Physical Activity & Healthy Living

I've been doing a pretty good job of staying in shape. I guess I've been home for two months, and I haven't been that active. I thought I'd start putting on pounds pretty fast, but haven't. If I was able to lose 30 pounds in three months when I was overseas, it's not impossible to imagine that I'd start to show my relapse by the two month mark.

I haven't been doing Karate. I'm never sure how long I'll be staying here, so I don't want to make any commitment, and when I don't have a form of income, I don't want to be draining my savings. I've been doing some light exercises on a daily basis. Nothing much, just 30 pushups, 30 situps, 30 leg raises. I don't always remember, but I have to say I do it at least every other day. I didn't think it would make a substantial difference, but to my surprise, the exercises have become less difficult for me. If I was really going for fit, I'd increase the difficulty, but honestly, right now I'm just playing maintenance.

Eating healthier, too. Don't know why it's easier for me now. Maybe it's because I'm sick of starchy foods after putting down so much rice and toh, so now appreciate fruit and vegetables more. I also don't have too much to think about, other than my health.

I've got a pair of dress pants which were two sizes too small before I started Katimavik, but which I could wear afterwards, but not when I started CWY, but I could after that program as well. My goal is to stay capable of wearing those pants.

I think it's mostly dietary. I mean, I exercised a lot before I left for CWY, but I was plump. I'm pretty confident I was exercising substantially more then, than I am now, actually. Put on muscle, but didn't do so much to remove fat. I was a big, fat, muscular manly-man. Now I'm a bit slimmer, and I think the difference is more my dietary habits than my exercise ones. After all, I subtracted my level of activity, but increased my good nutritional habits. I'm going to say that between those two changes, decreasing my level of activity isn't the one that made me lose weight. That leaves eating habits.

I gain/lose weight so fast in comparison to other people. I inflate and deflate like a balloon. So far as I can tell from watching other people trying to lose/gain weight, it usually doesn't happen very fast, but here I am, toggling between a 30 pound range. I don't know what's up with that.

Yo yo yo, I found a hair in my beard that isn't the same colour as the rest of my beard! Funfact: oftentimes, people will have singular strands of hair in their beards that are different colour to the rest of their hair. I know a guy with natural red highlights in his beard, and I have both blonde and red ones in mine. Thing is, this hair I found... WAS WHITE!

I'm telling myself that it's platinum blonde. If I turn out to be greying and balding at the same time when I'm 22... I'm gonna shave my face and head. Seriously, what's going on? I'm ageing badly or something. I still feel fit and full of energy... I don't feel any less vital... I'd arguably say I'm sort of at my physical pique right now. But it looks like I'm ageing at an accelerated rate. If this keeps going, I'll be dead from old age in ten years.

My brother's taking Karate now. He started it in his school, which struck a deal with one of the local dojos to do a class that can net them a physical education credit, like gym. Now he's got the credit, and a few stripes on his belt.

But the dojo took it in their fancy to offer Karate scholarships to the most talented students at this school. Well, guess who's getting free classes? Yeah, my brother's like a Karate genius or something.

By the time I'm out of college, this guy could be ahead of me! If he stays dedicated, he could be a belt above me in two years.

I don't know why they don't offer martial arts as an equivalent of physical education in high school more often. I know a lot of people who aren't into traditional gym classes, but who are interested in the martial arts. Right now, you can skirt the physical education credit prerequisite by putting off taking any gym classes until Grade 11, and then doing some kind of healthy active living course that's held in-class.

I kind of appreciate making that an option, for those who really hate Phys Ed, but I feel like it's a last resort. That's why I also like that they make it a little bit inconvenient. You aren't going to just drop gym because you're indifferent, you've got to actually have some resentment as motivation if you want to dodge it. But I think that teaching people about the relevance of physical activity, and getting people actively involved in it, is ideal.

I didn't dodge gym class, but I certainly never appreciated the merits of physical activity until I started doing Karate, which was after high school. I don't think gym is taught very well in high school, which is too bad...

Anyway, martial arts is easily just as physically stimulating as more traditional sports and activities, and I would have definitely shown interest had that option been available back in the day.

Here's more photos. I've run down my family, and now I'm doing randoms.



