Salicylates challenge more than expected

After 31 days of a strict elimination diet, we've finally entered the discovery phase.  Our first challenge, salicylates, was harder than I thought it would be.  For the previous 31 days I had looked forward to indulging in strawberries, mangoes, cherries, pumpkin, and apples, and once again enjoying the flavor provided by curry and cinnamon.  I thought my son would too; he was absolutely fixated on pictures of strawberries.  But the food didn't taste as good as I expected, and I was surprised to discover that I didn't feel very well either.

We embarked on this diet to discover the cause of my son's eczema, which has been present since he was a month old.  It could be anything he has contact with, including the pervasive dust mite, but since food proteins and chemicals can be passed through breast milk, and are one of the few things we have much control over, we decided to do an exhaustive test of foods to determine if any of them were the cause.  Many food allergies can be diagnosed through skin prick tests or blood tests, but foods can also cause irritation without triggering an allergic reaction, and these sensitivities to food can only be determined by altering your diet.  To find a food sensitivity or allergy, you first eliminate all likely causes of irritation from your diet for a period of time.  This is the elimination phase of the diet.  The next stage is to challenge your body with possible irritants.  This is the discovery phase of the diet.  For some irritants, the reaction may be reduced by avoiding exposure to the irritant for a while, so there is a period of developing tolerance following the completion of the discovery phase, and then you should follow a maintenance diet that minimizes consumption of foods that cause a reaction for you.

It is worth noting, since many people I've spoken with about this whole process do not seem to understand this at first, that you are not meant to stay on the highly restricted elimination diet indefinitely.  Nor is it the theory of the diet developers that salicylates are inherently bad for everyone.  Once you have determined which classes of food do not cause a reaction for you through the challenge phase then those foods can be reintroduced into your diet.

The first challenge
Our first challenge was salicylates.  You may be asking yourself "What are salicylates?"  It's a fair question; it's not an everyday word.  Salicylates are a class of chemicals that occur naturally in fruits, vegetables, and nuts and are thought to function as natural pesticides.  According to the research of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Allergy Unit, a surprising number of people respond to salicylates, meaning that they will have some sort of reaction if they eat a large quantity.  Responses to salicylates vary dramatically, but can include migraines, rashes, irritability, restlessness, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma.  Salicylates occur in almost all fruits, many vegetables, and virtually anything derived from them, including artificial and natural flavors, most types of alcoholic drinks, and aspirin.

What was the salicylate challenge?
The challenge required eating six serves of salicylate laden foods a day for a week (or until we reacted, which ever happened first).  My own participation in the elimination diet was mandated by the fact that I was still breastfeeding my son, and anything I ate could be passed to him through the breast milk, so I anticipated participating in the challenge as long as my son did.  The foods we were required to eat comprised:

• mangoes
• Granny Smith apples
• cherries
• nectarines
• peaches
• apricots
• watermelon
• cantaloupe
• strawberries
• pumpkin
• sweet potato
• asparagus
• bell pepper
• carrots
• cucumber
• zucchini
• honey
• cinnamon
• curry powder
• tea

There was no shortage of choice, especially since it is stone fruit season.  On the first day, we ate strawberries on our breakfast, watermelon for morning tea, zucchini with lunch, mango and yogurt for afternoon tea, cherries before dinner, and a colorful stir fry for dinner.

Though we continued to stuff ourselves with red and orange fruits, both my son and I lost our appetite for the challenge foods pretty quickly.  On day one, I had a mild stomach ache most of the day, and by the afternoon I didn't feel like doing much of anything.  By day three, I was longing for cabbage, and my son wouldn't eat anything containing salicylates after lunch.  Over six days of the challenge (I didn't last all seven) I had a stomach ache of some sort nearly the entire time.  I was also irritable, emotional, and unmotivated.

Clearly I was responding to the salicylates, however, since my motivation for doing the diet was not to assess the cause of my own moods but to determine the cause of my son's skin problems, it took me five days before I finally clued in to the correlation between my mood and my diet.  Even then, I couldn't stand the thought of missing out on two more days of red and orange fruits and persisted eating them for almost another day before I realized that I was not only torturing myself, but increasing the likelihood of suffering withdrawal symptoms, and stopped the challenge.

It has taken six days for my son's skin to get back to what it was before the challenge and it is now clear that he also reacted to salicylates.

What next?
After the challenge we went back on to the elimination diet.  The first three days following a challenge are considered part of the challenge, as it is possible for reactions to be delayed, and also required to ensure there are no residual effects from the salicylates before the next challenge.  My mood improved almost immediately but both of us continued to show signs of reactions to salicylates over that period.  Since his skin has only just returned to its pre-challenge condition, we will wait a few more days before we go onto the next challenge, which for us will be amines.  Tune in next week for the results.

Elimination Diet: The Dietician's Judgement

A few nights ago I had a dream that I was eating miniature jelly beans.  The following night I dreamt that I was eating steak bathed in ketchup.  In both dreams, my immediate response was Why am I eating this?  It will ruin the diet.

I've never had this response to a diet before, but then this diet is different.  After 30 days, I can identify every item of food that my son and I have consumed.  For the past 23 days I can count on my thumbs every item of food my son or I ate that we weren't allowed.  And on day 30 a dietitian reviewed our progress.

The visit to the dietitian was the source of some trepidation.  The severity of my son's eczema has reduced dramatically, so we've obviously done something right.  We could be ready to start the challenge phase of the diet, which would mean indulging in fruits, vegetables, and spices.  But the eczema is not gone, so maybe we've done something wrong.  We could be about to face two of the hardest weeks yet, with no wheat or cow's milk.  As the appointment with the dietitian approached and the severity of my son's eczema bounced around I got more and more concerned.  It's no wonder I was dreaming about things going awry.

I met with the dietitian yesterday.  She greeted me with a smile and asked how things were going.  Then she examined the food log.  I sat for a few minutes listening to nothing but the occassional sound of a page turning.  She broke the silence by saying You're ready to start the challenges.  Ready to start the challenges?  I was ready to jump out of my seat.  I wanted to do a little victory dance.  Actually, I wanted to do a big victory dance.

Tomorrow I'll be having strawberries on my breakfast, watermelon at my picnic, taziki for my afternoon tea, and carrots and capsicum in my stir fry.  I'll make lentil curry and pumpkin soup.  I'll eat apricots, and cherries, and bake apple pie.  And I'll do it all in the name of science.

I'm so happy about this new food freedom that I need to remind myself of the sour note: if one of us reacts to salicylates then we'll have to stop eating all these wonderful foods, and when the discovery part of the diet ends we still won't be able to eat them.  But I'm not about to let that ruin my fantasizing now.

I still won't be allowed to eat miniature jelly beans or ketchup on my steak, but who'd want to when there are so many wonderful things to eat instead?

Elimination Diet: Weeks 3 and 4

The In-law Challenge

Weeks three and four of our elimination diet were marked by the arrival of my in-laws.  Prior to starting the diet I was so concerned about our ability to eat together harmoniously that I almost delayed the start of the diet until they left.  I was dreading having to listen to snide remarks.  I was afraid that I would have to prepare all of the food, rather than rely on mother-in-law to do some of the cooking, lest she undermine the diet by including forbidden ingredients.  And I was concerned that they would not be supportive of the diet, let alone eat it.  I underestimated my in-laws.

Perhaps it was not entirely fair to pin all these concerns on my in-laws.  After all, being helpful seems to be in their genes.  Many people have been curious about the diet, and very few people have made deprecatory remarks about the diet, but most people I explain the diet to can't shake the thought How could fruits and vegetables possibly cause a malady? and they only start to express an earnest interest in the diet when I reveal that my son's skin has definitively improved since starting the elimination diet.  Of course, I didn't have the luxury of this information when I spoke to my father just before D-day, who was very subtle but obviously doubtful.

