knickerbocker holiday

Heh, the things you end up doing when you're on holidays.

So, we got lost in Oamaru and accidently found ourselves in a little neighbourhood where all of the buildings are from the Victorian period and made of limestone.

Turns out there's a little Victoriana thing happening, with a bicycle museum dedicated to penny farthings and the like (I know, I get lost and find a bicycle museum - what are the odds, right?)

Also in this area is a shop dedicating to clothing from the 1890s through to the 1920s. I'm not kidding. They make a lot of the clothes on site for re-enacters and the vintage car people.

I just happened to find a pair of early 1910s style knickerbockers. They just happened to fit me very comfortably. This, in spite of the fact that they were made on site for a "random" size (which wasn't even on the pants) and I'm a girl with girl-shaped hips.

Yes, I know the pants are technically gender inappropriate (a phrase that can describe far too much of my wardrobe), but I don't care.

I've decided that it's high time mens fashions from before the Revolution* became perfectly acceptable women's clothing today. Everyone who's ever watched Firefly would agree that mens styles from the late 1800s look pretty good on women, and I think we should just bring steampunk into the mainstream with high waisted pants and braces for all.

I will admit that I still want a pair of bloomers (and a matching basque), but I know I'll also have to get the foundation garments to go with it. Quite frankly, the thought of wearing a corset (whale bone or otherwise) chemise, drawers and a dickie in the tropics is unappealing - especially when you're wearing the other clothes on top of all that**. Men's fashions from the period were much more flexible and allowed for more movement (hey, look! Nothing's changed!).

Join with me, all of you. Men and women alike. It's time we started mixing and matching the fashions of the last two hundred years. Empire line dresses with sneakers one day, knickerbockers and T-Shirts the next. What a bright and glorious future it will be***.


*Nothing too political folks (depending on your point of view). I'm talking about the sexual revolution in the Sixties - you know, the one were it started to become perfectly normal for a woman to wear jeans and a T-Shirt without having to explain to her father why she still dresses like a boy even though she's past 18 and should start wearing more pretty dresses if she wants to land a husband any time soon - thus paving the way for those horrendous power suits in the 1980s.

**I once had a strange desire to go around dressed in nothing but a chemise, corset, pair of drawers and multiple layers of petticoats (standard "foundation garments" from the mid-to-late Victorian period) and see if anyone noticed that a) I was walking around in public in nothing but my underwear, and b) I was still wearing more clothes than anyone else.

***Okay, I'm possibly not crazy enough to actually expect anyone to join me in this endeavour. I'm not even crazy enough to actually join myself in this endeavour - but largely because I know I'll have to sew my own clothes if I want to do this economically, and that's not something I'm likely to take up any time soon.

****Bonus footnote: Interestingly, women's fashions do shadow mens fashions from several decades ago more than you may think. I once bought women's vests from the 80s to dress a couple of actors who were playing men in the 20s, because the cut of mens vests in the era were closer to women's clothes from the 80s than mens clothes from today.

Wanaka - or "One Lane Bridge"

Two things I have discovered in the past three days:

1. New Zealanders don't think their bridges through when they build them
2. Wanaka is very pretty. And Puzzling World rocks. I would have put an exclamation mark after that point, but this keyboard won't let me. Thus there shall be no exclamations.

I don't know what it's like on the North Island of the Land of the Long White Cloud, but in the South Island, they have a fondness for single lane bridges. All well and good when it's a little bridge over a little creek in the backroutes and side-roads. When it's a) the major road, b) a major river and c) shared with a train line... well then it gets a bit ridiculous.

I've lost count of the number of bridges I've driven over in the last two days, but I can count on one hand the number which had more than one lane. Of the single lane bridges, some of them were long enough that you couldn't clearly see if there was a car at the other end. Some had "queues" that started around blind corners on winding road through steep mountains. It's not good, people. It's just not good.

Not only that, but there were some pretty serious bridges. We're talking cast-iron suspension bridges, cable-stayed bridges, and truss bridges. These costs some serious money and engineering. Roughly the same amount of money and engineering it would have cost them to make it a two lane bridge. Yes, two lanes cost more, but not as much as two seperate bridges. A single lane bridge is a false economy - ask any engineer worth his/her salt.

Anyway, running out of time at this kiosk, so: Wanaka.

If you come to the South Island of New Zealand, you must come to Wanaka. You must go to Puzzling World, which is on the way into Wanaka (it's soooo much fun. Illusion rooms, a multi-level branch maze and a shop full of puzzles and games), and you must go for a walk along Wanaka Lake for some mighty fine scenery.

This cannot be avoided. If you go to the South Island and do not go to Wanaka, the good holiday fairies will hit you over the head and refuse to give you as much fun somewhere else.

That is all.

Away with me!

If anyone is interested in such things, I'm leaving town. And the country.

I may be hard to contact for a while.

Say, if anyone finds a body in the boot of an abandoned car in the car park outside the Fisheries building...

I didn't do it.

Strange Days - Or, Welcome to the Real World

I regularly communicate with a man named Colm (hi, Colm!).

Colm and I have never met. We've never been introduced. We've never even started a conversation with each other. In fact, this post marks the first time I have ever produced the words "hi, Colm" in my entire life.

I've never seen Colm or spoken to him. I've never written him a letter or an email - or sent him a text message. He's never written to me. I only know what he looks like thanks to one picture, which I saw for the first time some months after I started communicating with him. He did not send me the picture, just as I have never sent him a picture of myself - although he has seen one.

We've never been in the same country at the same time. We have walked some of the same streets, but months apart. Even if we had been walking down the same street at the same time, we probably would have walked passed each other without a flicker of recognition. We do not know any of the same people and, as far as I know, none of the people we know know each other.

We move in different circles on different sides of the world.

Yet, I know more about Colm than I do about many of the people who work my building. I know where he lives (not an exact address, but a rough ballpark). I know who he lives with. I know what he does for a living, where he works and when he got that job. I know where he was born (again, just a ballpark). I know what his highest educational qualification is. I know what he thinks about issues ranging from gay marriage to the use of English in the Eurovision Song Contest. I know English is his native language, but he doesn't particularly like it. I know he finds the last days of Autumn in Estonia miserable. I know he's thinking about buying a new computer, but he's hoping to avoid it for as long as possible. I know what he usually eats for breakfast.

If you asked him, he could probably tell you he knows a similar range of facts about me. He's never particularly told me any of these things, just like I've never particularly told him most of the details he knows about my life. This information is a matter of public record - anyone in the world could find out these details. Heck, anyone in the world could read every word Colm and I have written to each other.

I know Colm because there are a couple of blogs which we both read and comment on. After reading each other's comments on these blogs for a while, we started reading and commenting on each other's blogs. Pretty much every word we've ever "said" to each other has been in relation to a blog post first produced for the world at large.

If you asked me to classify my "relationship" with Colm, I'd put us in the same bracket as people who eat lunch in the same staff-room and often participate in the same conversations. Friendly acquaintances, I guess. Friendly acquaintances who've never met and don't know any of the same people...

Except the men who write those two blogs. I know more about those guys than I should, as well - considering I've never met them, either. Heck, I've even seen pictures of their children.

Oh, and the reason why I read those blogs? My cousin got me onto them. A cousin I haven't spoken to in person for over ten years.

Crazy world.

Cooking in a foreign language

I mentioned some time ago in another blog post that I was going to write a post about cooking in a foreign language. As I found myself starting to write a really long reply to this post by Colm which would touch on the same themes, I thought it was probably about time I just pulled what I was going to say over here and waste space on my own blog.

In the course of my Masters, I keep coming across a lot of great concepts that are intended for the consideration of language teachers within classroom contexts, but I find they are informing my self-instruction quite nicely. Amongst those concepts are:

• Extensive Reading: Read as much as you can in the target language, as long as you find it enjoyable and easy enough to concentrate on the message of the text rather than the language itself


• Narrow Reading: Just like Extensive Reading, only you focus on books/texts written about one particular topic, or by one particular author


• Repeated Reading: Read smaller passages of texts several times over - while listening to audio recordings for a couple of those times if you can - so that you can read those passages fluently.


• Authentic Texts: Read/listen to texts written in the target language for native speakers/readers of the target language - in other words, "real" texts, as opposed to things written specifically for pedagogical purposes


• Adapted Texts: Read/listen to texts which have been adapted, simplified or specifically written for your level of language learning...

