Schools: places of extreme importance, where would society be without them? But, as vital a thing as education is, schools are also right up there on the list of places which waste vast amounts of energy and need to become more energy efficient and FAST! Want to read more about how schools everywhere are set to redeem themselves by turning themselves around? Look no further than the following link: http://www.eniginliaison.com/2010/08/04/schools-to-manage-energy-efficiency/

It’s not hard to see why schools are such a difficult thing to tackle when it comes to energy expenditure: they are places filled with little people who just want to have fun, turning lights on and off, and all the other things which are so much fun and really annoy the adults. Now that Secondary Teaching Jobs come with the responsibility of practicing energy efficiency, the challenge will be how to integrate energy saving in to schools without making them boring places to be, after all, having fun when you’re a child is just as important as any amount of energy saving, isn’t it?

Thankfully, new technology (much of which is talked about at various Enigin blogs and websites which is certainly worth a look) means that there is no reason whatsoever why energy saving should interfere with learning or having fun in the playground. And the best bit of all this should be obvious: children get to grow up with a good attitude to the environment and nature, which means that hopefully in the future they will care more about the decisions they make that will impact on the rest of us.

Not Enigin. Who are Enigin I hear you cry? Well, Enigin are a business lot yes, and no doubt they know a thing or two about statistics as well – they wouldn’t be very good at their job if they didn’t, seeing as their job is one of the most important: working out how to make the most of the resources we have – but they are also, first and foremost, a leading energy saving company with their finger (or many fingers, seeing as they have people everywhere) on the pulse of what’s new and progressive. See the kind of thing that they think about over at this post.

In my opinion there is definitely a place for people who know how to enjoy life, and these lot seem to; for example this post is all about the beach and the amazing summer we are presently in the midst of having. But they aren’t one trick ponies, of course, and they are certainly not air-heads (which you should know by now, if you have been paying attention). They also have inventions and all kinds of schemes which can help you save money at once, whether that be on heating or lighting or whatnot! But mainly they just like going to the beach, from what I can tell. Who can blame them?

I’ve seen many procedures and treatments for the human body, be it botox injections or chemical peels, and I take little notice of them, they’re not for me. However I was reading an article on Digg that was really interesting. I know that people end up losing their teeth in many ways, particularly a fight in high school could leave you spitting a tooth or two, but losing your teeth could be a thing of the past thanks to a new breakthrough at the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory.

Dr. Jeremy Mao, the Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dental Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, has managed to successfully create new teeth with the help of stem cells. This is pretty cool, as it means an end to dentures and artifical implants as the body can regenerate a tooth with stem cells to a scaffold. Standard dental implants take around six months to heal, and if they fail, it could take 18 months to replace to include healing time, grafting time and fitting a new implant. They are annoying and fiddly, plus you have to visit different clinicians to get it done. I had a friend who got an implant and the whole process was long, painful and just wasn’t worth it in the end.The use of stem cells are getting better, apparantly they can mend damaged heart tissue and other organs, is great as it could ease strain on donors as well as decreasing the delay of an operation while a suitable match is found. The fact that they can also alleviate the issues of teeth replacement is a bonus.

For some reason, the first time I watched Labrynth, when I was a child and moisturizer for men was as mythical as adults who understood humour, I didn’t think that a baby being thrown about amongst goblins was odd. I didn’t even think David Bowie looked that strange, really; I could perfectly well imagine him getting on public transport with all the wacky gear and nobody batting an eyelid. Like some weird dream it just all seemed to make sense. It was only until years later that I understood that goblins have no place throwing babies about, let alone one who is crying constantly, making his unhappiness plain. (Not to mention the fact that it would be a very, very bad idea for David Bowie to go anywhere near public transport with a collar the size of a third-world country.)

So anyway, this got me on to a dark train of thinking: what happened to the baby? I pondered. Did it disturb him for life? Because if he was any normal kind of baby to begin with then it should have!

I conducted some research and discovered that the baby in Labrynth went on to lead a perfectly decent and worthwhile life. He wasn’t disturbed in the slightest, although I can imagine it might get annoying when people say “I recognise you from somewhere–hey, you’re not that baby from that weird film are you?”

People from other more tropical countries like to point out all the bad things about English weather, like the fact that it’s cold more than it’s hot, it rarely ever gets above room temperature outside, and that it rains almost every single day up north. Personally I think they are missing out. They are missing out on the drama of the great outdoors, something that Great Britain has in spades!