In contrast, I was pleasantly surprised by my in-law's support; my mother-in-law baked cookies and scones, was an excellent sous-chef, and even took up the challenge of making two meals.  I did not hear one negative or unsupportive remark from either in-law during their two week visit.  They happily consumed our failsafe food, and even marveled at how many ways you could prepare a leek.  They graciously ate their forbidden foods (they arrived with a fruit cake, lemon butter, and pineapple poppers, and couldn't resist purchasing grapefruits for breakfast) out of site of the rest of the family.  In the two weeks they were here, there was not one diet mistake that could be attributed to their presence, and I am still eating my mother-in-law's cookies.  When they left, I was sad to see them go.

Elimination Diet: Week 2

We have now completed week two of our elimination diet.  You can read about week one in my previous post on the topic.

In the past week our diet has seemed almost normal.  I go to the market, buy lots of good meat, chicken, eggs, and a little fish, plus a lot of pears, leeks, cabbage, green beans, and a few other vegetables.  Now that I know what we need, and have the larder stocked, the market shopping is actually easier than it was before the diet.  I've also found that following recipes is very easy when you already have all the ingredients, so I've been able to try lots of new foods without the hassle I usually associate with it.  And the food, for the most part, has been really good.  I'll be sad to relinquish the cookbooks to the library when they're due.

I must admit that I am starting to get a little tired of cabbage and green beans.  We have one or the other every night.  And my son must miss strawberries; when we read "I Am A Bunny" and "The Very Hungry Catapillar", we can no longer get past the pages with the strawberries on them.  He keeps flipping back to them and calling out "straaaaw-be".  Nevertheless, my husband continues to be amazed by the meals I am coming up with and is now quite content to be on the diet (especially when he gets to eat anything he wants when he's at work).

On a more positive note, I've been losing weight, despite eating absurd quantities of food, especially goodies like carob fudge, cookies, meringues, and homemade granola bars (now that I know what goes into them I'll never again consider them a healthful snack).

We had two major social challenges of the past week, both of which went very well.  The first was a hike followed by a BBQ.  I packed rice crackers and green beans to keep my son happy on the hike, and we brought all of our own food to the BBQ, including marinated chicken breasts, pear and bean salad (very tasty), a noodle and cabbage salad that replicated the one provided by the host, and a potato torte to share with everyone (there were two other beautiful desserts, so it's a wonder anyone found space for this one).  My husband pigged out, eating some of everything we brought and also tasting everything cooked by the hosts!  My son was really good about eating only what we offered him, even skipping the flavored rice crackers that had been left well within his reach before dinner.  Only once did he notice the corn sitting on the table (one of his favorite foods) and beg, but fortunately we were able to distract him.  Unlike our outing last week, there were actually two things I could eat: steak and potatoes, however the chicken and salad were so nice that I declined.

Our second challenge was last night, when we hosted a dinner for overseas friends.  I did a poor job of selecting menu items and found myself juggling four pots at the stove right before dinner.  But nothing was burnt or undercooked and everyone enjoyed the meal (lamb noisettes with pear glaze, steamed green beans, steamed red and green cabbage with a creamy leek sauce, and brown rice) and dessert (poached pears with sabayon).  Next time I'm cooking a roast.

However, the biggest challenge of the week was Melbourne Cup Day, which closed the market Tuesday, when I would usually do the fresh food shopping.  Since the market is only open Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday, I dropped into the local butcher, where I don't normally shop because the selection and convenience aren't as good as the market.  I nearly bought three porterhouse steaks, until I noticed the butcher pulling out a big cryovaced piece of meat.  When I asked how old the meat was, he said about a week and a half, then paused and said maybe two weeks.  It was clear that he wasn't really sure.  Amines continue to form as meat ages, regardless of how the meat is packaged or if it is frozen, so eating fresh meat is critical to sticking to the diet.  We ate vegetarian for three days.

My son's skin no longer seems to be improving and I'm concerned that we will need to eliminate wheat and dairy.  I feel like we should start immediately, but I'm procrastinating until I've had a chance to experiment with the recipes and build up an inventory of wheat and dairy free staples.  Of course, I'm also hoping that the current flare is just the withdrawal symptoms taking their time to subside.  I think I could happily continue this diet for quite some time the way it is, but to eliminate wheat and dairy would require major changes.  Of course, that's how I initially felt about cutting out fruit.

How much is petrol worth to you?

People like to whinge about the price of gas just as much as they do about the weather.  This wouldn't be true if we all used our bikes to get where we were going, but I digress.  Virtually every month I read a letter in our local automobile club magazine in which the author argues that the price of gas is fixed by colluding petroleum companies and that there should be a government inquiry into the matter.  Some make a pathetic effort to support their annoyance, claiming things like "On my recent trip petrol (that's what they call it here) was $1.23/L in Tamworth and when I was in Brisbane only a few days later it was $1.18/L.  Clearly this is a sign of price fixing."  Upon reading that line of reasoning I was incredulous; hadn't the author ever noticed that the price of gas at their local station changes daily, if not hourly!

In the most recent issue (October 2006, not on line yet) a reader had very carefully detailed the proportion of a barrel of crude oil turned into the various petroleum products we use.  Since the letter is not on line, I will reprint some of the figures he provided.  It turns out that only about 27% of the 159 liters of crude oil in a barrel becomes petrol.  10% becomes kerosene, 15% becomes diesel, 22% becomes lubricating oils, 16% becomes cylinder oils, and 10% becomes tar.  By his calculations, you get 42 liters of petrol from a barrel of crude.  He goes on to argue that the price of petrol should increase by 0.6 cents per liter for ever dollar increase in the price of a barrel of crude and that the daily changes of 5 cents per liter are evidence that the market isn't working freely and government action is required.

Now, I applaud this person's detailed research and math, but he failed to do a reality check.  Could it be that the price of petrol changes more when the price of crude changes because people want it more than the other petroleum products?

How much is a liter of petrol worth to you?  Are you buying it now, at $1.10-$1.15AU/liter?  Were you buying it when it was $1.25/liter?  Would you pay $2.00/liter?  No, you say?  What did you say about $1.00/liter a few years ago?  How much you're willing to pay probably depends on what you are using your vehicle for; If your business relies on moving things around, for example, then you have to figure out how to pay for the more expensive fuel or close up shop.  But if you're driving to work, maybe you'll find a different way to get there rather than waste valuable fuel on it.  What you can see, though, is that the value of fuel is not something you determine, or the petroleum companies determine, but all the people who buy the petrol.  If you think that a liter of petrol is only worth $1.00 and everyone else agrees it's worth at least $1.10, then you're just going to have to go without.

The price of petrol is volatile because it the market is so competitive.  There is no other good in Australia or the US for which the price is so well advertised, so easily determined without even leaving your car.  At some intersections you have the choice of two or even three different petrol stations, all of whom have their prices clearly displayed in front of the shop in writing that even my half blind grandmother can read.  And even though most people would willingly part with far more money to fill up their tank, they are always looking for a deal.  In an environment like this, of course the price of petrol is going to jump around.

As we saw recently in our discussion about banana prices, there are some goods that people just won't substitute.  Petrol is one of them.  Vaseline is not.  When was the last time you thought, Gee, Vaseline is getting very expensive, but there's nothing else I can use instead.  Economists call this elasticity.  Bananas and petrol (incidentally, the two items blamed for Australia's high second quarter inflation) have inelastic demand curves, meaning the price can increase a lot before people change their consumption habits.  In contrast, Vaseline has an elastic demand curve.  Besides, many of the products made out of petroleum, including Vaseline, are really just by-products, an opportunity to reap some financial gain from the left-overs of petrol production.  Kind of like trying to sell the tops off your celery stalks.  So when the price of crude increases, the change will be borne disproportionately by the purchasers of petrol, because the purchasers of Vaseline will just buy cocoa butter instead.