Hmm, those last two don't agree with each other, do they? If you read some of the literature, you'd also find that the concept of Repeated Reading, which is a form of intensive reading, doesn't fit comfortably with Extensive and Narrow Reading, which are both forms of extended reading.

Still, they don't have to agree with each other to be good ideas. I think there's probably something worth doing in each, and something that can be gained from each.

I also love the suggestions for reading material that I've been finding in the literature: Children's books, comic books, magazines, popular novels, non-fiction books about mummies or mysteries...

Whether looking at Authentic Texts or Adapted Texts, the advice is to do at least one of two things - either "read light" (texts that are a quick, enjoyable, easy read) or "get hooked" (read texts in which the subject is so interesting that you're willing to ignore the language barrier to find out what happens next). If you can do both, that's even better.

My problem, at the moment, is that I don't have enough vocabulary to make the extended reading concepts work. Ideally, one should choose books that are only a little bit beyond your reading level - you'll know 95% of the words and be familiar enough with the grammar so that you can understand what is written. The rest you'll "acquire" as you go along. Well, I have to say that my vocabulary is pretty limited and rather odd. I would say I know enough words to read a few paragraphs of text with only minimal recourse to a glossary, but those paragraphs would have to be pretty darn weird and probably wouldn't occur in Authentic Texts.

At my level, the most useful book I have at my disposal is Estonian Textbook: Grammar Exercises Conversation (written by Juhan Tuldava and translated by Ain Haas). According to everything I've been reading lately, it's wrong. I should not be getting more out of this book than anything else. For one thing, it's completely pedagogical - and in the bad way. The book is written in the style of language text books that were used in language classrooms in the 40s and 50s - and they've been out of favour for at least 40 years, if not longer. Then there's all that grammar - which I should be finding irritating and boring. Oh, and all the texts are written specifically to fit with the vocabulary given in that lesson (and all the previous lessons), which is terribly out-dated and really not authentic.

Yet, it's giving me the basic vocabulary and grammatical grounding I need to try to tackle the other texts. If I could organise myself to give the dedicated time I keep meaning to give, I'd be a lot further through the book and have a lot more of a grounding.

Mind you, I've been gleaning bits and pieces from all sorts of sources, so I know more than what's in the book, but I know the book has a lot to give.

So, after all this, the title of the blog was "cooking in a foreign language", wasn't it? Well, there's a reason for that.

It seems that one of the best things you can do to help improve your reading fluency in a language is to read more (who would have thought?). This is something I've known for years - I didn't need the literature to tell me this. So, when I first set out to learn Estonian, I bought reading material. Mostly, I randomly selected children's books based on the covers. This gave me a wide range of books aimed at different levels of readers - but not a one of them has yet managed to fall into my reading ability. I've finally managed to get my hands on some comic books, which are better as I have the support of the images to carry the plot even when I can't really read the text (more on this later), but this is fairly new.

Up until this point, I've been struggling with children's books, early primary school text books... and cook books.

The cook books have been a godsend. The genre is something I'm completely familiar with. I know what sort of things the text should be telling me to do. I have a fair grasp of the vocabulary involved in the ingredients lists and the verbs are repeated so often from recipe to recipe that I've managed to "acquire" a few of them along the way.

Everything the literature tells me I'm supposed to be getting out of Extended Reading/Narrow Reading and Authentic Texts, I've been getting from cook books. I have a number of Estonian recipe books (some with side-by-side translations, but most in Estonian) and I've managed to pull off one or two recipes (had some trouble with deciphering measurements to begin with) and I'm getting better. It's not just reading the recipes, but also trying to cook them - without translating them into English first. I have the Estonian recipe in front of me, and that's what I try to cook.

It's interesting to me that I haven't encountered anything about this in the literature on Extensive/Narrow Reading. They mention non-fiction books and pictorial dictionaries, but not instructional texts like cook books and things-to-make-and-do type books. But, surely, these books should have their place. Reading and following instructions is a great way to interact with a language. I can see why people combine language courses with cooking courses.

Cooking in a foreign language. Fraught with peril, but highly recommended.

She Waits

Another sonnet from the dead of night.

I was up way past my bedtime and my mind was wandering all over the place. Eventually I got on to thinking about old maids, and ended up writing this thing.

I don't know why I start thinking in iambic pentameter when I'm overtired. I just do.

It's not quite a true sonnet, though, as there is no change in direction with the sextet.

Trumpet

It's time to face facts. I'm never going to be able to play the trumpet. Or the cornet, or any other similarly sized brass instrument.

I've always been half convinced that I could probably do anything I wanted to, as long as I was willing to put in the hard work. This means whenever I say I "can't" do something, at the back of my mind I always tack on the word "yet". I might never put in enough work to be able to do it, but I still think the potential is there.

Heck, even math related things fall into this category. I suck at anything that requires something more elaborate than adding two digit numbers, and I truly hate maths. However, I believe I could probably improve if I stopped chanting "I hate this, I hate this" and put in a bit of effort.

When my brass instructor had me switch from cornet to baritone because he felt it would be a better fit, I held to the belief that, while the baritone was easier to play, I would still be able to play the smaller instruments if I just tried hard enough. I realise now that I was wrong.

It actually is about fit, not effort - and I mean this in the literal sense: fit as size, rather than fit as feel. I can't play a trumpet anymore than I can fit into a pair of size six stilettos. I cannot physically make my mouth fit into the space needed to hit any note higher than an E above High C - and I really struggle to hit that.

It's a bit sad, really, especially since I own both a trumpet and a cornet. The trumpet is a cheap tin pocket trumpet that looks a lot better than it plays, and the cornet is a third-hand ex-Salvation Army thing that I bought from a second-hand store for $50 and an accordion years ago. Now I have to figure out what to do with them, since I know I won't be able to sell them for anything near what I paid for them...

Anyone want a pocket trumpet or a cornet? I'm happy to give the cornet away, but I'd probably be looking to sell the trumpet for about $200 (I bought it two years ago for $400).

*sigh*.

New Bike!

New bike, new bike, new biiiiiiiiiike!



I was going to wait until my birthday to assemble it, but I couldn't help myself. I just love assembling stuff. I have been known to buy furniture just so I could assemble it later. I find the occasional jigsaw puzzle can quell this need, as can the fact that I live with my mother and she won't let me bring any more furniture into the house (yet another reason to move out in ten years, after I've finally saved up enough of a deposit to buy my own place)... but a penny-farthing to assemble was just too tempting to pass up.

I had to pull all of the pieces out of the box anyway, you see, because I needed to check they were all there (actually, the guy said he'd throw in some spare spokes, and they weren't in the box, so I guess they weren't all there). Once I had those pieces laid out, and the assembly instruction in my hands... Well, what's a girl to do?







In case anyone was interested, my "workshop" consisted of leaning the thing against a disused dog kennel and holding it in place with a bucket of dirt. The bucket of dirt once had a purpose, now it seems to be taking up space for no good reason. Ah, well, at least I got some use out of it.

I had a sad and unfortunate thought half-way through today, though. In Queensland, it's illegal to ride a bicycle on the road without at least one working break. I think that means I might have to get a break installed somehow in order to ride it anywhere other than a path...

The bike is finally here

Took two days to get from America to Australia, and over a week to get from Brisbane to Townsville. There's something not quite right about that.

Haven't taken it out of the box yet because I had to get to work.

I knew I was getting the "small" one, but it's actually a bit smaller than I expected. Could possibly fit it in the back of a station wagon without too much difficulty...

Once it's out of the box and in one piece I'll take photos.

Wonder Woman

This is sort of an amalgam of several women I know who fit the same description. If you think you're one of them and you want to claim it, you go right ahead.

Wonder Woman.

Then again, you may find it vaguely depressing, so perhaps you shouldn't read it.

Herman Brix

I think I might be falling in love with Herman Brix.

I have, in the past, mentioned my adoration for Tarzan in general, but Herman Brix has to be the best Tarzan I have ever seen.

I mean, he is clearly superior in every way to Gordon Scott, and Scott's always been my favourite.

I can't stand Johnny Weissmuller. Never could. He irritated me even before I started reading the books and realised just how far from Tarzan he really was.

