The Bear Minimum

I meant to say a few extra things in some of my previous posts, so I’ll add them here to make it a nice little mixed bag of a post.

With regards to health insurance. For those of you who don’t have any yet, which is a fairly valid option here in the UK, as compared to the US for instance, but if you are looking for insurance, make sure you get many, many quotes for affordable health insurance first! Don’t just go with the most well known, or the one offering the lowest premium. Make sure that you’re signing up for the right kind of insurance for you!

With regards to the investment opportunity of buying to let housing, there are a few more things I wanted to point out. Firstly, if you are considering it, try obtaining an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA), first, as they can assess how realistic it is for you to be buying a second house. If you do think you’re in the right position, but will have to obtain a mortgage, do make very sure you’re aware of all the latest news and trends in lending and borrowing, you can save yourself a lot of money this way!

And finally, still in that vein of thought: I contacted my old landlord who owned all those unit around town, and spoke to him about his thoughts on buying to let properties. He said that he’d had issues for the first few years when some of his tenants paid their rent to him by bank transfers. He said it was difficult to tell where exactly money came from, so he said that he switched all the renting related money handling to a different bank account and found it was much easier to manage that way. He also said that you should go and meet every set of tenants you ever get, because if they know you, know your face and name, they’re more likely to take care of the place for you. If you’re an unknown landlord, he thinks people won’t respect that the property doesn’t belong to them. Interesting, and I have to say it makes sense.

So, there’s a few thoughts I had rattling around my head after writing some of my earlier posts.

I happened to turn on the television last night, in spite of not watching a heck of a lot of it usually, and found that the same old same old is still on television.

It seems that there are a few set television tropes that get trotted out time after time. A few of them frustrate me, quite frankly, and I’d like to see something different for a change, something fresh and unique.

For instance, you can’t go past a new television program without certain characters being omnipresent. By that I mean there are certain types of characters always present, though gender, race, and name will be different in each case. Take, for instance, the Butt Monkey. This is a character who, in spite of being a nice character, has almost everything go wrong for them that possibly can. We’re supposed to like and identify with this character, and yet the writers are punishing him with the worst luck the world has ever known. Eventually it becomes intolerable.

One trope I find particularly dislikeable is one seen so very, very often in television shows. You have two characters who are obviously in love with one another seem to have every single obstacle thrown their way, until one or both of them says they’re giving up on the whole thing, but they’re both pining for the other to come and make it all better. This is particularly irksome to me because it’s usually unlike the characters to do this, yet the writers are ignoring the qualities of the characters they wrote in favour of having certain plot devices present. It’s so very Diabolus Ex Machina, if you ask me, and seems a hallmark of poor writing.

Whilst I’m having a grumble, which can be good for you if done in a moderately mature fashion, is internal monologuing of self-indulgent characters in books. I’m reading a book at the moment and I’m having a rough time of it due to the internal monologuing of one side character. I’ll keep reading and get past this character and all will be fine, though.

So, which TV tropes have you noticed? Do you like or dislike the ones you’re familiar with and why?

A house that we’d let out, of course.

I ask because it is something my wife and I are considering for our future. We both have good jobs, earning rather well, and we’ve often thought about semi-retirement earlier than is typically the norm. Something else we’ve thought about is buying small houses to let, as a means of perpetuating income without having to do much.

When my wife and I first moved in together, some twelve years ago now, we moved into a very snug little unit. It was one of six little snug units, and one of a handful of unit blocks our landlord owned throughout the town. You see, the man owned a business, and during his life he’d bought up unit after unit in order to have a very, very substantial income after retirement.

Now that my wife and I are in a position to think about such things, it’s an interesting idea. We’re in a position where mortgage lending issues wouldn’t exist, as we’d be able to buy a small house or unit outright with money we’d put away, so no remortgages from Nationwide or some such, either. There’s also still a fair bit of people doing the “selling your property or home quickly for cash”, thing, which is dreadful, but if one knows someone going down that path they can offer to take the house off their hands for more than those horrid companies would have given them which works out better for all involved, in my opinion.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I didn’t peruse a mortgage forum or two, as they’re invaluable for getting first-hand perspectives from people who’ve done just what we’re considering doing. I suppose I’m leery of being stuck with bad tenants who’ll damage the house, and that it will become a source of irritation, expense, and drama when it’s supposed to be a nice, neat little nest egg.

