Tabla de contenidos para June 2022 en Readers Digest Australia

In a few short weeks I will be going to watch my 40th performance of Les Misérables. I fell in love with the songs back in 1985 when they were first released – ‘Bring Him Home’, ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ and ‘On My Own’. Even though I hadn’t read the Victor Hugo novel and knew very little about the musical, the songs captured my attention and I happily sang along with gusto whenever I heard them on the radio. Fast forward five years and I embarked on a trip around the world with my wife and two-year-old daughter. On one of our stops in Vancouver, Canada, I saw a large advertising banner promoting Les Misérables and immediately suggested to my wife that we book tickets. On the drive to the…

When Katja Edler noticed tightness around her right shoulder in 2017, she assumed she’d been spending too much time at her desk. The 44-year-old book editor worked from home. About three months later, her symptoms were worse: “I got up one morning in a lot of pain and couldn’t lift my arm.” Edler met with an orthopaedic surgeon, who took an X-ray and then identified the problem: she had frozen shoulder. Also called adhesive capsulitis, the condition affects up to five per cent of people and occurs when the connective tissue surrounding the shoulder-joint capsule becomes inflamed. Over time, this tissue thickens and stiffens, causing pain and restricted movement. Eventually, even without treatment, the soft tissue will heal. But recovery can take one to three years – or more. “That’s…

She had been drifting in the cold Pacific water for a night and most of a day. Kept afloat by her orange life jacket, nine-year-old Desireé Rodriguez had watched helplessly as one family member after another let go of life. Just as she, too, began to give up, the skipper of a fishing boat spotted her bobbing in the water. Within minutes, the boat’s first officer leaped in and grabbed Desireé, pulling her back towards the boat – and life. That was 36 years ago, and the last time the rescuers and the girl saw one another. Until last year. May 18, 1986, was the kind of beautiful sunny day that regularly brought the Rodriguez family to California’s Catalina Island for some fishing on their 8.5-metre pleasure boat, the DC…

Traffic Stop The police pulled me over the other night and I recognised the officer. “Do you remember me?” I asked. “You used to play with my son.” “I don’t remember you,” he said. “But I do remember you just driving 65 in a 50-kilometre zone.” SUBMITTED BY MISIR DOOBAY Nine-Month Miracle My wife and I were at the hospital for her toe surgery, so she asked for a wheelchair. As we made our way to her appointment, one nurse approached us and said, “Congratulations.” It turned out the wheelchair was labelled ‘maternity’. We are 89 and 90 years old. Not So Yummy After being told that it’s rude to call his dinner “gross”, our four year old is finding increasingly creative ways to express himself: “This tastes unlucky to…

Annissa Jobb first limped into the office of Dr Riam S h a m m a a, a sports medicine and pain specialist in Toronto, in 2017. The personal support worker in long-term care homes was desperate for help after a decade of back pain due to an undiagnosed herniated disc. “It’s been my calling in life, taking care of people,” says Jobb, now 54. But working with frail seniors involves a lot of lifting, bending and pulling. It wasn’t an option to rest her injury. So she gritted her teeth through the worsening pain. “I had a drawer full of pain medication. None of it was working. I’d snap. My husband and I came close to getting divorced.” By November 2016, Jobb could scarcely walk 200 metres. “My family…

The Milky Way is shown here above the limestone pillars of the Pinnacles Desert in Western Australia. The band of lights that can be seen on clear nights is a galaxy that, according to estimates, consists of at least 100 billion stars. Its four spiral arms, made up of stars, gas and dust, curve out from a centre that contains a black hole. Our solar system – and, thus, the Earth – are part of the Milky Way. Optical fibres allow telecom providers to transport large volumes of data quickly. Unlike many conventional cables, those made of optical fibres transmit data not as an electrical signal but in the form of light. Fireflies are found on all continents except Antarctica. With the help of chemical processes in their abdomens, they…

FROM USA TODAY Every time I blinked awake, I would meet my mother’s eyes. My father, my brother and my baby sister were all asleep, sprawled across the floor in my dark apartment on the western edge of Kabul. They had fled just before the Taliban ransacked their home in Herat, in western Afghanistan, and now they were together for one more dusty sunrise. The Taliban had not yet knocked on my door, but we knew they would. I was 27, an educated single woman who asked too many questions and rarely wore a hijab. I was a working journalist, a member of the Shi’a Hazara ethnic group, daughter of an Afghan national soldier. In my dreams, I had tried to fight, to run. I’d pushed my way through chaos…

