fulllife

Did you see Sydney on the news today?

The famous Australian city by the harbor is covered in orange dust. Not just a cover of dust, no it looks like a heavy fog of dust… the air is thick with it. From the quai you can’t even see the world known Opera House, and this landmark is not easily to be overlooked. My whole TV screen was orange as the reporter told us about this phenomenon that is being a new plague for the citizens of the city. Geez, if they don’t have bush fires or dingo’s in or near Sydney, they have other troubles with nature! Very dry in the bush, heavy winds, and Sydney has ‘fun’ again

I was in Sydney many years ago - January 1993, I had to look it up for you - and man, I really loved being there. I loved being in Australia, period. Travelled around for 6 weeks and had a lot of fun, both with Australians and other travellers. One of my best vacations ever. So you understand everytime Australia is in the news, I pay a little extra attention.

The people of Sydney took the orange veil with their laid back look on life. A 72 year old man said he never had seen it before, I think that counts for something. Everybody was wearing masks and shawls for their mouth and some were commenting that their throat hurt “a little”. Now I am an asthma person myself and my heart goes out to all people over there who have respirational problems. While the orange fog may be cleared in a couple of days, the dust will still be in their lungs, and they’ll suffer much longer.

Granted, this item was only 1 minute in the news, while the life of the people of Sydney was totally derailed, and it probably won’t kill anybody except for some people with heavy lung problems maybe - whose life expectancy wasn’t too optimistic anyway. But this little piece of news told us again that whatever we do to live our life in a nice and comfortable way, whatever invention is waiting for us around the corner, whatever new electronic gadget finds its way to the market, it’s nature that goes it’s own way, whether we like it or not. Nothing we can do about it, except cleaning up the mess…

I just saw the funniest news on television… the kind of news that makes you smile. This is the little tale:

Toddler Danny has a puppy, just one week old, so I suppose there were more, still with their mother. Anyway, Danny is playing with this one particular puppy, rolling through the sand and the mud and having fun. But, oh oh, Mum is not going to be happy when she’ll see Puppy all dirty and sandy, so Puppy needs a bath. Sneaking up to the bathroom is not practical, but there is another shower handy and nearby: the flush of the toilet!

Puppy doesn’t like the idea of the flush and wriggles and wriggles to get loose while Danny is persistent to wash all the dirt away… but flushing ánd keeping Puppy under control is a bit too much for any 4-years old. There goes Puppy, literally down the drain…

Panic…

Here comes the hero, in the person of the plumber. With a little plumbers’ camera he locates Puppy’s position in the toilet drain. He askes all the neighbours not to use the toilet flush for a while, starts pushing Puppy through the toilet pipe to a certain position in the sewer system where he can open the cover in the street… and voilà, there is a very little, very distraught and very wet Puppy! 

Danny happy, Puppy too (after a while). 

I bet Puppy will never ever gonna like a bath or a shower in his life…

Did you hear about that young couple in Chicago that was going to be married and honeymoon in Mexico? They couldn’t travel into Mexico because of the pig-fever and the negative travel advice, so they decided to cancel the wedding… Huh? Cancel your wedding because you cannot do it in Mexico and have a honeymoon? What kind of love is that, I wonder…

But wait, there is a fairy tale coming up!

People (total strangers) learned of their misfortune and started to fix things for them, out of the blue. A caterer provided free catering, a fire brigade man offered the young couple HIS vacation on Jamaica as a honeymoon trip instead… and so on. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on TV. And then the young woman commented that she was impressed with these “humantarian actions from total strangers”. Humantarian, humantarian, I always connect that to feeding starving people, sheltering the homeless and saving those in utter danger… I was flabbergasted by both the young couple and these ‘total strangers’ that offered a lending hand. Why not just wed in Chicago instead of Mexico and take a honeymoon to anywhere else in the world except Mexico?

Oooh, oops, I almost forgot, there was one little disappointment in this happily ever after story: the wedding planner in Mexico refused to give back the already paid advance of a 1000 dollars or so…