Reader's Digest International - January 2015 by Nova May Solite

SIEGE OF THE

POLAR BEARS A TOWN UNDER ATTACK FITNESS FADS

FROM AB MACHINES TO ZUMBA

LUCK OR MIRACLE?

3 AMAZING STORIES OF LONE SURVIVORS

CONFESSIONS OF A COP

DESMOND TUTU ON THE POWER OF FORGIVING

A THINNER TOMORROW

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Content JANUARY 2015

True Tales

TREASURES, TRINKETS AND TROPHIES S Be it tourist tat or the prized memento of a dream holiday, our globetrotters show off their strangest souvenir purchases. LO U I S E WAT E R S O N Travel

LESSONS EVERY TRAVELLER LEARNS Bad food, dodgy hostels and loud sightseers, butt also self-sufficiency, new friends and unforgettab ble experiences: life expands on the road. B E N G R O U N DWAT E R F R O M W W W.T R AV E L L E R .CO M . AU

Like It Is

CONFESSIONS OF A COP Chasing down bad guys and bashing in doors with sledgehammers can be awfully good fun. R O B E R T E VA N S F R O M W W W.C R AC K E D.CO M

Living Language

HOW TO SPELL If you get stuck on spelling, here’s a simple guide that will help you tackle at least a few of English’s trickier traps. D O N YA L E H A R R I S O N Nature

SIEGE OF THE POLAR BEARS Polar bear migratory patterns have changed, leading the endangered but dangerous predators right through the centre of a small town. J E F F T I E TZ F R O M M E N ’ S J O U R N A L

Exercise

FITNESS THROUGH THE AGES Unearth that hot pink spandex leotard. We look at workout trends from the shapely 1960s to the spartan bootcamps of the 2000s and beyond. H E L E N S I G N Y

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Contents JANUARY 2015

Inspiration

WHY WE FORGIVE Drawing from his own traumatic childhood, the highly respected churchman explains the process of forgiveness and healing. D E S M O N D T U T U FROM THE BOOK OF FORGIVING

Science

THE FUTURE JUST GOT THINNER Meet the world’s thinnest material. It’s about 200 times stronger than steel, harder than diamond and very, very light. And its full possibilities are yet to be explored. L I SA C L AU S E N FROM THE GOOD WEEKEND

Cheat Sheet

INSTANT ANSWERS: E-SPORTS Legions of fans are packing into arenas to watch players battle it out – and the tournaments are becoming a global phenomenon. H A Z E L F LY N N Who Knew?

FUN FACTS ABOUT COLOUR Find out some fascinating details about your favourite colour. A L I S O N C A P O R I M O Lifestyle

GET COOKING Nothing beats home cooking. But if you have never cooked or are bored with the same old meals, here’s how to treat your taste buds. KAT H RY N E L L I OT T

Real-Life Dramas

102

SOLE SURVIVOR It’s a terrifying experience: to be the only one to live through a commercial plane crash. Three lone survivors share their stories. J E F F W I S E

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? ON ! I T SEC TION

S I NU T ED O IN RB

U PR K O THE C NLO TO

O U NOW T NT E WA CRIB

SUB

REGULARS 4 7 8 10 14 16 31 74 89 95 112 120

Letters Editor’s Note Staff Pick My Story Kindness of Strangers Unbelievable My Life Points to Ponder Quotable Quotes That’s Outrageous Smart Animals Puzzles, Trivia & Word Power

HUMOUR 46 Laughter, the Best Medicine 56 All in a Day’s Work 79 Life’s Like That

THE DIGEST 18 23 24 26 28 30 114

Health Technology Food Home Travel Etc Books & Movies

CONTESTS 4 Caption Competition 6 Jokes and Stories Januaryđ2015

Letters READERS’ COMMENTS AND OPINIONS

NOSTALGIA

is a “ There anta CSlaus ”

PH OTOS GE T T Y MAGE S T H N KSTO C K

The Magic of Childhood

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, universe of ours man is a as compared with the bound less world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You may tear apart the baby’s rattle inside, but there is a veil covering and see what makes the noise the unseen world which not the strongest man, not even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank GOD! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Thank you for the article, “There is a Santa Claus” (December). Francis P. Church must be saluted for answering an eight-year-old’s earnest question with grace and wisdom. He handled the little girl’s innocence like a piece of delicate china. He strove to preserve all that is good – faith, love, beauty and kindness – for as long as he could. He was careful not to break this beautiful realm of childlike wonder, for doing so would snuff out the purity and curiosity which is the essence of childhood. MARY EU IN 1897, on the advice of her father eight year old V rginia O Hanlon wrote Dear Edittor, a short nquisitive letter to the editor of New York s years old Some I am eight since defunct newspaper friends say of my little The Sun in which she sought Santa Claus confirmation of Santa Claus’s there is no you see it existence The paper’s editor Papa says “If Francis P Church soon replie it’s so ” Please in the Sun to Virginia s letter by way of truth, is there an editorial titled “Is There a tell me the Santa Claus?” which went on a Santa Claus? to become and in fact remains to this day the most reprinted l n O’Ha ia Virgin English language editor al in history and which has since 115 W 95th St spawned numerous adaptations Virginia herself went on to become a teacher and as a result Virginia O’Hanlon, aged of her innocent question received six in the photograph, an mail for much of her life She and her touching letter passed away in 1971 aged 81

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Francis P. Church, Editor

FROM LETTERS OF NOTE AN ECLECTIC COLLECT ON OF CORRESPONDENCE COMP LED BY SHAUN USHER DESERV NG OF A WIDER AUDIENCE WWW LETTERSOFNOTE COM

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Going Shopping

Grammar Class

As an avid online shopper, I found “The Bargain Games” (November) really useful. I thought your advice to procrastinate by putting the items in my online shopping bag particularly helpful. It gives the same satisfaction as window-shopping and allows you to come back and decide if you really MEG DUFF need the item!

I found the piece on the correct and appropriate use of hyphens (“Hooray for Hyphens”, November) to be both important and interesting. As a primary school teacher, it worries me that this information often falls by the wayside in a modern curriculum, leaving students deficient when they leave school. Additionally, I believe I

I really believe that I have “shopping-phobia”. As soon I hit the shops, I start sweating and stressing out! The only solution I now have is to browse the ads and if I do see something I need, go to that store, walk directly to the object, take it and pay! PETRA DU PLESSIS 4

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WRITE TO US If you are moved – or provoked – by any item in the magazine, write to us. Refer to page 6 for the editorial contact details in your region.

can speak for the masses when I say that reading another person’s repeated errors in punctuation and grammar can be infuriating. Thanks CHRIS SUTER for the great article!

A Win-Win Situation “How to Win Almost Anything” (September) by Sally McMullen was very informative. It helped me to improve my strategies for job interviews and competitions.

Monkeying Around WE ASKED YOU TO THINK UP A FUNNY CAPTION FOR THIS PHOTO.

RAYMUND FERRER

Waiting for the Gift of Life While my dad was being treated for acute kidney injury I noticed that most patients in the nephrology ward had a gruelling day – packed with tests and dialysis (“One Kidney, Three Lives”, October). Young and old, these people were waiting in the hope of a A.A. kidney for a transplant.

Acting on the advice from my dietitian, I have decided to replace the chip on my shoulder with a healthier option. CINDY BRENNAN I asked the genie for a six-ﬁgure bonanza and got a six-ﬁnger of bananas. LANCE ROSS That’s the problem with cultivating a Carmen Miranda hairstyle – you moult tropical fruit. The pineapples are a killer. LEIGH OWEN While the new Banana Republic knitwear logo is certainly distinctive, it is proving to be somewhat impractical when worn under a jacket. MIKE BOYD

PHOTOS: THIN KSTOC K

WIN!

If monkeys work for peanuts, the big apes in management must get all the bananas. ANITA DE LANGE

CAPTION CONTEST Come up with the funniest caption for the above photo and you could win cash. To enter, see details on page 6.

Fruity Krueger is coming to get you! SEUGA FROST

Congratulations to Cindy Brennan.

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Vol. 187 No. 1115 January 2015

EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Sue Carney Editor RD Asia Siti Rohani Design Director John Yates Managing Editor Louise Waterson Chief Subeditor & Production Editor Donyale Harrison Deputy Chief Subeditor Melanie Egan Designer Luke Temby Photo Editor Judith Love Digital Editor & Humour Editor Greg Barton Subeditor Hannah Hempenstall Editorial Coordinator Sally McMullen Contributing Editors Hazel Flynn; Helen Signy PRODUCTION & MARKETING Production Manager Balaji Parthsarathy Marketing Director Jason Workman Marketing Manager Gala Mechkauskayte ADVERTISING Group Advertising Director, Asia Paciﬁc Sheron White Advertising Sales Manager Darlene Delaney REGIONAL ADVERTISING CONTACTS Asia Kahchi Liew, liew.kahchi@rd.com Australia Darlene Delaney, darlene.delaney@rd.com New Zealand Debbie Bishop, debbie@hawkhurst.co.nz South Africa Michéle de Chastelain, michele@iafrica.com PUBLISHED BY READER’S DIGEST (AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD Managing Director/Publisher Walter Beyleveldt Director Lance Christie READER’S DIGEST ASSOCIATION, INC (USA) President and Chief Executive Officer Bonnie Kintzer Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, International Brian Kennedy Editor-in-Chief, International Magazines Raimo Moysa ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. REPRODUCTION IN ANY MANNER IN WHOLE OR PART IN ENGLISH OR OTHER LANGUAGES PROHIBITED 6

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CONTRIBUTE

FOR DIGITAL EXTRAS AND SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS, SEE PAGE 45.

Anecdotes and jokes Send in your real-life laugh for Life’s Like That or All in a Day’s Work. Got a joke? Send it in for Laughter is the Best Medicine!

Smart Animals Share antics of unique pets or wildlife in up to 300 words.

Kindness of Strangers Share your moments of generosity in 100–500 words.

My Story Do you have an inspiring or life-changing tale to tell? Submissions must be true, unpublished, original and 800–1000 words – see website for more information.

Letters to the editor and reader submissions

Online Follow the “Contribute” link at the Reader’s Digest website in your region.

Email AU: editor@readersdigest.com.au NZ: editor@readersdigest.co.nz South Africa: editor@readersdigest.co.za Asia: rdaeditor@readersdigest.com We may edit submissions and use them in all media. See website for full terms and conditions. TO SERVE YOU BETTER – OUR PRIVACY STATEMENT

Reader’s Digest collects your information to provide our products and services and may also use your information for the marketing purposes of RD and/ or selected corporate partners. If the information is not provided you will be unable to access our products or services. Our Privacy Policy at the Reader’s Digest website in your region contains full details on how your information is used (including how we may share your information with our affiliate companies in the US or other overseas entities), how you may access or correct information held and our privacy complaints process.

Editor’s Note

P HOTOGRAP HED BY TIM BAUER

Filling the Blank Page AS EVERY WRITER KNOWS, whether you’re setting out on a novel, a poem, an application for a job, a letter to a friend, or even this editor’s note, there’s nothing so intimidating – or rich with possibility – as a blank sheet of paper or an empty laptop screen with an impatiently flashing cursor. You just have to begin... As I write this, the editors here are in the midst of sorting and reading entries in our latest 100-Word Story contest. The first year we ran this short, short fiction competition, we held off until the closing date to begin reading entries; now we eagerly dip into the tales as they arrive each week. Gems go into our shortlist for the final rounds of judging this month. It’s shaping up to be another fabulous collection, thanks to our extraordinarily talented and creative community of readers. You are amazing! Words and writing have the power to amuse, provoke and entice, and we clearly see that in readers’ impassioned responses to our Living Language feature series. (This issue, RD’s chief subeditor Donyale Harrison takes on the tricky topic of troublesome spelling.) We settled on this title for a regular section on grammar, punctuation and spelling to flag that communication must change with the times, and to welcome a hearty debate. Write in with your views. You just have to begin.

PS E-readers will notice this month’s Digest has gone ad-free in response to your requests for faster downloads. Let us know what you think! Januaryđ2015

STAFF PICK

My Spelling Sins We took the honesty test round the RD office to see who could and couldn’t spell (see “How to Spell”, page 52). It seems we’ve all had at least one word we struggled with … When I was 16, I started exploring new words. I was particularly smitten with the word erudite and made a big effort to use it 23 times in an essay on A Tale of Two Cities. I remember this point very clearly, as it seems I’d spelled it wrong 23 times. I’d spelled it “erodite”. I’ve never used Louise Waterson it since. Not so much a spelling problem as a typing problem but whenever I type freedom I always type freedome, Healthrow instead of Heathrow and prob is often porb. Hannah Hempenstall

Can anyone tell me why “vast” is such a teeny-tiny word? It ought to be longer. At least that is my explanation for putting a rogue e at the end of it for much of my life, until a spellcheck program put me right. And a plea to anyone – usually a job applicant – who ever dares to claim they can “liaise”. It’s scary how few people get this word right. My fail-safe method for spelling: not sure? Use another word instead. It makes you more creative and often there’s a better word anyway. Sue Carney

For some reason words like license and coincidence always trick me. I almost always jumble the S’s and C’s up or try to add extra Sally McMullen ones in!

Various combinations of double letters often have me lurching for the dictionary: misspelled, millennium, Melanie Egan Philippines, and colosseum. 8

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When I was about nine, I remember walking into the classroom and staring at the spelling words on the blackboard, completely perplexed by “headache”. Couldn’t for the life of me understand what a hedaitch was! To this day, I can’t spell parsley. I always type parsely, which is a problem when you have worked on as many recipes as I have during my time as a subeditor! Artemis Gouros

P HOTO: THI NKSTOCK

For me, it’s “restaurant”. I always end up putting the u after the second a, as that’s how the word sounds to me – “res-star-raunt”. Even typing this out I had to use a spellchecker to make sure I’d done it properly! Tom Goodwin Austria: I can spell it perfectly well, but after typing Australia a million or so times, I can’t type Austria without enormous concentration! I was going to say necessarily, because I had a horrible time with it growing up, but apparently if you spend 40 years looking up a word, you do eventually learn how to spell it… Donyale Harrison

Mine is accomo... acommo... accommodation! I never know how many c’s and m’s belong in there so I depend on a spellchecker to let me know. And for someone who likes to make precise lists of travel plans which require that word, it can be quite frustrating. So I shorten it to “accom” so I don’t get driven crazy. Also, calendar vs calender. I need to empty my mind of any distractions before that one comes out Siti Rohani right.

MY STORY

As families left their homes in India, friendships were torn apart, but some had help to carry things through

Postcard from Pakistan

BY PARVE Z AND REWS

Colonel (Retired) PARVEZ ANDREWS , 76,

worked in the corporate world after he left the Indian Army in 1987. He now lives in Kolkata.

IT WAS THE SUMMER of July 1947. As the excitement of Independence drew near, countless Indians were also facing the dreadful consequences of Partition. In what was to become one of historyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest human migrations, innumerable Muslims started moving to the newly carved-out Pakistan, just as Hindus were doing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in the opposite direction. En route, innocent men, women and children were ruthlessly attacked and killed by frenzied fanatics from both sides. Communal violence had reached unfathomable levels. A nine-year-old boy then, I lived with my mother, three sisters and younger brother in Jalandhar, not far from the border. My dad, who was with the Provincial Civil Service, had recently been posted to Lahore, near his hometown. When he was with us in Jalandhar, there was a tall, well-built, moustached employee in his office called Mohammed Ali. This is my memory of Ali and how I learnt about unfailing bonds, regardless of the faiths people may profess. It made me realise that, even if politicians create wars and divisions, ordinary citizens want peace, trust and goodwill. Our home in Jalandhar, a bungalow with a boundary wall, was on the historic Grand Trunk Road that runs across

January 2015

friend turning foe. We wondered if these travellers would ever reach Pakistan safely. Indeed, mere survival in those times had become a privilege.

I ILLUSTRATION : KUNA L BELLE

ONE MORNING

northern India into Pakistan and beyond. Seated on the wall, I watched as bullock carts filled with migrating Muslims moved westwards. They took along whatever worldly possessions they could manage, including livestock. Plucked ruthlessly from their roots, they were leaving with no hope of ever returning. The carts moved closely in line, providing some brittle security in their togetherness. Although ours was a Christian family and moving to either side wasn’t on our agenda, we could understand the heart-wrenching reality of parting, of

Mohammed Ali, dressed in a white Pathani salwar-kameez (traditional tunic and pants), came rushing to our house. He looked worried. In his hand was an Ovaltine tin. I’d always known Ali, who had two little daughters, and we all liked him very much. “I’ve come to say goodbye to all of you,” Ali said. “I too am going across the border with my family to seek our destiny.” His eyes grew moist as he reflected on whether we would ever meet again. He put the Ovaltine can down and hugged all five of us children. What attracted my attention was the tin’s lid. It was roughly, yet firmly, sealed with a brownish paste that looked like atta (dough). After tearfully bidding my mother farewell with his salaams, he hurriedly thrust January 2015

P O S T C A R D F R O M PA K I S TA N

the tin into her hands. “Keep this! family was relaxing in cane chairs on I have to join my family waiting in the our lawn. Just then our bungalow’s cart.” Saying so, he rushed out. iron gate swung open and a tonga We stood there waving our (carriage) drove in. The horse goodbyes. After a while, we all stared stopped and as the dust settled, a at the Ovaltine tin. Wondering what it neatly dressed gentleman alighted. contained, Mummy He wore a kulledar carefully opened its pagri, a colourful fansealed lid. My guess was turban, which signified It was such a that it would be filled prosperity. We looked at solemn secret, with homemade sweets, each other. It took a few we never spoke seconds for us to a parting gift from of it even among recognise our cheerful Daddy’s loyal staff member. But our unexpected guest. It was ourselves ... In expectation soon turned Mohammed Ali! time, I almost to amazement and He hugged each of us forgot about it disbelief. The tin was and sat down to chat. Ali stuffed with gold recalled his safe trip to jewellery, some of it Pakistan in 1947, the inlaid with precious stones! good old days, even the bad old days, The truth soon dawned on our and caught up with the past six years. mother. It was Ali’s family jewellery – Ali and our parents even discussed the collection of a lifetime, heirlooms the prospect of India and Pakistan perhaps. Mother sat down, emptied joining back once again. Anyway, Ali the contents on to a bed and had settled down well to a new life. inspected it. After that, still puzzled, He was now an upper division clerk she returned every piece to the tin in a Pakistani government office. and re-sealed it with dough from her Soon it was time for Ali to leave and kitchen. Then, after hiding it in her he was once again saying goodbye to cupboard, she told each one of us not each of us. Strangely, there was no to mention a word about it to mention of the Ovaltine tin he’d left anybody. We obeyed – it was such a behind, or of its contents. He’d solemn secret, we never spoke of it returned to the tonga when Mummy even among ourselves. As the years stepped forward. “Mohammed Ali!” went by, I almost forgot about it. she cried, “haven’t you forgotten something?” “No, Memsahib, I have not left MEANWHILE, we moved to Ambala anything behind.” Cantonment. It was a summer “Wait,” said Mummy as she went evening in 1953 when the entire 12

January 2015

READER’S DIGEST

into our house and returned with the old Ovaltine tin, its atta seal still intact. She smiled and went up to Ali saying, “Take this. You had left it with me when you were leaving for Pakistan. I have kept it safely all these years for you.” Just then, most unexpectedly, Ali broke down and started crying. “I didn’t come for this,” he said, regaining his composure. “I was in Jalandhar and came to know that Sahib and his family were here in Ambala. I just wanted to see you all. I cannot take back something I had gifted you. Had we taken it with us, we might have been looted and harmed on the way. We would have lost it – along with our lives, who knows! This was for your three daughters who are like my own girls. Don’t misunderstand me, I have come this evening to meet you all and not for any ornaments, which are yours now.”

It was a most sentimental scene. It required a lot of forcing and cajoling on the part of my father and mother before Mohammed Ali reluctantly took the tin back. “I only hope that the customs officials at the border do not confiscate your tin,” said Daddy. “Be careful.” “Insha-allah, God willing, it will reach my wife,” said Ali. “You have kept it safely all these years, and now no-one can take it away.” “Please write us a letter when you reach home,” said Mummy. Ali agreed and left with tears in his eyes. Two weeks later, a postcard arrived with a Pakistani stamp. Its cryptic message read: “The sweets you gave have reached my wife and daughters. God bless!” Do you have a tale to tell? We’ll pay cash for any original and unpublished story we print. See page 6 for details on how to contribute.

