Programming lecturer quote of the day, following a question about the exercise we'd just completed:
"Yes. This program is totally unusable, impractical and there's no use for it at all... apart from to demonstrate."
"You wouldn't get much money for it if you tried to sell it."
My flatmate has lent me a midi system and because I don't have any tapes and my CDs are packed away, I have finally found a reason to listen to the radio.
Of course, I do like Triple J. (No ads!!) But I accidentally stumbled upon Radio Fogey when I was trying to tune the thing. It's awesome. It's got a Fogey presenter and a sidekick female Fogey and Fogey competitions. The only ads are just spoken by the one Fogey presenter, and aren't all jingly like those on the commercial stations. They have caller competitions where you have to write in and this week Doris and Ethel won the tickets to the Fogey Outing of the Week.
Best of all, I can listen to my Fogey Music. Bing Crosby, Doris Day, bring them on!
I'm not including the station here because first of all, if you're trying to find it, you can see it as a type of competition with yourself, and second, you might try to win the competitions ahead of me.
The puppy isn't yet big enough to take away from her mother, but she has been named if not picked out, and one day of the weekend was spent looking for puppy accessories.
It's worth shopping around. How much would you pay for a large metal dog-food bowl with rubber grips on the bottom? Shopping for these sorts of things is like shopping in a country where you need to barter to get a fair price - think, "What is this thing actually worth?" and make your decision to buy it or not based on that. For the record, the pet-store sells the bowl for forty dollars. But here's a plug for The Reject Shop - you can get one there for significantly under ten. Likewise brushes with nice, tough bristles. It was worth shopping around within the one mall.
Standing in line at The Reject Shop it was obvious that D was getting a puppy. The woman in front (who was drinking a curious bright pink drink with a marble in the bottle) struck up conversation easily and uninhibitedly because dog people have always got something in common. If you take a cute looking dog out for a walk, you'll get dog people stopping to admire the dog. They talk to your dog first, as a way in, and then you as the owner can respond if you want to, though true dog lovers won't let you get away without asking you the name and whether it's a pure bred and has she had her shots yet? It's kind of like having a baby, I guess (though I'm not experienced in that one yet, fortunately).
I've noticed that gardeners are similar in that if one gardener spots another gardener, they'll talk about weeds and potting mix for hours on end. Same as sports fans. Computer geeks too. All of these subjects are sufficiently broad as to keep fellow fans entertained for hours just yakking about it. (Or arguing about it.)
That's why the internet is so good for people with fringe interests. You can find like-minded people no matter how 'fringe' your hobby is these days. Infact, you could come to the conclusion after looking on the net that your hobby isn't fringe after all. How about these for hobbies? Any take your fancy?
swm with gsoh wltm attractive lady. must like reptiles and
potato. I am handsome, over 5', in working condition, financially indep.
with my own pc museum. i like long romantic walks, movies and cosplay.
Having just moved in, our new flat is currently in the sort of state where you:
- Look at a corner of the house and wonder where you're going to start in order to get it tidy.
- Would rather go out than do anything at home, including leisure activities
- Don't know how everything is going to fit in the storage space available
- Have to watch your feet for health and safety traps
- Drop a spoon and find it significantly later (not for want of looking, I might add).
Why is it that each time I move I end up with a collection of objects which don't seem to belong anywhere? Despite this, I don't want to throw them away. Even though, due to the expense, I only shipped to Australia what I really really wanted, I have still ended up with things that I really have no use for now.
I have two blind folds taken from planes. (I also have no curtains, so one of them may come in handy, but why two?) I also have two sets of earplugs (from my hostel days). Someone also kindly left some earplugs in the bedside cabinet that I inherited. Now I technically have six earplugs and two ears. Is someone trying to tell me something?
I had (until a few hours ago when I threw them away) two keys for which I no longer own the locks. I don't know how the locks went missing. What burglar would just steal the lock, for goodness sake? And why not steal the keys too, so at least they'd be useful...?
Two batteries - loose. I don't know if they work or not yet, and next time something runs out of AA batteries I'll have to remember these two, stored safely at the back of my drawer, just waiting for such an opportunity to prove their worth or worthlessness and be thrown out once and for all.
Hayfever medication. There's only one area in the entire world where I have suffered from hayfever (as all newcomers did) when I moved to The Hawke's Bay in NZ. To survive the Hastings summer I stocked myself up on hayfever medication thinking that I had developed it permanently. Now I don't seem to be suffering from hayfever at all. But as soon as I throw away my medication (which has almost but not quite reached its expiry date) I'm sure I'm going to be suffering from itchy nose and runny eyes. The torrential rains will start and Victoria will burst into bloom, spreading the grass pollen like goodnews.
I somehow ended up with a cord I don't know the use for. But it looks like an important cord, and at the weekend I spent about $150 on a cord for my laptop which had overheated in London, so I know the replacement value of useless looking electrical equipment if you just happen to throw them out on a minimalist kick.
So anyhow, I have done what all sensible people do with these things. I have designated a drawer. (Actually three drawers, but let's not quibble over details.) The drawer will work like my 'not-for-important-stuff' password. I have a password which I use when I register online for something and I'm sure I'm going to forget that I've even registered let alone the password. If I ever go back to the website and I'm asked for a password I'll think, "Oh, I must have used that password, not because I remember using it, but because I would have used it."
Similarly, when I'm looking for random* cords and stuff I'll think, "I don't remember putting it in that drawer, but I would have." And I'll solve the problem of losing things. (I'll also have to rectify my habit of throwing things randomly into cupboards and under the bed before people come round.)
*P.S. Has the meaning of random changed? Originally I'm sure it meant the opposite of 'organised' or 'occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern'. Now, especially among people younger than myself, it seems to be used as an exclamation meaning a variety of things.
"Random!"
Oh my god!
"This random guy came up to me and asked me for my phone number."
Unknown
"Everything she says is so random."
Bizarre, unexpected
When someone lists their least favourite foods, I am always surprised to find that fish features so disgustingly on many of them. Japanese people, I noticed, almost universally like fish, which is just as well, because everything in Japan seems to either be fish, or at least tastes like fish. Westerners I met in Japan, however, often seemed to hate it, which made me wonder how they survived. Perhaps a mild distaste for fish grew in magnitude by being surrounded by it. If you go to a Japanese supermarket you can't walk past the fridge section without being bowled over by a fishy smell. Japanese people I know find this pleasant. Even as a fish lover, I can't say I find it that pleasant... I'm not talking about the smell of old fish, I'd like to clarify. Just the smell you get when surrounded by a very large volume of fresh fish, which is quite different.
Is liking fish or not a genetic thing? I seem to like the same things as my Dad, so perhaps taste is passed on. Or, is it due to exposure? I used to hate green tea. But in Japan I was obliged to drink it, as it is served up on formal occasions where you feel you can't say no. Now I quite like green tea, and it goes well with Asian flavours as a sort of palate cleansing beverage. So I tend to subscribe to the nurture rather than nature point of view on this one.
To get back to the fish, I think the reason that many people don't like it is because the smell of it reminds them of some pretty disgusting things in nature. Without going too heavily into that one, rubbish juice springs to mind. The bottom of the wheelie bin smells terrible at the moment, which is partly to do with the fact that it has been so hot outside and the bacteria will be having a party, with many gate crashers. But it smells kind of like fish in there (along with a hell of a lot of other components). This, despite not having put any rubbish with any kind of fish parts in the bin at all. Hmmm. How does it happen that rubbish juice always smells like this?