Reflections On Life ROBIN KEOWN We inherited more in the way of ‘wildlife’ than we ever expected after buying a retirement property in dense bush in New Zealand seven years ago. All manner of native and introduced birds serenade us all day long, along with ground-dwelling birds, such as weka, pukeko and quail. Quail in New Zealand were originally introduced from California. They were intended as game birds as they are quite plump and tasty, and people eat the eggs. Recently we noticed a male quail tiptoeing down the path, in inimitable quail style, to our downstairs flat where he gazed at himself in the window’s reflection. We soon realised that it was not vanity which had prompted this behaviour. Instead, he was searching for his mate. Some days earlier…

You would never guess by simply looking at me, a hard, brown, crinkly seed, that I was once such a fought-over commodity that Manhattan Island (where part of New York now stands) was swapped in a deal to secure a monopoly on my trade. But wait, let me introduce myself: I am nutmeg, I am one of the most important spices in history. Native to the Banda Islands, a tiny volcanic archipelago situated in the Banda Sea between Indonesia and West Papua, I was introduced to Constantinople by Arabian traders in the sixth century, where they kept my source top secret so they could charge outrageous prices. However, I am also mentioned in Indian Hindu scriptures as early as 1500 BCE and in China in 3 CE, where I was…

A SNOW-WHITE BEACH as far as the eye can see! Shell Beach in Western Australia stretches for more than 70 kilometres inside the Shark Bay World Heritage area. The name says it all, because what is sparkling in the sunlight here is not sand but billions of tiny shells up to ten metres deep. They all come from a single species of mollusc, the Shark Bay cockle. In the past, these were pressed and cut into blocks to build houses in the nearby town of Denham.…

Are there things that took you years to discover? It was only a decade ago that someone explained to me about the petrol tank thing. On the dashboard of your car, there’s nearly always a drawing of a petrol pump plus an arrow indicating the side of your car that houses the petrol cap. Bingo. With various cars over 30 years, I’d tried to remember each time I drove in to fill up. I’d crane around, trying to spot it. I’d pull the petrol latch as I drove, hoping the door would spring into view. It was all pointless. I’d always it wrong, ending up with the hose pulled tight over the car, trying to stretch another millimetre out of the rubber tube so I could lever the nozzle into…

Antonio De Lorenzi takes a seat onstage in the concert hall of the Museo del Violino in Cremona, Italy, and carefully tucks a Stradivarius under his chin. The violin, crafted in 1727 and called Vesuvio, gleams in the soft light of the auditorium. Through an earpiece, the soloist hears a metronomic beat as a voice says, “Go”. De Lorenzi draws his bow across the lowest string and plays G for half a beat. He pauses, then follows with A-flat. Then A. He moves up the scale, never changing his pace as he works through all four strings. Once he finishes, he repeats the exercise, this time sounding each tone just a bit faster. This is no ordinary concert. Outside, police have cordoned off the street to traffic. Inside, workers have shut down the heater despite…

Movies Jurassic World Dominion Sci-Fi/Thriller In the conclusion to the epic Jurassic Park franchise, Jeff Goldblum’s character Dr Ian Malcolm states: “We are racing towards the extinction of our species. We don’t only lack dominion over nature, we’re subordinate to it,” which gives you good insight into how the movie will play out. This bold, new adventure takes place four years after the remote volcanic island Isla Nublar was destroyed – where Jurassic Park was developed and dinosaurs were resurrected and displayed to the public. Now, dinosaurs live and hunt alongside humans all over the world. However, the balance between man and beast is fragile to say the least, and will reshape the future of the world and determine, once and for all, whether humans will remain its apex predators. Starring…

