A fine line between sport and punching people in the head

I saw a T-shirt on a website that grouped fencing together with wrestling and boxing.

I'm not 100% sure about the wrestling (which surely belongs with judo, jujitsu and rugby - you know, sports that involve throwing people onto the ground and sitting on them), but I can see the boxing thing.

I watched a bit of the feather-weight boxing during the Commonwealth Games, while I was waiting for something else, and they almost managed to convince me it was a sport.  It actually looked kind of like what we do with fencing, although with more of an emphasis on punching people in the head.

I've always had a bit of trouble accepting boxing as a legitimate sport, because the entire goal of a bout is to try to punch someone in the head until they lose consciousness.  People have tried to tell me that the "sport" side of things comes from the fact that each boxer is trying to use all of his/her skill to avoid being hit.

Be that as it may, the ultimate goal is to punch someone in the head.  You can't deny that.

But, to be fair, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones (or walk around naked).

I've made the comment in the past that fencing is kind of like a cross between boxing and tennis.  On the one hand, you have people wearing poncy white clothes, fussing over hand-held doodads and being oh-so traditional as they salute and shake hands and stuff.  On the other hand, you have people trying to do each other harm in the name of sport.

Let's face it, fencing is all about trying to poke someone with a stick.  Or, in the case of sabre, trying to beat them with a stick.  You don't even try to do it lightly - if there are bruises, then there are bruises (and, believe me, there are bruises).

And, yes, there is an element where it's a good thing to aim straight for someone's head (unless you're a foilist, in which case the head is off limits, so aim for the groin instead).  I've had my share of mask-rattling head hits, and I've dealt out a few on occasion as well.

So, there's an extent to which fencing isn't that removed from boxing.

I have to admit, since taking up fencing I've toyed with the idea to trying boxing as well...

And then I remember that the entire goal is to punch someone in the head.

At least with fencing you are also aiming for other parts of the body.  If you're any good, you can win your bouts by constantly tapping your opponents on the wrist - no head shots necessary.  I somehow doubt you can win a boxing match by completely avoiding any attempt to hit your opponent's head.

If it were possible to win a boxing match without aiming for the head, I'd be interested to know about that.

Another one bites the dust

So, that's that.  I finished my last test on Sunday, and I've passed all of the bits and pieces, so I think I'll probably pass the subjects...

And all I have to do now is wait to see if I've ticked the right boxes for the system to send me an invitation to graduate.

That's the Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics done.  Once I get that piece of paper in my hands I'll be qualified to...

Well, nothing, really.  I bugged out of the TESOL component because I hated those subjects so very much.  I was really only doing them so there would be a point to the degree.  Completely trashed my grade point average in the process.  Good thing I don't care about that.

I did the MAAL as a stepping stone to possibly do a PhD later, and right now I'm feeling a bit "Meh.  Who needs a PhD?"

Give me six months.  It took roughly that long after I finished the Master of Information Management before I started itching to do more.

Mind you, I now have a terrible grade point average, so maybe no one will take me on as a PhD candidate.

Oh, who am I kidding - as long as I go regional, someone's bound to take me.

I'm now on a bit of a filing kick.  I've got four degrees worth of paper (journal articles, etc) clogging up my space, and I'm determined to cull and declutter.

Yes, you heard me - declutter.

Declutter my filing cabinet.  My study.  My living spaces.  My life...

I shall do it!  I shall live a less cluttered life!  I shall free myself from my addiction to keeping things!

I shall dig out a patch of simplicity and sit in it, and there I shall find the ability to be still.

Still and cool in my own mind and spirit...

I know that I run around in circles to distract myself from the fact that I never move forward.  One day I'll learn to sit still and accept the world as it actually is.  Then, maybe, when I have finally stopped looking for change, I'll stop being afraid of it.

How's that for a Deep Tuesday?

Small to medium folding bikes - Or "Really? Don't you have enough crap?"

Here's the way my brain works.

I'm going to Melbourne in a couple of months for a conference, and I'll have a few days at the end to amuse myself.

Naturally, my thoughts turn to bicycles.

Strida

I've been eyeing off Strida bikes for a while now.  Not because I need another folding bike.  I'm not sure anyone ever needs more than one good bike of any kind, and I've got a Brompton - which is one of the best folding bikes on the planet.

No, I want one because a) I love novelty bicycles, and b) I'm slightly obsessed with things that transform.  The Strida has a different design principle to the Brompton, so it's a different kind of folding bike.

There's a part of me that longs to be an inventor making my own folding bikes in my workshop.  But I'm not an inventor and I don't have a workshop (or any mechanical skills or experience, for that matter), so I just obsess over the work of other designers.

