Pentankh Eternal’s Blog

Well. I finally got a fantastic night’s sleep.

People who have no sleeping issues don’t know how good they have it. I have sleep apnoea which means I often don’t breathe properly during the night and I actually stop breathing. My brain wakes me enough to start breathing again, after a bit, but not enough to actually wake me (well.. most times). So I wake most days feeling exhausted as if I’ve never slept at all.

Sunday night I didn’t seem to sleep until about 3am. Monday night I was lying in bed and saw it was 2am. Awake again.. still.

No!.. Wait! I did fall asleep. Now I’m awake and I think it’s because I haven’t been breathing at all. You see, what was happening is I did actually fall asleep, but then I’d stop breathing as my sinuses closed and my brain would wake me again. Not being aware of falling asleep, it seemed as if I’d been awake the whole time.

I hooked up my CPAP breathing machine, put the mask on and finally drifted to sleep after 3am.

Yesterday I went to the chemist and talked to him. He suggested I try a nasal wash and a spray. Last night, I tried them out and also had a Demezin with antihistamine. I put my mask on again and had the best night’s sleep in the last 10 years.

Today I felt so alive and energetic. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that!

 Last weekend I took Sienna to the racetrack. They had a Family Day.

We got there about 10:15am but found out they don’t start until midday so we went to find a train into the city.  It turns out there are no trains to Ascot on weekends and you need to find a bus.  The train station is unmanned and they don’t have a map to the nearest bus stop, just a timetable saying to get a rail bus at whatever street.  We walked around for a bit until we found a bus stop, but it wasn’t the right one. Then we found a major road with bus stops. Just after we got there a bus came and we got on and headed for the big city.

I took Sienna to the Krispy Kreme shop and we picked up a donut each. They also gave us free donuts to eat while they served us so we had two donuts each. I also had a coffee and Sienna had some of a boysenberry icecream in a cup.

When we finished we checked out Harvey Norman and the Rocking Horse record shop. I showed vinyls and a record player to Sienna and we headed back to the bus stop as it was nearing time for our ride back.  We caught the bus within about 10 minutes and got to the racetrack just after they opened.

They had fairy floss so we got some of that and found a big wind tunnel for kids to run through so she did that a few times then she went on a swinging boat and saw Shrek walking around.

We bought some lunch and sat down to listen to the races and watch one race.  I wanted Sienna to get her face painted so we lined up and she sat next to some kids sitting opposite the face painter. After some time it became apparent the kids were not in line so we found the line and lined up behind some kids. Unfortunately, some women in their 20s said the line was further down behind them because they were there to get their faces painted like fairy kids too. What the hell? I said "You are getting your faces painted too? What??" They said yes and that we needed to line up behind them as well. Since there was about 10 women lined up revisiting their childhood I said there was no point waiting. At 6-7 minutes per person and about 20 people (including kids) lined up before us there was no way we were waiting over an hour in line. I could not believe that grown women would make 5yo kids wait an hour behind them so they could look immature.

We left and headed home for some rest.

Sunday we got up and went to the local Bowling Alley.  Sienna had never bowled before so it was a treat for her.  We played a couple of games and had lunch there.  We also played on the arcade games in the alley and won some tickets which SIenna cashed in on a candy bracelet. She’d never had one before so I had to show her it’s okay to eat the candy on the bracelet.  As she ate it, we drove home.  On the way I passed a paddock with a windmill and saw a big sign out the front FREE FAMILY SHOW!  I turned around and came back.  We drove in and walked around to see what was there. They had a guy demonstrating sand sculpting.  I helped Sienna make a big castle. The sand had clay in it so it was easy to sculpt.  After we did that we lined up with the face painter there.  We were lucky to be the second last people to be served as they were near closing.  We lined up for about 45 mins and Sienna started races with the girl behind us, running back and forth.  She got a flower painted on her face which she was very proud of and we headed home again.

A week or so ago Mil suggested I try out a Facebook application called "Human Pets". She said you meet people there and make friends and it’s a lot of fun.  You can also go to HumanPets.com and sign up and link it to your Facebook HumanPets account.  I paid the USD$15 and it came to about AUD$15.71  Gotta love it when the American dollar tanks!  I’m on HumanPets quite often now. I am on every morning and every afternoon until about 11pm or so depending on if my friend in Western Australia is on or not. She usually is

It’s about time I got ready for work so now I’m off!

