Nostalgia

I miss Malaysia!!!!

So I saw this article in my news feed this morning. Anytime I see something relating to Malaysia, especially travel or food related, I simply have to click. A lot of the time it doesn't tell me anything I don't already know - after all, having lived there for eight years and having a savvy Malaysian wife gives me a serious inside edge!

So we're currently talking about what to do holiday-wise in the coming year. When we were in Kupang it was easy - expat roles usually give you a trip home each year, so we took advantage of that. The rest of my leave was split between a week in Bali and a couple in KL, both to see family and also indulge in our foody interests.

However, being back in Australia, and no longer enjoying the perks of being an expat, well gallivanting around Asia and beyond is not quite as easy as it once was. Still, we are thinking perhaps a December trip to KL is in order. There are other options, such as Bali, but it's hard to go past KL. Anyway. I'll do some modelling about what trips to a variety of destinations would look like in terms of cost, and see how we go.

Pork noodle, I'm coming for you....

Stuff

I was feeling a bit emo the other day, not sure why. Sometimes I can be a bit too sensitive, and of course there is a fair bit going on right now. Health concerns, wondering about this new job and when they'll make a decision, always trying to be a better person. Occasionally it weighs on me a bit.

It might be these new meds too, and perhaps some kind of symptoms of not having coke and juice or sugar and such. Who knows. I just know I feel a bit fragile today.

I had a bit to eat and immediately felt better. May well have been the other side of "hangry", which we see in the kids once in a while. Far out, if I am so susceptible to these things, no wonder they - the boys especially - struggle from time to time. Even I wasn't aware of the cause of my symptoms.

It's funny - not funny, how much like me they are. I guess that does prove I am a knucklehead after all. I hope it also proves that I'm still a bit loveable too haha :)

Well, that was the other day's draft post - not long after I jumped in the car with the big boss to go to one of our projects and discuss a new proposal that the QM and I had come up with. He liked it, approved it, and it's all systems go.

As we pulled into Cohuna, he then says to me "before you jump out, there's something in the back I want to talk to you about". I'm thinking, does he want me to help him bury a body or something? But no, what he wanted to talk to me about was the contract for General Manager - Quarrying. One of the key positions in the company, and essentially my career goal in terms of where I have always aspired to one day get to.

WOW!

Of course I have accepted. So here I am, the GM. Today is my first day in the role, and I guess it hasn't fully sunk in yet. I am proud of myself, and eager for the challenge. I think this is just what I need to be honest. Below is the MD's email to all staff informing them of the appointment:

"Dear Team,

I am very pleased to advise that David Brown has accepted our offer for the role of GM Quarries, replacing Peter. You all know David from his brief time with us as Resource Development Manager. In this time I am sure that many of you will have recognised David’s strengths including his willingness to listen and learn, his energy and his strong technical, financial and management skills.

David has held a Western Australian Quarry Manager’s Certificate of Competency since 1998 and has had over 25 years of production, technical and management experience working in Mines throughout Australia and South East Asia. David also holds an Honours Degree in Geological Engineering from RMIT.

I know that you will all continue to make David very welcome as he continues to learn about our people, plant, customers and resources. As planned Peter will be working part time for the next couple of months to mentor David and assist with budget preparation. David is very fortunate (as am I) to have such an experienced and competent Quarry Management Team as you guys to work with. I firmly believe that our team is amongst the very best in Australia, a group that has blossomed under the guidance of Geoff Wakeman and Peter Richardson. I also know that David is keen to ensure that we all continue to work collaboratively to develop our business and remain at the forefront of the extractive industry.

We will shortly be advertising for an experienced and well qualified person to fill the critical role of Resource Development Manager. Until this position is filled David will be covering this role too.

Congratulations David!

Kind regards,

John."

Dave the GM, amazing....

Noodling3 - Look What I've Found

$760 in noodling this week, from three different bank visits. Two in Cohuna and one locally, so I'm hoping for some nice variation and a few interesting finds. I am not trying to emulate nor one-up PJ's Coin Capers, but I guess that's the format I am using. For now at least.

And that format is look what I've found! Not via video, but via humble blog post. After all that noodling, here are my finds, or keepers as we like to call them:

This photo shows the total of my keepers for the week. I suspect I am not as critical of what makes a keeper compared to more experienced noodlers, but as you'll see, specific current circumstance, particularly relating to the new effigy, is making a difference right now. But still, it's a nice big bunch of interesting coins!

This next photo shows my 20c keepers. I don't noodle a lot of 20c as there's not a whole lot to find when compared to other denominations, but these were good. Particularly the Canberra and Tasmania coins, neither of which I had seen before.

This photo shows the foreign coins I found for the week. All Kiwi, and all went in the jar with the rest. If any of the kids show an interest when they get older they can have the lot. I could possibly throw these back in circulation, but I'll keep them as foreign coins for now.

Next are my 50c keepers. We have a couple of Mabo's, a couple of state coins, all low mintages, and a robe cud error coin. I now have 6 of those and am wondering just how rare they are. Still, they are not costing me much to hang onto for now so I will keep them. Once I get to selling, I'll list them and if no good, back in the sack they go. That's the beauty of this hobby.

