Pesky Pill Bugs

It's only 8 am in the morning & I'm bored. I've been awake since 5.30 am. Dog's been walked, his teeth had been brushed, his morning drink been given (not alcohol but coconut water). All that's left is to give him a shave & shower him. But what I'll like to do 1st is to go to the library to return my books & head to the shops for dinner ingredients. Library doesn't open till 9 am. I've even gone outside to try & drown some pill bugs.

So, it's spring & I've tried planting some herbs so I'll always have a supply when I need them. The very next day, I saw that my sage is covered in pill bugs. They seem to prefer sage to all the other herbs I have. I brushed them off & searched for a way to rid of them naturally. If we're going to consume the herbs, the last thing I want is to spray them with pesticides. In many websites, they recommend filling tuna cans with beer & burying the cans up to the neck near the plants. The smell of beer is apparently irresistible to the pill bugs. They will climb in but they can't scale the vertical wall & eventually drown.

How it looks like 2 weeks ago.

I tried & it works. I used yogurt tubs coz I have 1 everyday for breakfast. Once I'm done, I'll just chuck the whole thing away. But I think they're just not enough to severely decimate their population. There're millions more where they came from. After that, I read that if you dissolve yeast in water, it works just as well. You don't have to waste a bottle of beer just for that. I have a bottle of expired yeast just good for the job.

So I've placed a tub to the left, right & front of my sage simply becoz I think the sage needs it. Then I placed a few more tubs evenly spaced out between the other herbs. While they're trapping the pill bugs, there are also many who doesn't fall for it. Now, I just have a sorry looking, half eaten sage plant that I'm not sure will survive. 

I was bored so I went out & scooped them up with my garden shovel as they emerged from the ground & dumped them into the yeast solution. They're not really bugs but rather, they actually belong to the crustacean family. Unlike their prawns & lobster cousins, they're land creatures & will drown in water. Sorry, it was you or my plants. 

Here's my sorry looking sage. It's not very clear but many leaves were eaten to the stem & the remaining leaves are brown.

1st Positive Psychic Feedback

I have been doing reiki on hubs & Ton since I learnt it, mostly on Ton Ton. Not that I'm bias or anything. Just that I've always told hubs to come to the bed so I can do him. But I'll wait & wait while he's outside either watching tv or playing games. Then it's way past my bed time & I just go off to sleep. Whereas Ton Ton will just follow me wherever I go, giving me constant access to him.

It will be easier to have a massage table so I can sit on a chair with my legs directly under hub's body. But we don't have the space & sitting cross legged beside him on the bed, stretching across puts terrible strain on my back. So I do it the lazy way.

As usual, he was lying on his back last night, I laid on my right, facing him. I put my left hand on his abdomen. While it helps to put my hand directly on the spot that needs to be reiki-ed, the body will use the energy as it deems fit regardless of where my hand is. Shortly after, I started to feel this sharp pain on my right sole. I know hubs has chronic sole pain from standing long hours at work. I know he said 1 side is worse than the other but I don't know which side it is.

I did what my teacher taught us to do when experiencing pain/discomfort. Dismiss it. We are to tell our mind, "If this pain is not mine, go away immediately." I wasn't expecting it to work even though I've seen it 1st hand during my course. Still a cynic as ever. But the pain really did disappear as if it was never there in the 1st place. So I asked hubs, "You were saying 1 foot is more painful than the other, isn't it? Is it the right foot?" He was surprised. "Yes! How did you know? Has it got something to do with reiki? Are you reiki-ing me? Is that why your hand is here (on his tummy)?"

I've done a few 20 mins sessions with hubs & many 15 mins sessions with Ton Ton but I've never gotten the psychic feedback the teacher & the volunteers who have practised reiki for many years were talking about. I just thought that I'm 1 of the people who never gets it. Sometimes it just comes to you when you least expect it. I wasn't even doing a proper session with both hands on him.

I hope in time to come, I'll be able to develop my psychic abilities. It will certainly pave the way to animal communication in the future.