Crossword Test your general knowledge. ACROSS 1 Cave in (8) 6 Calls on (6) 9 A ten-dollar banknote (6) 10 Wide view of an extensive area (8) 11 Resident of eg, Fiji, Samoa or Tonga (8) 12 Fast (6) 16 Reflected sound (4) 18 Storage centre (5) 22 Ruin (5) 23 Breeding place or colony of rooks (7) 24 Give consent (5) 25 The devil (5) 28 60% of the world’s population lives here (4) 32 25% equals a ______(6) 35 Snakes (8) 36 Appreciative (8) 37 Water closet (6) 38 Insecure knot (6) 39 Slaughter (8) DOWN 2 Supervise (7) 3 Once upon a time (4,3) 4 Procession (6) 5 Die (6) 6 Disappear (6) 7 Rush (5) 8 Shy (5) 13 Welsh county (5) 14 Vigorous action (5)…

As a child growing up in Nairobi, Kenya, looking up at the stars wasn’t something school children were encouraged to do. For Susan Murabana, that changed in her early 20s when she encountered her first telescope and spotted Saturn. “Seeing something I had only read about in a textbook made me realise how small we really are,” says Murabana, who is now an astronomer. In 2014, Murabana’s husband was so inspired by how studying space had opened up Murabana’s life, the couple decided to give kids this experience by creating an educational programme. Called ‘The Travelling Telescope’, they criss-cross Kenya bringing astronomy education and a portable planetarium to schools and communities. So far, they’ve met with more than 300,000 children. Kids can’t resist the lure of the telescope and the…

Ken Scott kicked off his blankets and leapt out of bed at his home in the Rocky Mountain town of Mullan, Idaho. It was 6am on January 7, 2020, and he was on a mission: he’d just heard on the radio that Silver Mountain Resort had been blessed with more than 40 centimetres of new snow. A self-confessed ski addict who’d worked in the industry for the last 30 years as a ski patroller and equipment salesperson, there was no way Ken was going to miss this ‘big dump’ of powder. It’s what skiers live for – even veterans like Ken who, at 57, still skied 100 days a year. His wife, Ruth, spent just as much time on the slopes, but she wouldn’t be able to join him. When…

Paying It Forward A woman was getting swamped with calls from strangers because a billing service had launched a number that was identical to hers. When she called the service to complain, she was told to get a new number. “I’ve had mine for 20 years,” she pleaded. “Couldn’t you change yours?” The company refused, so she said, “Fine. From now on, I’m going to tell everyone who calls that their bill is paid in full.” GCFL.NET Friendly Game Sandy began a job as a school counsellor and was eager to help. One day, she noticed a girl standing by herself at one end of a playing field while the rest of the kids enjoyed a game of soccer at the other. Sandy approached the girl and asked if she…

IN THE AUTUMN OF 1988, when I was ten years old, my parents moved us to a bigger house on the other side of town. I was forced to leave the familiarity of St Paul’s and become ‘the new kid’ at St Teresa’s: a one-hallway school with no gym, where the other kids in my Grade 5 class had been together since kindergarten. I struggled to break into the crowd and spent recesses playing hopscotch alone, gazing longingly at the other kids as they traded their cookies and Fruit Roll-Ups. I was lonely and desperate to make a friend. One school day in early December, shortly after the move, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and headed to my designated spot at the kitchen table. The radio was tuned…

A young man in a T-shirt and jeans exchanges a few words in Arabic with the middle-aged woman baking flatbreads over an open flame in a tiny bakery. She cuts one and gives him a slice. It’s my second day in Marseille and, curious, I’ve stopped to watch. I’ve seen small neighbourhood places like this in the Middle East but did not expect to find one in this southern French city. The customer turns to me with a welcoming smile. “Tourist?” he asks, as he drops a coin on the counter. He takes a bite of his bread and walks off down the narrow street without waiting for a reply. I’m on the Rue Rodolphe Pollak in the Noailles area of Marseille, France’s second largest city and its oldest, and…

As I sat in my lounge listening to my neighbours shriek on the balcony, again, I was at my wit’s end. But two weeks later, as they partied, everything had changed… and the reason was a little technique called ‘pig wrestling’. So, could it change your life, too? Pig wrestling is a problem-solving technique created by British performance psychologists Pete Lindsay and Mark Bawden, and introduced in their book, Pig Wrestling: The Brilliantly Simple Way to Solve Any Problem… and Create the Change You Need. The name comes from a famous saying by George Bernard Shaw, “I learned long ago, never to wrestle a pig. You get dirty and besides, the pig likes it.” The authors say that ‘unsolvable’ problems are like pigs, the more you wrestle with them the…