Shit I Learned In The English Countryside

February 4, 2017 Thomas Takes On.... 1 Comment

On my weekends to try and get out more and see a little more of England I have been taking tours to different parts of southern England. I did one tour through the Cotswolds which was really beautiful, I went to Shakespeare’s birthplace and home in Stratford Upon Avon, wandered the streets of Oxford and then headed south into Kent to visit Dover and Leeds Castle. On the way I picked up a few fun facts…. here they are!

The phrase ‘waiting on tenterhooks’ comes from the medieval days. In the castles, the place is usually freezing cold and when the royalty arrive, they have to wait for all of the tapestries and curtains to arrive to hang over the walls. The hooks they use to hang up the carpets are called ‘tenterhooks’. As such, waiting on tenterhooks is waiting on the carpets to come in an uncomfortably cold state.

20161113_115830 — The lovely green town of Bibury

‘Curfew’ is derived from the phrase ‘curb the fire’. Back in the days of Shakespeare the people used to have fires burning inside their houses to keep the house warm. There was a time that everyone had to have the fire out by and this was the ‘curfew’ or the time to ‘curb the fire’.
During these times they also used rope beds. The ropes were crisscrossed in a pattern across the bed and you would lay a blanket down and sleep on it. ‘Good night, sleep tight’ refers to wishing the person that the ropes on the bed would stay tight so that you wouldn’t slouch down in the middle of the night while you were sleeping because the ropes came loose.

20161203_130026 — The room where William Shakespeare was born. Note the pull out rope bed

Cherries are a traditional symbol of innocence. ‘To pop one’s cherry’ or to take their innocence comes from this traditional symbol.
Up until the age of five, they used to dress boys in dresses like they did girls. This is because it made them easier to toilet train. Only after the boys were toilet trained were they then allowed to be dressed in pants and were identifiable as boys instead of girls.

dscf5882 — A boy…. dressed as a girl… for potty training.

Grapes are a traditional icon of fertility. This is why they use dried grapes and fruit in wedding cakes. The top tier was traditionally saved for the christening of the first born to wish for the fertility of the child however these days most people save it for their first wedding anniversary.
Each of the different houses in the Cotswolds has a different fenlight window pattern above the front door. This is because in the days before house numbers, people could identify who they were visiting based on the pattern on the window.
There are 2600 toilets in Wembley Stadium

It was the Romans that invented road signs. They placed markers along the side of the road that later became known as milestones and these told you how many miles to your destination.
Dry stone wall building is an incredible art and it takes approximately one tonne of stone to build one meter of wall to ensure that the rocks all fit together snuggly for the structural integrity of the wall.
In the small town of Bourton on the Water, they have a football match in the town every August bank holiday. The catch. They play the football match in the water…. not sure how but I would like to check this out at some point…

20161113_114311 — Apparently the world’s most beautiful street, Arlington Row.

To support the wool industry of the Cotswolds, several laws were passed by the monarchy. Queen Elizabeth the first made it law that you had to wear a wool cap to church on Sundays. Charles the second made it law that if a person dies that the coffin they are buried in must be lined in wool and that the person must also be dressed in wool.

So that is it for now with the things that I have been learning as I have travelled around this glorious countryside. Stay tuned for more interesting things I have learned on my travels about the place next week!

Challenge, Learning, Life

Teaching, Stress and Depression

January 28, 2017 Thomas Takes On.... 8 Comments

Hi. I’m a teacher. I am stressed to the eyeballs all the time. Because of this I find myself not sleeping, lonely, gaining weight and slumping into a state of depression.

Everyday I get up and travel an hour on public transport to get to school. I teach long days and am at school between 8.15 and 5.30 most days. After this I travel another hour to get back home and I attempt to go to my boxing class that I normally love. Some days I am so exhausted I can barely keep my hands at my face. Some days I don’t have it in me to even punch the bag. So I turn around, go home, attempt to make dinner, shower and get to bed. I usually don’t find myself in bed until some point after 9pm. Then I sit down to try and do planning. Or marking. Or some other form of work. I get 6 odd hours of sleep and the cycle starts again.

By Friday I am so exhausted I can barely function. I go home and go to bed and sleep for 10 hours just to make up for the lack of sleep during the week. By the time the weekend rolls around I have to actively force myself to do things or try and see people. For the most part I feel like I don’t have the energy in me to move. I don’t have the wittiness to hold a proper conversation. I am just spent. I am depressed. And come Monday, I have rested just enough to take the edge off to start the cycle again. I do this for 7 weeks in a row until I have really burnt the candle at both ends and then I get a week to try and get myself back on track before it all starts again. And I dread it. If I force myself to go and do something, I start the week off even more tired and the cycle continues. I don’t have many friends here. The friends I do have I see every couple of weeks. I don’t have time to date. If I met someone I would barely have time or energy to spend with them, not that they would probably want to spend time with me anyway considering the kind of person I have become.