The volatility of petrol prices is certainly annoying, and makes planning difficult, but it's not in itself a sign of price fixing.  Even so, why is a government inquiry the solution?  Wouldn't we all be better off if the government used their time and energy to figure out how to promote alternatives to petrol and other petroleum products.   By increasing incentives to use alternative fuels and more fuel efficient technology, the government could reduce the demand for petrol, which would cause the real price of petrol to decrease.  By supporting investment in alternative energy, the government could reduce the country's dependence on unpredictable foreign suppliers, which is significant for both economic and security reasons.  The government could and should provide a boost to the economy by supporting the growth of technology associated with alternative industries.  And finally, these actions comprise a few of the many ways the government could be acting to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions.

But the price of petrol must still be too low because the government doesn't appear to be doing much at all.

Elimination diet, week 1

I've never successfully stayed on an elimination diet, and I suppose this one is no exception.  Despite all of my preparation, it turns out soy has been leaking into the diet in the form of bread and crackers.  Beware of vegetable oil (it usually contains at least some soybean oil), soy flour, flour improver 472, and lecithin, which sneak into store made food.  In a few weeks we may have to eliminate wheat, and then we won't have to worry about having soy in our bread or wheat crackers, but for the time being I'd like to find alternatives that don't involve making my own bread.

Ignoring the soy problem, which I'll deal with when I do the shopping tomorrow, I've been surprised by how easy this has been.  The two cookbooks mentioned in my previous post on the elimination diet have a huge number of not only tasty, but surprisingly easy, recipes, and I'm sure this experience is making me a better cook.  Here's a sample of some of the dinners we've had over the past week:

• Pan fried fish with butter and garlic
• Lamb noisettes with pear glaze
• Yogurt chicken
• Roast rack of lamb
• Golden chicken (marinated in golden syrup and grilled)

All of our meals have been accompanied by at least two vegetables, usually steamed, but sometimes sauteed.  I've discovered that steamed red cabbage is buttery, and that swedes can be cut lengthwise to make a nice compliment to green beans.

For dessert, or sometimes for afternoon tea, we have natural yogurt with pear, which is a combination we enjoyed before we knew about this diet.  On Saturday, I made poached pears with sabayon, which didn't come out quite the way I expected, but were still extremely tasty.

I'm finding that recipes are unusually easy to follow because the list
of allowed foods is so small that I have all the
ingredients for many of the recipes in the cookbooks, which makes cooking by recipe easier than usual.  I also feel less concerned than usual about how I allocate the vegetables we have, as long as they all get used by the end of the week.

Only once during the past week have I craved something I wasn't allowed to eat, which was chocolate.  I resolved this by making a batch of carob fudge that I've been enjoying ever since (though I must admit it is a little too sweet and the recipe will require some fudging to get right).  My son has been pretty good too.  The first day he was a bit out of character to refuse all of the nice food I gave him, and all he wanted to eat was rice crackers.  But since then he has been quite willing to eat everything and has rarely asked for food he isn't allowed to eat (even though he doesn't actually know that there are foods he's not allowed to eat).

We had our first big social challenge when we attended a birthday party this weekend.  The father of the birthday girl had prepared an all organic spread that could put any caterer to shame: mini quiches, homemade sausage rolls, skewers of fruit, flap jacks (they looked a lot like granola bars), meringues, chocolate coated cream puffs, and a chocalate mousse roll with strawberries for the birthday cake.  I explained that we were doing an elimination diet as soon as they
offered us food, which was pretty much as soon as we arrived, and they were very understanding.  Fortunately, I had anticipated there would be a little food and a cake, so I came prepared with pear slices, crackers, and meringues (since I had eggs left over from my poached pears with sabayon of the night before), but it was a little hard looking at all the beautiful and carefully prepared food and not be able to eat any of it (especially since it was probably the highest quality food we will encounter at a birthday or Christmas party this year).  The merengues had vinegar in them, the flap jacks had coconut in them, the sausage rolls were made with pork, the quiches had vegetables in them, the birthday cake had chocolate in it.   Finally, we worked out that the cream puffs were okay, except for the chocolate on the top, so I ate the bottom and gave the top away, just so I could partake in some way.  My son was even better than me.  He was happy with two slices of pear and one of my home made meringues.

Now we come to the big question: is all this inconvenience worth it?  Is his eczema improving?  The short answer is that it is too early to tell.  According to Sue Dengate's book "The Failsafe Cookbook," as well as our dietitian, we should expect withdrawal symptoms anywhere from four days to a week after starting the diet.  We're still in that range, so we must withhold judgment for the time being.

I don't think either my partner or I would have considered our son, who is nearly two, to be any less agreeable than your average two year old.  However, both my partner and I have noticed he has been less negative and more resilient in the past week than usual.  Whether it is the diet or coincidence, we don't know.  I suppose this may be exposed when we get to the challenge stage.  I'll keep you informed.

Eating friendly food to challenge eczema

When my son was about a month old, in the middle of a typically hot Melbourne summer, he developed a heat rash on his face.  Rather than fading after a few hours, the rash spread to his chest the next day.  When it hadn't cleared after a few days I took him to the doctor, who diagnosed eczema and told us to put cream on it.  It slowly cleared up off his face, but there continued to be some part of his body covered in rash.

When he was a few months old he got a wicked nappy rash that would not respond to the traditional nappy creams.  Once again it was diagnosed as eczema.  This time the diagnosis came with a prescription for a low concentration hydro-cortisone ointment.  The redness would reduce while he was using the ointment, but flare back up as soon as he stopped.  Another trip to the doctor yielded a more powerful cortisone ointment, which would eliminate the redness while it was in use but did nothing for the long term.  Finally, a trip to the tropics caused a marked improvement in his skin.

Sadly, within a few months his eczema returned.  We continued to "manage" it using greasy ointments after every bath, avoiding the common irritants, and treating it with the cortisone when it got really bad.  We've finally come to the conclusion that we need to put in an honest effort to figure out what is causing the eczema, which is easier said than done.  The problems could be environmental (like dust mites) or food intolerance or allergy.  Or it could be genetic.

So What Are We Going To Do About It?

Only a very low proportion of excema is caused by allergies, so it isn't as easy as doing skin prick tests (which are apparently unreliable anyway).  We have decided to try the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH) Allergy Unit's simplified elimination diet for natural and artificial food chemicals.  The aim of the diet is to remove all possible dietary causes of irritation until a marked improvement in symptoms occurs, then "challenge" the body with individual chemicals to determine which ones cause irritation.  Challenges must be done with only one chemical at a time to avoid confusing signals, and must be spaced so that the signs of a reaction are clear.  Since reactions to food can happen any time in the 48 hours after the food is consumed, and some challenges require large doses (to reflect the cumulative nature of eating those chemicals in everyday life), challenges must be spaced by several days.  The PhD thesis of Anne Swain, head dietician of the RPAH Allergy Unit, explains the development of the diet, and details what chemicals, artificial or natural, are likely to cause problems.

The problem foods can be classified as follows:

1. Salicilates, found in most fruits and vegetables, nuts, and many oils;
2. Amines, found in a few fruits, and aged food including cheese, wine,
   suction packed meat, frozen meat or fish (the Failsafe Cookbook
   recommends buying meat fresh and eating it within two days or freezing
   it immediately and eating within four weeks);
3. Glutamates,including natural, found in a number of really tasty vegetables (like
   tomatoes), mushrooms, and a huge variety of foods;
4. Sulfates, which are found in dried fruit;
5. Nitrates and nitrites, which are found in smoked food;
6. Artifical flavours;
7. A few classes of preservatives, antioxidants, and colours (artificial and annatto 160b); and
8. Anything that contains "natural flavours".

To further complicate matters, apparently there is a labelling loophole in Australia that allows food manufacturers to omit ingredients from the label if they are a small proportion of an ingredient, so antioxidents are often used in the vegetable oils that are used to make many processed foods without being put on the label.  This means that any item that contains "vegetable oil" must be avoided unless you have checked with the manufacturer.

This diet appeals to me for several reasons.  The first is that I've never been a fan of food additives (this has been especially true since I read Fast Food Nation). The second is that the RPAH has provided a convincing argument through their research that naturally occurring salicylates, amines, and glutamates, and a series of artificial food additives can cause a host of problems, including eczema.  The third, and final one I can think of right now, is that typically doctors recommend eliminating two or three likely triggers, which means you are likely to 1) not see significant improvement during the elimination portion, and 2) get false reactions during the challenges due to other triggers that haven't been eliminated.  This diet minimizes both of these.

