Uta’s Diary

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Last month we had many very warm days. There were plenty of opportunities for me to dip into some water. I enjoyed this very much! I think the following picture was taken on Thursday, the 24th of Jan 2019. We met Monika with little Carter (2) at Dapto Pool. And a bit later Ebony joined us with Lucas (6) and Alexander (4).

DSCN5069 — This is Ebony with Alexander and Lucas

DSCN5073

So, it is February now. After a few very hot days when the temperature went up to close to 40C, it is all of a sudden remarkably cooler. We even have quite a bit of rain today.

A couple of days ago, on Thursday, we spent quite some time in Stockland Shellharbour. Peter was able to settle the payment that occurred due to the car accident from the other week. The lady at the NRMA branch office was extremely helpful. To visit the bracnh office was a good idea. Communication was so much better than on the phone. It would have been too difficult for Peter to settle everything on the phone. Being in the Stockland Shellharbour Shopping Centre on that day, had also the advantage that we had air-conditioning. I mean it felt pleasantly cool in the Shopping Centre, whereas outside we had 39C on that day. However later in the afternoon the temperature dropped by about 20 degrees, and there were some strong gusts of rather cool wind!

We had some coffee in the Shopping Centre. And we bought grapes, peaches, honeydew, sprouts, some lovely stone baked sourdough bread plus a lot of other things in a huge fresh food store.

Now I still want to mention a few things about the accident. In that area in front of the Stockland Shellharbour Shopping Centre, where the accident occurred, there should perhaps be some speed restrictions. That would make it much easier for people to line up in the correct lane. So there are two lanes. One leads accross an intersection straight ahead, the other one also leads to the intersection with traffic lights and with the possibility to turn off right to another intersection with traffic lights. We wanted to go straight ahead. We had come from ALDI furter down on the right side. With no problem at all Peter joined the right lane where a lot of cars had piled up. They were all standing waiting to be able to move to the intersection. There were no cars in the left lane which Peter wanted to join for he had planned to go straight ahead when crossing the intersection. Peter looked whether there were any cars coming from behind on the left lane. There were no cars. So he indicated he wanted to turn into the right lane. Maybe this is where his mistake was. I mean he would never change lanes without indicating. I am sure this comes automatically. But why not first indicate and then look whether the lane was clear? It is possible that he indicated a f t e r he looked back and then proseeded rather slowly but without looking back again. In the meantime a car bumped into him that definitely had not been going slowly for in front of that car there were no other cars. If that cardriver had been able to see Peter’s indicator, she would probably have slowed down. But apparently for some reason she had not been able to see Peter’s indicator and Peter had not seen her approaching. Peter thought it was best to admit his fault and pay for part on the other car’s damage. The NRMA insurance comes up for the rest if the damage is such that there is more to pay. We think the door on the other car probably needs replacing.

Australia Day

The ABC published a beautifully written article by Stan Grant:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-26/stan-grant-on-australia-day/10747000?fbclid=IwAR2IQctTKi1iBWuN-SEsHfC2RzvRdAMYXg_v4x2JaalUpxnxOtTLP49Eo8I

Peter said I could copy what he wrote yesterday. Here are his thoughts on Australia Day:

Peter Hannemann <peter_hannemann@msn.com>

“Today is Australia Day. And I want all of you to have a great day if you can during this massive heatwave. Kids take drugs at concerts around the country and adults down beers as they watch their BBQ turning meat into charcoal. Australia Day has in the last few years turned into a day of controversy. For the Aborigines of this ancient continent, it is “Sorry Day”. They remember it as their “Day of Infamy”. But we also have great people in Australia who are able to verbalise what is going on. Stan Grant is such a person. He is a unique person who unites in himself all the DNA of the Indigenous people and the early settlers. His forbearers were standing across each other on that fateful day in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillips dropped anchor in Port Jackson and let his cargo of misfits disembark. This is the day we are celebrating today with as much jingoistic noise as we can. But Stan Grant offers us another view of what is happening in Australia. His head is full of the combined memory of Kooei and European culture. Please, make the time on this Australia Day 2019 and read his contribution. ” (The link to his article is at the top of this page!)

