5 months on: London, UK

So just under 5 months ago I took the leap over to London in order to get my career well and truly underway. With lots of hard work, some long hours, strategy and a fantastic social life, life is super. Simply brilliant. Although I am still single it would be great to meet a partner but hey — no rush.

Moving away from home

Personally the move away from home was easy as I left home to attend university and even when I lived at home I was independent. Looking back on my experience so far if you could choose to leave home — do it. You only ever have one life, you must live it and a good way to do that is to leave home to create and restructure your life. It is not about forgetting about your family but it’s about doing what is right for you.

Get to know your family

Everyone reading this does not know what is around the corner. OK, you might be in great health right now but who knows what little scare you or a loved one could get tomorrow. Whatever way you look at it, and if you’re like me very positively, you should get to know your family very well because you never know how much time you all have together. Enjoy and seize every family moment — that’s your time too.

Life is full of wonderful opportunities if you are willing to see them as opportunities. Maybe you have loads of opportunities every day without thinking about them, for instance, grocery shopping is an opportunity to see people you otherwise might not have ever seen, as well as, an opportunity to get fresh food. These opportunities are also privileges. Not everyone on this beautiful planet gets an opportunity like this (this example also includes the corner shop).

Appreciate what you have.

PS it’s fantastic to be back on here blogging. Will try to keep at it again. See you guys around, hopefully.

Life is like a circle

A few weeks’ ago I went out for lunch (yummy) and during lunch I was joking about a few things, which have now become a post, and how life is like a circle and cycle. Let me tell you what they are.

The passenger’s seat in the car

As a child I used to think the car seat looked ‘grown-up’, mature, more comfortable than the back seats. As an adult it’s a seat with a better view of the road, sometimes used to keep an extra pair of eyes on other cars etc.

Going to bed early was like a punishment

As a child I disliked going to bed early. I loved staying up late. As an adult going to bed early is like a treat. It recharges the batteries, allows one to relax, unwind and chill-out ahead of a new day tomorrow.

Childhood wants become adulthood comforts

As a child I always wanted to get into the front seat, no matter where I went. At the time the passenger’s seat was a real luxury seat, it looked more comfortable and adult-like.

As an adult a passenger’s seat is simply a passenger’s seat. There’s nothing special about it. Okay, you get a better view of the road, but that’s not that important if you are not driving.

Life is a full cycle. You do things, see another perspective whenever it comes back round again.

References

1. Life experience

Starting a new chapter

We all have a book on life. You know, the one where you live and save memories too? At the moment in my life I have relocated over to London, UK, to begin a digital marketing career. It’s exciting right now but very busy hence my lack of blogging over the last load of weeks.

I sincerely hope everyone reading this is doing really well and writing their book life too. Are you?

Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll schedule in some blogging time.

It’s time to decrease sugar

For centuries sugar has been linked to dental decay. More recently there has been more research into sugar and the outcome is not great. Let’s analyse why sugar is bad for you.

Sugar and health

Sugar is actually good for those who require quick energy, for example, cyclists or marathon runners. Sugar is used by the body to make energy. Access sugar is likely to cause fat: Sugar makes people fat.

In the human body sugar is converted into glucose which is transported all over the body, literally in every cell, through the bloodstream. Eating too much sugar causes a constant sugar spike and this can be bad for your organs.

Nutritionally sugar is, for the most part, just sugar. There is no fibre or other minerals in sugar. Sugar should only be used by those who will use it up quickly.

Recently scientists have discovered that sugar contributes to: diabetes; heart problems (cardiovascular); alzheimer’s disease; and obesity. Sugar is bad for your body because it just makes more glucose floating around you blood unnecessarily.

Alzheimer’s disease

After I lost a family member to dementia, a part of the alzheimer’s umbrella, I started to look into what causes you to lose memory. The complexity of the brain is simply not understood and, therefore, the exact cause and treatment of alzheimer’s is unknown. Recently scientists have started to link memory problems with the western diet: Sugar is a large component of a western diet alongside read meat and bad fats.

Sugar. Copyright from Wikipedia.

Tips for reducing sugar levels

• The first simple step is to become more active. The more exercise you do the quicker your glucose levels will reduce.
• Another simple sugar reducing method is simply standing for a few hours a day, say, 3 hours. Standing requires energy which reduces blood glucose levels.
• Cut out direct sugar, for example, chocolate and the sugar tub that sits on your kitchen worktop or cupboard.
• If you have a sweet tooth start to switch sweets with fruits. This is still sugar but there is other nutritional value in sweet fruits which is good for the body.
• If you bake and you need sugar use coconut sugar instead of “normal” sugar. I have tried this and coconut sugar tastes lovely. In a nutshell coconut sugar is the lowest sugar in terms of glycemic index. This means that coconut sugar does not cause a rapid spike of sugar in the blood and is released slowly in the body.

Once you start to reduce your sugar intake take this a further step forward by, for example, choosing low sugar fruits, such as, kiwi and blackberries over high sugar fruits, for instance, the tropical family (pineapples etc).

Posted by Gerald Murphy

References

1. Wikipedia. Sugar. [Online] [Accessed on 19th January 2014]
2. Life experience

Is global warming made up?

Large companies are behind global warming; hence the increase of environmentally or ‘eco’ friendly stuff. This post analyses whether or not global warming exists or whether or not global warming is made up.

Global warming: Objective analysis

Rising air and sea temperatures means the Artic ice caps are getting smaller. However in the Antartica, ice is scattered due to wind and sea waves causing ice caps to grow and expand — ice caps are getting bigger.

Climate changes are taking place in the northern hemisphere, for example, Russia and Canada (in Europe and Western Alaska this is at a lesser extent). Certain regions are seeing climate changes but this does not mean global warming does exist. Climates, ever since we have recorded them, have always changed. The reports are trends and nothing else — there is no such thing as global warming.

A thorough study does state that human beings are causing some of the observed warming and cooling. Global warming as a concept is not wrong because humans are destroying the environment, which, alongside the shrinking and expanding ice caps, partly explains why temperature variations occur in the first instance. We need to take action.

Mindmap of global warming. Copyright of StaticFlickr.

Human error?

The Antarctic sea has, over the last 35 years, expanded to an all new record high. Global warming is not really global since the whole globe is not heating up.

But have some places been reported to be at a record high? Yes. But these reports do not report that other places have been at their record low. In other words as 1 place heats up, another cools down. Weather changes are simply trends.

Look into this yourself. Most of my references, see below, are authoritative but after a quick search engine search please be a little cautious of media organisations and other money driven and influential industries because their ‘facts’ are not usually objective.

Whilst this post shows that global warming is made up there are some unknown questions, at least for now, they include:

• Does global warming cause cooling too?
• Should [global warming] be accurately renamed to [specific geo warming]?
• When we run out of oil will mother nature have any consequences? I.e. are humans wrecking the plant which causes temperature fluctuation?
• Our understanding of climates has really only started, as well as, the bigger environment itself.
• When it comes to vector-borne disease our climate is 1 factor for spreading diseases. Do weather trends influence other things, such as, cancer?

In preparing this post I also watched a bit of David Attenborough’s documentary on global warming. He, unfortunately, claimed that global warming was real but he failed to note that ice caps are getting bigger, or, at least within the first 20 minutes. I was surprised the BBC and Attenborough himself did not carry out a full analysis before broadcasting the documentary. Watch media organisation’s with caution. They don’t always get it right.

Posted by Gerald Murphy

References

1. Fischer, D. Thomas, S.M. Suk, J.E. Sudre, B. Hess, A. Tjaden, N.B. Beierkuhnlein, C. Semenza, J.C. (2013) Climate change effects on Chikungunya transmission in Europe: geospatial analysis of vector’s climatic suitability and virus’ temperature requirements. International Journal of Health Geographics. 12(51)
2. Keller, C.F. (2003) Global Warming: The Balance of Evidence and Its Policy Implications. The Scientific World Journal. 26. pp. 357–411
3. Machado, J.A.T. and Lopes, A.M. (2012) Dynamical Analysis of the Global Warming. Mathematical Problems in Engineering. Article ID 971641, 12 pages.
4. Samenow, J. (2013) Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday. [Online] [Accessed on 26th December 2013 — yes, boxing day.] http://is.gd/9dVttA