Isn't this photo absolutely radiant? I never learned her name, but she was one of the more savvy kids. She realized that my camera sucked, and so when she asked me to take a photo of her, instead of demanding that I find it for her, she'd say "Don't worry about it. Thanks for taking my picture!" and she'd skip off. It kind of wounded me that she never got to see how well this one came out.



This kid's name was something like "Dih-dih". He was the one who bestowed on me the nickname "Ali the Giant". At first, people tended to favour calling me "Elephant", but over time, the general populace settled more on Giant. I still had my niche that never called me anything but Elephant, but in the end, Didih's nickname was the most prevalent.



This is Mody. I used to tease him by pretending I didn't know his name properly, and called him "Mobily", which means "car" in Bambara. After a while, the other kids started calling him Mobily, and he would introduce with that title. This guy was a little bit on the rough side, but he helped out with the younger children a lot.



A Canadian girl from my group, Alex, with two of the children from her host family. Her children were some of the first to ask what my Canadian name was. They mistook my last name, "Sibbald" for "Sei bonne" which means "is good". They all thought it was hilarious and would call me "Gryphon Sei Bonne" all the time. I've had worse nicknames than "Gryphon is Good".



Girl on the right is Soongura, the one in the middle I don't know, and the one on the left I don't know. The middle and right ones used to come hang out with my family regularly, and I'd interact with them. I feel bad that I never found out what Star Earring Girl's name was, considering how much I talked to her, but that's an awkward question to just throw down after you've interacted for a certain length of time. None of the Canadians in my village area knew her name, either.

End of Malian Family Photos

Okay, so here's my counterpart, Ousmane Diallo. I've already spoken on him quite a bit. In this photo, we're at the Malian kiosk in La Pocatiere. We put up a booth at the local farmer's market, and served Malian food and drink. We played Malian music, and there was Malian dancing. The food was chicken and peanut sauce with rice, and the drink was some kind of fruit drink we'd never have again.

We would only have chicken once during our stay in Mali, and that was only for a really special occasion, and I think only because of Canadian request. Would have been more accurate to serve goat. The juice we drank in the village was something closer to grape juice, but I don't think there were any grapes, so it must have been one of the fruits that grew on the trees.

In this photo, Ousmane's wearing his prayer robe. He would wear that once a week, as some kind of tradition that I guess the others didn't follow.



This is my host father. His family name is Boffy Traore, and his village name is Dosun Traore. I called him Boffy. He was a really cool guy. Never beat his children or his wives, his kids all went to school, he helped me and Ousmane do our Educational Activity Day by giving a tour of the fields in the village and answering questions about agriculture. He seemed to reach out and support a lot of people when they needed it, and include them in the family. He came by and helped the Canada World Youth with group work a few times. He took an active interest in including me in the family. I really can't say anything bad about him.

He worked for the government, harvesting cotton, so he was one of the few people who didn't live in an entirely subsistence way. In Mali, everything is shared, though, so he didn't really get to keep his hands on it or give his family a lifestyle that was different from other villagers. The village lives in an entirely subsistence way throughout the year, with one exception. There is a "Marriage season" which I think is about one month, when all the marriage ceremonies happen. At this time of year, the people who are earning money from the government (cotton pickers and schoolteachers), give their money to the village, and they use it for the celebrations.

My host father's family had some mammoth bean harvest while I was there, too. Everyone knew about it, and all these visitors would come over and spend all day in the family, working and preparing beans. Apparently, it was a pretty noteworthy time, and brought a lot of honour to my family.

I regret not having individual photos of my host mothers. You can see them both in the family photo on my Gallery blog, and I've got a picture of Ma, standing with another village woman, but as I've explained, I was never in a position where I could take photos freely, and opportunity never really showed itself.




This is Baby Ali. The first photo is inside the first week of his birth, and the second photo is after two months. See? He changes colour. The lighting doesn't fully support me here, but you can still kind of see it.

He was able to recognize me by the time I left. When he would cry and nobody could calm him down, they would bring him over to me, and I'd calm him without fail. When he saw me, he would laugh and try to speak to me. I held him quite often. Everyone loved how he was named after me, and how he took to me.



