December, High and Thirsty

December, high and thirsty, and I – fool that I am – have once again ventured into the unknown without a decent amount of water. Or a repair kit, for that matter. I know I should take both, but this is the tropics, where we care little for unimportant things, like making it home alive.

Truth is, I am not going too far beyond my ken. Just a little bit further down the road. A few more kilometres.

This is a trip though time, in a way. A part of my city that was build thirty years ago, and hasn't changed much since then. Should I turn left and keep going for a few minutes, I would find newer neighbourhoods build with newer trends and building codes, but I stick with the river, following it up towards the dam. These older houses please me more than the newer ones ever could, anyway.

The path by the river changes into a “safe” cycle path that may be safe, but isn't terribly comfortable. I shift to the road. How many times have I wondered where this road eventually leads? Maybe one day I'll follow it until I find my answer. Maybe one day I'll just remember to look it up.

It seems popular amongst “real” cyclists. Two or three of them pass me, and I wonder if I'll ever feel as though I belong on the same road as someone wearing that much Lycra. One passes me only to turn around a few meters ahead. It seems the road narrows, and there is no space for such things as cyclists ahead.

Me? I haven't reached my target yet. I steel myself for jostling with cars, then notice that the “safe” cycle path is still continuing over on my right. I cut across someone's footpath to get to it. I'd rather share with pedestrians than cars, if given the choice. I like it better when I'm the potentially lethal element in the situation.

Then, suddenly, I'm there. Now what? I thought it would take me longer to get here. Should I just turn around as I planned? That would make for a shorter adventure than I intended.

I coast around the car park for a moment, wondering if I want to walk to the top of the dam for something to do. Or, perhaps, down to the river. Then I remember something I saw in passing, off the other side of the road.

It's a bird-watching platform. Built in the last year or so, with a nice, shiny interpretive sign to tell me all about the birds that come to the borrow pits. I'd never heard of a borrow pit before, although it makes sense that they would exist. Now I know what they are, that we have one, that it fills up with water every summer and that a wide variety of birds can be found here. I love interpretive signs. You almost always learn something new.

I notice the mountain range on the way back. It's a range I see all the time on the way to work, but it's a side and an angle I almost never see. I'm looking at the sun playing across the face of the mountains and I marvel at how pretty it is from this side – how beautiful and unfamiliar. I can barely take my eyes off it.

Nor, for that matter, the peacock which is inexplicably walking up the bike path on the other side of the road. What on earth...? How did that get there?

The things you see in your own town, eh?

You get what you get - Black Wolf Taipan hydration packs

It's one of the great fallacies that I buy hook line and sinker every time:

"You get what you pay for"

The truth is, you get what you get. I've lost count of the times I payed extra for the sake of perceived value, only to find that the expensive thing I bought broke just as quickly and easily as something much cheaper and "nastier". Heck, sometimes the more expensive thing was so awkward and hard to use, I ended up ignoring it and using the "cheaper and nastier" option anyway.

I'm feeling particularly burned, at present, by the Black Wolf "Taipan" hydration pack.

The first one I bought didn't even make it home from the shop before the plastic grip on the handle snapped. I took it back to exchange it for a non-broken bag, and noticed there were a few others in the shop with snapped handles. I figured this was clearly a design flaw, and decided to avoid holding it by that handle if it could be avoided.

The second bag (the replacement for the first) made it home without breaking, but never made it out of the house in the same condition. I removed the bladder to fill it with water, and when I put it back in the bag the tabs for holding the tubing popped out of the stitching. To add insult to injury, the bladder leaked.

$100 for a bag that broke (at three different places) the first time I tried to use it. I'm not getting another one of those, I can tell you.

Wondermark

Ah, that Wondermark.

Such a great addition to one's day.

Wonder Woman Movie

Thank you, DC. I was hoping you'd eventually notice that Wonder Woman could at least star in her own animation, even if we have to wait another 30 years for a live action film:

“Feeling special, turk?”

I called someone a “turk” today. Not as a racial slur because he actually was or looked Turkish, nor as rhyming slang* for “jerk”, but as a synonym for “punk” – something that could rightly be considered a little out of date.

Some bloke in a ute decided he was king of the road and didn’t have to give way to some girly on a bicycle, and as he passed I muttered under my breath, “hope that makes you feel special, turk.”

I caught myself doing it and thought, “Wow, that was very 1911 of me. What’s next? Am I going to start calling my friends ‘cobber’ and refer to nonsense as ‘mullock’?”

Apologies to any Turks, or punks for that matter, who might justifiably object to such language. I’m going to claim “too much CJ Dennis”. Can I use that as an excuse?
*****
*Yes, obviously it would fail as rhyming slang because it's only one word and actually rhymes with "jerk". As everyone knows, rhyming slang should have at least two words - the last (rhyming) word of which is consistently dropped. Therefore, if one were to use the word "turk" as rhyming slang for "jerk", one would have to put it in a phrase (such as "Regimental Turk") and then drop the "turk" (so that one would use "regimental" as the rhyming slang for "jerk").

Actually, in that example we'd probably drop everything except the "reg", which would probably then be extended to "reggie" or "reggo" (pronounced "redge-o").

It's not supposed to make sense. Stop expecting things to.

Pre-fab Neighbourhoods

I stole this from one of my own comments on someone else's blog. Shh, don't tell anyone (not that anyone reads this thing, anyway). It was a reply to a post on translating street names into English.

In Australia we're getting a lot of what I call "pre-fab neighbourhoods".

Someone just ups-and-buys a wide stretch of bushland where the wallabies roam, the kites have their nests in the trees, the plovers have their nests on the ground and the various skinks, snakes and goannas run free... Then they bulldoze the lot and turn it into these tiny blocks of land on these torturous "streets" where people who should have more sense build houses that are a) ugly and b) too big.

There are many things about these pre-fabricated neighbourhoods that annoy me. One is the fact that they are often built in known flood plains, but the body corporate bi-laws insist that all houses in these estates be low-block. There's a reason why the classic "Queenslander" style house is raised, you morons. Pay attention.

Another is the way they give the streets cutsey and entirely inappropriate names. 'Riverside Boulevard', for a street that isn't a boulevard. 'Hampton Circuit' for something that is clearly a Crescent. And, oh! The number of streets calling themselves "parades" or "avenues", when they are clearly just plain, old fashioned streets.

Heck, they don't even bother to plant trees along the avenues. That's completely missing the point.

Also, most of these street-like things just turn back in on themselves in a sinuous, sinister manner designed to squeeze more houses into a small area, rendering most of these estates impenetrable rabbit warrens - and some how they keep building "streets" that are too narrow for a fire truck to get past any car that might be parked on the side of the road.

I swear, this sort of thing shouldn't be legal. Heck, it probably isn't (it's amazing the way enough money can make laws 'go away').

Anyway, I guess my point is, sometimes the English speaking countries shouldn't be allowed to name their own streets. No one else should be expected to get them right under these circumstances.

Ummm.....

Came across this ad at the bottom of a web-page today:

"Killer White Teeth"
The Secrets Dentists don’t want you to know about Teeth Whitening!

I think (although I'm not sure, because I was too afraid to click on it) that this is an ad for some sort of teeth-whitening service or product, trying to use the serpent-under-the-apple-tree method for making you want it ("Dentists don't really have your teeth's best interests at heart - they just want to keep all the knowledge and power to themselves").

And yet...

I'm sorry, but it reads like on of those "Current Affairs" type gloom and doom stories. What are the secrets dentists don't want you to know, and how will that lead to your whitened teeth being "killers"? Is there some sort of toxic substance in all teeth-whitening procedures? Are we doomed to suffer some strange and fatal condition as a result of wanting unnaturally white teeth?

Thank goodness I never touch the stuff. I figure as long as my teeth aren't yellow or black I'm doing okay. Who needs their teeth to be as white as bleached paper?

For that matter, who needs their paper to be as white as bleached paper? Come on, people, that just ain't natural.

Cake Wreck

Okay,

This is now, officially, my favourite blog in the whole wide world:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

You have no idea how much of my day has been spent laughing at cake...

Banana flavoured Chupa Chups

Taste really, really weird. Whose idea was that, anyway?

New Look

Someone left me sitting in front of a computer for too long.

Was feeling in a slightly corn-flower mood...

.

Idiots in need of slapping

Ah, Bucky. Sometimes I agree with him entirely, and I don't know if that should scare me...

Been thinking about idiots lately - particularly of the smoking variety.

It amazes me that we haven't yet made the cultural shift to thinking of smokers as disgusting morons. They still have some sort of stubborn pride in themselves and a reluctant respect from the rest of society.

The cultural zeitgeist concerning smokers at present is: "I disagree with what you do, but I suppose you have a right to do it to yourself. Just don't do it while standing next to my kids."

Think about it, folks, this is a behaviour that is both stupid and disgusting - not to mention very unpleasant. Someone who smokes is kind of like someone who scratches themselves until they bleed, and then picks at the scabs in public.

Sure, on one level the most harm is done to the idiot engaged in that activity, but there are known health risks for the rest of us, and it's just not nice to be in the same room with that sort of thing.