There is a group of people who are 'involved' with their cars and there is also a group of people who are involved with their computers.
Who's got the bigger RAM? Who's got the better quality of RAM? ("Aaaw, Hyundai are shit!")
The only problem with being a computer booner is you can't annoy the neighbours with the size of it. Not easily, anyhow. You could always just buy really small fans and run them at very high speeds. You could also get flashing LCD lights and different coloured computer cables. You therefore have to surround yourself with likeminded people who are actually impressed at the speed of your RAM, the size of your tower and the whizzy bangy things.
I know the place, if anyone's interested in turning up to boast.
Pedants need only look to programming as a way in which to meet their pedantic tendencies... and with that actually being a good thing.
Isn't it funny how when you're meant to be studying, cleaning the oven looks appealing. But when the alternative option is sitting on the couch watching TV, the last thing you want to do is clean the oven.
If I have to study, generally the last thing I want to study is maths. But today, during my programming class, I had just got out two maths textbooks from the library and for some reason the maths textbooks seemed more appealing than the Java textbook. On Thursday during maths, I'll probably get a yearning feeling to open my Java textbook. Why does this happen? Why is the grass always greener on the other side?
To be fair, one of the maths books I have got out is quite interesting... for a maths book. It's purple with London buses on the front and it's called "Why Do Buses Come In Threes: the hidden mathematics of everyday life". It covers such things as how to cut a cake evenly no matter how odd the number of people and examines whether a cup of tea gets colder if you put the milk in first or last. It's even got little pictures in it.
There are some things you accidentally find on Wikipedia that you can spend hours looking at. Usually, you find these things accidentally.
List of Glossaries
Here, you can find all sorts of glossaries compiled by people with strange obsessions. You can find a blogging glossary, a glossary of words without vowels and neologisms from the Simpsons, among others.
You may have heard the toilet referred to as 'The Big White Microphone', so to extend the theatre analogy, I will refer to 'the inability to go' as 'stage fright'.
Why do women feel they need to hold a mini-party in public toilets? At TAFE the level one toilets are always filled with more females doing something other than toileting than there are with females actually in the toilet. You'd be amazed how often women run into each other and have a full on catch up in there. There are a large number of women who only pop in to do their hair or makeup, probably hoping to catch up with someone in there and have a good gossip.
The female toilet hardly ever smells like pooh. That's probably because there are lots of women who go out of their way to avoid having a pooh in a public place. After all, it's not easy to interrupt a medium-sized social gathering with a resounding fart when the acoustics in the toilets are so great. (They should design theatres like toilets - it would be easy and cost effective.) Anyhow, constipation is more of a problem in women. I'm not surprised. For some reason, even in the toilet cubicle, it's not fully accepted in our culture for a woman to let it rip when there's a gaggle of women right outside the cubicle.
This is where it would be advantageous to be a bloke. Blokes that I have talked to don't have this stage fright problem. My Dad always says, "If you can't fart in the toilet, where can you fart?" This is a good point. Apparently, if you're a bloke and you need to go into a cubicle, you can impress the blokes standing at the urinal by letting it rip. The plop is meant to make the biggest noise possible. The bigger it is, the more prestige afforded to him. The bigger the stink, the more a bloke can take pride, thinking as he waltzes out, "I made that stink".
I think this form of prestige is cemented in the teenage years. Teaching at a girls' school, I can count on one hand the number of times someone farted in class, and it was never intentional. (Well, maybe once, but then she blamed the chair when she found herself the centre of attention.)
At a boys' school, however, you don't want to be sitting in assembly without taking a gas mask. When there's nothing else to do, boys will start some fun by letting one off and seeing how far they can stink the room out. I even heard of one boy who ate raw onion sandwiches every day so he could let off the stinkiest ones possible. I once taught a boy who would come up to my desk and ask me questions until he let one off, then say, "Thank you Miss, I get it now", before rushing off to his own desk before the stink could affect him. Then he'd try and make out I did it. When he accused a large, red-headed boy of having bad-breath, I told him that he couldn't talk about stink, and I decided to refer to him as 'Stink-Boy'. Deservedly, I feel. The political correctness that was hammered into me at teachers' college doesn't include boys who play tricks like that, I decided.
Chemistry teachers at boys' schools could easily engage the attention of the class by launching into a lesson on which foods produce the smelliest farts. Some boys eventually become experts at it through trial and error. They learn that sulphurous foods such as cauliflower and eggs produce the smelliest ones, whereas by eating a lot of beans it's easiest to make the loud ones, but they won't stink as well.
If you're a graduate of a boys' school, you'll know what a muffin is. It is quite a skill to do a muffin. You have to grab the fart as it comes out, hold it in your hand until you can blow the smell into someone's face. You have to take atmospheric conditions such as humidity and windspeed into account, and I'm sure lots of future pilots have done their apprenticeships on muffins. I've been a victim of some blokes who are masters at it. The drawback is no doubt a stinky hand. And no doubt this can be used as a weapon anyhow. (Some fart experts think that reptile farts smell so bad that they probably use farts as a weapon.)
Dogs are even further along the continuum of uninhibitedness. A dog usually won't even bat an eyelid (although I did hear of a certain dalmation who gave itself a big fright every time it farted). Dogs can completely stink out a room and look totally non-plussed. This baffles me, as dogs usually get excited by stinky stuff like manure and old socks. Maybe a dog's own fart doesn't even smell good to a dog.
Finally a quote from Facts on Farts: "We should be grateful we're not crinoids. A crinoid is a marine creature with a U-shaped gut, and its anus is located right next to its mouth'.
I reckon I know a few humanoid crinoids actually.
Today I had a maths class for the first time since 1994. Not only was it a maths class, but it was a three hour maths class and it was mathematics for computing. The advantage I have as an adult learner is that, because I'm studying maths, I understand there is a point to knowing this stuff. That has taken me over ten years to discover. No teacher was ever able to satisfactorily persuade me of the usefulness of maths when I was a teenager, though I'm sure this was as much to do with my own mental block as to do with the effort of the teachers trying to convince me that I needed to do some work.
Interestingly, even though the most difficult thing I've done mathematically since then is calculate my change at the counter, it's amazing how you can get by in life being a complete maths dummy. I've managed to live a full life until now not knowing about bases and binary mathematics. I suppose once you're using this sort of thing every day, you don't know how people can live without knowing it. How much richer people's lives can be...
Also interestingly, although I thought a whole heap of information had never sunk in at school, it's funny how it partially comes back, or at least rings some bells. Bodmas is a word I remember from school, but I couldn't have told you before today what it stood for.
There are lots of things about maths that I will never get. Why is it that two to the power of two is four, three to the power of three is twenty seven, yet any number to the power of zero is one? That just doesn't make any sense to me at all. One to the power of zero is one. (Isn't that like saying one times zero, after all?) Twenty seven point five three to the power of zero is also one. One what? And apparently, even one Chicken's head to the power of zero is also one. Who worked that out? Who decided? Is it a truth univerally acknowledged, or did someone just decide that in order to work out the equations, they'd have to decide it was something, so one would be the easiest?
All my IT lecturers wear gold chains. Some are thicker than others, but once I noticed one, I kept noticing everyone's. I think they must have some sort of Brotherhood around here. Maybe on the interview panel there's a checkbox beside which is written 'Wears a gold chain?' Also as a prerequisite is the need to wear a flash disk around the neck, in lieu of a tie.