I hate how negative I have become. I literally hate everything. I find no joy in anything I used to. I resent that for someone usually so social that I cannot be bothered to speak to people. I resent that for every time I try to make a positive change that I feel like I am pushed backwards by some other problem I have to deal with or more work that I have to face. I resent constantly feeling like whatever it is that I do is not good enough. To the point where I don’t feel like I am enough anymore. I am not enough to be in a relationship. I am not enough to be someone’s mother. I am not enough to do this job. There just isn’t enough of me left as a person to be anything that I once even thought I wanted. And yet for the sake of others I spend the entire day pretending like everything is fine when it really isn’t.

If it is not enough to have to mark piles and piles of exams. I have piles and piles of books to mark. Eleven piles actually. Every three weeks so they can be taken away and ‘scrutinised’ by someone who can tell me I am not doing my job well enough. Oh and the homework marking. Then there are the endless observations chewing up your free time. The neverending behavioural issues that never get dealt with and then get worse because they never get dealt with. The constant fighting and arguing with disrespectful kids who do not feel that they have to follow any instructions you give them or even speak to you in a tasteful manner. I don’t want to do it anymore. I feel like my life isn’t mine and that I am running on autopilot. I don’t remember a time when I felt rested. I don’t remember a time I felt good about the things that I was doing and good about my job. I don’t remember when I last felt good about living. And yet I am stuck dealing with this and I don’t know how to get out. All I know is this….

When you have nothing of yourself left, you have nothing of yourself to give.

Teaching is too stressful. And too much stress leads to depression where I am concerned because my hormones and cortisol levels become really unbalanced. And that is no way to live a life. So what now???

Learning, Travel

Shit Learned In Albania

January 22, 2017 Thomas Takes On.... 3 Comments

Six months ago I travelled through Albania and it was one of my favourite countries that I visited in my trip through the Balkans. I learned quite a lot of shit there and despite the fact that this is well overdue, here is what I learned.

Albanian’s love American Presidents

In the capital city of Tirana not only is there a statue of George W. Bush, the first of the American President’s to ever visit Albania, but there is a George W. Bush Street and a George W. Bush café where he visited. They apparently rope the table he sat at off so that nobody else can sit there because that’s Bush’s table….. my gosh. On top of this, there is a Clinton statue erected in Prishtina (the capital city of Kosovo) most likely as a tribute from the ethnic Albanians as thanks for intervening in the conflict with Serbia. What I do find incredibly humorous, especially now post election, is that the Albanian’s had a special Hillary Clinton statue commissioned for Sarande in the south for when she became President…. I don’t know what they are going to do with it now since that went all pear shaped!

Albania’s roads are shit

The dictator Enver Hoxha during times of communist reign decided that with all of the money he had he would invest in spending it on 70,000 war bunkers at a cost of 1,000 dollars each. This is 70 million dollars that could have been spent on roads and other infrastructure. He did this because he was utterly paranoid that Albania was going to be attacked. Of course this was all unfounded and now as you drive across the country you can see bomb shelters all over the place that have never been used.

20160810_063205 — The view over the coast from the winding high roads towards southern Albania

Speaking of Shit….

Shitet is the word used ‘for let’. I don’t know why, but I find this thoroughly amusing…. ‘shitet’ lol….

20160814_144539 — Shitet….. lol…. what a shit apartment.

Albanians are lovely giving people

It annoys me a lot that I have heard a bunch of racist things from the mouths of ignorant people. At one point a British guy I met in Italy asked me why I would bother going to Albania as they are all aggressive gang members and thugs. As someone who has lived with and teaches Albanians everyday I can tell you this is not the case. In fact when the Bosnian’s were getting displaced from their country by the horrific Serbian regime to rid all Muslims from the country, Albanian’s gave refuge to more refugees than any other country despite how poor the country was at that time. They are a family oriented and giving people.

20160812_105220 — Goats wandering along the beaches of Jale

It’s all about the Eagle!

The Albanian flag is the black two headed eagle based on a red back drop to represent the blood lost fighting for the country. The eagle has it’s roots back to the Byzantine era. This eagle is featured and revered quite prominently. The Albanian word for eagle is Shqiponje. The flag is called the Shqiperise, the people are called the Shqiptar, the country is called Shqiperia. Everything eagle. It is a hugely embraced emblem of who they are as people.

Albanian drivers are crazy

Pedestrian crossing? What pedestrian? You will find your average Albanian driver cruising around with a cigarette in one hand and a phone in the other leaving you wondering what they use to actually hold the steering wheel and where their eyes are for driving. And yet somehow it seems to work. You just have to make sure that at all times you are on alert and don’t get in their way. Drivers also seem to get a little bit extra crazy if they are driving for weddings. They hang red and white scarves out the windows and wave them ferociously as they honk their horns loudly and often. It is quite the affair to behold!

