Scène d'automne Canal Rideau

The waters have now reached their winter levels on the Rideau Canal and the different ducks and geese are feeding on the many little fish. Despite the cool weather and cloudy sky a walk along the canal in the Glebe from Pretoria Bridge is always nice.

The walls of the canal need much repair but it appears that only the most urgent is being done,
giving it a look of antique neglect.

The canal runs parallel to the Rideau River which is just half a kilometer away on the left side of this photo. At low water level the aspect of the canal is completely different.

All along the canal manicured lawns and trees, in the summer great floral display can also be seen.

one of the little inlets along the canal from the days of its initial construction, this one near Clemow avenue. You can see the black mark line where the water is usually during the summer.

Though we are in the centre of the city in a neighbourhood the flora has that rural aspect.

Lots of ducks and Canada geese at this time. The geese and ducks should fly south for the winter but many still linger in the shallow water.

diet & balance

Since I arrived in Italy I have gained weight, how much I am not sure exactly, maybe 3 kg. that is about 6.6 lbs. not a lot but I don't like it. I did a lot of gym work in China, boxing helped me to loose weight quickly. I really enjoyed the boxing exercise and a few years ago I also developed a fondness for Thai kick boxing. Here in Rome it is different, I don't feel like going to a gym and I really need a coach to push and motivate me.
About a week ago a colleague at work mentioned this dietitian in Parioli. I made an appointment and went to see her today.
First the good news, I found out that I do not weigh 85 kg as I thought but 79.4 kg big difference when you think of it. I would like to weigh between 70 to 75 Kg. or 154 to 165 lbs. So I need to loose 10 pounds to reach the top of my ideal weight.

More importantly I have to reduce by body fat mass, this is the dangerous fat around the waist for men which can lead to all kinds of health problems as you grow older. The doctor is German and speaks Italian, I understand Italian but speak to her in English which she understands. Basically she explained that this is not a diet, diets do not work and are a fad which gives the illusion that you are trying to do something. You have to eat and be happy with what you are eating and she is not asking me to change my eating habits either. It is all about balance and amounts of food you eat to satisfy your appetite and drinking 2 liters of water per day.



She explained that I should not eat a large amount of pasta with a rich sauce and then have bread and a rich dessert all at once. I do not do that but I can see that I should not do a Primi (pasta) and as Secundi (meat) at the restaurant. Basically you eat a pasta dish with a sauce but the amount is reasonable, measured, no bread and no rich sweet dessert, instead have a fruit for dessert. If you have a steak eat, 100 gr, no potatoes, instead have a green salad with a spoon of olive oil. So basically I knew all this before and it reminded me of what I had seen in China and in Italy in terms of eating habits. This is why men are thin here.

This weekend I will do sort of a detox diet, only fruits, salad and 2 liters of water per day. Bread is not out, but if I have some it should be dark Rye bread.

I return to see her in 2 weeks for a second evaluation. Here we go, what we will not do for la bella figura.

Old Aqueduct park, Rome

We took the metro this morning to the outskirts of southern Rome and got off at Giulio Agricola station, this area of Rome was built up in the 1970's and is composed mostly of a very pleasant neighborhood of low condo buildings. At the end of the street in front of us stretches the park with its gigantic aqueducts stretching across the landscape, the low one is the Aqua Felice and Marcia, the tall one is the Aqua Claudia whose arches have a height of 28 meters. It was started by Emperor Caligula and completed by his uncle Emperor Claudius, I still drink water from that spring every day.

 

The old Via Latina also comes by there, in ancient times you would use it to go south towards the Pontine Marshes, the Via Appia antiqua is also part of this park. We also saw an old Roman Villa which in the year 900 was transformed into a fortified farm house. The Villa is very ancient and no one lives there now, but several others have been bought by wealthy people who turn them into luxury homes, imagine owning a 2000 yrs old house. People are proud of a 150-year-old house back home. It is quite marvelous to see those old aqueducts, at one time Rome had 11 of them stretching 750 Km bringing water to the city. The first one was built in 330 BC and 2 aqueducts still function today, the Aqua Marcia and the Aqua Vergine feeding fountains like the famous Trevi fountain. It is thought today that more clean water was available to every citizen of ancient Rome than today. Enormous cisterns were built everywhere to store water and even wealthy individuals could build their own cistern for their private homes. We saw one near by built by a man who made an enormous fortune selling bricks, the ruins of one of his villas is in the park with the enormous cistern next to the aqueduct. We also heard of the army of slaves needed to clean, maintain and repair the aqueducts, quite the workforce. Considering that mathematics and other sciences were in their infancy, it required quite a lot of ingenuity to devise such a system. The Romans simply built big and solid arches so the aqueducts could carry the load of all this water rushing towards Rome. What we see in the open air is only 70 Km of the whole system, everything else was underground. The Aqueducts functioned until 537 AD and then bit-by-bit the system disappeared, by the year 1000, the system no longer worked and the knowledge was lost. We would have to wait until 1500 to see the system partially restored.

 

On our way to the park, we passed one metro station called Porta Furba, I thought this was a very odd name, it means traitors gate, I asked Nancy our guide why was it called that, she tells me that Coriolanus, the same fellow who has a play written by Shakespeare, was a hero of ancient Rome, he turned against Rome and went to help the Volci, a people who lived south of Rome about 2300 years ago, when Rome was still a small city and an emerging power. He brought the Volci army to this gate and as he was about to attack the city, his mother appears, she said to him: who am I meeting, my son or the enemy of Rome?

Apparently Coriolanus was so ashamed of what he was about to do that he listened to his mother and turned his army away from Rome. A fitting story for Italy and the power of motherhood.