Carbohydrates are the Devil

For lunch today, H graciously packed me a container of leftover ziti, tomato sauce, cannellini beans, bread crumbs and a generous grating of mozzarella cheese.  I took it to the kitchen at work to heat up and returned with the steaming container of carbohydrate goodness to my desk to eat.  My Anonymous Officemate, who I have been unable to banish despite his three strikes, looked up from his desk with huge eyes to identify the source of the intoxicating smell.  Seeing it was a hearty container full of pasta, he took the time to tell me about his severely limited carbohydrate intake since the first of the year.  I was fortunate enough to learn that since January 1^st, 2011, my properly sized, not fat officemate has:

• Eaten pasta for dinner once, as his Friday night ‘treat.’
• Not eaten any bread whatsoever.
• Eaten an eighth of a cup of bran with a large serving of nectarines, apricots and other fruit for breakfast everyday.
• Eaten a salad for lunch everyday; I big-heartedly refrained from warning him about the copious amounts of fat that might be lurking in his salad dressing.
• Eaten a baseball sized piece of protein for dinner every night and filled the rest of his plate with vegetables.

Thanks to this, he has lost two full kilos since the start of 2011, off of his already fit frame.  I refrained from pointing out that he neglected to include his alcohol intake, the amount of full fat milk he consumes in his 3+ coffees per work day, or his consumption of an entire homemade Pavlova on Australia Day from his meticulously relayed food diary.  I’m so nice, I know.  I did however tell him that I had already eaten pasta twice this week and that one of those meals was homemade baked ziti pizza with sausage.  I then proceeded to pull out my homemade chocolate chip cookie to await its last minutes before entering my mouth on my desk, in full tantalizing view of Anonymous Officemate.  I’m sorry Anonymous Officemate, I have no imaginary extraneous weight to lose and I ♥ bread, pasta and chocolate.

Australia Day

On Wednesday I had the day off from work in honour of Australia Day.  While none of my Australian colleagues could tell me what the significance of Australia Day is, apart from beer and barbies, I learned from Wikipedia that it’s the official national day of Australia.  The date, January 26^th, celebrates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788 and the subsequent proclamation of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia.  The First Fleet refers to the 11 ships that departed from Great Britain in 1787 to establish the first European colony in Australia; approximately 52% of the passengers were convicts.

There is some controversy around the celebration of Australia Day on January 26^th.  Some people, particularly Indigenous Australians, refer to Australia Day as Invasion Day or Survival Day, and stage protests at annual Australia Day celebrations.  Others view the date as strengthening the connection with Australia’s convict past, commemorating, “Britain's driving ashore of Australia's first white citizens in chains.”  Due to these reasons as well as a myriad of other arguments, including the fact that January 26^th falls during school holidays, proposals have been made to change the date that Australia Day is celebrated.  To date this has been unsuccessful, so on Wednesday I was able to partake in my very first Australia Day, full of barbies, flags, beach trips, beer and fireworks.

In order to cut down on antisocial behaviour, alcohol could only be consumed within designated zones during the Perth Australia Day fireworks extravaganza.  Additionally, alcohol consumption within these zones was restricted to a two hour period between 6:30 – 8:30 PM.  Adults over the age of 18 were permitted one bottle of wine, one six pack of beer, or one six pack of premixed drinks (per person).  Yes, you did read that correctly.  It was considered perfectly legal to consume one beer every twenty minutes for two hours, in a public, outdoor space.  And please don’t forget that the first barbie I spotted was at 7:00 AM so some people had been drinking for many hours before 6:30 PM rolled around.  Maybe H and I are getting old, but while we could see how one can easily drink three beers in an hour, maintaining that pace to consume an additional three beers within the next hour seemed a bit extreme to us.  We haven’t yet taken to heart the Aussie mantra I learned from a very drunk middle aged man during a free (and copious) tasting of very nice wine at a boutique vineyard in the Margaret River: “Work is for work and alcohol is to get pissed.”