STARTING A NEW JOB IS NEVER EASY I accidentally pressed the panic button and summoned an armed response police team in my first week of training in a new job. First day of working as a cashier, I put the wrong code in for a voucher, giving the customer £3,000,000,000 credit. First job, first week, I refused to let a “strange man” into the shop before opening time. He was the regional manager. @RHODRI

January 2015

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

I can tell you this: you can change someone’s life just by lifting her suitcase

Sharing the Burden I WAS ONLY THREE DAYS into a graduate year in England, and I was dragging a heavy backpack and suitcase through the London Underground. I was also crying uncontrollably. As I struggled to get the suitcase up another flight of steps, I was struggling to understand how my life had fallen apart. The day before, my uncle had informed me that I was never to speak to him, his wife, or my two cousins again. Earlier, I had made a silly, joking remark. It was never meant to hurt my aunt’s feelings, but it did. I spent the evening in a telephone booth, weeping as I spoke to a family friend who lived in England. The most foolish part was that I did not immediately call my parents. As a 22-year-old who had been raised to respect and trust adults, I believed my aunt and 14

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uncle when they said I’d ruined the relationship between themselves and my family. Today, as a 38-year-old, I know this was ridiculous. Their reaction was all out of proportion. But at the time, it was as if I had razed everything my family had built. When I left the phone booth, I went back to a silent house with three closed bedroom doors. I did not sleep. In the morning, I heard everyone get up and leave; no-one knocked on my door. When it was quiet, I wrote a note of apology and left it in my uncle’s bedroom. I dragged my bags the kilometre to the train station. When I got into London, I had to take the Tube to the Angel underground station to get to my family friend’s house. I was familiar with the Tube, but at the time, it was a tube of endless white tiles. I was exhausted. Coming to England seemed like a bad

I LLUSTRATI ON: GREGOIRE M AHLER/FI GAROPH OTO/CONTOUR STYLE P HOTO: (WOM AN) GETTY IM AGES

BY HIL A RY PA R K I N S O N FR O M Q U E ST FO R K I N D N E SS

decision. Worst of all, no lifts were working. Crying yet again, I tried to lift my suitcase up the stairs. Suddenly in my slog there were hands. No-one said anything, but each time I faced another set of steps, a hand would grip the suitcase handle and lift it. At the top of the steps, the hand would let go, and I’d pull the suitcase to the next set. And just as I was about to struggle again, another hand would materialise. It happened several times. I never looked up, because I could not stop crying. I do remember thinking through the haze of grief that each

hand looked different, that many different people helped me, without asking or saying anything. They just helped, right up to the top of the last flight of stairs. I couldn’t look up. I wasn’t able to say thank you. I went on to have an amazing year studying in England, and I made some friendships that continue to sustain me. But that was the last time I saw or spoke to any of those four family members. Yet when I think about that terrible loss in 1998, I remember those strangers’ hands. They were there when I needed them, and even now, they pull me through the sadness of that memory. I think of them as I ride the Metro in Washington today, and I watch the commuters and tourists surge by, just in case someone needs a hand. Share your story about the kindness of strangers and win cash. Turn to page 6 for details on how to contribute to the magazine.

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Unbelievable TRUE TALES TOLD TALL

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be a fashion victim, advises a sartorial Nury Vittachi MANKIND IS SLEEPWALKING

towards a global catastrophe, unwilling to take action to avert impending doom. I am talking, of course, about the worldwide epidemic of poor clothing choices. On the morning of writing this story, I saw a number of people (two) 16

JanuaryÄ&#x2018;2015

wearing orange-and-brown tartan golf trousers in public, in full view of frail, impressionistic minds such as those belonging to small children and politicians. When I expressed shock about this at work, a colleague showed me a news report illustrating the incredible

I LLUSTRATI ON: AN DREW JOYNER

Clothes-minded

power of bad clothing. A grown man function wearing a mandarin-collar wearing an ankle-length leopard-print shirt and a Nehru suit. As I walked dress walked into a bank in the US through the hotel restaurant, state of New Hampshire and handed everyone kept trying to press money the teller a note demanding money. and credit cards into my hand, The man did not brandish a weapon, thinking I was the waiter. I seriously nor claim to have one. But the terrified considered standing in the restroom teller handed over the money, which for half an hour to collect tips. the robber grabbed before escaping. It’s also come to my attention that The teller did the right bulk buying your clothes thing. Anyone with a may lead to problems dress sense that bad can with quality. A division In London, the be extremely dangerous. of the Chinese army I used to work with a recently appeared in current fashion punk rock fashion victim (and when I say public wearing new who once turned up with uniforms, according to current, I mean her buttons fastened a news report sent to me for the past out of alignment. When by a reader. When the 40 years) is to I pointed this out, she men were ordered to sit snarled: “It’s fashion, down, more than 100 dress like a look it up.” I did look it of trousers homeless person pairs up. It wasn’t fashion. But simultaneously tore, I soon realised that this bringing about new line is useful for covering all acts of meaning to the term “let rip”. You sartorial stupidity. ME: “I think you sat could hear them tear, the paper on a 2kg lemon cheesecake and most reported. I’m SO glad I wasn’t there, of it is still attached to your nether as I would have laughed out loud – region.” HER: “It’s fashion, look it up.” not a good idea when you’re facing In London, the current fashion (and a group of angry men. What the when I say current, I mean for the past commanding officer should have 40 years) is to dress like a homeless done, of course, was to use the magic person. This makes things tough for phrase: “It’s fashion, look it up.” people like me, visiting from Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m low on conservative Asia. You meet someone cash and might just hang out in the and you never know whether to give gentlemen’s room in the hotel next him your business card or drop small door for a while. Towel, sir? change into his coffee mug. Over-dressing can be problematic Nury Vittachi is a Hong Kong-based author. Read his blog at Mrjam.org too. I once turned up at a fancy hotel Januaryđ2015

THE DIGEST HEALTH

HOT TOPIC

Q: What Started the Myth of Vaccines Causing Autism? A

WHAT’S THE TRUTH?

Since then, extensive further research has been done and

January 2015

absolutely no link has been found. Studies involving hundreds of thousands of children have now been conducted – and have discredited any connection. Ten of the 12 doctors involved in the original Lancet publication have retracted it. The lead author has been discredited and struck off the medical register. SO, THERE’S NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT? The risks of complications

from childhood diseases are very real and should be of far more concern to a parent than the entirely false association between vaccines and autism. The simple truth is that vaccines save lives, while fear of vaccines results in the chance of children getting infections with potentially crippling or even fatal results.

P HOTOS: THINKSTOCK

: The possibility that vaccines might be linked to autism was first published in 1998 in the Lancet, a well-respected medical journal. The paper looked at 12 children with developmental problems who had been vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, some of whom had autism. It wasn’t a clinical study, merely a report of the cases. However, this was picked up by the media and the subsequent furore caused many parents to assume there was a link.

Ways to improve your mental performance

3 Tricks for a Better Memory 1

Use it or lose it. The brain functions like a muscle – the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Learning new things, varying your routine, having heated debates, going on trips and playing an instrument all help your brain to make new connections and function better.

Eat healthy carbohydrates to boost brain cells. A Canadian study found that older people whose diets contained the greatest percentage of kilojoules as carbohydrates did best on memory and task tests. However, make sure you’re getting these carbohydrates from fruits, vegetables and wholegrains – these release glucose to the brain gradually. Sugary cakes or ice-cream may provide a quick fix, but are often followed by a slump and loss of concentration. Eating oil-rich fish once a week will also help the grey matter.

Develop strategies. Counter senior or fuzzy moments by doing one thing at a time – research finds that multitasking hinders memory and concentration. Stop for a second after an introduction and repeat the person’s name out loud. Read or work in a quiet room – noise exposure can slow your ability to rehearse things in your mind, a way of building memory.

“WHAT THE HECK IS HIS NAME?” Pay attention. When you’re introduced to someone, really listen to the person’s name. Then, to get a better grasp, picture the spelling. Ask, “Is that Kathy with a K or a C?” Make a remark about the name to help lock it in (“Oh, Laura – that was my childhood best friend’s name”), and use the name a few times during the conversation and when you say goodbye.

January 2015

HEALTH

DIY CHECK

Eyes Right They’re more than a window to your soul, so look after them Changes to the appearance of your

BULGING EYES

eyes can be the first sign of underlying health conditions. If you spot these changes, tell your GP.

Are a common symptom of Grave’s disease, more commonly known as hyperthyroidism, or an overactive thyroid. The medical name for the condition is exophthalmos. In addition to the bulging-eyed look, people with Grave’s often experience weight loss, nervousness, and a rapid or irregular pulse. Grave’s disease is more common in women.

Patients with these cholesterol-filled lesions, called xanthelasma, may have a higher risk of heart disease. A 2011 Danish study of nearly 13,000 patients found that about 4% had the spots and that those patients were nearly 70% more likely to develop hardening of the arteries and almost 50% more likely to have a heart attack over the next few decades than patients without them. EYE BAGS AND PUFFINESS

Tired-looking eyes could be a red flag for chronic allergies, which dilate blood vessels and cause them to leak. In the sensitive skin under your eyes, this creates puffiness and a dark purple-blue hue. 20

January 2015

GREY RING

If you have a history of heart conditions in your family, then the appearance of a thin grey ring around the edge of the cornea should send a warning. The ring, referred to as arcus senilis, can be a sign of high cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as an increased risk for heart attack and stroke. If a grey ring develops, your doctor will test for elevated blood lipids. The condition is more prevalent among the over-60s.

P HOTOS: THINKSTOCK

SOFT, YELLOW SPOTS ON EYELIDS

NEWS FROM THE

World of Medicine Long-term Weight Gain and Breast Cancer

Acidic Sports Drinks Damage Athleteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Teeth

A recent study has found that an increase in skirt size can up the risk of developing breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Conducted by academics at the University College, London and published in the BMJ Open journal, the study looked at the records of 93,000 women aged in their 50s and 60s who had been through menopause.

Sports drinks are taking their toll on athletesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; teeth, according to a report published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The UK and US dental health, sports and exercise medicine experts point out that dental consultations accounted for almost a third of all medical visits at the 2012 London Olympics. The evidence showed that poor dental health, including tooth decay, gum disease, enamel erosion and infected wisdom teeth, was widespread.

It found that jumping one skirt size every ten years between the ages of 25 and 65 increased the risk by 33%. An expanding waistline is known to boost oestrogen, on which many breast cancer cells rely for fuel. After taking account of other factors, such as infertility treatment, family history, and use of HRT, increases in skirt size emerged as the strongest predictor of breast cancer risk.

Researchers suggest the prevalence of poor dental health among athletes was due to the high number of acidic sports drinks (in addition to a high-carb diet) they consume during training and performance, the impact of which is likely to be worsened by a dry mouth during competition. January 2015

HEALTH

What’s All the Fuss about Spirulina? TRENDING

BY H E LE N S IGNY

This blue-green algae grows in freshwater ponds and lakes and is considered a genuine superfood. Used for centuries as a dietary supplement, it’s been taken to space by NASA astronauts, is purported to have kept some Japanese elders alive for decades, and is even being fed to livestock in Tasmania to improve the quality of their meat and milk.

allergic to seafood or seaweed, or have a temperature, avoid taking spirulina. Most of us, though, are very unlikely to experience unpleasant side effects, regardless of how much we eat.

WHY THE HYPE?

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

This natural, spiral-shaped algae contains more than 100 nutrients. It has more vegetable protein than fish or beef, very high concentrations of vitamins, especially B1 and B2, and a wide range of minerals including iron, potassium, magnesium, sodium and zinc.

The main advantage of boosting nutrition is beefing up the immune system. There is some scientific evidence that spirulina can do this, as well as protecting against allergic reactions and viruses. But more research is needed before any of these advantages are conclusively proven.

WHO IS IT GOOD FOR?

WHERE DO I GET IT?

Spirulina can benefit anyone who needs extra nutrition, including picky eaters, seniors and pregnant women. It’s also good for vegetarians and athletes who need to keep up their energy levels. But if you have hyperparathyroidism, are seriously

Spirulina comes in a tablet or a powder that you can sprinkle onto a smoothie or salad. Like any algae, spirulina sucks up toxic substances or heavy metals present in the water where it grows, so it’s important to buy your supply from a trusted source.

January 2015

P HOTO: THI NKSTOCK

WHAT IS IT?

TECHNOLOGY

Get a Computer Speed Boost Technology isn’t supposed to make things slower. Try these simple tricks to

free up the time you spend parked in front of a computer screen:

Get rid of “bloatware”. Uninstall items associated with preinstalled software you never use – and your PC or Mac will run faster, claims Popular Science. It’s simple: if you’re a Mac user, go to www.macpaw.com and click on Free Download. If you have a PC, go to www.tweaknow.com.

Don’t print the conﬁrmation page when you shop online. Instead, on your Mac, choose Print from the Safari toolbar, then from the PDF pop-up menu choose Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder. You’ll have a record in an easy-to-ﬁnd folder.

Decipher your error messages. You don’t need a computer manual, writes David Pogue in the New York Times. Simply type the error message or problem into your search engine, and you’ll ﬁnd out what’s wrong and how to ﬁx it.

Shrink your digital photographs. Images taken with digital cameras eat up heaps of space and, if you send them, are annoying and slow for others to open. Technology blogger Aseem Kishore suggests chopping them down to a manageable size by following the prompts at www.makeathumbnail.com.

P HOTO: THI NKSTOCK; SUPP LIED

SIMPLER MOBILE PHONES Not everyone needs a mobile phone loaded with the latest features and functions. In fact, many users just want a reliable mobile that makes and receives calls, is easy to operate, and can be pre-programmed with numbers for family, friends and emergency contacts. Now several manufacturers, such as Australia-based KISA and Swedish company Doro, are making basic models that have large buttons, are easy to read, and can be mastered by users of any age. If you can use a regular home phone, you can manage one of these. Ask your local telcos about basic models available locally.

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FOOD

Busting the Comfort Food Myth Here’s another reason to stick to that

healthy diet sitting at the top of your New Year’s resolutions list. Whether it’s chocolate or pasta, we all have comfort foods. But a 2014 study conducted by psychologists at the University of Minnesota revealed that comfort foods are no more effective at mood alleviation than any other meal – or even sitting quietly without eating at all. The experiment began with an

introductory session where participants were asked to list their comfort foods as well as foods they enjoyed in general. Then, during two sessions scheduled at least one week apart, the group of 100 students watched 18-minute videos composed of film clips found to elicit feelings of anger, fear, anxiety or sadness. At one session, after completing 24

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a questionnaire designed to determine their mood, participants were given a generous helping of their chosen comfort food (chocolate, ice-cream and cookies were the three most popular). At the other, the participants were given one of the non-comfort foods they enjoyed, such as almonds, cashews or a granola bar, which served as a neutral food. Or they were given nothing at all, meaning they sat in silence for three minutes. Afterwards, each participant filled out the mood questionnaire for a second time. The study concluded that the participant’s moods improved to the same extent regardless of which type of food they ate, how much they ate or whether they ate at all. In other words, we’ve just lost another excuse for eating junk. Although this may cause distress, take comfort in knowing that the feeling will pass – with or without the help of your favourite chocolate bar.

Learn some new kitchen tricks

How to Make Simple Cooking Simpler

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; THINKSTOCK; (PRESS) COURTESY JOSEPH JOSEPH

■ PRESS GARLIC A traditional garlic press can create quite a mess – all those corners, all that tricky cleaning up. Men’s Journal suggests trading it for a more efficient rocker-shaped model, which uses a back-and-forth motion to mince garlic by forcing it through a series of holes. Rinse and rejoice. ■ BAKE A POTATO For a perfect potato, bake it in a salt bed, says Cook’s Illustrated magazine. Spread a layer of salt in a baking dish and top with whole, unpeeled potatoes. Surround the potatoes with sprigs of rosemary and add an entire head of garlic with the top cut off. Cover with foil and bake for 1¼ hours at 230°C. Then remove the foil and garlic, brush oil on each potato and bake uncovered at 260°C for an additional 15 minutes. To serve, top potatoes with the roasted garlic, butter, etc. The result: potatoes that are tender outside and fluffy inside.

■ PEEL AN APPLE Peeling a stack of apples for a pie can take less time with this trick: peel around the top and bottom of an apple in a circle, leaving the centre intact, says Amy Traverso, author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook. Then peel the centre in a top-to-bottom motion, turning the fruit as you go. Works for pears and stone fruit, too. ■ DRESS UP MAYONNAISE If plain old storebought mayo isn’t doing your sandwich justice, give your mayonnaise a makeover. Whisk in fresh basil or thyme, dried herb mixes, lemon or lime juice, or condiments such as wasabi or chilli sauce. ■ SERVE ICE Replace your ice bucket with a colander. Real Simple suggests placing an ice-filled colander in a bowl or vase. Water will drain as the ice melts, leaving only cubes for your guests to use in their drinks. Don’t forget the tongs! Januaryđ2015

HOME

Spic and Span Cleaning tips you probably haven’t heard before gone ... and left a mess behind. Get ready for the New Year with our cleaning secrets. The best way to dust blinds? Close them, then wipe up and down with an old tumble dryer sheet. It’ll create an antistatic barrier that helps prevent dust from building up again. Vinegar and water is a great deodoriser for a musty bathroom. Spray your shower down as To mop you’re getting out. It wood really absorbs the floors, odours, and the smell of use plain vinegar goes away in water or an hour. a waterbased Spray glass with cleaner white vinegar diluted in water, then wipe off with newspaper for a streak-free shine.

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Don’t vacuum your bathroom mats. You’ll save time and achieve a better clean by tossing them into the wash once a week. It’s best to mop wooden floors with plain water or a water-based floor cleaner. Don’t use vinegar. The acid in it will pit your polyurethane finish, can void your warranty, and may reduce shine over time. To clean a microwave oven, microwave a cup of water with some bicarbonate of soda in it until it’s boiling. This eliminates odours and makes it super easy to wipe away all the sticky leftovers. Clean up hard-to-reach cobwebs with a long measuring rod covered by a sock. Use lemon oil on a sponge to wipe bathroom tiles after you have cleaned them. This will help bring out the shine and will also prevent the build up of mould. To eliminate that toilet ring, you can drop in a denture-cleaning tablet and leave it for at least 30 minutes or overnight. The stain will come off with just a few swishes of the brush. From What You Don’t Know About Your Home

6 7 8

P HOTOS:THI NKSTOCK, GETTYIM AGES

The holiday season has come and

Clever Storage Spaces … You Already Had Make the most of your unused or awkward areas WALLS OFTEN GO UNUSED Make them earn their place by installing shelves to store items you’d usually keep on the kitchen counter or bedside table.

pre-built shelving units. Many are designed to fit along the inside of doors and will give you plenty of added storage space. HANG IT! By installing hooks in the

ABOVE EYE LEVEL Items you use

only rarely, but enjoy having out on display, can be placed on the top of high kitchen cabinets, bookcases and other tall furniture.

space under cabinets you can free up space inside of them. Think wine glasses and coffee mugs. Storage stores sell the racks used by bars to hang wine glasses by their stems. From www.huffingtonpost.com and Home Hints & Tips

DOUBLE YOUR SHELVING SPACE

Don’t forget the inside of your cabinet and wardrobe doors. Simply hammer in some hooks, baskets or even shelves to store jewellery, socks, make-up, bottled herbs, stationery. TURN DOORS INTO STORAGE

Replace pantry or laundry room doors with reclaimed wooden shutters, available for reasonable prices at most hardware resale stores and charity shops. Not only will the wooden shutters look great, you can use the other side to hang items – like kitchen utensils or knickknacks – out of sight. If you don’t want to swap out your doors, you can instead add extra Januaryđ2015

TRAVEL

Ten cheap things that you can’t camp without

Tent Commandments

4. Refillable spray bottle:

water is often a scarce commodity while camping. Keep a spray bottle of water for quick cleanups and hand washing. 28

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You’ll be amazed at how much water you save. 5. Foam mats: slide these under the tent floor to protect your feet from rocky ground or use them as a shower floor when bush camping. 6. Wet wipes: perfect for clean-ups on the go. They are also handy for cleaning up picnic lunch utensils. 7. Pegs: aside from pegging up wet clothes, they are also great for securing items around the campsite. 8. Bungee cords: these stretchy elastic ropes with hooks at each end can help tie down your tent in a windstorm, secure items in the back of the car or on the roof rack and be strung together to form a clothes line. 9. Gaffer tape: there’s not much that can’t be fixed or held firmly in place with some gaffer tape. 10. Soft-sided bucket:

they make great camp kitchen sinks and are light and easy to carry even when full. FROM NOBLE WORDS

P HOTO: THI NKSTOCK

1. Rubber bands: when you’re travelling on rough roads anything that can pop open, unwind or unravel will. Almost everything in your food box and many other essentials, including the toilet paper roll, should have a rubber band around it. 2. Sandwich bags: store your food, leftovers and anything that might spill or shake open in a resealable sandwich bag. They occupy less room than plastic containers and protect against spills. 3. Doormat: a door mat outside the tent or caravan door can make camp life much simpler and cleaner, especially if you’re camping near the beach or in the bush.

