What's Wrong With Change?

Hello everyone. If you ever have feelings that everything in life is all the same, so and so and you have better things you want to do but not get accepted and dismissed, I feel the same way. With this latest post, I really like to bring up the big issue of not accepting any changes no matter any bit of change can be good.

It happened when in my later years particularly starting my new lifestyle within Melbourne, I've been developing myself to become a better and well-respected person with goals and ambitions in life whereas others don't seem to have that philosophy. There had been times having eFriend sessions is good to vent out serious bothers about communities not accepting change and it's especially pleasing that we both agreed Australia is a conservative country.

What I like to do is break down many topics where changes can be beneficial but not always accepted starting with autism.

To recap for those who visited my blog for the first time, I've been diagnosed with autism since I was 5 years old and growing up in a regional town Neerim South, I wasn't a typical child among others. My social skills hadn't developed as much, I was quiet and not wanting to hang out, avoiding noisy environments as much as I can and insisting things being the same. Those have caused problems growing up and after that, I felt the need to break those trends once and for all.

I began initiating changes in many ways. I can still remember when I went to the Yallourn TAFE studying Certificate IV in Screen and Media when I met and hung around with other students. That also freed up some of my insecurities after many troubling moments with students at schools left me not having much of a social life. Eventually as the years went by, I've been opening myself to other things whilst overcoming some sensory overload causes and anything that's out of my comfort zone but in the end of the day, I do have people even if they don't appear to be fussed about my autism who make me feel worthy. 

Although I've been establishing myself even accepting my autism and not being a problem thanks to my latest counselling sessions and meeting up with some other people on the same autism spectrum, I still face the dilemma of communities not educated enough to understand anything about the autism spectrum. Here's something that'll help emphasise this scenario.

I'll use Elmer which is a colourful tiled elephant. Colourful and funny, he's among other elephants with different shapes but all grey. There's a time he got upset primarily not fitting with other elephants until the rest decorated themselves in different colours and patterns and that concluded the story. Not as much in the real world unfortunately.

However, there are things that should be done that'll help with more integration with more opportunities to learn and better accept neurodivergent people such as myself. I really like to have more neurodivergent groups particularly in the South East of Melbourne where I even feel out of place at times but one thing that's promising is I've been getting involved with Aspergers Victoria and intend to become a member starting next month. Any bit of growth can help build momentum.

Next topic to bring up is car matters and that's been a quite interesting topic for me. Throughout my time growing up, I was accustomed to Fords, Holdens and Japanese branded cars that dominated the roads until from my early teens, I got into European cars starting with the Peugeot 307 expanding my automotive vocabulary. Strangely, I've never really got into the Ford versus Holden debates which were the thing until Australia stopped producing cars.

There is one kind of internal combustion engine aside from the growing influence of hybrid and battery electric vehicles as well as hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles that is still useable and that is a turbocharged petrol engine as opposed to a bigger engine.

These kinds of engines have been used before but became more of a thing with tighter emission regulations coming into force.

What you're looking at is the engine of a Ford Puma which I'm a proud owner of one. This engine may appear to be small as it's a 1 litre 3 cylinder plus turbocharged engine, it's capable of offering good power and useable torque throughout the rev range. With this engine producing 92 kilowatts (123 hp) of power and 170 newton metres (126 ft lb) of torque and getting decent fuel economy, it helps cars equipped with those engines to be on par with other cars in the same sized category.

There are benefits of using turbocharged petrol engines even that I've experienced myself which'll be worth mentioning. They include

*    Balance of power and useable torque

*    Better fuel economy compared to bigger naturally aspirated engines

*    Fewer spark plugs and fuel injectors to change

*    Alternative to cylinder deactivation with potential mechanical issues

*    No emission hassles compared to turbo diesel engines (diesel soot, DPF clogging up and requiring cleaning, AdBlue reliance for exhaust treatment)

There are notable turbocharged petrol engines worth mentioning that serve their purposes same with bigger naturally aspirated engines. These include

*    Audi/Volkswagen's 1.8 litre and 2 litre turbocharged engines

*    Ford's Barra 270T engines used in Falcon XR6 Turbo, G6E Turbo and Territory Ghia Turbo models

*    Ford's EcoBoost engines (including mine)

*    Jaguar's 3 litre twin turbo V6 engine in their XJ220 supercar (V12 engine initially proposed)

*    Turbocharged Buick V6 engine found in Buick GNX

And here are a couple of videos I found on YouTube to demonstrate.

I've done a previous post on my Ford Puma ST Line which I'll add the link for anyone to have a look.

My Puma ST Line At It's Finest

With that out of the way, it's time to move on with food and beverages.

Earlier, I was uncomfortable eating foods that are plain for just aren't familiar until I grew up. From there, I've diversified my tastes and became adventurous and even when I cook my meals, I add some extra ingredients for better taste helping it become more desirable. This brings up one lesson to make any food more desirable to eat which is flavour.