You’ll take better care of it that way.

I also like to protect my family. My wife and I are around middle-age now, and that’s about the time when you come to realise some really important things. The most startling discovery is that, every morning when I wake up next to my wife, I’m reminded by her peacefully sleeping countenance, with that little smile she gets when she’s asleep, of just how much I love her. Ten years we’ve been married now - those gifts went down a treat! - and for longer than that I’ve loved her.

Now, I’m aware that sounds corny, and I quite frankly, dear readers, don’t care. When you get a bit older, you stop caring what people think of you and you just want to live life and be happy and love the people you love with all of your heart. That’s how I am with my wife. I don’t mind looking over-protective, because I know that this world, whilst beautiful and amazing, is also chaotic, and anything could happen.

I recently had my yearly physical, which gets faxed off to my family health insurance people, and they offered me a new premium - they do this every year depending on my health, sometimes it’s slightly better, sometimes slightly more expensive, but it’s a good company and I’ve never had any issue getting them to pay for any health related costs. Anyway, this year they offered me a slightly better premium because I’m healthier than expected for 90% of my age bracket. Now that’s a good feeling! They also offered me another life insurance protection plan, but I’m happier with the one I currently have.

The reason I bring these two things up in the same post is to say that your health is not just important for you, it’s important for your loved ones. I have patients who come to me for help with eating disorders because they want to be better spouses and parents, as well as people suffering with alcohol and gambling addictions, and I’ve always respected the effort these people are putting in.

I know these economic times are tough, but your health is so important for your own happiness as well as those who love you, so you owe it to yourself to keep up your health insurance, whether you’re with Zurich health insurance or BUPA healthcare so that you are ready for whatever life has to throw at you!

It’s a sad time for Poland, there’s no doubting that, but it also must be such a terrible shock for them too.

I personally feel that each and every person is special. That we all have an intangible effect on those who’re in our lives, or affected by our lives, and often we’re not aware of how great that effect is. When a public figure dies, there’s a large ripple that brushes across many, many people. If you imagine your country just lost their President as well as his wife, and chiefs of the army and navy… It would be a huge shock to the Polish people.

It’s also so sad to me that they were all on their way over to Russia for a memorial service dedicated to a Russian perpetrated war atrocity in which 20,000 Polish POWs were killed. Call me paranoid, but one does have to wonder about all this… The world knows that Putin is an untrustworthy and unscrupulous man who is not above having any opponents killed. This is fact. So I’m betting that Polish officials are going to be in the thick of the investigation as much as possible.

Mr Kaczynski, who was a contentious figure in Poland, was brought back to Warsaw yesterday, and now rests in the Presidential Palace. When his coffin arrived at the Palace the gathered crowd softly began to sing the Polish national anthem. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but that to me is heart achingly sad. I know that Kaczynski wasn’t a saint, that he had is own set of issues, but he was still respected and obviously trying to better his nation.

We’ve seen throughout history the effect of having a leader taken early in life. It scares the nation to an extent, and I think this will be no different. I sincerely send my condolences to the Polish people and the families of those who lost their lives in the crash.

In the Cradle of Life, to be specific.

Let me set the scene for you. A palaeoanthropologist and his son have set out on the very first day of their trip to the South African region known as The Cradle of Life: A place known for being a repository for many, many ancient human fossils. A few minutes into an area that they’d designated as a likely ‘hot-spot’ using the Virtual Globe software in Google Earth, the son turns over a rock to see what he thinks might be a length of white antelope bone. He calls over his father, and within a few minutes the father is swearing. The son asks “What is it? What did I do?” The father replies, “Nothing! Nothing, you found a Hominid!”