Tortoises eat watermelon!!

Yeah I know right! Totally weird but totally cute!

20160814_093803 — In my jammies feeding the tortoise my breakfast.

So that is about it for my time. I did spend quite a large proportion of my time sitting on a beach in Jale down in the south and hiking from Thethi through to Valbona which is some of the most spectacular hiking I have ever seen in my life. It is such a beautiful country to visit and if you get the chance to, you should definitely go. Just don’t be in a hurry to get anywhere fast!

Challenge, Learning, Life

Bored and Boring…. My Worst Fear.

December 14, 2016 Thomas Takes On.... Leave a comment

As I sit here and attempt to conjure up some random shit to do I am actively trying to negate my feelings of boredom. As I fall into the daily routine of doing the same things day in, day out, I see my life pass me by with little meaning. I don’t want to be one of those people who wake up 50 years from now and realise that I haven’t done any of the things that I wanted to do. For the most part, people tell me I am crazy. I like to call it ‘actively participating in life’. In fact, every New Years I create a yearly ‘bucket list’ instead of New Year’s resolutions. I work my way through checking the things off the list and it gives me mini goals and something to do.

The weirdest thing about being an active participant in life is that when you aren’t doing something new and different, everything else just seems bland. It is one of the appeals of the road and travel to me and another reason why I struggle so much with staying in one place. Of late, the monotony of routine is really bothering me. Same food, same work at school, same bus, same gym, same same, but different. And yet I have been go karting, dressed as Santa and gone on a park crawl at Santacon, taken bus tours to scenic parts of England and taken a few walking tours. But none of it seems to be filling the gaping hole of boredom I feel right now.

I feel like a lot of this has to do with lacking new and open people in my life. The hardest thing about living in a new city and working very long hours is that you rarely get to meet new people. You barely get to know the people you do meet because people working day in and day out, they don’t really offer much of themselves. I find myself sitting here feeling like I don’t have much to offer them either. I find myself feeling boring to the vast majority of people I interact with and maybe that is my fault because I spend so much time trying to hide behind the mask of accepted ‘normality’ and I don’t know how to behave. I find that often that I am met with judgement instead of support for many of the random things that I choose to do. “Why go get drunk in the street dressed as Santa? Why go learn to fly a helicopter? Why go on a Jack the Ripper Walking tour?” While I sit here and ask ‘why not?’ I find that I spend a lot of my time hiding what I may consider some of the best parts of me from people. I find it isolating. I find it tiring. And more so I wonder why I do it and why I feel that I have to to be accepted in general society. My answer at the end of the day is always to move.

As I sit here after just booking my flight to go home and visit my friends and family, maybe the answer it to go back to those that have known me the longest. Those that are used to my antics and have learned to love me for them and not despite them. Those that will even join in when my brain starts getting bored and crazy. But even then I feel torn with not being understood at times. Maybe the solution is to start letting more people in? And yet that would involve investing time to do so, which I don’t have very much here. All I know is this.

Boredom will kill me. It will make me a shell of a human and take away the fundamental parts of me. So I won’t have it. I will continue to try and grow and change and try new things.

As for being boring? I really don’t know. That is in the eye of the beholder. I had a guy in a bar once tell me I was the most boring person he’d ever met. I told him that if I was that boring he could fuck off and go away. But then I also didn’t really engage. I was in a headspace where I couldn’t be bothered, just like I am feeling right now. Too tired to let people in.

So maybe what I need to consider is this. Who it is that I seem to feel comfortable allowing to behold who I am? And maybe I need to think about revealing more of myself without fear of judgement and persecution, which is a hard thing considering I get told frequently not to scare new people I meet. It plays on some of the largest insecurities I have of myself. Maybe it is time to try and put some of those insecurities to bed and move forward. But then again, maybe it is time to move to somewhere I can feel more accepted for being who it is that I am. If you have any idea of where that is, let me know…. I am all ears.

Challenge, Learning, Life, Travel

Backpacking Bed Bugs: How To Rid Yourself Of Them On The Road

December 7, 2016 Thomas Takes On.... Leave a comment

Bed bugs. Ugh. the one thing that sure fire knows how to ruin all travel. For me, I am allergic to them. The sheer number of times I have woken up to slapping one on my leg and catching it in the act of feasting on me is numerous. The bites from there swell up into giant circles an inch in diameter and make me shake. The insomnia I experience settling down to sleep after an attack can last weeks and it is always never far from the back of my mind when I set down into a new place.