And quote of the day from one of my lecturers, who was reading from a PowerPoint presentation about JDK being renamed as the Java 2 Software Development Kit (SDK):
"I don't know what impact this all has, but it's information anyway."
Somebody farted before, in this enclosed space. It's the kind of enclosed space with the humming of computers, fluorescent lights and multiple people. Many people around the world are working in conditions such as these, and no doubt people fart all the time, everyday. At any one time around the world, I bet thousands of people are farting simultaneously. So it's not surprising that one of those farters let one off right next to me.
I know who it was. It's easy to tell who farted. They usually give one, short sniff right after they realise that it does stink afterall. It's kind of an involuntary reaction. There's a mild panic going on in their head, because they know that the people around them are going to wonder who it was, and they wonder if the fart has made a long tail of green smoke or something trailing from their behinds. Then they suddenly realise that this is ridiculous; farts are invisible, and if they keep their head down, or perhaps divert attention by wriggling in their squeaky chairs, nobody will notice.
It's funny how the smell of a fart has the ability to capture the attention of a roomful of people. When I'm at work, somebody could walk into the room, slurp on a cup of coffee, hum a wee tune and I wouldn't necessarily notice any of these things. Somebody who lets one off, however, never gets away with it. You always notice.
Why is this? When somebody right next to you lets one off, you wonder if the person beside you thinks it was you. This is particularly annoying. But if you get up to open a window, they'll really think it was you, despite the fact that the real culprit is sitting engrossed in their work, sniffing abruptly, trying to pretend it never happened.
I remember a couple of years ago attending an evening where high school finalists were delivering speeches to a roomful of supportive family and friends. One person in the audience, an unidentified middle aged woman, kept farting. She made no attempt to mask the sound, and this seemed to make the odour worse. Unfortunately for me, I was sitting in the front row and was in full view of the poor students nervously delivering their speeches; in sum, I couldn't afford to laugh.
Unfortunately for me, I found this situation highly entertaining; more entertaining than the speeches themselves (which happened to be of an exceptional standard). When, after a particularly wafty fart, my head of department stood up in the middle of a speech and flung open the biggest window in the room, I could hardly contain myself. I was reminded of the days at intermediate when the very solemnity of the occasion of assembly would set me off in itself. Fortunately since then I had learnt when it's advisable to leave the room.
Therein lies a lesson. Not everyone who leaves the room is the culprit. Bear that in mind...
Wouldn't the universe have been a different place had people been born without thumbs, or pinkies, for that matter. Instead of a universe based on the decimal system, the primitive humans would only have had eight fingers to count on, and our world would be run according to a hexa system.
Alternatively, what if a dictating King had been born with some a deformity that meant he had six fingers on each hand. "I hereby decree that the land be calculated according to base twelve", he would cry, and the maths textbooks would be rewritten and a kilometre would no longer designate a thousand metres, but rather twelve hundred metres. Everything in shops would seem cheaper for a while... until you got used to it, and then everything would seem expensive again. (A bit like going home after being in London.)
According to Wikipedia (which is generally pretty accurate in my experience) "a number of Australian Aboriginal languages employ binary or binary-like counting systems. For example, in Kala Lagaw Ya, the numbers one through six are urapon, ukasar, ukasar-urapon, ukasar-ukasar, ukasar-ukasar-urapon, ukasar-ukasar-ukasar." I guess rather than counting their fingers, they just decided to count their hands.
Of course, the world really works in base two. Something is either there or is isn't. It's either on or it's off. It's up or it's down. Everything else just confuscates* the issue. So why isn't my Java programming class much easier than it is?
And who decided to call it Java anyhow? Apparently, it used to be called Oak. Then they found out that Oak was already the name of a programming language and, probably over a cup of coffee, they decided to call it Java. (Who knows who they are?)
By tomorrow evening I will be the proud owner of a book the size of the London telephone directory which tells me all I want to know (plus much more) about Java. I am not looking forward to carting that backwards and forwards from TAFE on my bicycle. I can just imagine the corner of it sticking into my back at an unfortunate angle, prodding my conscience into remembering that I probably haven't read enough for one day.
It's interesting that some of the most useful things in life are not the most interesting. There's very little correlation at all, in fact. I am looking forward to being able to write Java script, but in the interim I will be fighting off urges to clean the oven and weed the garden rather than hit the books. Aaaah, why I have missed studying eludes me just for now...
*This is not a real word. I made it up. Feel free to start a new trend, and confuscate people by using it.
Imagine if real life worked like this, and each time you woke up in the morning, you looked completely different. Assuming you could bypass the inconvenience of nobody recognising you, what percentage of people would take their chances and choose to wake up in a different body tomorrow? That would sort out who really was just moaning about their nose and who was seriously dissatisfied!
I sometimes think it would be advantageous looking different in different situations. Most of the time, of course, I am completely happy looking like me. But when I go in to buy a car or have some work done on it, I wish I looked like a man, about forty, dressed in overalls with grease on my hands. I reckon there's a smaller likelihood of being ripped off.
As a teacher walking in to relieve a difficult class, I reckon you'd want to be a really big, muscly black dude with a deep voice and scars across your face.
To get away with doing something silly you'd want to look young and innocent, and adopt body language to match. And therein lies the trick to it - it would be no good just being given the outer shell, you'd have to have the body language as well. And it may pay not to say much in certain situations either, in case of blowing your cover.
What I would love to know is how much our appearance influences our personalities. I'm sure there are psychological and sociological researchers who have written theses on this very topic. I'm sure that people get treated differently according to how old they look, what they are wearing, their accent and everything. Robert Winston did a fascinating series about appearance, and in one episode he rolled up to a cafe in a beaten up wagon dressed in rags and didn't get a second glance from a group of women sitting there. Next he changed into a designer suit and rolled up in a really expensive car and the women all looked over at him and smiled.
It's not just women who are influenced like this. A blonde model struggling with a heavy bag stood there for only a few seconds before a guy helped her out, yet an older woman wearing much more staid clothes stood there for a long while before having to ask someone to help her. Of course, if it had been a bloke with the case, he would have been stuck there for good, in all likelihood, before he was helped out!
I remember being a teenager, riding my bike everywhere, and having to go into shops wearing a back-pack. I was always viewed with suspicion because of the big bag and because I was a teenager. Of course, teenagers have the reputation of shop-lifting (whether or not they shop-life any more prolifically than other demographics) and now that I look a bit older, I have definitely noticed a drop in occasions when I feel a shop assistant is eyeing me up suspiciously.
These guys are in for it. Tonight I will probably dream about their slow, torturous death. There's something satisfying and deeply cruelly human about having targets, and these four dudes are it for me. Blinky will go first. I'll eat that powerball and chew him up and spit him out. Pinky's little pinky-toe is something I'd love to stomp on and make him squeal like the little pink pig that he is. Inky might be harder to catch, and Clyde, well he's just dumb and I might just let him go for a bit so I can torture him slowly.
In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is likely to hurt. 'Posthumous Pieces' by Wei Wu Wei
I just watched the Seinfeld episode in which George tells his date The Truth - that she is pretentious - and the gf ends up in a mental institution. Everyone else tells George he is a fool for telling her the truth, and even in situations where someone demands to know why you're breaking up with them, you should lie.
Of course, the main reason Seinfeld thought George should lie is because the girlfriend had his tax papers, which he was unlikely to get back after George told 'The Truth'.
