It is a rich era for manglish...
( Take a guess, before you look? Also, think up your own most despised verbiage and fill me in, will ya??Collapse )

They spend all day in their dripping wet rainforest camp. The men stay in their tents and their sleeping bags as if they existonly only to live in them. The women do what the men are always too tired or too uninterested or too caught up in a conversation about sport or politics to be bothered doing. They work. They peel vegetables. They collect firewood. They fetch water from the river up the steep and awkward bank to the campsite. They wash dishes. They help the guides organise the camp, unpacking and packing barrels. Repairing equipment. The men reserve their energies for some future conjectural at of courage. The women's courage is of a type that endures this day of rain. Meanwhile the men get depressed. The men feel some embarrassment that women are on the same trip and doing things that really only men ought be doing. The guides prefer it. Nothing, for a river guide, is worse than an all-male trip. They are boring and lazy and inclined to foolhardiness. They are considerable work to look after. They are generally not in the same class for company. Aljaz likes sitting down with the women around the fire....
--Richard Flanagan
p154
( another quote, p224:Collapse )

I can't tell you how many times I've been taught the Heimlich maneuver in CPR and first aid classes. Plenty. Well over 20 years worth of certifications and re-certifications. So I've been trained. In my last recert (2009) we were taught back slaps for infants, and they called the uncorking procedure used on adults "abdominal thrusts". It seems that pretty much everybody knows about the Heimlich maneuver. ( But maybe there are better emergency treatments for choking. At the very least, there are options.Collapse )

In Australia air ambulances that transport people from remote areas to big city hospitals are no longer big enough. One report says that 17.5% of the 21 million total population Down Under is grossly overweight. The Royal Flying Doctor Service is replacing its fleet of four with seven airplanes. Two of the new planes will be equipped with stretchers that can handle a 570 pound patient.
( ruminations on the air/obesity news of the dayCollapse )