Cityhop New Zealand's first car share service – cars by the hour

This week’s Time magazine has a fascinating story on the tastiest and healthiest food is also the least expensive and most ordinary!

Written by Dr Mehmet Oz the story explains that food like frozen spinach, peas, carrots are full of goodness and a lot cheaper to buy than the Farmer’s Market variety so if you are on a budget you can still give your family 5 fruit and vegetables a day.

Dr Oz also explains the goodness in bottled and canned foods - another way to get vegetables into your diet affordably.The article doesn’t just spout the virtues of vegetables, it covers the quantities of meat we should eat.  Avoid ‘fried chicken’ an item Dr Oz says best describes where the US has gone wrong,  why would you deep fry a meat that is renowned for being a lean and tasty meat?

He is also a fan of what he calls the ‘downmarket fish and meats found in cans.’ Canned salmon is nourishing and easy to prepare. Tuna is loaded with niacin, selaenium, vitamin B12 and omega-3 fatty acids. “A sandwich done lean and right on wholewhrat bread with lettuce and tomatoes is comfort food at its finest with little nutritional blowback.”

Worth reading and sharing!

One of the pleasures of the weekend is trolling through international newspapers and magazines on line. I’ve read a huge range of articles thanks to Zite, people putting links on twitter (thanks @seeby) and it reminded me to have a look at some of other favourite newspapers. There I found a fascinating article on how Rotterdam has creatively come up with solutions to ‘climate proofing’ that not only make sense but improve where they live.

Rotterdam is particularly vulnerable since 90 per cent of it is below sea level. With increasing storms and higher water levels some creative thinking came up with some very clever solutions to the water problem.

According to the Guardian article, Rotterdam is facing increasingly frequent small-scale flooding.  The key to coming up with politically palatable solutions, said Molenaar, is to present them as “opportunities”.

“That means devising double-purpose measures, including:

A parking garage built last year that incorporates a 10,000 cubic metre underground rainwater store. Expensive underground structures aren’t generally favoured in the flood-prone city but several million euros were saved by combining the car park and water store;

• “Water plazas” that under normal conditions are playgrounds but that temporarily hold water during heavy rain, then slowly release it to the drainage system;

• An Olympic rowing course that doubles as a water store;

• Rooftop gardens that absorb rain and CO₂ and reduce the urban island temperature effect, being built at a rate of 40,000 square metres a year with a 50% subsidy;

• Premium-priced floating communities on waterside sites vacated as facilities of Europe‘s biggest port are moved nearer the coast.

The climate-proofing effort, that is costing about €100m, is mapped out in a long-term plan called Rotterdam Water City 2035, sometimes referred to as the city’s “wet dream”, said Molenaar.