Almost Famous

I noticed the other day that one of the shops in town was advertising a boxed set of the complete Famous Five books, so I mentioned that to a friend who has kids about the right age to enjoy them.

She confessed that she never got into the Famous Five, and then I had to struggle to remember if I'd ever actually read any of the books myself.

I'm sure I did.  I must have.

I have vague recollections of having "I've read some of these books and I know who the characters are" conversations with friends in school.

I just can't remember which books I've read.  There was one with gypsies in it...

The phrase "smuggler's cove" is floating around in my brain, somewhere, but the actual book is called "Five go to Smuggler's Top", and quite frankly, I've just read a synopsis of the plot and I can't say it's ringing any bells.

Where the books particularly forgettable?  Is that why I can't remember anything about them?

Well, there was a dog called Timmy and a girl called George.  And gypsies.

For years I thought The Black Bog Mystery (a book I read and enjoyed when I was the right age to be reading Famous Five books) was part of that series.  But, of course, it clearly wasn't because a) it doesn't have the word "five" in the title, and b) I've just looked it up and it wasn't even written by Enid Blyton.

Lane Mitchell wrote it.  It was quite good, if I recall correctly.  There were twins and mysterious houses and bogs.  Everyone loves a good bog.  I can't remember what the actual mystery was.  I *think* it had something to do with people hiding things in the bog...  I read quite a number of Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew and other such books at the time and I can't rightly say which plot belonged to which books.

So, somewhere along the lines the only Famous Five book I could actually remember enjoying wasn't actually a Famous Five book at all - just some other kids' mystery novel of dubious memorability.

I always meant to get around the reading the Famous Five.  Maybe I should see if I can get them in German or Estonian - that might make them a bit more interesting.

Assignment woes

This sucks.  It totally sucks.  It sucks big time.  It’s one of the suckiest things I’ve experienced this year.  Not quite as sucky as some of the suckiest things I experienced last year, but it still totally sucks.

There’s nothing quite like having something you’re usually good at used to highlight just how crap you truly are.

I’ve been given two writing tasks for my German assignment.  One is to write a “travel blog” about a place in a German speaking country.  Easily enough done (if not easy to do well).  I have plenty to say about the place of my choice.  The actual mechanics of saying it are a challenge, but that’s why we have assignments, right?  Heck, I’m already over the word limit on that one (but I’ve decided I don’t care).

The second task is to write typical classroom assignment twaddle.  The question is:  “In education a person should be viewed holistically, one should not just focus on results”.  It’s twaddle.  It’s one of those silly twaddly things that just try to get you to prove you can write a reasoned argument in a proper paragraph structure.  It barely means anything.

This is just the sort of thing I can do with my eyes closed in English.  I can churn out twaddle like the best of them.  The trouble is that I make up for the lack of meaningful things to say by falling back onto rhetoric.  I use metaphors, similes, carefully crafted redundancies, the occasional hyperbole and the odd synecdoche.  All of these are very idiomatic and language specific.  A perfectly legitimate synecdoche in English is complete nonsense in another language.  I can crank out the meaningless twaddle, but I can’t translate it.

And, when I try to pare down to sentences that are simple and straightforward and can be translated across, I realise I have nothing to say.  Try as hard as I might, every time I feel like I’ve got the wind of inspiration and can burst into something vaguely resembling eloquence, I realise I’ve come up with a sentence like the one I’ve just written.  “Try as hard as I might”?  Idiom.  “Wind of inspiration”?  Metaphor.  “Burst into something vaguely resembling eloquence”?  I just don’t know how to translate that - or even if I should.

I “write up” for frippy little tasks like these.  I can churn out three sentences to encapsulate one flimsy idea.  But to translate into another language I have to pare back.  I can’t write up and pare back at the same time.  It’s doing my head in.

And, in the back of my mind, a simple truth keeps raising its ugly head:  “It’s only because you don’t know enough.  If you a) knew what you were talking about, and b) paid attention to the things you should have learnt, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

There's nothing like trying to do an assignment in another language to give you a new appreciation for what NESB students go through in English speaking universities.