I know people who smoke. I get along reasonably well with them, but in the back of my mind I know I don't really respect them. It doesn't matter how nice and intelligent you may seem when you're talking to me, the minute you light up a cigarette you show me that you are, in fact, unpleasant and stupid.

We need to get this mind-set into popular culture. As long as our approach to smoking is "you know, you really shouldn't do that", we'll still have idiot kids taking up the habit at 14 and idiot adults smoking right next to the "no smoking" signs.

If, instead, our approach was "Eeewww - that's just disgusting, you jerk", well, then maybe more people would realise that smoking isn't just a bad habit - it's obnoxious and unacceptable behaviour.

Jamie Gillis, Lois Lane and Superman

I hate it when this happens:

I was trying to find information on Jamie Gillis, a short lived character from the Superman Family comics in the early 1980s, and most of the hits I could find by putting the character's name into a search engine came back with an actor in the... Well, it's a certain film industry I don't care to name because I want this post to come up in any search that has the most obvious terms for that industry NOT-ed out.

Not helpful for augmenting information.

Anyway, in the spirit of sharing useful information about the subject in which I was interested, here is what I know about Jamie Gillis, the Superman character:

Jamie Gillis was a photographer working in the Daily Planet. Primarily, she was a kind of female Jimmy Olsen - going with Lois Lane to cover stories. She pretty much only appeared in stories where Lois was the main character, although she also appeared in some Supergirl comics as well. She had a sort of "will-they-won't-they" relationship with Mark Spencer, who also worked at the Planet.

She made her first appearance at the beginning of 1980, and she was very much a late '70s/early '80s character. She tended to wear jeans and a button-up blouse but with a photgrapher's vest. You'd usually see her perched on the edge of someone's desk while talking to them.

She reminded me a bit of Trixie Beldon - especially the book-covers from the late '70s. Her hair was short and curly/wavy, and she had freckles in some stories. She also had a tendency to react first and think later. You might say she was a bit flaky.

The way she 'moved' was also kind of '70s/'80s, although it's hard to explain why - kind of like she was always on the verge of skipping or dancing, but in an innocent, barn-dance kind of way. A lot of the female characters from the last ten years or so also look like they're about to start dancing, but with more of a pole dance than a barn-dance.

I've read at least three stories featuring her, and she stuck out for me (possibly because of the Trixie Beldon similarities, possibly because she looked like she was about to start skipping at any point - or possibly because she struck me as the character I could play in the movie, if I lost a bit of weight).

She never made it past the early '80s. Heck, she was out of the picture before Crisis, and she didn't survive into the new continuity. No one seems to have missed her, but I think she'd have a lot of potential if she was brought back.

How's this for a new game:

Superman characters from before Crisis who could be brought back into the current continuity?

Jamie Gillis and Mark Spencer are my nominations, what are yours?

Eglantine's End

I finally got around to putting up the last "chapter" of Eglantine over on my Siege Works blog.

Does it end happily? Does Hal survive the monsters and dragons? Does Eglantine get to stay pretty? Does anyone truly care if she doesn't? And, if Eglantine comes back, what will happen to Ruby?

To find the answers to these questions (and more), check out Part 7 of Eglantine. It's shorter than some of the other chapters, but that just makes it quicker to read...

Handle-bar moustache

Here at the university, we have a few men adorning their faces with natural fuzz for Movember - a rather peculiar charity concept in which men grow moustaches for sponsorship dollars in order to support mens' health issues, particularly depression.

As someone who has always felt that modern men are boring and need to do more entertaining things with their facial hair, I thoroughly encourage this bizarre event on principle...

However, I've been seeing a number guys wandering around the place wearing singlets and handle-bar moustaches. Now, in North Queensland it is quite common to see people who believe an athletic singlet is perfectly acceptable outerwear. There is nothing at all unusual about that. But team it with a handle-bar moustache and it just looks weird.

Not a "hey, that's kind of unusual" weird, either. More of a "that guy looks like some sort of creep" weird.

I'd never really thought about it before, but apparently on a certain, unconscious level there is an understanding that men who have particular patterns of facial hair also need to dress appropriately. A handle-bar moustache requires an actual shirt. Something that adequately covers arms and torso and bears no resemblance to underwear.

So does a set of really fuzzy mutton chops. There's one guy who comes in on the weekends occasionally who has the fuzziest face you've seen outside of an actual beard who often turns up dressed in nothing but a singlet and a pair of shorts. He just looks wrong, somehow. He's not dressed any differently from a lot of our other "guests", and yet it seems like he's only half-dressed... and inexplicably unkempt.

Side burns and a soul patch could probably work with a singlet without creepiness, but I think singlet wearers should probably remain clean-shaven (or with a designer stubble, if they've got the figure to pull it off).

Well there you go - I'm an idiot

Have you ever taken years to work out something that was blindingly obvious?

I finally "got" the logo for the Strand today. For years, I thought it was one of the stupidest design I've ever seen because the sqiggly things looked like they should be a "t" and an "s" (for "The Strand"), but they were all wrong.

Then today, I finally realised I should have been looking at the white space all along. The logo is an "s" (for "Strand") running between the blue of the sea and the yellow of the beach.

Now that I've "seen" it, it seems so obvious. Not that great, but obvious. Ah, negative spaces. They can be flummoxing at times, can they not?

Of course, part of the really embarrassing side of this all is the fact that I've designed a few logos myself over the years, and I used to work for a sign-writer on and off during the "Wilderness Year", so I should be used to noticing white space and it's effect on the over-all image.

Ah, well. I guess I'm just not that bright.

Don't tell me I did a good job

I delivered a presentation today.

It was about Second Life. Last week, I knew next to nothing about Second Life. Three days ago I new a little bit more, but still not very much.

Today, I delivered a presentation with no notes, no real experience and next to no preparation (the only time I had to prepare was spent madly trying to figure out how to walk in a straight line in SL and read up on what other people new).

I couldn't have been more inept if I tried. In fact, I kind of did try to be inept. I made a point of joking about how bad and unsuitable I was for such a presentation (someone else was supposed to do it but they couldn't make it).

And yet, during lunch, everyone kept telling me I did a great job. I didn't. I know I didn't and they should know I didn't. It annoys me that they seemed to genuinely appreciate the incompetent effort I made. I know I could have done a lot better. Even in the time I was given, I could have put more thought into it - I could have had a slide show, for example, instead of a handful of links to sites that didn't even work. I could have at least thought about a beginning, middle and end for what I was going to say.

Instead, I made them laugh. Years of working in front of crowds and talking to groups have taught me that the best way to get an audience on side is to make them laugh. Crack a few jokes, make a few sarcastic comments and they'll happily let you stand in front of them regardless of what you're talking about (I once did an impromptu speech on cacti for a performance).

But, the thing was, I wasn't there to entertain them. I was there to present information, and I did a very poor job of that. In fact, it was one of the worst "public appearances" I've ever made. I'm annoyed with myself for doing such a lousy job when I know I could have and should have done better. I'm annoyed with everyone else who told me it was good when really it was just amusing.

Getting away with doing a bad job just encourages me to think I can get away with it again next time. Not good.

Lorna Leigh

This one is Kristopher's fault. There is music. Have to get it down somewhere.

Lorna Leigh

When the night is over
And the dawn has come
I will stop this fighting
And lay down my guns
I will say goodbye
To this place I see
And go home to Lorna Leigh

Back home the sun is shining on the waving grass
And the deer are running 'cross the mountain pass
And my love waits for me to come home at last
I'll go home to Lorna Leigh

When they sign the treaty
And the war is done
It won't really matter
If we've lost or won
I will pack my bag
With a heart set free
And go home to Lorna Leigh

Back home the sun is shining on the waving grass
And the deer are running 'cross the mountain pass
And my love waits for me to come home at last
I'll go home to Lorna Leigh

Lorna Leigh
Lorna Leigh
I'll go home to Lorna Leigh

Lorna Leigh
Lorna Leigh
I'll go home to Lorna Leigh

When the war is over
And the peace begun
I will sing to heaven
And lay down my guns
With the light of glory
Shining down on me
I'll go home to Lorna Leigh

I'll go home to Lorna Leigh

Neither here nor there

I was having one of my "I should join that club - it could be fun" moments today when I realised I had made an error in judgment.

The club in question was Rockwheelers, the local mountain bike club. I thought I might be able to learn a thing or two and go along to some of the events - where there would be people to notice if I break my neck or something.

Then, the thought popped into my head: "Your 'mountain bike' wouldn't be up for those sorts of things, because it's not a 'real' mountain bike. It is, as previously mentioned, a 'comfort mountain bike'."

Then I thought - "but I should still join a cycling club anyway" as I had also been eyeing off the road bike club and their velodrome. Ever since I noticed the track racing at the Olympics was actually not boring (I get easily bored by races) I've been wanting to try out a velodrome.

"Ah," my obnoxious sense of reality pointed out, "but you don't have a road bike worth mentioning either. What you have is a 'cross' bike designed for riding around town."

It's true! It's true! While the old Merida managed to survive the Julia Creek Dirt and Dust Triathlon, it didn't exactly shine. Granted, my coming dead last probably had a lot to do with my level of fitness (and the fact that I can't swim in a straight line to save myself), but the bike wasn't exactly my secret weapon.

