marc.vic.max.elliot

After hearing a comment on a TV show this morning I was doing some research into circumcision in New Zealand. This was not to help decide whether or not Max will be circumcised – Vic and I are in complete accordance on this (he won’t be)

The TV show said that the overall rate of male circumcision in New Zealand was less than one percent! I didn’t have a particular figure in mind, I just thought it would be higher.  I seems that your ethnic background has a massive influence in whether or not you’ll be circumcised – understandable if we’re talking, for example, Jews vs non-Jews but it seems that the overriding infulence was your racial roots.  The figures were as follows:

? Maori – pretty much 0% as it’s never part of their culture

? Pacific Islanders – pretty much 100% as it always has been part of their culture

? Pakeha (European New Zealanders) – Less than 0.5% (as of 1995)

Another very interesting trend is that the percentage for the first two groups has stayed constant whereas the figure for Pakeha was at a high of 95% in 1950 and has been steadily decreasing to almost zero ever since.

link to figures

Max and I are slowly getting better. For him it’s his very active immune system and for me it’s throat lozenges and decongestants The weather doesnt help though, today is pouring rain and 70mph wind (the weather not me!) Bah humbug!

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I’m getting old – today I went out and bought slippers! And they’re grey!!

OH GOD!!!!!

I discovered a wonderful little shop 30 yards from our house today – Harrington’s Smallgoods.  They make continental meatgoods and so I nipped over and bought 2.2 lbs of haggis I love haggis and ate a lot when I was in Scotland a couple of years ago – now all I need to do is organise Neeps and Tatties.

Now for something really geeky – I love this watch! Very handy and not bad looking for what it is…….

Yee ha! Back online at home and loving it.

News? Very little actually. Max is sleeping for anything between 7 and 11 hours a night at the moment. Sometimes he’ll drop off at about 8pm and be up at 4 so while he’s getting a good nights sleep we don’t 🙁 I’m not complaining though – we have friends who had a girl the same day as we had Max and they are still getting up every two hours!

Anyway, loads to do so I’m off but I’ll drop by your part the world soon for a catch up

Excellent! another [url=http://www.digitalphotocontest.com]http://www.digitalphotocontest.com daily winner.[/url] This time in the animals category of all things

As for the stupidity – I was driving through town today and some idiot just pulled straight into my lane! Now I can handle it when stuff like this happens, after all I have been driving in London for that last five years. What really pissed me off is that there were two people in the front of this car and the driver was driving with a dog in his lap! This wasn’t some small lap dog either – oh no – this dog was big enough to see over the steering wheel! What an idiot……..

The good one – I won $327 on the lottery! I never check my tickets as I like the tension of just handing it over and seeing what sound the terminal makes. It’s usually the depressing little beep that signifies that, once again, the odds have beaten you. This time however it was the joyous noise of the terminal printer printing out a winners receipt. Not only that but I looked down and saw 3..2..7 on the display! My first thought was “how can you win three dollars twenty seven?” and then it clicked! Yee ha

The bad one – Winter is here 🙁 Rain, southerlies (bad in the southern hemisphere) and a high of about 13?C Jay and Larry’s place was built around the turn of the last century and has big rooms with high studs. Looks great but a bugger to heat Just have to worry about Max’s room really as us big’uns can regulate our body temperature a bit better.