The Day Job Comes to an End

After 14 months at PepsiCo ANZ – Snack Foods Division my contract has finally come to an end.

I can certainly say it hasn’t been plain sailing, but thanks to the help of colleagues the targets which had been set were reached.

It was just one more adventure in the many I have had since starting my working career many years ago.

What lies before me is anyone’s guess.

One thing is certain – my writing career is progressing from strength to strength.

I am looking forward to the Romance Writers of Australia Conference in Sydney at the beginning of August, followed by a five-week European holiday in September.

Hopefully another Day Job will come my way in the meantime, if not, perhaps after September.

Whatever lies ahead it will be yet another chapter in my working career.

RLB – Tomewriter

My Mum

Phew!!! It’s been a busy weekend…

What with cleaning the house from top to bottom in preparation of the wife’s return home next week. Yes that’s right she’s been overseas on holiday – Ireland and England [The Lake District, Milton Keynes, London, Devon]. I don’t begrudge her as it’s the first time she has been overseas in years and she deserves a holiday. But I’ll be glad to have her home again – it has been lonely around here!!

I have also been setting my mum up onto the social media platform. She is now on Twitter, Facebook, and has a blog of her very own [although I’ll also keep her as partner on this one as well].

For those of you who don’t know, Mum – Viviane Elisabeth Borg – has scored a contract for her novel “A Tangled Web” with Secret Cravings Publishing of TN. U.S.A. As part of the contract conditions she needs to be able to self-promote her novel when it is published. It is scheduled for e-release in September this year [2014] and a print version by March 2015. I am hoping the publishers will consider bringing this date forward to the 15th January 2015 to coincide with Mum’s 90th birthday – wouldn’t that be grand??

Please follow mum’s blog it’s at: http://vivianeeborg25.wordpress.com

Her Facebook account is at: http://www.facebook.com/vivianeeborg25  and you can find her on Twitter @ VivianeEBorg1

Needlesstosay it will be me who maintains these sites on her behalf, as I am sure you will appreciate that due to her failing eye-sight any dealings in these areas will prove to be extremely difficult for her.

I love my mum [and family] very much and there is nothing that is too much for me to do for them.

RLB – Tomewriter

Mesmerising Pools

 

As I gaze into her rich pale blue coloured eyes I find myself drawn into them.   A brown blemish in one eye adds intrigue and depth  into this fantasy. Slowly, but surely, brown shoreline which is edged with a variety of succulent vegetation. Ferns with deeply green foliage act as a back cloth     to a range of pink, purple and red orchids,

 each more beautiful than its neighbour.

Water falling             from a high cliff         into the pools creates a fine               mist of spray                    bathing the surrounding air        with welcoming            coolness.

 

 

 

The whole area    is an explosion of              glorious sounds, richly               painted colours           and vibrant aromas.

 Multi-coloured              butterflies fill   my view as          

bright humming-birds feed off nectar

 

enriched  plants   and kingfishers          dive into the

pools to               retrieve some               unsuspecting fish.

 

   Her eyes blink snapping me back to reality.

She is smiling.

Could she know what I was thinking?

RLB – Tomewriter

 

On the subject of cooking…

If you didn’t know, my wife, Sandra, is away on holiday for a month in the UK and Ireland.

So I’m home alone and although I wouldn’t say I’m bored, as there’s still plenty to do, it always seems that when she’s away – even if it’s for a few days – the place feels empty and out of sorts. I can’t explain it really, as many people would relish the idea of being away from their partners for a break. Don’t get me wrong, I have a holiday in September coming up which I am looking forward to as I shall be visiting my mum and elder sister in France, cousins and friends in Malta, and my younger sister and friends in London.

Fortunately I have a day job to go to Monday to Friday, and thanks to a busy work-load the company I have been contracting at for the past year has extended my contract until the end of June. May the work continue to pile up!

