important.
Sounds very much like cooking then.

That's not to say making money from your saliva is a bad thing, but I do realize that I'm subconsciously seeking a balance. And its not about one being work and the other play, photography and cooking can be either work or play. It's all about the mindset then. Bon Appétit!

Antenatal Class at Hospital Likas

We attended an antenatal class at Hospital Likas last Saturday. Someone suggested it to us, my wife did some asking around and we were told to be there for the registration at 8.30am.

There were quite a lot of people present already and the morning started off with a tour of the facilities, the labour wards and the delivery room. We then adjourned to a hall where they delivered a series of lectures.

First time parents get priority with the Dum-By (Dummy Baby)

Topics included pregnancy and complications, an introduction to painkillers during delivery (including epidural), medicines to avoid during pregnancy, breastfeeding and some hands on tutorial sessions with the nurses.

The practical sessions were what we found most useful, particularly the handling and bathing of the baby. The nurses were very experienced (most of them being mothers themselves) and walked around supervising as we listened to the instructor.

Its quite daunting sometimes when I think that I'm going to be a parent soon. On one hand I'm very excited but on the other there is some nervousness as to how things are going to turn out and whether I'm prepared for it. But one thing I'm sure of is that I'm grateful for all the advice and support given to us so far from many experienced hands.