It turns out that, while I am now the proud owner of two bikes - both of which I ride every week, I don't really have a mountain bike and I don't really have a road bike. I'm not even sure I have a touring bike (although the guy at my bike shop knew I wanted something for touring when I asked for his recommendation, so I'm going to assume the Sedona will do the job).

I definitely have at least one commuting bike, which is probably just as well, considering I do a fair bit of commuting by bike these days. It doesn't help with my occasional whim to join a bike club and ride around a velodrome, though.

Curse my desire to do a little bit of everything! Why must I want to a) ride to work, b) ride around the country, c) ride cross country and d) ride around a track when I cannot afford to collect a commuter, a tourer, a mountain bike, a track bike and a road bike?

Why can't they invent one bike that will do everything?

Yet, even as I make that plaintive cry, I know that any bike which was generic enough to do both cross-country and track riding would probably be terrible at both. Especially if it was affordable.

*sigh*

How "good" is a Giant Sedona as a mountain bike, does anyone know? Could it survive some actual cross-country trails without stranding me in the middle of no-where?

Not something that happens every day

Something happened to me the other night that has never happened to me before, and will probably never happen to me again:

A kookaburra threw a frog at me.

I had just gotten onto my bike and was about to leave the nursing home where my grandmother is currently feeling miserable, when I heard a very peculiar sound. It sounded a bit like a gecko with an attitude problem, but was a lot louder and more expressive than the average gecko noise.

When I glanced in the direction of the noise I saw some sort of flapping and fluttering of wings.

"Surely a bird wouldn't make a sound like that?" I thought to myself. I pedaled towards the strange sight to investigate.

Suddenly, even though I would have thought it long past its bed-time, a kookaburra flew from the location of the strange noise and threw something at me as it went.

With a rather sad-sounding "plop", a frog landed on the ground not far from where I had paused on my bicycle. As the kookaburra made a sound that was very much like the kind of sound an annoyed kookaburra would make, the frog hobbled over to the nearest garden bed and buried itself under a plant.

I thought to myself, "That was a bit different", and then rode home.

You speak-a my language?

According to a recent report in the Baltic Times:

"Many primary school and kindergarten teacher can’t speak Estonian well enough to teach." [sic.]

Apparently, this is a shocking state of affairs that requires redressing, and all bar eight of the tested kindergarten teachers will be expected to lift their game in time for another test in a year.

They should come to Australia. We have high school English teachers whose English isn't that good. The kindergarten teachers leave you in tears.

When I was studying for my Education Degree, I came into most of my courses with a firm grounding in English grammar and a strong love for language, linguistics and communication. Most of my classmates were hard-pressed to explain what a noun was - and they didn't see that as a problem.

For some reason, over the last twenty or so years the powers that be have come to the conclusion that learning "correct" English is a) elitist, b) pointless and c) discriminatory. After all, expecting a high standard of English communication implies that any other dialect or discourse of English is somehow "below standard" and inadequate. Heaven forbid children be told the way they speak at home is "not good enough" for their assignments and essays.

"English is a vibrant language", they say, "It changes all the time - and so it should." And thus they justify having entire cohorts of students graduating year after year without a basic grasp of sentence structure.

Not only have we created a culture where a high standard of English is neither taught nor expected, but we now have a culture where the very idea of a "correct" or "better" English is bitterly rejected.

"How dare you suggest I could be doing better? Who are you to decide what is and isn't good enough?" seems to be the prevailing attitude. Oh, and that's just the kind of response one would get for pointing out that bizarre and bazaar are two different words, and they've used the wrong one. Wait to you see the kind of reaction you can expect for pointing out that "been", "seen" and "done" require the word "have" in front of them. The common man will have none of your auxiliary verbs, thank you!

I've lost count of the amount of times I've tried to correct someone only to have a raft of other people rush to their defence - even though they were clearly wrong. Apparently it is far better to express yourself by any means (even if you have used the wrong words in the wrong order and have, therefore, said something rather different to what you intended) than to pause for a moment and think about how you are going to express yourself. It's up to the listener or reader to determine your correct meaning from your expressions. I don't know about you, but I think this could be rather problematic at times.

Then again, I've also lost count of the amount of times I've been corrected and found myself wanting to react just as poorly. Even though I know great benefit can be had from noticing a mistake and correcting it, I still don't like being told I am wrong and I could do better. I guess I'm a child of this culture after all.

On the other hand, I know what a noun is. That puts me well ahead of many of the English teachers educating our children today.

Brass players are nutjobs

So, I'm learning the baritone horn.

I had intended to learn the cornet/trumpet, but the guy who is teaching me at an exceptionally reasonable rate suggested a baritone would be more suited to me, physically, and since I get to borrow one for free I thought I'd give it a go.

The fact that it uses exactly the same fingering to produce the same notes (within a different octave range) also made it an easy sell.

He was right - it is a better fit. I sound worse than when I was learning the cornet/trumpet because I'm starting again on a new instrument so I have to redevelop technique, but I can produce a larger range of notes without busting a gut. My lips seem better suited to the larger mouthpiece, and I have the lung power to make it work (although I'm going to have to build up some serious intercostal-diaphragmatic muscles to make it work smoothly). Trying to play my pocket trumpet after practicing the baritone for a while is... shall we say "interesting". And I was just starting to get the hang of it, too.

Anyway, having come from playing the piano, recorder and a bit of concertina, I'm having some difficulty wrapping my head around this "transposing instrument" thing that brass has got going on.

In my world, a C is a C. I can handle playing an instrument that is tuned to a different key, as long as I know that when I look at a C on the sheet music and play a C on the instrument, I am actually playing the note that is written, and could therefore play the same music with any other instrument and make the same notes (give or take an octave). The idea that I can look at a C on the sheet music, play what is supposed to be a C on the instrument, but in fact be playing a completely different note is a bit disturbing.

And yet, it seems from my limited research that a heck of a lot of brass instruments play X number of tones above or below what is written. What's the point of that? Surely its just as easy to know what a C actually is on the instrument instead of picking an easier one to hit and saying "this can be C for us"?

Why spend so much time and effort learning to play scales that aren't actually the scales you're playing? Why get to the point where playing the sheet music is a breeze, if it's all a big fat lie?

And, of course, whoever composes brass music knows (somehow) that the cornet is actually playing a Bb instead of a C, while the (French) Horn is actually playing an F instead of a C, while the Tenor Horn is actually playing an Eb instead of a C...

And then, supposedly, when you write for certain instruments in treble clef they are transposing, but when you write for the same instruments in bass clef they are non-transposing - which means the players need to know what a "real" C is anyway so they can play it in the bass clef...

What the heck? How come no one has turned around and said: "Transposing octaves is one thing, but the rest of you are a bunch of nutjobs and should just learn to read the music, dammit!"

I'm trying to work out exactly how I transpose the sheet music in my brain so that I can play the "true" notes when I need them, but my tired little brain is having issues with that...

Seat Post Blues

The new bike needs a new seat post.

No, I didn't break this one, and it wasn't faulty either, more's the pity.

It's just an inch too short. That's what I get for buying a bike that's a size too small, I guess. I had good reason to - all the better to land on my feet when I come off the bike, my dear. The trouble with learning to ride a unicycle is you tend to learn how to land when you come off a unicycle. I found the last couple of times I encountered an obstacle that unseated me from my regular bicycle, I landed on my feet in exactly the same manner I do when coming down from das einrad. Thankfully, the women's frame gave me plenty of clearance.

When I new the next bike had to have a men's frame as there wasn't a women's alternative, I went a size smaller to give me that extra clearance. Makes perfect sense, unless you factor in this weird trend bikes have for shorter seat tubes, these days. Damn fashion. It's never once done me any favours.

So, now I need to fork out money to buy a new seat post when I have a perfectly good, functioning seat post already. Too many things in this world cost money.

New Bike!

New bike, new bike, new biiiiiiiike!

I got my new bike today. It's a Giant Sedona LX. It's what Giant calls a "Lifestyle" bike. It's not actually a mountain bike, you see, it's a "comfort mountain" bike.

I'm not entirely sure what that means, aside from, perhaps, "don't take this bike down Mt Stromlo unless you want to die", or something similar. However, I asked my friendly bike shop people to recommend something that could handle a bit of off road and fire-trails type riding while being comfortable and sturdy enough to do some touring (say, riding my bike to Brisbane), and that's the one they recommended.

I had these grand illusions of collecting the bike from the shop and riding over to the Nursing Home to visit my grandmother this morning, but quite frankly it was all too new and weird, so I thought I'd skip taking it half-way across town through "real traffic" until I'd had a chance to get to know him better, as it were. This weekend I'm going down the river, baby.

I'm almost happy with it. I've been almost happy with it ever since I ordered it. "Why almost?" I hear you ask. Well, it's because it was affordable. In all of the magazines I've been reading the bikes on review are usually around the $3,000 to $5,000 mark. Heck, I've even seen a few that were around the $10,000 mark. Now, I don't know if I'll ever do the kind of cycling where I'll see the value of a $10,000 bike, so I'm quite happy to leave those Italian racing machines in Italy (although, part of me will probably always drool over The Prince), but when most of the reviewed bikes cost more than my return flight to Europe, it makes me wonder what kind of quality I'm getting for my $900 dollars.