On the internet you will see all kinds of tools to help deal with this problem and most involve using a dryer. But I put to you, what does one do exactly when they are in the middle of nowhere in the tropics in wet season and there is not a dryer to be found anywhere? So here are my tips of the trade. How to avoid the pesky pains… and if you do have an encounter, things that you can do to get rid of them.

Avoiding Bed Bugs

The rules of the land are as such. Never ever enter a room or move your luggage in until you have inspected the mattresses and surrounding wooden areas for bed bugs. I don’t even need to tell you that if you find one, hightail it out of there quick smart.

The most tell tale signs on sheets, mattresses and bed frames are small brown spots. Where they basically have had their feast and passed it on through. For heavy infestations you will actually find clumps of eggs together in the corners of the mattresses and bed frames and often you will find the bug. My gut will tell me quite frequently whether they are there or not. It is like I am so well honed these days I can smell the creepy things. Anyway, even if you have the slightest feeling they are there, get the hell out and go somewhere else.

What To Do If You Are Exposed

Treating Your Bites

One morning I woke up after spending the night on a sleeper train in India to find that my entire face had been mauled by bed bugs. I had about 7 bites in total each about the size of an American quarter.

They can be some of the most sore, itchy and persistently lasting bites that you will ever manage. I recommend hauling arse to a pharmacy to get the following to help….

Antihistamines – these will not only help you to calm down and sleep better but will help take the itch out of the bite.
Cortisone cream – a secondary measure to the antihistamine if you can get it is a hydrocortisone cream such as betamethasone. Use only a tiny amount on each bite and it will help to reduce the localized swelling, pain and itch.
Tiger balm can also help. I had one morning where I woke up still drunk in Thailand shaking from being bitten by bed bugs across my back and a lovely Thai woman sat and rubbed tiger balm into my back to try and calm me down whilst I sat shaking and jittery and refusing to go back into any room sleeping. “It’s OK honey, it’s OK”.

If at any point you are in a place like I was in Malang and there is no other place to sleep but this hostel then there are certain things you can do. I for one refuse to sleep in the room if I have been bitten in it. I have slept on the floor or couch of a hotel lobby 3 times now because I refuse to go back in. If you are in a place where you can’t find any and yet your gut suspects they are there you can set your bed up like this:

The best thing to use is a giant plastic shower curtain made out of smooth and slippery plastic. They can’t walk on smooth plastic. If I have no shower curtain I have been known to put garbage bags taped together over the bed and tucked on at the sides and then use a sleep sheet on top.

To protect your luggage while in this situation either put it in a garbage bag or sit it on a sheet of plastic or garbage bag on the floor making sure all of the parts of your bag are on the plastic.

Getting Them Out Of Your Luggage Before Moving On

The most difficult thing for a backpacker to deal with is getting rid of them if you think you have them. Which of course is all well and good when you are in a country with industrial dryers. But when in Indonesia, India, Malaysia even, this just wasn’t happening. So then we have to come up with creative means with which to solve the problem.

My tools of the trade are

Black garbage bags (must be black)
90 percent rubbing alcohol. 70 percent will work but the more alcohol the better.
A brush. Dish brushes or this solid brush I have in the photo is good.
A packet of wipes
A can of bug spray containing permethrin, allethrin or any other chemical known to kill bed bugs. In developing countries these are easier to get your hands on than in the first world as many of them are controlled substances here.

If you are in a place that is ridiculously hot, the aim is to get the bed bug’s core temperature to 50 degrees celcius for over an hour. This will be enough to kill them. Loosely tie all of your stuff made out of material in separate garbage bags. If they are crammed too tightly packed then the temperature won’t get through all of the stuff in the bag and the bug won’t get hot enough to die.

Any of the stuff you have that is plastic or has smooth surfaces wipe it over with 80% rubbing alcohol or alcohol wipes. Also if you have books and electronics check in the nooks and crannies and especially all of the seams of the books. I have found a hatchling in a book of mine before. Freaked the hell out of me. Got rid of that thing quick smart.

I also take to my bags and in all the creases with a can of permethrin. This stuff will kill any bug on contact. It will not kill the eggs, so you will need to find a dryer in coming days or wait until it gets hot enough to put the bag into a black garbage bag for a day or two in the hot sun.

Do all of these things and you should be fine. Remember, the best defence is checking before you even get a problem. If you do have a problem, your best weapon is the plastic bag. Anything that has a chance of being exposed, including your clothes goes straight into a plastic bag until you have time and space to deal with it effectively. After all of this stuff, if you get the opportunity to throw your stuff into a dryer, definitely take it, because the last thing you want to be doing is taking these little bastards home!

Happy killing spree and ridding your stuff of these awful vermin… and remember, goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite!

Life

30 Things You May Not Know About Me

November 29, 2016 Thomas Takes On.... Leave a comment

It is funny because I meet people from all over the globe and I feel like there are some things that my home people know that my traveller friends don’t and some that my traveller friends know that my home friends don’t. So I thought this week, I would disclose some fun facts that you may or may not know about me. You definitely won’t know any of this if you don’t know me….. anyway, here goes.

