Financial & Travel Musings

Medical advances are wonderful but with each one comes a whole bunch of issues that didn’t arise before.

For instance, it sounds like a good thing to be able to extend life, doesn’t it? Well, only if you are healthy and that’s where the problem lies: in too many cases these days the lives extended aren’t really worth living. Say, for instance, you have an asbestosis related disease like Mesothelioma you can find that your extended life is basically one that’s visibly going downhill as each week passes. That’s just one of the dreadful diseases that medical advances can give you the ability to experience for longer these days.

Even without having one of the dreadful diseases as such even just extending life isn’t really as great a bonus as you might expect it to be. These days nursing homes are filling up with people who are sailing at various rates into what’s effectively a non-thinking person which isn’t too good for them and is awful for their families.

Popularity: 1% [?]

We’ve just moved the two little guys to a new school so are settling into a whole new range of school customs.

One of the most striking is the difference in the assumptions about how responsible the kids going to the school are. In their previous school, basically the assumption seemed to be that they had to be led everywhere so every morning they had to be taken to the door of their classroom, helped to take their coats off, and generally assisted to organise their arrival into the classroom. In this one, everyone from P1 through to P7 starts off in the playground then they line up at the spot for their class before following their teacher into the school thus all that parent assistance isn’t there.

That playground assembly practice in turn creates a totally different atmosphere in that the head master and all the teachers are out in the playground in the morning and indeed in the afternoon when the kids are getting collected. The big difference there is that the head master is around and much more approachable whereas in their previous school the principal had, as she put it, other things to do. Presumably their current head master also has those other things to do but his presence in the playground highlights what seems a different attitude and approach ie that he’s responsible for the kids primarily and if they’re all outside then that’s where he should be too.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Not sleeping well over the summer is something that many people expect because of the longer days and warmer weather. We’re conditioned to sleep when it’s dark and, of course, it’s light for a lot more hours over the summer months. Add to that the warmer weather and it makes for a difficult time to get a good sleep.

However, another problem is often caused by your mattress which is one of the pieces of furniture that most people tend to completely neglect until they’re in a pretty bad state. That’s understandable in many ways as you get used to the shape of an old mattress underneath you but even aside from the problems of worn out springs there’s the not so small issue of dust mites which build up over the years.

So if you’re still not sleeping too well as we edge into winter, think about the mattress underneath you.

Popularity: 1% [?]