It turns out everything we expect from them is kind of unreasonable and cruel.  All lecturers and teachers should try walking a mile in their shoes before attempting to mark them.

I think there's something wrong with me...

So, today I found myself running a Google search for Masters' degrees in Educational Design, and when I saw one particular university was offering a Graduate Certificate that was only four subjects, I wondered whether the certificate would be enough for me or if I should do the Masters because it would give me the chance to do a research project.

I am currently completely swamped by the two degrees I'm doing at the moment, and I'm already lining up the next one - and it's not even a PhD.  Just a few months ago I swore my next degree would score me a "Doctor".

That postgrad cert looks good, though.  I can do two subjects on educational designy stuff and two subjects from any other course - and I've just discovered they have a linguistics subject that looks specifically at syllabus and materials design.  My current linguistics degree doesn't do that...

Semi-final 1, 2014

Here in Australia, we get our Eurovision experience distilled into one sequin-filled weekend.  So I've only just seen the first semi-final, even though Europeans would have seen it earlier in the week.

And my over-all impression is:

Meh.

I know music videos of all the songs are available well in advance of the competition, but I like to experience it "live" first, so I usually only look at the Estonian video and maybe one other before the Big Weekend.

This year's entry for Estonia struck me as being, well, nothing special.  They were okay, I just didn't particularly think they would wow the audiences enough to get through to the final - and I was right.

What I didn't know was that they would be sitting amongst a whole bunch of forgettable songs.  I honestly think that the Estonian number was probably stronger than some of the others that got through.

The Netherlands was good - I really enjoyed that one and I'm glad it got in.  Sweden wasn't bad and Aremenia had an okay song (although the singer was off-key for part of it).  I was happy to see San Marino get through this year (and I thought they had one of the better songs on the night).

The real shame was Portugal.  Their song was a) good and b) one of the only songs not in English.  For some reason the songs in English are usually just a little bit boring.  But they didn't make the cut.

In the end, though, I found myself unsuccessfully trying to remember any of the tunes an hour after the show.  All I could get was Estonia's "Amazing".  That could have been because the song actually had one of the strongest hooks in the field, or it could have been because it was the only one I'd heard twice.

In the five years I've been watching Eurovision, I think Baku has had the best set of songs.  Copenhagen is proving to be a bit boring, really.

Fortunately we have Austria tonight.  That should liven things up a bit.

Oh, white can be beautiful, but mostly it's not...

I love fencing.  I really do.  It's the most awesome sport in the world and I'm so happy I get the chance to do it.  Sure, I'll probably be crap at it for the rest of my life, and then at some point my knees will give way or I'll move somewhere without a fencing club and spend the rest of my life playing lawn bowls as my sport thingy...

But right now I fence, and fencing is awesome.

Every now and then I look at my mask lying around in the spare room and think:  "hell, yeah, baby!  I totally fence!"  But that could just be because I'm a dork.  And fencing is awesome.

However, as much as I love the sport, ever since I took it up there have been a number of things I'd love to change about it.  I'm not the boss of fencing, I'm just a lowly nobody who's never even won a medal at a competition.  But if I had a bit of money and could afford to use it to try to push my own agenda, there are somethings I'd like to try.

One of them is the colour of fencing clothes.  Or, rather, the lack of it.

As per tradition, fencing uniforms are white (like cricket, tennis, and any other sport that was the domain of rich men with servants to do the laundry).  Okay, fine, that does look a bit cool.  I'm perfectly okay with there being a thing that says you should compete in the traditional white kit.

However, there happens to be two levels of fencing clothes.  The 350N level is good enough to stop you from dying and it's fairly common in normal week-by-week club fencing.  The 800N level is more swordproof and is the required level for any official competitions.

So, yes, you have to wear white for competition.  Well, hurrah.  Since the 350N clothes can’t be worn for competitions anyway, why do they have to be locked into the traditional colour scheme?

Or, for that matter, style?  Why can’t we shake things up at the training level and have – oh, I don’t know – pants?

There are a lot of clothes involved in the traditional fencing attire, and I’m not convinced we need all of them.  A better design would cut down on a lot of the guff.