I was born on a Tuesday, premature, still a 9 pound fatty and had no name for four days as my parents spent that long arguing about it.
Over the years, sports I have been involved of included ballet (8 years), netball (year 8 premiers in the C division… lol), springboard diving and boxing.
I play piano, ukulele and sing. I have been singing since I could talk. The first albums I learned were Vision of Love by Mariah Carey and Whispering Jack by John Farnham. I knew all the words by the time I was 4.
I write my own music and have recorded 2 EP’s. I am currently thinking about my 3rd, which is daunting because it’s been 10 years since my last.
I have visited 55 countries at the time of writing this. 56 within the next month. Hopefully 70 by the end of 2017.
Quite often I will buy bananas or bread rolls at the supermarket and give them to homeless people on the way home to remind myself to be kind and to remind myself of how fortunate I am.
As much as I do not like to admit it, I have OCD tendencies like my mother. I have a need to pop the fuschia flower buds on the neighbours bush everyday when I walk past it down the road. I have to systematically travel around an area and do all of it before I consider it done and can move on. I have fifty lists of things to do.
I spent 6 months driving a crane in an aluminium smelter for work when I was 18-19.
I have a forklift licence.
When I was 17 I applied to study medicine at University. I got a place and I turned it down in favour of a science degree instead.
When I was 15 I went on work experience as a teacher and after an embarrassing and disgusting come on by a year 6 student swore that I would never, ever become a teacher. Yeah well that happened…. not.
Foods that I absolutely cannot stand are coffee, beer and olives.
I go through waves of suffering from depression and anxiety.
I am a genetically predisposed hoarder which is not exactly the most amazing quality for a backpacker. Especially considering that I am like a pack horse and can carry quite a lot of heavy things…. which leads to backpacking problems with hoarding because instead of throwing things out I carry them.
I have an obsession with pretty bras and underpants. As a teenager they were rare in larger sizes and so now I just buy the whole store out. I still however feel that most of the time they are too pretty to wear.
I cook meat really well, I cannot cook cakes to save my life.
I hate rings. I cannot stand wearing them and feel like I have finger claustrophobia. If I ever get married I even doubt I will wear one then.
When I am sad I listen to Mr Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan and it makes me feel better.
I thrive on change and hate routine. For most people it is the opposite. I however find that if the routine isn’t changing and I am not doing something new to challenge me I will go crazy.
I do not fear much at all and if I do, I push myself to face it. My greatest fear is of not being able to breathe.
My favourite animals are elephants, owls and otters.
I can quote the movie Clueless word for word from start to finish.
At 5, my favourite book was ‘There’s A Hippopotamus On My Roof Eating Cake’. At 16 my favourite book was Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. At 25 my favourite book was Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden. At 31 the best book I have read lately is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.
My house cleaning music is Wolfmother. There is nothing like vacuuming to Joker and the Thief.
I often do puzzle books when I am travelling to keep my brain sharp. Not Sudoku though because I find them boring.
I cannot sleep on my back. Always on the side or front.
Growing up, I hated both Play School and Sesame Street. I preferred to watch Fat Cat and absolutely loved Alf and Young Talent Time! I had Alf everything.
I used to hate country music but after a stint of living in Calgary I now love it.
The only bones I have ever broken are the stress fractured metatarsal bones in my feet. Fractures I acquired after backpacking in flip flops. Lesson learned. Now I cannot wear high heals anymore and spend most of my days in Asics running shoes with orthotics.
I have made at least 4 different costumes for costume parties from duct tape alone.

So there you have it. A small insight into my lunatic mind. Until the next one, peace out! x

Learning, Life, Opinion

What I Reckon: About Being On A Diet

November 23, 2016 Thomas Takes On.... Leave a comment

*WARNING – Prepare for somewhat rant…..*

A while ago I decided that I was sick of being at the size I was at and that it was time to do something about it. Seven years ago, I was boxing, tiny and felt great about my body. After a glorious bout of pneumonia which cut me out of exercise for a year and then a nice long stint in the bread basket of Canada where everywhere you look is a processed food, I finally found myself in the position to be able to do something about the weight. And so after 3 months of boxing and getting into a decent fitness routine, I started on the Atkins diet (because my body retains water when I even look at a carb). I lost the weight, then under the stress of work and more travel, it happened again and I ballooned. So back on the bandwagon I go. To make myself do it, I booked a cheap Groupon photoshoot for fun.

