The Bear Minimum

I have, and it’s rather good!

I’ve watched the show on and off for most of the last decade. Both my wife and I love to cook, so it’s natural that we’d watch the show. I didn’t get into the Junior MasterChef or Celebrity MasterChef, but MasterChef: The Professionals is quite good. The original MasterChef is always the most enjoyable, though, because the journey seems much greater to these people.

I happened to be talking to a friend from Australia a few weeks back, and he said that they had the show in Australia, and that it was very good. I did a quick Google search of it and found that it was quite like our original MasterChef, and when my friend offered to send me a DVD of the episodes so far that he’d recorded off of TV, I happily accepted.

So earlier this week the DVD appeared in my letter box and my wife and I sat down to watch it. It’s actually very enjoyable, and feels very authentic to the original series. Sometimes the seasons of MasterChef could get quite stale (no pun intended!) and you could lose interest for a great portion of the season. There’s so many contestants in the first half of the show that you don’t get a chance to see much of them, and as a result you’re far less invested.

With this Australia season there’s that same issue, but when you’ve the chance to watch a great portion of the episodes back to back, you don’t get that feeling so much. I’m quite looking forward to receiving the next DVD of episodes, which my friend said would take me up to the point where there’s ten contestants left, which is a pretty good point to be watching at. I look forward to seeing who wins, and I will be avoiding any spoilers!

About time, I should think, that I updated what’s going on with that accident my wife was in.

She’s healed up very well, up and about walking with no pain now, which is just wonderful. The doctor said he’s surprised at how well and how fast she’s healed, but that’s the way she is!

An old friend of mine who works with a law society suggested to us to seek out the legal services of a reputable firm just in case there’s trouble with the fellow who hit my wife’s car or his insurance company.

My wife has decided that she will be sending through claims for compensation for the accident and for the medical bills that resulted from it. Another reason to have a lawyer retained at this stage! The fellow who hit her seemed like such a nasty piece of work, and I’ve a few other choice descriptions that I’ll leave out as I don’t like to swear on my blog. We’re honestly half expecting any day to get sent notification of his claims for compensation for whiplash or some other injury, but I think even that moron wouldn’t try that when it’s clearly his own fault.

The police report from the accident stated it was his fault and he was fined as well. But that doesn’t stop some people. There’s so many cases of idiots bringing forward lawsuits against people when they’ve no right. I suppose the allure of what could potentially be quick money is a bit much for some, or perhaps they really think they deserve the money? I really don’t know.

I do know that I’m extremely happy to see my wife back to her old self, up and about! We’re planning to go hiking sometime soon, we just have to pick the perfect spot! So far we’re both favouring doing the North York Moors Walk, which looks like it’ll be just excellent!

The Sydney Opera House was home to a new kind of music, earlier this month, at a concert for dogs.

I love good news. I read newspapers and watch the news and do take a peek at BBC News quite often, but far, far more often it’s bad news contained therein. In an attempt to gain a balance, a more even perspective of the world, I read multiple Happy News sites.

One story that stood out the other day was a concert specifically for dogs. The music had been written to appeal to a dog’s different hearing, sounding odd and at times high pitched to humans. The dogs all seemed to like it, yapping along at times, and there was actually no disagreements between the dogs (how surprising!) and the vet at the event only had to treat one animal who’s foot was a little sore after being stood on, but he was fine, apparently. The concert ran for about twenty minutes, and the music was written by Laurie Anderson and her husband, Lou Reed. Laurie said that the dogs appeared to ‘grooving along with it’.

I’m all for events that celebrate our furry friends, and would love to see similar events going on here in the UK, and something special for cats, too. My wife wouldn’t be happy if the cats didn’t get something special made for them, too.

I’ve always loved the sound of dogs or wolves howling; Since I was a child. There were a few dogs in my neighbourhood where I grew up, one of which must have been a very, very large dog for it had a very, very loud bark and howl. When that dog started to howl, many other dogs in the neighbourhood would start up with it, and there was a beautiful, if mournful, chorus of them. It was a haunting sound, one that seemed to fitting with a blustery moonlit night.

A little boy from London is finally able to communicate with is family, and it’s an uplifting story I thought I’d share.

There’s a diverse range of communication skills in even one room of people. But imagine if your child was completely unable to talk, because he was autistic. How would you know just how much he was listening to, how would you know if he understood you if there was no response from him?

That was what faced the family of Jamie Ponsonby, that is, until his mother Serena, was prompted to start teaching her son to type after reading a book by an autistic woman who could speak, but found it much easier to type instead.

It wasn’t easy, and Jamie was very slow to start with when he was nine years old, and was also took quite some time to show any progress. But now at age thirteen, Jamie is actually typing of his own accord and showing his family that he is in fact aware of what is going on around him, that he has a sense of humour and is creative, that he enjoys travelling, the list is potentially endless, because Jamie can now communicate, permanently, with his family.

