Tabla de contenidos para November 2021 en Readers Digest Australia

WHY WOULD ANYONE in their right mind leave New Zealand right now, home to Auckland, the world’s ‘most liveable’ city and run by a leader recently declared by Fortune magazine as the world’s greatest? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself since I returned to the UK at the end of June; the country where I was born is registering over 30,000 new cases of COVID-19 every day at the moment, while New Zealand, where I’d spent 2021, so far remains pretty much COVID-free. Despite being a New Zealand citizen, I’d never been to Aotearoa before I arrived there at the start of 2021. A Kiwi passport is arguably one of the most sought-after items in the world right now and I have a small house in Stratford, New Zealand,…

OPEN YOUR WINDOWS The air circulating indoors is up to five times more polluted than what’s wafting around outside. Pollutants include mould, building materials and products you use around the home. Fine particles can get into the lungs, bloodstream and organs. Poor indoor air quality has been linked to asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and even lung cancer. Ventilate your home as often as possible. CURB HOUSEHOLD CHEMICALS Perhaps less surprisingly, cleaning products can also contain noxious chemicals, giving rise to asthma or allergies. A Norwegian study found that women who used cleaning products regularly had a greater decline in lung function than those who were less house-proud. We’re not suggesting you keep a dirty home, but you might want to opt for allergy-friendly products and avoid sprays, which…

Primatologist and research scientist Andie Ang, PhD, grew up with an extended family of animals – cats, dogs, birds and fish filled the family home in Singapore. Then, in 1995, her father saw some sailors mistreating a small young monkey. Bringing the African vervet monkey home, he added it to the family’s menagerie. Just ten at the time, Ang clearly remembers her excitement on first seeing the golden-furred little monkey. She named him Ah Boy and they soon became close companions. “I would cycle through the neighbourhood and Ah Boy would tag along,” recalls Ang. “Neighbours would stop to look and comment,‘Oh, so cute!’” Ah Boy ate whatever her mother prepared for the family’s lunch and dinner. He also quickly developed a daily routine of climbing onto Ang’s shoulders to…

If Tooth Be Told My dentist, looking at my dental X-ray, muttered, “Where is your wisdom tooth, man? I can’t see it here!” He continued to look at the X-ray film and stopped at a specific shaded area and said, “Here we go. It is hidden down here!” My wife, who was also waiting in the room, commented, “I am not surprised at all, doctor. His wisdom is not immediately obvious most of the time, to be fair!” SUBMITTED BY PAUL JOSEPH RICHARD Stuffing His Face My husband was most displeased with the jar of pimiento-stuffed green olives he had recently bought. “They’re just not vinegary,” he said. “They were vinegary enough when I ate them,” said our youngest son. “When did you eat them?” I asked. “This morning. I…

High Roller A frog appears in front of Patricia Whack, a bank teller, and asks: “Ms Whack, I’d like to obtain a bank loan, on consideration of this blue marble elephant as collateral.” Patricia goes to her manager, who asks to see this talking frog in person. As it turns out, his name is Kermit Jagger, and he is the son of Mick Jagger. The manager promptly nods in approval, and Patricia cannot believe what she is witnessing. So she whispers in his ear, “Sir, are you sure about this? I mean, not considering the fact that he’s a frog, his collateral is a blue marble elephant. I mean, what the heck is a blue marble elephant?” The bank manager replies: “It’s a knickknack, Patti Whack. Give the frog a…

We lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all.AMANDA GORMAN, SPOKEN POET AND ACTIVIST I am not the richest, smartest or most talented person in the world, but I succeed because I keep going and going and going.SYLVESTER STALLONE, ACTOR REMEMBER, TODAY IS THE TOMORROW YOU WORRIED ABOUT YESTERDAY.DALE CARNEGIE, WRITER Listen to your body. I listen to mine and every day it tells me not to do Zumba.AMY SCHUMER, COMEDIAN If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he…