In the $1 section we had a nice 2015 ANZAC, a couple of 2001 Volunteers, which I am holding for now but will reassess when it comes time to sell. Lastly a few of the coin hunt coins. I am noting that these are wearing REALLY fast, so good ones will be hard to find in circulation going forward.

Here are the coins that make up most of this week's haul - the new Jody Clarke effigy coins. All are very low mintage at this stage, so time will tell just how many the mint mint in the second half of the financial year. The beauty of this hobby is that if they do mint a heap and these don't end up being worth any more than FV, I can just send them back to the bank, easy. I suspect some will go that way, but hopefully at least one or two won't. 5c for example, has 17 million in 2019 minted on the old effigy, so I hope they don't need to mint many more of the new one. Well already minted, as we're talking 2019 here.

Ok so the next one includes some that I have already changed my mind on - I had originally set my $2 mintage limit at 5 million, with a gold poppy exception (5.9M). However I have since changed that back down to 4 million, which knocks out the 1993. So apart from the coloured coins and Invictus, that only leaves the 2011, 2016 changeover and 2019 elder coins as the ones to keep. The middle coins are those 2019 ones, only 500k in the first half of the year. With the new effigy in the second half, with any luck there won't be too many more.

Right, not sure of the logic in this next photo as it's quite a mix! At the top is a low mintage 5c changeover coin, always good to find. Next to it is a cracker - the very low mintage 2011 10c coin and in almost uncirculated condition! The 2000 $1 coin is now no longer a keeper - I guess I was probably subconsciously channeling the mule by keeping these before! Next row are old effigy 2018 10c, fairly low mintage, and lastly $1 Jody's, so far a low mintage too.

This last photo shows the best of the lot - two 5c coins with rim cuds. According to PJ, these are quite rare and hard to find, so they should be worth a good few bucks each. Even at $5, that's still a 1000% return on investment. Pretty good!

So overall, a really nice noodle result. Yes a lot of them were JC effigy's and may not end up being keepers, but still I found a good number of excellent coins and had a whole lot of fun in the process.

Coin plan this week:

This past week was really fun and productive, so I am going to have another decent crack this week. But I need to be careful not to overload the same banks week in week out, just so they hopefully don't see me as a drag.

So, as last week I got coins from both Cohuna banks as well as Echuca CBA, this week I will go elsewhere. So far I have been to Kerang, and I may even nip down to Rochester. I will also go to banks other than CBA in Echuca. Let's see how we go!

Noodling2

Ok so this is a new vernacular for naming posts, but hey, it's my blog! So why not!

Week 7 in our new home and week 8 completed at my new job. I'll post on that soonish, but this one is about the noodle.

I simply haven't had the cash nor the chance to get much in the way of noodling potential happening recently, but I have done a bit here and there. Actually one of the more interesting things I have done is shown below, which is fingering through my big jar of foreign coins. It actually turned out that I had a pre-decimal silver and two 1966 round 50c coins in there too, so I was chuffed about that.

Rule of Thumb: NEVER noodle, at least until you know the mintages intimately, without the RAM mintage page open in front of you.

I should be following that rule more closely - recently I started keeping all commemorative $1 coins as I saw most were selling on eBay. So I posted one lot and in a week have had no views at all - people just aren't after it. So I looked back at the RAM site and saw it has a mintage of 10 million. Not super high, but not low at all either. Looking at ebay again, yes there have been a few sell, but I have to ask myself, what is my cutoff? I am going to rate the mintages and check it out - I have been put off by having to keep 50% of my bloody coins recently, I do not want to do that.

So I am going to go through them all and cull the ones that don't seem to hold value. Here we go...

1986 IYOP - 25M, hardly any circulated coins on Ebay sold, will ignore. $9 saved.
2009 Pension - 21M, a few sold but not many, I find a heap online, will ignore, $14 saved.
2005 Peace - 34M, someone sold one for $4 including postage and it was beat to shit. A few others around the $1-2 mark. Might be dodgy. Not keen, ignore. $12 saved.
1988 Bicentennial, I saved one of these originally, for the RIGHT reason - it was in almost flawless condition. At 21M mintage, again it's just not rare enough in circulated condition to make money from, so ignore and save $4.
1993 Landcare, 18M, even decent ones are not selling for much, ignore, $5 saved.

Ok, now for a biggie. When I was originally compiling my list of $1 coins to keep, I decided to keep the Scouts and Girl Guides coins because they seemed to be decent sellers. But, knowing what I know now (and seeing how PJ in particular does it), let's check out the mintages and actual sales:

Scouts 2008, 17M, not at all scarce, on Ebay same guy with his 2.50+1.50 is there, as is the 2+1 guy. But not a whole lot. I'm going to can this one too. Saving is..... wait for it..... $25. Yeah. Sure it would have been nice to make a percentage on that 25 bucks, but it just wasn't going to happen, at least not in a reasonable timeframe and not without a shitload of effort for borderline coins. No thanks.