SO, THIS IS WHAT PETER WROTE FOR AUSTRALIA DAY. AND NOW I ALSO WANT TO MENTION THAT I DID SEE YESTERDAY A LOT OF VERY INTERESTING PROGRAMS ON ABC AND ON SBS. There was a very good program on SBS about the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean that are an Australian Territory since 1955. The islands’ history and present population is full of controversy. The problems that are pointed too are thought provoking.

And this morning I found a few interesting links in connection with Australia Day. Here are some of the links:

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/meredith-lake/10607482

Dr.Meredith Lake has this program Soul Search that I find quite interesting:

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/soul-search/

Luke Pearson says: “I want an Australia that’s worth celebrating.” He insists that we must change the country. Please read up on it here:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/16/i-no-longer-support-changethedate-we-must-change-the-country

Sorry, these are a lot of links. I already glanced at a lot of these articles. It seems to me we live in very interesting times of change. There is definitely a lot of change in the air. Whether these changes are good for all of us or only for a few, who can tell?

Uta’s Diary

The day after. After what? Well, on the way home yesterday we had a little incident. Luckily nobody got hurt. There is only a little bit of damage on two cars, ours and someone else’s.

I the meantime Peter found the insurance papers for our car on the internet! He reckons he could copy them and install them on his phone so he could look them up anytime.

This reminded me how flustered and helpless I felt yesterday when Peter went looking through all the papers in the glovebox of the car and couldn’t find the insurance papers. I felt awful not being able to help him in any way while the nice very polite lady from the other car was left standing in the hot afternoon sun.

Uta’s Diary

Our house is pleasantly cool now after several very hot days and nights.

Last Sunday we had a very good time in Sydney celebrating with family and friends Yittah’s 75th birthday. This was a great occasionfor all of us!

dscn5030 — At this restaurant we had brunch to celebrate Yittah’s Birthday!

http://kazbah.com.au/balmain/

Peter and I are spending this weekend at home in Dapto. It is now already Sunday afternoon. It feels to me that yesterday and today were very normal days for us. Having done some shopping on Friday, we had plenty of food in the house. Since the great heat had left us, we felt like doing a bit more cooking over the weekend. On Saturday we also spent a bit of time doing some cleaning of the house. Peter did the vaccuming. I soon got tired of wiping the floor. I did get very, very tired and soon rested a bit, and then rested a bit more. Peter and I played some Rummicub Games. We also watched some great programs on RBB (Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg). Yes, Peter has no problem getting these programs in from far, far away. This is really amazing technic!

After several nights when the room temperature did not go below 27C, last night the room temperature had gone down to 24C, and this felt really cool to us. The outside temperature went even further down during the night. This morning when we woke up, it was only 22C outside, inside it was still 24C despite our open window. Anyhow, we felt really refreshed and went for our usual morning walk, had our usual Sunday breakfast with soft boiled eggs, watched on TV the news (including a speech by President Trump!) and then at 9 am the news from Germany. After the German news we had a very pleasant morning tea. Before having to start cooking lunch, I had a bit over an hour left. I felt somehow quite energetic. I thought this was maybe a good time to spend the hour to investigate what sort of writing needed to be sorted out. So I took time out to look through a box of old stuff I had not been looking at for quite some time. It mostly contained papers from the early 2000s. But there was also some writing from August 1957. I was in hospital at the time, having delivered our first born child on the 28th of August 1957. In the hospital I seem to have had plenty of time for writing, since the hours when I was allowed to see my precious baby were few and far between. For some reason they seem to have thought that babies were best kept in the nursery under the care of the sisters. Only for a few very restricted times were the babies be brought to their mothers for breast feeding.

I said that on Saturday, after a bit of cleaning in the morning, I soon felt very, very tired. I had acually planned on visiting a couple of neighbouring properties that were open for inspection yesterdy at certain times during the morning and early afternoon. There are two villas that are for sale for about half a million Dollars each, and they belong to our complex of ten villas. I had been interested in finding out how well these properties had been renovated as compared to our villa that we have lived in for nearly 25 years now. I feel that our poor house has not been sufficiently renovated over the years. Let’s just say it looks ‘well lived in’. Well, yesterday was the first time that an open house was advertised. Most likely there are going to be other open days before suitable buyers are being found. So maybe next time I’ll feel up to it to have a look. After all, these houses are only a few steps from our house.