This is Budjuh. This was the only kid that kind of got on my nerves. There's this phrase, Tubabu, which means "Whitey". The Canadians debated on whether or not it was a racist term. I thought it was kind of a misplaced sentiment, taking issue with the term, because racism doesn't exist in Mali, the way it does here. They've never had reason for there to be racial tension, so people remarking on the colour of your skin doesn't have any negative connotation. Rest assured, I learned the word for "Blacky" (Fatafini), and used it liberally.

But this kid was ridiculous. He would sit in front of me, and just say "Tubabu... Tubabu... Tubabu..." over and over again, with the most blank stare. He'd do this for HOURS. I was like, "Don't you have anything better to do?" I tried repeating "Fatafini" at him, but he always beat me on stamina. Even the other kids were getting annoyed with him. They'd say, "No, Budjuh! Say Ali! Say Ali!" Eventually he did learn my name, but he kept doing his thing... He'd sit in front of me, stare blankly at me, and say "Ali... Ali... Ali..."

I'm sure the next white person he meets, he's going to call "Ali".

In this photo, he's in a cotton patch. He followed me and Boffy out to work, when Boffy was giving me a private lesson in Malian agriculture.

More This and That

We got a little bit flooded the other day. A few things in a closet got a little water-damaged, but it's not so bad.

Weather's been ridiculous around here. One day it's winter, the next day it's spring. We've never had snow on the ground for a seven-day streak. Kind of sad. We're supposed to be the Great White North.

Maaaaan, I ain't got nothing interesting to talk about except for Africa. You guys are probably getting sick of it.

I ran out of water purifier partway through the rotation. My Project Leader said we needed to prepare to drink 1-2 litres of water per day, and recommended we bring two kits. Yeah, well, I drank 5-6 liters per day, and a few times worked up to nine. So I ran out, and bought purifier from Sirakorola.

They were official Aquatabs. Each tab purified 20 litres, which was perfect, because we used those 20 litre jugs. A strip of ten tabs cost 100 francs.

To put that into perspective, one Canadian dollar is 400 francs. I got two strips. That means, I purchased 400 litres of water for 50 cents. Didn't even make the water taste bad or anything.

It was so cheap, even the subsistence villagers could afford it. Hell, if you want to buy a soft drink, it's 250 francs. How can Aquatabs possibly be making a profit on this?!

One of the Sirakorola tailors was Italian. Can you imagine that? Being like, "I'm middle-class around here, but if I moved to a subsistence village in Africa and changed my money to the local currency, I'd be rich, and while I can't live on my skill here, it's in-demand over there" and then you actually DO it?! I respect anyone who can make a decision like that. Honestly, the village Malians had a higher quality of life than we Canadians do. They're way happier. But making a decision like that just isn't something that happens very often.

Here's more African children.



This girl's name is Mama. Some Canadians told me tha all mothers are called "mama" and that it's not a name, it's a title. But I really, really think they're wrong, because this girl was definitely named Mama, and she definitely wasn't a mother. She confused me at the beginning, because she'd do the cousinage bit, making fun of my name, but I thought she was in my family. Turns out though, she was just some kid who hung out with us constantly. She was practically a member of the family, so I've included her. Picture quality isn't that great, but I love the fist pose. I don't know who the baby is.



The one on the left is Mariam, and the one on the right is Nyaduku. All the Canadians thought that Nyaduku was "Unreal" in how cute she was. She was a fan-favourite among the Canadians, in the same way that Mariko was. It's true, she was really, really cute. Mariam was more shy, and followed Nyaduku's lead, but then she'd get jealous of her. I never really figured how out how to deal with that. I tried to draw attention to her more, but she was always too scared to play any of the games that the other children wanted to play.



This is Kafrinae. She thought that my hideous straw farmer's hat, with the giant fleural buckle, was beautfiul. Whenever the children were carrying my stuff home (yeah, they would wait for me to finish work, and then want to carry my stuff) she would always want to be the one to wear my hat. To avoid conflict over who got to carry my bag, I would have each child carry one item, to the point that I would bring extra stuff so there was enough for everyone. I'd have one kid wearing one work glove, another kid wearing the other, and usually Kafrinae wearing my hat. She would spin around while wearing it and pretend that she was going to steal it. When I left, I really, really wanted to give her my hat, but the way the gifts were distributed, there was no possible way that I could do that without looking like I was committing MASSIVE favouritism. So I didn't.