Also Serving Rocky Road Ice Cream After a full year of street closures and incessant jackhammering, Natalie Naquin Harvey had had enough of the never-ending roadwork on her New Orleans street. So Harvey found a (bitter) sweet way to get even: she threw a birthday party for the repair, complete with party hats, balloons, and, of course, a cake, which she decorated with construction equipment, a Road Closed sign, and a street in shambles – much like the scene outside her front door. “Happy first birthday to our street construction!” she posted on Facebook beneath a photo of her posing beside a construction excavator. “It was one year ago this week when they first began to rip up our street. One year later, half the street is impassable – just…

Simbo the Great USULA P. WIJESURIYA When we decided to adopt a dog, my son, Udaya, aged 12 and an avid Enid Blyton fan, claimed this dog was going to be his version of Timmy, the wonder dog from the Famous Five books. He named him Simbo and took full charge of the crossbreed German shepherd; feeding him, brushing him and allowing him to sleep on his bed. They were inseparable. Together they went on endless treks in our neighbourhood. Ours was the ideal location for adventures because our house stood on the banks of a lake with plenty of scrub jungle around. One day, while Udaya was at school, I was in the living room writing at my desk. My youngest child, who was two at that time, was…

How do you make the ordinary extraordinary? Add a little sprinkle of me, that’s how. I, warm, aromatic cinnamon, can turn the humdrum into the striking, boring into exotic. From stewed apples and porridge to rich Middle Eastern cuisine, sweet buns and desserts, I put the razzamatazz into your food. So, it’s hardly surprising that I was highly prized among ancient nations where I was regarded a gift worthy of kings and gods. With my place of birth kept top secret by those who plied my trade, I was something of a mystery to the ancients. To fill the void of my origins, elaborate stories were invented. Today, one would describe the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus’s (c. 484-425 BCE) account of me as pure fiction when he wrote that I…

TO KEEP THEIR FEET DRY, these farmhands float in large boat-like bowls near Huai‘an, China, to harvest ‘water caltrop’ – or in the local lingo, lingjiao. This method has proven the best way to pick the ‘water chestnuts’, which are the fruit of a type of aquatic plant that grows in slow-moving marshes, ponds or other shallow waters. A sweet white seed is found in a pink shell-like pod when freshly picked. As the pod dries, it darkens and starts to resemble a bat or a horned bull’s head. Its sweet flavour makes these water fruit popular snacks, and a welcome ingredient in casseroles – adding a rich autumn profile to a well-prepared meal.…

Having lived my whole life in the city, the countryside takes some getting used to. A couple of years ago, my husband and I traded a city duplex for a 19th-century farmhouse, and soon discovered what happens when you run out of milk for your coffee. Either you borrow your neighbour’s cows, literally, or you drive 15 kilometres to the ‘corner store’ over gravelly, pot-holed roads. Also, it requires sufficient fuel. In the city we mostly walked or took public transport. If we had to drive, we would fill up at the petrol station at the end of our block. But here, the nearest station is – according to Google Maps – precisely 30.2 kilometres in the opposite direction from the corner store. Either you make a habit of keeping…

Cows Theory My professor once went to hear the esteemed French philosopher Jacques Derrida speak. The entire talk was about cows; everyone was flummoxed but listened carefully and took notes about … cows. There was a short break, and when Derrida came back, he announced, “I’m told it is pronounced ‘chaos’. ” @pmgentry Wrong Thread While out walking with my son, a doctor, I fell and cut my hand. Quickly realising that the injury would require sutures, he voicetexted his nurse: “My mum has a bad cut. I’m on the way to the office to sew her up.” His ‘smart’ phone transcribed the last part of his message: “I am on the way to the office to sober up.” SUBMITTED BY TERRY KELLEN Pushing The Envelope What happens when you…