I recently took my Brazilian friend out to show him this drama first-hand. “Where we go?” he said.

I said, “The woods, you haven’t seen dramatic English weather until you’ve headed out in to the woods in gale force winds”. He didn’t know what a gale was and that was probably a good thing because he would never have agreed.

We stepped out of the car (him in his flip-flops, me in my walking boots). The wind was so strong it was snapping twigs off in the distance. You could hear them. In the wood Great British carnage was ensuing!

“Come on,” I told him, “let’s get in there before we miss the good stuff!” The good stuff, as anyone who has been in a wood during gale-force winds knows, is trees being uprooted and the like. Just what Paulo needed to see. Some real weather, the British way!

It was indeed a hellish ten minutes. First we had to take shelter behind a massive tree trunk as the wind grew to such extremes that it brought everything crashing down, then Paulo started to cry: he had lost a prized flip-flop and a small bottle of Brazilian organic moisturiser.

Once we were out of there Paulo did indeed know what dramatic weather was. He thanked me then, very suddenly, he stopped talking. For some reason he’s been very quiet ever since and he keeps saying he wished he’d never come to England–

As soon as I saw Charlie and the chocolate factory (the original) I knew I wanted to see my name in lights. There was just something about the golden ticket–the way Charlie looked at it–I wanted to be that boy! I wanted my very own most excellent golden ticket and I wanted grandparents that both slept in the same bed and were always around to tell riveting stories! And so I got in to chocolate eating in a big way, taking advantage whenever I could of the chocolate reserves in our house. Lesson 1: if you want to see your name in lights then do not get in to chocolate eating, because it won’t help your acting career at all–

A better way to see your name in lights (while simultaneously doing something very useful for everyone in the world) is this: hit the link and write a guest post for energy-saving superheroes Enigin.

The best thing is that anyone can do this, and you don’t even need to like chocolate. A few clicks and there you have it, you’re a guest writer with credibility and everything!

The reason I was impressed by this guest post malarkey is this: how many other places let you have your say on climate change and global warming? That’s right, not many. But at Enigin it’s all part of their philosophy to educate. They want you to join in and interact, because that’s what this saving the planet business is all about. It’s about coming together. Joining forces is so much better than working on your own, wouldn’t you say?

I am a kind man, and someone who is as equal as any other man (except possibly Bill Gates type people, in which case I am not the only one who isn’t equal). But there is something about me which is not quite equal, and something which has ruined many a date. I think you know what I am talking about: I am talking about my hands. They are smaller than average, slightly feminine, and something that I would change in a second if I had the opportunity. But sadly hand-transplants aren’t the kind of thing which you can get on the NHS. I’m sure you can probably get them somehow, but without resorting to dodgy tactics, I am yet to find a way.

I wouldn’t mind, only women judge men on their hands. It’s a fact. They discern many a thing from them: 1) how MANLY they are. 2) How good they might be at things involving the hands and 3) other things which I can not and will not mention here. It’s all very unfair, really. But there really isn’t much I can do about it. (I should say that this isn’t a problem every minute of my life; it’s really only an issue when meeting new women for the first time.)

Luckily for me I am extremely intelligent (and know all about mole removal, which is a good conversation starter), so life is quite easy. And there are many advantages with having small hands, too. One of them is that by standing next to someone with freakishly large hands, I look normal by comparison, which is nice.

]]> http://www.the-rtma.com/2010/03/this-article-is-about-hands/feed/ http://www.the-rtma.com/2010/03/agent-zeroes/ http://www.the-rtma.com/2010/03/agent-zeroes/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:11:48 +0000 admin http://www.the-rtma.com/?p=56

Following a brief hiatus, my neighbour (remember her, shes the one in the story about Locum vet jobs) has resumed her policy of making repeated and vociferous complaints against us. Her chief gripe appears to be that we have the gall to lead a life that does not involve making absolutely no noise at any time. Our co-landlord is attempting to resolve the dispute with all the tenacity of a drunk trying to change a lightbulb. Time to move then.

At first, the prospect of a move is exciting. A larger, cheaper place to live, with a slightly longer and more poorly lit walk from the tube seems like a good swap. Then I start looking. Find-a-property.com has a grand total of 4 suitable properties, but one is perfect - 2 extra bedrooms for the same that we’re paying now. I get on the phone to the agency and am told that, regrettably, the flat has already been let. Pangs of our last moving experience, where flats seemed to be vacated and let again in the blink of an eye, come flooding back. The next line doesn’t help.