This brings me to my point: when someone tells someone else a lie, for example about their gift, their looks, their breath... The fact that they lie is as much to do about self-preservation as it is to do about the other person's well-being. Most of the time, we are not only concerned with how The Truth is going to affect the other person's feelings, but about how much we are going to be disliked for telling the truth.
It's interesting that nobody likes to be disliked, even when we are disliked by someone we dislike equally intensely in return.
I'm not advocating telling-the-truth-at-all-times-no-matter-what. The world wouldn't work like that. I have noticed, however, that in some social groups it's much more likely that the members will tell each other the truth.
Take teenage boys, for instance. They always tell each other the truth, except of course when they are playing pranks on each other or trying to get one over the other.
Teenage-girls-who-are-friends aren't so good at The Truth. A teenage girl will tell her friend that her boyfriend is lovely even when she realises he is not. This is because she doesn't want to make her friend feel bad, but also because by telling The Truth, the friend knows she will be wiped off the Christmas Card list. Some girls never grow out of this kind of false comraderie.
But no matter how bad we are in our youth about telling The Truth, I think most people get better as they get older. It must be very liberating to be an old battleaxe, because the defintion of a battleaxe, as far as I can see, is someone who is no longer concerned with what other people think of them, and are refreshingly up-front and honest.
This is why I wouldn't mind being a battleaxe when I'm older. I think 60 will be the D-Day for me. On my 60th birthday I'm going to have a 'Battleaxe Birthday', because after that I am going to wear whatever I want wherever I want, only attend functions I know I will enjoy and I'll be almost retired anyway, so the little brown-nosing I do anyway will be completely wiped out of my repertoire of skills.
Today was the first day at TAFE, but it wasn't a proper day... Just orientation. I can't believe the timetable - I start at eight on four out of five days, and on Tuesdays I'll be going on and off all day from 8 in the morning (with a maths tutorial) til 8 at night. You should have heard the groans when that one was given out - it only affects those of us in our stream too, so we lucked out!! There are only about six girls in the class and about 20 guys, most of whom look like they're straight out of high school. Many of them fit The Stereotype to look at and I won't judge too harshly before I've talked to anyone about anything, but one guy who looked pretty normal spent a good five minutes full on picking his nose, and another five examining it. (That's only the time I was aware of it.) I'm hoping things will normal up after this.
If you browse the catfood section at the supermarket you'll notice that there are almost as many flavours of catfood as there are of human ready meals these days. In New Zealand, one of the biggest producers of tomato sauce, frozen peas and so on (Watties) is also the producer of one of the best known brands of catfood (Chef) so it's no surprise that the catfood sounds a bit like human food. If it's catfood you're after, you can buy lamb casserole, tasty chicken and turkey, tender chicken classic, salmon and tuna, beef and kidney, and I'm not joking when I say that Chef puts out a gourmet range now with flavours such as Mediterranean Chicken Terrine and Oceanfish Risotto with Salmon. Hell, last night I had what I'd call 'soup' and the night before I had 'stew', which just goes to show that many pusscats are eating flasher stuff than I am.
So they would have us believe.
Perhaps all these different flavours are part of a simple graphic design plan rather than an actual one. What I mean is, it says on the label that all these meats are different... but are they actually the same meat in different packaging? How's the cat going to let on? And it would take a pretty dedicated cat-owner to taste-test the wares before complaining to the manufacturer about false advertising, so wouldn't it make economic sense for a catfood manufacturer to make one, or maybe two main batches of catfood, chop 'em up a bit differently and stick 'em in a variety of differently labelled cans?
When I was a kid, our family had two cats, Mistie and Smokey. Both were fussy in their own ways, and what made them fussier was alternating the catfoods about. They decided they liked some brands and not others, and then went on hunger strikes for days and days, which didn't seem to stop them rushing to the fridge wailing whenever anybody entered the kitchen. Their favourite food was fresh mince from the pet butchers'. Most of the meat was for dogs. At the butchers', under the glass counter, were a variety of meats labelled as 'cow's meat', 'horse meat', 'pig meat' and 'cat meat'. My mother once tried cracking a joke to the guy behind the counter.
"What's pig meat made of?" she asked.
(without cracking a smile) "Pigs."
"Then what's cat meat made of?"
(silent stare)
The stony reception meant our cats didn't get cat mince very often. Plus it made a bloody, smelly mess in the fridge unless you were really careful, so most of the time it was a variety of flavours of catfood. The smellier it was, the more the cats liked it.
If it were the cats themselves who attended the supermarket and did the weekly shopping, the marketers would have to approach their sales pitch completely differently. Casserole wouldn't be a goer at all. Much less Mediterranean Chicken Terrine. What cat in this part of the world has been to the Mediterranean anyway? No, the best sellers would be 'Stinky Fish', 'Extra Pongy Unidentified Meat', 'Fragrant Offle' and 'Putrid Pig'. That would do any pet nicely I believe.
(Speaking of disgusting stuff, on the way to the lake on our bikes this morning, we saw a dead cat in the gutter with dried blood coming out of its mouth. Unfortunately you see more of every kind of scenery on a bike. When we arrived at the lake, two seagulls were fighting over a used condom. Noooice.)
Harry Melbourne died, aged 94 a few weeks ago. Until I read this in the local circulated newspaper, I didn't have the foggiest idea who Mr Melbourne was, but it turned out he was the creator of the Freddo Frog. He lived just around the corner from here.
Apparently, the Freddo Frog used to be a mouse, but he persuaded his employer to change to frogs because women and children were afraid of mice. Harry Melbourne never earned a cent out of his creation, but everyone knows the Freddo Frog, so no doubt it was one of his greatest achievements. He must have known that when he died, he would be known most widely as 'the creator of the Freddo Frog'.
I think it's called a mid-life crisis (or quarter life crisis) when you start to wonder what you're going to be remembered for when you die. A good way of realising your dreams is to ask yourself what you'd most like to be remembered for. Of course, when you die, it's doubtful you'll care very much anyway, because if there's an afterlife surely you'll be more interested in learning the ropes up there than dwelling on the past life on earth? I guess that means that whatever you're doing, enjoy it. And that's as philosophical as I can get on a hot day like today (which I am enjoying).
I may just enjoy life even more this weekend and buy a few Freddo Frogs to remember Harry.
Einstein said:
Each person travelling in his or her own way must experience a different time flow than others, travelling differently.
I find the ideas around time travel almost impossible to comprehend. I know it's not even possible, and not even worth trying to comprehend on some levels, but these ideas are fascinating nevertheless:
^The closer to the speed of light that an object travels, the slower time passes for it.
^Orbiting around a black hole would bring one to very high speeds, close to the speed of light, causing the time in that person's view to seem normal, but to everyone else very slow. The person moving that fast would feel as if he were travelling ordinarily, but would to himself be moving forward in time faster than everyone else, thus creating time travel. This can only go one way, though. Time travel backwards would be very difficult, if not impossible.
^Even if you could travel at the speed of light, you wouldn't go back in time. The opposite would happen: if you looked out the window of your lightspeed vessel, you would see every event in the entire universe happening at once, and probably in the same place.
Perhaps my descendents have a lot of evolving to do before any of this becomes comprehensible. In the meantime I'll occupy myself with more trivial piffle, drivel and fluff.