Uta’s Diary January 2019

Summer in Australia

The apricots and cherries were very good this summer! We had plenty of fruit for Christmas.

We are in Dapto, New South Wales, in the Illawarra of Australia. So far we had a very warm, but not too warm summer, whereas in lots of places of Australia the temperature went well over 40C for days on end this. Where we are, I think the highest temperature so far has been about 37C, and then going quickly down to maybe 35C so that the temperature in our house never went above 30C. When it is very humid, this sometimes feels quite hot. Then we have the ceiling fans going all the time.

With a very balmy temperature and no wind it is very pleasant to romp around in our beautiful Dapto Public Pool! Our Council provides a lot of Public Pools. You can see it here: http://www.wollongong.nsw.gov.au/facilities/beachespools/pages/pools.aspx#gref

For extreme heat days we do have an air conditioning set that is portable. We can set it up in any room that we like to cool. Usually we do not need to set this thing up. Only when the outside temperature goes above 40C we resort to it, for then the inside temperature might go well above 30C and a respite is very welcome! Sometimes the nights are quite hot too. Then of course we cover ourselves only with a sheet. Luckily, the last couple of nights were very much cooler after we have had some extremely hot nights. So we could use our blankets again! To have only 20C feels rather cool!

These are the surrounds of the Dapto solar heated Pool

Favorite Children’s Books

Please go to my other site here to read about my favorite children’s books:

https://auntielive.wordpress.com/2019/01/06/favorite-childrens-books-part-three/

How do you cope with being lied to?

“Das verstehst du noch nicht, du bist ja noch so klein . . . ”

(This you cannot understand yet, you are still too young for this . . . )

This is one of my earliest memories about how Mum would have talked to me. However, Dad would never have talked to me like this. This is how I remember it anyhow. Dad always tried to explain everything to me.

When I was sixteen, I had the chance to meet my Dad for a few hours. He told me that Mum had divorced him . Didn’t she tell you this, he asked me. As a matter of fact, no, she had not bothered to let me know anything about the divorce! In the end I think I told myself that she probably meant well, that she just did not want me to get upset! Was I upset then? My word, I was. When I was young and still living with my mother, I could never adjust to the way Mum treated me. No matter how well she meant, she managed to upset me very, very often in lots of ways!

The same kind of being extremely upset I do experience when politicians in power deliberately keep things from the electorate or spread outright lies!!

A gentle Exercise Class

The following is something I wrote in 2011:

“Thursdays I usually go to a class here in Dapto. It’s a gentle exercise class with Marta Venegas. This class is to improve core strength and balance. I like these classes. Marta always brings stimulating music along. She sees to it that we keep up with a bit of dancing and also some more serious fitness training. Some of the exercises can be done sitting or standing. This class is breaking up next week. The break lasts to the beginning of February! I must aim at going to the swimming pool more often to maintain some kind of fitness.”

This class is still going on Thursdays with Marta as instructor and I still love to go to these classes! Sadly a lot of people did drop out over the years without sufficient replacements. However I do hope that the class is going to continue next year. It would be a pity if it had to stop because of too few people attending regularly. We do have a break now that goes till the first Thursday in February. There is always a summer break like this for the class. I hope enough people are going to turn up in February so that the class can be continued!

Memories from 2011 about Christmas and some other Subjects

https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/

Following is something I wrote in November 2007 and I published it in 2011. It sounds like I could have written it today.

“Time is running out? . . . how much time do I have left? With every year time seems to be getting more precious. Whatever I still want to do in life, I should be doing it soon, very soon. There is no need to panic. It is just this feeling in me that I ought not to waste time; in other words, I should make the best use of it I possibly can. Making time for reflections as I do right now, I do not regard this as a waste of time. It nourishes my soul, it makes me look forward to spend the day in a productive way. There are the Christmas preparations to consider. How can I keep them to a minimum with that special Christmas Spirit in mind? Some spiritual songs usually help me along to get into the mood. Even in shopping centres the odd Christmas song can bring about temporary elation, a feeling of peace and comfort in a buzzing shopping centre! And even if this sort of mood happens only for brief moments while doing the shopping , it is still appreciated and helps to cope with the mad commercialism that surrounds us everywhere.

