Lifestyle

It would have seemed like an innocent enough question.

Loss of a child in pregnancy is a daily occurrence but rarely spoken about. Picture: File

Standing at the supermarket checkout, struggling slightly with a bulging belly as I hoisted heavy bags into the trolley, with no children in tow: ‘Will this be your first baby?’

The answer should be simple. If a one word response will suffice, I’ll have no problem. No, this is not my first baby, my first pregnancy. It is my seventh.

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  • Monique says:

    09:08pm | 13/02/10

    Interesting.  As a woman, I felt unable to talk about the loss of our boy twin, at 16 weeks,  with my husband.  I always felt that even though my husband grieved, he just wanted to put it all behind us and focus on our surviving girl twin as well as… Read more »

  • Liz says:

    04:18pm | 03/02/10

    Men suffer undoubtedly and glad it is being addressed but why bring competition into it?Very sad as if there isn’t enough pain and suffering around in this situation.Hope that those of you still with emotional pain will seek professioanl help and not try to go it alone.If you find the… Read more »

 

[Editors’ note: This is in response to an article published in The Punch on Monday about 10-hour, four-day working weeks. Michael Honey’s business does just that.]

Traffic: On a 4/10 schedule, you spend less time in it

The indignities of modern working life are many, and one of the most onerous is the grind of the five-day working week. Two days of play after five days’ work is inadequate to renew our enthusiasm for life:  we barely recover from the quintuple routine of waking to the alarm, commuting to work and back (to say nothing of what transpires in between), dining with our weary family and crashing to uneasy sleep; than we have to confront the thought, on a Sunday afternoon, that it all will begin again. A five-day work week leaves insufficient room for us to develop our sensitive natures: it makes us dull and cranky.

We run a small design studio with four fulltime staff. When we started up the place, one of my aims, as a refugee from the advertising agencies where I built my career, was to build a kinder, gentler, more humane organisation.

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  • Kieran Given says:

    10:46pm | 11/03/10

    I think I could only pull off a 4-day week on occassion like in the summer time, as I’m solo in my business. I could possibly move it to summers and educate my customers that Fridays are no-go days or have someone fill in the Friday ‘phone calls’ and ‘emails’.… Read more »

  • Swampy says:

    02:53pm | 01/02/10

    I work part time, four days a week, 8 hours per day. Our offices are manned 5 days a week as people have different days off. The only drawback is less pay. But if everyone worked four days per week, eight hours per day prices would come down anyway. Read more »

 

I have taken unto myself a motorbike and it is a beautiful and joyous thing. For others it is a sign of my mental collapse and advanced desperation.

These guys are shaking in their motorcycle boots at news of the formation of the Hells Hacks.

There has been a procession of arched eyebrows and the diagnosis of a mid-life a crisis from those who believe I should be confining myself to inspections of nice retirement villages.

I acknowledge that I am north of 50 and a shortish commute to 60, but it is foolish to make sweeping statements about an age group. (Gen Y does it all the time). And I’m having too much fun to worry.

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  • Buckets says:

    10:30am | 17/07/09

    Welcome back to living, not just surviving… Oh, and do get involved with the MCC of NSW. Good bunch of people. Read more »

  • ASuzi says:

    01:09pm | 16/07/09

    Good for you. I got my L’s at 37 & pretty much got the same response from friends/relatievs you did! but due to circumstances they lapsed:( I will go again as soon as I can. Absolutely love, love, love it! Ride like the wind Mal, shiny side up! Read more »

 

Getting through: Ads don't lead to this.

Enforcing a blanket ban on advertising certain foods to children is not the answer to solving Australia’s obesity problem.

Activists and some politicians bleating for a ban on advertising high fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) foods on all media before 9pm need to get real.

Arguing that television adverts for HFSS foods are almost totally responsible for making people overweight, especially children, is an extraordinary leap of logic.

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  • G says:

    11:19am | 07/07/09

    We can all agree that us ‘normals’ really dislike obese people and it’s a base genetic response recoil at the site of them. Read more »

  • Jayne P says:

    09:58pm | 06/07/09

    My kids are young, for the small amount of TV they do watch is only the ABC -good quality preschooler shows WITHOUT ADVERTISING. The in your face advertising during kids shows on the commercial channels is digusting. Read more »

 

On heraldsun.com.au today

Read it here.

I’d like to think I would be yacht shopping this morning, wearing a cravat, and being followed around by someone I’d hired specifically to top up my champagne flute.

But they’ve gone to work! According to a Lotto spokesperson:

When they got the call this morning solidifying their winnings, they said ‘I was hoping to hear from you this morning’.