I’ve discovered I’m either allergic to GLUTEN or WHEAT (or, possibly, both).  The other day I had some Coles band Oats which has a label "THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS GLUTEN" on it. My face went bright red and all the skin on my forehead went dry and flakey.  This has happened often over about the last ten years (the symptoms) but this is the first time I’ve actually linked it to something. I went to see a skin specialist many years ago and they just gave me expensive cream which did help, but required me to go back often for visits to buy more of the same. 

I recently went on a Detox Diet and found that my forehead went back to it’s natural oily state for the first time in 10 years. I was surprised by this, so figured it must have something to do with whatever I eat which causes it.  The above suggests wheat or gluten. The reason is, with Oats purchased from shops, they are produced on the same equipment which makes Wheat and other products. They cannot guarentee no wheat whatsoever in the oats.  This was confirmed when I wrote a letter to Carman’s foods (an Australian company which exports to other countries as well) and they said due to Australian manufacturing practises even they cannot guarentee no gluten. Their Oats do, however, say "NO WHEAT". I ate their oats the next day with no noticable big problem.  They did say, however, that they have a new meusli breakfast cereal out now which contains no wheat and no gluten. They offered to send me a free pack to try out if I gave them my address.. which I did.  This company is fantastic! Who would think you’d be given an offer like this? I already eat their meusli bars for morning tea daily.

So, I’ve given up things with wheat and gluten in them for a few days to test the theory.  One thing I have also noticed is both brands of shampoo I have at home contain WHEAT! Even an Organic Shampoo, so I have stopped using them for now as well. You can imagine if I *am* allergic to wheat and it makes my forehead react then I have shampoo which mainly goes on the head area .. what would happen!  Stay tuned for more updates.

I’ve had a lot of thought and I now believe I will stay in Brisbane.   I just can’t stand nor justify moving away from my daughter back to a more expensive location with the overcrowded trains I hated while there.  I will just have to make it my priority to move out to a better location in Brisbane North and make more friends and socialise more.

I found out today I have at least three friends in the North Brisbane area all of whom would visit if I were closer to them, so that’s a great start.

As for catching up with my Sydney friends. I will make more of an effort to fly down every 2-3 months for long weekends and catch up with them.  I will also drive home to visit my parents at least twice a year, fly to visit my sister at least once a year and from time to time drive back up to Gladstone and visit my friend Tharyn up there.

All in all, I think this will be a very good solution to my problems.

Head on over to the iTunes Australia TV page and check out the available shows to download and watch!

Browse the iTunes Store for television shows from ABC, Disney Channel and more. Find shows like Desperate Housewives and McLeod’s Daughters or sports, cartoons, educational programs and more: It’s all in the iTunes Store. Watch 30-second previews, then buy the episodes you want.

Episodes are around AUD$2.99 (eg SouthPark). Whereas a Season of SouthPark is AUD$32.99.  Other seasons I’ve seen are up to $50 or more.

After doing the Detox diet it appears Red Wine may have been a culprit in causing me to have interrupted sleep patterns with lack of oxygen during the night.  During the detox I don’t remember having any issues sleeping. As soon as it was over I had a glass of red wine on Thursday night and another on Friday night. Both nights I had trouble sleeping. I had trouble breathing at times since my sinuses closed up somewhat and I had terrible nightmares.

I tipped the rest of the bottle down the sink and will see how it goes once I have it all out of my system.  Last night I slept rather well.

The night before last I started using the "3 step lessons" function on my new Casio CTK 810 keyboard to teach myself to play "London Bridge".  I had fun learning the key sequences and it was easy to figure out how it all works.  I’m going to try and dedicate 30-60 mins each night to learning to play music.  Once I have my credit cards successfully paid off I’m going to get some actual lessons.  I did email a local teacher about lessons a couple of weeks ago but have not heard back so have decided to wait until things are all paid off first.

