From The Home Front

The last couple of weeks we have been having winter on and off. One day it snows and freezes,

then it all melts and looks nearly like spring again.


I've been quite busy this week, hence the lack of posts. On Wednesday we went to watch an opera, La Traviata, streamed live from the Royal Opera House (London) in our cinema. It was really a great production, with Placido Domingo as Alfredo's father.  The price of the ticket included one free drink of choice and some snacks. We really enjoyed ourselves. Yesterday I spent the better part of the day visiting relatives.

I also invented a new waffle recipe. (they may not look great, but the taste was quite good!). Someone somewhere said that you should eat a warm breakfast every day so that I have been switching between waffles and griddle cakes of all sorts:). These waffles are made with an egg, some milk, rasped potatoes (2 small ones), some cheddar cheese and buckwheat flour (and, of course some baking powder and salt). As far as I know, this particular combination is sorely my own invention.

My inner nerd (under influence from a YouTube discussion) drove me into investigating more about the risk factors for cancer. Here is a list of countries with the lowest and the highest cancer rates in the world. It's noteworthy that several of the countries with least cancer are Islamic and forbid alcohol, whih is probably not surprising since alcohol is a known carcinogen.

It gets especially interesting when you compare two countries which are very similar in some ways like Niger and .Nigeria. Niger is poorer but has a higher life expectancy and much lower cancer rates than Nigeria which is one of big alcohol consumers in the world.

In general, I start thinking that the (modern)  Christians with their heavy emphasis on "forgiveness" and the horror of "legalism" aren't doing that great a job of preventing risky behaviours. Compare, for instance, Namibia's death rates from Aids to those of Niger above and you'll see what I mean. Of course, all developed countries have a much higher life expectancy despite high cancer rates but when you think that in countries like Mauritania there is practically no health care whatsoever, you start thinking that life expectancy of about 70 sounds quite impressive.

(Age 20

69.5M

71.6F)

Our cat is still missing. We even tried posting an ad on a news site but it didn't help. We started talking about getting a new one and then the neighbour came along and told us that we should fight and that he himself is searching too. All our neighbours loved the cat and they all are of opinion that he is stolen.

 
I guess that's all our news by now.  I baked chocolate muffins and will post a recipe soon. See you later!

Oh yes, last but not least: tomorrow is Candlemas so the last Christmas decorations are going out - just in time for Carnival:)