Strategies to Save Money at Airports Going on holiday can be an expensive business, so the last thing you want to

do is spend a fortune at the airport. Here are some ideas for saving money before you jet off. BOOK A FIRST-CLASS LOUNGE

It might sound counter-intuitive, but some airlines in certain countries allow you to pay for a first-class lounge without being a frequent flyer member or first-class traveller. Prices vary between airports, but for adults it’s usually around US$20 or under, US$15 or under for children, and free for infants. This covers the cost of a comfy room to wait in as well as food and drinks. If you were planning on eating at the airport anyway, this way could work out cheaper. Plus it keeps you away from the duty-free shops.

PHOTO: THI NKSTOCK

BOOK AHEAD FOR PARKING

Turning up on the day to park will mean paying the maximum price. Instead, book in advance online. TAKE AN EMPTY WATER BOTTLE

Fill it up at a water fountain in the airport – this will keep you hydrated

without having to splash out on overpriced drinks. You can get collapsible water bottles that can be used over and again, and that pack neatly away if necessary for security screening. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF AIRPORT DISCOUNT CODES Many airports

have special offers and deals on products and meals, so remember to check the website of the airport you’re travelling from to see what’s available. ORIENTATE YOURSELF If you’re

going to a new airport, find out where everything is before you arrive. Look up your airport’s website and see what information they have about the buildings, shops, amenities and transport. Some airports run cheap or free shuttles in and out of town. The more prepared you are, the less likely you’ll need to spend money unnecessarily. Januaryđ2015

ETC

A smiley was just the thing to temper the bickering online

The First Emoticon BY PAG A N K E N N E DY

Once he found the colon, the rest “The first line of my obituary is going to mention the smiley face,” says Scott was easy. And as the web expanded in the ’90s, so, too, did the colonFahlman, who would rather be hyphen-parenthesis. “Wherever the remembered for his research into internet went, the smiley face was artificial intelligence. But like it or there within weeks,” Fahlman says. not, Fahlman has become famous for The symbol has endured because it’s three keystrokes. In 1982, a young a quick way to soothe hurt feelings professor at Carnegie Mellon or express joy. But Fahlman still University in Pittsburgh, he realised hears complaints that it is a hallmark the need for a symbol to temper the of lazy writing. His critics raise bickering that plagued online forums. questions like “Would The internet was just a Shakespeare have baby then, and yet A UNIVERSAL used a smiley face?” already flame wars LANGUAGE? Yes, Fahlman says, raged. Fahlman if Shakespeare were decided that a smiley Western-style emoticons often read as “sideways faces”. The around today, thumbface could be useful as Japanese, meanwhile, have tapping a screed a “joke marker” (as he kaomoji or face marks. “about parking at the called it) to take the >_< ;_; Globe Theatre, he sting out of mocking Ouch! Crying ^_might say something statements. And so he Winking intemperate. And then hunted around the 9_9 =_= Tired Bored he might think twice keyboard for a way to about it and want to make the face. “But m(_ _)m d(-_-)b what do you use for Bowing down use an emoticon.” Wearing eyes?” he wondered. From the New York Times in apology headphones 30

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MY LIFE

In 2015, I Will… BY A N N E R O U M A N O F F

Q I will buy running gear to join my girlfriends who go

jogging. To actually start jogging I’ll wait till 2016. Q I will sort through the great piles of papers on my desk.

ANNE ROUMANOFF

ILLUSTRATI ON: JOE M CKENDRY; PHOTO: TH INKSTOC K

is a wellknown French humourist.

The last time I looked for my driver’s licence, I found it after an hour of intensive searching, hidden under a plumber’s bill and a packet of chewing gum. Q I will make an appointment for a breast scan; I will take my daughter to the orthodontist; I will manage to persuade my husband to have his cholesterol checked. Q I will give away the clothes that I never wear and I will stop buying any old rubbish just because I think it’s fashionable. Q I will cook something other than fish fingers and pasta for my kids. I will learn how to prepare fresh vegetables in appetising ways – and I won’t give up at the sight of their wrinkled-up noses. Q I will visit my great-aunt with Alzheimer’s more often – before she forgets who I am once and for all. Q I will become a sex goddess. Only joking – just to see if you’re paying attention. Q My fingernails and toenails will always be immaculate. That’s how you tell a real woman. Q I won’t wait till I’ve put on 5kg to launch an emergency action plan. I will make it up with my ister. I will breathe deeply at least few minutes a day. I will take the pressure off. Q I will make a list at the start of each month because, as my grandmother used to say: “You have to aim for the moon to reach the sun.” Januaryđ2015

TRUE TALES

, S E R U TREAS S T E K N TRI &

PHIES ev underrate the alue of a souvenir – it el the holiday high ve on ... and on BY LO UIS E WATER SON

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; THINKSTOCK

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We each returned with several leather camels of varying size... No-one questioned why we needed them or what on earth we would do with them back homeâ&#x20AC;?

TREASURES, TRINKETS AND TROPHIES

can’t imagine ever going away on vacation and coming back with less than I took. Usually the suitcase – or the back of the car – will be stuffed to capacity. Last time it was a set of wooden rowboat oars and a captain’s wheel that I discovered in a bric-a-brac store during our family holiday along the coast. I decided my “finds” were too good to leave behind. And it seems I’m in good company. Shopping is a major part of being a tourist, taking up to one-third of our vacation budgets. And with the World Bank confirming that over one billion people travel for leisure outside their own country each year, the mind boggles at how much money we spend on mementoes and knick-knacks to remind us of our adventures. It starts at the airport duty-free stores, continues on the plane, and ramps up at the hotel circled by souvenir sellers and at the bustling local markets and landmarks. If we’re very naïve – or exhausted – it persists on the special bus tours that take us round town and end up at a discount store owned by the driver’s cousin. So why do we all get the urge to snap up exotic items on holiday? And is it possible to ensure those neverto-be-repeated purchases are worth every peso, ringgit, dollar or euro? To figure out what’s going on, I asked family, friends and work colleagues to unpack their souvenir stories. Whether it’s the spare time a

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vacation allows us to browse shops for non-essentials, or the heady atmosphere of a new location … or the aching need to have evidence we’ve been away, there are common themes to our holiday buying, and some rules we’d all do well to heed next time we venture from home.

You Only Live Once Vacations can be epic. So it figures we want something very special to mark our extraordinary trip. A few years ago, Siti, a medieval-history buff, visited Toledo in Spain, famous for its

Wacky: A quacking plastic duck that lays eggs from Vietnam

PHOTOS: GETTY IM AGES; LUKE TEM BY

medieval armoury. Unable to bring back a sword, knife or a full suit of armour, she settled for a steel helmet complete with chainmail at the back of the neck. “I was sensible. I mailed it home to Singapore,” she says. The same bold thinking is behind an (elaborate crystal) chandelier that my mother’s friend Frances purchased in Venice – for her 1960s low-ceilinged suburban home. Or the plastic walking, talking, egg-laying duck that Luke lugged back from Vietnam. If we shake our heads in disbelief at these purchases, it’s only because they didn’t belong to our own last grand adventure. “Today it has pride of place in my living room,” says Siti, of her helmet.

Rule 1 A souvenir doesn’t have to be expensive to be extraordinary. From talking fridge magnets and feathered pens to Chinese opera masks and Scottish kilts: if you’ll get pleasure from something for years to come, it’s a beautiful thing. Kitsch is Fun From sombreros in Tijuana, to didgeridoos in Kakadu, nesting dolls in Moscow or batik from Bali, sometimes you just have to say “We were there!” When Greg visited Abu Dhabi in 1996 with a touring volleyball team they

Just like holiday romances, some purchases can be hard to fathom in the “cold light of day” all hit the local markets. “We each returned with a dishdasha (traditional gown), hijab (traditional head scarf ), and several leather camels of varying size,” he says. “No-one deviated from those three souvenirs. No-one questioned why we needed them or what on earth we would do with them back home.” Greg still has the camels. Siti shares a similar attitude: “I love buying things when I travel,” she says. Januaryđ2015

TREASURES, TRINKETS AND TROPHIES

“I don’t think I’ve ever gone to a place where I didn’t end up bringing something home, no matter how small. I like it when I’m using something and then go, ‘Oh yes, I bought this little coin pouch in Bali.’”

Rule 2 If it captures a particular moment or if the expedition to find it was an adventure in itself, who cares about good taste? The Thrill of the Hunt You have spare time, new shops to explore, money burning a hole in your wallet and the thrill of snapping up something that you may never get the chance to buy again. For John, it’s the John F. Kennedy memorial mug he bought in Napier. It’s one of his coolest treasures. For Sue, it was a cast iron guillotine for cutting bread. She and her husband had admired one they once saw on a French cooking show. So earlier this year, on the way to the airport in Auckland to fly back to Sydney, they spotted a battered model in a local antique shop, and they couldn’t believe their eyes. “We had to get it specially wrapped, then explain our way through check-in, the special freight desk, and also Australian customs. We 36

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“We had to explain the guillotine through check-in, the special freight desk and customs” didn’t mind because we were just so excited to have found it,” says Sue.

Rule 3 Your buys don’t have to be local or even typical, just special to you. Says Sue, “We’ll remember the weird little shop where we bought our breadcutter, and with it, the great holiday we had around Rotorua.”

READER’S DIGEST

Love at First Sight … Just like holiday romances, some purchases can be hard to fathom in the “cold light of day”. hristine was in Japan when she ell head over heels in love with he local fabrics. Without any ewing knowledge, Christine pent five hours deciding which brics to buy – $350 worth of e stuff – before posting a large oxful home. “I figured I’d just nd a dressmaker and then have me dresses made,” she recalls. e problem was the fabrics were ore suited to upholstery than mmer-weight dresses and it took ristine five years to find somee to make a pinafore out of one them. Does she regret the purchase? “I’ve wonderful, wonderful memories of an amazing afternoon,” she enthuses.

tea canister she bought in England. “Unfortunately, when I stopped over in Austria, customs thought it resembled a grenade when they X-rayed my luggage. They took my bag apart in front of everyone.” John can do one better – back in 1998 while in Turkey he felt compelled to buy a flint-lock pistol. “It was a beautiful thing,” he recalls. “With detailed inlay on the handle: I just had to buy it.” Then, as he was heading for the airport a panicked common sense prevailed – he threw it in a public bin before Turkish officials could throw him in the clink! Inconvenience kept Kevin company when he visited Italy for his 40th birthday. A day into the month-long holiday, he found his heart’s desire – a coffee machine. Only problem: this meant lugging the steel appliance all over the Italian countryside for the remaining 29 days.

Rule 4 If you buy with your heart, don’t expect your buys to be sensible, but that’s quite all right.

Rule 5 So what’s a good holiday without a good story to tell at the end of it?

No Thought of the Consequences (or Freight)

The Clock is Ticking

The return journey home with your souvenir can itself be the traveller’s tale. My oars and captain’s wheel were a bargain but the ordeal of squeezing them into the family car (together with four kids and a dog) tested my husband’s patience. For Melanie, her “buy first, think later” came with a brass and copper

Spontaneity and buying souvenirs can go hand in hand – urging us to make quick decisions that at home would take us days to make. But for many travellers, the pressing thought that “I’ll never be back” can convince them to buy what takes their fancy. This happened to Angela, an excellent selftaught cook. When she was in Lisbon back in the 1980s, she felt compelled Januaryđ2015

TREASURES, TRINKETS AND TROPHIES

SIMPLE THINGS THAT MEAN SOMETHING Souvenirs can take many forms – some a little unexpected. For many years, my mother had a shelf in her laundry cupboard where spare shopping bags went. There were bags from local supermarkets (free for anyone to take and never return); bags from “the better shops” in town (for special uses); and bags carried back from Paris, London or Singapore (and to be treasured as reminders of memorable European and Asian holidays).

to souvenir some high-grade local saffron. Figuring she wouldn’t return for many years, she purchased five tiny boxes for what she thought was $7 each, not realising she needed to add another zero. She had totally misunderstood the exchange rate. Oops! Barbara can empathise with Angela – she regretted her decision to buy a

Singapore Airlines kebaya (traditional blouse and long skirt) the moment she arrived back home in England. Designed for the trim figures that Singapore Girls are famous for – rather than Barbara’s curvy, more mature shape – it’s no surprise to anyone that she’s never worn it.

Rule 6 Get yourself a calculator. Then dream as big as you can afford. Sentimental Journeys

Saffron: watch the exchange rate when buying the world’s most expensive spice

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In her study of nostalgia and souvenirs, Associate Professor Tracey M. Benson, from the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University, argues that souvenirs play an important role in building nostalgia and strengthening family ties to home. It’s why many of us work so hard to buy, bring back home, and then display our souvenirs. For Sue and her husband it’s the hand-woven bedspread they bought on their honeymoon and which has covered their bed for over 30 years.

READER’S DIGEST

“It says ‘crazy bus trip around Ireland’ each time we look at it.” Or a hippie string hammock they bought in San Francisco and hung in their garden until the fibres eventually rotted.

Rule 7

Souvenirs are the most reliable way of never forgetting your travels.

The Ones That Got Away Sometimes, souvenirs are hard to forget – particularly when it involves regret. It happens when you don’t buy a special memento that perfectly summed up how you felt at that time. Take Phil, who in 1984 visited the picturesque Swiss town of Lucerne. A watch in the hotel lobby shop caught her eye. To this day she carries the disappointment of not buying that time piece. “It had a lovely enamel cover, so you couldn’t see the face without opening it,” she says. “At the time I was in two minds – will I or won’t I? Then common sense prevailed, the bus was boarding and I told myself – You can’t buy everything you see. I’ve had a number of watches since, and none has been as lovely as that one.”

Some souvenirs will return to their new home to collect dust, while others enjoy prime position Rule 8 There will always be the ones that slipped through your fingers. And maybe that’s all the excuse you need to book your return trip… While some souvenirs will return to their new home to collect dust in the china cabinet, bookshelf or hall cupboard, others enjoy prime position on walls or on the mantelpieces to be admired and remind us of wonderful experiences in fabulous places. Whether a souvenir has story-telling value or sits as a testament to your weakness of impulse shopping, never regret your finds – each one tells a story and what’s life without stories? Do you have a holiday souvenir story or photograph to share? Details on how to email Reader’s Digest are on page 6.

PASS THE BOWL “Would the congregation please note that the bowl at the back of the church labelled ‘for the sick’ is for monetary donations only.” AS SEEN IN THE CHURCHDOWN PARISH MAGAZINE

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TRAVEL

It’s a big, wide world out there. But though you will meet dodgy taxi drivers and dirty hostels, don’t hold back!

Less

Every Traveller Learns

BY B E N G R O U NDWATER FRO M WWW.TRAVE LLER .COM. AU D

can be a little daunting, but as time goes by and you settle into the travel scene, you very quickly begin to love it. And that’s because every traveller learns certain lessons, lessons about themselves, about travel, and about the world in general. Lessons like these…

BEN GROUNDWATER

was named 2014 Travel Writer of the Year by the Australian Society of Travel Writers.

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You’re far more resourceful than you think... This is the number one thing every traveller soon realises. You might have previously thought you’d struggle with the language barrier, or that you’re terrible with directions, or that you’re shy around new people, or that you can’t cope in a

P HOTO: GETTY IM AGES

When you first step out into that big world it

L E S S O N S E V E R Y T R AV E L L E R L E A R N S

crisis, but once you throw yourself in the deep end and have to survive on your own in the world, you’ll come to know: you’re far better at this stuff than you ever realised. Large groups of any nationality are annoying... You’ve seen it with Australians, just as you’ve seen it with Russians, or Indians, or Americans, or anyone, really. Travelling in large groups of the same nationality tends to bring out the worst in people – it gives them the confidence to complain, get rowdy, be rude or just drunk. Try to avoid them. You can get used to pretty much anything in about three days... Every time I go camping, or stay in a hostel, or even eat dodgy street food, the feeling is the same on that first day: urgh. I can’t get clean. There are people making noise in my room. This food is going to poison me. But after about three days of anything – any level of discomfort, of grot or grime – you just get used to it. And then it becomes fun. You can survive with less food and less sleep than you thought... Couldn’t find anywhere to have breakfast this morning? No worries. Stayed up all night boozing and now you have to catch a bus? It’ll all be fine. Blew your budget on a dumb souvenir and now you have to survive on packet noodles? No dramas. See the 42

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Survival tips: best to avoid large unruly groups of other travellers but do consider deep-fried insect delicacies

point above – it’ll take about three days to get used to it. Leave the clean towels behind... What you may have once thought was disgusting – showering in a mouldy bathroom, drying yourself with a foul hostel towel, wearing the same T-shirt four days in a row, never washing your socks – becomes routine once you’ve been travelling for a couple of months. Hygiene? It’s a first-world problem. You will not get robbed... (Although, maybe you will.) First-time travellers tend to obsess over security,

READER’S DIGEST

The first price is never the right price... This holds true for anywhere that the price isn’t stamped onto the bject or clearly labelled in some ay. While haggling doesn’t come aturally to some, it’s something you ave to get used to if you don’t want o be ripped off over and over again. ir travel is fast, train travel is omantic, and bus travel sucks... ere are my golden rules of travel: an eroplane will get you there quickly, ut it’s not much fun; on a train you t to meet people, you get to dine at proper restaurant, and you get to atch the world go past your window you soak up the fun; and on a bus well, you’ll get where you need to . Probably. Eventually.

P HOTOS: GETTY IM AGES

but after a while you realise that the world isn’t actually out to get you, and if you just take a few easy precautions the odds are high that you’ll never get robbed while you travel. (Although you still might, so don’t carry anything you can’t bear to lose.) Weird food is good... It’s a bit of a milestone the first time you eat something truly foreign, the first time you open up and stuff in a deep-fried scorpion, or a sheep’s eye, or the leg of a guinea pig. But just because we don’t eat it at home, doesn’t mean it’s not good.

atience is a virtue... Things go wrong when you travel – lots of things. The train is late, the money exchange place is closed, the hotel has lost your booking, and you can feel a rumble in your stomach that means last night’s street food was a bad choice. But you have to be able to roll with the punches when you travel, or you’ll quickly go insane. You need more money than you thought... Draw up a budget for your trip. Think about all the money you’ll spend on flights and transfers, and accommodation, and food, and drinks, and Januaryđ2015

L E S S O N S E V E R Y T R AV E L L E R L E A R N S

entrance fees, and insurance, and all of the little miscellaneous costs that will pop up on your overseas adventure. Tally all of that up, arrive at your total – and then double it.

Somewhere, at some time, someone will successfully rip you off... There’s no point getting too upset about it. These people are professionals – they make a liv ing, sadly, It doesn’t matter f rom ta k i ng tou r ists where you are – for a r ide. It’l l most McDonald’s is an invaluable resource for l i kel y happen w hen Ethiopia or toilet stops... Estonia – people you’ve ju st a r r i ved, You don’t have to eat when you’re jet-lagged are essentially there, but plenty of and tired and freaked the same countries lack decent out by the foreign land public toilet facilities, around you. You’ll get and in those cases it’s r ipped of f. A nd you McDonald’s to the rescue. Their toilets won’t be the first. are usually free, they’re usually clean, People are essentially the same... and they’re usually close by. This is something I’ve noticed over many years of travel to many places. All underwear is two-sided... Desperate times call for desperate It doesn’t matter where you are, whether it’s Ethiopia or Estonia, measures. You’ll come to know this. Guinea or Guyana, the Middle East or the Mid-West – people are essentially Always – always – remember to the same. They want the same things. book an aisle or a window... Unless you fancy the idea of spend- They want a comfortable, quiet life ing 14 hours locked in a vicious battle with a decent job and a family to love. for armrest space with the two hulks They want to be distracted by a sports sitting either side of you, make sure game, and filled with a good meal. you book an aisle seat or a window We all have our differences, but deep down, we’re the same. when you pay for that ticket. WWW.TRAVELLER.COM.AU (OCT 1, ’14) ©2014 FAIRFAX MEDIA

TONGUE-TWISTERS TO TRY Tie twine to three tree twigs. No nose knows like a gnome’s nose knows. 44

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SHARE YOUR STORY

Practical Jokesters APRIL FOOL’S DAY IS COMING!

P HOTOS : THIN KSTOCK

It’s that one time of the year when newspapers, big brands, and mere mortals have a chance to mess around. We’d love to hear your prankster stories – old and new. So if you enjoy a laugh on April Fool’s Day, are a monumental stirrer or perhaps have been the target of a good-humoured prank, tell us all about it. Send us your April Fool’s Day stories by January 31, 2015, and we’ll publish the best in our upcoming Humour Issue. Closes 31 JANUARY, 2015.