The boy had found the clavicle of the newly named Australopithecus sediba, a formerly unknown ancestor in humanity’s family tree. Before the finding of A. sediba there was almost no known fossil examples from around 1.8 to 2 million years ago in our evolutionary history, which is why these two skeletons, of a mature female and a juvenile male, are so important.

What’s also very interesting about this case is that the scientists who discovered the fossils have grouped them in with the Australopithecus rather than the Homo group of ancestors. What this means is that they think these Hominids are further away from us in terms of evolution, yet there are Homo species in other parts of Africa which have been dated as living longer ago than this new A. sediba.

Another fascinating aspect of the A. sediba is that the skeleton shows us a different version of evolution than scientists had previously speculated. The legs are long like ours, and the pelvis is highly developed, which means that A. sediba walked on their hind legs like us, however their arms are comparitively very long, like that of an orangutan, which means they would have been very able in trees, also. The brain cavity is small, too, like that of the Australopithecus, but it seems that that trait alone is what is holding it up from being considered closer kin, and therefore of the Homo species. In my personal opinion it won’t be too long before the Australopithecus sediba is re-named as the Homo sediba, but is just my take on the situation.

When police are in the ’sites’ it’s nice to know that justice still won’t waver.

It’s an interesting case, and one that I’m quite pleased to see play out like this. In 2008, Pc Jason Hanvey was investigating an assault which Amy Keigher, who was 19 years of age at the time, was the lead suspect. During an interrogation with Keigher, Hanvey became overly aggressive to the point of bullying her. He was shown in CCTV footage to have pushed her head onto the table and held it there, told her he would “rip her scull off”, held her hair, and cuffed her only to then hold her arms up over her head for over a minute, whilst telling her to say “pretty please” to have her arms let down.

This was all witnessed by Sgt Andrew Kennedy, who was the other officer charged, and whom the judge in the case, Judge Anthony Gee QC, was also quite scathing of. He called them bullies, and stated that Kennedy’s culpability was no less than that of Hanvey’s in spite of his not physically being the aggressor in this case. Both officers haven’t had spotless careers before this, with Hanvey being convicted of punching a suspect in the face during an interrogation 12 years ago, and Kennedy facing disciplinary hearings in both 1999 and 2000 for neglect of duty.

The lass who was assaulted by Hanvey was tried and convicted of the assault for which she was a suspect, which is partly why I’m mildly surprised to have seen this result. I believe the judge was entirely right when he sentenced the two to 18 months in jail each for their part in the incident, but nonetheless, it’s still nice to see that even when abuse of power is directed at criminals it’s taken as seriously as if it’s directed at the common person. Both officers have also lost their jobs, quite obviously, and their pensions.

The judge also commented that neither of the police officers had shown anything like remorse, and in fact they’d tried to justify their actions in what he saw as an arrogant fashion. You know they’ve irritated the judge somewhat to receive such words, which makes me wish I could have seen their faces whilst they stood in the witness box.

This all just makes me glad that those CCTV cameras are in interrogation rooms nowadays, and that certain standards are still expected of our police.

I find the NDE phenomena very interesting, so I though I would report on this recent small-scale study out of Slovenia.

I’ll give a brief run-down of what an Near-Death Experience (NDE) is before I go into the rest of my piece here today. An NDE occurs when a person has died for a short time and has returned by themselves or been resuscitated, and has had some sort of experience during this time. This can range from seeing some sort of tunnel with a bright light at the end, or a feeling of peace and happiness, or being free from one’s body and being able to move about the room and see things and hear things that they have no physical way of seeing or hearing, or going on an immense journey and meeting all sorts of figures from family to Angels, to Jesus and in some cases a God-like figure. Often these experiences will contain a ‘life-review’ where you look over the effects you’ve had on all the people you’ve come into contact with. No two NDEs are precisely the same, and some of them are amazing to read, and I heartily suggest everyone read a few of these: some are really quite profound.

Okay so now that you’ve an idea of what these are, I can talk about this study. To sum it up briefly, the University of Maribor in Slovenia has been researching into NDEs, and found that in the 52 cardiac-arrest patients they studied (a very small-scale study, indeed) the 11 who had reported having some form of an NDE had also had higher levels of carbon dioxide in their bodies than the other 41 patients.