I mean, Tarzan rocks. The guy managed to survive being "abandoned" by his parents shortly after birth (does dying of jungle related illnesses count as abandoning?), being raised by apes and getting into regular scrapes with gorillas, wild cats, giant snakes and the like. He taught himself to read using children's books, taught himself to speak French by imitating a French guy he found in the jungle, can communicate with almost any animal he comes in contact with and managed to learn the language of every people group he's ever encountered. He's a giant of a man with a lithe, muscular figure and incredible strength whose every sense has been enhanced by living wild in the jungle.

He's the epitome of "good breeding", being physically and mentally superb and therefore capable of surviving any adventure you could possibly throw at him. And he's an English Lord, an African Chieftain and the uncontested king of the jungle. He's certainly not some flabby, inarticulate monkey man.

And yet, when MGM took a crack at Tarzan films in the 1930s, they decided to go with the flabby, inarticulate monkey man take on things, and that's the version of Tarzan most people know today. Okay, to be fair Weissmuller wasn't that flabby to start with, but by the 40s he definitely wasn't the Olympic swimmer any more.

The 1930s period was an interesting time for Tarzan, though, as there were actually two different film franchises created by two different companies. On the one hand, there was Weissmuller (who obviously won the battle for the public's love and adoration). On the other hand, we had Herman Brix.

Born Harold Herman Brix and later working under the name Bruce Bennett, Brix played Tarzan the way he was written - intelligent, articulate and bounding with power and energy. He was tall, had a lithe, muscular physique and was completely convincing when climbing trees or bounding through the jungles of Guatemala (barefoot, no less). He did his own stunts, spoke in complete sentences and looked completely at ease with monkeys and hamfisted actors alike.

He's just perfect. I've never seen an actor better capture the Tarzan of the books. Why oh why did Weissmuller's version take off when Brix is clearly the superior Tarzan?

It was probably MGM's doing. No way an independent film company was going to beat a megacorporation at the box-office - not even in the 1930s.

The Watch

My new watch isn't as good as my old one.

Have I even mentioned how much I loved my old watch? It was a Timex from the "Expedition" series. I bought it almost completely by accident a couple of years ago from Rebel Sports. It was about a month before the Julia Creek Dirt'n'Dust Triathlon and I wanted a watch that was likely to survive dust, mud, water, sweat, sun and a whole pile of other conditions likely to completely ruin the cheap watches I usually wear.

This was the first time I've bothered paying more than $20 for a watch, and I fell head over heels in love with it. Three time zones (and at one point I actually used all three), three alarms (brilliant!), a stop watch with lap settings, a timer, a 'hydro' function that beeps every set number of minutes and an "occasion" setting for anniversaries/birthdays and the like (which I never worked out how to programme). Oh, yeah, and the light, but whatever. It probably has other features too, for all I know.

About those alarms... Three of them. And you could set them to go off everyday or only on weekends. I had one to remind me it was getting late and I should probably stop reading now. One to start the whole waking up process and one to mark the time when I really had to get out of bed if I was too lazy to get up when the first alarm went off. Good stuff.

Oh, and it didn't obviously look like a man's watch. I mean, it was extremely useful, so obviously it was a man's watch (nothing designed for women is meant to be useful - just pretty. After all, women don't do useful things and are meant to sit around being pretty...), but it looked nice and unisex. I didn't feel like I was wearing an obviously gendered piece of equipment (which I often do when I opt for the useful things).

I really, really loved this watch. I loved this watch more than most people love their phones. With this watch on my wrist, I felt like I could take on the world. Even when I wasn't wearing the watch, it was close by. I keep it on my bedside table when I sleep...

Sadly, for a $100+ watch, it had a fatal flaw. The same flaw most watches have - the band. After two years of being being worn all day, every day and being dragged through every weird thing I felt like doing, the band snapped. It was connected to the watch in a very peculiar fashion, so that regular watch repairing people couldn't replace it for me. I even found a shop that specialised in Timex watches, and they said it was unlikely the company made those bands any more (after two years? Who are these people?). Besides, I had no idea where my warranty was, and no one seemed interested in sending it back to the factory for a replacement band without one.

So I decided to buy a new Timex watch. One with a band I could easily replace when it failed. Which is when I discovered their nefarious scheme. You see, NONE of the watches that have the kind of functionality with which I have fallen in love have normal, easily replaced bands. The only watches that had practical bands had fewer functions. I wasn't going to fall for that trick again, so this time around I went for the band rather than the multiple alarms...

And, dammit, this watch isn't as good. I really want multiple alarms. I really, really want them. I can live with only two time zones. The fact that the timer can be set to repeat so that it can do the same thing as the hydro function is okay. I can live without the occasion function (I never used it any way). But I really, really want my multiple alarms. This watch will let me set the alarm for every day, weekdays or weekends, but what's the point of having the option to set the alarm for weekdays or weekends if you can't have a different alarm for each?

I have valiantly tried to save the old watch by stitching it onto the band for another, cheap watch, but now it just looks like some ugly franken-watch. I still have it by my bedside, but I don't feel comfortable wearing it to work - especially when I have a nice-looking non-franken-watch I could be wearing.

Just one that's not as good.

Encoding

DVD players.

You probably don't realise it, but they point out something wrong with the world. Deeply, distressingly wrong.

You may not know this (but many of you may), but the whole region coding thing for DVDs is a scam.

It's not like VHS tapes, which actually used a different technology for recording and playback in different regions. DVDs are the same the world over, but someone somewhere has decided they should be sold and used in certain countries only, so they add an encoding which tells your DVD player to reject the disc if you are in the "wrong" region.

The really cheap DVD players - you know, the ones that have trouble with dual layer discs and occasionally decide to break down with your disc inside it for no good reason - they're too cheap and nasty to handle the encoding, so they just ignore it. Thus, you can watch just about anything from anywhere.

If you get a good quality DVD player from a "reputable" brand, they'll be sophisticated enough to read and apply the encoding. But they don't have to. There is nothing in the technology itself that stops the machine from reading the disc. Just the code - deliberately and intentionally written to tell your machine to not do something it is more than capable of doing.

Then, they try to sell you an even more expensive DVD player that is, supposedly, "region free". But it has absolutely nothing to do with getting "better" technology - and everything to do with what the technology is programmed to do...

It's a scam. Nothing more than a money grubbing scam.

On the one hand, the "reputable" brands are getting more money out of you because they can make sure you don't buy a cheaper DVD from overseas - or import a DVD into the country where it hasn't been officially "released". On the other hand, the big corporations of the world have decided they want to control who watches what and where.

Not good, people. All sorts of Freedom-of-Information-Trampling not good.

Charges, con't

Oh, and I'd just like to bring this to everyone's attention:

Import Document Fee 10%=4.80 48.00

That's $52.80 (including GST) for a document. A document. Someone has to look at a piece of paper and sign it, so I get to pay $52.80

That's more than half the cost of the Terminal fee. You know, the $88 I pay for the privilege of having my cargo turn up at their precious terminal. Which, of course, doesn't include the $49.50 I'm paying to have it taken off the plane, or the $27.50 for the Cargo Automation. I don't know what Cargo Automation is, but it sounds suspiciously like someone pressing a button and letting the machine do all the work.

Oh, how I miss the postal service.

Charges

Well, this is something I wasn't expecting:

ImportTerminal Fee 10%=8.00 80.00
CArrier Disbursement 10%=4.50 45.00
Import Document Fee 10%=4.80 48.00
Cargo Automation Fee 10%=2.50 25.00
Cartage 10%=7.80 78.00
Clearance 10%=12.00 120.00
Duty Exempt Rated 57.79
Import GST Exempt Rated 162.16
Customs Entry Charge Exempt Rated 55.20
CMR Fee 10%=1.50 15.00

That's not even counting the actual cost of getting the thing to Townsville - or GST.

You know, I buy weird and wacky things from overseas all the time and they just send it to me in the mail. Occasionally someone at customs slices it up and leaves me a note saying they were "just checking", but I don't suddenly have over $700 added to the price just because my thing turns up in the country. Why are people suddenly charging me Duty, GST and customs charges just because I want a box taken off a plane?

Where do they tell you this sort of thing will happen? How could I possibly have known about this back when I was thinking about ordering a bike from the US?

The price on the website is US$900. The custom paint job (yes, an unnecessary expense, but if I'm going to by a fancy-pants bike I may as well fork out for a red one) was less than US$200. I was quoted a price to have the thing shipped to Australia, which was fine. Factoring in the exchange rate, I thought I'd come in at under $2000AUD - which I could live with. Now, it's going to end up costing me over $2500 - probably even closer to $3000.