Plus, there's that whole "comfort mountain" and "lifestyle" thing. In the back of my mind something keeps whispering "you should have forked out at least another thousand and bought a 'real' mountain bike". I know, deep down, that the kind of riding I'm likely to do is probably best served by a bike like the Sedona, but there's this niggling feeling that I should have payed more for a bike with less comfort and more grunt.

I'm sure it will be fine. It's a good looking bike and I'm sure I'll fall in love with it and never look back. I could feel it starting to settle in just riding it around in the back yard to get the seat height right and work out what this front suspension thing is all about. And, next to my old bike (which I'll continue to use to get to work), it looks pretty darn shmicky.

Will I use it to ride to Brisbane? Well, maybe. One day. If I can manage to somehow make sure my mother doesn't notice I've gone. She's already freaking out at the idea of my riding it to Ingham. Don't even ask her what she thinks of my whole "riding around Estonia" plan. I'm surprised she hasn't offered me money to hire a car...

"Welcome to Country"

Today I attended a conference at another university, and once again some middle aged white guy took it upon himself to "welcome" us to "Country".

This annoys the hell out of me.

Why? Because nine times out of ten they tick every box necessary for turning it into something trite and irrelevant instead of something meaningful:

Did some guy who definitely has no claim to "Country" welcome us to it as if he new what "Country" really meant? Yes.

Did he neglect to even mention the name of the people whose Country he was so magnanimously welcoming us to? Yes.

Did he point out how good his organisation was for making a point of mentioning "Country" and the "original owners"? Yes.

Did he use the standard cliche of "acknowledging the original owners of this land" without giving the impression he even knew who they were? Yes.

Sure, its the "in thing" these days to show how culturally aware you are by stating explicitly that this piece of land used to belong to someone else and they still have ties to it. But, honestly people, if you aren't going to make the effort to find out who those original owners were and acknowledge them by name - what's the point?

Country isn't a buzzword that you get to bandy around because it's in vogue amongst political circles these days. Either think about what it means and sound like you care, or skip it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this particular Australianism, "Country" refers to the concept that indigenous people have a bond with their home turf. Left to their traditional ways, they would be intimately familiar with the seasons, flora, fauna and sacred places of the patch of land they call their own. Their ancestors' spirits sink deep into that land and therefore it's not just their home - it's part of their family.

Whatever they would have called it in their own language, these days the convention in English is to call it Country. No articles, adjectives or qualifiers - no "the" or "my" or "your" - just Country.

Except that it does have a name - the name of the people who call it their own. To them, it's just Country. To everyone else it's Such-and-Such Country.

Take the place were I live and work, for example. It was variously home to two Aboriginal Language Groups: Wulgurukaba and Bindal. There are other language groups in the area, but those two are the traditional owners of the place I now call my home.

Not being a member of either language group, I'd feel a right twit trying to welcome you to "Country" as if I had a right to do so. It's not "Country" to me. Well, in a way it is, as I was born and raised here and feel a kind of kinship with my home turf, but if I was going to welcome you to my place I would welcome you to Townsville. It's not in my culture to think of this as "Country", and to use that word in that context when I don't really feel it...

Well, that just seems even more culturally insensitive than not using it at all. I could quite happily welcome you to Wulgurukaba and Bindal Country, just as I could quite happily welcome you to Charters Towers if you were meeting me there and you had never visited that town before.

If I wouldn't use "Country" to welcome you to my home town where I was born and raised, I sure as heck wouldn't dare do it to a place I've only lived in for a couple of years.

As for "acknowledging the original owners of this land"? Well, you do that by actually mentioning whose traditional land it is. You can bandy the political buzzwords around as much as you like and feel special about it, but if you haven't gone to the trouble of finding out the name of the traditional owners, then saying "I acknowledge you" is a pretty shallow gesture indeed.

Get over yourselves, impertinent and supercilious white dudes. You don't sound special. You just sound obnoxious.

Further to the Last

Actually, I've been thinking about that a lot, recently (see the last post, on Eglantine Part Five).

I wrote Eglantine about a year ago, and that theme of "change-the-face-and-change-the-person-behind-it" has often played on my mind since.

It's because I've been making subtle changes to my own appearance over the last year - and it's because of the way I've been doing it. I've been changing the person behind the face, and that has resulted in my face looking a bit different.

Between the beginning of last year and the tale end of this year, I've lost a bit of weight, gained a bit of muscle, improved the quality of my skin tone and picked up a vibrancy, of sorts. I feel more up-and-at-'em, and the people around me have told me it's coming out in my face.

I look better, I feel better (although I know I've still got a long way to go), and it's all because I'm starting to live better. Juggling started it off, but the training for the triathlon really proved to be the catalyst. I made some serious changes to my life-style in order to survive that thing, and while I've been slacking off during the cold dark days of winter, I managed to retain the attitude I had to create to make it all work.

Yes, that's right, I had to create an entire attitude. The same way I made myself like capsicum and coffee, I made myself like exercise. I convinced myself that I love riding my bike so much I'd rather go to work that way instead of taking the car (even though it's awkward). I convinced myself that running was enough of a buzz to make up for the fact that it was hard work - that getting up an hour earlier in the morning just so I could go for a run was worth it because running was its own reward.

Yes, trying to fit it into my lifestyle was a struggle, but I've found that I'm slowly creating a whole new lifestyle. So much so, that I'm planning to cycle around a small European country next year. Two years ago I would never have considered it.

I realised the other day that I have made myself love and value things that I once disliked, or was indifferent to. I also realised that in doing so, I've become a different version of me. The Me that existed five years ago wouldn't recognise the Me that I am today. It wouldn't recognise my interests, the way I spend my time or the sorts of things I spend my money on.

If I was still the old me, I wouldn't have been able to pick up my fitness level the way that I have. I had to become a different person in order to make these positive changes to my appearance. Oh, I still have a long, long way to go, and I think I'll have to change myself many times over in the process. I can't help but wonder exactly who I'll turn myself into in the end.

I think the next step involves cultivating a dislike for things I have previously liked and enjoyed - changing my attitude yet again. Mainly for things like chips, deep fried food and the like. I'm already at the stage where I often crave salads instead of crumbed sausages... But sometimes those crumbed sausages just call to me. Must make myself view them as unpleasant things that I do not wish to place in my mouth.

Eglantine Part Five

Well, I've been a bit tardy with updating it (sounds about normal for me), but Eglantine Part Five has been posted over on my Siege Works blog.

This is one of my favourite parts of one of my favourite stories. The whole plot behind Eglantine just sort of fell into place all by itself, spurred on from various points of inspiration. Occasionally stories write themselves, and I just get to go along for the ride - more a reader of the story than the writer.

It's at this point of the story that the central theme behind Eglantine is revealed, in the words of the elegant witch:

"We are as we are. We can change ourselves to an extent, as it is within our power to do so, and we will still be ourselves. But, if we allow someone else to change us, then we will become someone else. Do you understand?"

Eglantine isn't happy with what people see when they look at her, and all she can think about is how much she wants it to change (extreme make-over style). What she doesn't realise is that the person she is cannot be completely divorced from the rest of the package - face included. If she changes her face (in a way that doesn't come organically from her) she changes the person behind the face as well.

The idea of a "kind of beauty that rests in all things" which must be appreciated before it can be seen isn't new, but I think it is often forgotten - even by those who should know better.

The Awareness Test

How good are your observation skills?

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

It will get you thinking

Received Pronunciation

You see, this is why every language needs a particular accent that is accepted as the "proper" pronunciation.

Sure, it's classist, slightly racist and incredibly excluding, but it works, dammit!

I've never had an accent that anyone could actually identify. For as long as I can remember people have been asking me where I come from. Sometimes I sound a little more British, so they ask if I'm Scottish. Sometimes I sound a little more North American, so they ask if I'm Canadian. Maybe I just sound "northern", I don't know.

But, when I need to, I can deliver a clear and well annunciated "home counties", English style accent - the slightly less plummy version of Received Pronunciation that used to be referred to, in some quarters, as "Eaton Dialect". You know, the way all of the Doctors on Dr Who used to speak in the old series.

I have found this skill to be invaluable. Suddenly, I am perfectly understandable to anyone from Europe, and reasonably understandable to a large number of people from Asia.

Why? Because English, in Europe, is usually taught by English professors with that accent, or someone who studied English in a school where that accent was preferred. In Asia it is usually taught by someone with an American accent, so the Asian students I work with can sometimes struggle a bit with my vowels when I snap into my "Home Counties Accent". I suppose I should try making it a bit more "Boston" when I work with them.

It's almost automatic with me. The minute I'm in a situation where I think someone is having trouble understanding me, I switch into this accent and start sounding like an English Professor. With some people, you can see the lights switch on as they finally have a fighting chance of interpreting what I say (I even had a student from Germany thank me once).

But, then, you get people who learn a language as a group of words. They don't pay attention to how the words sound, they just pronounce it the way they'd pronounce their own words. Then they come and ask me questions and I have a hell of a time trying to work out what they want.

