I'll keep this short and sweet...

I'm beginning to think that the whole idea of blogging is all a little too narcissistic for my liking, so I think I'm done...
Ciao xx

The Empathic Civilisation

Wow. Thinking scientifically and historically about increasing empathy. I can't think of a much better way for my mind to tackle this idea...

Kylie from Connecticut - Ben Folds

Oh Ben, you are the master and make me glad I'm getting piano lessons.

Want a challenge? Try Bikram...

One of my beautiful friends finally convinced me to spend Sunday afternoon with her at Bikram Yoga. I'd never heard of it before I met her, so here's the rundown; you spend about 10mins lying in the room then complete 90 minutes of yoga postures (check out the pictures at http://www.yoga-108.net/bikram_postures.htm) and a 5 minute lie down before you leave. Doesn't sound so bad except that the room is heated to 40 degrees Celsius! I've done similar yoga postures before and quite honestly it was nowhere near intensive enough for my liking, but with Bikram I had to stop for a few minutes in the middle of the session cos I was one step away from throwing up or passing out! I play a decent amount of sport and I would like to think that I am reasonably athletic (only once ever have I worked myself so hard that I nearly vomited), but Bikram, damn, you nearly had me beat! Who would have thought that stretching could be so demanding on your body? But I guess nearly two hours moving around in a sauna will do that to you! I have a free pass for next Sunday, but can I stomach it? I'm hoping so, but regardless, I know I'll be furious at myself if I pike out now so I know I'm gonna have to go back just to conquer it. My respect for my friend's mental strength has increased dramatically. She is tough. Love it!

Today's winners are...

Here's today's installment of gratefulness (though I do promise that this is not going to last). I'm not really sure why, but it comes with a food theme.

I am thankful that:
5. God tasked someone with the all important job of creating Nutella.
4. although I ate an entire tub of Nutella in 3 days, I can still happily fit into my skinny jeans.
3. I managed to stumble upon the delectable squid arrabbiata at Giuseppe Arnaldo & Sons on Southbank.
2. I am now officially addicted to Sacla's arrabbiata pasta sauce (and although it costs twice as much as any other, my Italian genes tell me it's close to the best you'll ever find in a jar).
1. my Oma taught me to make her amazing Dutch meatballs which I ate tonight. Yum!!

And the winner is...

Understandably, my husband is getting fed up with me being restless, so he asked me to find five things to be thankful for every day. I think this is definitely a beneficial thing to do (for everyone really), so write a comment if there's something you're particularly grateful for! I'm enjoying the fact that they're going to be quite mundane (so apologies if you don't find this to be groundbreaking), because what I really want is to be content with a good, old, normal life. So here are today's winners in no particular order.

I am thankful that:
5. I live close to my work and can sleep nice and late.
4. even though Paul is quite ill, give him a few days and he'll be perfect.
3. my workplace is so much friendlier than it has ever been.
2. many of my friends and family love me enough that they called to check up on me when I was injured.
1. even though I quite literally have over 2500 pages of exams to mark over the next week, I love my job and I love my kids.

Ethiopian anyone?

Tonight I went with my sister and a friend to try an Ethiopian restaurant in Footscray that we'd heard about. Danni put the word out to a group of her friends and not surprisingly most of them responded with cries of horror that we could not go to such a scary and unknown destination. Okay, I admit, we ate with our hands and didn't use any utensils or plates, but the food and beer was fantastic. What I really want to know is why people are so anxious about the unknown. I absolutely love trying new things! In fact I will even make a point of trying things that I'm pretty confident I won't like.

According to psychologists Costa and McCrae, there is a whole personality dimension devoted to openness to experience. Some people will be down the lower end of the continuum and I guess I would sit at the higher end. I absolutely love the way that their personality theory was created. The idea is that if anybody had ever behaved in a certain way or shown particular personality traits ever in the history of humanity, then someone would have created a word to describe what they saw. So Costa and McCrae compiled every single word ever used to describe a person and eventually whittled them down into five distinct categories. These are Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism and are believed to currently be the most valid and reliable method of measuring enduring personality traits.

So if anyone thinks they may be high on Openness, grab my phone number and give me a call! Or if anyone else wants to use an atlas to choose a restaurant, then come join me! If there's anything that you've ever wanted to do but never got around to it, then lets do it. Variety is the spice of life!