That's a lot of money to pay for a $899.00 bike. I don't know whether I would have gone ahead with it or not, had I known what the full price would be. Maybe. I'm just ticked off that I didn't know. I like making informed decisions, and I have no idea where I should have checked to get this information.

Caveat emptor indeed.

Tallinn on my Mind

And, once again, I've got Tallinn on my mind.

Sunshine State

It is a perfectly glorious, sunny, pre-summer day in North Queensland today.

The sun is shining, but the clouds in the sky are softening it a bit. The poinciana trees are flowering, along with those trees with the yellow flowers - the ones planted on every second street in the "middle aged" suburbs, but for which I never did find out what the name is...

They are, of course, introduced species, but they've always been the heralds of summer and, with it, Christmas.

Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere, where "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" when the trees burst into a glorious array of colour.

Oh, and it's not just the trees, per se. We're edging close to the time of year when the lorikeets come to town to feast on the flowers, and everything sort of explodes with life. Screeching, squawking, getting-drunk-on-nectar-and-slamming into your windows life. The galahs are already back, and the cockatoos forgot to leave during winter, so we'll all be having a Psittaciformes-y old time before you know it.

It's hot, now, but not yet really-really-really hot. That usually kicks in the week before Christmas and gets worse throughout January.

Oh, but the fruit is starting to shift, and nectarines are turning up in the shops. Very soon we'll be seeing peaches, apricots and cherries at affordable prices. Of course, the true joy of a tropical summer comes from feasting on a handful of lychees on the back stairs or trying to eat a mango without wearing the juice.

It's a brilliant thing, a tropical summer. We're all sick of it by February, but in these early stages it's a source of strange magic.

Yessirree. It's a beautiful, warm, sunny Sunday, with lots of sunshine dappling through the trees. The trees I can see from the window. The window I can half see from where I'm sitting. At work.

There are some days when working on a Sunday sucks more than usual.

Change My Mind

Helen asked me to write a song.

Sadly, I couldn't think of a new one, but an old one decided it was time to flutter into my head, so I pinned that one down instead.

Some months ago a country-bluesy kind of tune crept into my brain. It seemed familiar, but I couldn't think of any lyrics that belong with it, so I was happy to just hum along until I remembered where it belonged.

Unfortunately, my brain has a tendency to play with patterns, so before I could remember what the real lyrics were I started to fill up the tune with words that "flowed".

Then one thing lead to another and "Change My Mind" was the result.

The sad thing is, I'm still pretty sure that tune belongs to another song, so I don't think I can use it - but now I really can't remember what that other song is, because I keep thinking of these lyrics instead.

Whatever.

What I learnt today: Puggles

I love it when new words are incredibly fabulous:

"Puggle"

It's what you call a baby echidna. According to the Macquarie English Dictionary, the name actually came from a line of toys. People thought the little naked echidna babies looked like the toys, so they started calling them puggles, and the name just stuck. The dictionary implied this is a word applied to all monotreme pouchlings, so I guess a baby platypus is also a puggle.

They didn't include a date chart, so I have no idea when this all happened, but I think it's kind of cool that the "real world" is starting to be named after toys.

Plus, the word "puggle" is just brilliant. Plus, echidna puggles look fabulously funky:



You can kind of tell they aren't really meant to be out of the pouch, yet. I tell you what: zoo personnel have the best jobs. Well, next to being a librarian, that is.

I want to find a picture of a platypus puggle, now. Well, actually I just want to find an excuse to use the words "platypus puggles" in a sentence. I think I've managed that for today.

Technology changes so fast...

The use of master tapes to operate computer databases was common practice in the middle of the 20th Century. However, by the end of the century magnetic tape had fallen out of favour with many database designers. Most began using the plant-based technology, chlorofilm, believing it was technologically superior. Indeed, chlorofilm could store larger amounts of information than magnetic tape, and the need for channels and playback speeds was eliminated, making the technology easier to use. It was also resistant to magnetic fields, meaning the information could not be damaged by proximity to speakers and telephones. Unfortunately, the chlorofilm based technology was highly biodegradable, and much of the information stored in that manner was lost within five years.

After losing several years worth of data as a result of chlorofilm based technology, companies like Microsoft and Neowolf turned to minerals to develop a more reliable method of storing information. Silicone was briefly considered, but rejected in favour of the more conductive copper. Ultrarefined Copper (URC) is currently the basis of all data storage in computers and servers in America, England, Australia and the Pacific nations. Much of Europe and Africa, however, has followed Germany’s lead with using aluminium based technology.

Pedants' Corner - homonyms

And today, in Pedants' Corner, we're going to look at a handful of nyms and a phone.

Homonyms are words with the same spelling, but different meanings. Thus "pot" (as in, "I will cook this in a pot") is a homonym for "pot" (as in, "I don't think you should smoke pot").

Synonyms are words with different spelling, but the same meaning. Thus "set" (as in "I will set this on the table") is a synonym for "put" (as in, "I will put this on the table")

Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation, but have different spellings and meanings. Thus "buy" (as in, "I think this is a good buy") is a homophone for "bye" (as in, "I think this is goodbye").

Pseudonyms are fake names used by people who don't want to use their real name. Thus "Currer Bell" (as in, "Jane Eyre, by Currer Bell") is a pseudonym for "Charlotte Brontë" (as in, "Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë").

The important message to take away from this is that homonyms look alike, but do not necessarily sound alike, while homophones sound alike but do not necessarily look alike.

It's easy enough to remember once you notice that "homophone" has the phoneme "phone" in it. "Homo" means "same", "phone" means "sound".

I mention this because I came across a website that specialises in helping people work out easily confused words... and they had accidentally used "homonym" instead of "homophone" on their own front page...

Cheeseday

By the way, after consultation with various interested parties, the official cheese week looks like this:

Colby = the first day of the working week
Feta = the second day
Edam = the third day
Jarlesburg = the fourth day
Halloumi = the fifth day
Camembert = the first day of the weekend/the Sabbath
Brie = the "Lord's Cheese"...

Now, the next challenge is to rename all of the months after root vegetables. I'm voting for "Beetroot" for the first month on the calendar...

That's an insult

From a Wall Street Journal Article:

"He has compared a prominent opponent of the switch to a local "avaava" fish -- a sea creature that swims in shallow waters and eats garbage, an insult in Samoan culture."

You mean, calling someone a shallow garbage eater is an insult? Go figure.

Anyway, I like it. I think I'm going to have to add "avaava" to "troglodyte" and "fustilarian" on my list of "insults that are almost as much fun to say as they are to give."

You and me, and all that jazz

Okay, people, it's not that hard. You just ask yourself, "what would I say if I wasn't sharing this sentence with someone else?"

So, if you felt compelled to write the sentence:

"I don't think this will effect the work Lynn and myself are doing with that room."

You should simply remove Lynn and see how the sentence reads without her:

"I don't think this will effect the work myself am doing with that room."

Doesn't sound right, does it?

That's because it's WRONG. Really, really WRONG. So WRONG it almost eclipses the incorrect use of the word "effect" in that sentence. Almost, but not quite.

To the person who originally wrote that sentence, I say this:

"That's not quite right."

Oh, come on, like there's any point in correcting people these days. No one cares. No one listens. No one wants to know. No one wants to hang out with you afterwards...

Why don't you all just forget there's such a thing as case in the English language (yeah, you heard me, I said the English language has cases!) and just use whatever pronouns you feel like. We all know you will anyway.

Fury

Aaaaand we're back at the bottom of the ladder.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Fennecs and Pikas Alive Alive-O

I want one of these:



Anyone know where I can get a fennec?

Fennecs, by the way, start with the letter "f", not the letter "p". I mention this, because I was once involved in a ridiculously drawn out game of categories when someone said we had to come up with every animal we could think of starting with the letter "p".

There are a lot of them, and at one point the word "pika" came into my mind. Someone tried to challenge me on it, but I stuck to my guns. Sadly, I described it as a type of fox with really big ears. This not only sounded like something completely made up, but it was also quite incorrect.

A pika looks like this:



It is, as you can see, a type of lagomorph with relatively small ears, given the ear size of other lagomorphs like rabbits and hares.

"What in the Zharkian Empire is a lagomorph?" I hear you cry. "If it's some kind of rodent, why don't you just say so?"