On the one hand, that’s mildly interesting, and it would be great to understand the correlation. You can also see how those who don’t want to believe in NDEs for one reason or another may latch onto yet another ‘biological’ reason why people have these experiences.

On the other hand, the study is very limited, and it frustrates me somewhat that the content of the patient’s NDEs is left out entirely from the paper submitted by those doing the study. I find the content far more intriguing than the why of these phenomena, but I do see that it would still be beneficial to know why these events occur.

A study I’m more looking forward to seeing the results from is one conducted by Southampton University into whether or not cardiac arrest patients do have out-of-body experiences and to test this the researchers will be leaving images up on high shelves that can only be seen from above. When so many studies are looking to attribute the phenomena to a malfunctioning, dying brain, it’s nice when a study takes it a little further.

As far as re-enactments go, this one here, brought to me by a friend in Australia, is rather crass, in my opinion.

On Saturday afternoon in the small beach-side city of Geelong, Victoria, Australia, a group from a church decided to have a re-enactment. The paster of this church, Heaven on Earth, decided that they needed to get out and ’spread the word of God’ as the Bible told them to do, and they thought the best way to do this was to show people what Easter was all about.

So they dressed a fellow in a loin cloth, and two ladies in black as mourners, and had the fellow doused in fake blood and stand up on a crucifix, whilst he was mourned by the two women. They also played instrumental music through an amplifier. The paster, Sarah Kenneally, defended their decision and called the ‘demonstration’ a ’silent display’ and that they weren’t trying to ‘preach to people’.

First off, that’s just a lie. There was music coming through the amplifier, and the person acting as Jesus was moaning audibly and crying out ‘Why, why?’ which, of course, terrified children and many of them were crying leading parents to request police to put a stop to the display, which they did. Quite unceremoniously, too, from what I hear. Secondly, how is could this pastor thing she’s not preaching? You don’t have to be speaking to be preaching, and this was sending a very clear message.

I think it’s the carelessness that aggravates me about this. The group chose a busy shopping district on the day before Easter to put on this performance, knowing that many children would be in the area. I think that’s extremely inconsiderate of those children and of the parents who’ll now have to explain to their child that no, the man wasn’t really in pain, and he’s alright, and why these people would want to do this.

Apparently the pastor is looking to do this again next year, but probably without the fake blood. Well that’s something, at least.

Our 10th anniversary approaches, so I’ve thought long and hard about just the right gift for my wife.

Just after our ninth anniversary my wife and I decided that for our tenth we would take a vacation. We agreed that we would get each other a gift as well, but that we would also plan a trip together. After careful thought, we decided on a Mediterranean cruise, and we’re both highly anticipating our ten-day cruise for our tenth anniversary.

After scrutinising some savings news websites, we set up one of the cash ISA savings accounts and deposited money consistently until the cruise was paid off, and we also had a nice lot left over for spending money whilst we’re on the cruise! We considered an account with Nationwide Savings and Investments, but ultimately the ISA was better for us.

The traditional item for a tenth anniversary is made of tin, but more modern times have seen this become the diamond anniversary. I wanted to keep to both, so got her two presents. I’m sure she’ll love them both and I’m very much anticipating watching her reaction as she opens them. The tin item I wanted to have an antique feel, and be something she ornamental. I got her a tin floor vase, with filigree, which is something she loves. I’ve ordered it from the U.S. and a friend has agreed to ship it over to me. Expensive process, but well worth it. For the more modern item, I wanted it to have a modern touch, and I got her a pair of snowflake diamond earrings. She loves snow, and snowflake motifs, and drop earrings, so this was an obvious choice.

All in all I’m very happy about my choices for her, and this has been one of the easiest years to shop for an anniversary gift. I’m also looking forward to seeing what my wife has found for me. She often finds the most amazing antiques or collector pieces for me, and it’s always a treat to see what amazing piece she’s discovered!