Work Place Bullying

It came to my knowledge that 1 of the anaesthetist who did 1 of our list for us was asked to leave by the public hospital she was working for due to verbal abuse of staff & patients. Anti work place bullying is a big thing here. We had to view the work place bullying video every year & do a test on it. Still, I was surprised to hear of that. Unlike on Sg, 他们不是说说而已。

How many times have we been screamed at unreasonably in my previous job? There simply isn't any use to bring it up. A staff did & was penalised for it. This is exactly what's wrong. They, the bullies, are allowed to get away with it. So they have every incentive to keep at it.

Sacking the bully drives home the message that work place bullying is not tolerated. More importantly, it reinforces that everyone is worthy of respect. 我们都是人。我们没有贵贱之分。This is something severely lacking in Sg.

2nd Spring In Perth

Spring came way too fast. It certainly feels that way. We're having a 3 days temperature spike, with tomorrow forecasting to hit 31°c. I'm reverting to the night time "headache" of sweating if I have a blanket on but shivering if I have it off. I'm sure pretty soon we'll have to switch to a thinner blanket.

The fly trap I've set up in late winter has already caught 1/5th bottle of flies. I'm just thinking to myself, how many more will it trap comes summer? The bottle is starting to emit a foul stench due to decomposing flies which also works to lure even more unsuspecting flies. But I dread the day I have to clear it so I can mix a new batch of the fly attracting powder.

It's also my 1st day back to scouting for the 1st time in 5 weeks. My regular anaesthetic nurse is back from her holiday so I've passed the baton back to her.

I've got activities planned for this weekend for advance birthday celebration for hubs. Really looking forward to it. In the meantime, I really got to work on getting my fitness level up again. I've got my S Health app set up for working towards a 5 km run & I'm really excited. Let's enjoy spring!

Strawberry Pilgrimage 2015

2nd year running. Perhaps it'll become something of a yearly pilgrimage. We're early this year, thanks to Jen's heads up. The strawberry fields had just been opened as of yesterday to the public. Immediately, I texted hubs, "Let's go tomorrow (today)!" Great minds think alike. Apparently, Nix had already asked hubs to join them today.

Happy man with the biggest strawberry we could find.

Based on last year's experience, I chose to wear slippers as I badly dirtied my track shoes & not to mention the discomfort of having sand in my shoes. I also brought a pair of scissors to cut the strawberries rather than using my nails to pinch the stems off. I had a hard time getting the dirt out from under my nails last year & it just won't do for a scrub nurse to have grubby nails.

We still paid $10 for the tray but it was evident that it had shrunk in size. Also, this year, we have to pay cover charge of $2 per head. It was explained to Nix that groups of people came in together & bought 1 tray. But along the way, they picked & ate so much strawberries that they decided to charge $2 for every person without a tray. Since the tray had shrunk, we decided to have a tray of our own.

Strawberry almond crumble with strawberry ice cream.

I had already sourced out a couple of recipes that utilises strawberries, 1 of which being strawberry ice cream. So last night, I stuck the ice cream tub into the freezer in preparation for today. Looks like there'll be plenty of desserts coming up.

Sama Sama

I don't usually comment on things such as politics. I'm just not interested enough. But election after election, it becomes apparent that it is the same every single time. Be it ruling party or opposition, they resort to dishing out dirt on the other party.

Whatever happened to "不管别人做的好不好, 自己要先做的好。不管别人做的对不对, 自己要先做的对。"? Fight fair not hit below the belt. Let your actual proof do the talking for you. Sad to say, none of them seem to fit the criteria.

Part Time Vs Full Time

Today, my manager asked if I will be interested converting to full time rather than my 30 hours a week part time position. If they offered it to me right at the beginning, I would have taken it. I work full time hours as it is, some weeks slightly over 30 hours, some weeks slightly over 40. It balances itself out. I get paid overtime when I exceed 8 hours of work a day (which is quite frequent by the way, probably 3 to 4 times a week).

Switching to full time means I get a constant salary. I'll get paid the same amount every month. If I do work over time, it will be accumulated till I've got enough hours to get a day off. If I don't hit 38 hours working in theatre, I'll have to be deployed out to the clinic. Not such a good deal to me. Until they make it compulsory, I'll stick to my part time arrangement.