I decided to be sensible about this, so we visited a dietitian, just to make sure we will have proper nutrition, and also because I'm going to need all the encouragement I can get to stay on this diet, especially since I've never been very good at staying on diets.  The good news is that we can eat as much as we like, as long as it's well balanced.

So What Can We Eat?

The food we can eat can best be summarized as follows:

• Fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices: Peeled pears, or canned pears in syrup, leeks, chokos, cabbage, brussel sprouts, mung bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, shallots, celery, green beans, garlic, swedes (also known as rutabagas), potatoes, dried beans (except broad beans), iceberg lettuce, parsley (in small quantities), saffron, salt.
• Fresh meat, chicken, and white fish (nothing that is pre-made)
• Wholemeal or white bread with no preservative (no multigrain bread)
• Plain crackers and cookies with no additives
• Cereals without additives or corn
• Milk, rice milk, oat milk, natural yogurt, vanilla yogurt, vanilla ice cream, eggs
• Butter, select margarines, sunflower, safflower, and canola oils
• White sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, golden syrup, glucose syrup, rice syrup, carob powder
• Decaf coffee (no tea of any type), whisky, gin, vodka
• A variety of baking ingredients including flour, baking powder, etc.

The dietitian gave me a food list so exhaustive that it even dictates what vitamins I can take and what toothpaste we can use (mint is a huge source of salicylates, so most toothpaste isn't allowed).

Where Can I Get More Information?

Sue Dengate, who runs the extensive, but not very well organized Food Intolerance Network website, wrote a cookbook for the diet, "The Failsafe Cookbook" (she calls the elimination diet "Failsafe", which stands for: Free of Additives, Low in Salicilates, Amines, and Flavour Enhancers).  Her cookbook provides a food list and a reasonably good explanation for why many foods aren't allowed.  This is a good resource full of pedestrian recipes and substitutes for foods you're not allowed to eat.  It includes a shopping list.  Unfortunately, this book is hard to come by right now since it is between printings.

You can find a complete list of the additives to avoid on the Food Intolerance Network's website.  One thing I noted when I first read about these, is that red dye #2, which has been de-listed in the U.S. since I was a kid (remember when the red M&Ms were taken off the market?), is still allowed in Australia.

The RPAH has also put out a cookbook, called "Friendly Food" (now in its second edition).  This book also explains the diet, though it virtually ignores the role of food additives despite being clearly implicated by Anne Swain's PhD thesis.  It is filled with pretty fancy looking meals.  It also contains a shopping list and has the advantage of being readily available in Australian bookstores.

The Diet Begins

Today is day one.  The preparation has taken several weeks.  In addition to the visit to the dietitian, I have spent the past two weeks testing out recipes and tracking down ingredients.  Yesterday I prepared an eating plan for my son's childcare, and tomorrow I will be meeting with them to make sure they know exactly what food they can give him and what to do if he eats something he isn't meant to.

I've been to four grocery stores, and three green grocers, a candy store, a health/vitamin store, and three pharmacies to find suitable foods.  One thing that has struck me is how small the "health food" section is in the supermarkets.  This should tell you something about the healthfulness of what's general available in supermarkets.  Another thing I've noticed is how limited the health food sections are, as if the grocery store defines health food as food that no one would choose to eat unless they were avoiding a more mainstream food (i.e. rice pasta instead of wheat pasta, or carob instead of chocolate, except that I happen to really like carob, and it's so uncommon here that the big supermarkets don't have it even in the health food section).  The other thing I've noticed is that all health nuts must be soy addicts, judging by the ubiquity of soy in that aisle (technically, I'm supposed to be avoiding soy in addition to everything else listed above).

In the spirit of my friend Ron, who went on a 10 day juice diet and documented everything he ate on-line, I will periodically post our progress (though not in such exhaustive detail).  Incidentally, virtually everything Ron ate during those 10 days would not be allowed on this diet.

Wish us luck, and please, keep your cynical thoughts to yourselves, or at least save them until we're done.  As I've already mentioned, I'm going to need a lot of positive encouragement to stick to this.

One Final Note

I have yet to find carob chips without palm oil, nor have I found a recipe for making them from carob powder.  If you have one, please post it as a comment.

Food for thought

"Where would we be without the humble banana?"
      -- father of 11 month old, prior to Tropical Cyclone Larry


About a year ago I had a chat with a mother friend of mine about bananas.  Every mother knows that bananas are an indespensible food with a baby or toddler; it comes in it's own disposable wrapping, requires no preparation, is easy to store, and is universally adored by young children.  In this discussion, my friend proposed that bananas were a single market good; unlike other food, when the price went up, people would not substitute a different fruit.  I denied it.  Surely people would just eat apples, or mandarins, or grapes instead of paying exhorbitant prices for bananas.  Little did I know that within six months I would get to witness the result of a dramatic decrease in the supply of bananas.

Australia has several banana growing regions and does not allow the import of bananas.  The largest and most productive region is on the Queensland coast, centered on Innisvale.  Innisvale happens to be the location where Tropical Cyclone Larry, a category 5 cyclone, hit land in March, 2006.  It decimated the banana crop that was just about to be harvested, and the plants that would be producing bananas through the Australian winter.  Almost immediately, the price of bananas doubled.  The price has since risen to $15 wombats per kilogram, five times its pre-cyclone price.

Being the mother of a toddler, eliminating bananas from the diet complete is not an option, so we ration them.  A single banana currently costs between $2.50 and $3.00 wombats.  We regularly spend $15 on bananas a week.

Since Larry, the price of bananas has been a constant topic of conversation between me and my mother, who lives in Costa Rica. She constantly marvels that anyone would pay so much, and when she visited Melbourne recently (when the price was a mere $10 wombats/KG) she asked the green grocer about it, who replied that you would think that people would cut back, but parents just keep buying them (myself included).

In July the Australian goverment announced that the consumer price index had risen 1.6 percent for the quarter from March through June.  This figure was higher than expected, and economists claimed the rising price of petrol and the cost of bananas were largely to blame.

When my mom bought 6 bananas for 76 colones today in Costa Rica (about 20 Australian cents, or 3.3 cents each) I started to see just how absurd the price is in Melbourne.  In contrast, the typical Costa Rican earns enough money for a full day of work to purchase four bananas at Melbourne prices.

The good news is that the price of bananas in Australia is predicted to start falling this month.

A Good Book Is a Bad Thing

I've alluded to this before.

Last night I finished One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.  I've read it before, but when a copy of it landed in my husband's hands (see Book Crossing for how that happened) I decided to read it again, since all I could remember from my high school reading of it was the ending.

But a good book is a bad thing.  Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest's main character, Randle McMurphy, a good book cajoles you into abandoning your sensible routine, keeping you awake way past the prudent hour you normally go to sleep, and incites you to shirk your responsibilities until your formerly well oiled machine barely functions.

When I read fiction, I prefer not to know much about the story before I read it, so I'll try not to ruin it for you, except to summarize what you could work out from the back cover: The story, told by a patient in a mental institution, is about the power struggle between the Big Nurse and the new patient on the ward.  The nurse is what I would call a Hook Operator (a term I picked up from the totally unheard of Operators and things: The inner life of a schizophrenic, a book I read 15 years ago, have never seen another copy of, and highly recommend to anyone for it's insights on office life alone, but also to follow the very interesting journey of the schizophrenic author).  The nurse keeps everything under her control, not by using force, but by abusing power.  McMurphy, the new patient, is boastful and cunning, and also trying to work the system in his own way.

This story is about so many different things: the abuse of power, the importance of fun, friendship, sacrifice, and redemption.  I normally try to avoid "the classics" but I highly recommend this book.  As Douglas Eadie says on the cover of my copy, "If you haven't already read this book, do so.  If you have, read it again."