Asia: READERSDIGESTASIA

@rdasia

Australia: READERSDIGESTAUSTRALIA

@readersdigestAU

NZ: READERSDIGESTNEWZEALAND

@readersdigestNZ

South Africa: READERSDIGESTSOUTHAFRICA @readersdigestZA

Januaryđ2015

Laughter THE BEST MEDICINE

“It turns out you’re not A, B, or AB but the much rarer ABBA blood group.”

BEST FOOT FORWARD

It’s New Year’s Eve, and the restaurant is hopping – revellers, band, overworked waiters. Wending his way through the crowd is a drunk, staggering back to his seat. Spotting an attractive woman sitting alone, he says, “Pardon me, miss, did I step on your feet a few minutes ago?” “Yes,” she replies testily. “You did.” 46

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“Oh good! I knew my table was around here somewhere.” Seen on the internet

IN YOUR DREAMS

A man goes to his doctor and says, “Doc, every night I dream I’m playing football. Can you help?” “Take these pills,” says the doctor. “You’ll sleep soundly.” “Are you crazy?” says the man. “I can’t take those. Tonight’s the grand final!” SUBMITTED BY PETE FOSS

CLASS WARFARE How do you drown a hipster? Throw him in the mainstream. SUBMITTED BY JESSE REHN

FOOD FOR THOUGHT LOWERING THE BAR

“There are occasional embarrassments over recommended accommodation.” Anyone who can type that without correction gets to be US President.

Guess what, tapas: you’re the exact Venn diagram midpoint of my two least favourite things in the world: small portions and sharing with anybody. EIREANN DOLAN, ON TWITTER

US WRITER MATT SUDDAIN, ON TWITTER

CALLED TO ACCOUNT

A lawyer dies and goes to heaven. “There must be some mistake,” the lawyer argues. “I’m way too young to die. I’m only 55 years old!” “Fifty-five?” says Saint Peter. “No, according to our calculations, you’re 83.” “How did you get that?” the lawyer asks. Answers Saint Peter: “We added up your time sheets.” Seen on the internet

SPOTTED ON THE TRAIN

On the train to work, untangling headphones is the new knitting. The woman across from me could have finished a cardigan by now.

WORDSMITH I invented a new word: SUBMITTED BY M.R. plagiarism. THE BARBER SYSTEM

A man walks into a barbershop and asks, “How much for a haircut?” “Twelve dollars,” says the barber. “And for a shave?” “Ten dollars.” “All right,” says the man, settling into the barber chair. “Shave my head.” SUBMITTED BY HELEN RUSS

SNACKABLE The key to eating healthy is not eating any food that has a TV commercial. COMEDIAN MIKE BIRBIGLIA

GREG PREECE, ON HUMORLABS.COM

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Hollywood gets police work completely and utterly wrong. Here’s what it’s really like to do this job in America

CONFESSIONS OF A

People Are Serial Liars Ninety-nine per cent of everything people say to me is untrue. The most common: “These aren’t my pants.” We hear it during virtually every case in which someone gets shaken down and drugs or guns are found. Apparently there are ownerless pants just floating around, and people grab them off a communal pile before leaving the house.

We’re Cautious in Some Neighbourhoods for a Reason I always imagined it was because those places were littered with armed gangsters, but the reasons 48

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are much more complicated. I was cruising about one night and saw this drunken guy riding a horse, clopping into oncoming traffic. I turned on my lights and tried to pull him over. He galloped away on horseback, headed for one of those apartment buildings. Our protocols dictate any officer entering such a building must be accompanied by at least three other officers. He stopped the horse inside, possibly assuming no officer would follow him for drunk driving a horse. I leaped out of the car to grab the rider. The guy, in keeping with the old joke, immediately assured me, “The horse is sober.”

I LLUSTRATI ON: EDDIE GUY

LIKE IT IS

But the guy was not, and wacky circumstances don’t grant you licence to endanger yourself and others while under the influence. I knew I wasn’t getting horse registration, so I started to book him, at which point this little old lady came up and asked why I was arresting Horse Guy. I began to explain

that he was drunk driving and that horses do count as vehicles under the transportation code, when some random dude ran up and punched the old lady in the head. Punching little old people is a felony, so my partner and I chased the assailant through the complex. He Januaryđ2015

CONFESSIONS OF A COP

vanished somewhere in the labyrinth, so I made my way back to the car, hoping maybe the lady knew who he was. But she had disappeared too. As had the drunken rider. The horse, however, had been left behind. You would not believe how many phone calls I had to make to get that horse back to its rightful owner.

Kicking in Doors Doesn’t Look Like It Does in the Movies I have kicked dow n way more doors than I ever thought I would. The movies get that whole action completely wrong. At no point should you ever stand directly in front of the door. Doors aren’t bulletproof, and if some bad guy behind the door hears you kicking at it, he’s going to shoot. The goal is to stand off to one side with your back to the wall so that only your leg is in front. Then give it a good donkey kick, right under the knob. One time, I kicked a guy’s door. Nothing. We tried a sledgehammer as an impromptu ram. Nothing. We borrowed the fire department’s pry bars. Nothing. The firefighters broke out the Jaws of Life, and we peeled the entire wall of his apartment away to get inside, only to see that all three hinges had been welded shut and the door locks had been welded shut, and he’d also welded a metal pole to a brick of steel behind the door and mounted that pole into the floor. And after all of that? We didn’t charge him 50

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with anything. (We were there to stop him from harming himself, and fortifying your home isn’t a crime.)

The Sight of Police Lights Turns People into Idiots Myth : cops use their emergency lights whenever they want, often as an excuse to break traffic laws. Truth: police vehicles log when an officer turns on the lights, so a cop abusing this will have to explain to an annoyed fleet sergeant why he keeps running down his batteries for no good reason. While you’ll often hear complaints of police speeding just for the heck of it, in my hometown in Texas, protocol sets our maximum speed at 125km/h. When we turn on our lights to get to an emergency, everyday commuters – who routinely exceed our maximum set speed limit – pass us. In theory, a police car with lights flashing should be able to clear a path. Everybody knows to pull off the road, or at least clear a lane, when he sees lights and hears sirens. But some people see that lane open up, and they rush over to it, completely oblivious to the cop car racing towards them (yes, a lot of wrecks happen this way). Ev e n m o re p u z z l i n g a re t h e accidents that happen when the police vehicle is sitting still with the lights on. Despite the fact that our lights are carefully designed to be bright and annoying enough to get even the most jaded commuter to

READER’S DIGEST

pay attention, people constantly crash into parked, lit-up police cars.

A Search is the Slowest, Most Intense Game of Hide-and-Seek I have the legs of an Oompa-Loompa, but chasing people is a surprisingly awesome part of the job. There’s a primitive part of the brain that makes us love chasing. If you’re a businessman or a barista, and you see some guy running down the street, you can’t chase him. But it’s socially acceptable for the police – and it’s just the best. The slow, tedious version of this is a building search: we check every possible hiding spot big enough to house a human. Once we got a call from federal agents guarding an unnamed bigwig in my city. Someone had left a door ajar, and we had to go room by room, opening every cabinet, cupboard and locker. It turned out that a janitor had left the door open by accident when he went home. We were still clearing the place when he showed up for work the next day. I’ve found suspects hiding everywhere, from water heater recesses in the maintenance closet to fridges in the break room.

Here’s a tip: if you’re hiding from the police, choose the nastiest place you can imagine. Dry-clean-only uniforms are a total pain (politely ask your cleaner if he’ll get out blood, faeces, or fleas and see how that goes), so cops don’t really want to get disgusting unless they have to. It’ll definitely cut down your odds of being found. I’ve gotten fleas twice from nasty places I searched. But if you are caught, surrender immediately. Procedure demands that we get you out of there. I’ve had to Taser people to get them out from under dumpsters. One guy tried to lock himself in his car, which could have led to a SWAT call. We preempted that by dispersing pepper spray in the air conditioning vents.

I Love Calls About Wild Animals We once got a call that two men – one in boxers, the other in a pair of swimmers – were bothering some peacocks. Now, I have experience with big birds, so I suspected this would be a self-correcting issue. Sure enough, the next call soon came in: “Two naked males being attacked and chased by feral birds.”

SPARE THE BOD Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it, I wash my mouth out with chocolate. CHARLES SCHULZ Januaryđ2015

LIVING LANGUAGE

English is a beautiful language to use, but a pain in the brain to spell. Reader’s Digest chief subeditor Donyale Harrison shares her favourite tips

How To Spell

(part 1)

S IT ANY WONDER that English speakers have problems with spelling? After all, it’s a language with inconsistent rules and a 2000-year history of stealing any good-looking word that came along. The fact that many people learn it later in life and are good at it is nothing short of miraculous. Some words will always send us scurrying for the dictionary (bless it!), but for more common problems, here are some handy tricks of the trade to help. 52

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H OW TO S P E L L

Sound It Out Even the best spellers break words down into chewable parts to get them right: indefatigable looks hard but is made up of six easy syllables – in-defat-i-ga-ble. Immediately was the bane of my young life until a teacher made me sound it out: im-med-i-ate-ly. Easy! Even necessary just needs you to remember one thing – the first S sound is a C: that tells you that you need an E after it to make the soft sound. Then the next S sound is a longer one, so two S’s, and stick an -ary on the end. There are also tricks for distinguishing between pairs of words with similar sounds but different spellings and meanings. Stationary stands still like a car, and both have ar in them. Stationery includes letters, and both have er. Confused about principle and principal? The person ends in pal. You hear with your ear, or bring her over here. And then there are words that look nothing like they sound. For them, it’s worth sitting down and memorising what the word looks like, how to say it and how to spell it. Admittedly, I’ve been known to say picture-sque after teaching my goddaughter how to spell picturesque – but I pass it off as a poor attempt at humour!

Origin Stories Knowing where a word came from can give you clues to its spelling. Many other languages have clear-cut rules that still hold true for their words when they’re swiped by English. If 54

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you speak another language, you’re a step ahead. Italian tends to pronounce every consonant, even when they’re doubled. That’s why we say broc-coli and spell it with two C’s and one L. If it was brocolli, you’d say “bro-col-li”. Italian also has soft C and G sounds before I and E (like foccacia: foc-ca-chi-a), unless you add an H, which tells you how to spell spaghetti (spagh-et-ti) and zucchini (zuc-chi-ni). These silent H’s sneak into a lot of words to harden up other letters: architect, ghetto and even the non-Italian gherkin. French words often stay gendered in English, so we say blond for a man’s fair hair, but blonde for a woman’s; fiancé for Jim, fiancée for Jess, and my protégé Bill but my protégée Beth. That -ay sound at the end is common in French and can be made with an e-acute (sauté, café), an ee (entree) or an -et (ballet, fillet). Though words borrowed from the French centuries ago often have a straight English -ay ending: parlay, foray – I may have been exaggerating about the rules being clear-cut.

Clues from the Classics Latin scholars have a big advantage. For starters, they know how many F’s are in professor (a common confusion). It’s made up of the Latin proposition pro- (forward), then fess (to speak, knowledge), with the English suffix -or (one who does something) stuck on the end. Pro-fess-or.

READER’S DIGEST

Latin gives clues to endings, too: most words ending in -or are Latinbased (confessor, author) – other words have the more common -er (driver, runner). No idea which words are Latin-based? Look for Latin word beginnings such as ad-, con-, contra-, in-, inter-, pre-, pro-, re-, sub-, superand trans-. They usually get added whole to the rest of the word, so with that short list you’ve got a good start on hundreds of words. One trick : ad- (administer) has a few alternative forms including a- (aspire) acc- (accede), and always ac- before Q (acquire and acquit). If the first letter of the root word is a single consonant, it becomes a- plus the consonant: affix, attract, assign. Greek roots abound in English. There’s tele, phone, scope, zoo, hydro, photo, graph, logo; as well as prefixes like anti-, auto-, micro- and mono-; and suffixes like -ism, -logy, -phile and -ic. These generally keep their spelling in English, so telephone, hydrograph and antibiotic can all be built from pieces. English also has a habit of making hybrid words that mix Greek and Latin, to the horror of purists. Handily, words like television and automobile keep the spelling rules of each of their parts. We’ve only scratched the surface, but that’s already thousands of spellings sorted. And remember, if you’re ever at a loss, just choose another word!

GET TRICKY There are some words that most people get wrong at first. Happily, generations of teachers have come up with handy little sayings to get us through the hard bits: O There’s a rat in separate. O ’E’s in the cemetery. O De finite world is definite. O I’m able to accept acceptable. O Is land surrounded? It’s an

island. These tricks are called mnemonics and come in a few different types. For example, you can make up a phrase to help you with the hard parts of a word: O Cousin Charlie and Mr Marsh need accommodation. O A secretary must keep a secret. Or you can come up with a phrase to spell out the whole word: O Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move = rhythm O Dining In A Rough Restaurant? Hurry! Otherwise, Expect Accidents = diarrhoea

REST IN PEACE

Part 2 of “How to Spell” will appear in our April edition. Januaryđ2015

All in a Day’s Work HUMOUR ON THE JOB

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

More dramatic real-life scenes from US courtrooms.

you was the condition of the body when he performed the autopsy? WITNESS: He described it as dead. Source: Law and Disorder, by Charles M. Sevilla

PROSECUTOR: Do you see the defendant in the court today? WITNESS: Yes, I do. PROSECUTOR: How is he dressed? WITNESS: He looks pretty sharp. ATTORNEY: What did the doctor tell 56

| Januaryđ2015

POORLY SCREENED

SCENE: Me driving past a fastfood outlet. SIGN: Now Hiring Managers. [Two weeks later…] SIGN: Now Hiring Managers. Background Checks Required. Source: notalwaysworking.com

LONG IN THE TOOTH

At the age of 55, I finally got my degree and set out to become a

ILLUSTRATION: CHRIS CATER

PROSECUTOR: How fast was the car coming towards you? WITNESS: I am not a thermometer, so I can’t tell you the speed limit.

“You’ve had three hairstyles. What’s next for your career?” Z AC H GA LI F IA N A K I S TO J U S TI N B I E B E R O N B E T WE E N T WO F E R N S

substitute teacher. One day, a seventh grader asked if I’d been teaching long. “Actually, I’m brand new,” I told him. “I just graduated.” Looking me up and down, he asked, “How long were you at university?” SUBMITTED BY DEBI BRIM

TAKEN FOR A RIDE

From a passenger of the Vacaville, California, public bus company: Dear Sir, I would like to commend driver Lea Schroeder for the following reasons: 1. She frequently doesn’t stop for me when I’m waiting at the bus stop, but she always waves as she goes by. 2. If she’s running behind, she tells me, “Sit your butt down,” in a courteous way. 3. She nearly comes to a complete stop now when I disembark, so I haven’t fallen in almost a week. 4. Although she usually gives me wrong instructions on which bus to take, I enjoy riding all around Vacaville on the different routes. 5. The way she suddenly starts and

stops, rides the rear bumper of the car ahead, and pulls several Gs of force when she turns corners unfailingly elevates my heart rate. This has obvious health benefits. Once again, I would like to commend Lea Schroeder for her outstanding work. Sincerely yours, Robert V. SUBMITTED BY LEA SCHROEDER, A BUS DRIVER WITH A GREAT SENSE OF HUMOUR

CODE BROKEN

I tried to explain to a client why I couldn’t help him with a project that was written in a program code I wasn’t familiar with. “Let’s say you’re asking me to write something in a specific language. Now, I’m fluent in English and Spanish, but your project is in Chinese. Since I don’t understand Chinese, I’m not your best option. You need someone who is fluent in this specific language. See?” He said he did and thanked me. The next morning I got a call from another developer asking, “Why is so-and-so asking us if we’re fluent in Chinese?”

Source: clientsfromhell.net

Got a good joke, anecdote or real-life gem to share? Send it in and you could win cash! See page 6 for details on how to contribute. Januaryđ2015

Decemberđ2014

Every autumn, hundreds of polar bears pass by, and through, the small Canadian town of Arviat

NATURE

Siege

BY JEFF TIETZ FROM MEN’S JOURNAL

Polar Bears of the

PHOTO: A LAM Y

my turboprop landed in Arviat, airport workers chased a polar bear off the runway. Three bears had passed by the terminal earlier that November morning. Around noon, a fifth bear loped down the main street and chased two young men. Paul Aliktiluk, one of Arviat’s two bylaw officers, arrived just in time to head ➸ FEW HOURS BEFORE

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SIEGE OF THE POLAR BEARS

it off. That evening a sixth bear charged shooting bears pre-emptively, which a woman, who dashed into a nearby at this point could mean carnage.* house. Later that night, the town’s bear monitor, Leo Ikakhik, used firecracker AFTER I ARRIVED in Arviat, I drove shells to scare off a seventh bear. my rented 4WD out to the town Every autumn, hundreds of po- dump, which residents had ceded to lar bears pass Arviat, an Inuit town the bears. As I pulled in, I saw a bear of 2800 people on the western shore amid the trash mounds, but the scale of Hudson Bay, in the northern Ca- seemed wrong: on all fours, it was too nadian territory of Nunavut. As they wide and too long. Standing, it might move northward to the have been 2.5m tall. A high Arctic, they range resident of Arviat had east onto the widening once seen a 4m-tall “You never ice of Hudson Bay. bear. Looking up at that By the time the bears bear would have been know where a reach Arviat’s latitude, like looking up at somepolar bear is most should already one leaning out of a going to pop be out on the bay, second-storey window. up,” said hunting seals. But the The bear had buried its face in trash. Then climate has warmed in tribal elder two ears flicked up, and recent years, and the Peter Alareak it raised its head and ice freezes later, so the took a few steps back. bears hug the coast. It moved with languor Their new route runs – I would have expected it to lumber straight through Arviat. “You never know where they’re and thud, but its steps were eminently going to pop up,” tribal elder Peter controlled. I could see its muscles and Alareak told me, noting that Arviat bones working beneath its fitted coat. was far worse than Churchill, which It swung its head to one side and back lies 260km to the south and bills itself before resuming its meal. as the Polar Bear Capital of the World. Polar bears are aquatic animals: “You might be inside and want to go their paws are webbed for swimming out for a smoke, and next thing you and their necks highly extendable know, the bear is right there.” for breathing in rough seas; a whaleNo-one in Arviat has yet been mauled or killed, but for many resi- * Measures to deter polar bears in Arviat, such as the hiring of a bear monitor, are dents the town has become a scary credited with lowering the number of polar place. I kept hearing that people were bears killed from eight in 2010 to three in a serious injury or death away from 2011 and none since. 60

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READER’S DIGEST

Arviat lies on the western shore of Hudson Bay

PHOTO: GORD BILLARD

like layer of blubber makes them buoyant and impervious to cold. They can swim more than 350km and run 40km/h. They can smell a 70kg seal under a metre of ice from 1.6km away, approach its breathing hole soundlessly, and casually pull it from the sea. Encounters between humans and polar bears are infrequent, and fatal attacks remain exceedingly rare. They are stealth hunters – you won’t see or hear them until they charge – and if they’re hungry enough, they will kill and eat humans. IN 2011, a bear broke Darryl Baker’s sled-dog pen, killing one of his dogs. Carefully bred and highly trained, sled dogs are worth several thousand dollars each. When the bear ignored a warning shot, Baker killed it. Darryl and his wife, Kukik, live near

Hudson Bay. I drove over one day to talk about the bear problem. It was 2pm and the sun was setting. Like the 8am sunrise, the sunset would last for two hours – in late November, half the day’s illumination is twilight, which tempers the overwhelming whiteness of the land. The comfortable living area of Darryl and Kukik’s sizeable house smelled faintly, but not unpleasantly, of frozen sea mammal. A bear skin and photos of seal and whale and caribou hunts hung on the walls. Darryl, having thrown his back out while axe-cleaving frozen seal and whale carcasses to feed the dogs, was lying on a big modular lounge, talking on a mobile phone in front of a large flatscreen TV. Ku k i k , w h o i s 3 1 a n d e v e n tempered, offered me tea and a seat at the kitchen table, then clicked two Januaryđ2015

SIEGE OF THE POLAR BEARS

cartridges of chai into an automatic When climate change drove polar tea-maker. bears into Arviat’s backyards, a Darryl got off the phone, stiffly sensible solution would have been to ambled over, and sat down. “Are you exempt residents from the quota and walking?” he asked. “Because there implement a bear deterrence system. was a polar bear right out here on this Churchill employs a full-time bear road about an hour ago.” response team, maintains a bear holdDarryl and Kukik said that many ing facility, has a transport helicopter, people in Arviat don’t and buries its garbage. walk around after But no politician dark anymore. Some moved to shield Arviat. “Are you don’t walk around in Leo Ikakhik’s position as walking?” the daytime. Children bear monitor was crerarely play outside, and ated with funds from the he asked. when they do, their World Wildlife Fund. To “There was a parents order them to people like the Bakers, polar bear stay within “running the WWF does more right here on distance” of the house. harm than good: it exAs recently as the late ploits a caricature of the this road an 1950s, Darryl pointed polar bear – vulnerable, hour ago” out, the Inuit people noble, adorable – to lived in small, semilobby for the hunting nomadic bands. Arviat prohibitions that leave had been a summer hunting camp. people in Arviat defenceless. When they moved to Arviat perma“These are not cuddly, fluffy aninently, a dump became necessary, mals,” Darryl said. “They’re very big and caches of whale and seal meat and scary.” lay on the beach. Arviat was now a The Inuit, of course, have always bear lure. hunted polar bears sustainably. To people in Arviat, the southerners’ T H E C A N A D I A N government in- assumption seems to be that if left troduced the quota system for polar unregulated, Inuit would treat polar bear hunting in the 1960s, a response bears like white people had. Darryl to overharvesting by commercial and and Kukik said that no-one in Arviat sport hunters. Arviat receives only “played around” with wildlife. The eight tags a year, and any bears killed culture didn’t allow it. “Musk ox, cari“in defence of life or property” count bou, beluga – this is our big farm up here,” Darryl said. against the quota. FROM MEN’S JOURNAL (NOVEMBER 2013), © BY MEN’S JOURNAL, LLC 2013, WWW.MENSJOURNAL.COM

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READER’S DIGEST

Leo Ikakhik, Arviat’s sole polar bear monitor

PHOTO: SA RAH ROGERS/NUNATSI AQ NEWS

t or not, seemed clear: an Inuit life was not worth a polar bear’s. LEO IKAKHIK PATROLS the town’s perimeter alone, with no mobile phone or radio. “It’d be good to have someone else out there with me,” he said before taking me out on patrol. “The bears can get pretty spooky – sometimes they run behind me before I can see them.” Ikakhik is 50, short, with narrow eyes and a wispy goatee. “I always approach the animal as the animal’s behaving,” he told me. “If they make a lot of stops and wait for you and look at you, they’re uncomfortable. They hardly ever charge, but you never know.” Around midnight, we hopped on a

snowmobile and glided down empty streets. At a scrap yard, Ikakhik began nosing among corroded trawler hulls and staved-in shipping containers and dead bulldozers. Bears make sleeping nests in the wreckage, so what we were doing seemed an excellent way to startle a bear in close quarters. Hours later, the sun showed a fraction of itself, and we made for the dump. Behind snowed-over rubbish, Ikakhik pointed out sleeping hollows from the night before – inexplicably small depressions in snowdrifts. “They’re big, but they can curl up real small,” Ikakhik said. “They’re very flexible.” We turned away from the dump, and there in the middle distance was a bear. It was moving away from town, but it was close enough that Ikakhik felt Januaryđ2015

SIEGE OF THE POLAR BEARS

compelled to hurry it along. He gunned the vehicle. Had the bear turned and charged, it probably wouldn’t have been able to catch us, but snowmobiles can stall and guns can jam. This one kept on going, though.

