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Month: March 2014

Sister Cristina Scuccia and her quite heartwarming TV moment

Published by neilmonnery on March 23, 2014

I haven’t blogged in an age. So what could drag me back into writing? Well how about the story of a nun, a TV show and general all round awesomeness?

If you know me well you’ll know that gutter TV and me are in a relationship. I watch a lot of rubbish television. A lot. Like a lot of people I also enjoy The Voice, well the audition part of The Voice anyway. The rest isn’t that great but the auditions are fun. I watch the UK version. I watch the American version and I also scour YouTube to watch auditions from versions from all over the Globe.

Well over the weekend one audition has gone viral. The audition of Sister Cristina Scuccia. The 25 year-old nun who lives in Milan but originally from Sicily was insecure about her life and where it was heading. Her Mother Superior told her to use her gift of a singing voice and audition for The Voice of Italy and if on the off chance you haven’t seen it yet then it is embedded below and is just quite frankly heartwarming.

Now is it the best audition I have seen in terms of singing voice? Probably not but it is extremely good. However what makes it stand out is watching the audience go crazy and then the faces of all the judges as they turned around. If there is one thing the Italian public will like it is a nun who can entertain. She must be about as red hot favourite as their has ever been for one of these shows after just one audition. A deeply Catholic country, a nun, real singing talent, that is a recipe for insane popularity right there.

The crowd go nuts after her first line and the two males judges look at each other noticing this and knowing it must be something special. The rapper J-Ax is the one that goes first followed by former X Factor Italy star Noemi. They are both delighted with what they see and J-ax implores the other two to push their buttons. Piero Pelu does so and then after more pleading Raffaella Carrà finally turns her button but gestures clearly that she’s only done it on the say so of J-ax before turning around and her jaw hitting the ground.

Nuns from her religious order are watching and are overjoyed as everyone turns and then the judges make their cases to Sister Cristina. J-ax says that if he had heard her voice whilst in his teens then he’d probably be Pope by now and that they could be the devil and the holy water. The other male judge Piero Pelu also makes an impassioned plea for her to join his team. Raffaella Carrà is just stunned that this is a real nun and Noemi decides to attempt to engage with her religious side by proclaiming herself holy water as well.

At the end she says that she had decided beforehand that if she had to choose then she would do so solely on the basis of who turned first and therefore chooses J-ax. Sometimes opposites attract and I have a feeling these two will win the competition and she will go on to be a big star and potentially a huge asset to the Roman Catholic church as they look to engage with a younger generation. I think she chose J-ax correctly as he was clearly the most into her voice, his reactions say as much.

This audition has gone viral due to the fact it is such a feel good story. Her voice is clearly legit and isn’t TV there to get us talking and to entertain us? In this case it has certainly done that to me because I just can’t stop watching it. I will certainly be looking out for her future performances!

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Please leave any comments or contact me directly via the E-Mail Me link on the Right Hand Nav. You can stay in touch with the blog following me on Twitter or by liking the blog on Facebook. Please share this content via the Social Media links below if you think anyone else would enjoy reading.

Lactose Intolerance attack after food poisoning

Published by neilmonnery on March 6, 2014

So I’ve been pretty quiet in the past fortnight or so. Hardly tweeted and not sure I’ve updated Facebook for a good while let alone write a blog. Well I am still here and the reason I’ve been relatively quiet is because yet again I have been unwell. After years of a bad cold being the low point in my health, since I decided to aggressively my weight issues I have been felled by numerous illnesses.

Top of the tree was and still is my throat, which whilst much better still isn’t 100% and recently I have been unable to fully open my jaw. This should pass relatively soon but for now watching me attempt to eat is quite a pathetic and humorous experience.

However this post is about lactose intolerance. This is the thing that really knocked the wind out of my sails. I got some very nasty food poisoning a couple of weeks back, I lost six lbs in six hours as the body expelled all of the bad stuff inside of me. It was grimmer than grim but after a day or so I felt much better and felt some sort of appetite come back so thought I would eat something. Now my mum had told me not to eat any dairy for a few days but as a non dairy eater in general I didn’t really think about it.

So I walked into the kitchen and sitting there was a packet of bakewell slices. ‘Cake’ I thought, brilliant. So I ate some and proceeded to sit down and watch the football, but then my stomach started making noises, noises that sounded like it was hungry and wanted more food so I went into the kitchen and looked in the freezer. I didn’t have a lot in there and I had nothing in the fridge as I hadn’t been food shopping yet. I thought pizzas were a no go so I delved further a saw mini kievs, simple enough, so I bunged them into the oven and ate them 20 odd minutes later. Now my stomach was all over the place, I had no idea what was going on.

My stomach was making gas noises like I had trapped wind and suddenly I was running to the loo, there I would sit for the next 6-7 hours as I suffered not knowing what the hell was going on. At that point I had not put two and two together and after several hours of immense stomach cramps, pain and expelling everything that could possibly have been inside of me, I was extremely close to calling for an Ambulance but I refrained and just decided to sit it out. The whole experience was made worse by blood coming from somewhere it shouldn’t be and that is what was really getting my attention.

Come the morning things had calmed down but still toilet tissue was smeared in blood. I didn’t know what to do, so instead of going to a healthcare professional, I went onside and dd some research. I had clearly had an lactose intolerance attack and now all the lactose had been expelled I would recover. Now I would just have to hope this was just an isolated incident and that when my stomach was fully back up to speed, my cake eating would not be curtailed in any way, shape or form by this.

Well over the weekend I decided to try and ate some cookies. My stomach held up and subsequently I have eaten more dairy and it clearly was a short-term issue. Still it was one of the most painful nights of my life and it has taught me a big lesson, after a major stomach upset, lay off the dairy whilst the body recovers and starts producing lactase again. The blood luckily came only from a cut, now whilst having a cut where you really don’t want a cut is painful enough, cuts heal pretty quickly and after a few days the blood stopped.

Still though we are ten days or so out from my initial food poisoning and I still don’t really have much of an appetite, I’m eating because I know I have to eat. I still have very little energy (quite possibly from having no appetite and therefore not eating that much) and keep falling asleep in the afternoon or evening, not just for a small snooze but for several hours at a time. I am slowly feeling better but it has just wiped me out totally.

So the lesson of the story b’s and g’s is that if your mum tells you some health advice then listen to it strictly and more bluntly, if you have food poisoning or a serious stomach upset then for your own sakes, don’t touch anything remotely dairy. Suffering from an attack of lactose intolerance is immensely painful and will wipe you out for a few days to boot.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Please leave any comments or contact me directly via the E-Mail Me link on the Right Hand Nav. You can stay in touch with the blog following me on Twitter or by liking the blog on Facebook. Please share this content via the Social Media links below if you think anyone else would enjoy reading.