Oh my god, I'm a stay at home mom!

This shouldn't be too surprising, since I haven't worked in over a year, but before now I was in denial.

Until my son was born I was earning more than my husband.  I decided I'd like to stay home for the first year of my son's life so I quit my job, naively believing that I'd be able to find part time employment after a year out of work.  Last month, I dusted off my resume, added my most recent experience, and sent it to a few people.  The response I got was less than encouraging: "The chances of finding part time work in the IT industry are virtually nil."

Now, I'm not wedded to the industry.  In fact, I'd be quite happy doing something else, but I'm not prepared to take an entry level position just to start working again.  It's just not practical; working is too expensive to get paid beans.

The going rate for childcare in our area is about $75/day (wombats) and competition for places is fierce.  If you already have your foot in the door, it could be a few months before you can pick up an extra day of care each week for your child.  If your child doesn't already attend childcare, you can expect it to be a year.

Childcare covers the hours between 7am and 6pm, with hefty penalties if you are late to pick up your child, which means you have to be strict with your work hours.  There's no option for half days, or any reliable way to pick up casual days (for those times when you really need to attend a meeting on  day when you don't normally work).  This is when the other types of care kick in: nannies and daddies.  Which you choose depends on how much dad earns and how much you travel.  If this is a rarity, dad might stay home for the day, but if dad earns a lot or you travel a lot, then a nanny is a cheaper option.  The going rate for a nanny in our area is about $17/hour.

Not that I want to have my child in childcare for that much time.  Sure, it's nice to have a break from changing nappies and conversations with someone who sounds like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons, but I'd still like to be one of the primary carers in my child's life.

Another hidden cost is the loss of government benefits when resuming work.  If I were to work three days a week, for $20/hour, I would forfeit about $3,500 in government benefits, making my effective tax rate about 30%, compared with the tax rate of 16% for people without a child.    Combining taxes and lost benefits with the aforementioned cost of childcare makes my marginal take home income only slightly better than if I were in the highest tax bracket.  Of course, the Australian government makes it easy for all Australian parents to weigh up the cost of returning to the workforce by making the cost depend on your partner's income and your prospective income, tax rate, medicare levy, tax offset, family tax benefit A, family tax benefit B, and childcare benefit, not to mention the family tax benefit supplement, which they don't even remotely try to explain how it is calculated or who is eligible for it.

There are other costs to working: transportation, work clothing, out of hours baby sitters.  I read a quote from one woman who was spending nearly $200/month on the magazines she read on the train!

Of course, there are costs to staying home as well, most notably the lost experience and contact with the industry that will ultimately result in lower wages when I return to the workforce, which could haunt me for the rest of my working life.

For now, I've decided to stay home a little longer.  Each day I feel my market value slipping away, but I try not to think about that because if I am already unmarketable after one year out of work I in danger of becoming a permanent housewife if I stay home too long.

The digital eye sees things differently

I recently attended a party with my son's playgroup.  After the party, one of the mothers generously gave everyone CDs of the photos her husband had taken with his new digital SLR (dSLR).  As I sat there scanning through the hundreds of photos, it slowly dawned on me that I would not have been able to take the equivalent photos with my digital camera.

The photos from the party were great.  The subjects, almost exclusively one year old babies, were in focus, caught in the moment of smiling, laughing, opening a present, stealing a cupcake, discovering a new toy.  The exposure was good, the colors were crisp, and the backgrounds were pleasingly fuzzy.  Like I said, I couldn't do this with my camera.

What's wrong with my camera.  The short answer is that it is about five years old.  Although has a pleasing feature set for an amateur photographer (also known as an enthusiast), including aperture priority, shutter priority, and manual exposure settings, manual focus, a zoom lens, a flash, a remote control, burst mode (with auto focus - which is increasingly uncommon these days), and spot metering, it is slow.

This is reason #1 why I couldn't have taken the photos; babies don't sit still for very long.  It's something I have been struggling with since my own baby started smiling.  It took weeks of trying before I was able to capture the moment for the grandparents to see.  So I started looking for a new camera (which is part of the reason the blog's been so quiet recently).  With everyone complaining about the slow speed of digital cameras, surely the designers had done something to improve it.

And they have.  I talked to some friends, asked strangers about the cameras they were using, found some reviews (if you're interested in really detailed reviews of digital cameras look at www.dpreview.com), and decided on one I liked.  It was smaller and lighter than my current camera, and it had a 12x optical zoom.  All I needed was to play with one a little to be sure it lived up to its hype, so I made a trip to the local camera shop and had a play.

It was peppy.  It was so much peppier than my current camera.  But my husband thought it could be better, so we asked to see a dSLR for comparison.  Actually, not any dSLR, but the same model used to take the photos at the party.  It was peppy.  It was very peppy.  And after taking a few photos with it, the compact camera felt just as slow the one I had at home.  As we walked out of the store, we concluded our next camera should be a dSLR.

Then we decided they were too expensive.

Since I was stuck with my old camera, I decided to revisit it's functions to make sure I was getting the most out of it.  After the shutter delay, my biggest gripe about my camera is the depth of field.  Imagine complaining about images being too focused, but that's what's been bugging me; I cannot take photos with a shallow depth of field.  This is reason #2 why I could not have taken the photos from the party with my camera.

Shallow depth of field: the subject is well focussed and everything else is blurry.

For those of you who aren't photography buffs, the depth of field of an image is the range of distances from the lens that appear crisp and focused.  It is commonly used to reduce the emphasis on parts of the image that are not relevant.  In the aforementioned pictures of the babies, it was the unfortunate background.  It is also commonly used to give a two dimensional image a three dimensional feel.

The traditional thought about depth of field is that it is inversely proportional to the size of the opening of the lens (aperture) so larger openings yield images with shallower depth of field and smaller openings produce images with more of the image in focus.  Aperture is measured as the ratio of the lens length to the diameter of the opening, therefore a longer lens has a larger opening than a shorter lens at the same aperture number.  The largest lens opening for a lens is always less than the length of the lens, and most lenses are three to five times as long as their largest aperture.

Using the aperture priority mode, I opened the lens as much as possible and took a few photos of my son.  Everything was in focus.  I tried getting closer, so the relative distance to the subject (my son) and the background was greater.  Everything was in focus.  I got even closer.  Now the background was slightly blurry, but still clearly distinguishable, and my son's face was starting to look distorted.  No matter what I did, I couldn't get a satisfyingly shallow depth of field.  Clearly there was more to it than just aperture.

The lens redirects scattered light onto the sensor, shown at left.  A shorter lens (top) makes a smaller image on the sensor, but a smaller sensor means the image can still be framed the same as with a larger lens and sensor combination (bottom).

When investigating digital cameras I came upon the term equivalent length, which means the length of lens on a 35mm camera that would produce the same field of view.  It's only natural that people would be interested in the equivalent length, since prior to the switch to digital cameras, nearly everyone used 35mm cameras and a large proportion of them had a sense of the field of view provided by a 28mm lens versus a 105mm lens.

One camera I looked at had a lens that was equivalent to 35mm at the wide end of its range, but it was actually only 6mm long.  This is accomplished by reducing the format size or sensor.  The image projected onto a small sensor does not need to be as large as the image projected onto a large sensor for the resulting picture to fill the same amount of the frame, so a smaller lens is used with a smaller sensor for equivalent framing. This camera's sensor was only 5.8mm across, or roughly 1/6 of 35mm.  But was this 6mm lens really equivalent to a 35mm lens?

I found a nice explanation of depth of field versus format size at www.wikipedia.com.  The smaller the sensor is, the deeper is the depth of field for a given aperture and equivalent lens length (where the camera is the same distance from the subject and the image is framed the same, assuming the same aspect ratio).

