The Walk of Life

Recently our local weather is HOT! It seems that every time we are in the Ramahdan Month we usually hit the HOT period! Don't really understand why because Ramahdan in the Islamic Calendar changes every year, sometimes in December, or January then this year in September etc. Yet the HOT climate seems to follow it!

Well what I want to share and serves as a Warning to you folks is the danger of leaving your cellphone in the car under such hot weather! I received this information from a friend and not sure about the authenticity of it but its better to be safe than to get this shocker! Take a look at the photos here before I try to explain what happened!

Yeap! these photos show an EXPLOSION! According to the report from Middle East, a cellphone left inside a car under the hot Sun exploded and caused such severe damaged to the car! Quite unbelievable though, that a tiny cellphone exploded like a hand-grenade, that can caused such severe damage! The report further warned locals there not to leave their cellphone in their cars parked outside or not in shaded places! Boy! I know how hot the Middle East can be in the day time.

Will this happen in Malaysia? Our temperatures seldom goes beyond 40C but the temperature inside a car under our local Sun for a couple of hours can get to such degree of hotness! True or not just be warned about this danger! Perhaps someone can check this out!

When my mother took me for marketing when I was just a kid, I noticed the common usage of newspaper, brown paper wrappings for meat and vegetables, and they were tied with a long straw! Big leaves of some river plants were also used as wraps. Then around the 60’s Plastics entered our lives in Malaysia! We begin to see plastic bags, slippers, pails, containers, etc and hey! remember those Tupperware parties?

Today, nearly every household item we see in our kitchen are made from Plastics! Take a look at the symbols below and do they look familiar?

Yes, they are Markings at the bottom of our Plastic Drinking Bottles! Here is a list of these Markings from Number 1 to 7 and the type of Plastic to the applications they are meant for.

I am sure many of you have heard of the danger of re-using plastic drinking bottles and if the Number is 5 and above it is safe! I found out that Plastic Bottles are just NOT SAFE to use from 1 to 7, and especially not for heating food or drinks in Microwave Ovens. It seems that a substance call Dioxin would be released into our food and Dioxins are cancer causing substances! Number 7 contains a very dangerous substance call Bisphenol A!

Apart from Plastic Bottles, we have the same problem with Plastic Food Wraps which is especially bad if we microwave our food with these wraps on!

Given below is a link to a video on the health hazards of using Plastic Drinking Bottles.

If you want more information, visit the sites below and get all the facts about the danger of these plastic bottles! Now we have the Green Movement to save our environment in connection with the usage of plastics and also we have the health hazards involved. A good lesson to learn.

Take a look at the above shoes! those were the type of shoes that most men, including me wore! They were called Platform Shoes which was the style of the early 70's and are designed specially for men who want to be a little taller, like me at 5ft. 6ins. I needed another 3 ins. added to my height! what more during that time I was studying in the UK! Even the ladies stood taller than me! Arrgh! I would bear the aches and pain wearing them shoes for hours for the sake of 'image'? How foolish we can be when we were young!

How about for the ladies? I guess High Heels never goes out of fashion be it an issue of height or elegance! For your sake, ladies I want to share some important information and what I have learned about High Heels and how damaging they are to your posture and feet health in the long run! I guess the following series of Photos are pretty self-explanatory!

I guess the above is sufficient and ladies, don't say you are not fore-warned! I guess for the sake of beauty, you will continue to wear them High Heels! :)

A few days ago I posted something on eating the 'Pangas' and the health hazards involved. Today received a rather enlightening email from a friend on Fruits! I am sure many of you folks do eat fruits and of course your source of supply is either from the Hyper-marts like Tesco or Giant etc or perhaps from the local fruit sellers that we find by the road side.

As for me I never bother to check on the 'Stickers' on the fruits! Apparantly they tell a story and it is good to know what the numbers on these stickers mean. Take a look at the apple with a sticker on it. Noticed the numbers on the sticker? It reads '94017'.

All that is important is the first digit and in this case is '9' and what it means :-

9XXXX are fruits grown Organically or Organic Fruit Labels. These are safe to eat.

4XXXX are called Conventional Fruits Label. Grown with conventional means of herbicides and insecticides sprayed on them.

8XXXX are GMF Label i.e. Genetically Modified Fruits. Be careful of these!!!!

The colors given to the first digit is my doing and not really shown that way on the sticker! Also not all numbers are 4 digits for some have 5 digits but its the first digit that we have to watch out for.

I am not sure are there any other numbers used in the Labeling System but that's about all that I have learned. I did a searched on GMF and the article I read is full of warning about taking such fruits. Rather than reproducing the article, which is quite lengthy, you can read it HERE!

Now, I am sure some of you might have asked 'what about those without stickers' God Knows what type they are then! Perhaps removed for a reason! LOL! Hope that this post is useful and helpful! Cheers!

I am a fish person and I love all types of fishes, fresh water as well as sea and deep sea fishes. A fellow blogger Wan Noorizan hosts a health blog and she posted an article on eating fish as an important part of diet programs. River fish is not as clean as deep sea fishes simply because of the pollution going into our ponds and rivers! Many of these river fishes, pond fishes or fresh water fishes contain harmful chemicals in their flesh whereby we ourselves would be contaminated, poisoned by eating them.

Years ago while we were still in Kuching, Sarawak we were told of this local guy who loves 'Raw Fish' so much so that he literally eat it daily! Years later, he discovered worm like creatures crawling underneath his skin! Apparantrly these worms got into his body system through raw fish! Scary! How would you like to see these worms crawling underneath your skin? Creepy!

Have you heard of the Pangas? Well it is actually a type of Cat-fish from the Mekong Delta in Vietnam popularly known as Pangasius, Tra, Basa. I think in Malaysia we have them too but not sure whether they are of the same kind. The Pangas become very popular not only in Vietnam but also in France and even UK!

However according to certain reports; the Pangas breed in ponds contain industrial effluents, arsenic, and toxic and hazardous by-products of the growing industrial sector, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT and its metabolites (DDTs), metal contaminants, chlordane-related compounds (CHLs), hexachlorocyclohexane isomers (HCHs), and hexachlorobenzene (HCB).

Here are some photos of the commercially packed Pangas sold in Germany.

Here is the Link where you can read all the details why you should not take Pangas. Below are more photos of Pangas being sold or harvested and prepared for packaging for export.

I guess you have to check these information out and decide for yourselves whether to eat or not to eat such Pangas. I am not sure our local breeds are as poisonous???