Jamie has started writing poetry, giving his family a greater insight into what it’s like to be Jamie, what it’s like to be largely stuck within one’s own mind.

I can only imagine how uplifted his family must be, to know that he’s right there. He’s with them, even if he can’t say so. His mother says that they ask him all sorts of things, and he knows so much more than she’d ever expected. She also says that his confidence and self-esteem have greatly increased with his ability to type. What a wonderful turn for this child.

I know that this sort of thing doesn’t work for all autistic people, or even most, but I’m happy for this one little boy and happy for his family, who now can really get to know Jamie.

For people who need help, but live far from city centres, there’s work arounds that can help.

When technology first started to allow for teleconferencing at an affordable rate, it was something I immediately thought of for use in my work. Sure there are a lot of advice services online, but few of them allow for the practising psychologist to build a rapport with the patient.

When internet, video, and audio conferencing first became widely available, I let it be known amongst my colleagues that I would be open to working with some people via this technology, and of course that information was also filtered out to GPs who were looking for solutions for patients who were going through some psychological issue, especially those that weren’t likely to be long-term, as with post-natal depression or trauma after an accident of some sort.

The clinic I work at also put in an IP office phone system that was business grade, so that cost of conferencing would be greatly reduced making it more feasible for these sorts of sessions to occur. I also felt like it was a big thumbs up for what I was doing, and the service has worked well in the past.

I mentioned some time back my helping a woman who had suffered from extreme agoraphobia, well she’s one of the patients I’ve helped without her having to leave her home, to start with anyway, and after many, many sessions, and with a great deal of courage from her, she’s been able to largely move past her phobia, and accompanied her husband earlier this year on his life-long desired trip, to Egypt.

They had a great time with the tour, and the tour staff were very thoughtful when it came to helping my patient and being understanding with her when her phobia would flare; It’s nice to hear of such things, isn’t it?

Otherwise that wouldn’t have happened!

In this case, I happened upon a book of bed time stories from my childhood. One of the stories is about an old Japanese man who lived on a mountain. He was poor, but loved his garden, so he would traipse all over the mountain digging up plants to put in his garden. People would come from far and wide to see this garden, and the old man was happy.

One day the old man noticed an old brass kettle in the corner of his room. Now, this wasn’t his, and it looked very old, but his own kettle was so well-used it was cracked and starting to leak. The old man took the kettle and popped it on the fire to heat up some water.

Then the kettle started to change shape. The handle turned into a head, and the spout a tail. Four legs sprouted out of the bottom, and then, running madly around the old man’s house, was a tanuki.

Now, that’s not a creature many will be familiar with, but it sort of looks like a raccoon or a dog, and in Japan there’s a great deal of myth surrounding them which says the tanuki have the power to transform themselves into anything they like. This is the tanuki, and this here is what the illustrator had in the pictures. That’s right, that’s a badger. In a story about a magical tankuki.

Now, I understand this book was written and illustrated long, long before the days of the internet, and how many encyclopaedias would have a picture of a unusual Japanese mammal even if they did include an entry on the creature? So I do not begrudge the illustrator, but I do still think it rather hilarious.

There are some few that aren’t treatable with psychology, but we try nonetheless.

I’ve been a psychologist for a long, long time. I’ve helped over a thousand patients move toward mental health and overcome a variety of issues. However there are some that I cannot treat. There are some that psychology cannot help, that medication will do far more for, if anything will help.

I’ve had a few schizophrenic patients and honestly, I’ve been greatly saddened by them. These poor patients who are constantly beset by phantoms within their mind aren’t suffering from something I can help them with. Yet the people who love them, who want to see them be happy and feel safe, bring them to me in the hopes that I can help. But really, I can help the carers so much more than I can the schizophrenics.

These poor people can sometimes be helped with pharmaceuticals, but in so many cases there’s little that can be done, and even when medications help, it’s very rare that a schizophrenia sufferer is completely free of their mental illness.

It’s very draining attempting to help people who are, really, beyond my ability to help. Not just my ability, but the ability of non-medicating health professionals. My wife helps me greatly when I’ve tried to help these patients. She’s a surprisingly strong woman who often knows just what I need to rejuvenate and refresh, whether it’s a good home cooked meal, a cup of tea on the back porch looking out over the back garden, or just sitting and talking.

I wish very heartily that a new wonder-drug is discovered, that some compound will be discovered that can reverse or erase the damage in the minds of serious mental-illness sufferers. I don’t think that will happen straight away, but I do hold out hope that research into this field will shed light on ways to eliminate this kind of disease.