It is always in the evenings and weekends that are the trying times and looking for things to do. There is always “writing”, but even this pleasure can be “too much” and you need a break from it.

Saturdays are normally put aside for domestics, and yesterday was no different. One falls into a set routine and it is always best to continue following the path just to maintain any semblance to normality. So after waking up early getting through three loads of washing, dusting, vacuuming, making the bed and getting myself ready to face the rest of the day [not to mention somewhere amongst that lot I had a bit of breakfast] I was then ready to do the weekly shopping.

With Sandra away I wrongly assumed I wouldn’t have such a high expense – but then again… I do have a tendency to impulse buy and yesterday didn’t prove me wrong. Apart from the usual frozen meals, bread rolls [for my weekly lunches], meats and veggies, without Sandra I was able to stop at the ice cream freezers! Have you tried the Magnum Kisses? They are to die for… especially the apple flavoured ones. So in they went into the trolley as well as a box of the red fruits & meringue.

On the subject of cooking… as much as I had every intention of cooking myself a proper meal last evening I got side-tracked and ended up with a frozen meal instead. The latter are usually saved for during the week when there isn’t too much time to be had by the time one gets back from work. But yesterday afternoon I started to watch the movie “Ben-Hur” which was interrupted by a phone call from my mum. By the time I finished the movie the thought of cooking a chicken curry was not on the agenda. I’ll have that pleasure this evening instead.

Some time ago, Sandra suggested we try out “Lite-n-Easy” meals in a bid to lose some weight. When we costed it up it did seem to us a lot of money to spend on meals. We decided instead to purchase the frozen meals from the supermarket for week days and prepare proper food at weekends. That is what we have been doing for the best part of this year, and although I’m not certain we have lost much weight, it definitely has helped us cut down on our portions. In the long run this surely is a plus.

For nutritional value I had no idea if this was of any benefit to us or not. Sandra is of the belief that if any food has the “Heart Tick” on the packaging then it must be good for you. She could have a point. The frozen foods we have been buying have varied from “Lean Cuisine”, “Healthy Choice”, “Weight Watchers”, and recently ALDI’s “International Cuisine” range.

As I was browsing the freezer in Coles yesterday a new product caught my eye. The box showed a variety of nutritional grains and vegetables making up a mouth-watering risotto. The product, Australian Made, labelled “Super Nature” didn’t have the heart tick and was a trifle more expensive than the other foods at $6.30, but I thought I would give it a try; and I did last night.

It was very tasty and quite filling. Today however I decided to take a look at its nutritional value. In fact I went one step further and compared it with all the meals in the freezer. The results were an eye-opener:

Per Serve	Intl. Cuisine [Aldi]	Lean Cuisine	Healthy Choice	Super Nature	When in Rome	Weight Watchers
Energy	1020kj	1245kj	1580kj	1800kj	600kj	365kj
Protein	15.4g	15.0g	14.3g	20.3g	5.74g	1.1g
Fat Total	3.2g	6.0g	6.7g	14.0g	4.48g	3.6g
Fat – Saturated	1.8g	2.4g	1.3g	5.6g	1.91g	2.0g
Cholesterol	<3mg	15mg	25mg	–	–	–
Carbohydrate	34.0g	42.3g	62.2g	49.0g	19.6g	11.4g
Sugar	<1g	8.1g	21.0g	8.4g	4.23g	9.2g
Dietary Fibre	7.4g	–	4.2g	–	–	2.9g
Sodium	683mg	705mg	672mg	1330mg	271mg	27mg
Heart Tick	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Type of Food	FROZEN MEALS				FROZEN PIZZA	FROZEN ECLAIRS

 

Last time I attended a dietician I was told to watch out for three things in particular:

• Saturated Fat
• Sugar
• Sodium

Looking at the above chart from now on I think I’ll stick to Aldi’s frozen meals, Pizza and éclairs – Happy Days!!

RLB – Tomewriter