“The Canberra Psychic Fair returns to our north shore,” declares an excited Mike Fogarty of Weston (ACT). “It will take place at the Ainslie Football Club this weekend. For a lark, I’d like to attend, but I would need their assurance that the event will not be cancelled due to ‘unforeseen circumstances.’ Stuff happens!”
Amy Dickman of Pymble stamps her authority on the passport discussion (C8) with one degree of separation: “When getting my passport photo taken to renew my Australian passport in Los Angeles last year, I looked over at the stack of photos waiting for collection. Top of the pile was Halle Berry’s. A true ‘star sighting’.”
Unfortunately, for Kerry Ryan of Rozelle, the experience was borderline blunt: “Before entering Gibraltar, the British wag behind the customs desk looked at my brown-haired passport photo, looked at the grey haired reality in front of him and said ‘Wow, you had a hard night’.”
Jack Dikian of Mosman tackles the elements (C8): “Many years ago someone had placed a sticker on the main entrance door of Sydney Uni’s chemistry building which read, ‘I Told a Chemistry Joke ... There Was No Reaction.’ The irony was, from the Carslaw building (which was directly across the chemistry building where I was doing first year math) we’d hear the fire brigade attend to ‘reactions’ at least twice a day.”
“In a recent cognitive test (C8), a very young septuagenarian American friend, deeply distressed by the election results, said to the examiner that she refuses to let the name of POTUS pass her lips,” says Peter Wheeler of Seaforth. “She was recorded as ‘unable to name the US President’.”
Is it time to test the testers? Michael Johnston of Corlette puts his hand up: “A standard question in the Mini Mental State Examination (screens for dementia) is to ask the patient to repeat a name and address given to them and then get to recite the name and address two-to-three minutes later. I’d give an extra point to patients at the end of the examination who would remind me that I hadn’t asked them to repeat the name and address.”
Maurice Collins of Wollongbar has another element named for a country (C8): “Polonium was discovered by physicist Marie Curie and named for Poland, her country of birth. She also discovered the element Radium and won a Nobel Prize in physics and another in chemistry.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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