Aliktiluk later told me that he chased the bear out to the scrap yard and shot a cracker cartridge at it, which spurred it to run onto the roof of an old pickup, leap onto a road grader, and then spring onto the roof of another pickup before sprinting out onto the ice. “They’re tricky, like monkeys,” he T H E T R AU M A of being chased by a bear is durable and perspective- said. “I didn’t even know they could do that.” altering. I also talked to “There’s nothing in 22-year-old Rebecca your mind, just ‘Run!’” “I’m barely Nariyak, slender and Luke Atatsiak told me. out now, c u t e a n d w h i s p e rLuke is one of the voiced, who’d been young men who got during the chased and nearly chased the day I arrived dark,” she killed by a bear four in Ar viat. We were said. “I’m years earlier. It was sitting at the dining always scared about this time of year table in his house, a when the bear chased slight-looking A-frame to be out in her, Rebecca said. She with a single first-floor the dark” seemed on the verge of room. Luke is rangy, tears, but her voice was with a melancholy face so faint I couldn’t quite that changes entirely when he smiles – a smile so wide it tell. “They were saying, ‘There’s a bear inside the town,’ and we were going to nearly forces his eyes closed. “While I was running, I was in my go see my grandmother because she boots, steel-toe, and somehow I didn’t was alone and it was in her area.” The bear appeared soundlessly slip,” he said. He kept thinking about this detail, how strange it was that the almost as soon as they walked out the boots didn’t slow him down. door. “After what happened, I kept “We had to run back to our neighlaughing at myself – I didn’t know I bour’s house. And as we were runcould run that fast.” ning, the bear was shot from behind.” I asked him whether he would have If the bear hadn’t been shot, it would gotten away if Paul Aliktiluk hadn’t ar- have caught her. rived. “No,” he said. “It was too close.” Rebecca nodded when I asked if I asked him how much he thought she’d had nightmares, and then said, about it. “Most of the time,” he said. “Because I had to protect my sister 64

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READER’S DIGEST

and run away from the bear at the same time. I was the older sister who had to protect her.” I asked how she felt walking around town now. “I’m barely out now, during the dark,” she said. “I’m always scared to be out in the dark.” She got nervous during the day, too: “I actually don’t walk around much anymore.” I asked whether she’d be willing to live far from her family and friends and birthplace to get away from bears. “Yes,” she said. PAUL ALIKTILUK OFFERED to take me out on patrol in his truck. In his early 50s, with a shaved head and wire-rimmed glasses, he reminded me of the Dalai Lama. As we drove along the bay towards the cemetery we could see the lights of snowmobiles out on the frozen water. “I like when people are out here – kind of keeps the bears away,” Aliktiluk said. We saw fresh bear tracks by the cemetery, but they led from town back onto the ice, so we turned around and drove to the dump, where six polar bears were eating nearly shoulder to shoulder. Aliktiluk observed that the bears had so much to eat, they might

not even bother scavenging in town that night. We watched them for a while, and then Aliktiluk asked, rhetorically, “Why would Coca-Cola use them as mascots?” Like everyone, he was irked by the cartoonish recasting of the animal. “Polar bears are not cute,” he said, and suggested sarcastically that Pepsi retain grizzlies. Aliktiluk asked if I wanted to see how they reacted to the sound of a shotgun being pumped, and I said sure. He opened the window and racked the slide a few times. The bears’ heads came up right away. As usual, I was impressed by the briskness of the movement – not at all ponderous: a start, a whisk of the neck. Aliktiluk decided to shoot a firecracker shell. It arced out of the gun, landed near the bears, then popped and flared. The bears had been shifting uneasily, and at the explosion they rushed off agilely. “Whoever invented that – I thank him,” Aliktiluk said, and then, after a pause: “They’ll be back in about five minutes.” The WWF has funded Ikakhik for a fourth year. This year, the regional government has funded three additional patrollers.

21ST CENTURY VOCABULARY E-QUAIL (v.) To feel dread upon receiving an e-mail from a hostile or irksome source, and to resist opening it for fear it might contain distressing or irritating news, or increase your workload. Januaryđ2015

EXERCISE

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;80s

Terry-cloth headbands and a chest expander to engage the back and shoulders

As we resolve to definitely exercise more in 2015, Helen Signy takes us on a hot and sweaty trip through time

Throug the Age

FITNESS THROUGH THE AGES

rom Jane Fonda and ab machines, to high-intensity interval training and hightech fitness apps – the world of fitness has continuously reinvented itself in recent decades as we strive to get healthy and look good. “The science around fitness and health has come a long way,” says Lauretta Stace, chief executive officer of health and fitness industry association, Fitness Australia. “Much of what we do now is evidence-based and tailored to people’s needs.” The current guidelines for adults advocate being active on most, preferably all, days of the week, with muscle-strengthening activities on at least two days. You should aim for 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity, each week, and minimise time spent sitting. But doing any physical activity is better than doing none. So if you haven’t worked out since the days of the leg warmer and spandex suit, maybe our nostalgic look at how far we’ve come will entice you back to the gym or walking track.

The 1970s Exercise craze: Jogging, body building, calisthenics Equipment we used: Vibrating belts, sauna suits, weight-reducing belts – all designed to help us look slim What we wore: Short shorts, knee-high white socks, velour tracksuits 68

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’70s What we’ve learned Back in the ’70s, exercise was all about looking good. We jogged to lose weight, and body building took off in earnest, led by the pumped up pecs of Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Mr Universe brethren. Katie Williams, accredited exercise physiologist at Exercise and Sports Science Australia, says running is still regarded as a great medium- to highintensity exercise that burns large numbers of kilojoules and uses the large muscle groups. It’s also great to improve bone density.

’70s

READER’S DIGEST

But these days we recognise that mixing it up will probably achieve etter results. Cross training, which ntroduces variety to your weekly orkout, will get you fit more quickly. unning outdoors on a track or trail s great because it challenges your tability and balance. If you’re runing on a treadmill at the gym, make ure you get off the 0% gradient.

he 1980s xercise craze: Aerobics, group ﬁtness xercises, rollerblading Ripped and toned: Arnold Schwarzenegger

quipment we used: ThighMaster, bMaster, ButtMaster – a wide variety f do-it-at home resistance training achines hat we wore: Spandex leotards with cinch belts, leg warmers, sweat bands

What we’ve learned Modern aerobics burst onto t he scene in the early ’80s spearheaded by celebrities such as Jane Fonda and Olivia Newton-John. With the advent

’80s Feeling the burn: lycra-clad and legwarmered, we puffed our way through high-impact exercise and spent a lot of time waving our legs in the air in time to Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson

“Don’t overdo it. It’s really important when engaging in a running programme to build it up over time to prevent injury” KATIE WILLIAMS, ACCREDITED EXERCISE PHYSIOLOGIST

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FITNESS THROUGH THE AGES

of exercise workout videos, made accessible on our new video players, we could feel the burn in the comfort of our own living rooms. “Jane Fonda and the likes were the beginning of a massive movement that’s still going strong,” says Lauretta Stace. “Choreographed fitness moves are an attractive model, particularly for women. They’re fun, the music is motivational and you can choose the class that suits your needs.” Aerobics today ranges from the ver y gentle to the most extreme high-intensity workouts, offering the variet y that we now k now is essential for optimum fitness. As for the burn – while some muscle soreness is a sign that your muscles are repairing themselves to be stronger, excessive soreness that lasts more than two to three days can be a sign you’ve overdone it. Make sure you build up gradually so you don’t injure yourself.

’90s

The 1990s Exercise craze: Boot camp, BodyPump, aqua-aerobics, yoga Equipment we used: Heart-rate monitors, dumb-bells, Swiss balls What we wore: Leotards, leggings, bicycle shorts, high-tech fabrics

What we’ve learned By the ’90s, former Olympian Les Mills and others had developed a wide range of choreographed group fitness programmes that remain 70

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’90s

READER’S DIGEST

po opular today. The most succeessful of all time, BodyPump, offfered a full-strength workout n less than an hour, toning in th he muscles and improving caardio vascular fitness. For hose who needed something th d ifferent, there was aquaaerobics, step, boxercise – the liist goes on. This decade also saw the popularity of boot camp, p commando-like group fitness c classes using the outdoors as c the t gym. The trend opened up u a world of fitness opportunities for people who didn’t t like gyms. l “We started to see parks and benches used for these outside classes and business exploded as fitness centres added these classes to their services,” says Stace. At the other end of the fitness spectrum, yoga became mainstream. This centuries-old psycho-physical and meditation practice is now offered by most gyms and, along with Pilates, is considered an essential part of many people’s weekly exercise routines. The pool became cool in the ’90s, with aqua-aerobics offering gentler, “low-impact” exercises. Boot camps, meanwhile, promised military-style discipline to keep us on the straight and narrow

Ab Rocket: “Tighter abs in five minutes” – or your money back?

EXERCISE TRENDS THAT ARE BEST FORGOTTEN

1. Upside-down Abs Machines: Also known as hanging sit-ups, this fad had us suspended by our ankles while we strained to sit up. Only for the experienced trainer. 2. Cardio Striptease: Launched with Carmen Electra’s Aerobic Striptease DVD, this craze promised an improved sex life along with your kilojoule burn. But only if you looked like Carmen Electra. 3. Three-minute Legs: A popular gadget that promised total sculpting of all the muscles in the legs and bottom in just three minutes a day. As if. 4. Ab Rocket: A “magic” way of getting rid of belly fat and love handles as you sat back and let the machines do the work. 5. Aqua Cycling: A spin class where the stationary bikes are immersed in water to reduce impact. Yes, really.

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FITNESS THROUGH THE AGES

The 2000s Exercise craze: Zumba and other dance ﬁtness classes, Pilates, Wii, personal training Equipment we used: Video games, strip poles, vibration plates What we wore: Bare midriffs, shoes that mimicked being barefoot, iPods, thigh-toning shoes

What we’ve learned

LASTING IMPACTS

1. Sitting is bad. Sitting for long periods during the day can damage your health, according to numerous studies. Make sure you move regularly throughout the day. 2. Short, intense workouts can achieve amazing results. Known as high-intensity interval training (HIIT), you combine bursts of intense anaerobic exercise with short recovery periods for improved ﬁtness, fat burning and glucose

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’00s t was now t at persona training exploded, both individual and groupbased. “It’s about understanding that everyone is an individual and may need tailored advice, motivation or programme design. Personal training helps people get results based on their own needs,” says Stace. metabolism. There’s plenty of scientiﬁc evidence to show it works. 3. Strength training is essential. It’s not all about getting ﬁt – you need to do some resistance training two to three times a week to maintain muscle mass and bone density as you age. 4. Sweating does not help you lose weight. Sweating has been promoted since the ’50s (when sweat suits were the rage), but there is no evidence to show this normal bodily response to exercise accelerates weight loss. If you

P HOTOS: ALL GETTY I MAGES OR SUPPLI ED

As we started to fixate on screens and our waistlines grew, a new exercise option opened up – Nintendo Wii. The ability to play a video game and move at the same time at least got us off the couch – though this form of exercise did give rise to Wii injuries as people forgot to move furniture out of the way. In the gyms, dancing for fitness became a craze, giving rise to highenergy classes like Zumba and pole dancing. Pilates, a mixture of yoga, ballet and calisthenics moves, took off as a way of improving flexibility.

READER’S DIGEST

Now N E Exercise craze: Apps, pedometers, GPS tracking G E Equipment we use: Increasingly highttech gym equipment W What we wear: Wearable technology

What we’ve learned W L Like most facets of our lives, technology has transformed fitness. The n iinternet and smartphones mean tthat people can access a full range of ffitness instruction in their own homes aas never before. At the same time, we ccan monitor everything from our daily ssteps to our heart rate or sleeping patterns. It helps people stay accountp able, set goals and track their progress. Rather than challenging the supremacy of gyms, technology is bringing more people through their doors, says Stace. “People are seeing their patterns emerge and realising what they can do better. They are more self-aware and are looking for tailored services.” are going to do a programme which will make you sweat a lot, like Bikram yoga, then hydrate well. 5. Exercise gadgets tend not to wo ork. Late-night TV is full of equipment promising great abs or thighs – butt there’s little that can target one speciﬁc body area for weight loss.

’10s Smartphone keep-fit: speed trackers, food diaries and customised exercises

Many gym goers today are looking for results-based fitness programmes, exercising to achieve specific goals, she says – giving rise to terrifically popular challenges like Tough Mudder, fun runs and Masters games. Gym equipment has evolved, too, and these days is designed to help us achieve very specific improvements and increase our functional fitness. Treadmills, cardio machines and strengthening machines are proven to be highly safe and effective if used correctly.

6. Exercise should do good, not ha arm. Before starting any activity, check w with your GP about any risk factors and to get advice about a programme suitted to your health needs.

a ua an aryđ20 2015 015

Points to Ponder THE PRESIDENT and I [were talking to guests at a fund-raiser], and they’re holding their smartphone cameras up ... And I said to the president, “You know, the oddest thing about what’s happening right now is that we’ve stopped living our lives, and we’re just recording them.” GEORGE CLOONEY,

a c t o r,

in Esquire

THERE’S NO SUCH thing as a woman, one woman. There are dozens inside every one of them … but what child can see the women inside her mum, what with all that Motherness blocking out everything else? KELLY CORRIGAN,

CATHERINE M. WALLACE,

a u t h o r,

in U.S. Catholic

A UNIVERSITY’S OBLIGATION is not to teach students what to think but to teach students how to think … If students graduate with ears and minds closed, the university has failed both the student and society. MICHAEL BLOOMBERG,

f o r m e r m a y o r o f Ne w Yo r k C i t y , in a commencement speech

TO LIVE ENTIRELY in public is a form of solitary confinement.

in her book Glitte er and Glue

MARGARET ATWOOD,

a u t h o r,

in the New York Review of Books

When n people are like, “Life is so good,” I go, ““No, life is a series of disastrous mom ments, painful moments, unexpected moments, and things that will b break your heart. And in between tho ose moments, that’s when you sav vour, savour, savour.” SANDRA BULLOCK, a c t r e s s , in Entertainment Weekly

P HOTOS: GETTY IM AGES

w r i t e r,

IF YOU DON’T LISTEN eagerly to the little stuff when [your children] are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them, all of it has always been big stuff.

I was the first person to know that my daughter, Chastity, was a lesbian, but I was the last person she told. I didn’t make it easy for her, CHER, in More and I’m not proud of that. NAMES WORK HARD: they can affect who gets into elite schools and who gets hired, and they can even influence what cities we live in and what products we buy, since we’re attracted to things and places that share similarities to our names.

WE ARE HAPPY WHEN we have family, we are happy when we have friends, and almost all the other things we think make us happy actually are just ways of getting more family and friends. DANIEL GILBERT,

CODY C. DELISTRATY,

professor of psychology,

in the Atlantic

on bigthink.com

writer and historian,

MY GENERATION WAS raised being

able to flip channels if we got bored, and we read the last page of the book when we got impatient. We want to be caught off guard, delighted, left in awe.

A LOT OF PEOPLE who came up the same time we did ... you see them fade, and you can see why. They’re attached to a decade and have to milk that to live. TOM PETTY,

TAYLOR SWIFT,

musician,

in Rolling Stone

in the Wall Street Journal

CITIES ESCAPE US, run away from us, woo us, and dump us. Cities have a mind of their own. MICHELE FILGATE,

w r i t e r,

in the Brooklyn Quarterly

There is no more wasteful entity in medicine than a rushed doctor. SANDEEP JAUHAR,

c a rd i o l o g i s t ,

in the New York Times

Januaryđ2015

INSPIRATION

Anger may be justified, but “getting even” won’t make you feel better

Why

We Forgive

T H E R E W E R E S O M A N Y nights when I, as a young boy, had to watch helplessly as my father verbally and physically abused my mother. I can still recall the smell of alcohol, see the fear in my mother’s eyes, and feel the hopeless despair that comes when we see people we love hurting each other in incomprehensible ways. I would not wish that experience 76

Januaryđ2015

on anyone, especially not a child. If I dwell in those memories, I can feel myself wanting to hurt my father back, in the same ways he hurt my mother and in ways of which I was incapable as a small boy. I see my mother’s face and I see this gentle human being whom I loved so very much and who did nothing to deserve the pain inflicted upon her.

P HOTO: GETTY IM AGES

BY D E S M O N D TUTU FRO M THE BOOK OF FORGIVING

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu

WHY WE FORGIVE

When I recall this story, I realise how gives, at best, only momentary respite difficult the process of forgiving truly from our emotional pain. The only is. Intellectually, I know my father way to experience healing and peace caused pain because he was in pain. is to forgive. Until we can forgive, we Spiritually, I know my faith tells me remain locked in our pain and locked my father deserves to out of the possibility of be forgiven as God forexperiencing healing gives us all. But it is still and freedom ; locked Until we can out of the possibility of difficult. The traumas we forgive, we being at peace. have witnessed or expeWithout forgiveness, rienced live on in our remain locked we remain tethered to memories. Even years in our pain and the person who harmed later they can cause us locked out of us. We are bound with fresh pain each time we recall them. the possibility chains of bit terness, together, trapped. Are you hur t and of experiencing tied Until we can forgive the suffering? Is the injury healing person who harmed us, new, or is it an old, unthat person w ill hold healed wound? Know the keys to our happithat what was done to you was wrong, unfair, and unde- ness; that person will be our jailor. W hen we forgive, we take back served. You are right to be outraged. And it is perfectly normal to want to cont rol of our ow n fate and our hurt back when you have been hurt. f e e l i n g s . We b e c ome ou r o w n But hurting back rarely satisfies. We liberators. Forg iveness, in ot her think it will, but it doesn’t. If I slap you words, is the best form of self-interest. after you slap me, it does not lessen This is true both spiritually and the sting I feel on my own face, nor scientifically. We don’t forgive to help does it diminish my sadness as to the the other person. We don’t forgive for fact you have struck me. Retaliation others. We forgive for ourselves. THE BOOK OF FORGIVING, BY DESMOND TUTU AND MPHO TUTU © BY DESMOND TUTU AND MPHO TUTU, IS PUBLISHED BY HARPERCOLLINS, HARPERCOLLINS.COM.