This is a really significant thing for photographers who want to use depth of field to their advantage to consider when selecting a camera.  My digital camera's sensor is 7.2mm across.  That means an image shot at 2 meters from the subject with a 35mm equivalent lens at F2.8 will have a total depth of field (from the near limit to the far limit of acceptable focus) of over 4 meters (according to the depth of field calculator found at www.dpreview.com), whereas with my film SLR it will be about 0.6 meters, and about a third of that with a 4"x5" format camera.  Let's put this into context, if the image is shot in my living room, the background would always be in focus on my digital camera, but nearly always fuzzy on my 35mm film camera.

So when you see a camera spec that states the lens length as 35-135mm equivalent, you should now know that it isn't.  As it turns out, only a few of the most expensive digital SLRs available on the market today have a sensor as large as 35mm film.  The vast majority of consumer digital cameras (as opposed to professional digital cameras) have sensors between 1/9th and 1/3rd as large.

Incidentally, I've just recently started getting prints of my digital photos and have discovered that they all have a blue cast (well, really it's cyan).  That's reason #3 I couldn't have taken the photos from the party.  Maybe I will get a new camera soon.

The death of free to air?

As mentioned in a previous post, I gave up watching TV.  There was a caveat, that I would watch one or two of the best shows (where "best" is entirely subjective).  Well, the new season has rolled around and the TV is still off, but the VCR is working pretty hard.  I've got it recording the one or two best shows every week and now have eight weeks of them on tape with the intention of watching them when I feel like watching TV.  So far, I've watched one hour.

Now, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is going to become a horrible mess, even with just two shows, trying to keep track of what's been watched and what hasn't, making sure the tape in the VCR has enough capacity, and is positioned in the right spot.  But technology comes to the rescue (or would, if I were earning money and could justify the expense) in the form of a digital video recorder (DVR).  Many of these little units (often paired with a DVD recorder) can record up to a hundred hours of TV, and allow you to pause and rewind live TV or start watching a show already in progress from the beginning while still recording the end, instantly navigate through your recordings by means of a menu (rather than having to scan through hours of programs to find the right spot), automatically select items to record using a broadcast guide, and provide a commercial skip function.  Why has it taken so long for these to be widely available?

Now, the commercial skip function is not a new idea.  It is nothing more than a 30 second fast forward that can be repeated a number of times and exists on my five year old Korean VCR.  The difference is that with digital content, it is possible to instantly skip an entire ad break of predictable length without even scanning the ads in fast motion.  Television broadcasters will have to become increasingly clever to force people to watch at least some of the ads.  My guess is that the length of ad breaks will vary more and shows will be scripted so that there can be more ad breaks.  There will be a premium on the last ad space in a break (or perhaps the last few in a longer break) as the first few will be able to be skipped more readily than the last without missing the return of the show.

As fewer people see the ads, they will become less useful marketing tools, and networks will have to become more creative about how to pay for the cost of purchasing or creating shows and delivering them to viewers.  Advertising will become increasingly insidious and difficult to avoid.  Shows will decrease in quality as they incorporate product placement to pay the bills, as seen in "The Truman Show" or "Survivor".

As people can watch whenever they want (after the initial broadcast) networks will no longer be able to use high profile shows to increase the viewership of the duds placed between them.  Whereas we may brighten up at the prospect of fewer bad TV shows, the reality is that there will be fewer good TV shows, because they are the ones that cost money to produce.  I suspect this will force free to air networks out of business or searching for a new profit model that includes either a subscription price (as with cable or satellite TV) or pay per view.

For those of you living in the US, the TiVo has been around for quite some time and provides the functions described above for a subscription.  In many areas of the US high proportions of people already subscribe to cable TV due to poor reception.  Not so in Australia, where cable TV does not include the free to air networks, but with only 2-6 free to air stations, depending on where you live in Australia, many people subscribe to cable just to have more choice.  My guess is that the growing availability of DVRs will be the death of commercial free to air TV.

Some people don't care for economic expansion

I just finished reading Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger, which is the story of the five years he spent exploring the Southern part of the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1940s.  On the surface, this is a book about an explorer traveling through the deserts of the Saudi Peninsula known as "The Empty Quarter" and is classified as a travel book.  But this book is significant because Thesiger was one of the first Westerners to travel the area, where he had the unique opportunity to live amongst Bedu and meet people from many of the tribes in the area.  Though he never learned to identify the tracks of his camel, he was a keen observer of the people he traveled with and among, and has documented the lifestyle and values of a people who are now almost extinct.

All of the people in the area were Muslim.  Many of the tribes he encountered were acutely xenophobic and anti-Christian.  Material possessions were few; his travel companions generally owned camels, guns, the shirt they were wearing, and little else.  Even settled tribes seemed to have very few possessions.  His travel companions were willing to kill for their tribe or traveling companions as a matter of honor.  They were generous to the point of poverty, always offering food to anyone they met while traveling, even if it meant they went without any food for the day or longer, and Thesiger's companions seemed incapable of saying no to a request, even if it threatened the provisions required to cross the desert.  It is also clear that there is great variation in degrees between different areas and tribes, with some not so concerned about Christians and others calling Thesiger's companions infidels because they were accompanied by a Christian.

In the five year period in which Thesiger completed his travels the area was in constant turmoil.  Tribal alliances were complex and the areas of conflict were constantly shifting.  Thesiger follows these tribal conflicts like a local, and recounts tribal conflicts that consolidated power and facilitated exploration for oil in the period between his travels and when he wrote the book.

The rigors of the desert created a society that differs dramatically from our own Anglo-Saxon society.  This book provides insight into where the Muslim religion was formed, and the growth of values that seem utterly foreign to many westerners, which is especially significant in the current climate of Christian-Muslim animosity and the global threat of terrorism. 

Thesiger aspired to define neither Arabs nor Muslims in this work.  However, his keen observations of the Bedu peoples amongst whom he traveled provide insight into the values of both.  Thinking back on my geography education, reading this book would have broadened my understanding of the Middle East far more than the chapters of our text book on the topic managed.  On top of all this, it details the challenge of crossing a desert five hundred miles across by foot, with only the provisions they could carry on their camels, amongst warring tribes.  It's well worth reading.

Recycled clothes to ease the travelers conscience

I bought a pair of high tech travel pants today, the kind where the material is partly composed of old plastic bottles.  The tag had a picture of the aforementioned bottles awaiting conversion into these pants.  As I started to examine the picture, I expected to see lots of Coke bottles; Coke is ubiquitous.  But I saw only one or two.  The vast majority of the bottles in the cage were water bottles.

I only rarely drink bottled water.  It is generally reserved for occasions when I need the bottle more so than the water.  I am fortunate enough to have lived my life in places where there is a safe supply of clean water delivered directly to my taps.  Mind you, I did start filtering my drinking water a few years ago when we lived in a house where the water ran brown for the first few seconds whenever you turned on the tap.  However, even when I travel, I usually drink the local water if I've been told by a local that it is safe (the one exception to this is when I visit my mother's house, where I can't stand the taste of the water after brushing my teeth).

A while back I went to Belize.  I spent nearly a week in a small town that would hardly exist if it weren't for the tourists.  On one of our excursions we noted that Coke was still delivered in glass bottles which were sent back to be refilled, but all the local tourists carried a disposable water bottle rather than a reusable bottle that they filled at their hotel.  Each of these disposable plastic bottles came with a little plastic cap to cover the mouth piece, which was further wrapped in plastic to keep it in place during shipping.  These bottles, caps, and little plastic wrappers were all over the roadside.

When I went to Spain a few years later, it was nearly impossible to get water that wasn't bottled; Restaurants didn't serve it and there were no drinking fountains.  The expectation was that everyone would purchase their drinking water in a bottle.  In fact, no matter how nice the restaurant, if you asked for water it was delivered to your table in its original plastic packaging, never decanted, so that it would be obvious that it was not tap water.  I guess this is for the same reason that bottles of wine are always opened in front of the customer.  I can imagine a stuffy old man quaffing his glass of water and puckering his lips as he says, "Hmm, a citrus bouquet, with rich mineral undertones."