One of the biggest challenges I have found to weight loss is not even the strictness that is required to stay away from the carbs. I got to that point now where I was 3 weeks in I don’t crave or want them anymore. My biggest challenge to dieting is other people’s attitudes. It is a sad thing to say but for most people, the biggest challenge that they will face is lack of support from other people. I used to have this all the time when I was living at home with Mum and Dad because they didn’t want to eat what I was cooking and I wasn’t being considerate of others. I now cop it from work colleagues who seem to correlate levels of fun with the amount of alcohol you consume. One colleague even finds pleasure in putting carbs under my nose on a daily basis and I want to punch him, not because I want his bread roll (the thought of which now makes me want to puke) but because he is being such an unsupportive turd. Fun also seems to be correlated with excess consumption of not so healthy food also. If you refuse to consume you are then ‘antisocial’.

And so I pose this question… While everybody says that they are happy for you when you lose weight, are they actually? Or are they annoyed that they themselves do not have the strength and willpower to go out and do what they want so they find comfort in bringing you down to see you fail. And more so, is this not a reflection of society in general and the need to cut down the tall poppy instead of embracing and encouraging the strengths that we have. I see it on a daily basis in the school system with the smart kids getting bullied or attacked for ‘enjoying science’. You will see it in the media with every celebrity attacking each other through Twitter about the clothes they wear or the things they say and do. It makes me angry. And what makes me even more angry is that people tell me that I must be angry because I need a carb. The truth is, it makes me angry that we cannot as people support the positive decisions that others make in their lives because we fear that it somehow makes us inferior or less of a person if we are then not making these same positive decisions.

Truth be told, I don’t want to progress up the chain of command at work. I don’t find the trade off of the title for the extra stress beneficial for me as a person. But I will support those who do because I can appreciate the work and dedication it takes to step up. I don’t want to be an Olympic boxer. But I will support and appreciate those I meet with the natural ability and hardcore work ethic that want to go all the way. Hell, I will support people in whatever positive decisions they want to make in their life. Because it is their life. And whatever makes them happy is whatever makes them happy. Majority of people will support these ventures… but weight loss? Why is this such a different thing for people to come to grips with and support. Why is there such a peer pressure to drink more and eat more rubbish over the peer pressure to avoid clogging your arteries, live longer and be healthy? Is it because we feel less bad ourselves about trashing our bodies if there are others engaging in the activity too? And then somehow we can vilify our behaviour knowing that it is because others do it we can too, guilt free. Therefore anyone who chooses not to engage is labelled a ‘loser’, ‘downer’, ‘spoil sport’ or ‘boring’ and hopefully it will push these people back into the hole of conforming to peer pressure so that everyone can feel good about themselves? So many questions. I don’t know the answers. But what I do know is this….

Please, if you are reading this and you have a friend that is trying to lose weight, please be a good human and support the positive changes they are making in their life. Support the fact that they don’t want to die and early death due to heart attack or obesity. Support the fact that what they are doing is hard. Even if you don’t agree with it. Even if you feel that it imposes on your social life and the things you can do with them. Even if you feel inferior because you think you can’t. Support it. Change your attitude about the idea of ‘fun’ to not include copious drinking and broaden your horizons to include something new. Who knows, you might find something new that you enjoy and feel better about yourself in the process.

And to those on the journey of dropping the pounds, congratulations for making a change! I am with you all the way and we can do this with or without the support of others because we are strong enough and courageous enough to make change on our own. We deserve this. And so we will have it!

Learning, Life, Travel

Shit I Learned In Serbia

November 15, 2016 Thomas Takes On.... Leave a comment

Serbia was one of the first countries I travelled in my trip around the Balkans and it was probably a good idea that I went to Serbia first. I think if I had have gone there last and heard some of the things come out of locals mouths that I heard while I was there I may have just slightly lost my shit at them. For the most part, Serbians are very lovely and passionate people. However it is an interesting place to travel if you want to see just how far government propaganda and media can place some of the most nonsensical and ridiculous ideas into a people and have them believe that these notions are true. Today the Serbs still fight for their pride despite losing the war and face in front of the world at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic. On the other hand, the Serbs also faced massive atrocities at the hands of the Turks from the Ottoman period and their five hundred year occupation. Add it all together and you have an interesting country that should be observed with a critical eye.

Here is some super trivial shit I learned in Serbia….

The Novi Sad staple diet must consist of popcorn and ice cream because I failed to find any other form of food while I was there. (Maybe this happened on purpose.)

20160727_194812 — Sunset over the fort at Novi Sad

I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet. Hooray!
The name ‘Belgrade’ comes from the Serbian ‘beo grad’ which means ‘white city’.
During the NATO bombings of Belgrade, the animals in the zoo got out and were roaming the city. This includes the elephants and tigers…. shame they didn’t find and a) stomp on or b) eat Slobodan Milosevic.
Serbs are unimpressed with nudity. So much so that this statue was shunned and removed from the town centre to where it could not be seen by the public.