If, on the other hand, they had learnt a couple of accents along with the vocabulary, then we'd all stand a fighting chance of being understood.

I'm trying to be conscious of that as I'm learning Estonian and Russian - listening to the speakers and trying to pick up on their accents. I'm not sure if I'm being remotely successful as I still have this weird tendency to try to speak "clearly" - which, with my training, is the "Home Counties Accent".

I'm sure Russian with a crisp, clear English accent is just as hard to understand as English with a soft, muted Russian accent...

Favourite Sentence for the Week

There's something about web pages that are written in English, but quite obviously not by native English speakers. They have such a unique turn of phrase - it's almost like unintentional poetry.

Take this gem, for example:

"Right moving in nature has been inherent of people already from the primeval times."

It comes from the State Portal for the Estonian government, on a page about hiking.

Now, I'm working on the assumption that the sentence actually means something along the lines of "moving about in nature has been a natural drive in people since primeval times", but doesn't their version sound so much more interesting?

Live Toads

I once heard an interesting statement that has stuck with me ever since:

If you eat a live toad first thing in the morning, nothing bad can happen to you for the rest of the day.

The point of the statement being: theoretically, eating a live toad is one of the worst, most unpleasant things that could possibly happen to you in the course of your day, so everything else is a step up. Comparatively, everything else has to be good, so nothing "bad" can happen to you after that (it's better than eating a live toad, so it can't be that bad) and your day necessarily improves remarkably from that point onwards.

Normally, you don't get the chance to test theories like this because you're not likely to eat a live toad, are you? Today, however, I had the privilege of seeing that principle in action.

No, I didn't eat a live toad, but I did discover there is a very real activity that is equally unpleasant - I tried to communicate with Telstra via the telephone. For those of you who don't know, Telstra is the semi-national-semi-privitised telecommunications company that rules the roost in Australia. It inspires such feelings of warmth and kindness amongst the Australian people that we actually prefer to deal with the taxation department than Telstra, if given the choice.

I had a relatively simple problem that needed to be solved: my SIM card had been playing up and I needed to have it replaced whilst still retaining the same phone number. The girls in the shop couldn't do it at the time, so they gave me a new card and a telephone number and told me to do it over the phone.

If given the choice in the future, never EVER deal with Telstra over the phone.

It took me over an hour of being passed from computer to operator to computer to operator to operator to operator to being put on hold for over twenty minutes to computer to operator to operator before they would actually complete the rather simple task of waking up a card that I already had and connecting it to an account that already existed. And then the PUC they gave me was wrong so I had to phone them back and get another one.

Seriously, after spending an hour on the phone with Telstra (most of that time listening to the same three pieces of muzak being played over and over again), nothing worse could happen to me today.

I cut my finger making lunch - ran a serrated knife over the top of a knuckle. As I tried to make sure the blood didn't get into my sandwich, I literally found myself thinking, "Eh, that's not so bad". Comparatively speaking, spilling my own blood was actually less painful that trying to get anything out of Telstra.

I felt a strong desire to create a cottage industry based around selling T-Shirts with one slogan written on them: "Telstra hates us all". I toyed with the idea of giving them away for free to anyone who had a legitimate reason to think Telstra didn't have their best interests at heart, but then I thought I'd probably run through a few million that way, so I changed my mind.

Since then, though, it's been a pretty good day. Heck, I have a feeling it will be a pretty good week. It can only go up, after all.

Siege Works

Another entry in the "I have too many blogs" list:

Siege Works

You may have noticed from my occasional bursts of poetry that I fancy myself a bit of a writer. Well, I've decided to take advantage of the self-publishing empire that is the Internet and start putting some of my short stories, etc, out there for the world to ignore at its leisure.

I know no one reads what I write anyway (that's why I don't put counters on my personal blogs - the lack of hits on my "professional blogs" is depressing enough), but it feels good to pretend that there might be an audience somewhere.

It you build it they will come, and all that.

At the moment I'm partway through posting parts of Eglantine, one of my "Stories for Kate". It's a personal favourite of mine, so if you hate it feel free to lie to me and tell me you quite enjoyed it.

As for who "Kate" is... well that's my little secret (I've got to create some air of mystery, otherwise they'll be nothing of interest in what I do at all). All I will state categorically is that she is not my child...

Oh, and if you're wondering why I called it Siege Works, I'll explain later. It's a long and drawn out story that involves Superman, Gladiators, a flock of birds and a fondness for homonyms. I think it will take a posting of its own at some point.

The Second Tuesday Band

I woke up one morning and this song just started falling to place in my brain. The words are definitely mine, but I can't vouch for the tune (which seems strangely familiar to me, although I can't peg it down - it's a bit of a shame, really, because I think the tune is better than the words). Thus the words are all I shall present here:

The Second Tuesday Band

There is a town in North-West Tasmania
That has a cape that sits beside the bay
Behind the football club are some buildings
That you might wander to some day

There is a brass band beside the pipe band
And there's a concert band just down the way
And every second Tuesday in April
They get together and they play

And they play "God Save the Queen"
(The grandest dame you've ever seen)
And they play "Nearer God to Thee"
And then they play "Amazing Grace"
Until they're all blue in the face
And they play "Lover Come Back to Me"

They play the standards from the past
The kind of songs that always last
So long as someone holds a horn
And when the drums begin to roll
It starts a stirring in your soul
That makes you glad that you were born

And they play "Sally" (still down our alley)
And "Sally Gardens" can fill you with joy
And they play "Onward You Christian Soldiers"
And then the pipes play "Danny Boy"

It makes you feel good – It makes you feel great
'Cause it's so absolutely grand!
You'll never find a better ensemble
Than in the Second Tuesday Band

You'll never find a better ensemble
Than in the Second Tuesday Band

Childhood games

It's always interesting listening to my "elders" reminisce about their childhood. They had so much less than me, and yet they seemed to have something that my generation was starting to run out of, and of which the current crop of children has very little indeed - space to breathe.

Their parents were more stern, yet less controlling. Their lives less filled with "stuff", but probably better for it. My aunts and uncles were talking about the places where they used to play and the things they used to play with as children, and I felt a strange sorrow that few kids today would have those memories to recall when they reached their fifties.

We've lost the ability to be happy with a set of odd-shaped wooden blocks. We've lost the freedom to wander down to the nearest creek and fall into it. Our kids are kept safe and entertained, which means they don't get to know their environment and they don't know how to entertain themselves.

And its because my mother's generation decided that their own childhood wasn't suitable for their kids. Very poor of them, I think. Look where it's gotten us - sure, we have Tickle Me Elmos, but at the expense of running down to the creek with the other neighbourhood kids to catch frogs.

Of the two, I know which one I would have preferred for my children. Yes, I know, I don't have any children - and if I did I'd be just as likely to give them the doll and keep them away from the icky creek where the dangerous strangers might do horrid things to them. That's not the point.

Then again, maybe it is. The world my mother used to play in as a child no longer exists, and my kids wouldn't be able to play in it no matter how much I might want them to...

She Made It.

My grandmother turned 80 today.

There were many, many times over the past five years when we thought she wouldn't make it to the next milestone. "She probably won't be here for Christmas/her birthday/my birthday/your birthday/the next school holidays..." And yet, here we are, on her 80th birthday.

We had all of her children (and a couple of ring-ins, like myself) up for a birthday party last Saturday, and against all odds a good-time was had by all. Considering we had to celebrate her 80th in the hospital gardens with a picnic at 4:30 in the afternoon, it went down very well.

There were lots of stories and reminiscences. My grandmother even managed to get a lot of the details right (they've been shifting around a bit as she got older). We were worried that she might have been too out of it to appreciate what was going on, but she woke up enough to have a great time (we think it might have had something to do with the interaction between the wine and her medications, but that's beside the point).

The really great thing was that everyone got together for a celebration of her life while she was still here to join in. So much better than waiting for her to die and coming together for her wake.

I'd recommend it to anyone - if a loved one's continued existence is in doubt, throw them a party while they're still with you. No matter how small or low key, it will mean more to all involved than the biggest posthumous celebration you could possibly put together.

Today, her actual birthday, was pretty much like any other Tuesday, only with more flowers involved. But, she's still here, and in a way that was a present for us. She made it.

Too-ral li-ooral li-addity

I've been thinking about Botany Bay recently.

For some reason I started singing it about two days ago, and for some reason I actually sang it right for the first time in my life. It was like an epiphany. Have you ever done something one way your entire life, tried to do it differently on a complete whim and realised that's the way you should have been doing it all along?

And yet, I realise now that I've had the wrong idea about the song because every version of it I've ever heard was also wrong, as were the music teachers and primary school teachers who would get us to play the tune in class many long years ago.

Why, just this morning, when I finished my baritone horn lesson (receiving, not giving) I walked into another class room where the teacher was telling her class to play Botany Bay with "swashbuckle", and immediately launched into what I'd called an oom-pa-pa version of the tune to illustrate what she wanted.