There's a shop in Melbourne that sells Stridas, so I'll have the chance to take one for a test ride.  Then I'll know if I just want one because it's pretty or if I'm actually likely to ride it.

Now, there is an excellent chance that, if it's magnificent enough in person to impress me, I'll just buy one there and fly home with it.

However, I've gone off trawling the Internet for folding bicycles again, haven't I?  And because I'm now looking for something that's in a different class to the Brompton, I'm now looking closely at a bunch of bikes I dismissed back when I was looking at folding bikes last time.

A-Bike

For instance, part of me really likes the idea of the A-Bike.  I've long thought the ideal folding bike would also be collapsible, and the A-Bike does pack up quite small.  It also has 6-inch wheels, which is a little bit alarming.

I'm sure it rides much better than it looks like it will, but I've had enough experience with scooters and the like to know the smaller the wheel, the more likely it is that a pot-hole will send you flying.

If they had offered a model with larger wheels, I probably would be thinking about it more seriously.

The Carryme
Image from Ridethisbike.com

The Carryme by Pacific Cycles is not quite as compact as the A-Bike, but it looks much more robust, it has 8-inch wheels (which makes more difference than you may think) - and it's got some pretty good reviews on the Interwebs.  Some of them even rank it higher than the Strida in terms of practicality and value for money.

I have to admit that the more I look at the Carryme, and the more I read about it, the more I want one.

Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to take it for a test ride while I'm in Melbourne.  And something in the back of my head is saying: "It's sort of in the same 'class' as the Strida, and it might be better - so you really shouldn't get both..."

And, really, I shouldn't get either.  I don't need another folding bike.

No, really, I don't.

Are you listening to me, Sharon?  You don't need another folding bike.

“Working from home”, Pt 2

Following on from my last ramblings about “working from home”, I was thinking that it’s strange there’s not more of a trend of working from someone else’s home.  Or having someone else work from your home.

My aunt works from home, and she could probably do with a bit of extra income.  Her son has the front down stairs room, which is a perfect space for an office.  You can get to it from the street without entering the house or yard.  You can cut it off from the rest of the house and there’s a kitchenette and toilet that can be easily accessed...  If she kicked him out to the granny flat, she could convert that room and rent it out as office space.  Parking would be awkward, but I’m sure they’d work something out.

There are probably a lot of houses that could have a section converted to office space.  You hear about people converting part of their homes into a separate living space so they can rent it out, but it doesn’t seem to be a common thing for people to convert a space into an office to let.

From the home owner’s point of view it would be less intrusive than having someone actually living in your house, but still a source of income.  And if you were running a small business and needed an office it would probably be cheaper than renting a space in a commercial complex, and possibly a more pleasant environment.

This way, even if you lived in a one bedroom flat and you wouldn’t particularly want to work there, you could still “work from home”.  Just not your home.

And it would potentially be a much safer investment on the part of the home owner.  People are odd, and treat the place where they live in a way they would never treat the place where they work.  A professional working in an office is likely to do much less damage (I would expect) than someone living in a rented room.  And it would be so much easier to evict someone who’s mistreating the place if they don’t actually live there.

This could be a thing.  How do we make this a thing?

“Working from Home”, Pt 1

“Working from home” is a funny phrase, when you think of it.  Really, you’re working at home.  I don’t know why (in Australia, at least) we us the word “from”.  Perhaps it’s to create some sort of distance from the idea of house work.  Can’t have people thinking all you do all day is vacuum, now, can we?

I was reading something in the paper recently about a company which is encouraging its workers to “work from home” at least one day a week.  I mentioned it to my manager, who then got this dreamy look on her face and said it was a “lovely” idea. 

She maintains the biggest problem she has with getting stuff done is the office environment, and she’s probably right.  We are a nest of distractions – and, ironically, most of the time it’s our work distracting us from our work.  All of the little things just eat away at the time you need to tackle the bigger things.

I suppose you could say I’ve been “working from home” one day a week for the past couple of years – but I’ve actually been “studying at home”.  No one’s paying me to be here on my study days (no one’s paying me at all on my study days) and what I do doesn’t directly benefit my employer.  I know that I have been learning a lot that has helped me do my job a bit better, but it’s not really what people think of when you say “working from home”.

I’m going to miss it when this Master’s degree wraps up at the end of the semester and I have to go back to working full time.  There’s something oddly wonderful about being at home during a weekday.  When my attention starts wandering I can always clean something or bake something, which makes me feel useful.  And just being able to have the place to myself and potter around is lovely.  It’s somehow more relaxing than the weekend, when it feels like everything is being crammed in and shuffled around.

Additionally, because I’ve chosen to keep the Internet out of my house, I’m not fragmented by a steady stream of emails and interruptions (just interrupted by the occasional desire to write a blog post).