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Last Sunday I received my first SMS spam to an Australian mobile phone.
It says:

ATTN: ITS IN THE RECORDS HERE THAT YOU ARE THE SOLE BENEFICIARY TO LATE CARO MARK WHO LEFT #10 MILLION POUNDS STERLING. TO CLAIM YOUR INHERITTANCE EMAIL: revfatheragustin@yahoo.com.hk or MOBILE: 0092347082836553

I hope this isn’t something which is going to happen often. It was at 6:30am. Lucky I was already awake.

Last night I met up with Mil and her friends Duane and Mel at The Globe in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.  We went to see Angelspit live in concert along with Baal, Monster Zoku Onsomb and Empty Art.

It was a really good night.  Empty Art had some good songs. I’ve not seen them before.  Monster Zoku Onsomb were crazy insane people with catchy music but entertained everyone dancing around, jumping, doing the Chicken Dance and the girls slapping the bum of the lead singer guy who had a zipped up "Gimp" mask a’la TISM.  Following them were Baal whom were not bad, but the lead singer screamed through most of it and nobody could understand any actual lyrics.  But the one we were all waiting for was Angelspit!  They really rocked the show and everyone was having a fantastic time.  DestroyX (the female singer) is really cute, too!  I really enjoyed myself and had a wonderful night out.  I will post up some video on my YouTube later, but now I have a few photos below.  The rest are in my Facebook and Flickr photo albums. Go check them out!

EMPTY ART

MONSTER ZOKU ONSOMB

BAAL

ANGELSPIT

The gig finished about 12:15am and I was home before 1am so I got plenty of sleep.  After a great night out like this I’m less pissed off with Brisbane at the moment.

Over 4.25 million downloads so far worldwide. Over 69,000 downloads just for Australia!

Let’s do it! I love Firefox 3!

Had a busy weekend.

Saturday morning I took Sienna to swimming lessons. She had a fun time as usual.  We picked up some mail from the Post Office and went to our usual Coffee Club shop for breakfast. Unfortunately they had closed until this Thursday for renovations.  Sienna had a great idea that we should go to Indooroopilly shopping centre as she knows there are food shops there. Too clever for her own good.  We drove up there and I found another Coffee Club for our breakfast. We had our ‘usuals’.  I had bacon, scrambled eggs, tomato and toast.  Sienna had turkish bread with sausages on them.

When we finished eating I took her to the Intencity arcade centre.  I put $20 through the tokens machine to get bonus tokens.  I didn’t realise you can’t trade them back for money if you don’t use them all so we had $20 worth of gaming to do hehe.  We played lots of games and had fun, but then a guy gave us a huuuuge roll of tickets.  I wondered where it all came from, but soon discovered the Deal or No Deal machine at the front of the shop which we walked past on the way in.  We sat down and put 6 tokens in the machine.  I let Sienna pick the suitcases and we ended up with 200 tickets!  We played several times more and ended up with 75 tickets and then 25 tickets.  We had so many my pockets were bulging!  Normally we are lucky to make 50 tickets when we go there.  We both enjoyed playing the game, too.  Sienna traded in her tickets for a new pink plastic tiara as her old one was broken, plus a soccer ball on a keyring and a T Rex dinosaur keyring.

We came back home and I got the washing onto the line and the dishes into the dishwasher to clean.  We spent most of the rest of the afternoon playing games and playing The Simpsons on the Wii.

Sunday morning I got up late-ish. I wanted a sleep-in which I don’t get often so woke around 8am.  We had breakfast and packed our bags and hopped in the car.  We drove to my friend Tharyn’s place at Gladstone.  It turned out to be a 7.5 hour drive due to a few stops. I was so glad to arrive.  Sienna met Jade and they had a ball playing together.  Sienna showed Jade how to play the Wii Catz 2 game and they chased each other around and watched Dora on Jade’s bedroom TV.  Tharyn’s parents came to visit so we all had a BBQ.  After that, Tharyn took me for a drive to show me the town as I’d never been to Gladstone before.  The furtherest north I’d driven is the Sunshine Coast so it was something new to me.  When we got back I played Halo and Quake against her hustband, Rob and Rob’s son Greg.  Greg kicked our arse so much we just kept dying.  In the end we restricted him to just the chainsaw in Quake and he still beat us.  We were having a fantastic time, though and got told to shoosh via MSN from Tharyn upstairs hehe.