About 90 billion liters of bottled water is consumed each year in the world.  The Italians drink the most per capita, but Americans now drink over 4 billion liters of it.  Friends of mine consume bottled water because they perceive it to be cleaner and more healthful than what is available through the tap.  It pays to take care when purchasing bottled water, though, because up to 40% of it comes from a tap.  When in the U.S., where community water supplies are among the cleanest in the world, it hardly seems worth the bother to get your water from a bottle rather than the tap.

Anyway, all this bottled water requires a lot of bottles.  In a place like small town Belize where they barely have garbage collection, the bottles are as good as garbage.  But in Australia and the U.S. they can be turned into pants that are designed to be worn on trips to exotic places with dubious water quality.  It's appropriate that the people creating all that plastic waste are the same ones purchasing the high tech pants.  It's too bad the recycled pants will reduce waste where the tap water is safe and not from the destinations where the pants are intended to be worn.

Why I'm teaching sign language to my child

I guess I'm not an entirely conventional mother.  One of the ways this evidenced itself was when I tried explaining to my child's day care minder that we were teaching him sign language.  She reacted with surprise; she had never heard of hearing parents teaching sign to a hearing child.

To be fair, I had never heard of teaching sign to a hearing child until I noticed a friend of mine had an uncanny ability to figure out what her daughter wanted even though she wasn't speaking.  Her daughter only knew about ten signs, but was using them to communicate valuable information.  As soon as I found out about this, I acquired copies of Baby Signs by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn and Sign With Your Baby by Joseph Garcia.  Then it seemed like I was seeing references to baby sign all over the place: books at the bookstore, DVDs at the baby goods store, classes at the local community house, articles in the weekly baby newsletter.  Most of the women in my mother's group had heard of it, though I think I am the only one who is actually using it.  With all this exposure, I was surprised that someone in the childcare industry had not heard of it.

There area number of supposed advantages to teaching your child sign:

• It takes years for children to develop the oral skills to say all the sounds in their native language.  Manual dexterity develops much earlier and research suggests that infants develop the ability to use language before they develop the muscle coordination required to speak clearly.
• Learning to communicate at an earlier age reduces frustration for both the child and the parents.
• Using sign allows children to learn fundamentals of language earlier.  Garcia found that children who learn sign language are speaking about objects at the age when children who aren't using sign are only starting to identify objects.  Acredolo and Goodwyn concluded that babies using signs understood more words and learned to speak more easily than babies who weren't using signs.

My child can only say three words orally, but he's currently using at least five signs.  Like all children, these words have a much broader meaning than a fluent speaker would attribute to the same words.  For instance, the sign for potty may mean "I need to use the potty", "I have just peed", or "There's the potty".  But what a relief!  Instead of crying, if he has a sign for what he needs he silently moves his hands.  I no longer need to guess if he is thirsty or hungry.  When he signs "potty" I know he either needs to use the potty or needs a nappy change.  Sign hasn't turned him into the angel child; he still yells when he wants something or when he is unhappy, but only when he doesn't have a more effective way to communicate or doesn't get what he wants.

He seems to be so excited about being able to identify something and share that with us.  For instance, he recently started using the sign for "hat".  He now signs whenever he sees a hat or a helmet, not only when he wants to put one on or look at it more closely, but also as if to say "hey, I see a hat and I know what it is, and I can tell you that I know what it is."  This creates opportunities for conversation that would not have happened if he weren't initiating it.  These conversations expand his understanding of the world and of English.

As it would be when learning any language, my son's pronunciation is at times difficult to understand.  For instance, the sign for "more" can be confused with clapping (I'm still not sure which one he is using), and it took me at least a day to figure out his sign for drink.  But now that his pronunciation is familiar, it is becoming very easy to understand him.

When I first started this process, I used signs from ASL.  Then I started looking for variations because some signs are just too difficult for a young child with limited manual skills.  I'm not opposed to making up signs, as Acredolo and Goodwyn suggest, and as I learn to understand my son's "pronunciation" I realize that the official sign doesn't matter all that much as long as we understand what he's saying.  Since very few people he interacts with are likely to know sign, it doesn't really matter what signs we use.

It has taken very little effort to teach our son the signs he knows.  Because I own two books on baby sign, we have an accessible reference to learn new signs ourselves.  Then it is just a matter of using them at the right moment.  As my son learns more signs and expands his interest in the world, I learn more signs to share with him.

All I want for Christmas is a pizza cooker

I recently noted at the local home wares shop a window full of pizza cookers.  This appliance looks like a  large, round sandwich griller.  I can't imagine why anyone would prefer to own a specialized appliance just to cook pizza rather than use their oven.  Everyone already has an oven.  Pizza cookers require storage space and are probably harder to clean than the pan you use in the oven.

Each year I note a new appliance like this on the market, something that is essentially the same as an existing, and possibly even useful appliance (I do find the sandwich griller very useful), but in a different shape or size.  They are supposed to allow you to prepare something that you already prepare some other way.  They quickly end up gathering dust in the most inaccessible cupboard available.

Why don't the home wares companies ever come up with something truly innovative.  I'm waiting for someone to develop a compact, energy and space efficient system to wash and dry Ziploc bags.  That's something I'd pay $100 for.

Your turn

I know that blogs are new to most of my readers, so now it's time to introduce comments.  Did you know you can add comments to my postings?  It's easy: just click on the "Permalink" link at the end of the post.  You will be taken to a page that contains the post, any existing comments, and a place to add your own comment.

Top five reasons to comment on this and other entries in Wombats and Cents:
1. You can share your opinion
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4. You can let others know you're reading
5. You can tell me how the blog is going (verbose?  airy-fairy?  insightful?  boring?)

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When you're done you can use the links at the top of the page or on the right side to read my other posts.

Writing lessons

I feel a little let down by my high school English curriculum.  For six years I read countless novels, short stories, and plays, I identified themes in spot quotes, and I wrote five to ten page essays purporting to explore the deeper meaning of these stories.  Despite all that reading and writing, I have not been able to shake the feeling that I missed the day when the teacher discussed how to write a good essay (I missed very few days, so it must have only taken one or two classes).

I'm a huge fan of Tim Cahill's writing.  Cahill, who used to be a regular contributor to Outside Magazine, has a style that melds personal experience with history and often has you thinking about the future as well.  For non-fiction, he is one author I'd like to be able to mimic (another is Jon Krakauer, another contributor to Outside Magazine who writes with a very similar style).  Why didn't we read articles by Cahill in high school?  Why didn't we spend any time analyzing the writing techniques used in our endless reading list of the classics?  I suspect it was because my high school English curriculum was more geared towards making sure we could quote from Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ("Madame, I never eat Muscatel grapes.") than to develop an understanding of different writing styles and how to mimic them.  Not to suggest that mimicry should be the goal of any aspiring writer, but that it can and should be used as a valuable step towards developing one's own style.

Today I was very excited to discover an analysis of a typical article by Tim Cahill.  If you haven't read anything by Cahill, I suggest you get a copy of his first book, A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg, which is a collection of articles on topics as diverse as the Jonestown Massacre and Bigfoot sightings.  The aforementioned analysis is of a piece from Pass the Butterworms, a collection I haven't read, and is quite understandable even without having first read the article.  I will be reading this analysis several times to glean everything I can from it.  Hopefully it will have an effect on what you see here, but no one should hold their breath for that.

According to Stephen King, in his memoir/writing instruction manual On Writing, good writing comes from lots of reading and lots of writing with a few things like grammar and vocabulary thrown in (in other words, there is no formula).

With the exception of a few pages of Cujo when I was too little to be reading Stephen King novels, I've never read anything by Stephen King.  I was so scared of the shadows in my closet that I have avoided scary books and movies ever since.  And I'm not terribly interested in writing fiction.  I never would have picked up his writing manual except that my mother was so enthusiastic about it that she sent me a copy.  Once I started reading it I couldn't stop.  I was hooked by the second page, which I suppose is why he is a bestselling author.