NO, REALLY? “Warning: high in sodium.” As seen on a salt cellar. “Do not use while sleeping.” On a hair dryer. “Do not eat toner.” On a toner cartridge for a laser printer. 78

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Life’s Like That SEEING THE FUNNY SIDE

From the Archives

P HOTO: THI NKSTOCK

What presents as a charming anecdote in January 1959 would attract the immediate attention of child protection services in 2015. You be the judge…

delighted baby smiled back. It was the most animated and appealing window display our town had seen in years. SUBMITTED BY SOLON GRAY

The young wife of our local chem mist came into her husband’s store the other day and asked him to takee care of their baby while she did some shopping. The chemist agreed, but no sooner had his wife left than the youngster began to cry. Business was brisk and th he poor man was desperate. Then he had an idea. Hurrying into the furniture store next door, he borrowed a playpen, which he set up in one of his display windows. Into it he popped the baby. Then he stacked the rest of the window with such infant items as nursing bottles, diapers, powder. In a few moments a crowd had collected. The spectators smiled at the baby and the

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L I F E ’ S L I K E T H AT

STICK WITH IT, GRAMPS

None of my grandsons share my corny sense of humour. When the family is eating lasagne, I say, “Lean over your plate, boys. You’ll get lesson-ya.” I say to the ten-year-old, “Don’t yell through the screen door; you’ll strain your voice.” And when I took another grandson to the zoo, I asked, “Do you know why that snake’s not pressed against the glass? He doesn’t want to be a windshield viper.” They’ll probably laugh later. SUBMITTED BY HOMER ADAMS

The Great Tweet-off: New Year’s Edition My New Year’s resolution was to stop tweeting. ALBERT BROOKS (@ALBERTBROOKS)

My New Year’s resolution? To be less laz. JIM GAFFIGAN (@JIMGAFFIGAN) My New Years resolution is to stop smoking, cursing and drinking. Darn, I left my GD cigs in the bar. #oneoutofthreeaintbad. COLIN QUINN (@IAMCOLINQUINN)

Januaryđ2015

Forgott to make resoluttions? Just write out everything you did d last night and a at the beginn ning add the word “stop”..

PIECE BY PIECE My three-year-old sat in the bathroom with me, watching as I removed my dentures and brushed them. After a few minutes, he asked, “Can you take your ears off too?” SUBMITTED BY S.W.

CART TER BAYS (@CARTERBAYS)

SUBMITTED BY PHIL NOYES

If you’re thinking of tweeting the tensecond countdown to midnight, I have a resolution for you: maybe a little less twitter this year.

As we waited for a bus in the frosty weather, the woman next to me mentioned that she makes a lot of mistakes when texting in the cold. I nodded knowingly. “It’s the early signs of typothermia.”

PETE HOLMES (@PETEH HOLMES)

IF TRUE, AMAZING

READER’S DIGEST

GUN SALESMAN

My husband and I couldn’t decide which jacket to buy our granddaughter, so we asked the young salesman. “If you were buying a jacket for your girlfriend,” I said, “what would you get?” “A bulletproof one,” he said. “I’m married.”

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE This classified ad speaks volumes: “Wanted to buy: playpen, cradle, high chair; also two single beds.” SUBMITTED BY MATTHEW COLE

SUBMITTED BY JOHN CANUTESON

ON THE CASE A RIOT OF READERS

A pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, a parliament of owls – we asked RD readers to come up with a few collective nouns of their own. These were a crush of our favourites: Q A brace of orthodontists. RUSSELL COFER

Recently I woke up to find that two of my car’s tyres had been stolen. When the police officer arrived, he asked, “When were you last driving the car?” “Last night at 11pm,” I said. “And the tyres were on it then?” SUBMITTED BY JEREMY RICE

Q A sulk of teenagers; a bogey of WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

monsters; a chord of musicians. ANDREA DEFUSCO-SULLIVAN

Q A slew of assassins. ELIZABETH SILVERTHORN

Q A muddle of managers.

PHOTO: GETTY I MAGES

STEVE SEYARTO

Q A lot of parking attendants. Q A string of bikinis; a piddle of

R.M.

puppies.

L.M.

CLICK TO PROCEED

I’d like the window that says “Are you sure you want to do this? OK/Cancel” to pop up less often on my computer and more in my real life. @AARONFULLERTON ON TWITTER

I am an American in China and I arranged a meeting with a guy from Germany. I go to his hotel. He says, “I’m coming down in the elevator.” The elevator opens and the only western face I see is a guy looking for me – or so I thought. He introduces himself with a thick accent. We talked for half an hour before we both figured out that we were supposed to be meeting other businesspersons. And, yep, there they were in the elevator area waiting for us… another American and a German. Go figure! SEEN ON REDDIT

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SCIENCE

How two men playing with sticky tape found something truly amazing

The

Future BY L I SA C L AU S E N F R O M T H E G OOD WEEKEND

just got

Graphene: a simple structure with extraordinary possibilities

M AT E R I A L O F T H E F U T U R E

Three clear bottles stand like trophies arranged in a dazzlingly perfect on an otherwise empty shelf in honeycomb pattern. Their playfulProfessor Dan Li’s office at Monash ness was to win them the Nobel Prize University, in Melbourne, Australia. in Physics in 2010. Two are filled with powder the colour “No-one really thought [releasof midnight, while the third contains ing graphene] was possible,” said the a lump of silver-grey rock. They’re all Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. forms of graphite, a type of coal we all “Carbon, the basis of all known life on rely on, whether it’s in brake lining, Earth, has surprised us once again.” batteries or pencils. But that’s not why Li has the bottles displayed behind his The Thinnest Material desk. Among scientists like Li, graphite Since then, the surprises have kept is now celebrated as the source of gra- coming, as graphene continues to phene, the phenomenal new material show just how much it may be capable researchers, governments and corpo- of. For starters, it’s the world’s thinnest rations are betting could transform a material – with a sheet of graphene just multitude of industries, from electron- an atom thick, it’s a two-dimensional ics to renewable energy. material. You’d need Scientists had long three million sheets to suspected graphite A stack of three make a stack 1mm high. contained something It’s very flexible, yet million sheets interesting. But while harder than diamond they knew this smudgy, is just 1mm thick and 200 times stronger light rock was com– yet graphene than steel; it is so posed of stacks of grastrong, Columbia Uniis 200 times phene sheets, none of versity researchers once stronger than the brilliant minds workcalculated it would take ing on it could figure out an elephant balanced steel how to isolate a single on a pencil to break sheet, let alone maniputhrough a layer of gralate it. Then, in 2004, University of phene as thick as plastic food wrap. It Manchester physicists Andre Geim is practically transparent, so dense that and Konstantin Novoselov had an in- not even the smallest gas atoms can spired idea. penetrate it, and it conducts electricity Taking a block of graphite, the pair and heat beautifully. simply began stripping off flakes with While other commonly used materisticky tape. They ended up with micro als such as silicon can match graphene flakes of a completely new material, in maybe one or two ways, what makes vanishingly thin, the carbon atoms graphene so special is that it brings so 84

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READERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S DIGEST

many desirable qualities together in one package. In short, it seems to have it all.

Skinny TVs So what might this marvellous material give us? Some say transparent, superthin computer and TV display screens that can be rolled up and put University of Manchester physicists and 2010 Nobel Prize away. Slimmer, faster winners Andre Geim (left) and Konstantin Novoselov phones that recharge in seconds. Smaller, fascinated by its potential for biospeedier computer chips. medical tools, optics and plastics â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beyond our comprehension of reinforcement (such as building what is possible,â&#x20AC;? says Cathy Foley, lighter, hardier aircraft or satellites), chief of the Australian governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s as well as creating high-performing CSIRO Materials Science and En- solar cells and electric vehicles, and gineering Division. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There will be next-generation filters for water purichanges that will blow us away.â&#x20AC;? fication and desalination. Defence inGraphene also has researchers dustries are pursuing graphene-based

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JanuaryÄ&#x2018;2015

M AT E R I A L O F T H E F U T U R E

ultra-sensitive gas and chemical sensors, while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently funded projects using graphene to make stronger, thinner condoms.

Building Super Batteries With such prizes on offer, scrutiny of graphene is intense. In 2004, the year Geim and Novoselov had their Eureka moment, fewer than 500 scientific papers on graphene were published. In 2012, there were almost 9000. Thousands of patents have been issued, and while few graphene-based devices are yet a reality, corporations such as Samsung are racing to control the market. The European Union last year committed €1 billion to its multination research efforts. “Our funding pool is much more

Graphene foam is light enough to balance on petals

Januaryđ2015

limited,” says Dan Li, who leads a team of ten. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t do something unique.” A cheerful man with rapid-fire speech, Li is one of Australia’s leading researchers in graphene, a field he entered after arriving in Australia on a fellowship from the US in 2006. “I wasn’t that optimistic about graphene at first,” he admits. “A lot of promising materials never make it to market.” While most researchers have focused on individual graphene sheets, Li is on a quest to use these sheets as molecular “bricks”, assembling them in different ways to create new materials and devices infused with graphene’s talents. He likens graphene to a world-beating athlete – extraordinary on its own and capable of as yet unimagined feats when teamed up with other materials. But as an engineer he knows that architecture is everything. “You could have the strongest bricks, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll end up with the strongest building – it depends on how all the components interact.” Having already come up with a simple, ground-breaking technique for separating graphene sheets using just water and a series of chemical reactions, Li’s team’s latest success has been in the area of supercapacitors, specialised batteries already used in digital camera flashes, laptops and hybrid electric vehicles. Their flaw has always been their bulky size and regular need for recharging; using a

Ä?ĆŤ ĆŤ

READERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S DIGEST

graphene-based gel Li and his team two sheets of graphene â&#x20AC;&#x201C; about 25,000 have been able to produce super- times thinner than a human hair â&#x20AC;&#x201C; on capacitors in the lab that can store a biopolymer (a naturally produced triple the amount of energy in a much large molecule, such as cellulose or smaller, and hence cheaper, package. DNA), they hope to create a device to â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kind of an impossible thing implant in the brains of people with to do, but now we can do it,â&#x20AC;? says Li. epilepsy. The plan is that its graphene electrodes could detect Since publishing results in 2013, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been an impending seizure swamped with enquiries Researchers are and trigger the release of from around the world. anti-seizure medication. working on Researchers last year applying also devised a way of New Bones using textile techniques and Aircraft graphene to spin nano-fibres of Li and his team are also in nerve graphene, designed to working with Australian and Chinese researchers regeneration for give super-strength to to use graphene in bone damaged limbs materials used in bulletproof vests and aircraft and tissue regeneration, fuselages. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re workharnessing its superconductivity to deliver electrical stimu- ing, too, on applying graphene in nerve lation for cell growth. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve also pat- regeneration for damaged limbs. ented a graphene-based foam which, by mimicking the natural structure of Harnessing the Future cork, is super elastic and lighter than Professor Gordon Wallace, executive air but able to support objects up to research director of the Australian Re50,000 times its own weight. Blended search Council Centre of Excellence for with other materials, such as plastics, Electromaterials Science, says while it could vastly improve toughness and the scientific community is taking a heat resistance. wait-and-see approach, the excitement Li, who has received several fellow- around graphene is more than hype. ships for his work and is now looking â&#x20AC;&#x153;The question is whether we, as sciento the private sector for commercial tists, technologists and engineers, can partners, has a preference for graphene take its amazing properties from the projects with a social dividend. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I want nanomaterial world to the level of macto get something useful out there into roscopic devices,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the real world.â&#x20AC;? not grapheneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s challenge â&#x20AC;&#x201C; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ours.â&#x20AC;? University of Wollongong researchGraphene is not giving up all its ers also have high hopes. By placing secrets easily. Electrons surge through JanuaryÄ&#x2018;2015

M AT E R I A L O F T H E F U T U R E

it at a constant speed of a million metres per second â&#x20AC;&#x201C; yet itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not fully understood how they can be guided. Moving from the nanoscale to the commercial scale remains hugely complex. Making enough of it is still tricky. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We want to be able to press a button and have kilometres of the stuff come out,â&#x20AC;? says Foley. At the moment, most processes used to obtain graphene take hours or days, involve toxic ingredients or only produce small amounts, not the mass quantities consumer products would need.

Making Graphene From Honey One group of CSIRO researchers thinks theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve solved that conundrum, in part thanks to a bad cold. In 2011, PhD student Donghan Seo was at home nursing a cold with lemon and honey tea and reading the Bible. When he came to Exodus, which talks of â&#x20AC;&#x153;a land flowing with milk and honeyâ&#x20AC;?, he had his own epiphany. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I suddenly thought, why wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t honey work in making graphene? I had a strong religious feeling that it would work, and from a scientific point of view it made sense.â&#x20AC;? The next day, he took some honey

to the lab, where he subjected less than a gram to plasma testing, pelting it with highly charged ions to purify it down to its basic carbon structure. The Plasma Nanoscience team heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s part of can now create a 1cm x 1cm sheet of graphene in nine minutes. While not everyone is convinced, Seo says they have already used honeyderived graphene in a gas sensor and butter-derived graphene in a battery. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We know it works in the lab.â&#x20AC;? In the meantime, Australia has graphite deposits, and several companies keen to begin mining. With world graphite prices rising, high-quality deposits are ripe for development. Professor Wallace says heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d love to use local graphite. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one way, he says, in which Australia has the chance to help shape the era of graphene. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But the window of opportunity for that is not going to be there forever,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We need to get that alignment of the mining opportunities with the technical expertise, from graphite to graphene to graphene-based devices, as quickly as possible. We wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be the only people thinking of doing that â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but we have to be nimble enough to be the first.â&#x20AC;?

GOOD WEEKENDĆŤÄ¨ ĆŤÄ&#x201A;Ä&#x20AC;Ä&#x152;ĆŤÄ&#x2122;Ä Ä&#x2026;ÄŠĆŤÄŻĆŤÄ&#x201A;Ä&#x20AC;Ä Ä&#x2026;ĆŤ ĆŤ ĆŤ Ä&#x2039;ĆŤ Ä&#x2039; Ä&#x2039; Ä&#x2039;

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JanuaryÄ&#x2018;2015

Quotable Quotes Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.

ALL OF US EVERY SINGLE YEAR, WE’RE A DIFFERENT PERSON. I DON’T THINK WE’RE THE SAME PERSON ALL OUR LIVES.

D O N H E R O LD, h u m o u r i s t

STE VE N S P I E LB E RG

I DON’T KNOW WHY I SHOULD HAVE TO LEARN ALGEBRA … I’M NEVER LIKELY TO GO THERE. B I LLY CO N N O LLY

Big doesn’t necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren’t better than violets. EDNA FERBER, author

My heroes are Larry Bird, Admiral Byrd, Lady Bird, Sheryl Crow, Chick Corea, the inventor of birdseed, and anyone who reads to you even if she’s tired. B I G B I R D

WHEN THE WINDS OF CHANGE BLOW, SOME PEOPLE BUILD WALLS. OTHERS BUILD WINDMILLS. P HOTOS: GETTY IM AGES

CH I N E S E P ROV E R B

A mirror becomes a razor when it’s broken. A stick becomes a flute when it’s loved. YO KO O N O

New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to JA M E S AGATE , t h e a t r e c r i t i c take up more of my time. Januaryđ2015

CHEAT SHEET

BY HA ZEL FLYN N

E-SPORTS

START AT THE BEGINNING

Playing video games competitively is now a real job. Players can earn six-ﬁgure incomes boosted by big-name sponsorships. They compete, watched by thousands of fans in arenas, with millions more following online.

TELL ME MORE In 2014, 40 years after the first known tournament (playing Spacewar at the US’s Stanford University) offered a magazine subscription as first prize, the world championship for Dota 2 had a total crowdfunded prize pool of almost US$11 million and 10,000 fans watched live as Chinese team Newbee won the US$5 million first prize. Last year also saw the first dedicated e-sports arenas open in the US and the announcement of a 15,000-seater e-sports stadium in China; the introduction of e-TV sports coverage by sport network ESPN; and the launch of US$450,000 worth of e-sports scholarships by Chicago’s Robert Morris University.

PHOTO : GETTY IM AGES

WHY DO I CARE? If you’re over 40 you probably don’t, directly, unless you happen to be a fanatical player of the most popular e-sports games including StarCraft, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, League of Legends or Dota 2. But your children or grandchildren do. They know the players by their gaming handles (“Fatal1ty”, “Moon”, “Dendi”, etc) and hope to follow their heroes into a gaming career. 90

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IS THERE A DOWNSIDE? It’s an intense and demanding life for players. Competition is ﬁerce and allconsuming and players train for 12 to 14 hours a day. The career of most will be over by their mid-20s.

I N ST A N SWA N T ERS

$20 BILLION:

amount by which annual global revenue from e-games is now greater than global music industry revenue

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? E-sports will continue to grow at a phenomenal rate.

US$970 MILLION:

what Amazon paid in August 2014 for the gaming site Twitch

“Obviously it’s not cardiovascular in any way, but it’s mental. There are elements that go into it that are just like any other sport” KURT MELCHER, ASSOCIATE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR AT ROBERT MORRIS UNIVERSITY

MILLION: live online audiences for major tournaments

WHO KNEW?

Fun Facts About Colour BY ALIS O N CAP O RIM O

Turns out the sports staple was made for TV. For the 1970 World Cup in Mexico – broadcast around the world on television – Adidas created the iconic black-and-white panelled ball, intended to catch the eyes of viewers better than a single-coloured one would as it moved across stillcommon black-and-white TV screens. The black pentagons also helped players and referees recognise the swerve and flight of the ball.

Why the US Purple Heart Medal is Purple The Purple Heart is the first US military decoration and is awarded for bravery in action. When the governing body of the US during the American Revolution forbade George Washington from promoting soldiers, the revered general got crafty. On August 7, 1782, he established the Badge of Military Merit: a purple cloth or silk heart to be worn over a soldier’s left breast and signify an elevated status. While it’s hard to 92

Januaryđ2015

know why Washington opted for that hue, the history behind the colour purple’s regal reputation dates back to the 15th century BC, when ancient Mediterranean clothiers created the shade from sea snail secretions in a long and expensive process. The cost meant the colour became a symbol of wealth and power.

Why Surrender Flags are White Some believe the peacemaking symbol comes from the bland garb of ancient times. Soldiers and civilians alike had white underclothes handy, and since they were highly visible against neutral backgrounds, the clothes could be waved to easily convey passivity.

Why Some Taxis are Yellow If you hailed a New York cab in 1905, a car painted red and green would screech to a halt before you. So how did the colour change from two-tone to bumblebee-bright? In 1907, Albert Rockwell created a taxi with an innovative 15-horsepower engine at

PROP STYLIST: LINDA KEIL FOR HA LLEY RESOURC ES

Why Soccer Balls are Black and White

his car company. Legend has it that his wife suggested the cars be painted yellow. By 1909, yellow taxis were zipping around New York, courtesy of Rockwell’s cab company.

Why Bubble Gum is Pink Fate would have it that hot pink dye was readily available at the Fleer

Chewing Gum Company when employee Walter Diemer experimented in 1928 with a new gum recipe – as he liked to do in his spare time. The 23-year-old created a less sticky and more flexible formula that resulted in bigger bubbles. He poured pink dye into the batch, and a global oral fixation was born. Januaryđ2015

F U N FA C T S A B O U T C O L O U R

Why are US “Greenbacks” Green? When small currency banknotes were introduced in 1929, the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing opted to use green ink because the colour was relatively high in its resistance to chemical and physical changes. Also, at the time, green pigment was available in large quantities for quick printing. Today’s “greenbacks” incorporate shades of purple, yellow and grey to deter counterfeiters.

Why Karate Belts are Black There are a lot of myths surrounding the martial arts’ most prestigious designation. The most likely story, however, claims that white belts used to be dyed to a new colour upon a student’s advancement to a higher level. Hence the increasingly darker order: white, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, brown, red and black.

Why First-Place Ribbons are Blue Some scholars say we have an old nautical award to thank. In the 1860s, the Blue Riband – a pennant flown from a ship’s mast – was an accolade

given to the passenger ship making the fastest transatlantic crossing. Scholars speculate that over time, the spelling blue riband was changed to blue ribbon, serving as a symbol of general excellence.

Why a Matador’s Cape is Red Bulls charge at the sight of red, right? Wrong. Bulls are colour-blind. Thus, a fighting bull is likely enraged by the cape’s quick movement instead of its colour. So why the bold hue? Some say it helps mask one of the more gruesome aspects of a bullfight: splatters of the animal’s blood.

