Work Summer Party and visit from P's parents

Last Friday night was a work summer party. Really fun night! I managed to aquire the feathers towards the end of the night! Food, dancing, wine and song. They also gave out free massages by professional massuese. The two girls either side of me are both Aussies who work in HR. The guy on the right is J, who is a mate of mine too (we both started our job on the same day). It was so nice to go to a party and have fun after a couple of weeks of messy flat due to the kitchen dust and hayfever.

When I got back home it was about 1am, and P's parents had arrived for their weekend vist (is was Father's day here in the UK) , it was nice to see them again. We took them to see the Borough markets and bought loads of yummy food: plum tomatoes, cheese, olives, organic lettuce, fresh pumkin and feta ravioli, some flan/quiche things AND a slice of cake each. this was much easier than cooking when I had a sliiiight hangover.

In the evening we went to the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green, which was excellent. P insisted on sitting in the first row. And I was feeling tired so wasn't feeling up to being challenged by a comedian, so of course every comedian had to direct their questions to me!

The next day P's parents took turns to try out the porsche. In the evening we went for dinner at our local Italian.

Here you can see the all the parts of the new kitchen sitting in our old dining area....

Then by the end of the week we have this lovely new kitchen, complete with replastered walls.

And also the old carpet in the lounge room was replaced too. Much nicer. Although it did create quite alot of dust and I have had really really bad hayfever ever since.

You can't quite make it out, but that is P's Dad, lying on the lounge. It is Father's Day and P's Mum and Dad are over visiting from Northern Ireland.

The company we used is 'Kitchens Direct'. They were great.. no issues. We are having trouble deciding which new appliance is the best. The washing machine, because it is so quiet and the last one sounded like a helicopter was taking off. Or the fridge as its big, not one of those silly English under the bench ones where you have to bend over to find stuff. Or the dishwasher, because we didn't have one before at all! Has to be the dishwasher I think!

The scary swimming centre

This is the outside to the St George's swimming pool in my local borough of Tower Hamlets. Scary isnt' it? They seemed to have closed the original entrance and now use one at the back of the building. No-one seemed to have thought that putting a sign up to alert people to this might be a good idea. Therefore new people to the area wander past what looks like a deserted building, when there is acutually a fully functional swimming pool inside. Its quite dated inside and the diving board is cordoned off as the structure looks unsafe. But hey, the water appears clean and its at least 50m, so great to have a pool close-by.

Tim Flannery- The Weather Makers

The 5th of June was World Environment day and Advance (an association for professional Australians) held a free event where Tim Flannery gave a presentation. He is Australian of the Year and has a new book out called 'The Weather Makers'.

I took a few notes at his presentation and thought I would share them with you as it's such an important topic.

• A 19th century scientist, Wallace, said that the atmosphere was a 'great aerial ocean', because we are as dependent on the atmosphere as a fish is to the sea


• if you shrunk the atmosphere into a liquid, it would be 1/500th the size of the ocean


• since in the industrial revolution, 80 parts per million (ppm) of CO (carbon monoxide) has been added.


• since 1997, and the general dithering of governments at Kyoto, 20 ppm of CO has been added


• it is generally accepted that we need to keep below 2 degrees of warming to stop very extreme climate changes from occuring. This is is 450 ppm and we are already at 420 -430 ppm


• key message: climate change is a fast-moving threat


• an inter-governmental panel on climate change set a conservative projection that there would be a 3% rise in temperature over the century... this is proving too conservative considering that they predicted that there would be a 8% melt of ice caps over decade and in 2006 there was a 5-fold increase in melting. The ice-caps could be gone completely in 30 years.


• the next 'Kyoto' type summit will be held in 2009, in Copenhagen


• things that Tim Flannery would like to see agreed for the sake of humanity are 1) agree a threshold that greenhouse gases cannot go past, 2) agree on a carbon price, 3) forestry price


• The top two things we can do to help to reduce greenhouse gases are 1) introduce a regulatory environment that recognises the true cost of energy, and make businesses/people pay on a user-pays basis, and 2) make use of technology


• He believes that efficiency gains of 50% are possible in houses


• Someone asked if population control should be addressed as strategy to manage, and his response was that there was not enough time for this to make an impact. Any population initiatives would take decades to come into effect, and this is too late


• Another person asked about people's high level of consumption patterns, and pointed out the need to change this. Again he agreed, but said that change would take too long.


• One more question about developing countries and that as they become more industrialised, are contributing large amounts of greenhouse gases. He said that in his view he saw that we have an 'historic debt': since the 1800's onwards, industrial countries have pumped 100ppm into the atmosphere, making us rich. Therefore we have a debt to pay


• trees have a mechanism for drawing out carbon dioxide. Growing tropical trees is a great way to reduce carbon dioxide. There could be a role here for developing countries to be paid for growing trees. Maybe people in developing countries could use of the $85 computers that are being developed at MIT to monitor logging.


• Some interesting points about Australia:


• the impacts of global warming on Australia will be catastrophic. There has been a 10-20% reduction in rainfall in the past 20 years. Streamflow has reduced 60-70% over 30 years.


• rainfall is predicted to decline by 90% due to global warming. As the soil gets hotter, it soaks up the rain faster. There is also more evapotranspiration from the plants.


• soon the Murray River in Australia will not be able to be used for commercial purposes and this will affect a major food region in Australia - olives, citrus fruit is grown here among other things. He knows people who are shooting their dairy cattle there because they think there won't be any pasture for them later this year


• Adelaide is reliant on the rivers from up North, and soon the water will be too salty to be drinkable


• Brisbane's dam is already at 20% capacity and people are on water rationing. There has been some rain lately, enough to make the country look green, but not enough to reverse the trend


• the price of electricity is set to double next year as there is not enough water to run the power stations. Every MW (mega watt) produced, consumes 2 tonnes of water

It was a good talk as he is a scientist who 'tells it like it is'. A not all a tale of woe either as he does point to some constructive things that can be done to make changes. I liked it when he said 'why is it when ever you see a cartoon and to indicate that someone has had a good idea, they show an 18century incandescent lightbulb above their head. It should be an energy saving one!'

Cheltenham

Around 1st June we went to Cheltenham for the weekend. Visited Nanna's 90 year old friend Daisy. Nanna has been friends with her for years, since her step-daughter married Daisy's son. It was nice to meet her. Stayed at a nice B&B Lonsdale house, the owners have looked after Nanna when she stayed there in the past. The photos at the top are of a lovely village called 'Old Slaughter', outside of Cheltenham. There was an old mill that served home made ice-cream and tea and scones by the stream. Lovely stream with ducks. Gorgeous. Just like you imagine an English village to be.