Of course, if I ever did “work from home” (in my current job), I’d have to get all connected and let those emails come.  Unless, that is, I could magically create a job for myself that brings in enough money to live on and grants me the freedom to only check my emails a couple of times a week when I pop into a library.

And I don’t think I’d want to “work from home” full time – I do enjoy going to work and conversing with real people.

All I need to do is find a part-time job where I can be with other human beings for half the week, and then a hobby that pays it’s way so I can “work from home” for the other few days.

Simple!

I finally did something!

Sure, it has 10.30 at night when I finally remembered that I was going to start making things on Monday nights, but I remembered!

And I actually did something!

It's this thing:

Okay, it wasn't all of that thing.  I actually only did five rows of it - but still, that was five rows that hadn't been there prior to last night!

What is it, you say?

Well, it's a cross-stitch, obviously.

I did commit the cross-stitching sin of reversing the direction of my stitches, but hopefully you'll be so blinded by the fact that it's an unfinished work that you won't notice it's also badly done.  And badly photographed.

Hooray for doing stuff!

The trouble with stairs

Over the past few years I’ve come to view the stairs in my house as a problem.

Growing up in North Queensland, stairs are a fact of life.  Except for a couple of years when I lived in a ground-floor unit, I’ve lived in high-set homes all my life. 

In the last few years, however, I’ve been seriously questioning the logic of any house design that renders the living areas accessible only by stairs.

It’s all well and good if you are young and fit and mobile and can bound up those stairs with vim and vigour… but the older you get, the more potential those stairs have to make getting in and out of your own home a problem.

My grandmother spent the last few years of her life virtually house-bound because the stairs became more and more of an obstacle for her.  By the time it got to the stage that we had to install a chair lift to get her up and down the stairs, getting out of her own house had become an event in itself.

Not only did she only leave the house when the occasion was worth the exertion – she almost never spent time in her own gardens because the effort it took to get to the lift (which was installed at the front of her house) and get around to the back yard was simply too much for her. 

Without those stairs, she could have just walked out her back door and spent time surrounded by trees and things.  Or, if she wanted to go out, she could have just walked out the front door and saved her energy for getting in and out of the car.

I honestly believe she would have had a better life if she had moved to a low-set house (with few or no stairs) in her sixties. 

In her sixties, she was still young and spritely enough that a move would have been something she could tackle with energy and enthusiasm.  In her late 70s, she was stubborn and grumpy and her health was shattered from 50-odd years of heavy smoking.  She was entrenched and determined to die in her own home (which didn’t happen) and resistant to any suggestion of moving – even though, in hindsight, that house was seriously bad for her quality of life.

For the past year or so, we’ve been watching my old dog struggle with the stairs in this house.  She slept downstairs and spent most of the day there, but when we were home she loved nothing better than to come up stairs and be near us – in the living space where we spent most of our time.

We’d been wondering what we would do when she could no longer make it up and down the stairs.  After all, you can’t install a chair lift for a dog – but being left downstairs would have made her miserable.  Additionally, she’d been very unstable on her feet, coming up and down the stairs.  Yet we had to make her go downstairs on a regular basis to pee, or go out for a walk, or go to bed...  We were honestly wondering if she would fall down the stairs and break her neck before she got to the point where she couldn’t make it up or down the stairs at all.

Well, a couple of weeks ago she tumbled down the stairs and did herself some serious harm.  So serious, we had to put her down. 

I know – deep in my soul, I know – that her quality of life and her length of life would have been vastly improved if we didn’t live in a house where the living areas were only accessible by stairs.  And I’m at the point where I know (deep in my soul, I know) that I could say the same for my grandmother.

It really brought home to me the fact that smart people don’t grow old (and don’t let their loved ones grow old) with what amounts to a feature of an obstacle course built into their own home.

When you are young enough to climb stairs or walk up hills without a problem, you don’t care about this sort of thing.  Heck, you could enter via rope ladder and exit via fireman’s pole, if that’s what you wanted to do.  But the minute you find yourself regularly getting to the top of your stairs (or steep driveway) and feeling a bit worn out by the experience, it’s time to move on.

My mother is in her sixties.  She’s still young enough and spritely enough to tackle a move with energy and enthusiasm – and she has arthritis in her hips and knees and regularly notices the effort it takes to get up and down the stairs.  Because I love her, I’m going to keep pestering her until she sells up and moves to a more practical house. 

This house has been in the family for almost 50 years and I love it, but I’m not going to let it swallow up the lives of anyone else I love.  It’s time to go.

If someone you love is living in a house with stairs (or any other obstacles), do what you can to push them out before they get stuck there.  They’ll never notice how much better they have it, but you will be giving them better quality of life in their later years.