Why Brides Wear White The classic white dress came from a European fashion trend. In 1840, England’s Queen Victoria donned a white lace gown to marry Albert of Saxe-Coburg. At the time, brides were married in any colour – even black was popular. The Queen’s choice, however, quickly inspired other brides to opt for white. Within the decade, popular Godey’s Lady’s Book decreed: “Custom has decided that white is the most fitting hue for a wedding.”

WATER WISE You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Januaryđ2015

That’s Outrageous! NOT ACCORDING TO PLAN

AN AMERICAN

renovator decided to save money by painting the exterior of his house himself. First he took off the old layer of paint with a blowtorch. UNFORTUNATELY …

He successfully removed the paint, but he also removed much of the house when it went up in flames. Source: wbay.com TENS OF THOUSANDS of people

I LLUSTRATI ON: NI SHANT CHOKS I

packed St Peter’s Square in Vatican City to hear Pope Francis pray for peace in Ukraine. The ceremony was topped by the release of two white peace doves. UNFORTUNATELY … A seagull and a crow attacked the symbols of peace. Source: Associated Press HOW DID A CLUB in Florida, US, get people to participate in a charity event? By plying them with champagne and the chance to win a $5000 diamond. If that weren’t fun enough, the lucky winner would find the shiny bauble in her bubbly! UNFORTUNATELY … When the lucky winner drank her flute of bubbly,

she swallowed her shiny bauble. Source: thedenverchannel.com

A BANK CUSTOMER

in the US was waiting in line when he saw another man in the queue carrying a gun. Not wanting to spook the gunman, he slipped the teller a note, informing her. UNFORTUNATELY … The bank teller thought the customer was saying he had a weapon; she had him arrested. As for the man with the gun – he had Source: courant.com a permit to carry it. A RUSSIAN WOMAN named

Natalya was 130,000 roubles in debt, so she did what any reasonable person would do to get out of paying it: she had a sex-change operation. “Andrian” got a new passport and even managed to borrow more money. UNFORTUNATELY … Andrian is now on the run, but he can’t get off that easily, said authorities. “If a debtor thinks he can escape that way, he’s very much mistaken,” said a Russian bailiff. Source: dailystar.co.uk Januaryđ2015

LIFESTYLE

Get g n i k o o C BY KATH RYN ELLIOTT

So you want to upgrade your kitchen skills? It’s the easiest, healthiest, most entertaining adventure you can have without leaving home

t can happen at any time, without warning – suddenly your tried-and-true repertoire of home-cooked meals becomes boring. You can’t find the momentum to get excited about cooking anything. Still, you know full well that research shows that home-cooked food is healthier and cheaper. So, motivated by this good sense, you go out and purchase multiple cookbooks and magazines, then watch countless cooking shows. But when it comes to the crunch, you just don’t seem to know how to get started. The cooking mojo you once enjoyed is gone.

The good news is that help is at hand. Regardless of whether you’re an empty nester, newly solo or cooking for a family, if you want to cook but are baffled about where to start upskilling and expanding your menu, don’t worry as we have a nononsense guide on how to get you cooking again. Cooking – and enjoying it – requires confidence. Building confidence depends on trying new cuisines, techniques and flavours. But before setting out, consider this three-point strategy to settle your doubts and help stay positive: Q Accept that failures will happen and that even the best cooks mess up

Januaryđ2015

occasionally. Don’t worry if dinner goes badly, but instead try to learn from your mistakes. Q Stop buying recipe books and start cooking. Cooking is a skill and the only way you’ll improve is by actually experimenting with your cooking. Stop putting it off, make a commitment and start today. Q Master five recipes. Make a list of five new meals you’d like to cook and start there. Cook each a few times, until you feel comfortable, before moving on.

Cooking for One? Cooking for one is a challenge. How to make healthy and delicious meals, while minimising washing up and waste? It isn’t as hard as you think … ' Buy only what you need. While large packs seem a better deal, when grocery shopping, think about what you can actually eat before the produce perishes. Ignore the value packs and only buy what you need. ' Learn how to cook with eggs. Eggs can make a meal happen in a flash and are perfect when cooking for one. Toss baby English spinach into scrambled eggs; top steamed vegetables with a poached egg; use leftovers to make a frittata or omelette; or boil some eggs and add them to a salad. ' Freeze individual portions for lunch or dinner. Sometimes, rather than cooking for one it’s just as easy to cook a larger meal and freeze the leftovers in single portions. There are

P HOTOS: OS: (P REVIOUS S PREA D) GETTY I MAGES ; (TH IS SPREAD) GETTY IM AG E S, THIINKSTOCK )

GET COOKING

READER’S DIGEST

5 Kitchen Essentials An amazing number of meals can be cooked with minimal cooking equipment:

1. Sharp knife Don’t buy a knife set. Instead, invest in one good knife. You will not regret it. 2. Large high-sided frying pan You can cook virtually anything in this pan: sauce, omelette or stir-fry, braise vegetables and many cuts of meat. If your pan has heat-proof handles, it can even double as a roasting pan and casserole dish. 3. Chopping board Buy a wooden or plastic board and keep one side for meat and ﬁsh and the other for vegetables and produce, to prevent cross-contamination. 4. Forks and spoons Wooden and other large stirring spoons are useful, but not necessary. Most of the time I use table forks and spoons for stirring and tasting. 5. Measuring cups and spoons Standard-sized measuring cups and spoons are invaluable. They’ll help you measure accurately, which increases the likeliho cessful cook ng.

You want low-fuss ways to add flavour and complexity to your meals. Spice mixes can be used in marinades, rubs, soups and stews also countless leftover ingredients you can freeze to help avoid waste, such as milk, pasta sauce, hummus, fresh herbs, garlic, pesto, tasty cheese and so on.

Empty Nesters? When the kids leave home many people struggle to re-find their love for cooking, now there are fewer mouths to feed. Sound familiar? Try these tips: ' Tu r n we e k n i g h t s i n to a wonder. Firing up the barbecue is an easy and quick way to cook dinner. One of you can cook, while the other makes a salad, meaning the meal preparation is shared. Plus, a barbecue requires minimal washing up. ' Spice up your dinner routine. Now you’re cooking for fewer people you want low-fuss ways to add flavour and complexity to your meals. Spice mixes, such as chermoula and garam masala, are perfect for this and can be used in marinades, rubs, soups and stews. Januaryđ2015

GET COOKING

Top 5 Cooking Cheats

Here are my top five ways to add depth of flavour, speed up the cooking and minimise washing up: 1. Secret ingredient If your food is tasting bland, then adding a dash of shoyu (the Japanese-style soy sauce) can impart a rich and complex flavour. Use this in many soups, sauces and stews. 2. Forget about peeling I rarely peel anything and it’s a real time saver. Leave the skin on most fruit and vegetables, just giving each a scrub with a nail brush or vegetable scrubber before cooking.

Can’t Cook, Never Cooked? Nobody is born knowing how to cook – instead it’s a skill you develop over time. Here’s how to leap into the unknown: ' Get into the habit of preparing your own food. If you’ve never cooked regularly it can seem daunting, so start by making your breakfast 100

Januaryđ2015

4. Use frozen vegetables Having a few bags of mixed vegetables in the freezer can save on preparation time, as they’re already cut up and ready to go. 5. Learn to multi-task Most how-tocook guides suggest you prep all the ingredients in advance, but this is a slow and laborious way of cooking. Instead, as you get more conﬁdent you’ll learn to prep as you go, which saves time.

P HOTO: GETTY IMAGES

' Cooking with fish isn’t difficult. Many home cooks are a bit scared of cooking fish, however, it’s one of the easiest and fastest foods to prepare. Barbecuing a whole fish, cooking it in parcels in the oven, or a fish curry are all perfect meals for empty nesters.

3. Make the salad dressing in your salad bowl This is a neat trick I learnt from Jamie Oliver. Prepare a dressing in the base of your salad bowl, add the ingredients on top, but only toss together just before serving. Your salad won’t turn soggy and you’ve saved on washing up by only using one bowl.

READER’S DIGEST

Leave the skin on most fruit and vegetables, just giving each a scrub with a nail brush or vegetable scrubber – it’s a real time saver every day. This can be something simple, which requires no actual cooking at all – but get into the habit of preparing your own food. ' Learn how to make a salad. When you’re more comfortable, try making a salad. Again, start simple: wash some leaves, chop up a few vegetables and add a pre-made dressing. Try different vegetables and flavours to see what you like. ' Master the art of cooking one thing. Invest in a wide-based frying pan and teach yourself how to cook one thing – the perfect steak, chicken, a fillet of fish or some tofu. Follow a recipe, but if the food isn’t quite right for your tastebuds, make small changes, for example adjust the

cooking time slightly, add extra black pepper, or try a different cut of meat. You’ll learn a lot from this process.

Bored With the Same Old, Same Old? If you used to cook a lot but got bored of the relentless chore of producing meal after meal, getting back into cooking can be a different challenge. But there are ways to camouflage the chore hidden within: ' Involve somebody else in your household cooking. It’s hard to remain motivated when you’re cooking every day, so take a night (or three) off and get your partner, kids or even grandkids to cook. They don’t have to make anything complicated, but not having to cook every single day is a great way to recharge your kitchen engine. ' Start testing out new recipes. Cooking the same meals every week simplifies planning and saves time, however it can also become really boring. So, pick one night a week or month to try out something new. Make this into a special dinner, set the table and sit down together to enjoy your new meal.

NEVER ... “… do anything you wouldn’t want to explain to the paramedic.” “… go to a doctor whose office plants have died.” “... hurry and never worry!”

SHANNON RYAN

ERMA BOMBECK

E.B. WHITE

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REAL-LIFE DRAMAS

The odds of surviving even the most serious plane crash are 76%. The odds of being the only one left alive are infinitesimal. This is what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like to be the ...

Survivor BY JE FF W I S E

ON JUNE 30, 2009, French schoolgirl Bahia Bakari, 12, and her mother, Aziza Aboudou, 33, were aboard a packed Airbus A310 on their way to Comoros, a group of islands off the eastern coast of Africa, to visit family for the summer. Minutes from touchdown, Yemenia Flight 626 shook violently in the swirling 65km/h winds; the lights ďŹ&#x201A;ickered, the engine stalled, and the plane, holding 142 passengers and 11 crew members, plunged into the Indian Ocean, breaking apart on impact. ILLUSTRATION: BRYAN CHRISTIE DESIGN

The illuminated area represents where passenger George Lamson Jr was seated when Galaxy Airlines Flight 203 crashed, killing 70 people

SOLE SURVIVOR

Bahia was ejected from the plane. With no life vest, food or drinking water, she clung to a piece of wreckage for nine hours until a sailor from a private rescue boat plucked her from the ocean. Days later, as she recovered from her wounds in a Paris hospital, a psychologist shared unlikely news: Bahia was the only survivor of the disaster. Call it a miracle, coincidence, or luck – the distinction of only one left alive is a heavy weight, says Ky Dickens, 36, whose 2013 documentary film Sole Survivor tells the stories of several plane-crash survivors. “They feel an incredible amount of pressure,” says Dickens, a survivor of a car crash in her teen years that killed several of her friends. Drawn to the topic partly because of her personal experience, Dickens contacted George Lamson Jr, a passenger on a plane that crashed, killing everyone else on board, including his father, and enlisted him to help other survivors share their stories with the world. Says Dickens, “Naturally they wonder, Was I spared for a reason? Am I supposed to do something amazing?” Here Lamson Jr and Annette Herfkens and Jim Polehinke, two sole survivors from other crashes, describe what they live with every day as members of a tiny club they never sought to be part of, but are very fortunate to have joined.

SURVIVOR: George Lamson Jr

đ Date: 21/1/1985 đ Flight: Galaxy Airlines 203 đ From: Reno, US đ To: Minneapolis đ On board: 71 đ Crew deaths: 6 đ Passenger deaths: 64 đ The ﬂight crew had signiﬁcantly reduced power to the engine to eliminate

AFTER MY FATHER and I found our seats, I settled in and tried to sleep. Pretty soon, two men came up to us and said, “Hey, you’re in our seats.” That wasn’t true, but my dad said OK, and we switched seats with them. Our new seats were in the first row right behind a bulkhead. 104

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After takeoff, everything seemed smooth at first. Then we hit turbulence, and the plane started to bank to the right. It didn’t seem serious, but as I was looking out the window, I could see we were losing altitude pretty quickly. Over the loudspeaker, the pilot said that we were going down. It must have been five to ten

P HOTOS: GREGORY REI D

unusual vibrations. The captain lost control of the aircraft, sending it plunging into a recreational vehicle (RV) sales lot near downtown Reno.

READER’S DIGEST

seconds before we hit the ground. We hit three times, and the third time the plane hit an RV lot and broke apart. It was going about 225km/h. I was thrown more than 10m onto a street near downtown Reno. The wreckage was on fire, and I searched through it trying to find anybody alive. One memory I can’t shake is of finding the man who took my seat. He was lying out in the field, facing the fire, and I could see his eyes were open. I went to him trying to help, but I realised he was dead. If I hadn’t switched seats, that would have been me. After the ambulances arrived, they took me to the hospital with another

survivor. He had third-degree burns all over his body. His skin was black from the fire. I said to him, “I can’t believe I couldn’t find anybody. Here we are, still alive and talking.” And his answer was, “There’s nobody.” I didn’t think he was that hurt, but once we were getting treated, I remember him yelling in pain from all his burns. He died a few days later. I have a hard time explaining to people how overwhelmingly sad and dark this whole thing was. When they first meet you, people will look at you and think that you’re special. They’ll say, “Wow, you’re amazing; you were able to live through this.” Unless you’ve gone through an experience like this, it’s not possible to truly understand. You’ve seen a massive loss of life, and you’re standing in the midst of it wondering, Why the hell am I here? Why are all these people mangled? Why are all these people dead? After I got out of the hospital, I went home. I finished high school and started college. I had a Lamson Jr, 17 and a high school senior at the time of the crash, sustained only minor injuries

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future. I’d always imagined that I’d of the passengers aboard my flight. get a degree, maybe join the Air I was really dreading the meetings. Force and become a pilot. When the I felt physically ill as I drove to the holidays hit after my first semester of first family member’s house in Minnecollege, it sunk in that things weren’t apolis. Sarah had lost her mother, her going to be the same again, because father, and two grandparents on that I didn’t have my father anymore. My flight. She was six years old when it mother and my sister were having a happened. I thought about how trauvery hard time dealing matic that must have with the loss. I made it been for her. through the holidays as When I got to her I sensed the best as I could, and then house, I walked in, I I went back to school. presence of her gave her a hug, and we But then the Challenger made some small talk. family. It gave Then we sat down at her disaster happened, and it triggered me me a wonderful kitchen table, and she handed me a photo of into a depressed state. feeling of relief her father and mother. I dropped out of colThat was the moment lege and later moved to and love ever ything changed. Reno. Today I work in a This sounds weird, but I casino as a dealer. sensed the presence of Compared with the plans I’d had when I was younger, my her family in the room. I felt like they life feels like it has come up short. I were standing right by her and smiling. imagined that the family members of It felt like I was forgiven for not letting the people who died would say, “Look my life be as perfect as it should have at this guy – he got a second chance been. She was happy to see me, and I at life. I lost my dear husband, I lost was happy to see her. I was looking at my dear son, I lost my dad. Why is a picture of her when she was six years this guy alive? He’s not even doing old, and I was seeing her in front of anything major with his life. I know me, in her 30s, and I was in tears. I felt my dad would have done something; like I was with the family. It was a I know my brother would have done wonderful, authentic feeling of relief something.” I suppressed a lot of this, and love. It felt really good. and it would come back and bite me with depression or fits of anger. It was After moving to Reno in the ’90s, very hard to cope with. Lamson Jr married and had a daughter, In July 2010, I made a trip to Minne- now 18 years old. He and his daughter sota to meet with the families of three still live in Reno. 106

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READER’S DIGEST

SURVIVOR: Annette Herfkens

đ Date: 14/11/1992 đ Flight: Vietnam Airlines 474 đ From: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam đ To: Cam Ranh, Vietnam đ On board: 31 đ Crew deaths: 6 đ Passenger deaths: 24 đ After ﬂying into a tropical storm, pilots lost control

of the three-engine airliner, and it struck the ridge of a mountain.

F R OM H ER BO O K, TU R B U L EN C E : A TRUE SU R V I V AL S T O R Y

WE WERE 49 MINUTES

into a 55-minute flight when the plane made a tremendous lurch. I told my fiancé, Pasje, “Don’t worry. It’s just an air pocket.” Then we dropped again, and people started screaming. I reached for Pasje’s hand. That’s the last thing I remember. I later learned that the plane had hit a ridge at more than 480km/h. One wing ripped off, and the rest of the plane crashed into the side of the next mountain. When I woke up, I was still inside the plane, pinned under a dead body. Pasje’s seat had flipped backwards, and he was lying on it with a sweet little smile on his lips, dead. I could see jungle greenery through a hole in the cabin where the cockpit used to be. I had gaping wounds all over my body. Ten centimetres of bluish bone were sticking out of my shin. When I tried to move, I felt an excruciating pain in my hips. Somehow I managed to get out of the plane. Dead bodies were

scattered all around me, and people were moaning in pain. A very kind Vietnamese man assured me that help would arrive soon. “I am a very important man,” he said. “They will come for me.” Over the next few hours, his breathing grew weaker. I saw the life go out of him. He closed his eyes and was gone. There was no more sound or movement from anyone. I have never been so alone. For eight days, I lay on the jungle floor, waiting. Leeches covered my hands. My feet were swollen to twice their normal size, and my toes turned black. I had nothing to drink, but when it rained, I was able to squeeze some water from my wet T-shirt and pieces of aircraft insulation into my mouth. The body of the man next to me began to decompose, so I used my elbows to pull myself to another spot. The crash had made a clearing, and I could see a mountain rising in the distance. I felt like I was one with the beauty and the process of decay around me. Finally, on the eighth day, a group of Vietnamese men arrived and Januaryđ2015

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carried me down the mountain on a piece of canvas slung beneath a stick. The journey took so long that we had to spend another night camped in the jungle. Then we reached a village, and I was driven to a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. The next day, I was

flown to a hospital in Singapore. Two weeks later, I was flown back to my native Holland, where doctors took skin grafts from my thigh to cover the wound on my shin and checked four pins that had been inserted into my broken jaw. I was in constant pain. Two and a half months after the crash, I returned to my job as an international bond trader and my home in Madrid. Being alone again in my apartment, I was hit by Pasje’s absence in a way I hadn’t been before. My Pasje – my compass, my alter ego – was gone. Bitter thoughts ran through my head day after day. I was angry – angry at death, angry at life, at all my unmet expectations. After the accident, I spent most of my energy on appearing the same as my old self, the same as my peers. Perhaps I did this to comfort Herfkens, 31, in a Singapore hospital ten days after her rescue

READER’S DIGEST

others, perhaps to comfort myself. I kept the jungle to myself and tried hard to blend in and make the world forget the survivor part of my identity. In 2006, I went back to Vietnam. I travelled to the village where I’d been taken after the crash and met some of the men who had carried me all those years before. The next morning, a group of us got up before dawn and started to hike. After wading across six rivers, we started to climb. It took us more than five hours to arrive at the crash site. I sat down on the leaves. And twigs. I looked down the mountain through the trees. It was so much more

claustrophobic than I remembered. And not as green. Not as pretty. I looked behind me and tried to imagine the fuselage. With Pasje in it. Here was where his life ended. I didn’t feel his presence there – not stronger than usual, at least. I worked my way farther up the mountain and stopped at a rock. I searched in my backpack for the small wooden dolphin and the little white seal I had brought. I placed them on the rock. “Bye, Pasje,” I said. Today, Herfkens, her husband, Jaime Lupa, and their children, Maxi and Joosje, live in New York.

SURVIVOR: Jim Polehinke, copilot

đ Date: 27/8/2006 đ Flight: Comair 5191 đ From: Lexington, Kentucky, US đ To: Atlanta, US đ On board: 50 đ Crew deaths: 2 đ Passenger deaths: 47 đ The pilots steered the airplane down a runway that was too short. The plane

continued past the runway end, knocked down a metal fence, and continued onto a ﬁeld, where it struck several trees and burst into ﬂames.