Nis was home of Constantine the Great. It was where eventually build his house the Medijana.

Back in the days of the Ottomans, the more windows you had on your buildings, the more taxes you had to pay.
Nikola Tesla is apparently Serbian…. he seems to be claimed by many different places around the Balkans, but his ashes rest in Belgrade’s Tesla Museum despite him never actually visiting Belgrade when he was alive.

dscf3843 — Getting electrocuted at the Tesla Museum

There is a sign in the city centre which has an arrow pointing to the moon so that when people get super drunk on rakija they still know which way is up

Tito was a cool guy who was loved by many and had a rule of communism that was way less harsh than that of many other communist regimes of the world….
The Yugoslavian National History Museum in Belgrade is a joke and gives no insight into anything that happened in Yugoslavia except for the fact that Tito was an ‘awesome dude’.
And of course my glorious tour guide told everybody that it wasn’t Serbia’s fault that Yugoslavia broke apart and that everybody else decided to leave because of ‘religious differences’ and whatever anyone else tells you about it is false. She was also fairly adamant that NATO had no right to be in Serbia and couldn’t understand why it is that they bombed a few buildings because they were all innocent. Again, it was lucky that I hadn’t yet been to Bosnia or I would have been enlightening her with a few facts about say, the genocide at Srebrenica…. but anyway, I guess I learned that ignorance and propaganda reign supreme.

dscf3845 — A destroyed building from the 1996 NATO Bombings

Despite some of the negative emotions that I had towards the Serbian government and the ignorance of some of the people that live there, I did find the local Serbians to be an incredibly generous and lovely group of people (well unless I was trying to by Bulgarian money at the exchange – the Serbs don’t seem to like any of their neighbours). I enjoyed my time here and wished that I had more time to get out into the countryside and explore further.

Learning, Life, Travel

Shit I Learned In Lithuania

November 9, 2016 Thomas Takes On.... 2 Comments

In my half term break from school I decided to go visit the Baltics and from when I decided this was an excellent idea in March until when I went in late October, I still thought this was a fantastic idea. Then I got there and froze my arse off because it was so cold. At one point I was chasing snowflakes around outside with my tongue hanging out for entertainment to forget about how I couldn’t feel my face. So the first thing I learned here was this.

Don’t go to Lithuania after September.

Here is some other random shit I learned whilst I was making my way around the wondrous Lithuania:

You cannot buy tinned soup in Lithuania

I tried. I failed. When all you want when you are sick and snotting all over the place is a large can of chunky soup and all you can find are Maggi sachets, life is going to get a bit disappointing.

You can be polite sneezing here.

The word for thank you is aciu, pronounced ‘achoo’ like the sneeze sound. Also a plus when you are sick.

There is an independent country within Vilnius

There is a country within the city of Vilnius known as the Republic of Uzupio. They have their own constitution and it is hilarious. “A dog has the right to be a dog”, “everyone has the right to be loved, but not necessarily”. Amazeballs….. anyway, everyone who lives here has a passport and they have an independence day party every year.

Other countries love occupying Lithuania.

There were the Danes, the Swedes, the Poles, the Russians, the Nazi’s and again the Russians….. pure ridiculousness. In 1989, whilst under the occupation of the Russians towards the end of the Cold War, over 2 million people joined hands on the road that stretched from Tallinn to Vilnius in one massive straight line to demonstrate unity and a want for independence. This is the longest human chain recorded in history. They had to wait a few years, but they eventually came out from under the Russians to claim their independence and have been their own country ever since.

Religious pissing contests are funny

Under the reign of the catholics, no other buildings were to be taller than the catholic church in Vilnius. So as an ode to ‘screw you’ the Jewish decided that if they couldn’t go up, they would go down. So they dug out two floors in the basement to make sure that they had the “tallest” building in city. Cheeky shits!

dscf4815 — Stunning gothic church in Vilnius

Lithuanians love basketball

I mean they are totally obsessed with basketball. Any other sport that would otherwise be played here falls to the wayside compared to the Lithuanian love of basketball.

Churches are not just useful as churches

When the French arrived, this particular church was turned into a storage facility for Napoleon’s guns. Then after the French departed, the Germans spent a stint here changing all the shapes of the windows so they could get the bells out and melt them down to make more guns. Then after that the Russians came in and banned any religion whatsoever and it commissioned to be an ‘atheist museum’. What do you even put in an atheist museum?? Odd.

dscf4804 — The church where Napoleon kept his guns

You can get baptised more than once.

In fact, to encourage people to become baptised upon the arrival of the religious folk into this area and the shunning of the pagan folk, they used to give all people being baptised a woollen t-shirt. So good and warm was this wool that many people went back to get baptised a good three or four times so that they could get more woollen t-shirts.

