Watermark

12 May to 17 May 2012

Mark, who worked for some time in Mackay, now lives in W.A.

Students from the architectural design faculty of Hefey University of Technology were involved in the design of the Piano House at Huainan City, Anhui, China. Music students now have the perfect place in which to practice. The transparent violin contains the staircase to the upper levels. Perhaps another idea could be a building like a human body where medical students could study, making their way from area to area via giant veins and arteries.

I have had information about this truly disgusting sounding food combination, bacon and egg icecream, for quite some time but couldn't bring myself to write the story. A gentleman called Heston Blumenthal came up with the idea almost a decade ago and it is a specialty at his Fat Duck Restaurant somewhere in the wilds of England. To go with the icecream there is caramelized brioche which stands in as toast and a look-alike jam which is really tomato and red pepper paste. I don't think jam is part of the standard bacon and egg breakfast dish but I suppose the meal needed some colour. The meal ends with jellied Earl Grey tea. Jellied? Goodness gracious me.

If you have chooks you will find it much easier to make this dish as it requires 24 egg yolks, giving you 24 lots of egg white which can, at least, be put to good use by making meringues. And don't forget the 300 g of bacon!

Woolly headed people can sit in the chair and count sheep. One, two, three and then, one, two, three. Or they could get up and do a waltz.

1 May to 11 May 2012

I enjoy everything connected with the body and with the medical world and therefore this chair is a delight. Rather sad that the bones used are from cows but the concept is an interesting one. It comes from Ama Darko Williams, a British designer, who is obsessed with bonestructure and with recycling. This seat is part of her furniture collection called 3rd Leg.

Berry good

And here is a suggestion for all of us who are unnerved by the idea of senility - eat berries. The Nurses' Health Study, run by the Harvard Medical School for the past 35 years, and including 121,700 female registered nurses between the ages of 30 and 55 showed eating blueberries and strawberries could delay cognitive ageing by up to two and a half years. The berries are high in flavonoids which have strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

Nurses were surveyed every four years and between 1995 and 2001 16,010 people, aged 70 or older, had their cognitive functions tested every two years.

Enjoy the film

But remember your seasickness tablets

Not Scotch on the rocks, but films on the rocks! The Archipelago Cinema, floating near Kudu Island, was home to dozens of film-loving guests during the recent First Edition of Film on the Rocks.

Archipelago Cinema which floats on a raft built out of recycled materials, copies techniques used by fishermen to construct floating lobster farms. For a time the floating auditorium will travel to other places but it will end its career back at Kudu Island where it will be donated to the community of Yao Noi, the builders.

26 April to 30 April

Above is pharmacist Joyce McSwann, organiser of the Mackay Pain Support Group, at the Mackay Botanic Gardens

Ten skilled volunteer facilitators, from a variety of health backgrounds, are supporting the newly formed Mackay Pain Support Group. The volunteers include a physiotherapist, psychologist, pharmacists, doctors, nurses, counselors and pastoral care. The facilitators, who have close ties with pain services within Queensland, are well resourced to help pain sufferers to develop self-management skills to live a good quality of life despite their pain.

Meetings are held on the third Saturday of each month and further information can be obtained from Joyce McSwann on 0412 327 795 or via her email.

Recently a member of the Mackay Pain Support group wrote "we need a support group here as many of us suffer in silence and we need the support to get through our everyday life, we need to get the word out there that there are people going through this and you are not alone".

Above, view at the Mackay Botanic Gardens and below, the Lagoons Cafe

19 April to 25 April

We all know sending, receiving, and reading texts while driving a car is illegal and dangerous, however I had never considered airline pilots doing it. Apparently a Singapore Jetstar flight performed a go-around at the Whitsunday Coast Airport, instead of going straight into landing, because the pilot was trying to download a text message! Perhaps the message was work-related, but that is not an excuse.

There aren't any pilots on this very weird aircraft called the Odysseus. Work is ongoing on this surveillance aircraft which should be able to fly for five years without stopping thanks to the energy from solar panels. This is a combination of three planes, each a 164 foot long wing shaped structure. The planes launch individually and join up in mid air. The shape changes in order to trap the optimal amount of sunshine.