So, given that, what about the Guides? 2010, 12.6M, so a bit rarer, but still not scarce at all. The usual suspects are on ebay, I'm becoming more and more suspicious about those guys. So we'll discard these too, and save $20. Badda Bing, Badda Boom. That's a big wad, those two together. I ain't done yet.

Next is my least favourite $1, the Parkes coin. It just looks poorly conceived to me I'm afraid, but I'm no artist. Usual suspects online, same crap, 26.6M mintage. Discard, save $9. Haha, it may seem like I don't want to noodle anymore, but that's the opposite - I just want to noodle value, treasure hunt, and do it for fun and maybe profit. Not as a chore.

1999 Older People, 1997 Kingsford-Smith, both gone too. 2002 Outback aswell. $18 more back in the bank.

AHA! My first keeper - 2001 Year of Volunteers. Only 6M mintage, which is reasonably low, so I'll hang onto these for now and see how I go with them. Next keep is 2003 Making a Difference, 4.1M and a keeper.

Looking at the only listing I had done, the Women's Suffrage one, I now feel it is in the same boat, so there's another $11 back in my kick. 2007 APEC too, $9 thanks.

2011 CHOGM, 9.4M is getting there. I only have one so will hang onto it for now.

By the way, I am not going to be making sets of all these coins. I am not collecting circulated coins for numismatic purposes, purely for making money. The collecting is for either stacking precious metal or collecting valuable numismatic coins and other metal objects.

So we have now gone through the list and have saved a heap. Plus my stash now looks far more reasonable. Happy with that.

Aspartame - In or Out?

So I have quit lollies, ice cream, chocolate, biscuits, and even booze. 100% gone, all of it. Yet my morning wake-up blood sugar remains at about 14, as in about double what it should be.

Ok, so these changes have only been made over the last 1-2 weeks, with booze the last cab off the rank, and as wifey says, what takes years to accumulate quite likely will take years to rectify. She meant that with regards to weight gain, but I think the principle is largely true overall for all health related matters.

Still, it's a frigging pain in the arse, I was really hoping for some, even small improvement in sugar levels after the major lifestyle changes I have made recently. Not to be, not at this time, so it seems. I am seeing a doctor on Friday, so I suspect that will lead to some tests, specifically to look at diabetes, and also organ function. These factors, particularly the latter, may well be having a big say on why my sugar hasn't moved as yet. I may need medication, and who the fuck knows what else. We'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

But, and yeah it took me a while to get here, but it's my blog! Yes, but, my clever wife spelled something out to me today - yes I do eat and drink more than her, but that's probably proportional to our size difference. In general, apart from my occasional sneaky chocolate bars, we eat and drink the same things. Yet her blood sugar this morning was 4.3, and as perfect as you can get. She, as she has done many times before, asked about my diet drinks - specifically Coke No Sugar, which is artificially sweetened by aspartame. We have read somewhere before that it is so effective an artificial sweetener that it actually fools your brain and body into thinking you've had sugar, so they react accordingly. Up until now I had been dismissive of this, as it is proven there are no calories in this stuff. So how can it have an impact? Well, blood sugar isn't just about what you ingest, it's also about your organs and how your body deals with what you eat and drink. Anyhow, while we were talking, I remembered something from the old Brisbane days: Ketosis.

Ketosis is a state your body can get into where it starts eating itself, because you are not ingesting enough carbohydrates, or something like that. In order to achieve this state, one essentially needs to stop eating and drinking carbs, so bread, rice, potatoes, sugar, all out. That obviously makes sense. However, an interesting aspect of this diet was that while some diet drinks with artificial sweeteners were ok, those with aspartame were not, because of their effect of fooling your body. I did manage to find a local alternative that didn't use this sweetener (Kirks?) and got through the month ok. In fact I lost 10kg during the process and was pretty chuffed with that. Since though, apart from a eat-anything diet, I have also been regularly consuming diet coke. Except in Kupang where I couldn't easily get it, initially. And I lost weight there...

www.sciencedirect.com seems to think it's safe for all, including diabetics. So does the Mayo Clinic and numerous others. However, studies have proven that aspartame blocks the gut enzyme IAP, which directly impacts on the metabolic syndrome, issues concerning diabetes, heart condition and obesity. Fucking yikes.

Pepsi is dropping it in its diet drinks in the US but not elsewhere. Apparently this is to allay the fears of consumers, but it does appear there is something to this. In studies, mice who had aspartame in their diet all had elevated blood sugar. Sound familiar?

I am not going to list all the articles etc that I have gone through here, but what I did read today, coupled with what I already knew and what I had forgotten but have since remembered, all lead to the same conclusion. I need to add aspartame laced drinks to the list of things I am giving up. Frankly, if I go off this shit for a year who knows, maybe the rest won't be so bad after all. It does seem to be a key common denominator after all.

So there you go. Goodbye Coke No Sugar, Coke Zero, Diet Coke. I have enjoyed you, but it appears you have been silently killing me. Time to move on.