The book starts with an autobiography that exposes his insatiable appetite for horror, a love of writing, and a determination to publish, all of which started from a very early age.  The second half of the book commences with a discussion of the elements of one's toolbox and relies heavily on Strunk and White's Elements of Style (he recommends that any writer own and study this book).  The better part of the writing manual, however, is about how to manage story, themes, background information, and research in writing.  He illustrates this very effectively with examples from his own writing history and samples of his writing.  The postscript is about getting hit by a car and how writing fit into his recovery.

My only complaint is that he assumes that the reader is an aspiring fiction writer to the extent that he instructs the reader to stop reading if he is not.  I found the book interesting, regardless of my non-existent desire to write fiction, because it demonstrates how one successful author cultivated his skills and develops his stories.  This book would be a welcome addition to any high school English curriculum.

Reading  On Writing made me want to read more of King's books, but I'm still a little afraid of the shadows in my closet.

Outsourcing international relations

I got a phone call from India the other day.  This is nothing new.  Even though I don't know anyone in India, I get many calls from the call centers there.

Like anyone with a telephone who has lived in the same place for more than a few months, we regularly get sales calls.  Everyone who has been subject to the litany of calls can attest to the poor timing; the calls inevitably happen just as you are getting home, just as you are cooking dinner, or just as you are sitting down to eat.  They call during that precious period between when you arrive home and that ill-defined time when it's considered too late to call, which for a telephone solicitor is, thankfully, earlier than it would be for a friend. 

What you may not know is that these calls also happen during your normal working hours.  I discovered this when I stopped work to take care of my child.  Now I can get an unsolicited sales call when I am feeding my son, changing his diaper, or putting him down for his nap.  The timing of the call is annoying because it happens when you are at home at all.  It is an invasion of our personal time (and space - I don't pay $30/month to have a phone line with the intent of making it easier for the telemarketers - wouldn't it be great if we could treat them like the trespassers that they are).

Okay, so you know how I feel about telephone solicitors, and my guess is that you share some of these feelings.  I'm probably not the only one who provides an abrupt response when I receive these calls.  My partner often engages in little games with the callers before telling them he's not interested.  I'm sure some people give the telephone solicitors an earful before they hang up.  I certainly have in the past.  My standard reply when I get a sales call now is "Not interested. Please remove me from your list.  Thank you."  Then I hang up the phone before they have the chance to try to convince me otherwise.  A few people are authentically sorry for bothering me and don't even try. Most callers I can hear starting their plea as the phone makes it's way
to the hook.

Like many things these days, the work of telephone solicitors is being outsourced overseas.  I rarely receive sales calls from rural Australia, even more rarely receive them from one of the major cities.  Virtually all of our sales calls come from India.  This may make economic sense to the companies using the call centers to sell their wares.  Labor is certainly cheaper in India than Australia.  It probably costs less to call from India to Melbourne than from Adelaide to Melbourne (if my international phone card is anything to go by).  And Indians speak English.  In theory, it's perfect.

Unfortunately for the poor Indians, and for the companies employing their services, they don't actually speak the same language.  Even though the grammar and much of the vocabulary is the same, the pronunciation is often so different that it is notably more difficult for a person from the US or Australia to understand someone from India than someone from their own country.  Furthermore, it is immediately obvious that the caller is not a native Australian, which increases my irritation with the company using the call center; not only are they paying someone to invade my time and space with annoying sales calls for things I don't want, but they won't even pay Australians to do it (probably because it's such a despicable job that Australians demand a lot of money to do it).  Unfortunately for the person on the other end of the phone line, they bear the brunt of this irritation.

Many of the people working in the Indian call centers probably do not have phones in their homes (according to the Economist, there are 4.4 land lines per 100 people in India - compare that with 54.1 and 60.8 land lines per 100 people for Australia and the US), and therefore do not understand how numerous and annoying sales calls are in countries like Australia.  They must think Australians (and this American living in Australia) are terribly rude.  But now, because of this peculiarity of international markets, there is probably more contact between Australians and Indians over sales calls than over cricket.

And that leads me to wonder what effect this new trend towards international call centers is having on international relations.

"TV is God"

...or so said a friend of mine some time ago.  I've always liked this thought, because whenever a TV is on, people can't help but watch, even when there's very little worth watching.  I dislike restaurants with TVs for this very reason, because the TVs draw my attention away from the people I'm with and the conversation I'm having.

Of course, the problem with TVs goes beyond restaurants.  Virtually all Americans and Australians now own at least one TV (some own many so they don't even have to pretend to be spending time with their family while they watch TV).  In Australia, unless you have cable, there are only two to seven channels, depending on where you live, which limits your nightly viewing options.  Still, I had somehow developed an addiction to shows four nights a week.

I recently gave up TV.  When the season finale of Grey's Anatomy was announced, my response was "Thank God" (you decide which one).  The Grey's Anatomy season finale meant I would no longer be tied to Meredith's weekly indecision about whether to stick with Dr. McDreamy.  It meant I was free to spend one more evening a week doing something else, like write blog entries, or read a good book, or talk with my spouse!  That's when I knew that I was ready to give up TV.

It was surprisingly easy.  Two things conspired to make it this way.  The first was the shift of dinner time to before my son's bedtime of 7:00 PM.  The second, was that the networks obliged me by showing all the season finales and then starting the typically uninspiring summer line up.  Every few evenings I wonder what's on the tube, and there have been a few times where I've just felt like watching, but then I remember that summer line up and decide to read a book instead.

Giving up TV has been great.  I have more time to get things done, I'm better rested, and I'm reading more than I have since college.

Unfortunately, I know that once the long dark of winter consumes Melbourne, I'll be sucked back in.  Hopefully, now that I've found so many other things to do during my evenings, I will only allow myself to watch one or two shows, the really good ones, if such a thing exists.

Raising children gets easier, I hope

When my son was about four months old the father of a young girl told me, "It only gets harder."  There aren't many crueler things a person can say to someone who hasn't had four consecutive hours sleep in almost six months.

I consoled myself, saying that if it never got easier no one would ever have a second child by choice.

Now my child is a year old.  Despite the occasional temper tantrum (which is a relatively new development), it is easier than it was when I heard that cruel remark eight months ago.  Maybe it's just a temporary reprieve, but then maybe a little rest was all I needed to be able to approach all the new challenges with a sense of humor.

Or maybe he just got off easy when his daughter was younger.

Books that changed the way I see the world, part 3: The Control of Nature

Four months after it was hit, New Orleans is still cleaning up from Hurricane Katrina.  The population of the city is down and city officials are lobbying the federal government for funds to build new and improved levees, reconstruct housing, and trying to encourage former residents to return. 

Okay, I must admit that I probably didn't change many of my preconceptions about the world from reading The Control of Nature, but I still found it fascinating.  John McPhee is one of those writers who can make any topic interesting, and in this book he provides three stories of man versus nature that seems particularly apropos in the aftermath of Katrina.  For instance, did you know that the Mississippi River has been trying to change course into the Red River and the Atchafalaya swamps for most of the last century.  It has been stopped by an ongoing dam project at Old River driven by the desire for New Orleans to continue to be a port.  While the Mississippi gets increasingly shallower and more likely to flood as it fills with silt, the amount of water flowing from the Mississippi river to the Red river has been frozen to the proportions from the 1950s at great expense because of economic interests!

This book is interesting for several reasons.  First, it illustrates how dependent our homes and property interests are to current geographical conditions.  Second, it demonstrates the exhaustive amount of energy people will use to protect their homes and their property interests from changes in those conditions.

Currently the population of New Orleans is less than one fourth the population prior to Katrina.  Some of these undoubtedly haven't returned because they do not have a place to return to.  Perhaps some of these people have decided that it's easier just to stay where they are now.  Some may have decided that New Orleans is too prone to flooding (if it weren't for all the levees the place would always be under water).  But then there are others who are trying very hard to make New Orleans livable and encourage people to return.

Do we insist on living in places that require continual control of nature because we are too stubborn (or lazy) to move or is it because we are running out of more suitable places?  Are the projects described in this book over the top or are they just extreme examples of the control we exert over nature everyday to make our existence comfortable?  The book answers neither of these questions, but it got me asking them.

Your thoughts?