Tonya Brigham could never resist a good sudoku – or any sudoku. The 50-year-old smoothie-shop owner and mother of two wrestled with the puzzles while waiting in lines and raced to solve them in record time using strategies plucked from YouTube videos. “If it’s a 30-minute puzzle, I try to figure it out in 12,” she says. “Sudoku lets me challenge myself, take a breather, and then go back into the world’s chaos.” After several years of playing sudoku, Brigham noticed something unexpected: her brain seemed sharper and more focused. “I didn’t have much, if any, brain fog during menopause,” she says. At work, she found she could easily put together employee work schedules in her head. “A lot of stores use an electronic scheduling tool, but I have all…

After five years of silence, the distinct low growling sounds of female kiwis and the high shrieks of the males are being heard again – much to the excitement of the 150 volunteer bird conservationists who conducted the latest audio survey. Fifty per cent of sites that were silent in 2016 had kiwi calling in 2021. And not one site had become silent in the last year. The survey, called the Kiwi Call Count, is conducted manually using the human ear as well as listening devices to record population numbers of New Zealand’s five kiwi species, assessing the status of the birds in any given area. The kiwi’s call is the most reliable way to track them. In the early 1990s, trapping was introduced as a kiwi-saving action plan to…

When the alarm woke Oksana Samkova on January 12 this year, she rolled over and looked out her bedroom window to check on the weather. That evening she was heading out on a night dive at Port Noarlunga in the St Vincent Gulf, 30 kilometres south of Adelaide, as part of her advanced scuba diving course. Instead of the calm, sunny day she had hoped for, what she saw was grey, blustery weather – with the wind so strong it was sending her outdoor furniture flying. A little panicked, Ukrainian-born Oksana called the diving company to find out if the night dive had been called off. But they assured her that the weather would settle down. The dive would go ahead. That evening at sunset, around 8.30pm, the group of…

Thomas Muller-Rorich fell into a depression while on holiday with his family back in 1992, when he was 38. Thomas found himself inexplicably unhappy, irritable and tense. He yelled at his children for playing noisily and picked fights with his wife over nothing. After returning home, his mood didn’t lift; he lost his appetite and couldn’t concentrate at the electrical engineering firm that he ran. Two years later, he was formally diagnosed with depression. Shortly after he began experiencing insomnia, waking at 4am with anxious feelings that prevented him from falling back asleep, making it even harder for him to be productive. “The combination of depression and insomnia definitely made things worse,” says Thomas, now 67. “I felt empty and numb, and that everything I had done in life was…

WE WERE LUCKY. We got our flat tyre as we drove into the Mount Barnett Roadhouse on Western Australia’s notorious Gibb River Road. Luckier still, three burly guys changed our tyre, with dire warnings to get to the Over The Range service station to fix it, pronto. Otherwise, well … I guess that’s why our rented four-wheel drive came with a satellite phone, an emergency locator and 40 litres of water. My wife, Jean, and I had wanted to experience one of the English-speaking world’s most remote places that non-explorers can navigate on their own: the Kimberley region, an area in the northwestern corner of Australia, much bigger than Germany or Japan, with a population of just 34,000 people. And in May 2018, we got the chance to visit. The…

Crosswise Test your general knowledge. ACROSS 1 Baby’s garment (5) 4 Bizarre (9)  10 Liverpool English; Liverpudlian (6) 11 Cooking pot (8)  12 Spoke quietly (9) 13 Yellowish-brown colour (5) 15 Dated (3,3)  17 Tender of sheep (8) 19 Paper-cutting instrument (8)  21 Uncover (6) 22 Transport (5)  24 Magyar (9) 27 Sheath for a sword (8)  28 Degrees in a right angle (6) 29 Hard water weather event (9)  30 Root vegetable (5) DOWN 2 Boozy (9)  3 Saint -----, London cathedral (5) 5 Ulcer (7) 6 Tense (4)  7 Old ocean liner, perhaps (9) 8 Icon (5) 9 Depression (9) 14 Cleansing agent (9) 16 Brother of Hannibal; Carthaginian general (9)  18 Got going again (9)  20 Tremble (7) 23 Capital of Ghana (5) 25 Regenerate (5)  26…