My MS
by Ian Heydon

Well, I’ve gracefully given up the cardio-rehab exercise thingumy.  To help get rid of the feelings of guilt and failure that I’m experiencing, I recall an email the Swami sent me some time ago with health advice from a Chinese doctor… Q: Doctor,  I’ve heard that  cardiovascular exercise can prolong life.  Is this true? A: [...]

I saw the photo on the right yesterday of Times Square in New York and thought immediately of the musical, Singin’ in the Rain… then I noticed the hoarding for the musical, Rent. How things have changed in 60 years since the Gene Kelly musical! Rent features an S&M dancer with HIV, a lesbian performance [...]

Thanks to Willy for sharing this eloquent statement on equal opportunity for the disabled!  Willy is from Switzerland and while they don’t have capital punishment there, he tells me that handicapped parking is very scarce. I don’t know many Swiss jokes, but seeing Willy will be arriving Down Under for a holiday early in 2012… [...]

When you’ve seen one shopping centre you’ve seen a mall. Sorry about that… Laura update.  Casually strolling into a mall in Michigan for lunch and hundreds of people are there. Discover that they are there for a glimpse of Australia’s answer to Justin Beiber, Cody Simpson. Host Mom, Cindy, has contacts at the mall and [...]

I know a few MSers mopping up after Irene stormed up the east coast of the US. Positive thoughts are with them.  Happy birthday to Marc, the ’Wheelchair Kamikaze’ from NY – that one will be memorable! The hurricane claimed 40 lives and there are still many homes without power. For a while New York resembled a ghost town – no [...]

Dave rang yesterday just to say that he didn’t make it to the gym in the morning – and that makes it the tenth year in a row! I did actually go to the gym but it was, shall we say, less than satisfactory. It’s a seven-week program for cardio-rehab. Now, normally, it would be [...]

Can you imagine buying an Ikea kit and finding the instructions only in Swedish? That’s what our federal government did when purchasing the European manufactured MU90 torpedo for a couple of warships – they lashed out with $655 million to discover on delivery that the all the data and instructions were in French and Italian. [...]

TOILET ETIQUETTE… I read this comment in the SMH today (Sam de Brito – All Men Are Liars blog) and could empathise.  A guy went into a public toilet and was barely sitting down, when this happened…  A voice came from the stall next door: VOICE:   Hi, how are you? MAN:      (EMBARRASSED) … Um…Doin’ [...]

Having lived in Vanuatu for a number of years, you become pretty immune to earthquakes or, as they say in Bislama, “kraon i shek-shek” (“ground he shake-shake”). The 5.9 quake in the US this morning doesn’t sound like a big one, but I guess it would be scary up a skyscraper that started swaying and [...]

…AND THE IDIOSYNCRASIES OF ENGLISH: IF MAN EVOLVED FROM MONKEYS AND APES, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE MONKEYS AND APES? DON’T SWEAT THE PETTY THINGS AND DON’T PET THE SWEATY THINGS. ONE TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR. ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION. WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS? WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN [...]