TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Social distancing 2020 style. A fter not being too far from COVID-19, potentially patient zero in Australia back in 2020. Four years later my partner finally tested positive for the virus. Then I inevitably caught it as well. You might think, so what, but I'm honestly surprised we've lasted this long. My partner works at an aged care facility that has fought off numerous outbreaks over the years, and continues to do so. Workers at her facility take RAT tests daily so you know pretty quick if you test positive. Workers then have to isolate at home for at least seven days until they're clear. COVID-19 symptoms can vary in intensity and you may not get the full range (at least to my knowledge and experience). My partner seemed to get it fairly bad with tiredness, aching joints, loss of taste and smell, along with cold and flu like symptoms (sore throat, congestion etc). While we did try to social distance, keeping our distance, hand washing, and not sleeping in the same room...

I'm fine now, but earlier... Like most people, our extended family of relatives is fairly spread out across various locations, so getting everyone together at Christmas is often a small miracle. This year, the Adelaide clan, consisting of two vehicles, ours, with myself, my partner (Enigma), three grand kids, and our dog, Oscar, did a two and a half(ish) hour drive north, from Gawler to Port Pirie, South Australia, three days after Christmas, for a family gathering in a Church Hall hosted by Enigma's mother.  The rest of the family made a similarly long trip south from the very Aussie named town of Bruce. All this is just to set the scene for this guy... me. All I was hoping for, aside from a great Christmas family get together, was to make it through to the end of this day without getting sick. By that I mean, Enigma and I had just come off a two to three week, hellish run of coughing and sinus issues, and were well on the mend in the week up to Christmas. I just didn't wa...

Score a Goal in Five Steps Tracker. Digital or Printable Worksheet. Completing any complex task or project can be made simple by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable steps. If you're the kind of person who does this, and likes to see more measurable results than just ticking off tasks on a to do list, then my Score a Goal in Five Steps Tracker may be for you. This Five Step Tracker is a two page digital or printable worksheet that you can fill in anytime you have a complex task that you want to track your progress on. If you find the format useful there's also a 24 page, 5"x8" journal version so you can track multiple goals. To use the Five Step Tracker, write your Goal/Project in the top box of the first page. Next break this down into five smaller steps and write those into the boxes provided. If any of the five steps are still quite complex tasks on their own then there is room to break each step down into up to five additional sub steps. Write these in...

Photo by Anna Shvets . The World Health Organisation (WHO) was first established in 1948 but I'm willing to bet the average citizen in most countries had never heard (or were only vaguely aware) of it until the first quarter of 2020 when the global pandemic, COVID-19, began to emerge as a world wide concern. As you would expect one of the main goals of WHO is to improve the health of world populations, which it does through its Universal Health Coverage target. Its two other major targets are: Better protected people from health emergencies. People enjoying better health and well-being. Each of these three targets aspire to benefiting at least one billion MORE people over a five year period, at which time the strategy is evaluated, reviewed, revised, and reimplemented for the next five years, and so on (I presume). Note that 'more' is important because the overall target is to deliver better health to ALL and not just the same one billion people. The organisation is funde...

Flying over WA 2007 trip. Booking any kind of cross border travel in today's not quite post COVID-19 world is a bit of a gamble. Almost a month ago my partner and I booked airfares to travel from South Australia to Western Australia for a five day holiday to attend a 70th birthday, visit family I hadn't seen since 2016, and so my partner could spend her birthday in one of our favorite places, Fremantle. We booked the tickets because the week before they were half the price we paid, and we didn't want to hold off any longer in case the price went up yet again to a potentially unaffordable amount. In the meantime all the state governments of Australia were making plans for when to reopen their borders to general travel, based upon the number of fully vaccinated people in each state. SA settled on 80% fully vaxxed before we would open our border to states that were still battling COVID-19 lockdowns, primarily New South Wales and Victoria. While I decided to get myself fully va...

Michael Rosenbaum, Inside of You Podcast . Michael Rosenbaum, who you may be more familiar with in his role as Lex Luthor on the TV Series, Smallville , but is currently making a name for himself with his podcast, Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum , recently announced that he had caught COVID-19. The reason I bring this up is that he had mentioned previously on his podcast that he was fully vaccinated. Now I'm not pointing this out to say vaccines don't work, they do, they're just not an absolute guarantee that you can't still carry the virus, or get sick from the virus. Michael is a relatively high profile example. In a previous post, Lower Your Expectations, COVID-19 Vaccines aren't a 'Cure All' , I highlighted that vaccines are just another line of defense against the virus. They don't make you immune to being a carrier or from experiencing symptoms. However, if you do experience symptoms, they should be less severe, and it's less likely you...

The Pandemic before vaccines (and probably after too). Photo by Thirdman from Pexels . Remember when the pandemic first started? How we didn't have a vaccine for over a year, yet we were still able 'flatten the curve' through hygienic practices like handwashing, mask wearing, social distancing, and, in the really critical periods, lockdowns? Australia, and several other countries are in the strong position we are today thanks to those practices and not vaccines. Yet, there appears to be a growing perception that unvaccinated people are threatening everyone's health because of their higher risk of catching COVID-19. However, while you might think getting vaccinated is a no brainer, as you 'state the obvious' statistic that more deaths occur from COVID-19 in people who have not been vaccinated. I think, I would certainly hope so because you'd really be wondering, what is the point of getting vaccinated , if there was a high number of deaths from COVID-19 amon...