They’ve got something in the same area for 1050 per week. Just 150 above our already strained budget then. Next time you walk past an estate agent, try calling out your monthly rent budget through the door. They are rigorously trained to disregard it, to the point that it seems they physically cannot hear numbers. She asks for a list of areas we’d consider living in. I explain that we live in Tooting (hardly alongside St Tropez or Sandbanks in terms of exclusivity) and would like to stay in the area. At a push we might venture a half-mile outside in any direction. “How about Dulwich?”I put the phone down. I don’t feel excited any more.

Which leads me to the bigger question: why are estate agents so utterly rubbish? I accept that living in London requires me to accept inflated prices and smaller property, but it’s been the same everywhere I’ve lived. Estate agents only ever have properties in areas you don’t want to live, at prices you can’t afford. Either that or they’re keeping the cheap local modern penthouses to one side whilst they try and palm off the hovels festering on their books.

That’s the fundamental problem - it’s like going into a Tesco to get a packet of fags and being offered a pint of milk - but only if you walk to the next Tesco’s. I’m not aware of the loophole in universal commercial practice that you should try and give the customer what they want, but estate agents seem to exist entirely within its radius. The second you call an agent, you’re drawn into a web of mind games, where you go in wanting a studio flat in Clapham, and come out with a house boat in Clacton-on-Sea. Estate agents, I beg you: just give me what I want. I know you have it. I don’t want a free coffee, or a tour of properties I can’t afford; I just need help finding somewhere convenient and affordable to live. From what I understand, that’s what you do, isn’t it?

Update: In the time since I drafted my diatribe, the aforementioned agent has called back to offer me the £1050 property again, pointing out that it’s “stunning”. Well, if it’s stunning…

The morning BBC News is very important, I know that. But there is something about it that is repulsive (and I’m not even talking about the presenters'love for anti aging facelifts and skin-care). If you don’t think it’s repulsive then I suggest you promptly book yourself in for the next evening-class of ‘Don’t know what’s repulsively embarrassing to anyone under the age of thirty and want to find out? Come and do an evening class!'I am, of course, talking about the shocking and brutally embarrassing section of the show (and this happens almost every single morning) when they do a feature on something considered ‘cool’, ‘hip’ or, at its most gut-wrenching, ‘grimy’. I need not look far back in to the past for such exaggerated grimness. Only this morning there were hip-hop dancers on TV trying to look for sponsorship, and what a hash the two presenters made of it–

I wish I could say it’s only the comments and the camaraderie that are appalling and vomit inducing, but it’s not. It’s everything. Compounding this is the fact that the little jokes they make are obviously scripted, making them bomb as if clad in lead.

If anyone who has anything to do with this mess is reading, I have a suggestion: why not get a couple of people on—and they don’t have to be young—who have a slight professional comedic touch? Let the presenters stick to the news. Give this part of the show the same professionalism it deserves.

We are more like our Neanderthal ancestors than we have ever been; we are almost devolving socially and morally with every passing year.

When was the last time someone held the door open for you? When was the last time someone showed genuine interest in your well-being as opposed to asking “how are you?” because they have to? Because everyone is wrapped up so tightly in their own personal affairs, rarely do you see genuine interest in others. This lack of sincerity saddens me; it’s even worse when someone attempts to feign interest in an over the top fashion. For example, have you ever spoken to someone about a problem in your life and they exaggerate their emotions so much that it would feel as if they are not even listening; that their extreme interest is so polished that they must be only concentrating on their well rehearsed responses?

And what about honour and respect? I remember a time when a hand shake sealed a deal. Now, you need three copies of the contract signed and notarised and witnessed. This happens in both business and in personal life. I now trust nobody; which in effect makes me no better than those I distrust.

To say the world is going to the dogs is inaccurate. At least dogs are loyal and relatively honest. Loyalties with humans are based on the power of money; the more money you offer, the more loyalty and respect you command. This is why those we respect the most are also the most morally bankrupt. We could learn from our canine counterparts; at least they don’t hide what they really are.

Holiday news: The idea to take a caravan along the south coast are in the works! Although we do need to look into getting some Caravan insurance, I am handing this to Deb…