This building is not a survivor from an earthquake but is a working guesthouse in Ciudad Abierta in Chile. The Errante Guest House was an experimental building which was part of the Catholic University of Valparaiso in Chile. The strange angles of the guest house were planned to deflect wind shears and to aid in temperature control.

Loos

Decades ago I thought about doing a book about toilets as I had seen some strange ones in my travels. The book was written but by someone else and now I have found an interesting new loo which should be added to any new edition.

And while I am on the subject of trees....

11 April to 18 April 2012

It's interesting to think back to all the food warnings we've had over the years usually followed by a reversal of thinking. For instance coffee, butter, red wine, chocolate and eggs were all frowned upon, now coffee, red wine and eggs have been shown to have benefits while a scary email about margarine, sent me racing back to butter. Chocolate seems the way to go if you are depressed.

White rice is now in the spotlight with the suggestion that eating it on a regular basis could substantially increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

352,384 people from Australia, China, Japan and the United States were involved in a study which found that each serving per day of white rice, (around 158g), increased the risk of diabetes by 11 percent across the overall population. All participants were free from diabetes at the start of the studies. More than 13,000 developed the condition during the study. And as usual I have a question, did those 13,000 people not eat white rice prior to the study?

This tree again...

I used the photo above a few weeks ago but have just discovered it is known as the Basket Tree and was made by tree sculptor Alex Erlandson by planting six sycamore trees in a circle which were grafted together in 42 different connections to give it its basket shape.

Although the tree began its life half a century ago it was transplanted to Gilroy Gardens from the Tree Circus which Alex opened in 1947 and which featured numerous odd trees. The property was sold just before the death of Mr Erlandson in 1964.

Erlandson taught himself to train the growth of trees into shapes of his own design and he considered his methods trade secrets. When children asked how he got his trees to grow in such a weird way he told them he talked to them.

Poor thing

I think the RSPCA should widen its scope to include foodstuffs, as above, and many doors which are in a constant state of alarm. Not to mention spiders, see below. One spider which can't be shoed away.

6 April to 10 April 2012

Art installations usually do not touch me emotionally, but this one, called One Third, touched me in several ways. Firstly the photographs, even though they are of rotten food, are beautiful, and, secondly, the photographic commentary brings home that one third of the world's food supply is left to rot. Klaus Pichler, from Austria, created the photographs after learning of the UN finding regarding food wastage.

designboom describes the installation as follows. The photographer "captured the colorful and putrid images in a classical still-life composition, the simplicity of the black background and direct lighting, enhancing the detail and variation of color observed in the decomposition of each product".

Each photograph has a full caption which includes the place of production, cultivation method, time of harvest, transporting distance, means of transportation, carbon footprint, water requirement, and price of the product. The UN report suggested that, depending upon the product, the wastage rate may sometimes be 75 percent.

The photographs are a criticism of the behaviour of consumers and are aimed at enhancing public awareness of the food waste which occurs all over the world.

To read more about the project, and to see many photographs, you can download the project statement.

Eat the recipe not just the product!

Why hasn't this been thought of before? Classic lasagne can now be made, firstly by reading the instructions which are embedded or embossed on pages made of pasta, and then the pages can be cooked and eaten. This is one book which would not be added to my library unless I planned to photograph it as it rotted and send it to the photographer above. This pasta pages idea was created by Korefe, a German design studio and the cookbook has been published in a limited edition by Gerstenberg Publishing House.

Below, prime candidate for a nursing home

Horror vacui, Latin for the fear of empty space, is the name given to a series of photographs which depict stars from cult films of the 1970's and 1980's as ageing and alone at the end of their lives. The photographer in this instance is Italian, Federico Chiesa.

5 April 2012

I have been having fun this past month or so turning some manuscripts into ebooks, and what a learning curve that is! The writing is the easy part. Anyway if you have a Kindle or an ebook reader, for the grand price of about 99 cents each, you can download Dreamweb and or Childmesh

30 March 2012 to 4 April 2012

I'm clearly going colour blind. I sorted my collection of bags, mostly green, and stopped to admire what I thought was a blue bag but NO it is a green bag!

Above, this tree is just in time for Easter.

Above Queenie and Stampy relax together. My printer is a favoured position not only for Stampy, but also for Queenie and Snoopy.

Above, music on the move.