green facts 7

with today's petrol prices ever rising, this info might be useful for some.

- if your tires are too inflated, you lose about 2 euros worth of petrol for every fill-up
- if you transport a bike on top of your car, you add 3 litres/100km to your consumption
- if you drive at 100kph instead of 120kph, you reduce petrol consumption by 20%
- using the aircon too much increases petrol consumption by 15%: roll down those windows if you're not on the motorway!
- try accelerating or braking smoothly
- if you spend more than 6 seconds at a red light, it's worth stopping the engine!
- empty your car of heavy useless stuff and save up to 2% on your annual petrol budget
- know where you're going: use a map or GPS to avoid driving around for ages trying to find a place

common courtesy?

when i got home the other evening, i bumped into one of my neighbours. she's in her 80's, gets around with the help of a rolling frame and has very set ideas about certain things, but is otherwise very nice. anyway, i stopped to have a chat. it only lasted about 5 mns, but when we said our goodbyes, she not only wished me a nice evening but also thanked me for my kindness. which was very nice, but i'm not quite sure it was necessary. even when i didn't know her, i often stopped for a chat, but now that we've been introduced, she seems to feel she has to thank me all the time. so i wonder, do other people not show her the same courtesy? i mean, she's an old woman and i certainly hope other people are being nice to her...

what it means

i know this sounds weird, but although it was becoming obvious my grandmother would die, i actually kept thinking she wouldn't. you see, for some reason i have always believed that she wouldn't die before my wedding. i know it sounds crazy. i was really, really convinced that she would live until she'd seen me married. this belief was strengthened when my mother died. so although my aunt kept saying she was dying, and even hearing it from my father (my aunt has proven, through the last few months, that she was generally pessimistic about my grandmother's condition) the other day, i couldn't shake this idea.

now, technically, i've been thinking for a while now that i wouldn't actually get married, so it really shouldn't matter either way. but somehow, this seems to really hammer it in, like i don't even have a choice anymore. i know this is completely illogical, but there you go.

RIP

my father just called to let me know my grandmother died earlier today. she was 93, and had a full life. she did things that were considered outrageous in those days (after divorcing her husband, she left the kids with him - this was in 1954, imagine the upheaval...) and she was, with a few things excepted, a good grandmother. last year, she was still travelling around the world (to visit her daughter in the States and her son in France), but in the last 6 months she'd broken her hipbone, fallen a few more times, and got several strokes. it was better for her to leave us now, i've been told. i'm sure it's true, and we all knew it was coming. to be honest, though, i didn't think i'd feel this moved about it.

old classmate becomes famous

i was flickling through the pages of a woman's magazine while in a waiting room this morning, and stopped when i saw a name that seemed familiar. a name i hadn't seen since junior high school. there was a picture attached, and that too, looked familiar, but again, it was a long time ago, and several people with similar names are quite popular today, so i wasn't sure it was her until i read the article. and it was. is. and it's great. this girl has become a writer, and a successful one at that. she was apparently even engaged to a very famous stand-up comedian. i'm really happy for her that she's made a good life for herself. now i'm going to see if i can get my hands on one of her books!

i was right!

3 months ago, one of my colleagues was sent a huge bouquet of red roses. and i mean huge. she got them at work, so we all got to see them. they had been sent by her partner, who, despite being a darling (mostly), is not normally prone to sending her flowers. so the first thing that sprang to my mind was that she was pregnant. that or he'd done something he needed to be forgiven for. when i asked her, she said no to both. but as it turned out, i was right. she was pregnant. she's just made it known and she's obviously ecstatic about it, which is great. i'm really happy for them.

a in M - architecture

beautiful picture courtesy of T.

one thing i really liked in Morocco was the architecture. beautiful buildings, sometimes very simple, sometimes very elaborate. thousands of hours of work. but inside, mostly empty. no clutter. i realise i only visited public buildings, but you'd have paintings hanging on nearly every wall in Europe, whereas there, it was just whatever colour it had been painted. in that respect, it reminded me of Japan, which was strange, as i'd never have compared the two cultures, but it wasn't even the only thing that made me think of Asia. kaftans and kimono are also very alike, despite their styles being very different.

green facts 6

i like meat, especially when it's nicely BBQ'ed in the summer. however, eating meat is not the best thing for our planet:

- to make 1 hamburger, 6 sq.m. of forest is turned to grassland
- 80% of drinkable water in the States is used to rear cows
- in one day, 378 millions of litres of water are used in a chicken abattoir; this is the equivalent of the water consumption of a town with 25,000 inhabitants
- 50% of the polluted waters in Europe are are a result of intensive animal farming, including fish farming