The Great Aussie Bloke Slim Down

 

You have a new best mate.

If you, like Fitzsimmons and myself, are a middle aged male carrying way too much weight. Your new best mate is Peter Fitzsimmons, the author of the recently released "The Great Aussie Bloke Slim Down". This isn't a book so much as a conversation between two friends. Fitzsimmons doesn't break the fourth wall so much as he rips it up and throws it away. You and Fitzsimmons are old mates. He tells you that he was with you every time you over ate, he was the one bumping you out of the queue at the “all you can eat buffet”. He makes the point of his book that it is sugar, not fat, that is making us obese within the first half dozen pages and then elaborates on it.

There is very little chance that you are going to read something that you do not already know in this book. I kept hearing myself whilst reading it...and sure enough everything that Fitzsimmons says about the dangers of refined sugar are things that I have already written about in a blog of my own. Fitzsimmons begins each chapter with some stick in your mind quotes…”You can’t outrun a bad diet”.

Where Fitzsimmons is very good is establishing a relationship with his reader. Not for a moment does he pretend to be anything other than a former fatty who lost a lot of weight. And this is where Fitzsimmons makes his claim to credibility…he isn’t asking his reader to do something that he hasn’t. Fitzsimmons repeatedly tells us that he is proud of the fact that he isn't a Nutritionist or Dietician and uses his lack of specialist knowledge to build the readers knowledge base of the composition of food. Fitzsimmons explains what protein, glucose, carbohydrate and high fructose corn syrup are in ordinary language. He also goes through current diet trends and fads at some length…and candour.

Where Fitzsimmons is annoying is his decision to call his reader “Fatty Boomka”. I’ve been called any number of things in my time, but Boomka is one of the most annoying. Having said this, being called “Boomka” repeatedly throughout the 237 pages of this book wasn’t enough to detract from the message or the value of the book.

"The Great Aussie Bloke Slim Down" is easy to read and genuinely useful.

 

Remembering Peter

Being bored carries a cost.
On Wednesday August 3 I was bored out of my tree and seriously struggling to find motivation at Uni. For some reason I decided to browse the website of the Buddhist Society of Victoria. At the very end of the July newsletter I came across mention that Peter had died in March.
I knew Peter for about 20 years. There had been a time when I counted him as a friend. I gave him work in my gardening business Big Russ's Gardens.
I changed. We lost touch. I wandered in and out of the Buddhist Society. My first marriage foundered and then died. Selina entered my life and love flourished.
As my new life blossomed and I entered the glory of my life, I began to find Peter more and more irritating. For a long time I had found him to be patronising. Felt that he was talking down to me and without good cause. I thought of Peter as the worst example of a hopeless case, a pretentious nobody whose opinion of himself far exceeded any demonstrated capacity.  As my contact with the Buddhist Society spluttered and stuttered my irritation with Peter grew. He was, at best, a gormless blob. The last time I spoke to him he had tried to tell me how to parent my eldest son.
I leave the Buddhist Society. The friendship I had wanted to save had died. I have changed too much, become too confident, care too little for others approval, feel too little need for guidance and am utterly unwilling to place another in a higher social standing for the friendship with Nissarano to work.
Then Peter is dead.
Curious I contact people to find out why he had died. I assumed given that he was middle aged and over 100kg that Peter had died of a heart attack. Peter is at most only 5 years older than I am. I feel like I have been hit by a truck.
Peter had taken his own life. As I begin my inquiries people clam up. I find where he volunteered and message them in Facebook. They are the ones who tell me that Peter had suicided. Information is sparse and his family have disappeared. His Facebook pages gives little more than the barest of details.
An acquaintance from the Buddhist Society tells me that Peter had been diagnosed years before with bipolar schizophrenia. He had stopped taking his medication. He also had put his elderly mother into a nursing home, gone home and killed himself on a blisteringly hot day. No one is willing or able to tell me how Peter killed himself. I learn that there had been a memorial service at the Buddhist Society and Peter had been cremated. His mother was given his ashes.
Knowing that Peter was mentally ill changes my perception of him. In hindsight he wasn't always being patronising to me, what he was, was often as not seriously medicated. His inability to achieve goals is now seen in a different light. This explains why his highest qualification was a year of English at Swinbourne University. Peter's schizophrenia robbed him of his ability to deal with stress. He simply couldn't get it together enough to study.
One way Peter dealt with this was to find someone he could reasonably feel superior to. Given that throughout my time as a Buddhist Society member I was an emotional mess, I was that person...and rightfully so. I was the one person who was communicating on a regular basis that I was in worse emotional/mental shape than Peter was.
Given all this. Given that by the time Peter chose to die that we hadn't been friends for over 10 years, why am I writing this?
For me Peter is a lesson.
I saw a quote attributed to the actor Richard Gere which says that none of us are getting out of this alive and that we should live our passions, be loud, be adventurous, watch the flowers and love without inhibitions. He also says we shouldn't condemn ourselves for our mistakes.