With eggs which I've never been keen on consuming, that changed back when I was at the Dandenong Hospital after a series of surgeries from an ileostomy to the reversal. I've managed to eat curried egg sandwiches among the assortment of other sandwiches once allowed to be on a solid diet and from then on, I sometimes ate Turkish style sausage and egg muffins at Hungry Jacks's with barbecue sauce that'll help and it's a good way to help overcome eating anything that has egg in it which I wouldn't do.

Other than that, I've been pretty good accepting other foods including pasta using a variety of sauces including tomato based and cream-based sauces cooked with other ingredients. Rice is another food I like to eat and sauces are a ticket for consumption if rice feels too bland to eat. One great example is cooking stir-fries using hoisin and oyster sauces. And even making my own marinades for various meats using olive oil, garlic and any kind of herbs I desire is another thing worth emphasising.

And with the decent appetising tastes of foods that I've accepted and embraced, going out on restaurants isn't much of a problem and I like to bring that up when my family go out to meals around Melbourne bearing in mind the city is the foodie capital of the world. Whilst factoring meals my family had back when we attended family autistic camps up in Mansfield, we all agreed the meals in Melbourne's abundant restaurants are well better and we won't look back.

I'll leave you now with 3 examples of the foods I've cooked.

Here's my own burger I've made back when I was living in the sharehouse in Berwick. I've added tomato sauce and mustard. One of the housemates gave me burger cheese slices along with the sliced bread whilst he travelled to his home country of Sri Lanka for a holiday.

Here's a latest toasted sandwich using chicken, sliced cheese, a combination of barbecue sauce and mustard and spinach grown in the backyard at my parents' house.

And finally, this meal is made using leftover rice which is good to prevent as much food waste as possible.

We'll now move to everyday living starting with our use of money to pay. Nowadays, I mainly use EFTPOS payments and online transactions other than using cash which'll be a rather interesting thing.

Here's this interesting argument saying how "cash is king" which is completely odd as I've very much moved on from this old method.

My benefits using my bank cards include convenient and efficient payments, time saved going to ATMs, eliminating guesswork on how much cash money is required for any payment and that's all. With regards to power and internet outages and even EFTPOS machines malfunctioning, how often does that happen? I hadn't had many dramas so why should I use cash solely? Nice try.

Accepting new technologies such as smartphones can feel unorthodox with any kinds of apps imaginable and features such as cameras, calculators, diaries and so and so to use but with time, they're useful. I can remember when I got my first smartphone when I was 22 years old and as years gone by, Bluetooth connectivity is another good feat of technology from making phone calls in my car to playing music through cordless speakers. I've taken up initiatives to buy some tech to get accustomed to and better understand ever-growing technological trends.

And finally, another area where accepting changes gets iffy but part of our daily lives is energy.

As we've been traditionally using fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas to build up our civilisation but contribute to pollution including greenhouse gas emissions, efforts are put in to bring up more renewable energy using solar panels and wind turbines. But then, they don't quite cut the mustard as much as solar panels and wind turbines don't generate electricity consistently although battery storages can help smooth out ups and downs of energy generation.

That aside, hydro dams can be a better option of more baseload power with fossil fueled power stations reigning supreme. Pumped hydro stations even have better potential and get this, Italy and Switzerland used them starting in the 1890s. Later in the 1930s, America first used hydro dams for their domestic power generation nowadays accounting for 96% of their power needs. See what I mean?

And then, there's the concept of nuclear energy which Peter Dutton wanted to have in Australia if he becomes our next prime minister. Although it produces abundant clean energy which is great for emission free baseload power it does have its drawbacks.

Nuclear power plants take extensive amounts of time to construct as well as being downright expensive, natural disasters that could disrupt power generation, potential nuclear weapon risks and waste but we won't conclude this just yet. There is another method of nuclear energy to generate electricity which is fusion. Let me explain further.

Our long traditional method of nuclear power which is nuclear fission involved the splitting of uranium atoms by neutrons to create heat but I'll bring out this diagram to help you understand.

So here, you'll see how the neutron collides with the Uranium 235 atom splitting and as you can see releasing more neutrons. Nuclear power station workers will need to control the rate of reactions or they could end up with a meltdown like what happened at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine and then in Fukushima not helped when Japan was earthquake and tsunami stricken in 2011. Nuclear fusion is a completely different method and can even be more safe.

I hope this diagram of nuclear fusion helps. On the left are 2 hydrogen isotopes (one neutron, another with 2 neutrons) and once fused, they create energy and the hydrogen isotopes form a helium atom.

In France, ITER founded in the 24th of October 2007 initiated an international nuclear fusion research and engineering mega project to develop and fine tune nuclear fusion to create comparable baseload power as we're globally moving away from fossil fuels to cut greenhouse gas emissions whilst maintaining humanity for years to come. With the global collaboration with other countries including China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the USA, more can be learnt and all this is a big and eventual work in progress. One piece worth knowing is nuclear fusion occurs in stars such as our sun.

There is a lot to factor in but in the end of the day, changes can make anything in life better. Even when I've started accepting changes when things don't go right, I can learn to figure out what goes wrong and figure out what I can do to make things better and since then, I've never looked back.

But for those who aren't autistic in any way but don't like change, why so?

That's it for me this year and I hope you all have a good Christmas and a happy new year. See you next time!