Leb cues can be purchased at the vege shop. I saw the sign and, as you do with vegetables you don't know the name of, moved onto the tomatoes. However, when I was told how delicious Leb Cues are, we bought about four of them. It took me a while to work out that, like lots of things, the Aussies have made up their own abbreviation, incomprehensible to the newcomer.
If you didn't know what a Leb Cue* was, there's no way of finding out on the net. If you look up Leb, you're no better off, because it only exists in German. For your information, a Leb is "eine moderne Vorortsbahn, die in Lausanne teilweise unterirdisch verkehrt. Die Züge fahren alle 30 Minuten (zwischen Echallens und Bercher alle 60 Minuten ausserhalb der Hauptverkehrszeit)." Useful. I can't read a word of it, but I'm guessing it says a Leb is 'in modern Vorotsbahn, where someone called Lausanne died on the twelfth of November under a bridge. The far-away Zuge is 30 minutes further down the autobahn (but unless you drive a swift Echallens or Bercher it can take up to 60 minutes).
A cue, on the other hand, is familiar to any English speaker who has spent time at the pub. As you'll be aware, a cue is 'a weapon used in pub brawls'.
So when I purchased the Leb Cues, I was unwittingly buying German Weapons.
*Lebanese Cucumber
Today we celebrate the life of a fly who contributed much to his species. Not only was he a loving father and devoted husband, but Frutus Stupidus was known to all as the fly who invented the ever-popular 'Inverse Spacies'. As we all know and love, Inverse Spacies involves forming teams of, oh, about 10 000 and hanging around in the air in hope that a cyclist will fly past, at which point all members of the team attempt to be first to fly into the mouth and lodge themselves in cyclist's throat.
Frutus was never very good at his own game. Until today. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; a fruit fly needs as a fruit fly must.
Now that I have an Australian tax file number and a medicare number, I feel like I'm properly here. It was surprisingly easy to get a tax file number. It involved filling in a form online and waiting for it to turn up in the post. Given the rigmarole it takes to get the equivalent in the UK, where you have to ring up, be put on hold, get cut off, ring up again, get given a time, go halfway across London on a train that's likely to be delayed, wait half an hour, wait another half hour and then be called back only to be sent the number several weeks later, this was an unbelievably simple process. Some UK bureaucrats "wouldn't life a finger to save their own grandmothers without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters." (Can you tell I'm reading a certain Guide?)
Anyway, now I have The Piece of Paper, I can now add it to my number collection. I'm thinking of getting a shadow box to display them on the wall. Trouble is, I don't like dusting.
There is something unsettling about being down to the last roll of toilet paper, which is the situation I find myself in at present. It's okay to run out of cereal, or even eggs (Heaven Forbid) but if you run out of toilet paper you're in dire straits, especially if you don't even have tissues either. I know that there are many parts of the world where toilet paper is an unaffordable luxury, and I'm not going any further with that thought. I know I have become accustomed to sleeping without a pillow, but I don't think... No, I'm not going any further with that one either.
The other day I watched the 'Square to Spare' episode of Seinfeld. I had heard the quotes from it long before I saw the episode, so now I feel a gap in my cultural knowledge has been filled.
How thick is a ply?* I was wondering if you can get fractional plys. I'm pretty sure you can, because that's what they use at my old workplace. Point five ply toilet tissue. This was problematic because they also installed fancy loo-roll dispensers (to stop staff from stealing the rolls, presumably - not that point five ply loo-rolls have a high value on the second-hand retail market) and with the weight of other loo-rolls bearing down on the point five ply roll at the bottom, it was impossible to grab more than one square at a time... if you were lucky. It was far more likely that you'd end up with part of a single point five ply square. This isn't pleasant. Entering the toilet cubicle should be your one respite from our increasingly hectic lives. Grasping frantically at such a loo-roll, however, leaves you far more frazzled and annoyed upon emerging from the cubicle than what you were when you went in.
When it comes to the normal type of toilet roll holder, which way round do you replace the roll? For some reason, I don't feel it's right unless the unravelly bit of paper is AWAY from the wall. I've no idea why. Nobody made up a rule to say toilet rolls have to face this way, and I'm not OCD in any other aspect of my life, but for some reason, even at other people's houses and in public toilets I find myself subconsciously taking the roll off and turning it around to what I feel is the right way. The only time this is a problem is when there is someone else staying in the house who has the same OCD complaint, but in reverse. Fortunately this hasn't happened in a while, but that's definitely one attribute I don't want in a flatmate.
If you get really bored, go to the following website. It's simple, but somehow soothing to be able to unravel a whole roll of toilet paper and not have to roll it back up again. If you do choose to roll it back up again, it rolls back up perfectly, not like what happens if you, for whatever reason, have to roll toilet paper back up in real life.
http://www.papertoilet.com/
In case you're wondering how I came upon this site, I was actually looking for a picture of a crab on google, when I noticed that one of the sponsored advertisement for crabs was for eBay, and it said 'new and used crabs' were for sale. I wondered who would have a use for a used crab, and who would try hawking one off? I wondered if eBay also sold 'new and used toilet paper' so I tried typing toilet paper in. For the record, they don't sell used toilet paper, but I'm glad I checked it out because then I wouldn't have found the aforementioned site, as well as a lot of other useless info about toilet paper.
* A ply is exactly a nothingth of an inch thick.
http://twilightcrawling.blogspot.com/
A reason to study Spanish more vigorously. I wish I had a Babel Fish. A REAL one.
Interesting Things The Internet Teaches Us About Eggs
Can't remember if an egg is fresh or hard boiled? Just spin the egg. If it wobbles, it's raw. If it spins easily, it's hard boiled.
(If, in the trial process, it spins out of control and smashes onto the floor, hope like mad it was hard boiled.)
A fresh egg will sink in water, a stale one will float.
(Don't try this in very deep water, as it's a waste of a fresh egg.)
White shelled eggs are produced by hens with white feathers and white ear lobes. Brown shelled eggs are produced by hens with red feathers and red ear lobes. Brown egg layers usually are slightly larger and require more food, thus brown eggs usually cost more than white eggs.
(Aaah, this explains why the even the smallest humans, which are bigger than the biggest chickens lay 'eggs' that are browner than the brownest brown eggs.)
China produces most eggs, at about 160 billion per year. In the US, about 260 million hens produce more than 65 billion eggs per year.
(I pity the poor soul who had to count all the eggs in China.)
Chickens came to the New World with Columbus on his second trip in 1493.
(How do we know this?)
A hen starts laying eggs at 19 weeks of age.
(What a shock it must get when the first one pops out.)
A hen must eat 4 pounds of feed to make a dozen eggs.
To produce one egg, it takes a hen 24-26 hours, and to do so, she requires 5 oz. of food and 10 oz. of water. Thirty minutes later she starts all over again.
Occasionally, a hen will produce double-yolked eggs throughout her egg-laying career. It is rare, but not unusual, for a young hen to produce an egg with no yolk at all.
As a hen grows older she produces larger eggs.
A mother hen turns over her egg about fifty times per day (so the yolk won't stick to the sides of the shell)
The largest single chicken egg ever laid weighed a pound with a double yolk and double shell.
(Poor chicken. Can they have C-sections?)
In the Christian Bible it says that chickens came first before the egg.
"And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And God said, 'Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven'." Genesis 1:19-20.
These facts were taken from the following websites:
http://www.didyouknow.org/eggs.htm
http://www.roseacre.com/trivia.html
http://www.aeb.org
I don't remember my dreams very often, but this morning I woke up laughing. I must have realised towards the end that what I was dreaming was just a dream. I wish I could have done it earlier, because despite the ending, it was a really annoying kind of nightmare!