In addition to the mask and shoes (which are non-negotiable givens) my usual outfit for a weekly training night consists of everything I would wear at a competition:

• A pair of knee-length socks (which are always awkward to get on and off, and can’t possibly project my shins against sword wounds)
• A pair of breeches
• A pair of exercise shorts under the breeches (because the breeches on their own just feel weird, and because I change between breeches and real pants for activities before and after fencing and can’t be bothered finding a changing room)
• A T-shirt
• A plastron (a half-shirt of thick material worn under the jacket to provide extra protection under your sword arm)
• A chest protector
• A jacket

Now, Leon Paul sells 350N track pants (black) which could theoretically replace the socks and breeches and eliminate the need for the shorts.  They also sell “club jackets” – which combine the jacket and the plastron into one garment, which is padded to reduce bruising and ROYAL BLUE!

Their website indicates the blue colour will deter theft and encourage people to buy their own kit.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking:  “Wait, there’s something that cuts down on the amount of clothes I have to wear/wash, gives more protection against bruises and is a pretty colour – and I’m *not* supposed to want it?”

I could reduce the amount of clothes I have to deal with *and* have an outfit that came in colour…  This sounds like a good thing to me.

I could go from everything listed above to the following list without endangering myself at all (and possibly providing even better protection):

• Pants
• T-Shirt
• Chest protector
• Jacket.

Clearly, they are actually capable of making 350N clothes in colours other than white and in styles other than the bib-and-breeches combo.  So why don’t they?

I can’t believe no one has found a market for this yet.  If you could buy jackets in a variety of colours and styles for normal club fencing days, why wouldn’t you get more than one?  Imagine what would happen if you came up with a way to print designs on the fabric…

I know a bunch of people who never bothered buying a 350N outfit because they may as well just have an 800N suite to cover everything (I bought the cheaper stuff while I was waiting to see if I'd stick it through).  I think there are probably a lot of people who would probably buy a second jacket if that jacket looked cool.

Imagine a fencing kit that looked like Captain America's uniform, or something...

Brownsville’s Green

I frequently use the term “Brownsville” as a semi-derogatory way to refer to my home town.  It’s a phrase often used by locals – especially if they are returning to Townsville after visiting someplace greener like, say, I don’t know… anywhere else on the coast.

Townsville is, you see, part of the dry tropics stuck smack-bang in the middle of the wet tropics, so one of the things you notice most about coming to Townsville from either the lush tropics to our south or the even lusher tropics to our north is how brown everything is.  For large parts of the year it requires serious irrigational intervention to keep the green grass alive, while the brown spindly grass that’s endemic to the area has no problem growing in this climate.

It has recently come to my attention, though, that I have failed to appreciate just how much green space Townsville has.  Nobody calls Townsville “the garden city”, but it wouldn’t be a misnomer if they did.

We have four botanical gardens in Townsville.  Four.  Queens Gardens is in the more formal garden style, with flower beds, hedge mazes, a fountain (which rarely works, it must be said) and an aviary.  Dan Gleeson Memorial Gardens is also in the formal gardens vein, with flowerbeds and fountains (which actually do work) and a network of ponds.  Anderson Park Botanical Gardens is a rambling parklands kind of thing, with ponds and groves of trees -- and judicious use of paths, a one-lane-one-way road and the wide swaths of green can see you get four kilometres worth of running in that park without repeating the same scenery.  Finally, there’s the Palmetum – a garden dedicated to showcasing the different environments in which one might find palms (from rainforests to savannah land).

All of these are open to the public and completely free.

In addition to this, there are a network of parks and paths stretched across the city’s coastline so that you could travel from the city’s Strand promenade to the bushwalking trails at cape Palaranda – 10 kilometers away – without ever having to touch a street.  There’s also approximately 40 kilometres of parklands surrounding the river.  And there’s the Town Commons – a wetlands area that could either be considered a paradise for bird watches or a mosquito infested swamp, depending on the time of year.  Like Cape Palaranda, Castle Hill and the Mount Stuart range, the Town Commons has a series of bushwalking tracks through it, so that you never have to leave town to enjoy a stroll through nature.