This is Salief, the yooungest of the three eldest male children. He looks really sinister in this photo, but he was a really sweet kid. Some people called him Zangei, and some people would tell me to call him Zangei. But some people called him Salief, and tell me to call him Salief. He told me to call him Salief, so that's what I went with. He was a little warrior kid, always shouting battle cries. He'd always want to carry my heaviest item after work.



This is Konima. He's one of the three youngest male children. I don't know if he's younger or older than Nene or Budjuh. Something about him makes me think he'll be athletic. He'll be one of those guys who goes to the soccer field every day.

Library Card & African Children

I got my library card replaced. I can't remember how long it's been since I got my card, but it was so worn down you couldn't see the numbers that allow you to access their Internet. I saw that happening, and always thought I should write the number down, but never did. Probably for the best that I get it replaced, anyway. I don't even know if I would have been able to sign out books with that faded barcode. I don't really need their Internet access right now, anyway, it's the book thing I'm probably more concerned about.

They've got a completely new card design, and now you can get just the barcode in keychain format, so you don't have to lug around a whole card.

Here's some photos of children in my Mali family. All of the photos, with the exception of Nene, were taken while I was riding on a donkey cart with them on the way to Sirakorola for Thursday's market.



This is Nene. He bonked his head once and cried. Usually when a child cries, he just cries until he stops. I was playing catch with some other kids at the time, and when I saw him crying, I put my hand on his shoulder. He stopped crying and I gave him the ball. He laughed and passed it over to me. All the children cheered, and whenever I passed the ball to one of them, they would give it to Nene. Afterward, if a child got hurt, the other children would try and comfort them. My host father asked me if I would adopt Nene and bring him back to Canada.



This is Sakura. I guess it's not appropriate to call her a child. For the longest time, I didn't know what her relationship was with the family. She was a good bit older than the rest of the kids, and since she was of childbearing age and worked with my host mothers, several times she was mistaken for one of my host father's wives, but she wasn't. I thought she might have been the younger sister of one of my host mothers, because it's a tradition for a younger sister to move with her older sister if the older sister moves away from their home village, and one of my host mothers was a foreigner, but then I learned that Sakura was a Traore, which wasn't the family name of either of my host mothers (in Mali, women don't change their family name after marriage).

What I think it was, was, in Mali, if you call somebody a relative, it's considered the hard truth, and nobody questions it. If you have a falling out with someobody you've called your brother, or your father, you can't just bail on your words. You have all the responsibilities and obligations of a blood relative. It's not cool to ask about genetics. If a father has two wives, and one wife gives birth to a child, the child must honour both mothers equally.

I remember, my host father had another daughter, who was obviously too old to be his daughter. She was like, ten years younger than him, maybe. I think Sakura may have had that kind of relationship with my host family, as an adopted daughter.



This is Nasu. It might not be fair to say, but she was probably one of my favourite children. I don't know how to interact with children in the 10-13 year old age bracket, though. She was really shy, and really responsible.



This is Madu. He lived in the same hut as Sedio, before we came along. Another boy, named Salief, lived in it, too. It was the hut for the three eldest sons, but Sedio was the chief of it. Madu was the second eldest son. Isn't this a good photo of him? He's going to be psyched when he sees it. Note: he's not smiling.



This is Sedio, the future chief of the family. He's the oldest son, and the house I was living in belonged to him before me and my CP arrived. A lot of family responsibility, especially responsibility regarding me, was left to him. I felt kind of bad for putting him out so much, but he never showed any signs of resentment at all. It's kind of hard for me to imagine him as a chief, since he was only 13.

I can only post five images to Blogger at a time, so I'll post more tomorrow.

College Ponderings

Man, researching school stuff is tough. First I was looking into that Personal Support Worker program, because someone recommended it, and it fit most closely to what I'd done in Katimavik, but I was put-off when I found out it didn't offer a full diploma. Then I found another program, Developmental Services Worker, which is basically a dialled-up version of the same thing, taking longer and offering a full diploma. I decided to look at how many options I had in a course like this. I plugged it into the Ontario Colleges application website and got... 107 options.

Okay, so trim it down. They put a lot of things on here that aren't exactly the same program. There's a bunch of Personal Support Worker, College Certificate courses, which I've already eliminated from my priorities, and there's a number of Autism and Behavioural Science programs... I'll look into that later, but right now, let's eliminate those options... Okay, well, there's only 28 colleges in Ontario, there's still way more than that here.