And this is precisely what Peter didn't do.
One reason why I left Traditional Theravada is because it actively promotes a life that is passion free. In Traditional Theravada a practitioner is supposed to be quiet. We are taught that a life spent with our eyes shut is the ideal.
I prefer to live a life that is jammed full of passion, of adventure, of  love without limit. A life where I have pushed my envelope so far that the term has no real meaning to it. Mountains are there for a reason, mountains are to be climbed. I am climbing my mountains. By the time I leave this lifetime I will be worn out.
I have stood and screamed my defiance at my demons. I have upturned what I thought I was. I have done everything but be quiet. Answering the question: How good am I? Has brought the peace, the confidence that spending days with my eyes shut and being quiet never did. Trying to be quiet never took Peter into the intellectual elite, which is where I find myself. Being quiet never took Peter to walks of 100 km +. It never took Peter into deep pleasure. Being quiet and trying to be the perfect Traditional Theravadin never took Peter to mountain tops. Being a good little Theravadin got Peter dead with a life that was, at best, half lived.
This is Peters lesson.

Tipsy

 

This is the best book on booze that I have ever bought. Clare is clear, she is informative and above all she has an utter lack of the pretentious bullshit that so many "aficionado" of booze have.

Tipsy is a book for those who want to have fun. Clare tells us about the various wine's, beer's, sake and whisky where they come from, what makes them what they are and above all what food to enjoy them with. She even tells us why some foods work with specific wine's and others don't. Clare has a chart that pairs cheeses with alcohol and actually tells you that some pairings. Creme cheese and Scotch whisky  for example, simply don't work.

By the time you've read this incredibly useful and accessible book you will be able to make informed and interesting choices in your alcohol. You will no longer suffer from the horror of choosing the wrong booze for your meal. You will be drinking better...and ranging more widely in your choices of booze.

Becoming Jewish

 

Over the last 15 years I have become aware that I am Jewish. It began with tuning into a genealogy programme on the ABC....the guest was asked whether Weiss and or Muller were Jewish names. The reply was an emphatic "Yes". I nearly fell out of bed. My father was an unapologetic practitioner of racism and bigotry and considered Hitler to be a great guy. He lived, married my mother, had 7 children by her, was divorced by her and died unaware that she was Jewish.

I had read "My name is Asher Lev" by Chaim Potok in my early 20's and felt a deep sense of connection. Now I know why. It also explains why when I get drunk I want to dance in circles.

Conversely I have always been ambivalent about Israel. I know that there are plenty of Jews who happen to feel the same way. In my early teens I read Mein Kampf and self identified as a Nazi. So you can see that the journey to my acceptance of being Jewish has been meandering to say the least.

Last Friday I was in Elsternwick, a suburb with a large observant Jewish population having lunch with the lovely Selina. We stopped at a Chemist Warehouse to buy some things. The owner, a man in his 70's began talking to me. I mentioned the rumour that my mothers-mothers family were Weis & Muller, which I understood to be Jewish names. The man emphatically confirmed that they were indeed Jewish surnames.

So how does this affect me, Russell Dunne, as a person?

The immediate affect is zero. I'm not about to start observing Kosher and that yarmulke that has been in my laptop bag for the last 4 years is going to stay there.  

What I am finding is that there is a growing curiosity about where things fit in. I've done some family research on my fathers side of the family. Now it is time that I researched my mothers side of the family. I understand that Weis is an attempt at Anglicising the German-Jewish Weiss. I want to discover when, where and why the Jewish connection was severed.

My mother self identified as Christian and was horrified when I mentioned to her about 12 years ago that there was a very real chance that she was in fact Jewish. Likewise with my elder sister who found the idea of being Jewish more challenging than the fact that the brother between us in age had raped his own daughter repeatedly for 10 years.

I will buy a menora, put it on my altar and try to light a candle on Friday nights. Because for the moment I'm vegetarian keeping Kosher should be easy for me...should I decide to observe it.