And, then, the place is lousy with parks.  Actual, honest-to-goodness, suburban parks are all over the place.  Some have football or cricket fields in them, but many just have a handful of trees, a picnic table and some playground equipment – and quite a number have an off-leash dog exercise area as part of them.  The only good thing about the new pre-fabricated neighbourhoods (where no one has a backyard big enough to plant a tree) is that they all have parks woven into their pre-fabricated designs.

I don’t think there’s a single place in Townsville where you would live more than five minute’s walk away from a park.

I currently live in what I would call one of the “middle aged” suburbs – one of the ones that were built during the 1950s and 1960s.  Within a 1km radius of my house are three parks.  Within a 2km radius are five parks and a botanical garden.  Within a 3km radius are seven parks (maybe eight), a botanical garden, two public swimming pools (which both have lawns) and a library (garden of the mind?).  Okay the library thing is pushing it, but you get the idea.

Townsville does green space.  Having grown up here, it’s always been part of the background of my life.  I’ve just always lived a few minute’s walk from a park and a short drive from a botanical garden.

I hadn’t realised how special this was until a couple of years ago, when I noticed the town I was holidaying in didn’t have any public gardens and only had a couple of parks.  Once I started paying attention, I started to notice that gardens – “real” gardens – weren’t a standard part of every town. 

And when I say “real” gardens, I mean gardens big enough for several whole families to spend the afternoon picnicking and playing without disturbing each other, and with enough space for some couples to find a secluded place to canoodle without being seen by the kids from those families.  I’ve been in towns where they say they have “gardens”, but they’re barely big enough for two picnic tables, and you certainly wouldn’t spend hours there.

Recently I’ve been thinking of moving to the Sunshine Coast and I’ve been checking out the area on Google, trying to find the neighbourhoods where there are parks and shops within walking distance.  The Sunshine Coast has more people than Townsville (and covers more land) but, surprisingly, less green space.  Most of the towns don’t have gardens and only have one or two major parks.  Some of the suburbs, alarmingly, don’t even have much by way of trees.

I have a dozen reasons for wanting to move out of “Brownsville” eventually, but I never realised just how good I have it, in terms of parks and gardens.  Now that it has been brought to my attention, I’m going to enjoy it while I can.

And maybe I’ll try using the phrase “the garden city” more often to describe the old town.  I think she’s earnt it.

Thou canst thine own space find...

So, this is amusing me:

It's poor form, I know, but I use Google translate to check up on things when I'm trying to compose in German.

It's because I'm exceptionally lazy, and I can't be bothered looking up the grammar rules every time I want to write a sentence that I haven't practised before.  You have to find the appropriate chapter in a text book, then consult a dictionary to work out what gender your stupid noun is in, then try to work out if it's in dative or genative case and go back to the textbook to see what difference that makes...

It's time consuming, just trying to make an informed guess - and then I have no idea if I'm right or not.

In an ideal world, I'd ask one of my classmates or my tutor/lecturer what the right form might be and discuss it with them.  I would use interaction with and feedback from other human beings to help me improve my communication skills.

Right now, though, all I've got is Google.  I think about it.  I try to make a guess based partly on what I can remember and partly on what I intuitively "feel", and then I run various combinations of both the English and German sentences through Google to see what she thinks.

She's often just as wrong as I am, but I figure there are dozens of people helping her get it right, so she's got a better chance than I do.

Anyway, on to the amusing thing:

When you write an English sentence using the word "you", Google tends to default to translating that as the German formal "Sie", and gives you all the verb conjugations to go with it.  It is nigh impossible to get it to give you any of the "du" conjugations once it has decided you must, surely, mean "Sie"...

But you can get around that by writing "thou".

And if Google is still trying to give you the "Sie" verbs, you can get around that by conjugating the English verbs into the "thou" form.

When I wrote "you can find your own space" I couldn't get Google to give me the "du" version of that sentence come hell or high water.

But, when I wrote "thou canst thine own space find", it had no problem with that at all.

Some cleaver bunny behind the scenes has taught Google to accept archaic informal English pronouns and verb conjugations.

I just wish the same person would hack into Reverso, which is my other go-to online resource for German and is also excessively formal.