They’re a Gold Coast couple so based purely on postcode there’s an increased likelihood $53 million isn’t all that life-changing. But I doubt it.

I’m especially happy for the other guy, who’s being playing Lotto for 20 years and plans to give some of the money to charity.

What would you be doing? Would you be at work?

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  • Craig says:

    05:39pm | 02/07/09

    I would be pissing in the boss’ ash tray as soon as possible. And if he/she didn’t smoke, I’d supply the ash tray. Read more »

  • Miriam says:

    10:33am | 02/07/09

    I would probably go to work the next day because, if anything, suddenly quitting might make colleagues suspicious that I was the winner.  Also, I’d probably be in such a state of shock that the routine would be welcome. Not everyone hates their job anyway. Read more »

 

If one’s face can’t register an orgasm, is the climax still as good?

Ageing: Some do it gracefully. Others use accessories. Which is best?

Startling as it may seem, I feel liberated by the decay of beauty.  It’s a bold statement, but in this era, when the glorification of all that is youthful is paramount, I hope that I look like the mother of my eldest daughter, (who for the record is almost 24,) and not at all like her sister. I don’t want to be in competition with her, or my younger girl, who is only eight. I want them to take up the mantle of their own prime years and have me cheering them on from the proper place - as the more senior female of the clan.

Our society so abhors the discussion of ageing and death, that we have embraced a whole new industry of psychological touchstones involving chemicals and knives and a race to look 10 years younger in 10 days. I don’t castigate or object to anyone making personal choices regarding cosmetic procedures, nor do I rule them out for myself if I feel I want them. But I am concerned that so many of my friends, acquaintances and even other people in the media are beginning to relinquish their unique expressions of emotion and life experience at the point of a needle.

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  • tess says:

    10:38am | 19/06/09

    Tanya, like you, I too have had to ‘bear the burden’ of the 4 B’s - blonde, brains, beauty & BOOBS (36d)!!!  I was always proud to get an A in any subject, prouder still when the company I was managing had it’s first million dollar turnover year, and still… Read more »

  • Mistress D says:

    10:02am | 19/06/09

    I’m 23 and mortified at the prospect of being old…. Death doesn’t hold nearly as much horror as I know will be contained in the day I find my first wrinkle…. But I’m determined not to get any enhancements. I have friends whose mothers compete with them and it gets… Read more »

 

In our body-image obsessed world, being told that you can be thinner by the weekend sounds delicious.

That was the hook Grazia magazine used in publishing the latest US diet craze in its “Thin by Friday” feature in the June issue.  NOVA 96.9’s newsreader Kristy Warner has also shared her experience of the diet on-air.

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  • Simone says:

    08:36pm | 18/06/09

    When will magazines such as Grazia cease this irresponsible jumping on of fad diet bandwagons, I wonder? They owe more to their readers than recklessly promoting such obviously unhealthy solutions to losing weight. Surely by now we’re all aware that there are no miracle diets, or if there are, they… Read more »

  • K says:

    04:10pm | 18/06/09

    Severely restricted calories = losing weight. Groundbreaking news, Grazia. Read more »

 

I can’t remember a time when the decimal point was more popular.  Apart from the usual uses in maths, finance and software, we’ve now got things like Web 2.0, PR 2.0 and even Participation 2.0.

This is so 2008. Photo: Pieter Baert / Flickr. Used with permission.

I clearly remember the first time I heard the term Web 2.0. I was shocked and confused. “But I’m just doing Web.  What the hell is Web 2.0 and how did I miss Web 1.0?” I thought.  Likewise when I heard that PR 2.0 was the real deal when I was still fumbling around with plain old PR.

Sometimes I wonder when the 3.0s will arrive and who will decide when they do?  And in 10 years, will I be doing PR 8.0?

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  • s 1.0 says:

    07:57am | 24/06/09

    A slip of the finger and the world would be a different place - Web 2,0 Read more »

  • Chris says:

    06:10pm | 10/06/09

    I agree, I’m finding the proliferation of decimals a little confusing myself. When did we enter the Matrix? Has everyone else taken the little red pill except me? Why do we need such annoyingly infinitesimal decimal versions of everything from computers to friggin energy drinks? I’m starting a new movement,… Read more »

 

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Up to the minute Twitter chatter

Paul Colgan

@MClarke23 nip out of camp to help out Warney? Now that would cause some chaos

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@SimonThomsen LOL you can try!

Lucy Kippist

Don't bring your children and other "rules" of supermarket shopping. Got a gripe or two of your own? Add to my list: http://bit.ly/dBWydm

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What voters really think of Tony Abbott, great piece by Nic Christensen & Tina Tek: http://bit.ly/bvLWSz#thepunch

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