A colleague of mine is breaking our long-standing tradition of looking dour in the office because he’s so excited about his new holiday house. Of course there’s no actual tradition, and we’re not really that dour.

He’s an older fellow, getting very close to retiring I’d say as he turned sixty-seven last year. He’s always had a love for far off places, and recently he’s been trying to decide whether or not to purchase a holiday home in the Philippines; a country he’s long had affection for after visiting there a long time ago.

His office is decorated with beautiful photographs of the bright blue seas surrounding the tiny island nation, the great Philippine Eagle. The man is a long time ornithology enthusiast, and his favourite species of bird is the Eagle, and he says the Philippine Eagle is a particularly beautiful bird. I must say, a quick Google search of the bird and I have to agree, it is a mighty looking predator!

Combine these two factors and his being informed by a friend of an opportunity for overseas property investment in Philippines real estate and you’ve got a recipe for a very happy psychiatrist with a new holiday home!

My wife and I would much rather holiday closer to home on a frequent basis. Oh sure we like to skip across to the Continent every so often, but that’s something rarer for us, and we actually take great pleasure from discovering all the amazing places right here in the UK. Next year we’re considering going to Wales and spending some time exploring the castles of that region. Many of them are ruins, but they’re still so vast that it’s very enjoyable to explore.

I think one of the things I like most about holidaying in Great Britain is the potential for coming across ancient history. All across our green landscape are reminders of just how long we’ve been living in this part of the world, and the vast and varied history England has had.

There’s multiple ways you can recycle electronics, but either way you go, you should do it.

I’d been meaning to get down to the post office to drop a couple of old mobile phones off in the recycle bin there, but when I told the receptionist at my office where I was headed off to, she told me that you could actually sell your old mobile phones, though you only get a few pounds for them.

I looked up the website she directed me to, and found that they have a pretty good reason for purchasing people’s old phones, and I’m always very happy to help out a good cause so I started the process and ordered the envelope to be sent to me.

There’s quite a bit of stigma, I have discovered, about this process, as many people seem to feel that these companies mislead people selling their old phones, and they don’t get all that much for them. I have seen multiple references to this mobile phone xchange scam, and yet I have to wonder, if these people were willing to part with this phone, thinking they didn’t want it anymore, if they get anything for it, and don’t have to take a trip to their local post office to recycle the thing, then why would the become so aggravated at not getting a lot of money? I suppose the most obvious answer to that is that this site does seem to suggest they’ll give you a lot of money for certain phones, and of course those are the latest model phones that very few people would willing part with, and I think those larger figures on the front page of the site is someone misleading to some people.

I enjoy the thought of giving my phone to someone in a third-world country, though I do wonder how much it can really help third-world nations… I doubt they’ve got mobile phone towers dotted across the landscapes of most third-world nations, so perhaps that’s something that bares further investigation.

It seems to be part of the play-book for many teams in the World Cup.

Football can be an extremely enjoyable spectator sport, especially on an international scale, but there’s one aspect of the game that I personally find very frustrating. I intensely dislike the faking of injuries that so many players engage in. It’s not limited to any specific nation, nor any specific continent, though some nations aren’t as bad as others.

For instance, Italy is playing New Zealand at the moment, and they have to be one of the worst offenders for this type of behaviour. A few of the Italian players have received a tap here or have fallen there, and they writhe around on the ground as if they’ve received a kick to the back of the head. Very dramatic, I must say. On the other hand, I saw a few of the Swiss players take quite a fall due to tackle, and get right back up with nary a bit of theatrics, in spite of the tackle seeming quite aggressive.

I know that the players think that if they play up their pain, they may be slightly more likely to receive a free kick or even perhaps a penalty, but at the same time, where’s their sense of sportsmanship? Are they really that okay with the thought of essentially cheating the system? Are they not embarrassed at behaving in such an obviously fake way? I know I certainly would be, and I wouldn’t want to be seen as being either weak or a fake.

So far the World Cup has been pretty enjoyable, save for the inconsistency in refereeing decisions. I feel like there should be better communication between all of the referees to ensure that certain types of behaviour aren’t condoned by one and penalised by another. For instance, a red card was awarded to Australian player Harry Kewell last night, for what the referee suggested was a deliberate hand-ball. Rosetti, the ref, also awarded Ghana a penalty shot for that same incident which is how Ghana tied the scores. Now, in a match played between Serbia and Germany a few days ago, a referee denied gave a yellow card and a penalty to a Serbian player for a hand ball. This happened twice during that match, yet neither time was a red card.

Oh, and for an amusing little anecdote. North Korean citizens weren’t allowed to leave the country for the World Cup, so instead, North Korea - known in the cup as Korea DPR - has hired Chinese actors to stand in as fans at the team’s games. I personally think that’s incredibly funny.