The special food at Christmas I like very much. On the other hand I hate it, if food is being wasted. I rather have not too much food of everything. How awful, if food has to be thrown out because we cannot keep it fresh enough in the Australian heat once it leaves the fridge. There may be one and a half dozen people at our family gathering. People bring food along. I would like to keep the food that I am going to provide to a strict minimum. Unfortunately I know already that this is an impossibility at Christmas time! I suppose I’ll just have to grin and bear it. I am determined to make the most of the Christmas Spirit where-ever I may come across it and enjoy the closeness of family and friends. Indeed I am looking forward to a Joyful and Happy Christmas. I did not always feel joyful and happy at Christmas time: There are some happy memories about Christmas, but there are also some very unhappy ones . . . . May the truly happy hours at Christmas time be plentiful and greatly outnumber the sad and lonely hours! This is what I wish for everyone.

This is the link to some more posts I published in 2011:

https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/

These posts from 2011 have the following titles:

Daddy’s Anger: https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/17/memories/

MY MOTHER: https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/17/out-of-last-years-files/

After the War (1945):

https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/12/after-the-war-1945/

Reflections

Post W W II: https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/11/reflections/

In Love with Leipzig:

https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/10/in-love-with-leipzig/

OUR LUCKY ESCAPE; https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/08/our-lucky-escape/

My Family’s Reaction https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/06/575/

https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/06/thirty-three-years-ago/

https://auntyuta.com/2011/12/05/utas-diary/

So the following is still something I did publish in Decermber of 2011:

“5th of December, our second daughter’s birthday; the youngest daughter’s birthday is coming up in four days. The two girls are exactly twenty years apart!

Tomorrow, Tuesday, is Thai Yoga for beginners with Chaija Noradechanunt from the University of Wollongong. In the pamphlet it says:

‘Enjoy stretches, breathing work and relaxation practices in a women only place.’

On Tuesday, the 13th December, is going to be the last class for this year.

I like these Thai Yoga classes. I hope they’re going to continue next year. For the Thai Yoga I go to Coniston, which is two trainstops away from where I live. The Older Women’s Network hire the Community Hall in Coniston for these classes. They say:

‘You’re in good company with Illawarra OWN Wellness Centre. What is a Wellness Centre?

A Wellness Centre provides older women with a different model of health and wellbeing. We offer a holistic approach to improving and maintaining health and coping with illness by providing a variety of choices for healthy living. The Wellness Centre provides an informal, friendly and supportive environment.

We are committed to:

. Flexible, “drop in” attendance

. Learning from each other, as well as from health professionals

. Consumer involvement & participation

‘Social isolation is a threat to the well being and health of us all. As women tend to live longer than men, they are more likely to feel isolated. Being on a limited income further restricts many people and decreases our ability to lead full and productive lives. To enjoy healthy senior years our minds and bodies need to be active and we need to do all we can to ensure we foster a willingness to stay well by keeping active.

An older woman is generally considered to be 50 years and over. Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Women aged 45 Years and over. All are welcome at the Wellnes Centre.’

Thursdays I usually go to a class here in Dapto. It’s a gentle exercise class with Marta Venegas. This class is to improve core strength and balance. I like these classes. Marta always brings stimulating music along. She sees to it that we keep up with a bit of dancing and also some more serious fitness training. Some of the exercises can be done sitting or standing. This class is breaking up next week. The break lasts to the beginning of February! I must aim at going to the swimming pool more often to maintain some kind of fitness.

My laptop is playing up sometimes. I think I need to take it for another service.”

The Story of Valentines Bakehouse

https://www.valentinessourdough.com.au/our-story

“The Valentine’s artisan sourdough bakery and coffee shop operates out of three locations – Rutherglen, Albury and Wodonga.”

Recently Peter and I had a lunch break at Wodonga. We went to the Valentine’s coffee shop in Wodonga. The bread was very much to our liking. There were a variety of fresh healthy options to go with the bread. And the coffee was very good too.

We had been staying overnight in Gundagai and were on our way back home to Dapto. We were travelling in our ancient Audi. Peter’s driving went very well. He loves driving the Audi long distances. The Hume Motorway is not a bad road to drive on.

Australia Day can be a time for hope, not resentment – This is what Stan Grant says.

After the War (1945):

In Love with Leipzig: