Tag: Health

Eggplants!


Aubergines from http://www.usda.gov/oc/photo/9...
Image via Wikipedia

Kiddo and I had a couple of pork chops and eggplants last night, all cooked on the Webber Q.  I also threw in a couple of sweet peppers. Tress didnt want any dinner as she had a biggish lunch at Little Nyonya again.

We have been having eggplants a lot – everytime we do a barbie, which has been a little frequent in recent weeks. Apparently eggplants are great for you, so I guess we’re ok. Look at this write up re eggplants:

Nutritional Value of Eggplant

Eggplants are rich sources of dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals and contain very less calories. This makes it an ideal component of the low fat diets and the diets of those working on weight loss. Other essential minerals contained in eggplant include potassium, manganese, magnesium and copper. Eggplants are very important sources of phytonutrients, which is obtained from their deep purple color.

Dietary Fiber
Eggplants provide dietary fiber in abundance which is essential for regulating and facilitating smooth bowel movements. The dietary fiber in eggplant also helps, lower blood cholesterol and blood sugar levels. One cup serving of eggplant would contain approximately 10% of the recommended dietary fiber.

Vitamins
Eggplants contain vitamins like vitamin C and b-vitamins, but they are not very high in content. One cup cooked serving of eggplant would contain approximately 2-5% of the recommended vitamin B1, vitamin B-3, vitamin B-6 and vitamin C.

Nicotine
A very interesting nutritional fact about eggplants are that they contain trace amounts of nicotine, which is absolutely harmless to the body. The nicotine levels in eggplants are way less than that in cigarettes.

Potassium
One cup serving of eggplant contains around 3% of the recommended potassium intake. The potassium in the eggplants is beneficial for those suffering from low blood pressure levels and it also regulates the beating of the heart.

Calories
Calories and fats are something, that the eggplant contains the least and this is what makes it a healthy component of daily diet.

Phytonutrients
This is the most important nutrients that eggplants contain. They contain phytonutrients like flavonoids, caffeic acid and chlorogenic acid. The flavonoid Nasunin in eggplants, has high levels of antioxidant properties and is known to be a scavenger of free radicals, thus protecting the cells of the body. Nasunin is also known for its ability to protect the fats surrounding the cell membrane of the brain. The chlorogenic acid it contains is known to be the most potent antioxidant that displays antimicrobial, antiviral and antitumor abilities and plays an important role in the prevention of many diseases.

Eggplant Nutritional Facts

The table below has some detailed information on the eggplant nutritional facts.

Nutrient Content
Dietary Fiber 10%
Vitamin C 3%
Calcium 1%
Iron 1%
Thiamin 2%
Riboflavin 2%
Niacin 3%
Pantothenic Acid 2%
Vitamin B6 3%
Potassium 5%
Phosphorus 2%
Magnesium 3%
Zinc 1%
Copper 3%
Cholesterol 0%
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Grey Day… and cold!


Owner of a lonely heart

I’m home – cold, feeling miserable as I look outside at the grey, wet and cold conditions. Struggling to get some work done. Tress is having dental surgery done under general anaesthetics so I have taken the day off to just be around apart from being the chauffeur, and maybe make some hot soup later. Maybe I’ll go out and get a badly needed hairy, just to get into a warmer place away from this cold, wet and grey environment. Cant stand a grey day. Near depressing.

Just over 2 weeks now before kiddo heads off to Europe. There’s an info session tonight and I really dont want to go out in these conditions but it’s important I do I guess, so I have to head off into the city on my day off, for an evening meeting. I dont know why the teacher can’t just disseminate the information over an email or something. Sometimes I feel like we truly are living in a nanny state where everyone bends over backwards to come across as doing the right thing. Maybe it is just me being grumpy on this grey day… I need to see the sun…

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Slip Sliding Away


Things appear to be rosier now – or are they? Yes and no. This –  the here-but-not-yet, already but yet to come, bad but good, good but bad, first shall be last and last shall be first – fluctuation, undulation, the to-ing anf fro-ing of events, sentiments, expectations and outcomes, they all seem to be the flavour of the day. The flavour indeed, of life. Seasons come and go and with them our sentiments ebb and flow. Is winter here? Yes but not yet. The cold is here, for now. Soon it will be no more, smoked out by the heat.  But it will come again – it is yet to come, even when it is here already. The circle of life, the cycle of time. None are happy all the time, nor sad. None are melancholic all the time, nor glad.

