Today I learned...

... that World War II is not over:

Medvedev Indifferent to Japan’s Reaction on his Kuril Visit

04:46 05/07/2012 Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday he is indifferent to Japan’s reaction over his trip to one of the Kuril Islands earlier in the week.>>

Other news of the day

So, technically, Russia and Japan are still "fighting" WWII? How does that work?

I think disputed border territories ought to have some sort of time limit imposed. They can only be disputed for, say, 50 years? Is that reasonable? After that point I think you should take a poll of the people who live there and ask them who they'd rather be (Russian or Japanese, Russian or Georgian, Russian or Estonian, Turkish or Armenian, Turkish or Cypriot...) and let them decide for themselves.

This isn't too extreme a suggestion, is it?

Dirigable

Tell me how it is that, in this day and age, we still don't have the technology to create personal dirigibles.

I've been thinking about those old competitions people used to have that involved a single person, their crazy, mad-cap contraption and a long drop into a body of water.  All those attempts to make personal, one-man airships...  Why have none of them ever lead to us being able to take our dirigibles out for a spin?

We have motorcycles, ski-doos and jet-skis.  Why can't we have personal dirigibles?  How hard can it be to make a little one-person airship? 

Sure the practical applications of dirigibles have long since disappeared, but surely they are ripe for entertainment possibilities?

It's not like they would to go particularly high to be worthwhile.  If they can clear the trees, then great.  If they can't, people will just take them to parks, fields and beaches to play with them.

Oooh, I just had a vision of a dirigible park.  Can't you imagine it?  A wide open space full of people swooping around in personal airships...

Novosjolov vs Pizzo

Well! There are times, I will admit, when watching fencing is a bit like watching two people wave sticks at each other for no apparent reason while running back and forth in a straight line.

Like football (the real football - the one where they can only use their feet), it does seem like not much is happening - although, unlike football, the score line actually changes and it doesn't drag on for over an hour.

Then you see a bout like this:




Now, just a heads-up, the first person to 15 wins. You'll probably miss it because the tape cuts straight after Pizzo hits.  I'm probably not giving anything away by telling you the Italian wins - the score is in the description of the clip.

Did I use the word "tape" while talking about a YouTube clip?  It must be because I never quite reconciled myself to the end of the 80s.

Anyway, there are more interesting bouts out there, this is just one I saw recently.  One in which "my" fencer loses, but Pizzo puts in quite the flying performance.  Heck, he even falls over at one point (and keep an eye out for a flying sword to the head at about the 5 minute mark).

A matter of sole

My new shoes don't squeak on the new floor at work, which is amazing.  I thought it might have something to do with the rubber soles, but then I remembered the shoes I normally wear also have rubber soles.

I have a tendency to buy shoes with rubber soles.  I don't know why, but it's a selling feature for me.  If I have a choice of two different shoes which are both comfortable, I'll take the one with rubber soles.

It's probably a subconscious way to protect myself from lightening strike.  I don't know if it will help with the ball lightening, but hopefully it can keep me safe from any stray lightening that isn't caught by the town's crackle trap (this town does have a crackle trap, right?).

I doubt my rubber soled shoes will be any defence at all against swan attack, but we can't have everything now, can we?

Harry and Harriet

Although I'm not allowed to say things like this about myself (as it could be deemed "negative", and for some reason saying negative things about oneself is simply not permitted), I'm fairly androgynous in appearance.

I feel comfortable saying it because it's true - and has pretty much always been true.  When I was a kid it was true because most kids look like they could be either-or, and it's really only the clothes and haircut that gives it away.  As someone who had short hair, "dressed for action" and hated wearing pink frilly things, I never really looked much like a girl.

Then, when I grew up, I grew "out".  I've got broad shoulders which contribute to an hour-glass figure if I'm not carrying too much extra weight and I wear fitted clothes... but give me a few extra kilos and loose-fitting garments and I look fairly square.  Match that with a square shaped jaw, long arms and a bit of height (I'm 178cm), and I don't exactly look feminine and delicate.

I have a formidable skeleton.  I know saying you are "big-boned" is more or less code for saying "I'm fat and delusional", but I am actually big-boned.  I've gained and lost weight over the years, but even when I got sick and stopped eating properly for three months, I was never slender.  "Feminine" is a word you can rarely apply to me, and "delicate" is really more applicable to my grasp of reality.

There's the kind of androgynous where you could be a girl or a very pretty boy, and there's the kind of androgynous where you could be a boy or a not-very-pretty girl.  Unfortunately I fall into the latter category.  That's just life - someone has to do it, and it may as well be me.