They put every location as a new option, so if a college has more than one branch, each goes down as a separate link. Now, there's a number of accelerated, part-time, and distance education programs. I'm sure those are all innovative ideas, but let's not look at those right now.

Okay, so I have the same course for 12 colleges across Ontario, and at 20 locations.

Maaan, college is expensive. Not that I have to worry about it a ton. With my careful financial planning (cheapness), and consistent level of poverty, it comes as a surprise that I'm kind of well-to-do. My family's taken good care of me in this regard, and I don't have to worry about running down my finances, but hell, look at these numbers.

Tuition's the cheapest expense. First place I looked was $4832 for a two year program. Second place is $4636. the first one's probably Ontario's most prestigious, whereas the second one is more on the cost effective side. But see, when we're talking numbers that big, the difference doesn't stand out so much.

DON'T LAUGH AT ME! Maybe you've all had University educations that were much more expensive, but to me, these numbers are big. Most I've ever been able to save is $2000, and I couldn't keep it at that height. I wouldn't be able to field even this expense, and it's not the biggest one.

Okay, so I'm not going to be going to the local college, because all they have is the Personal Support Worker course. And I can't really commute because I don't have a full driver's license. I'll be working to have that remedied (enough) before I start my program, but I've got to apply before I can be certain that this would be a plausible option, and even if I did have one, no car. Possible to solve that issue, too, but so many potential kinks in that plan. I don't want to gamble like that, so maybe that makes moving out look like a good idea.

Well, I'd need somewhere to live that would be cheap. Hey, isn't that what college residences are for? Let's look into that.

Okay, so from the two colleges I looked into, College A gives a $5146 per year option, whereas College B gives $4000 per year. That means it works to $643 a month for Collage A, and $500 a month for College B. That's cheap, but it's not THAT cheap! I know where you can get a room in Guelph for $360 a month, or a two bedroom apartment for $700. You split $700, that makes $350 a person if you shared with someone, which is the gist of these residences.

So, you combine the tuition and residence, and for option A it's a total of $14,832, and for option B it's $12,636. And this doesn't include living and educational expenses, which I suspect would produce a sizeable addition.

Like I said, money isn't really an issue, but yeesh. I feel positively guilty, playing with these numbers.

Sahel Crisis Article

Someone clipped out a newspaper article on Mali for me. Apparently there's a famine raging across the Sahel region of Africa, which my village is smack-dab in the middle of. It's not often you can read something in the newspaper about the sufferings of an impoverished nation, look up at your concerned Canadian friend, and say "Don't worry, I was just there. Everything's fine."

The graph on this thing's kind of weird, too. They highlight the effected areas on a map. It covers parts of eight countries. On their list of effected countries, though, there is still eight, but not every one is the same as the ones they've highlighted.

I've written about the different seasons of Mali? Originally, I thought the fluctuation wouldn't be too severe, because it's so close to the equator, but I was wrong. There's three seasons: wet season, cold season, and hot season. We came in at the tail end of wet season, and moved into cold season. In wet season, it was rainy, humid, and hot all the time. In cold season it never rained, and was frigid cold at night. You know how you sometimes here that in the desert, it's hot during the day and freezing at night? Yeah, well that's only true depending on season. For some reason the night temperatures fluctuate way more severely than daytime temperature.

We only got the tail end of rain season, but I'm told that during the thick of the season, it just never stops raining. I never saw rice growing, but we had tons and tons and tons of the stuff. I'm pretty sure that's because it only grows in rain season. You know how it's commonly cultivated during tsunamis? Well, I think they grow it during their African tsunami during cold season, and since it preserves well, they stock up and eat it throughout the year.

Anyway, the relevant time for collecting water this year is through, and based on what I saw, it doesn't seem like they're going to be stretched thin this year. You would be shocked at how freely they use their water. They shower three times a day, they clean themselves every time they pray (which, for Muslims, is five times), and before and after they eat.

I find it interesting, too, that this article refers to us as being the "world's donor nations", and it talks about how we neglected to step up during the last famine that hit this region.

Early after I got back, I was speaking on the difficulties I was having readapting to Canadian society, and somebody asked me if I felt guilty, because we have so much, and they had so little.