It's the same way I was taught. Instead of "too-ra-li oo-ra-li addity" (or tooral liooral liaddity, as I've seen it written) being the sort of lovely lilting sound most songs with "too-ra-li" type lyrics are given, it may as be "oom-pa-pa oom-pa-pa oom-pa-pa".

I don't know how, or when, or why, but Botany Bay has been decreed some sort of up-tempo drinking song, and is invariably performed with the gusto usually given to Blow the Man Down and the kinds of sea-shanty you'd sing in the pub after a hard day's work.

Maybe that's the way it was originally performed all those years ago when it started out as a number in a musical burlesque (Little Jack Sheppard), but there are usually soft quiet songs in burlesques as well as the more up-tempo numbers - and when it was adopted as a folk song, it should have taken on the charm of its own lyrics.

Besides, it's not a shanty. It doesn't have any of the qualities of a sea-shanty, and it shouldn't be treated like one. I think it's a ballad. If you look closely it's this lovely, lilting, I'm-miserable-and-I-want-to-go-home ballad.

I mean, think about it, it's a song about poor, weak, lonely, depressed convicts - sent on the boat-ride from hell to the other side of the world, knowing that the odds they'll get home alive are very slim, and all because they mugged a guy and stole something small and meaningless.

If you take a walk down the streets of Campbell Town in Tasmania, you can read some of the crimes convicts were deported for, and how long they were banished from their homes and families. The crimes were things like stealing shoes or food (sometimes more serious crimes like sheep stealing and the like), and the sentences were anywhere from seven years to life.

The trip from England to Australia took more than six months on their fastest ships (which weren't usually used for transporting convicts), and for the duration the convicts were locked in an area that was dark, damp, lice infested and putrid with the smell of their own body-waste. Food was less than basic - and often filled with weevils and other insects. Many died on the journey. All came off the ships covered with sores and riddled with illnesses.

Sure, it was written years after the whole convict thing was over, and it may have written for the amusement of people who probably thought convicts were terribly funny - but it still seems like cry from the heart from lonely, downtrodden, desperate men and you loose all of that if you sing it with too much gusto. It should not be sung (or played) with the kind of happy frivolity one would hear from Blow the Man Down. It's a song of pain and misery, and should be sung with the same kind of soft, gentle, lingering caress that is given to war ballads like Aura Lee.

You should sing it like you've been at sea for months, you're feeling homesick, and the rhythm of the ocean is making the boat sway in that way that would rock you to sleep if only it didn't make you want to throw up.

And yet, every time I've ever heard it played, the notes are clipped short instead of lingered on, the the tune is kept bright and up-tempo instead of gentle and soft. I don't know, maybe it's been that way all along. It just seems like such a waste. It should be pathos, rather than bathos.

I'd actually gone off the song because I found the "oom-pa-pa" nature of the tune a bit annoying and overly simplistic. As a lovely, "too-ra-li" ballad, though, it's really quite pretty.

I don't know why I started singing it like that the other day. I think it's because I had been humming the tune to Aura Lee earlier, and I was just in a ballad frame of mind.

Some of the verses don't quite fit with the "lovely ballad" concept of the song, but they can work and, alternatively, you don't seem to loose anything by dropping them. The song gains a lot by cutting to the heart of the remaining lyrics instead of playing it for 'yuks'.

Or maybe it's just me. But next time you feel compelled to sing the song, sing it slow and pretty. It feels good.

Two Screens

I've just borrowed an extra screen to see if it would help with the whole stupid CMS conversion thing.

The answer is:

Yes, a lot. Makes me feel sad I didn't think of doing this months ago (actually, I did think of it, I just didn't think we had a screen to borrow).

Also, makes me feel a little bit like some kind of mastermind. Maybe not "evil mastermind", but perhaps "nefarious mastermind".

Mwah-hah-hah. And all that.

New Plan

I visited my grandmother again today. This is nothing terribly special or unique - I visit her everyday. Some days are more depressing than others, though, even though I'm not sure why. This was one of them, although it wasn't as bad as some have been.

Maybe it's the way she heard me come up behind her, thought I was a nurse and said, pitifully, "please help me", because she needed to go to the toilet and it had been some time since she pressed the button but no one had come.

There's something about watching someone succumb to old age that just sucks. Their life sucks, and you get to live a sucky life vicariously through them. We shouldn't have to get that old. We shouldn't have to live past the stage where we can take ourselves to the toilet without asking someone to help us and hoping against hope that they help us in time.

We shouldn't have to live past the stage where we can walk, breath and eat without feeling as if we've run an ultramarathon. Life shouldn't get to the point where the basic living of it is beyond us. Not if people are going to insist we keep on living.

If not for the marvels of modern medicine, my grandmother would have died years ago. She would have died with a lot more dignity than she has the way she's living now, and she wouldn't have had her world shrink on her so much for so long. It's been years since she has actually enjoyed life, and now she actively hates it. But she's still alive. All because we take her to the doctors when she gets sick, and the doctors find a way to stop her from dying from whatever sickness she has.

It's not their fault. We simply live in a society that has forgotten what death is for. We think life is vitally important, so we go out of our way to make sure people who shouldn't really be alive manage to stay in the game. Babies that would once never be conceived/never be born/never survive past the first few nights/never live past the age of five are now making it through childhood - even though they might not do it very well. Adults who would once have died while still with some quality of life after some illness or accident are now living long enough to see the quality drain away - and then go on living a few years more.

We weren't meant to live forever. Some of us weren't meant to live very long at all. It's sad, it's tragic, but it's life. Death is a part of life. It defines it, puts it in perspective and keeps the living honest. Yet, we try so hard to avoid dying, even when living isn't really the best thing we could do - for ourselves or for those around us.

But how do you die in this society, in this day and age? We're trying to stamp out death by natural causes and no one approves of death by intent. In the olden days, you'd get sick and die. That was reasonably normal. These days, you don't go down without a fight - even when winning the fight would actually be more like loosing. And when you do die, everyone says it should never have happened and tries to find way to stop it happening to others. We've lost the concept of a good death.

Except when it comes to our animals. We're quite happy to put our dogs out of their misery, but not our parents. They get to stay miserable (apparently it makes us all feel better).

I've been joking with some of my friends who have parents and grandparents in similar situations - saying I don't want to get that old, so after a certain age I'm just going to live recklessly and hope I get taken out in a motorcycle accident or something.

The problem with that plan is I'm likely to get "saved", so I'll be old and suffering from permanent damage that will stop me from base-jumping or engaging in other death-inviting activities.

I thought of a new plan today: Exposure. I've been reading a magazine on trail running and it mentioned things to do to avoid catching hypothermia and dying of exposure. It made me think of the RSPCA's recommendation for killing cane toads - putting them in the freezer. Apparently, their temperature drops gradually, they fall asleep and freeze to death in blissful ignorance. (Why they honestly think that anyone who isn't going to dissect a toad is going to bother catching them and putting them next to their steak and lamb chops is beyond me. I think they might be delusional).

From what I think I know about hypothermia and dying of exposure, it's a similar pattern. You get really, desperately, uncomfortably cold for a few hours, then you start to nod off. Once you fall asleep, if help doesn't get to you soon, it's all over bar the coroner's inquiry.

That doesn't sound like a bad way to go, all things considered. Find a beautiful spot somewhere really cold (Arctic Circle, perhaps), go for a nice, long bush walk in the middle of winter, make sure you've got enough supplies to get far enough away from civilisation that no one will come along and try to save you, and let nature take it's course. Sure, you'll probably end up being eaten by something - but at least then you're giving something back to the planet, I suppose. Circle of life and all that.

Beats dying slowly because people insist you should be trying to stay alive.

So, yeah, that's my new plan: Live a rich and full life for as long as I can and face old age as valiantly as I may until I feel I've jumped the shark and it's time to go. Then I'll take myself out into the woods somewhere (if there are any left by that time) and die of exposure. Hey, they say wild animals do it all the time, so it must be reasonably civilised.

Of course, I may change my mind by then - it may be quite a number of decades away.

How would you like to die?

Happy Place

Fancy that.

According to a survey by the World Values Survey organisation (a US funded body), Estonia is the 84th happiest country in the world.

They should put that on a T-Shirt.

Sure, someone could complain that 84th place in a field of 97 surveyed countries is a bit of a poor showing, but you have to admit, it sounds kind of cool:

Come to Estonia, the 84th Happiest Place on Earth...

Russian

So...

I'm learning Russian. I don't know why, especially since I'm at that stage with trying to learn Estonian (on my own) where I could probably quite easily confuse myself, but I found a Russian teacher and I figured I should try to learn at least one language with professional help.

Why Russian and not, say, French or Spanish?

I don't rightly know, exactly.

I always felt that if you were going to learn a language you should learn one that could be used in a wide number of countries. I refused to learn Japanese when I had the chance because it was only spoken in Japan. I studied Indonesian in school, but largely because that was the only language on offer. I didn't feel the need to pursue it with any vigor as Indonesian is only spoken by Indonesians (and not even all of them). All I can really remember from those lessons is saya tidak mengerti, which means "I don't understand". A little bit useful, but not much.