I was at an unspecified mall (they're all the same anyhow) with a person who shall remain nameless. I didn't know what we were doing at the mall, and for some reason it didn't bother me that we were just wandering round aimlessly. There were kids screaming and large groups of people walking really slowly so that we couldn't get past. It was kind of like a computer game where you've got creatures obstructing your path, actually. We made it to a big store like K-Mart and finally found the aisle we thought we needed. But when we went down the aisle it kind of opened into an outdoor area which was a staff carpark. When we realised this and turned our trolley around, a young woman in a store uniform was standing there with her handbag smiling condescendingly, and she said, 'Aren't you a couple of nongs then?' She pointed at a sign which said something like 'No customer entry'.
After that experience we decided to sit down and have a coffee, which the nameless person spilled everywhere. After more frustrating shopping we decided to have a sit-down on one of those benches in the middle of the mall. There were two old ladies engaged in conversation with each other who didn't seem to notice our presence, even when the nameless person decided to perch on the back of the seat and fell off backwards. It looked like it really hurt, and although the old ladies didn't so much as flinch (were they statues?) I remember feeling concerned, until I realised he had bounced back up like a cartoon character. He then produced a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to me with a sheepish look on his face as if I should take a look.
It was upon reading the piece of paper that I woke myself up laughing. I now discovered that he was at the mall as a kind of 'Mall Licence For Blokes' and there was a list of pass criteria. I looked at the fine print, and it stated clearly that 'falling off a chair in the mall will not, in itself, jeopardise the candidate's chance of passing, though candidate may not pass with distinction'.
So what would a mall certificate look like? A bit like a warrent of fitness for a car, I expect.
(And finally, a handy Latin phrase from Dryfoo)
Utinam coniurati te in foro interficiant!
May conspirators assassinate you in the mall!
Gouache and coloured pencil on paper. Yes, I decided to turn the photo into a drawing. I am still working out how to use gouache well. Mixing it with water, it's hard not to get it streaky. I can see why it's called opaque watercolour though.
16" x 20". Gouache, coloured pencil, beads, PVA glue.
What would life have been like had I been born a manga princess? Pretty exciting, I reckon. I wouldn't need to give a wet slap about anything except how pretty I looked. Though it might be quite a 2-dimensional life. What I don't understand about this Japanese style of cartoon drawing is not only why the characters all look Western, but why do they look so exaggeratedly Western? Apparently this style is called moe, which is difficult to describe but easy to pick... big eyes, youthfulness, slim limbs, innocent-looking. No doubt this beauty ideal has had an impact on modern Japanese thinking.
The great, cavernous abyss is approaching faster and faster. You crawl along, panting, panting, and you know it's there and it's getting closer and closer. It's purple-rimmed magnificence is calling to you, catching you in, begging you PLEEEASE come to me! Purple, mauve, and back to purple... Or is it pink? Images of torn flesh flash before you. Your eyes, closed, still see the inverse of the big, dark pulsating hole ahead, and you swallow but your mouth is dry and you reach out ahead of you and your hands look a million miles away... just like the purple abyss. But it IS getting closer, you tell yourself. Closer and closer. Here it comes. And you see now that there is a cavern much smaller than the overall halo that now envelops you. It pulses in and out, in and out, and you can hear yourself screaming but no words come out. Up, down, up, down. The blood rushes past your ears and creates a rhythm both calming and disturbing and you know you are getting closer, or is the abyss getting closer, or are you approaching each other... And you fall! Oh, the release! The freedom of wind rushing past your ears! You feel yourself falling and falling and screaming is coming from somewhere and you realise it's coming from YOU...
The world stops spinning. You are floating in liquid softness. It welcomes you and you know that you have come home. You now have nothing to worry about. It is over.
*(Stream of consciousness of a blue-berry as it falls into the blender and its life flashes before its eyes.)
If I made a trip back to Japan I would stock up on pens. There are few things more satisfying that grabbing a big bundle of hi-tec or hybrid ball-point pens and taking them to the check-out counter. Japan definitely makes the best pens in the world. Of course, when you have to write Japanese characters, you understand why the type of pen you use is so important, but writing English with pens which have a smooth ink-flow is also a pleasurable writing experience.
You just can't get decent pens over here. I have found on a number of occasions the hybrid pens which I really enjoyed using in Japan, but the pens they export are different from the pens you buy in the country. They are designed for greater ink output, and apart from not being able to make a nice, thin line, they last no time at all.
There is only one problem with Japanese pens. They go missing. They look really nice, even though they are disposable, and when somebody 'borrows' one of your Japanese pens, it's easy to forget to return it. (Especially if you're a teacher.) For some reason, stealing a pen isn't considered stealing. Pen-stealing is to stealing like white-lying is to lying. Not that I've never accidentally taken a pen before... I definitely have. It just provides me with no thrill whatsoever. Because they're never Japanese pens. And it's surprising how often you end up with a case full of chewed pens. This is how I know I steal them. I don't chew pens. There's nothing quite as gross as gazing into the distance lost in thought, to come back down to earth and realise you're sucking on a pen which is already tooth-pocked.
I find myself with a sore thumb. Now that I'm over the saddle-soreness that ensued after purchasing a new bike, my thumb has decided to become sore due to the surprising exertion required to change the gear.
I notice this soreness also when I'm cutting cheese off a block with a vegetable peeler. (Perhaps you haven't tried this - it makes nice thin slices.) It's surprising how often you use your thumb. You tend to take it for granted until it gets sore. Thank goodness for opposable thumbs. I tried to imagine what it would be like not having an opposable thumb by picking up a jar using only the force of my fingers and palm. It's really difficult.
In view of the fact that my thumb is very important to me, my personal trainer has ordered that I need strengthening exercises on it. I must do one thumb-up each morning before getting out of bed.
It's surprisingly easy. You wouldn't believe how many mornings so far I have got my thumb-up over and done with before I even notice! I just wish sit-ups were like that.
Brown is an interesting colour. It has wonderfully evocative and aromatic associations, and it also can remind one of shit. Funny how when you buy a duvet cover you're not going to see 'Pooh Brown' on the cover. It'll be 'mocha', 'cafe', or perhaps 'cocoa'. Any delicious brown foodstuff will do. Except for sausage. You never see 'sausage' coloured duvet covers.
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
- Abraham Lincoln
Needs a bit of work with extra decoration or something around the border, or at least a trim. Haven't decided what to do with it, but don't feel it's finished. In case I completely bugger it up, I took a pre-damage photo.
There must be something in Cole’s Olive Spread that means they’re not allowed to call it ‘margarine’, because to most people, that’s what it is. A new pottle of the stuff was opened this week. When I opened it up I discovered to my horror that we’d been ripped off. There was a hole right down the centre of it, like a donut, only margarine.
I soon got over it, and in fact I have been enjoying making the hole bigger. Usually I scrape the knife horizontally across the top of the spread, or dig it in slightly to make the inverse pattern of a choppy sea with crumbs in it. But to go out of your way to do something different makes a refreshing change. They say a change is as good as a holiday.
I set myself the task of finding interest in everyday, boring spaces around the house. Here are some of the photos, with the highlighted bits and shadows both exaggerated and many of the colours saturated. All done with Picasa. I'm sure I'd add more intrigue by cropping some of these further.