Well, gentle readers, it turns out that rabbits, hares and pikas are not rodents at all. They belong to a completely different order of animal - lagomorpha. They bear but a superficial resemblance to members of the rodentia order. And yet, despite this, members of both orders are equally likely to pee in your hand. You get that.

So, while a pika may superficially resemble a degu:



Or, perhaps a chinchilla:



It is, in fact, nothing at all like a small fox with large ears. That would be a fennec:



That's "fennec" with an "f".

Fury vs Glory and GC United

Oh. My God.

The Fury appear to be on a winning streak. I'm so excited I don't know what to do with myself.

I meant to write a post last week about the match against Perth Glory, but I ran out of time. Let's see if I can sum it up:

"Hell, yeah!"

They gave us a show and a win. What more could you ask? a) a 2-1 win, b) second win of the series, c) first home win ever... I was so happy I bought a hat. It's now my "victory" hat, and I'll wear it whenever we win.

I briefly put it on yesterday when I read about our 2-0 win over Gold Coast. After our last match against GC United ended with a 5-0 loss, the 2-0 win was very sweet.

This is what I'm talking about, people. When you support the stuggling team, every win is "Yeah! We Won! Huzzah!", while a loss is just "eh, whatever". But if you're team is consistently at the top of the ladder, any win is just same-ol-same-ol, while any loss is devastating. It's always good when the wins mean more than the losses.

Meanwhile, the fact that the only games I can watch are the live matches totally sucks, dude. What happened to the days when at least some of the A League matches were televised free to air? I'm not going to pay for Fox Sport, dammit! SBS or Seven, get your gear into action and buy back some rights!

Talking about Cheese

Okay, so I needed some help with spelling "Jarlsberg" for the last post...

I managed to find my way to this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cheeses

I now have a strange desire to undertake some sort of "tour of the world" via cheese. Is it completely ridiculous to want to try all of the regional cheeses in the world?

Just a typical Jarlesburg Afternoon

Kirsty: "So, when will you be back?"
Helen: "I should be here on Tuesday."
Kirsty: "Feta!"
Sharon: "No, I'm reasonably sure she said 'Tuesday'..."
Kirsty: "Feta!"
Sharon: "Well, now that you mention it, that is more interesting. We should rename all the days of the week after cheese. Monday can be 'Colby', Tuesday is 'Feta'. Is Winchester a type of cheese?"
Helen: "Friday should be Halloumi."
Andrew: "Something should be Camembert. Or Brie."
Stephen: "What planet are you from?!?"

Celery

I knew I was going to be staying at work late tonight, and then heading straight out to a movie, so I decided to pack myself dinner as well as lunch today.

It had to be something I could eat with my hands in my office, so I packed a "picnic" for dinner: cold chicken drumsticks, cheese, pineapple slices and a couple of pieces of celery with peanut butter.

It seems a bit sad, but I've been hanging out all day for those sticks of celery with peanut butter. Every time I started to feel the slightest bit peckish today, my mind has been going "hmmm, celery sticks with peanut butter..."

I happen to believe that the best way to eat celery is raw and with peanut butter spread down the middle. If you've never tried it you should give it a go.

Anyway, I've eaten them now, and they were very nice, but I could do with one more...

Fury VS Phoenix 17th October 2009

Quite possibly the worst game I have ever watched.

I have to say, it's a good thing I'm already invested in the damn game, or this match would have sent me packing.

It was really, really boring - and the few bits that weren't boring were largely annoying. I can usually tell when a show is bad when I find myself paying more attention to the sets and rigging than the actors. This game I was reading the ads and looking at the speaker set up while the ball was still "in play" (if you could call it that).

For those of you who didn't watch it (and, I imagine, you number in the billions), it went a little something like this:

Kick, kick, kick the ball off the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Kick, kick, kick the ball of the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Wellington scores in the first eight minutes with a really boring goal. Kick, kick, kick the ball off the field. Stand around a bit until it gets thrown back in. Kick, kick, kick the ball to the goalkeeper who, for some unfathomable reason, kicks the ball to the other team - who then kick it off the field.

And so it went on for the next eighty minutes - nothing happened, and it didn't happen very often, either. A few times the Fury pretended to kick the ball towards the Phoenix's goal, but they either weren't really trying, or they really suck at this. At one point the little kid sitting near me cried out, "oh, they were so close!", and I just had to say: "No, no they weren't."

Once in a while something interesting would almost happen, but then someone on the opposite side of the field would fall down and clutch their knee or their side, and the referee would have to stop the game to go and see why the poor dear had fallen down. Then the boringness would resume.

At half time the reserves started warming up, and during the second half a few of them would try to keep themselves limber by doing some funny little dance down my end of the field. That was more interesting than what their team-mates were doing on the field.

Oh, and then Robby Fowler scored a goal and the entire crowd erupted. Not because it was a particularly brilliant goal or was particularly well executed, just because someone finally did something. Then things went back to being boring, until the penalty time started.

Finally, in the last four minutes of the match, they actually played like they cared if they won or not. People tried to keep the ball on the field. They tried to get it from one end of the field to the other. They tried to get a goal. There was a sense, in the air, that someone might actually score something and win this thing. Then the time ran out and it was just another draw.

In the end, it was all just frustrating and horrible. It was as though two teams who didn't have a hope of winning were playing each other because they had to, and not because they wanted to.

Honestly, I don't mind backing a losing team. I don't really care if the Fury are at the bottom of the league and keep getting put down match after match. The way I see it, the longer the fall, the sweeter the climb. When they finally win something - when they finally move just one rung up that latter, it will just make it all the more interesting.

However, it has to be said:

If you can't give us a win, at least give us a show.

We humans are fickle that way - we'll forgive you for being losers, but not for being boring.

Sonnets

A couple of years back I had this scathingly brilliant idea.

I was going to write a love story about these two people who met, went their separate ways, bumped into each other a few times over the years and ended up together.

Yeah, I know, we've all seen When Harry Met Sally - but this was going to be different.

This was going to be about two people who were interested in each other from the start, but life got in the way and they followed their heads instead of their hearts.

Okay, we've probably seen a few films (not to mention read our fair share of books) with the exact same concept. But this was going to be different.

This was going to be in verse. Not only in verse, but in too-clever-by-half verse - the girl's side of the story was going to be told in sonnets, while the guy's side of the story was to be told in haikus.

Bet you haven't seen that one before, eh? Probably because it's daft.

Sonnets and haikus are lousy ways to tell stories. They are not designed for exposition. The few sonnets I wrote to actually convey the story line sucked. The haikus were slightly less terrible, but they also weren't really haikus. Oh, sure, they had the structure of a haiku, but not the soul of one.

I quickly abandoned the idea as being "stupid".

However, every now and then I suddenly feel the urge to write something that might fit. One day, some day, I just might find I've written the thing after all - one sonnet at a time.

Sonnets are one of those things that just draw me in. I just love the form. I'm particularly attached to the Shakespearean style, but I have been known to accidentally produce an Italian Sonnet (it's probably best if you don't ask how someone can accidentally write an Italian Sonnet). I haven't written a Spencerian Sonnet yet, but I'm sure it's bound to happen one day.

Anyway, the other day (yes, it was another one of those middle of the night things) I felt compelled to write a couple of sonnets. I had meant to write one Shakespearean Sonnet, but I accidentally wrote an Italian one instead, so I tried again. The second time I got the structure I was after, but the direction of the poem shifted from the original.

You can read them here if you want.

Oh, and I should probably take the opportunity to warn you: sonnets are one of those things about which you shouldn't let me start talking. They sit in the same category as Superman and the history of bicycles as "things Sharon knows too much about, and insists on sharing..."

Matthew Reilly

At lunch today I was reading an article on Matthew Reilly in an old newspaper magazine.

I wasn't really reading it, though, just flicking through to pass the time, then I stumbled across a picture on the last page of the article. He was wearing a Flash T-Shirt. As in, The Flash - The Fastest Man Alive.

Now that caught my eye, it must be said. So much so, that it took me a second to notice that he was sitting on a DeLorean.

A DeLorean, people! The guy is a prolific writer, not bad looking at all, and he wears a Flash T-Shirt and drives a DeLorean.

I think that covers everything I'm looking for in a man...

Potatoes

There comes a point
In every research project
When the very mention
Of Springerlink
Or Science Direct
Or Proquest
Just makes me want to turn the computer off
Move to some obscure European town
And grow potatoes for a living.