And yet, here I am, trying to learn Estonian, which is spoken by less than two million people. Why? Because I refuse to have an Estonian passport and be entitled to help from the Estonian embassy if I've never been to Estonia and I can't even speak the language. So I'm trying to learn Estonian and I'm planning a trip to Estonia next yet (just a holiday this time, but with a view to moving there for a year or so in the foreseeable future).

Learning Estonian is, of course, ridiculous. It's ridiculous for exactly the same reason that learning Finnish would be ridiculous. Why try to learn one of the hardest languages on the planet when:

a) only a small group of people speak it,
b) everyone who speaks it also speaks at least one other language - any one of which would be much easier to learn,
and
c) the native speakers have a reputation of having little patience for people who haven't got a complete grip on the language, and can speak your language so much better than you could ever hope to speak theirs?

Plus, the language itself is ridiculous. I'm sorry, but it is. You don't need fourteen cases - especially if you are also going to have prepositions and postpositions. You do need gendered pronouns and articles. Whoever invented the Finno-Ugric languages was a bit like one of those sociopaths who lock up abandoned children in the basement and only speak to them in a series of complicated grunts. I'm almost convinced it was some sort of twisted sociological experiment that has gone on for far too long.

That said, it's so darn pretty to listen to that I can't wait until I understand enough words well enough to hear the meaning behind the poetry. Plus, the fact that it is such a challenge makes me feel strangely victorious whenever I've managed to wrap my head around part of it.

Which leads me to Russian. Okay, it's spoken by more people in more places than Estonian (including Estonia), but a heck of a lot of the non-Russian countries which used to speak it try to avoid it like the plague these days. It will probably help me read a few signs and talk to a few shopkeepers in certain quarters of Estonia, but if I'm not really planning on visiting Russia, and the Estonian speakers would have more respect for me if I spoke French, why learn Russian?

I think its partly because, when I was growing up, Estonia was part of the USSR, and, in the 1980s, the USSR was kind of cool. That was where all the best Bond villains came from. That was where the best competition came from in the Olympics. That was where all of the really cool scientists and artists defected from. The USSR, in the 80s, had a strange attraction for a young kid who read comics and watched action films. Every time you heard about a ballet dancer, gymnast or chess master from an Eastern Block country taking out some big honour, something in the back of your mind would register: "Eastern European countries rock".

That was all tied up with Russia. Knowing very little about Estonia, thanks to my grandmother's more-or-less total assimilation into the Australian culture, every time I learnt something new about Russia or any of the other countries in the USSR, I also felt as if I was learning more about Estonia. After all, it was a member of the Eastern Block...

Even though I have now spoken to enough ex-pat Estonians to know that they don't particularly like Russia, Russian or anything to do with the Russians, something deep down inside of me still feels that learning Russian somehow gets me closer to my Eastern European roots. And, even though Russia itself is now a bit boring and slightly obnoxious, the part of me that grew up during the last hurrah of the Cold War still finds something strangely alluring about it all.

Plus, it comes complete with a new alphabet. The part of me that always loved finding new letters and working out their names and pronunciations is completely over the moon. I mean, I used to amuse myself during boring lectures by translating words into phonetic symbols, so this is just great.

One of these days I'm going to learn French and Spanish, too, but right now it's Estonian and Russian. That will do for the present, I think.

Russians and Turks

I had a rather revelatory conversation the other night.

A group of us were discussing the parable of the good Samaritan: about how most people today forget that an important part of the story was the fact that Samaritans and Jews hated each other's guts. In fact, a Samaritan would probably prefer to help anyone in the world rather than a Jew (and a Jew would probably prefer to think of anyone in the world helping them rather than a Samaritan). The point of the story was that the people you would expect to help the Jewish business man (the priest and the 'pillar of the community') didn't, but the man you wouldn't expect to help did - thus leading to the conclusion that a "neighbour" isn't someone who lives next door or in your community, but rather someone who acts "neighbourly" towards his fellow man.

While talking about how you would re-cast the parable in modern times, the general consensus of the group was that it would be hard to pick a 'despised' race to take the place of Samaritans as, being middle class white Australians, we are so separate from the rest of the world and their cultural problems that we both love and are loved by all.

I had to point out that such thoughts were a bit of a WASP delusion. There are many middle class Australians who still harbour feelings of bitterness towards certain groups of people, and would be just as likely to expect help from that quarter as a Jew would have expected help from a Samaritan. I know of a number of Estonian Australians who get worked up at the very mention of anything Russian, and a number of Greek Australians who have to resist the urge to spit whenever they mention the Turks, for example. Also, there are Chinese and Korean Australians who can't stand the Japanese, and the Australians who have their origins in the Middle East... well there's not an awful lot of love in certain quarters.

In the course of discussing these examples, a rather obvious similarity struck me. The most bitter feelings towards the most "hated" races come from people who were on the receiving end of massacres and invasions. From what I can gather, the main reason the Russians and the Turks hate the Estonians and the Greeks is because the Estonians and Greeks hate them ("for no good reason"), while the main reason the Estonians and Greeks hate the Russians and the Turks is because the Russians and the Turks invaded their countries, killed their family members and treated them like scum, making it impossible for them to continue living in their own countries.

In my white-middle-class-Australian delusion, I was feeling rather detached from it all - after all, we (as in, white, middle-class Australians) have never been involved in any such invasions or massacres...

But, then, of course we have. We moved into an entire continent, told the original inhabitants that they were scum, forced them to leave their own countries, killed their family members (often in horrible massacres), made it clear that they didn't belong here as far as we were concerned and - when we finally admitted that maybe they did belong here after all - treated them like second class citizens and wondered why they didn't pull their socks up and get on with being just like us.

We are just like the Russians and the Turks. The only difference is, we were much more successful. We've managed to stay long enough and out number the original inhabitants so vastly that no one would ever expect us to leave. The Greeks looked with hope and longing for the days when the Turks would leave and they could have their own land and culture back, and the Turks eventually did leave (well, there's Cyprus, but we're going to ignore that for now). The Estonians held on to their land, language and culture looking forward to the day when the Russians would let them have their country back, and eventually it happened (albeit begrudgingly).

The Indigenous people of Australia (and New Zealand, and America) have no such hope. Their countries are irrevocably our countries, and we're not going anywhere. The most they can hope for is that we'll occasionally give them pack a small piece of land to call their own. Even then, there are white Australians who think we shouldn't have to do this, and will treat the entire concept of "native title" with fear and loathing.

It's weird that, for all my life, I've thought that the Aboriginal people of Australia were bitter and angry "for no good reason". I knew the history, but I figured it was just that - history - and there was no reason to let it continue to torment the future. It wasn't until I connected the Indigenous Australians with other invaded peoples that I realised exactly where they were coming from, and exactly what we must be to them. We are the Russians to their Estonians. The Turks to their Greeks. The Japanese to their Eastern Seaboard Chinese... And it's not like they can grin and bear it and wait for us to leave.

And, sure, there's the argument (that someone like me can make quite easily) that I wasn't personally involved in any of these acts of invasion and violence, and none of my ancestors were personally involved in any of the acts of invasion and violence, so I shouldn't be hated and despised for something I didn't do... But racial memory doesn't know individuals, it knows groups. For as long as I regard myself as a white Australian, I'm a member of the group that did these horrible things to those people, and I get tarred with the same brush as every other member of my group. It's my history, whether I like it or not, and I need to take responsibility for it as surely as we expect the Germans to take responsibility for the Nazis and the Russians to take responsibility for their oppression during the Soviet Era.

By the same token, I also feel a better appreciation for the "bad guys" of the past. Everyone likes to demonise the invaders... unless of course we happen to be the invaders.

I suddenly have a much better understanding of why the Russians think the Estonians are ungrateful little snots, and why they'll probably never apologise. Who wants to apologise for making the world a better place? That's what we invaders do, really. Sure, we make your lives miserable on a number of levels, but we also provide the opportunity to live a better quality miserable life. If you don't want to take advantage of that, it's your problem, not ours.

Hunky Dory

Memo to self:

Must not use idioms like "every thing's all hunky dory" when talking to people for whom English is not their first language...

Heck, I can even think of some native speakers who would have trouble with that...

The Electric Uno Motorcycle

Not a motorised unicycle, but it looks like one from the side, which is kind of cool:



Not bad, for an 18 year old inventor. More info here.

Hope the guy gets his investors. Can't see it really replacing cars and 'real' motorbikes outside of the busy city centres, though.

You learn something new every day

And today, I learned that Estonia is half the size of Tasmania.

Literally.

Estonia has an area of 45,227 square km, while Tasmania has an area of 90,758 square km. Divide Tasmania's land area in half and you get 45,392, which is close enough to 45,227 for me to feel confident in saying that Estonia is half the size of Tasmania (although technically it should be "less than half").

Having lived in Tasmania for two years, and found the "smallness" of it all rather refreshing compared to the wide open spaces of North Queensland, the knowledge that Estonia is half the size is filling me with strange ambitions.

I know I said before that I'm thinking of cycling about in Estonia a fair bit, but that was before I put the size of the place in context. Now I want to cycle around the whole lot.

I don't know whether I actually will or not, but why wouldn't you? After all, the thing's half the size of Tasmania, and there are towns all over it.