This is my Dad ironing. When I showed this photo to my host father in Japan, he thought it was really amusing. Most Japanese men wouldn't be seen dead with an iron. Mind you, nor would some New Zealand men.
It's not often you learn a life lesson from your pillow.
It's a short, simple lesson, as you'd expect, and comes after several months of not having a pillow... and learning to like it. A pillow wasn't high on the list of essential items through Africa, and after a month of sleeping without one, it wasn't very high on the list of priorities when I got to Australia.
In fact, I have slept with a pillow for the first time since about the beginning of Dec 2006, and I ended up casting it aside halfway through the night. In fact, I don't recall even being able to get to sleep on it.
The reason this is mildly interesting is that beforehand, I couldn't actually get to sleep without a pillow. Perhaps this isn't interesting in its own right, but if you apply this idea to other, bigger things in life, it's an important truism that sometimes if you think you need something, you realise you don't.
Some linguists believe that children pick up language far better than adults because in our youth we have in our brain a LAD (Language Acquisition Device) which erodes as we get older, making any language learning an exercise in rote memorisation and a helluva lot of effort.
Thinking along those same lines, I have noticed that children also seem to have what I'll call a 'What If' Device (WID) which we lose as we get older. If you've spent any time around kids around seven or eight years of age, you may have noticed that a lot of their conversations start with the two words 'What if...'. The ability to begin conversations in this way is indicative of a vivid imagination, which most people seem to lose. It's such a pity.
'What If' conversations might go something like this.
"What if this wan't a cake. What if it was a rock?"
"Hey yeah. What if people could eat rocks!"
"Yeah. What if you broke all your teeth off munching on a rock and had to get false teeth!"
"Yeah! (imitates grandpa) What if rocks could taste like anything you wanted!"
"I'd make mine taste like chocolate!"
"What if someone else could decide for you?"
"I'd make your rocks taste like poo!"
"Eeeew. I'd make your rocks taste like rock-solid poo with corns in!"
(degenerates further)
I wonder how many adults have What If conversations in their own heads. Perhaps in order to get anything done, or anything of note said, it's best we keep our What If conversations to ourselves... After all, if we didn't lose the WID, we'd still be sitting round the campfire at the cave saying (in Neanderthalese):
"Hey, what if we decided to deliberately breed those cows and eat their meat!"
"Yeah, what if those cows were rocks!"
"Ha! What if rocks said 'moo'?"
"What if everytime you stepped on a rock it said 'moo'?"
Fortunately for humankind, the conversation didn't go like that, and we all lived happily ever after.
"Nana", of course, being me.
Like usual, when a non-pro cook makes up a recipe it's because you thought you had a certain ingredient then you realise that the container is empty, or it's gone mouldy. I won't go into the details of how this dessert came about, but I'm about to share with you the secret ingredients to what I shall name
Custard and Bread Surprise
(If it's a made-up recipe, I usually call it Something Surprise because it's a surprise if it tastes any good.)
How to make it:
1. Cook up some custard. The secret to making smooth custard (for perfunctory cooks) is to make it however it turns out then beat the hell out of it with a stick mixer. I know you've probably heard all sorts of proper ways to make custard, but I'm telling you, you can't go wrong with that one. I put two eggs in this custard, and used castor sugar instead of normal sugar, but I couldn't tell you how much I tipped in, because I didn't really measure it.
2. Make some toast. About four slices should do it. I used crusts, as it happens. Some were brown, some were multigrain. I don't think it really matters.
3. Put jam on the toast. Thickly.
4. Chop toast into pieces and line bottom of dish. Pour on custard. Make another layer of jammy toast. Pour rest of custard on.
5. Sprinkle with coconut.
6. Stick it in the fridge.
It's kind of like Bread and Butter Pudding without the butter. Bread and Butter Pudding is one of my Dad's favourites, and he announces everytime he eats it that it's also the Queen's favourite pudding. I'm not sure how he knows this, and I'm not even sure whether the Queen said this in the 1950s when other kinds of puddings hadn't been invented yet. Somehow, I guess you feel a bit flasher eating it if the Queen also appreciates it. I reckon if the Queen came round I'd dish this up for her. (Isn't it amazing how many thought patterns begin with 'If the Queen came round..." She never ruddy well does.)
I double dare you to make it. Enjoy!
Today I made chocolate slice. The most fun part of the whole process should be the icing. It is quite satisfying seeing how icing seems to develop magically before your eyes as you stir it, and it's really hard to mess up. The only way you can mess up is by realising the mixture is too pasty, and adding too much moisture. Then it takes about a mountain of icing sugar before you get it looking something like icing again.
I expect nightmares tonight about making icing, not getting the moisture right and ending up having to swim out of the house because I've made so much of it.
The other morning I had the most annoying dream that seemed to last about an hour. My bike tyres were flat as pancakes, and I couldn't ride anywhere. But everytime I went to pump them up, I ended up dropping the little connection off the end of the pump. If only you could realise things are a dream sometimes, and just wake up.
I sometimes look at someone else's random blog. It's amazing how many teenagers there are out there maintaining updated blogs. As you would expect, many are the perfect vehicle for peer-defamation and covert bullying. This is an unfortunate side-effect of technology.
There is also another dialect which has come out of the blogging/texting phenomenon, though in order to be infected by it, there is a requirement that you weren't fully literate in the first place. To people who have had grammatical rules and punctuation hammered into them, the option of writing like a trendy blogger isn't there.
An example of the kind of language I'm talking about is found at this teeny bopper's blog. This is also a representative example of the kind of subject matter to be found. It's great for a good laugh, and if you're wondering if you've grown up since your highschool years, this would be a good measure. If you find it funny, and somewhat cringe-worthy, you've moved on.
"Doona" is one of those words that sounds really normal to you if you grew up in Australia but really weird if you didn't. It's just one of those words. If I had to guess what a Doona was, I wouldn't have picked a duvet. I would have guessed something less commonplace and everyday. A Doona sounds like a hairstyle. The kind of hairstyle you get when you've been wearing a hat all day, in the sweltering heat. Or maybe a Doona could be a type of fish... I don't know, but it doesn't sound like it's a duvet to me.
After recently purchasing one, and browsing the shelves at the shop, it turns out Doona is a brand name that has become a generic name for the category of duvets. Such is the power of advertising, I guess. However, when this happens, regional dialects develop.
The NZ equivalent of a brand name which sounds weird but has become generic somehow is 'Twink'. It seems nobody outside NZ knows what Twink is. (It's correction fluid.) In fact, it's a rather dangerous term in America. (Don't try googling it, as I once did. Not at work, anyhow.) If I went to America I would have to remember to avoid to use the word Twink.
Australians who go to the UK have a problem with Thongs. (In NZ they're jandals, Japanese sandals, which nobody outside NZ seems to understand.) An Aussie friend of mine in London, was looking for some of these shoes in a shop and unashamedly asked a (male) shop assistant where she could find some thongs. Looking uncomfortable, she was of course directed to the g-string section, which provided an amusing story to tell afterwards, if nothing else.
By the way, the English call them flip-flops, which seems to be the best word for them as the onomatopoeia of the term is cross-cultural enough to be understood by any English speaker. Completely uncontaminated, too, until someone comes up with a new definition of a flip-flop. (If that is already the case, I choose to remain ignorant.)
One of the best movies I have seen this year (or indeed, for a very long time) is Kenny. I had heard it was a spoof doco about a guy who runs a port-a-loo business and that description alone didn't really encourage me to rush out and see it, but now I have seen it twice I'd like to give it a plug of my own.