And it was funny, because, before the program I would have said yes, but after the program... no.

Thing is, you hear statistics like "We have enough food in the world to give every family five meals a day. The problem is distribution." and the implication always feels like, everything I take, is being taken from hungry, impoverished families. The perception is that there's some big stockpile of resources, and everyone should get a share, but some bigger, tougher guys are batting down the runts and taking more than their share. You feel like you're responsible to make sure everyone gets what's entitled to them.

Thing is, when you're living in a subsistence community... You grow food, and you eat it. You build using material from the earth. The land was here before first world societies developed, and now that they have, nothing's changed. Nobody's come and taken anything from you. The people from the big cities probably feel way more sore toward first world nations, because they're part of the globalization thing.

That being said, I'm probably more likely to donate now than I was before, but that's because I care personally about the people of Africa, not because of any feelings of obligation.

They also say that right now, it costs $80 to cure a malnourished child, whereas if they'd acted proactively, it would only cost $1. That's another thing. In these campaigns, everyone talks about money, but like I said above, with the growing food and material from the earth stuff... they don't really use money.

They're talking about feeding all 500,000 of the starving African children... Yeah, I can pretty much guarantee you nobody's going to show up in my village.

It says that over a million children will suffer from malnourishment in the Sahel crisis. Thing is, if there wasn't a famine, over a million children would suffer from malnourishment. Being malnourished isn't the same as starving. It's not a matter of how much you eat, but what you eat, and what you eat never changes around there.

Page 45

I don't sleep in an orthodox pattern nowadays. I sleep for three hours one night, and then 12 the next. That isn't even an exaggeration. Overall it averages eight hours a night, so I guess that's something, but I don't know if that type of logic applies in concern to health. When I can't sleep, it's either because I can't fall asleep, or because I wake up early.

I was wondering if something in my subconscious was the cause of my troubled sleep, so I've started a dream journal. Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was helping an old friend find his apartment, and in doing so, learned that his real name was Maple Syrup. No help there. Didn't dream at all last night, because I never slept. Worst night so far.

Have you heard the trend of reading the 45th page of the book closest to you to predict your sex life in 2012? I did it. The one closest to me was Frank McCourt's Teacher Man, and the 45th page was pretty detailed on this subject. I'll be with a woman who's out of my league, and who's two-timing me with a professor, which I'll know about, but won't do anything about, because of low self-esteem issues.

There was some controversy over which was closer, though, Teacher Man or Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Maybe I'll do better with this one.

“Now he could go home and explain to the girl that nothing happened.”

Huh. So now I need to decide whether or no the first one was worse than nothing.

That's weird, though. Is it good literary timing or something, to address this subject on the 45th page? Let's try it some more!

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.

Eh... Narrator's just dozing off and hearing bits and pieces of a conversation between an uncle and nephew. They seem to be talking about politics and climate. Wait, my book starts on what's labeled as the third page, so the 45th page would really be the one labeled as 48th. We still have a chance!

...Eh. I can't really tell what's going on here. Something about dead donkeys. I guess if you're into that...

Okay, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes.

...No, it's just about alcoholism and children dying.

Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint.

...No, some lady is talking about talking to someone, and she's on a computer. Then a guy walks down a street and possibly feeds a dog. Maybe what the lady was talking about talking about was sexual, or maybe she was about to send a saucy email or something, but I think the prophecy needs to work off one page. If you have to read more of the book to get it, it's not legit.

Okay, Green Grass Running Water, by Thomas King.

Oh my goodness. Listen to this:

“First dates, long talks, simple passions, necking, petting, sex, serious conversations, commitment, the brief stops along the line to marriage and beyond.”

Yeah, that's how it starts. And it doesn't get less appropriate. I could quote the entire page. This is a good prophecy book.

If I had selected this one, I would be juggling two men, who were looking for commitment, but me being satisfied just to have sex.

Calling On Dragons by Patricia Wrede. If this one works, it will be pretty disturbing, since it's a children's book.

A cat is beating up a wizard. “Your cat appears to have captured a miniature wizard.” “Jabbed his tail closer to the bush.” “What did you do with his staff?” Yeah, you could kind of make that sound perverted.

Looks like, other than the two books I started with, of the armful of books I randomly took off the bookshelf nearest me, only Green Grass Running Water will make sex life predictions.