Sure, some people might think this is a weird way of looking at the world, but let me put it into context for you.

I live in a city. One of the largest cities in the state, and the largest city in the northern half of the continent of Australia. The nearest other city is six hours away when travelling by car. The nearest town is 95km south. That is, depending on the conditions of the road, approximately an hour-and-half's drive from where I live.

There's a reason why Queenslanders always give distances in times. That's how we figure out whether or not it's worth the effort: Yes, this great festival is happening in the next town. The next town is two hours away, and the road between here and there isn't great for driving at night. If I go, I'll probably have to plan to stay overnight. I can't really afford that, so I'll just go to a movie instead.

I understand people who live in the Northern Territory and Western Australia do exactly the same thing.

"How far is X from Y?"
"About a forty-minute drive."

When you live in remote locations, almost all the distances you have to think about are large distances. While I'd like to ride my bike to the next town, that's probably going to take me the better part of four-to-five hours. I'm going to have to do a lot of work to build up my fitness and endurance before I take on a challenge like that.

In comparision, when I lived in Tasmania I was in a town that was only 15km away from the nearest city. Less than a twenty minute drive. All of the born-and-bred Tasmanian locals would talk about how remote we were in the North West of the state, and I just kept thinking, "What are you talking about? In the time it would take me to get to a 'nearby' town back home, I can get to the other side of the state from here." Heck, Hobart, the state's capital, was less than half a day's drive from my home. Where I came from, if you started driving in the mornin you wouldn't get to the capital until the afternoon of the next day.

I was so intoxicated by the nearness of everything that I just drove everywhere. I hardly spent a weekend in my own town. I mean, why would you when you've got the wonders of Tasmania all around you - and so darn close to boot?

There's a dancing festival on the other side of the state? Of course I'll be there, is basically a stone's throw away.

I never rode to the next town, but that was largely because I was afraid of riding on the highway. Cars had some trouble avoiding other cars on that part of the highway. Plus, I wasn't really at a point in my life when a ride to the next town sounded like something I had to do, and my fitness/endurance levels weren't really up to the challenge. But I took some comfort from knowing I could have, if I wanted to.

I felt like I practically owned Tasmania - there was barely a thing that wasn't within my reach. Okay, driving from Wynyard to Dover would probably take some time, but who would want to do that anyway? Certainly not without stopping off at dozens of interesting places along the way.

That's another thing about North Queensland. We don't have quite so many interesting places to visit at regular intervals along the way. Oh, we have them, all right, there's just a fair amount of space between them.

So, this discovery that Estonia is half the size of Tasmania, and has even more towns taking up that tiny, tiny space, fills me with a strange and glowing confidence. If I owned Tasmania, I'll - like - totally own Estonia. Bring it on, man, I can take it.

Cycles

I seem to be forever guided by whims and fancies.

Fortunately, I've started using this particular weakness to my advantage (I think).

Having recognised my tendency to latch onto things and form mild obsessions, I've been running an experiment to see if I can cultivate said mild obsessions for things that would be good for me.

So far, it's kind of working. I've been endeavouring to develop a love affair with cycling, and I can definitely feel it taking hold. I'm buying cycling magazines because I actually want to read the articles and look at the ads. I'm borrowing books on the history of cycling. I'm finding joy on the days when I can ride my bike to work (and a slight depression in the fact that, when one lives in the tropics, one can either have inclement weather or good light to ride by, but not both).

This is really feeding off my fancy for unicycles and penny-farthings (one of which I already own, the other I lust after) and my whim to participate in a triathlon earlier this year. Both involved paying more attention to wheeled things, so I thought I'd try to direct some of that whim-and-fancy energy into actually riding my bike more.

I have been riding my bike more. Heck, I even bought one of those indoor trainer thingies so I could keep riding it even when it's too dark/cold for me to go out somewhere for a ride.

Trouble is, I think I'm feeling very tempted to take cycling up as a hobby and, as hobbies go, it's not cheap. In trying to convince myself to ride my bike more, I'm starting to develop a desire to own a better bike. Something I could use to go touring, maybe. Perhaps two bikes - the tourer and a mountain bike. And then maybe join a club that could show me where the good mountain biking trails are in the area.

And, of course, I'll need to keep the bikes in fine working order, which will mean buying new parts for them on a semi-regular basis. Nice, shiny parts like you see in the magazines... parts which cost a fortune.

On the one hand, this would probably put a dent in my finances that would hinder my "I want to go to Estonia for a year or so" plans. On the other hand, I was thinking of cycling most places once I got to Estonia, so improving my fitness and endurance on the bike would be a good investment, right?

Why do the good bikes have to cost so much? It just fills me with a lack of confidence in the bikes that fall within my price range. I mean, if the top-of-the-line road bikes cost over $10,000, what kind of bike would I be getting for my $600? Could I put enough faith in it to go for a ride to the next town?

Oh, and in riding my bike around town, have confirmed a long held suspicion: the Town Planning department in Townsville hates cyclists and is trying to kill us. They've got plenty of lovely little Sunday-afternoon-stroll type bike paths around the place, but try to ride your bike to the shops or to work and you take your life in your hands.

I mean, who designs a bike path that ends up throwing you onto the main road, facing oncoming vehicles, with no safe place to cross the six lanes of seething traffic? The Townsville Town Planning department, that's who.

Did I say I thought this was going to be good for me?

Take three films...

I was reading an "Out and About" piece in The Baltic Times (yeah, I'm still reading whatever I can for free even though they cut me off mid sentence) that got me thinking about my own culture.

I may technically be an Estonian as well as an Australian, but deep down inside "I still call Australia home", and most of my cultural musings will draw a line back to the Green and Gold eventually, even if they start in the Blue Black and White.

-- As a sideline, surely Australia and New Zealand are amongst the only countries in the world who do not have their national colours on their flag? That's just weird, really. But, then, that's Australia (and NZ) for you. (For anyone who doesn't know, the national colours of New Zealand are Black and Silver - neither of which appear on the NZ flag).--

Anyway, this particular article mentioned three movies, stated they were beloved by Estonians, that almost every Estonian had seen them and they were such a part of the cultural cannon that anyone who was interested in the Estonian culture should watch them. They were: Kevade, Suvi and Sügis.

I haven't seen any of these movies, and until such time as I can figure out who, if anyone, sells the DVDs over the 'net, I probably won't. I know the DVDs exist. I know it is possible to buy them. I just haven't found a DVD retailer with a nice, simple interface (like Apollo Rammatud) that someone with limited Estonian skills can navigate.

Anyway, what it got me thinking about was this: If I was going to recommend three Australian films to anyone who was interested in what passes for Australian culture - three films that almost everyone in Australia has seen and loved - what would they be?

Now, this is a hard one because by and large (almost to a man) Australians hate their films. We can't stand anything set in our country or about our people. The only film I can think of off the bat that would fit the bill is The Castle.

Most other Australian films completely polarise the population. A surprisingly small number of people have seen them, an even smaller number of people liked them, and there's a strangely large group of people who refuse to watch them but still claim to hate them.

I know most people outside of Australia would probably start shouting "But what about Crocodile Dundee?" at this point, but the truth is that Crocodile Dundee was actually designed to sell Australia to the Americans. No one in Australia actually regards it as an Australian film so much as a big joke. It is the cinematic equivalent of drop bears and hoop snakes. (Oh, if anyone asks, drop bears and hoop snakes absolutely exist. I would be remiss in my cultural duties if I suggested otherwise. Also, kangaroos really do make that strange 'tch' sound you hear in episodes of Skippy and the opening scenes of Dot and the Kangaroo. Honest. Honest and for true).

Unlike the Estonian culture, which was hard fought for and fiercely held under trying circumstances, the Australian culture has never exactly been cherished or celebrated. Sure, around ANZAC day we start feeling a glimmer of national pride and a nostalgia for the Australian culture that existed "back in the day", but that culture has been long gone (except in a number of pockets - remnants of remnants, as some might say), and there isn't really a recognisable "Australian" culture that isn't completely caught up in the "cultural cringe" that so characterises our self-view.

I think the only part of the Australian culture we actually do celebrate is "taking the mickey". If you don't know what that might mean, refer to the above comments made about drop bears and kangaroos.

If, they had actually made a film of Ray Lawler's play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll back when it was at its height of popularity, that probably would have made it on the list.

Okay, I'll rephrase that. If they had actually made a good film of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll it would have made it on the list. Technically, they did film it, but someone thought having an American/UK/Australian co-production staring American and British actors and completely re-arranging the story would be the way to go. It wasn't. When I used to teach The Doll to high school students I would threaten them with the movie (A Season of Passion) if they didn't behave. That's how bad it was.

So, are there another two films I would add to The Castle as films you must watch if you are interested in Australian culture and want to see things that are deeply entrenched in the Australian cinematic psyche? Possibly Storm Boy, although I've never seen it myself, and maybe Rabbit Proof Fence (David Gulpilil take a bow), although I don't know if Rabbit Proof Fence is loved or just respected (that, in itself, an achievement in this country).

Personally, the Australian films I love the most are Dot and the Kangaroo and The Little Convict. Oh, and the middle part of Hercules Returns. Sad, but true.