AS THE PILOT in command taxied the plane from the terminal to the runway, I was going through the preflight checklist of equipment settings, so I didn’t look out the window to check the runway number like I would before most flights. Even if I had, I might not have noticed that the markers along the

taxiway didn’t match the runway we’d been assigned, because so many of the lights at the airport were broken. We waited to be cleared for takeoff, and then the captain said, “OK, let’s go.” He taxied out onto the runway, turned, and straightened us out. He said to me, “OK, your brakes, your controls.” I said, “My brakes, my controls,” and away we went. Januaryđ2015

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I don’t remember anything after that. On the cockpit voice recorder, you can hear me say, “That’s weird, no lights.” A few seconds later, we ran off the runway and hit an embankment. The plane rose into the air for a short distance, then clipped the airport fence, hit some trees, and broke into pieces. When the rescue crews arrived, they heard me coughing and cut me out of the wreckage. Instead of waiting for an ambulance, they put me into their vehicle and took me to the hospital. I was in an induced coma for four days. My body was like a broken rag doll. My left tibia and femur were both fractured. My right heel bone came out of my foot. I had broken ribs and fingers and a pelvic fracture. My right Stowed in a closet near the cockpit, Polehinke’s flight bag, shown here, survived the crash unscathed

lung had collapsed, and I’d suffered a traumatic brain injury. Once they got me out of the coma, they waited for my head to clear up. My wife was there. I thought, OK, I’m in the hospital, and I’m really messed up here. So what happened? That’s when my wife explained that I’d been in a plane crash. My response was a question: “Was everybody else OK?” And she said, “No. You’re the only survivor.” When I heard that, I pretty much lay there and cried. For the first week, the doctors kept cleaning out the left leg to try to save it. Finally the doctor came to me and said, “Listen, we can do one of two things. We can see if this is going to work, and there’s a possibility that you could die from an infection, or we can amputate.” Once they took my left leg, the rest of my body recovered very quickly. Emotionally and psychologically, I was very black the first couple of years after the crash. I was angry that all the blame was put on the captain and me. And I felt sad for the family members of those who had died. Sometimes I’d say to myself, “I’m alive!” And a split second later, I’d think about the 49 families who had lost loved ones. And I’d wonder, Should I be happy to be alive, when all those people are gone? I’m grateful that my

READER’S DIGEST

wife, Ida, is as strong as she is. She was my rock. She supported me, took care of me. I’m grateful that I have the wife that I do. My advice to some- “I miss flying body else in my situ- dearly,” says Polehinke, now 52. ation would be “Keep “I was lucky to l o o k i n g f o r w a rd s.” have had that Keep looking for that privilege” light at the end of the tunnel. You can’t change the past, so just always keep moving forwards. I’m basically paralysed from my right knee down. If somebody took me out of my wheelchair and said, “Stand up on one leg,” I’d drop. But I love to God, for allowing me to be alive and ski, and I get out whenever I can on a able to do this.” monoski. When I’m at the top of the moun- After the accident, Polehinke tain, I don’t think about the crash. I and his wife moved from Florida look out over the world stretched to southwestern Colorado, where he is president of Colorado Discover Ability, below me and say, “Maybe I don’t an organisation that promotes outdoor have a reason to complain. Thank you, activities for disabled adults and children.

Puzzles

See page 120

Tricky Tiles

Out of the Box

G R A F

R A D

M A G O

G H T

T H

Join each shape in the top row to the bottom row to reveal an alphabetical sequence.

Quick Thinking

1. Yes. 2. Yes: Cairo, Copenhagen, Cardiff, Canberra. 3. No. RSVP is French. 4. No; 49 is a perfect square. 5. Yes. 6. No. It spells OSO. 7. Yes. 8. No. 40 is shorter.

Hidden Meaning

South of the border O In the thick of things O Six periods in the school day

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Smart Animals

Crowd pleaser LEIGH WESTON

In the mid-1980s, I had just completed a successful season with my jazz duo in London, and we were booked for a six-month contract at The Golden Hat Piano Bar in Paris. One night, just before our 1am finish and when the crowd had thinned out, a young man in blue jeans and a 112

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light leather jacket walked in with his small companion. He chose a table near the band and ordered a cocktail for himself and an orange juice for his friend. They sat and listened to the music, and when we had finished the number, the little friend, who was dressed in overalls and a redchequered cap, carefully put his

I LLUSTRATI ON: BEN SANDERS

Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s more human: the pet owner or the pet

orange juice down on the table and they both clapped enthusiastically. Well, we couldn’t very well stop at that when we had two such delightful customers enjoying the music, so we played on for another half hour, thoroughly enjoying our small but select audience. What made it an occasion to remember was that the pleasant young man could have been from anywhere, but his little companion – was a chimpanzee! Surely, only in Paris!!

Trick for treats VERA FARR

When I leave the house in the morning, I give our dogs (my elegant male saluki, Zeke, and my daughter’s mixed-breed old lady, Ash) a dog chew each. One morning I got the chews out but must have become distracted and forgot to give them to the dogs. After I had gone, my daughter noticed Zeke doing a tap dance in the kitchen, with his long nose in the air pointing at the cabinet. “What is he doing?” she thought, going over to him. There on the bench, in easy reach of the tall saluki’s mouth were the two doggie treats. He could easily have knocked them off (and eaten both!), but his early training – take nothing off benches or tables – and his love of these chews, made him perform an elaborate dance to draw attention to the fact

that I had fallen down on the job. Clever boy Zeke – he got his reward.

Dinner bell LOIS STAHL

I’ll never forget the day I brought home my first microwave oven. As I was setting it up on the kitchen table, my two-year-old tabby cat Midget wandered into the kitchen and watched over what I was doing with a disdainful look. His ears pricked up in interest when he saw me put a fish in the microwave. He then sat and gazed through its glass window as the fish turned around, and around on the plate. Imagine his surprise, when the microwave suddenly made a loud ping sound to announce the end of the cooking program. Midget jumped up in a fright and then ducked under the table. With the smell of the fish wafting out Midget slowly – but cautiously – emerged and jumped back onto the table to have another look at his dinner. I then placed it into his dinner bowl and he set about eating his dinner with no fuss. Within days, Midget had learned that when the microwave let out its ping it was time for his dinner. From then on, he watched over the microwave and would call me when the microwave pinged. You could earn cash by telling us about the antics of unique pets or wildlife. Turn to page 6 for details on how to contribute to the magazine. Januaryđ2015

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BOOK DIGEST

For SPINELESS (Abrams), Susan Middleton spent seven years photographing marine invertebrates – “the backbone of life”. Part art, part scientific study, her 150 portraits show creatures that dwell from the depths to the shallows in intriguing detail and beauty. Here, a captured young Pacific Giant Octopus with a body just 1.5cm across is preparing for a life trawling the ocean in search of crustaceans, clams, fish and the occasional seabird. It will likely grow in its three- to five-year life to some 45kg, though one specimen weighed in at a colossal 272kg.

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8. Jane Austen in Bath, UK. Universally acknowledged Regency charms

Best Literary Walking Tours, according to Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2015

1. Millennium Tour, Stockholm, for fans of Stieg Larsson’s crime thrillers. 2. Literary Pub Crawl, Dublin, Ireland. Raise a glass in creative drinking holes. 3. Literary Landmarks, Boston, US. The birthplace of American Romanticism with the homes and haunts of Louisa May Alcott, Henry James, Thoreau and more. 4. James Bond’s Mayfair, London. Classiﬁed secrets of the Fleming high life. 5. Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl, New York City. Decades of inspiration in the Big Apple, from Revolutionary writers to the present day. 6. Writers in Paris, France. Step into a world peopled by the ghosts of Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Jean Rhys and Marcel Proust. 7. Literary Shanghai, China. From local stars such as Lu Xun and Xu Zhimo to visiting giants of international literature including George Bernard Shaw.

“... Some 500 languages worldwide are currently spoken by fewer than 500 people; around 50 languages are spoken by just a single individual. In 2013, the last native speaker of Livonian died in Latvia. In 2012, the last speaker of the Cromarty dialect in Scotland breathed his last. And in 2011, in a welcome variation of the theme, it was reported that the last two speakers of Ayapaneco, in Mexico, refused to talk to each other.” From LINGO:

A LANGUAGE SPOTTER’S GUIDE TO EUROPE (Proﬁle Books) by Gaston Dorren

Spaniards utter an average of 7.82 syllables per second, as against 6.17 for English speakers and 5.97 for German.

Numbers are odd: French, with its ‘four-twenty-teneight’ for 98; in Breton, 77 is ‘seventeen-and-threetwenty’; and 78 is “two-ninethree-twenty” in Welsh.

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BOOKS

In GREAT WHITE, (Pan Macmillan)

James Woodfood

writes: “... This is the story about a ﬁsh – from the tips of its teeth to the end of its tail. It has the body of a submarine, the jaws of a bear trap, the stomach of a wheelie bin, the power of a torpedo, eyes as big as billiard balls and a brain smaller than the top of the thumb of most men. It emerged from a lineage predating dinosaurs and its personality has the ill-deserved reputation of being somewhere between a psychopath and a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang ... The simple fact is that each and every white shark is a rogue shark. They are everything that is both terrible and wonderful about life and food chains and oceans and primal power.”

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“... The strategists had worked out that they should not make any claims about the way Heineken tasted, or tell consumers that Heineken was cheap and that they could drink an entire barrel without getting excessively intoxicated. They hit on another attribute that was much more appealing: that it was refreshing. Terry Lovelock, in the ad agency’s creative team endured ‘three months of agony’ over his assignment, and he eventually decided to escape the pressure from executives by tagging along on a photo shoot to Marrakesh. It was during the nights there that he got up to write two lines. One of them read: ‘Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.’ ...Over the years the slogan would become part of the English language.” Barbara Smit in THE HEINEKEN STORY (Profile Books) “... Getting simplicity into your life is the same process as good product design: firstly, reduce the number of moving parts; secondly, make the outside user-friendly; and lastly, do one thing really well. All the great inventions make things more simple, not more complex ... There are fortunes to be made in simpler ways to generate power, find love or change a duvet cover ...On the other hand, some things don’t work when they’re too simple: for example, flamenco, whisky and foreign policy.”

HOW TO BE NORMAL: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED (Atlantic) by Guy Browning

MOVIE DIGEST BRAINY BRITS

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING Biopic

EXTRACTS MAY BE EDITED FOR S PACE AN D CLA RITY

Starry eyed: Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking

While Stephen Hawking’s achievements are well known, his personal story is less so. The Theory of Everything portrays how his physical decline at the hands of motor neurone disease ran parallel to personal and professional triumphs. A ﬁlm about battling both love and illness, The Theory of Everything explores universal themes using a unique story. This is a truly emotional ride for the audience.

THE IMITATION GAME Biopic Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) was a genius British mathematician, cryptologist, computer scientist and an unlikely war hero. He led the charge to crack the German Enigma Code in WWII, an act Winston Churchill labelled the biggest single contribution to Allied victory. The ﬁlm delves Decoding the into Turing’s famously enigma: Benedict eccentric and antisocial Cumberbatch as life and his hidden Alan Turing homosexuality.

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MOVIES BIRDMAN Comedy/Drama Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is a washed-up actor trying to reclaim his glory days playing iconic superhero “Birdman”. Sound familiar? No, it’s not a Keaton biopic. Thomson struggles to mount a play to revive his career and personal life. Riddled with in-jokes and wink-wink references, Birdman drips with dark humour and shows that even Hollywood actors can poke fun at themselves.

Feeling beaky: Michael Keaton

Girl Power

INTO THE WOODS Fantasy Modern retellings of classic fairy tales have been all the rage lately and Into The Woods adds to the ever-growing list. Meryl Streep plays a witch – and you can tell she had fun with this role – who conspires to teach important lessons to characters we love, such as Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. Based on the musical, the ﬁlm centres on a childless couple, who set out to end a curse placed by the vengeful witch. The ﬁlm explores the darker side of these classic tales’ style.

Q: 118

After decades of male-dominated Hollywood leads, it appears that some recent releases are starting to level the field. Films such as Gravity, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Frozen and Maleficent all featured leading ladies and reaped the benefits. According to database Box Office Mojo, these films have taken in a combined $3.6 billion worldwide. Why the shift? Because the majority of cinema-goers are female. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the cinema attendance rate for females (70%) is higher than the rate for males (64%). And the Motion Picture Association of America reports that in 2013, 52% of US moviegoers were women.

In 1982, Ben Kingsley won an Oscar for playing which peaceable character?

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SUMMER DVD MARATHON

January is the perfect time to rest and relax in front of a TV. We’ve picked the hottest new DVD releases to help you chill out YVES SAINT LAURENT Biopic

NANCY WAKE: GESTAPO’S MOST WANTED Documentary/Drama

In 1958, Yves Saint Laurent was drafted into the iconic Paris fashion house established by Christian Dior. The French ﬁlm follows YSL’s rise and his life-long relationship with Pierre Bergé.

MALEFICENT Fantasy Angelina Jolie gives Sleeping Beauty’s evil stepmother a softer side in this modern twist on a classic tale that shows there are two sides to every fairy story.

LUCY Action/Thriller When Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is used as a guinea pig for a powerful new drug, her body undergoes surreal changes that unlock her mind’s full ll potential.

Nancy Wake was the daring allied spy who became the Gestapo’s most wanted woman in WWII. Including interviews with her closest friends, conﬁdants and military historians that bring the legend to life, this docu-drama is a compelling retelling of one of history’s little-known heroes.

AND SO IT GOES Comedy

When obnoxious real estate agent Oren Little (Michael Douglas) becomes guardian to his estranged granddaughter, he palms her off on his lovable neighbour Leah (Diane Keaton). But bit by bit, Gandhi. Oren stubbornly learns to open art – to his family, to Leah life itself. Januaryđ2015

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BRAIN POWER TEST YOUR MENTAL PROWESS

Puzzles Challenge yourself by solving these puzzles and mind stretchers, then check your answers on page 111 Tricky Tiles Place the tiles into the grid to form a word square. Different words read across and down. Clues to the “down” words are given below.

DOWN CLUES 1. Grain for grinding 2. Tall, nettle-like perennial herb used for cloth 3. Memorable proverb 4. Boxing match 5. Cog on a wheel

I G H T

Out of the Box Fill in the two missing shapes in this sequence. Think laterally!

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G R

R A F

? ?

PUZZLES

Hidden Meaning

Quick Thinking Don’t think about these yes or no questions too hard. Trust your initial instincts and see how many you answer correctly.

Identify the common words or phrases above.

N W

E S

1. Do these shapes have 28 sides all together?

EGYPT WALES DENMARK AUSTRALIA

2. Do these countries’ capitals begin with C?

ETC

RSVP

3. Are these all Latin abbreviations?

4. Are all these numbers prime numbers?

ADDER CHIMP BELLS DIRTY 5. Are these words all spelt alphabetically in order?

SC.H.O.O.L D.A.Y

6. Does this spell SOS in Morse Code?

7. Are all these white circles the same size?

8. Are these numbers, when spelt out, the same length? Januaryđ2015

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BRAIN POWER TEST YOUR GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

Trivia To celebrate the start of the year, we have a quiz where you select the item that came first historically. One point per question. Which was the first to …

15-18 Gold medal

9-14 Silver medal

10. … become a

company: Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola? 11. ... hold a Summer Olympic Games? Atlanta or Seoul? 12. … be invented: The iPhone or iPod? 13. … release their first album: The Beatles or The Rolling Stones? 14. … have creatures walk the Earth: Jurassic or Cambrian period? 15. … change the world? Dismantling of apartheid in South Africa or collapse of the Berlin Wall? 16. … be published: Winnie-the-Pooh or Alice in Wonderland? 17. … have his Symphony No. 1 premiered: Beethoven or Brahms? 18. … be declared: The Gulf War or the Iraq War? 5-8 Bronze medal

0-4 Wooden spoon

ANSWERS: 1. Mongols (1206-1300s; Aztecs 1428-1521). 2. Amazon (1995; Google 1997). 3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; Star Wars 1977). 4. Suez (Oct, 1956; Cuban missile crisis Oct, 1962). 5. Einstein (14/3/1879; Picasso 25/10/1889). 6. Toaster (1893; pre-sliced bread 1928). 7. ABBA (1972; Sex Pistols 1975). 8. Plane (1903; Titanic 1912). 9. Confucius (551BC; Caesar 100BC). 10. Coke (1888; Pepsi 1903). 11. Seoul (1988; Atlanta 1996). 12. iPod (2001; iPhone 2007). 13. The Beatles (1963; Rolling Stones 1964). 14. Cambrian (ended 485 million years ago; Jurassic ended 145mya). 15. Berlin Wall (1989; apartheid 1990-1994). 16. Alice in Wonderland (1865; Winnie-the-Pooh 1925). 17. Beethoven (2/4/1800; Brahms 4/11/1876). 18. Gulf War (Code-named Operation Desert Shield, Aug 1990; Operation Iraqi Freedom Mar 2003).

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COMP ILED BY GAIL MACCALLUM; PH OTO: THIN KSTOCK

1. … rule their part of the world: Aztecs or Mongols? 2. … register its .com web address: Google or Amazon? 3. … be screened: Star Wars or 2001: A Space Odyssey? 4. … occur: The Cuban missile crisis or the Suez canal crisis? 5. … be born: Albert Einstein or Pablo Picasso? 6. … be invented: The electric toaster or pre-sliced bread? 7. … be formed: ABBA or the Sex Pistols? 8. … launch on its first voyage: RMS Titanic or the Wright brothers’ Flyer? 9. … be born: Julius Caesar or Confucius?

BRAIN POWER IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR

One way of accomplishing your New Yea ar’s resolutions is setting small, bite-size goalls throughout the year. So this month we celebrate all things diminutive. Zip through this quiz in short order, then baby-step over the page for answers. 1. transient adj. – A: short-range.

B: short-handed. C: short-lived. 2. vignette n. – A: small glass.

B: short literary sketch or scene. C: thin line. 3. bagatelle n. – A: child’s rucksack.

BY EM ILY COX & HENRY RATHVON ; I LLUSTRATIONS BY JI LL C ALDER

B: cell nucleus. C: something of little value. 4. scintilla n. – A: short vowel. B: minute amount. C: minor crime.

10. niggling adj. – A: petty. B: stunted. C: short-winded.

5. myopic adj. – A: too tiny for

11. aphorism n. – A: concise saying.

the naked eye. B: shortsighted. C: early.

B: shorthand writing. C: cut-off sentence.

6. irascible adj. – A: small-minded. B: narrow-waisted. C: marked by a short temper.

12. staccato adj. – A: of cemented

7. expeditiously adv. – A: promptly

13. nib n. – A: crumb on a plate.

and efficiently. B: incompletely. C: tersely or rudely.

B: point of a pen. C: matter of seconds.

8. tabard n. – A: short-sleeved coat. B: booklet of verses. C: dwarf evergreen.

14. exiguous adj. – A: inadequate, scanty. B: momentary. C: reduced by one tenth.

9. arietta n. – A: tot’s playpen.

15. truncate v. – A: compress by

B: miniature figurine. C: short melody.

squeezing. B: speed up. C: shorten by lopping off.

fragments. B: formed into droplets. C: short, clear-cut sounds.

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WORD POWER

Answers

10. niggling – [A] petty. “Jane,

1. transient – [C] short-

you’re driving me bonkers with your niggling complaints!”

lived. “The first-quarter lead proved transient, as the Ravens racked up 42 points in the second.” 2. vignette – [B]

short literary sketch or scene. “Dickens created characters from prose vignettes like little photographs.” 3. bagatelle – [C] something of little

value. “My stories aren’t prized works, just personal bagatelles.” 4. scintilla – [B] minute amount.

“There’s not one scintilla of evidence against my client.” 5. myopic – [B] shortsighted. “Kim’s myopic view of the project surely led to its collapse.” 6. irascible – [C] marked by a short temper. “If Jack were any more irascible, he’d have smoke coming out of his ears.” 7. expeditiously – [A] promptly and

efficiently. “As a pick-me-up, a triple espresso works expeditiously.” 8. tabard – [A] short-sleeved coat. “My entire Hamlet costume consists of a wooden sword and this tabard.” 9. arietta – [C] short melody. “The

goldfinch trilled an arietta, reminding us that spring would come soon.” 124

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11. aphorism – [A] concise

saying. “My father has an aphorism for any occasion.” 12. staccato – [C] short, clear-

cut sounds. “Lucy’s hilarious laugh comes in sharp, staccato dog barks.” 13. nib – [B] point of a pen.

“A faulty nib, Beth complained, ruined her first pass at her final drawing project.” 14. exiguous – [A] inadequate, scanty. “Ever a big eater, Art found even the jumbo burger a bit exiguous.” 15. truncate – [C] shorten by lopping off. “According to mythology, the gruesome Procrustes would truncate his guests if they were too long for the bed.”

WORD HISTORY: MICRO Micro is a word-forming element meaning “small, microscopic; magnifying; one millionth, as in phones, scopes and chips. It comes from the Greek mikrós, for “small, short” (also related: mica, the rock whose tiny pieces ﬂake off). VOCABULARY RATINGS

5 & below: Came up short 6–10: Short and sweet 11–12: Made short work of it 13-15: Word Power wizard