Semilingualism

"Semilingualism" is a word I've learnt recently thanks to my research into library support for language learning.

"How's that going?" you may ask, to which I would have to reply:
"Eh. I'm learning lots of things, but I don't know if they'll actually help with my thesis."

At the moment, I have a research project in search of a thesis to prove. I know what my field is, and I'm learning more about that all the time, but I don't know what I want to say.

Attempted thesis statement no. 85:

There are a number of different methods language learners use to acquire a second language, and academic and public libraries need to consider not only the support that each learner nominally needs, but also the support they are getting from other sources and the inherent challenges that come with each method.

I'm not sure if that actually said anything. I could probably argue it for 14,000 words, but I think that says more about my ability to produce drivel than it does about the actual merits of that statement.

I'm trying to capture the concept that a student in a language course will be getting support and guidance from his/her/ta teacher that a student trying to teach themselves French using the books in the local library won't be getting. The librarians can't be expected to fill up that gap, but could we give some help and guidance to make their efforts a bit more effective? Are there generic "this is what you need if you're going to learn a language" considerations that could be applied to our collection policies and library guides? Can we be proactive in suggesting to language teachers what they can recommend their students do in a library? Things like that.

Anyway, in following a tangent which is quite possibly a complete waste of time, I've been looking a little bit at bilingualism - which is how I've come across the term "semilingualism".

"Semilingualism" is a term that can be seen as somewhat insulting and many teachers advise avoiding it. Basically, it means you can kind of speak the language, but not well. Your speech is halting, you take some time trying to work out how to say what you want to say (and even then you probably pick the wrong words), you read slowly and without full comprehension, your grasp of the spelling and grammar of the language is limited and flawed and - above all - you have a limited vocabulary.

"Double-semilingualism" is the term used for people who speak two languages poorly. That is, neither their home language nor their second language is fluent.

Now, this concept has always intrigued me. I have no problems at all with accepting the fact that a person may not be fluent in a second language. That makes perfect sense. I can understand how people might lose a grip on their home language when they move to another country where it isn't spoken and therefore struggle with both languages. What I've never been able to work out is why people aren't fluent in their home language if their home language is the lingua franca of the place where they live. This is your mother tongue, you speak it every day (and twice on Sundays) why are you struggling so much to say what you want to say?

I've particularly noticed it with certain socio-economic groups. English is their only language - they have no other language to struggle with - and yet they still have great difficulty thinking of the word they want to use. When they finally choose what they want to say, the words are either incredibly basic, used incorrectly, or largely supplemented by expletives.

I can't get over the number of people who seem to think that every adjective can be replaced by f--ing and every noun can be replaced by s--t. What amazes me even more is how the people they talk to actually understand what they're saying. Personally, if someone came up to me and said "I got the f--ing s--t from that place, yeah, but I seen there was some other s--t there and now I dunno what to do with this f--ing s--t, eh?", I would struggle with understanding what they wanted from me. Yet their peers not only understand, but respond in kind.

I think their entire mode of communication must depend on the fact that the person they are talking to is aware of the context. Once they have to speak to someone who has never seen them before, they really struggle to say what they want to say.

Okay, let's say reading was never a big part of their upbringing and they've therefore missed out on a lot of opportunities to learn vocabulary. They still watch TV, right? Days of Our Lives uses a wider vocabulary than they seem to have at their disposal. Heck, Funniest Home Videos uses a wider vocabulary than they seem to have at their disposal. And it's not like they never read - yet even New Weekly and Boar it Up Ya also use wider vocabularies than their readers use to communicate. So why can't they say what they want to say using real words? Words that might actually mean something and have a standard dictionary definition that makes sense in the context?

What I want to know (and there's probably research papers on this out there if I ever get serious about finding out) is how someone can be semilingual when they only have one language?

I also want to know if it's possible to get a list of everyone who buys Boar it Up Ya so I can avoid being in the same room as them.

You should always listen to the fish

I'd forgotten about the fishes! Man, I remembered it was a bit odd, but I'd forgotten about the fishes.

I found the Acapulco poem.

I've put it up on one of me other blogs. Click the link above, if you can be bothered wasting whole minutes of your life on a rambling conversation with no one in particular - with a fish chorus...

Pin-up

I think it's safe to say that every woman in the Western World had a “pin-up boy” when she was *ahem* younger. Someone whose talent may have been dubious, but whose “prettiness” was beyond question. Someone whose face adorned a wall, a spot near the mirror, the inside of a locker or the back of a bedroom door – somewhere it could be seen on a regular basis everyday because, for some reason she will never be able to fully account for, seeing that face just made the day seem somehow brighter.

For a brief and shining moment, this “pin-up boy” can do no wrong. If they are a terrible singer or an average-at-best actor, these things go unnoticed, forgiven and vehemently denied for several years. If they are actually half-way decent at what they do, than the devotion is all the more justified and sweet.

Over the years, the pictures/posters may get covered up by others, moved, folded up and placed in a scrapbook of memories or thrown in the trash like so much old paper, but deep down every woman caries a soft-spot for her pin-up boy. She will still forgive him his terrible singing and bad acting. She will still pause for a moment whenever she sees a picture of him and savour the old, familiar lines of his face. She will still feel sorely tempted to see his latest movie, buy his come-back album, watch a TV show just because he's in it or go to see his concert if he's in the country.

This is the reason why otherwise sane, sensible, middle-aged women leave their teenagers to fend for themselves while they drive half-way across the country to go to a concert by someone their kids have never heard of, act like teenage girls and throw their underwear at (let's face it) old men who haven't been able to hit the old high notes for years. It's all for the sake of that boy whose face adorned the back of their bedroom door and made the day seem brighter.

My pin-up boy was a Superboy.

No, I mean that, literally: Gerard Christopher, the second actor to play the role of Superboy in the TV series from the late 80s/early 90s. I first watched the show when I was ten, and didn't quite register just how spunky this guy was until it was repeated a few years later.

Sure, the first actor to play the role (John Haymes Newton) was actually a better actor. To be honest, Gerard's acting ability is about on-par with most actors who have worn the “S” - that is to say, roughly on par with the marionettes in the Thunderbirds. But the guy was definitely pretty:



Okay, for those strange people out there who can't take a man seriously when he's wearing tights, here's a picture of him wearing a T-Shirt:



And here's a picture of him not wearing a T-Shirt (isn't the 'Net grand?):



Are we on the same page now? Good.

Now, there is a good chance you've probably never heard of this guy before, and there are a few good reason for that:

• His “hit” TV series (which should have launched him to fame and fortune) was more or less boxed up and hidden in an attic by Warner Brothers in order to protect their new “hit” series, Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and thus it was never syndicated and only repeated in a small number of countries outside the US.


• He immediately followed up this role with a part in a very, very bad Western TV miniseries (actually a couple of telemovies based on two different books by the same author, but screened as a miniseries). How bad? Well, so bad they include lines like “I've got things to do, places to be,” spouted by cowboys just before they ride into the sunset. All the actors are horrible and wooden – even the ones who shouldn't be, like Martin Sheen. Oh, and they're R rated because they include a couple of completely pointless scenes with bare breasts – without which they could probably be screened on a Saturday afternoon without trouble.


• The only movie he's starred in that was actually half-decent was independently funded and took five years to get out of the festival circuit and onto the Hallmark channel.


• His agent clearly sucks. I mean, seriously, the guy is damn pretty and there are hundreds of crappy TV shows being filmed in the US every day – you couldn't get him a decent range of guest-star spots, or a pilot here and there? He's perfect for playing a “token hot guy” or a man in uniform or something.

Anyway, it has to be said that, I'm still likely to see anything he's in – no matter how terrible it is. And, if I ever get to become a Jerry Bruckheimer or something, there's going to be a role for Gerard Christopher in every thing I do.

Sad, but true.

We'll Always Have Acapulco

Some weeks ago, for some reason I don't quite understand, I found myself staying up until midnight writing some ridiculous poem about not going to Acapulco.

I've misplaced it, or I would replicate it here, but it was the kind of thing one writes when one is over-tired and should be sleeping. It's also the sort of thing you end up looking at the next day and thinking:

"Yes, but what does it mean?"

The title of the poem was We'll Always Have Acapulco, and the body of it was some bizarre nonsense along the lines of:

We never made it to Acapulco
Because we never planned to go...