I went to bed around 11:30pm or so.  It took ages to get to sleep for some reason so I had a couple of Insomnia-X valerian tablets and a couple of Herron Blue’s.  That knocked me out until Sienna woke me at 7:30am.  We had breakfast and played the Wii some more before leaving at 10:30am.  We hopped in the car and drove off.  We  had a few stops on the way south again.  We stopped for lunch at 2:30pm at Red Rooster, but Sienna wasn’t really hungry.  She fell asleep about 30 mins before we got home but woke 10 mins later.  I dropped her off at 6:30pm and came home to rest and sleep again.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend away.

I tried a new method to get to sleep quicker and stay asleep longer.

About half an hour before bed I had a herb tablet called Insomnia-X. It’s a new dual-action Valerian tablet.  It has two layers. One layer dissolves quickly to release the herbs fast and get you to sleep fast. The other layer is absorbed over 6 hours so as to keep you asleep.

I also had a glass of warm milk and read a book for half an hour before going to sleep.  Add in some ear plugs and I slept right through with a really decent night’s sleep.  Oh, I also had a rainforest sounds cd playing.

I’m going to keep up this ritual.  I think it’s a great way to wind down and get my mind off things before sleeping.

The book I was reading is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

If you read this blog much you will know it sort of disappeared for a while.  It didn’t totally go away, just moved from the front page.  I wasn’t doing too well and didn’t want the blog here for some time until I had resolved some issues.

As a result, I’ve decided to move back to Sydney.  Brisbane isn’t the place for me and I need to get back to my friends and relatives in NSW.

It does however mean leaving my daughter behind, but there’s nothing I can do about that.  It made me an emotional wreck for a few days, but it’s a decision I had to make.  I will miss her terribly and she is already upset that I am going away, but I aim to fly up to visit her as often as I can.  Better to have a happy father living far away and visiting sometimes than a miserable, depressed one living nearby and visiting often.

I talked to my team leader at work and he tells me there’s a guy in our company in Sydney who wants to transfer to Brisbane. He just has to sell his house and we can swap jobs.

I picked up a lot of packing boxes given away on Freecycle on Sunday afternoon, so I will start packing away anything I don’t really need right now.

It’s been an emotional rollercoaster and I don’t think it’ll be over for a while, but it’s going to be much better for me in the end.

I’ve heard people from time to time meantion the Flight of the Conchords so I decided to check it out. It’s not too bad. This one is probably the most amusing I’ve seen so far.  Probably the end bit is where it starts getting even more amusing…

And another good one. Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros

Sienna has been sick lately so I’ve taken a couple of days off work to look after her.

I bought the Wii game "Catz" from Electronics Boutique (EB Games) since they have their half-yearly sale on and it was half price.  We’ve been playing it quite a lot the last couple of days. Today was mostly a ‘Catz’ day.

Product Description

Choose a kitten from over 40 different breeds, and make her cuter with clothing and accessories. Create a comfortable pet village and guide your lovable bundle of fur through 60 fun adventures. Compete against your friends in mini-games such as racing and treasure-hunting.

Manufacturer’s Age: 6 years and up

Our Recommended Age:

6 years and up

Last Sunday the Zombie Walk Brisbane was on.  We drove into the city and followed the gathering weirdos with paint and costumes on.  I took some movies (check on YouTube) and some photos (check my Flickr) of the people walking around. We started at Roma Parkland and made our way down through the King George Square and along Adelaide st.  The masses were heading for the Valley but by the time we walked to Broadway Sienna had had enough. We went to Hungry Jacks and picked up an ice cream each and a bottle of water.  Once we’d settled down we headed for the car.  Sienna wanted to find the ‘monsters’ again so we drove to Fortitude Valley and circled around the park they had all stopped in.  She wanted to park the car and go see them so I found a spot but wasn’t sure if I should park there.  We got out and I looked at the windscreen of the car behind me which had a ticket on it saying "Infringement Notice". We quickly jumped back into the car and headed off home.  It was a nice day out anyway and after being unsure about the scary people at first, Sienna soon warmed up to them, particularly since she was on my shoulders most of the way, so I guess she felt much safer.