The first massacres of the Jews in World War 2 started in Lithuania

When I was travelling in Kaunas, I went to a very sobering place known as Ninth Fort. It was originally a part of the fortification structures in the area but during the Russian occupation and the Nazi occupation, the place was used as a prison. It was here that the first of the massacres of the Jews began by the Nazi’s in World War 2 after they were bought over from Gdansk. You can still see the bullet holes in the walls. There is a monument to remember these people by that is quite haunting and beautiful.

There is a Devils Museum

It is full of different statues and paintings of the devil doing all kinds of wicked deeds and is in fact, quite cool. Devils pouring vodka down the throats of helpless individuals, fornicating devils, international devils, devils having an all round great time.

Zeppelins are the bomb

The local food is like a giant ball of potato with meat in the middle that is then either boiled or fried. It is served with a sauce and bits of bacon. It is amazing and super good for the cold months. And it also sits like a bomb in the bottom of your stomach once you’re done eating it.

20161022_163957 — A tasty traditional lunch

Well hopefully this was interesting. Based on my adventures with a cold whilst roaming around outside trying to catch snowflakes with my tongue I did actually managed to learn some stuff in my pharmaceutical induced state. Until the next!

Life

The (Mis)Adventures of Dano: Getting Hit On

November 3, 2016 Thomas Takes On.... Leave a comment

Well a great way to start your morning is with a marriage proposal. This one came from a friend who is looking to leave the US if Donald Trump manages to become President as he feels that he no longer wants to be there if this horrid fate is to eventuate. Romantic I know, and I told him as much. Which is when he points out to me that at no point with me would life ever be boring if I was to ever take on a ‘pity wife’. Of course he would be the wife because I wear the pants, kick arse on a weekly basis and he even agreed that we’d keep my family name. Anyway, he calls my life ‘The (Mis)adventures of Dano’. Which got me to thinking…. how is it that one seems to constantly find themselves in situations of ridiculousness? Do I have ‘crazy magnet’ written on my forehead?

This week alone I have spent majority of the week unsuccessfully trying to hide the black eye I got on Sunday at jiu jitsu. Apparently this makes me a crazy person as I am willing to get physical and fight with others.

So anyway, in another Steve-inspired segment, here are some “crazy hit ons” from the (Mis)adventures of Dano.

Weird, creepy guy is driving down the road screaming out of his car window at me about how fat my arse is. Apparently telling him to fuck off wasn’t quite enough for him to decide that he was going to leave me alone. Instead he just kept on rolling with the fat arse comments and my personal favourite line “God wouldn’t have given it to you if he didn’t want you to have it”. God clearly didn’t want you to have a brain either. Arsehole. Despite me telling him it’s impolite to comment on people’s arses and to disappear out of my face, hits were not quite making their way through the neural network. He kept going and going and going until thankfully someone came up behind him and honked their horn at him to drive normal speed and the arse clown moved on.
I am cooking quietly in a hostel and get into a conversation with some new people. The couple upon five minutes of meeting me have literally told me they haven’t seen each other in 3 days and there will be sex. But that they were all about free loving and that they would like me to come on over and join in with them…. ummm…. yeah… no. After pointing them in the direction of the bathroom, they proceeded to tell me I have a nice arse and queried about my underpants choice. I of course for shits and giggles told them I wasn’t wearing any and ran off to hide somewhere where they couldn’t find me.
Once upon a time I was in my local Boots Pharmacy store and looking at heat packs. I like the ones with wheat in them. None of that gel shit. Anyway, I am shaking the box when the huge arse security guard starts giving me the 20 questions about what I am doing. He then uses this as entrance to try chat me up. I manage to wrangle my way out of the conversation “oh look at the time, gotta go” and escape the Boots. About 5 minutes and a good 200m down the road this guy taps me on the shoulder panting heavily because he had just asked his boss for time out to go get my number. What the hell do you even say to that?! I was so taken aback that I gave him the wrong number and kept going. It will take a good 6 months before plucking up the courage to go back to the local Boots.
Add to this that in the following week or so after this, another random guy I’ve never met decides that upon looking at me that I must of course be amazing and that he just has to get to know me. This fucker is also out of breath from running. I must have said no about ten times while walking past my house and then had to double back to make sure I lost the dude before I went home. Can’t be too careful in the presence of weirdos.
Sitting in a bar nursing my eye after one guy who has thrown a coaster at my head with his phone number on it has hit me in the eye. I am approached by another man who’s line is ‘Hi! Have a drink with me? I just got out of prison and I have no friends. Ummm….. no. Thanks. I’ll pass.

This all is rather odd to me. I would like to know where the normal men of society are? They certainly aren’t asking me out in a spectacularly normal and respectable manner. Or maybe I just have “crack job magnet” written on my forehead.

Got any crazy stories of your own, share them below! Until the next (mis)adventure!

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