No I have been smoking funny cigarettes. I am just reflecting on what Tress and I briefly talked about on the train this morning, on the way in to work. Nights of school lectures and events for kiddo, long hours of work for Tress, reasonable hours during the day and attention stretching work at night for yours truly. It is a time where heads are down and quills doodle (or keyboards hacked away) as the nights arrive sooner and stay longer, bringing with them cold winds and gloom to be swept away only by cheery and hopeful hearts and minds in our God. I now wake up to chilly mornings – it was 9 deg this morning – and I can no longer head off to the gym in my shorts and t-shirt. On a good day it still hits 25deg albeit momentarily but as always, it is the dark – the early arrival of farewell to the sun – which gets to me.

Maybe I have been cooped up in my study just a touch too long, but then again I have been thinking I have not spent enough time in there! Or maybe that too is a yes and no example. Life’s too hard some times. Fun, but hard.

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Malaysia Loses – More Brain Drain


Last Saturday we had dinner in Alex and Li Har’s home with a family who arrived as migrants just a week earlier. This family represents a classic case of brain drain that has been plaguing Malaysia. The man is a neurologist and his wife is a dental surgeon.

The wife was offered a job back in April, with the RoyalDentalHospital in Melbourne. She had to ask for a later start as they weren’t ready to leave Malaysia in April. The man was also offered a job with the Footscray Health Group. He is contemplating holding out for a role closer to home – they live in the eastern suburbs and in any event Footscray isn’t exactly the sort of suburb you’d want to work odd hours, which will be required of this highly talented doctor.

Also at the dinner was a family with a child suffering from a very rare condition called Alagilles syndrome. While the neurologist did not seem familiar with this condition (it is very rare) he could intimately describe all the attendant symptoms and alternative but consequential treatments in the most coherent and intelligible manner. I can easily picture a patient being totally at ease with a doctor who obviously knows what he is talking about and can easily engage queries without pretending to know everything.

The couple was very engaging but was at the same time, very unassuming and humble. We enjoyed their company and we believe this family (they have 2 bright and very well behaved children) is an indictment on the racist and bigoted government who stupidly, is too happy to see the backs of such people simply because they aren’t Malays. He is only 41 years of age – at the height of a very bright career. Assuming his wife is a touch younger than him, she too has so many years of fantastic service left to offer. Malaysia loses, again, and it doesn’t seem to care.

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Err… How does that go again? (signs and wonders twists)


If I cant understand something and I ask questions, I am not being dogmatic. I am being inquisitive. I am searching. If no one provides an answer, I reject that something. Again, that is not being dogmatic. That is being reasonable. On the other hand if you cant explain what you are asserting, I’d say you are the dogmatic one. You are suggesting I am not being open to new things. Maybe. If however that “new thing” simply doesnt make sense and no one can plausibly explain it to me, maybe you are the one who is not being open. Maybe you are not open to the possibility that the reason you cant explain is that you are wrong.

If someone continues to claim he heals and that healing took place but I ask why the supposedly healed person continues to be sick, I am not being dogmatic. I am being sensible. If you claim a person has been healed in spite of his continued state of being sick, You are not being open. you are being dogmatic. You are being in fact and quite frankly, stupid. If you claim that supposedly healed person is sick now because he ceased believing and that it was a an issue with his faith, you are even being cruel. That person wants nothing more than to be healed. To say he has no faith is to cast an indictment on him (how dare you) which is cruel simply because you are being dogmatic about your claim that healing took place.

If you explain that to me I will cease questioning and I will cease, in your words, being dogmatic. I will start, in your lingo, to be open.

I dont think God meant for us to be blind and stupid. That to me sums up why I think the signs and wonders movement has a huge hole. Plug that hole and I’m all yours.

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Goodbye, Dad


Got that dreaded call this morning – my father, aged 68, passed away. I battled the notion that it would be cold to blog this but again, this blog is for posterity. Hopefully, some day, someone in future generations would read this and remember Teh Seng Beng. I hope to put up a eulogy at some point.

“So, I commend the enjoyment of life.” (From the Bible – really. Eccl 8:15)

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