And, quite frankly, it all got weird from there. I've always been a fan of poets like Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, who had a lovely talent for complete nonsense, but I'm sure they at least "got" their own poems.

I think it was something about regretting the things you didn't do, or not regretting the things you didn't do, or something like that. Not having regrets because you didn't do something you might have regretted? Whatever.

All I know is that I distinctly remember writing it, and it's in my handwriting, but when I looked at it later I had a bit of a "What the...?" moment.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason I've never been drunk.

Well, that, and the fact that when I'm perfectly sober I think riding a unicycle is a good idea...

Dinner

Or, Virtue Rewarded*

I found a can-opener straight away tonight. I just opened the dreaded utensils drawer, and it was right there! I was so happy I didn't even bother looking for a better can opener, even though this was one of those horrible things that take the whole top off and make you spill some of the liquid whenever you use them.

There were bound to have been more can-openers of various colours and designs in that drawer - there seemed to have been multiple versions of everything that wasn't a vegetable peeler - but I decided to quit while I was ahead.

I was actually feeling quite smug about how successfully I managed to cook dinner without even coming close to cutting off my own arm, but then as I was dishing out the food I realised I had forgotten to add the beans - which made my "Sausage, Bean and Corn Casserole" a little incomplete.

Ah, well. Such is life.

I caught a glimpse of the "other cat" tonight, which means he's not dead. I find that comforting.


*For further illumination on this subtitle, you should refer to another post, written by another me.

Dinner

Or, There are no good solutions

For those of you who read this blog but haven't spoken to me in person lately, I'm currently house sitting for a friend.

My primary duties are to a) not burn down the house, and b) keep the cats alive. Ordinarily, I would probably feel fairly confident at succeeding in these two tasks. At present, though I'm not taking any bets. I think it's a wonder that I haven't cut of my own arm with a box of cling-wrap yet.

At the moment, it's a toss-up as to who dies of starvation first - the cat who hasn't eaten anything (that I've observed) over the past two days, or me. One of the cats has no problems with my being here, and is quite happy to eat what I put on the floor. The other seems to be trying to hide in whatever cupboard I didn't check last, and freaks out slightly whenever he notices I'm not one of his people. Hence, he catches sight of me and bolts, and does not seem to care for whatever food I may offer. Heck, he even turned up his nose at fresh chicken!

Which leads me to tonight's dinner, and the fact that I almost gave up on having it about four or five times in the course of the evening.

I had this plan, see, I would go to the shop on the way home and buy the ingredients for something I could cook tonight which would give me left-overs for the next couple of nights. Along with the tuna casserole I managed to cook last night (after some trials and tribulation), that would mean I had all meals set until Saturday.

Something simple, something quick, something reasonably good for me - a chicken and vegetable stirfry with sauce and rice. What could possibly go wrong? I was so sure that this would be an easy meal to cook that I didn't even bother starting to get everything ready until 7pm. Heck, this sort of thing takes fifteen minutes to prepare and about as long to cook, right?

The Vegetable Peeler

The first thing I did was start cutting up the vegetables... sort of. The first vegetable I put my hand on was a carrot. It was the only vegetable I had to peel, but I find the skin of carrots to be a bit bitter, so I always peel them if I can. I went looking for the vegetable peeler. And I kept looking for the vegetable peeler.

You'd think something like this would be fairly easy to locate, but, no, for some reason the Hoopers prefer to have their pizza cutters and melon ballers in easy reach, but not the vegetable peeler. I looked through every drawer two or three times before picking the most likely drawer and practically pulling every item out one at a time.

I found about four or five bottle openers. I found three graters (including a ridiculously tiny one which must surely have been for purely decorative purposes). I found dozens of things for cutting vegetables into shapes. I found biscuit cutters. I found basting brushes and spatulas. I found funny little plastic thingies designed to keep your plastic bags shut. I found several ice-cream scoops. I found a number of things I didn't recognise and couldn't fathom the purpose of. When I found the little brass hammer that looked like something a cobbler would have in his workshop, I almost gave up there and then.

Finally, after more than fifteen minutes of searching, I found the vegetable peeler - right at the back of the drawer, under two garlic presses and a tea-strainer.

I think I made a complete mess of the drawer.

I don't care.

After that, the chopping of vegetables and cutting of meat seemed to go off fairly smoothly. I thought the dinner wouldn't be that far away. I was wrong.

The Electric Stove

Now, I'm not a big fan of electric cook-tops. I've grown up cooking with gas, and I just can't judge electric. I never know which are the fast elements and how long it takes them to heat up or cool down... Now, with gas, you can actually see the flame, so you know exactly how hot things should be.

I completely misjudged this stove. I had the rice cooking too quickly (even though it was on the lowest setting) and the chicken not cooking quickly enough (even thought it was on the highest. If I was smart, I would have worked out that I needed to swap the pots so that they were on the better elements for what I wanted. I wasn't smart.

Instead, I panicked, and decided to chuck the vegetables in with the chicken even thought it wasn't cooked enough, just to get them started before the rice went "too far".

Do you ever have one of those days when there are no good solutions? Everything you do to try to make something better ends up making it worse? Well, everything I did to try to make the chicken cook faster made it less likely to cook properly at all. Everything I did to slow down the rice just made it more of a gluggy mess.

Finally, after almost an hour of trying to figure all this stuff out, I decided the only course of action was the nuke the whole thing and hope for the best. So, my stirfry became a microwaved casserole and my rice became... porridge.

There were a few times when I thought I was likely to loose control of the situation entirely and have a whole kitchen to clean up, but finally, after 8:30pm, and without too much mess, I sat down to my honey and sesame chicken casserole and rice porridge.

And, guess what? I've got plenty of left-overs for the next few nights' dinners.

*sigh* It's a good thing I like rice porridge, eh?

German and French

When I was a kid, I really wanted to learn German.

I borrowed "learn German" books from the library, and picked up an old 1960s German course book from a second hand store. I diligently read the first couple of lessons in that book, feeling so very proud of myself when I could "read" those dinky little passages of text they have at the end of each chapter (something about a boy and his dog going to the park).

But, if I have one character flaw that has haunted me for as long as I can remember, it's my inability to finish anything that doesn't come with a due date. In the absence of some external force saying: "Continue to read this book until some good can come of it - the outcomes of which will be measured on this specific and clearly defined date", I just sort of let everything slide.

Thus, I never really got as far as the numbers, no matter how many times I borrowed a book on the subject from a library, or looked at that old course book. I looked at that old course book a fair bit, over the years, as I ended up using it to prop up a piece of furniture after a foot broke off. I'd like to see you do that with an electronic book.

Anyway, I managed to distract myself with other languages with which I never really did anything. A brief infatuation with Spanish caused me to learn enough of the third most spoken language in the world to say "Hola! Habla Español?", which is about as useful as a cheeseburger to a drowning elephant in the grand scheme of things.

Then it was Indonesian in high school - not because I actually wanted to learn Indonesian, but because it was offered opposite Geography, and sounded more interesting. Personally, I thought Indonesian was a bit of a waste of my time, due to the fact that it is only spoken in Indonesia. Very handy if one was planning to visit Indonesia, but it won't give you any kind of advantage in Vladivostok, will it? And, quite frankly, I've always been more likely to visit Vladivostok than Indonesia. Obviously, I should have taken Geography.

It was also during these years that I started watching French In Action on ABC on a semi-regular basis. They repeated it a few times, and I never quite caught the whole series, but the language kind of spoke to me. So much so, that I ended up putting myself through an Elementary French evening course at the university when I was in Year 11.

Now, I didn't follow up on that with Intermediate and Advanced courses, which I should have. I also didn't take any French subjects at university (although I was thinking about it) because I was focused on the English and Theatre subjects I needed for my course. I regret both of those things, because it would have been the ideal time to actually get some real language skills. Instead, most of what I learnt from that short course and the French in Action programme atrophied and fell out of my brain.

That said, I think my vague interest in French coincided with just the right period of synapse development in my brain, because there's something about French that feels like a comfortable pair of shoes. I can't communicate in the language in any way, shape or form, but I can read some basic bits - I picked up a feel for how English and French dance with each other so I can sometimes work out what the French text is getting at.

Also, some of the phrases from the show are burned into my brain so that, to this day, when I don't like something I have to fight the urge to declare: "Je détester ce!" - something which I have no doubt spelt badly as I actually have no idea how to write it. I also have a weird tendency to occasionally say "Salut!" instead of "hello", which usually just confuses whoever actually notices what I say. Thankfully, most people don't.