The first time I saw it was on the flight from Perth to Melbourne. Being set in Melbourne, it was a good choice for Qantas to show this particular film on flights bound for here. I sat next to a much older couple who chose a seemingly more sedate movie, but I did hear through my headphones the old guy say to his wife, "I think we chose the wrong movie, luv." This was because I was really laughing my head off. It reminded me so much of the people I knew when I worked as a cleaner when I was at uni in NZ. The character of Kenny is a rounded character who viewers easily empathise with throughout the course of the film.
Hopefully we all know a few Kennys. The Kennys keep us grounded. The Kennys are the guys who it is easy to ignore, but whose absence would be sorely missed. The thing about cleaners, as I discovered when I was one, is they work all sorts of weird, unsociable hours and do the jobs nobody really wants to do, with no thanks whatsoever. In fact, the only time a cleaner will ever hear anything from anyone is when something is NOT clean, not when something IS clean. Nevertheless, the Kennys of this world accept their place, take pride in their work and know in themselves that they do a vital job. It used to please me somewhat that if cleaners went on strike and the toilets didn't get cleaned for two consecutive days the whole joint had to close due to health and safety reasons. (I don't know if this is really true, but I heard it once, and chose to run with it.)
It's people who don't know any Kennys who should be worried. People who don't know Kennys probably work in an office and haven't so much as raised an eyebrow at the person who empties the snotty tissues out of their bin. The person who doesn't know any Kennys probably surrounds themselves with ladder-climbing, pretentious and self-absorbed cronies who look down their noses at those who do the more basic things in life. Thing is, the more basic a job is, the more important it is. The fellas who scrub the bogs probably save more lives (through the decontamination of communal areas) than those who are researching for a thesis with a polysyllabic title, attending conferences and eating cucumber sandwiches.
Never annoy your cleaner. Nor your secretary, nor your rubbish man. As Kenny displays magnificently in the movie, these people have more power than you realise, and not all of them will get you back in such an obvious way.
Any true-blue computer geeks by now will have their hot little (soft, non-calloused) hands on Windows Vista.
I likes it. I likes it a lot. I can't say I've really explored much of it yet, but after having a browse around the superficial, appearance areas of Vista, I have to conclude it appeals to girls. You can now choose the exact shade you would like around your windows. The little bells and whistles are different, and the defaults sound like something out of Peter Pan (you know, like when Tinkerbell appears).
But perhaps the best thing about downloading a new version of Vista is it makes you feel really powerful. I can't do anything (until the settings are changed, no doubt) without a little box popping up saying, "Windows needs your permission to continue". Well, imagine if the whole world worked like that. Wouldn't the power just go to your head?
Another nice thing about the desktop of Vista is the option of downloading nifty, and often completely useless, little widgets. I now have a calculator and a dictionary on my desktop - both useful. But I could also have a timer telling me when to go and have a prayer (except I'm not from the United Arab Emirates) or a voodoo doll. (What sort of sick people are these MS programmers?!) Seriously, wouldn't you be worried if the guy sitting next to you at work downloaded a doll onto his desktop and started sticking virtual pins in it. Wouldn't you be even more concerned if the voodoo doll started to wear the same patterned tie? And extremely concerned when you started to suffer from unexplained sudden pains in places you didn't know you had?
Beware, fellow Vista users. The Power of Vista can be a wonderful thing, but dangerous in the wrong hands.
With the aid of some powdery stuff that came out of a bag that said 'Pikelet and Pancake Mixture' we fried up some very passable pikelets this morning. Like other foods, such as biscuits and scones, the area of baking can be full of cross-cultural misunderstandings. Apparently the Americans don't use the word 'pikelets'. (In which case the word probably sounds like a smell person who chickens out of doing something.)
About a year ago, before leaving for England, I was researching my family tree. Or more accurately, pulling together what other relatives had learnt about my family tree and organising it on computer. It was a thought provoking experience. I'm sure I'm not alone amongst the thousands of people who have been interested in where they come from. It brought home to me how much my life had been one of chance, on so many different levels. Every life decision that my ancestors made impacted me heavily... Kind of like the butterfly effect. What if, out of the children in that family who died young, my ancestor had been one of them? I wouldn't exist. What if that grand-mother hadn't married that man, but another one - I wouldn't exist. (Or would I still exist in a different genetic makeup?) And what if that family of ancestors hadn't moved from the UK to New Zealand? I would be British! What a different life that would have been. Just how different I didn't realise until I visited the UK.
If I continue thinking along these lines, it hits me that even though we make decisions based on what is right for us at the time (ie. I like Australia because it's warmer, and I have Australian friends), in fact the decision one person makes will influence a whole line of descendents to a remarkable degree.
(Of course, this only applies if you ever have children. One thing about family trees is, far into the future, nobody is going to do much research into the aunt whose line stops at her. And I think this is why many people have children.)
Other people have their decisions made for them, however. I listened to a podcast documentary about whether Australia really is the wonderful land that immigrants think it is. Apart from highlighting some stereotypes about Australia, it covers the more serious topic of who we allow into the country and who we don't. (I say 'we' because New Zealand has exactly the same issue.) It is easy for a white, native English speaker to immigrate (at least, easy compared to non-white, non-English speaking people who are often promised 'Milk and Honey' and end up in detention centres before being sent home). I think if you were born in a country where there was corruption and violence, the decision to move to the other side of the world would not be just a selfish one (as mine was) but you would be thinking that you were providing a better life not just for your children but any descendents of yours. It must be so disappointing to build your hopes and dreams around life in another country, finally plucking up the courage to go, and then to be sent back home. The documentary I listened to questioned how Australia (and NZ too, I will add) market themselves to potential immigrants.
It also asks the question, "What if Australia opened up its gates to anyone and nobody actually wanted to come here? What would that do to the country's self-esteem?"
For the record, I'm sure Australia would be inundated with immigrants. But whether they stayed here would be another matter. As a native English speaking, fellow antipodean immigrant, Australia will suit me very well. But just because this is a very liveable country, doesn't mean that it provides what everyone needs. There would also be many immigrants who would feel amazing homesickness, and that would override anything that Australia and New Zealand have to offer.
Link to the BBC documentary:
No Milk and Honey
When I was living in NZ, one of the things I used to look forward to was listening to Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand on Saturday mornings. Kim Hill always has really interesting people on her show and even if you don't think they're going to be very interesting because you're not the slightest bit interested in their field of work, she asks such insightful questions that you end up interested by the end of it. Now, Radio NZ has got technical and they chunk her programme up and have added it to iTunes' Podcast directory. I highly recommend Kim Hill, and not just for Kiwis, as it is fairly international. I don't think Kim Hill is a Kiwi, I have a suspicion she was born in England, though I may be wrong...
You can drag this link into iTunes, or access it from the podcast store (for free, of course).
http://www.radionz.co.nz/podcasts/saturday.rss
to subscribe to the feed.
Another Radio New Zealand program that I really like is Country Life. I'm not a farm girl, but if you listen to this program, the interviewer goes out to the farflung areas of New Zealand and talks to farmers, often with broad Kiwi accents, about their farms. The ambient sounds of the farm are included, and you can really feel as if you've had a trip to the country after you've listened to this.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/podcasts/countrylife.rss
Any other expat Kiwis may be interested in the following site, which is a directory of NZ podcasts.
NZ Podcasts