I'm going to preface this post with the obvious, I'm not a medical expert. I have no experience with creating vaccines nor how they work. Everything that follows is based upon my own opinions and thoughts. Definitely do your own research on whether you want to get vaccinated for COVID-19 or not. The following cut'n'paste message has been circulating on Facebook. At least that's where I first came across it. It's not attributed to anyone so it's not possible to draw any conclusions about the original poster's motivations or intent: --- Post begins --- Let’s awaken some people’s minds... What happens if you decide to get "vaccinated" (beside the fact that you could end up very sick or even dead)??? Here are 12 important questions and answers before considering getting vaccinated: "If I get vaccinated can I stop wearing a mask(s)?" Government: "NO" "If I get vaccinated will the restaurants, bars, schools, fitness clubs, h...

Click & Collect is a service offered by many online retailers where you can shop for your items online, and then pick up your order from a participating retailer near you within hours. It sounds all very convenient but is it really? When I shop online, I do so because I want my purchase to be delivered to my front door. I don't want to leave my house. That's convenience. Click and Collect allows me to go to an actual store, that stocks the item I've ordered online, where my purchase will be packed and waiting for me to pick up within a few hours of placing the order. As opposed to me just going to the store near me, buying from that retailer what I would've ordered online, in however long it takes for me to get to the store and back. In certain circumstances Click & Collect is great. There may be times when you don't want something delivered directly to your home. It's particularly appropriate for purchases where the item is physically being shipped to a...

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron I'd heard a lot of good things from various successful people about Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way , particularly about this daily activity called 'Morning Pages' that seemed to help focus their day. I was curious to know more so I decided to buy the book and see what it was all about. As it happens The Artist's Way is a self help, Twelve week program to assist you in discovering or rediscovering your creativity. As such it's not a book you want to read cover to cover just to get the information. To get the full benefit it's designed so you can read a chapter each week and do the activities, until you've completed the full twelve weeks. Which is what I chose to do, with every intention of following the course as instructed, but as I started reading, I just didn't recognize the person this book is reaching out to. Initial impression The book is intended to help you discover or rediscover ...

Mostly Plants - 101 Delicious Flexitarian Recipes from the Pollan Family . I've never bought a cookbook in my life until now. Mostly Plants randomly came across my path when I happened upon a Youtube clip of Jimmy Fallon interviewing Michael J. Fox and his partner, Tracy Pollan. One of the topics discussed, obviously, was the cookbook which is a collaboration with Tracy's two sisters, and her mother, with a title that comes from her brother Michael's quote: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. You can watch the aforementioned Youtube clip from April 2019 below. Mostly Plants is a Flexitarian recipe book, not to be confused with a diet book. Its main goal is to give anyone trying to eat healthier, plant based meals, some options if you'd still like to keep a little meat in the mix. At the time I bought the book my partner had been trying to eat less meat, and even tried going vegan altogether but wasn't managing to stick with it for very long. Possi...

In my last skateboarding related post I wrote about swapping a skateboarding session into your weekly workout routine  in order to allow you to designate actual time in your schedule to skateboarding. For me it was working fine, giving me time to actually head out and skate my local skatepark when it wasn't busy but maybe you want to do more than just skate, and get an actual, measurable workout while skating. Jordan O'Meara is an Australian skateboarder who came up with the skateboard workout , a routine that challenges you to complete all the basic tricks of flatground skateboarding ten times each, gaining 1 point each time you land a trick successfully. Much like doing repetitions at the gym this standardizes your skateboard routine and gives you measurable results on how well you're going with landing your tricks. In the video below I run through Jordan's Skateboard Workout giving a shout out to some skateboarding YouTube channels as I go. As you'll see...

I first came across Robert Scheinfeld in an interview with him on James Wedmore's Mind Your Business Podcast , Episode 192 . That interview was focused on Robert's 5th book, The Ultimate Key to Happiness . If you follow the links on the podcast episode page you can actually download the ebook version of Robert's book completely free. Which is what I did. I read the entire ebook but I felt I wasn't able to focus on it properly to really absorb the ideas it presents. So I bought a physical copy to read again. The book is an interesting essay on how the mind works and how almost everything we do, we're doing because we want to be happy. In the book Robert talks about various emotions, how the mind processes information and events based on a story we've been told about how we should react to it. Something he calls 'The Mind Machine'. For example, if something makes you angry, it's very likely you're only angry because you've been told (...

Back when my Orbital Walker was shiney and new. Back in February of 2014 I bought myself an Orbital walker to supplement my exercise, or lack of exercise, I was getting from 'walking' my dogs for an hour each day. I say lack of because at the time both our dogs didn't really walk fast enough for me to break any kind of sweat, they kind of 'meandered', whilst window shopping smells and places to pee. Fast forward to now and I've pretty much exercised on my walker five days a week, every week. My sessions started out at ten minutes and increased to forty minutes for the last three years. Consequently this machine is starting to become the Millennium Falcon of exercise machines. As Han Solo said; She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself. Those 'special modifications' are ones I've made to hold this thing together rather than buy a replacement. It's an...