The crazy-annoying thing is that French and Indonesian managed to get into my brain when the getting was easy, and now when I'm trying to learn another language, I find that they're getting in the way. I'll try to think of the Russian for "hello", but the French will come to me. I'll try to count in Estonian, but realise that I've managed to switch to Indonesian part-way through.

I hope, one day, to go back to French and learn it well-ish. In the meantime, I've actually come full circle, and now I'm back to German again. I've decided that I should try to have a "useful" European language under my belt before considering moving to Europe, and my brief fling in Estonia has convinced me that German is probably the best one to go with.

I'm back to borrowing "introduction to German" books out of the library, and I'm planning on starting a Diploma in Languages next year with a German major. I'm still trundling ahead with Estonian, and I haven't completely given up on Russian, but I think German will probably be my primary language focus once I get started.

Just so long as someone gives me a due date...

Contributing something useful

I was wrapping some of my mother's birthday presents today when --

Well, let's put that into a more accurate perspective. I was intending to wrap some of my mother's birthday presents today, working on the assumption that we had wrapping paper in the house. It turns out that we have quite a lot of wrapping paper in the house, but it's all decidedly "Christmas" or "Congratulations!" themed. Really obviously so. You couldn't pretend it was birthday-present wrapping paper if you tried.

So, I rustled up some brown paper and started to do my old "brown paper packages tied up with coloured string" thing (it could be lazy and boring if it wasn't referential, inter-textual and quasi-chic). It turns out I also didn't have much by the way of coloured string, and it was all going to look really boring.

After wrapping the first one, I surveyed my rather poor options when this thought suddenly came to me:

If Nana was here, she'd tell you to grab her purse and walk up the street to the news agent to buy some decent wrapping paper.

So that's exactly what I did. Her purse was still where it's been for the last five or so years, and was chock full of coins she hadn't spent (or we hadn't spent for her) before she died. I grabbed it, walked up the road and off-loaded some loose change on four rolls of colourful, birthday themed wrapping paper.

It was a strange sensation, really. Over the last few years she has told me, on countless occasions, to grab her purse and walk up the road to by something or other. Traipsing up the street in the middle of the day with my grandmother's purse was something I used to do on a semi-regular basis before she went to hospital that last time.

I think it made her happy, yet strangely we had a thing about not letting her pay for things if we could do it for her. Not letting her pay was one way we showed our care for her... But thinking about it today, I realise we were just stopping her from showing her care for us.

My grandmother did things for us throughout her whole life. Practical, useful things, like cooking and doing the dishes and stuff like that. As she got older, we started doing those things for her. By the time she reached the stage where my mother moved in with her, there was very little she did while any of her kids were around - my mother and uncle did everything they could for her, and when I moved back home I joined in.

From being the person who is always doing something, always providing something, she became someone who contributed very little, and I think she felt that. For a while, she still tried to contribute something. In the mornings my mother would usually go to work just as Nana and I were getting up, so I'd make the two of us breakfast before I went to work. She used to tell me to leave the dishes for her, and I would. I knew, on a certain level, that doing the breakfast dishes (all four of them) and feeding the dogs lunch was her way to still contribute. My mother wasn't happy with this, though. She always frowned at me when she found out Nana had done the breakfast dishes again.

Eventually, she couldn't do them any more. I'd do the dishes in the morning, and my uncle would come over to feed the dogs. All she'd do was sit. But, occasionally, she'd tell her granddaughter to take her purse and buy something. Something for lunch. Something for the house. Something for someone's birthday. She never really cared what you bought with her money. When you'd bring it home to show her, she was almost completely disinterested. It wasn't the thing that mattered, you see, it was the fact that she had contributed it.

Far too often, we stopped her from doing that. At one point, she wanted us to buy a new freezer with her money, and we more or less decided we could keep going with the old freezer until after she died. Our reasoning (although I didn't entirely agree with it) was that she should have her own things around her as much as possible - we shouldn't move into her house and replace everything. But, looking back on it now, I think it would have made her happy if we had bought a freezer with her money. I think she would have liked to be able to walk past it and know it was something she contributed.

Back in her prime, a birthday in the family would be her thing to do, if you know what I mean? She'd co-ordinate the present buying and wrapping, she'd do the cooking, she'd host the dinner, she'd do the washing up... By the end, she didn't do a thing, really. And, what she tried to do, we'd take away and do "for" her. In the end, we were so busy trying to take care of her that we took away everything she could do to take care of us. That must have been so hard for her.

If I had thought about it, if I had acted on gut instinct instead of trying to do what a good granddaughter should do for her ailing grandmother, I would have asked her for more things. I would have asked her for little things that she could just give me - like coins for buying drinks, and I would have asked her if I could borrow things so that I could thank her for the loan later when I returned them.

How hard would it have been to say, "Nana, can I borrow some money to buy some stuff for work? I'll pay you pack after I've had a chance to get to the bank..."

Maybe it would have made her feel better. More like she was taking care or me. I don't know.

What I do know, deep down inside, is that it would have made her very happy to know I walked up the street today with her purse and bought some wrapping paper for my mother's birthday presents. My grandmother contributed something useful for her kids. That's something she definitely would have wanted.

Hmmm...

Google knows where I am.

That's not entirely surprising, I suppose. Even though I put my time-zone down as "Brisbane" and usually nominate that as my location for reasons of obfuscation, I do mention the town in which I actually reside from time to time, and my IP address should be easy enough to track.

However, whenever I see an ad on one of these Google applications that's specifically targeting me based on my location, I feel nervous.

Wishin' and Hopin'

I've decided this is what I want for my birthday next year:



I've wanted a penny farthing for years. I've wanted this one in particular ever since I found the website back in 2005. I think, for my 30th birthday, I can splurge and buy myself something massive and pointless.

I hereby forgo any other birthday presents in favour of donations to the penny farthing cause.

A Hell of a Good Man...

I once had a very disturbing conversation with a young woman at my old church. She was a few years younger than me (I expect she still is), and one of those friendly acquaintances you tend to pick up who aren't exactly BFFs, but you'd happily have lunch with them or invite them to your birthday party.

Anyway, in the course of the conversation she worked out that I was single, at which point she immediately offered to set me up with a guy she knew.

Now, I had, on previous occasions, met the fellow in question, and I had found him to be the kind of person you nod to, before turning to talk to someone you actually like. I wouldn't actively avoid him, but five minutes of polite conversation would be about as much as either of us would really get out of the other before completely exhausting our reason for being in the same room.

I thought it was an awfully strange suggestion on her part, as she would surely know me well enough to know I wouldn't get along well with him.

I politely told her I wasn't interested, and then attempted to change the subject. Not to be deterred, she immediately suggested another guy - one even less suited to me than the first. In doing so, she also made it clear that her main criteria for attempting to make the match was the fact that "he's single".

Yes, that was her sole consideration.

Somehow, in her universe, the idea of finding someone attractive, interesting or sympathetic (in the older sense of the word) had no relevance. It didn't matter if you shared no interests, had wildly differing opinions on most things and didn't find each other appealing in the least. You're single, he's single, what's the problem?

I was on the verge of explaining to her that there was a little more involved in finding a "match" than just grabbing the nearest available man on offer, but one look at her face told me it would be a waste of time. She was a "simple" girl - in that she was naive and uncomplicated - and it was easy to see she was like that because she wouldn't understand such complexities, even if she could.

Besides, it was an attitude that was somewhat endemic among the "youth" in that church: Better to have someone than no one at all.

At least, that's how I saw it, being outside the "intense set". I don't think I was too far wrong, given that at least four marriages in that set never made it past two years. That was one of the reasons why I don't go to that church any more. I didn't think the youth had the healthiest approach to life, and I didn't think the "mature adults" were paying enough attention, or making the effort to try to steer them right. But, that's another story.

It was sometime later that I bought a Circe Link CD "Moody Girl", including the song "Hell of a Good Man", which seemed a much healthier way of looking at the whole "boy-meets-girl" scenario, and I wished I could ram it in the ears of some of my young friends at that church:

It takes a hell of a good man/ to be better than/ no man at all...

It's something I think applies to a lot of things in life: Don't settle for something that isn't what you want just because you haven't found what you want yet.

And that's my profound thought for today.