I'm a bit ambivalent about it all, really.  On the one hand, I really, really hate being mistaken for a man.  Especially when I think I'm actually dressed in clothes that are reasonably girlie.  It happens less often now that I've lost some weight and started wearing more fitted tops (along with a good T-Shirt bra, it makes me look like I might actually have boobs), but it still happens from time to time.

On the other hand, I know that all I have to do is put on a baseball cap and a jacket and I suddenly become invisible.  It's very strange, but also very useful.  When I talk about going to places like Sydney or Europe on my own, people who know me get all fretful about me travelling by myself because apparently it's dangerous for a woman to be on her own.  But I don't really have any trouble at all.

I wear a cap and a jacket and I stride with purpose and sit without trying to be lady-like, and no one even gives me a second glance.  There's a kind of invisibility that men just have, and I can slip it on whenever I feel like it.  Then I take off the hat and carry the jacket while asking a question in my "female British tourist #6" voice, and people treat me with the same kind of kindness and helpfulness that they usually reserve for young foreign women.

It's probably cheating to play on it like that, but it works for me.  I've done it for years without really noticing, but a few years ago I realised what I was doing.  Now, when I need to, if I think it suits my purposes, I'll actually play the characters (which I've started thinking of as Harry and Harriet) on purpose.  Harry is really a non-speaking role - I just use him to walk through parks and city centres, and I tend to "walk strong" while I'm playing him, smothering any latent femininity I might have in my bearing*.  Harriet is for getting help and directions, and I've noticed I actually change the way I stand and move when I play her - I act more feminine when I'm playing Harriet than I actually am in real life.

So, I've come to see my androgynous appearance as something quite useful.  I'll never be the girl someone sees across the crowded room and thinks "my, she's pretty", which is a bit disappointing, but I guess I can live with that.  As long as I can look like a girl when I need to, I can deal with the rest.


*except when I feel the need to skip through a park, which does happen from time to time.  Every now and then, quite without warning, Zing! go the strings of my heart.

Mask

What I like about my workplace is the fact that it's always entirely possible that one day you will walk through to door to find someone dressed in full fencing gear while someone else is throwing plastic cutlery at them.

My garb came in the mail today and, despite being told that they could not deliver to a post office box, it was delivered to my post office box.  I did promise people I would show them what it looked like if it turned up at work...

Well, not quite "full" - my socks are coming in a different package, and I don't own "proper" fencing shoes yet.  Eagle-eyed viewers might notice I'm only wearing the mask in this photo.  I actually do have the plastron, glove, pants and jacket, too, but they were back in the box by the time I thought to take a photo.

First impressions:  the proper 1600N Negrini mask is much more comfortable than the cheap Uhlmann one I've been wearing at the club, and I'm quite impressed with the fact that everything actually fits, considering I bought it "off the rack" and "on speck", based solely on a handful of measurements.  And, it is quite light compared to the club gear I've been using.  We'll see how it feels when someone is trying to poke me with a sword...

Vehklemine 2

Okay, as in most things, a little bit of patience can change your mind.  My first impressions of fencing included the following:

• Epee - kind of like a cross between tennis and boxing.  Very vibrant and interesting to watch, even if the linear playing space takes a while to get used to.
• Sabre - more like a cross between cricket and boxing.  People appear to just be whacking stuff with a stick and shouting "Howzat!" at the umpire.
• Foil - I have no idea what that's about. It's like epee, only somehow more vicious and more delicate at the same time (you have a flimsier sword and you have to take turns attacking, but you're only allowed to aim for the chest and head).

My opinion of sabre was pretty low because the descriptions I had read indicated that it would be a lot more interesting to watch than it actually was. Much like cricket. I can't get into cricket. It's probably very unAustralian of me to say that, but I just find it so very boring.

I thought sabre was a bit like this, too, as all of the clips I saw on YouTube seemed to lack anything remotely resembling "interesting things". However, I am now willing to concede that I just didn't give it a proper chance. I usually only watched for the first couple of minutes before crying "this is boring!" and trying to find something more amusing, like lawn bowls.

I decided I should try to watch at least one bout the whole way through, though, and discovered that it actually gets better the longer it goes on. They spend the first three minutes or so whacking each other on the head and shouting "howzat!!" at the umpire, but after that they start doing other things - things like trying to avoid being hit by the other guy. Then it picks up a bit.

After they start using defensive moves, all of the things I read about that seemed interesting started to appear. I guess they spend the first few minutes sussing each other out by all that whacking before bringing in more interesting moves. At least, the girls do. The boys seem to spend a lot longer in the whacking phase.

So, sabre isn't entirely boring. It's not as interesting as epee, but it isn't entirely boring. (I still have no idea what foil is about).

It makes me wonder if cricket might actually be interesting if I can just sit through the first three hours of whatever it is they do.

I remain doubtful.