iZumba

Finally I get to update my original blog. I have been somewhat quiet of late due to my recent change in status to that of mother. It takes a fair bit of my time and I decided way back when that I didn't really want to harp on about all things baby on this blog. So I set up a new one, dedicated solely to the creation of my family and development of my children, at linsinproduction if you're interested.

So last week I got to do something non-baby related for a change. I zumbared (or whatever the past-tense verb of Zumba is, if indeed there is one). I left hubbie in charge of the tea-time household duties (i.e. putting the baby to bed), although I was a dutiful wife and had dinner cooking in the slow cooker (man, I'm good!), and I headed into town and met me bezzie (who also left her hubbie at home in charge of the baby) and we tried out the latest fitness craze to sweep the world.

If you search google for "latest fitness craze" you'll get all sorts of things, like hula-hooping, can-can dancing, skipping and even inflatable gym equipment. But they're all wrong. The latest fitness craze for anyone in Australia who watches daytime telly is quite clearly Zumba.

So, what is it? Well, without looking up the official definition, my take on it is that it is salsa dancing on speed, with a bit of street dancing or hip-hop thrown in, done to crazy South American dance music in a darkened room with disco lights. Unlike aerobics there is less pressure to conform and you're encouraged to ad lib a bit. Even the instructors ad lib, which is very confusing to a beginner.

"What's that wiggle she threw in there? I missed that. I'll do it this time instead. Oh... she didn't wiggle this time. Now I feel like a fool."

It was SO MUCH FUN!!! Which is exactly the intention. The idea is that you get fit whilst dancing and having fun. Having done, and enjoyed, both latin dancing and belly dancing, this seems to be much better for fitness. I suppose for Lucie and me the novelty of being out at night without our husbands and babies added to the pleasure.

Unfortunately, for a lactating mother still in her first year after giving birth, and with the softened ligaments that come with the territory, it is kind of hard core and a bit hip-wiggly. I spent so much time thinking about the different moves I was "supposed" to be doing that I didn't really pay enough attention to my core muscles and I put my back out. It's easing up now (a week and a visit to the physio later) but I am back to the basics of doing my hip flexor stretches every day just like when I first started physio for a similar injury about two years ago. So this week I'm resting but you can bet I'll be back zumbaring again next week. And if anyone's interested, I'd love the DVDs for Christmas so I can get really good at it.

Here are some Zumba-related links if you'd like to find out more:

Australian Zumba site

About Zumba

Zumba on Wikipedia

Zumba on YouTube

Why I love living where I live... (part 2)

...because I can go swimming in a 50 metre open-air pool on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Autumn, with a wide lane all to myself (and no one in the lane next to me) and watch birds flitting over the water catching insects as I breast-stroke my way along. Absolute bliss!

See Why I love living where I live... (part 1).

Buckle has been approved

I checked my citizenship application this morning and it seems they have finally approved me. I have no idea why it took them so long: almost 6 weeks. How come they didn't just take one look at my application and say "oh she looks like a nice girl; we'll have her. Tick"? But at least they have finally come to their senses and realised they would be proud to call me an Aussie.

To be honest, the thought of dual citizenship is a wee bit strange. I could never give up my British citizenship because I feel British through and through. Even though there may be some elements of the British psyche that bug me, I just can't help it. It's who I am, it's how I was brought up, it's who many of my close friends and relations are and despite its faults (and in some cases because of them) I love it.

That said, I do feel increasingly Australian. You can't live here for five years, immerse yourself in the culture and not let it rub off on you. Obviously there are things that bug me about the Australian character too, but it's much easier to fob that off saying "oh but I'm British" ("and far superior" is the inference there, I suppose). When I return to England I remember my Britishness but my Australianness is also highlighted: that's the bit that makes me different to my fellow Brits. And my Britishness makes me different to my fellow Australians. So, I'm neither one nor the other and I guess that's the way I have felt for a while now.

So, although I can never be constantly 100% Australian, or constantly 100% British, I can now be sometimes 100% either, or always 50% of both. See what I mean about it being a bit strange? I think I will still have to barrack for England in international tournaments, and the "friendly rivalry" between the two sporting nations could very well tear me apart, but I do think I have the best of both worlds.

Now I just have to see if they can squeeze me into the last citizenship ceremony of the year in 2 weeks. I'll practice my national anthem in the meantime.

Australians all let us rejoice
For we are young and free
We've wealth for toil and earth to soil.... no , that's not right
We've wealth and toil and earth and soil... nope
We've wealth and soil and Mrs Doyle
Preparing buns for tea... no hang on, that's Ireland.

I am a pantheist.

I have just discovered that I am a pantheist. I have often struggled to define myself in religious terms. Sometimes I'm a christian (by birth, not practice), other times I am an entirely non-religious atheist and then there are times when I'm a naturalist/universalist/believe in the inter-connectedness of all things known and unknown spiritualist and why isn't there a word for this? Well, apparently there is. It's pantheism and I discovered this when reading the following passage in Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion:

A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them).

This is what most of the world's religions are: theists. Clearly, this isn't me. Although the small part of me that is Christian, the part that was christened when I was five, which clearly is a very small part of the thirty-two year-old me, still wonders if God knows when I'm naughty and will send me to hell as punishment, and can be known to make a quiet prayer when there's something I really want (or don't want) to happen. But deep down, I know it isn't going to make the blindest bit of difference. But wouldn't it be cool if there were a such thing as miracles?

A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs.

Now this is an interesting concept, and one I haven't really considered. However, as Carl Sagan said, "if by 'God' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying ... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." Gosh, how I laughed when I read that. Still tickles me.

Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

So there you go. Dawkins does go on to argue that such "believers", if they can indeed be called as such should refrain from referring to their metaphorical spiritual force as "God":

The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason.

I am happy not to call my interconnecting energy God, but I would like a name for it. However, for now I am happy to put a name to my general belief. Pantheism. I shall now go google and wiki it just to be sure that that's what I am. I'm only up to page 41 of the book so there's a good chance I could change my mind by the end of it but "sexed-up atheism"? I can live with that.

How could I forget?

Silly me! Of course I have something to report... well not exactly yet but the thing is about two weeks ago I did the Australian Citizenship test and then, after getting 100% (I'm such a girly swot), I applied for citizenship. As part of my preparation for the test Toby kept teaching me the Australian national anthem. It's surprisingly catchy. That's about as exciting and interesting as that story goes.

The website that I applied on is typical of all goverment (or at least Department of Immigration) forms; that is, bloody awful. You have to visit the site a few times in order to know where to find things and even then, when I want to check on the progress of my application I have to go through about 12 screens of the application process to find it.

UPDATE 19/09/08: Richard showed me today that there is actually a link directly to the login section to check my application about one click into the site. It's just the pages are so damn long, and it was right at the bottom, that I missed it. So, still not an entirely user-friendly site but not as bad as I thought. I take some responsibility for that particular problem.

The form itself asks for a Citizenship test reference number. The paper given to me after the test had two references numbers on it but neither of them were called Citizenship test reference numbers so it was anybody's guess as to which was the right one to use. Thankfully, my British colleague, Richard had recently applied so he helped me out a bit, although really he was just guessing too and I don't know why I listened to him anyway as his application was delayed whilst they conducted an "internal investigation".

After I'd applied I was directed to a form which detailed what I had to do next. This involved filling in a proof of identity form and getting someone important to witness it. (I immediately thought of my friend Libbette as she's a teacher and apparently none of my other friends have important enough jobs.) The form indicated I would also have to get a passport-sized photo witnessed. Passport photos are difficult things to obtain here on the Sunshine Coast, lord only knows why. No such thing as passport booths you see. You end up having to go to photograph processing places. I could only locate one place that did them in the surrounding area and it wasn't en route to anywhere for me that day. Richard told me I didn't need a photo because they took one when I went for the test so I phoned them to make sure. The lady who answered said I didn't need to send anything else in, not even the proof of identity form. She did follow this, however, with the comment, "if we do need anything else, we'll contact you," which probably means she didn't really know. Rich had been given contradictory information from people he'd spoken to on the phone so he suggested I send the form in anyway. I got a colleague who's a Commissioner for Declarations (whatever one of those is) to witness it (because I forgot to ask Libbette) but so far I haven't managed to remember to post it.

So that's that. Rich and his wife, Sue have their citizenship ceremony on October 31st. It only seems to be us Brits who are humoured by the fact that they will become Australian citizens on Halloween. I guess it's not really an acknowledged celebration here. It's summer here at that time of year and Australians don't feel the need to break the depression of increasingly shorter, darker days with random holidays such as Halloween and Guy Fawkes. That, and they have no pagan history. Not that Fawkes was a pagan but to say Australia has no history would have caused an uproar and wouldn't have been strictly true. The Halloween ceremony is the last of the year, the next one being the biggie on Australia Day on January 26th. I'm really hoping I can squeeze into the same one, or one before that as I don't fancy making my pledge in front of all those people whilst 8 and a half months pregnant. Suppose I'd better get that form sent off then.

Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free...

'Allo 'allo

I'm a little surprised at how long it's been since my last post. Work has picked up and has been quite busy and I haven't really had much to say on any other topic. Still pregnant, still painting the house, nothing much to report.

Except, I just have to tell you that there is a South African guy at work who sounds like one of the German officers from 'Allo 'Allo, either Captain Hans Geering (the one who hangs around with the fat Colonel and prounces Colonel as it is written), or Lieutenant Hubert Grubert (the one with a crush on Rene). Either way, every time he talks I have to giggle and when he talks to me it's terribly embarrassing as I struggle to keep a straight face and not immediately burst out with "Ha! Did you know you sound like one of the German dudes from 'Allo 'Allo??? So funny!!"

Bored!

I am so unbelievably bored.

Apart from one or two notable exceptions, no one has sent me an interesting email in days, and even Facebook is a bit like Scarborough in winter at the moment. Not that I've ever been to Scarborough. I've never been in summer, let alone winter, but I imagine not much happens there in winter. If there is a lot going on in Scarborough in winter then Facebook isn't much like it at all. It's possibly more like the moon. But less cool because the moon has a good view of the earth and the whole low gravity thing going for it.

That said, Facebook did recently go through quite an interesting and fun phase where I got to laugh at lots of old school photos (including class photos from when I was 9 and 13 ish). My sister's friends have started putting old photos on now too so I've been having a good giggle at them.

Work is boring. I've finished off a lot of jobs and those remaining are in a pending state whilst I wait for various colleagues to get back to me. What's the bet they all get back to me at once demanding immediate resolutions?

Knocked up

It's probably about time I made an official announcement on this site that I'm having a baby early next year. Thank god! My pregnancy is the only interesting thing going on right now. It's quite fascinating once you get into it but I think I'm stretching the limits of how much even that can entertain me. (I won't go on about it by the way - I have another blog for that purpose - but I will mention it when it's relevant.) At least I know I'm unlikely to spend my days next year sitting on my arse whinging about being bored. I'll probably be wishing for such days to return to me.

Don't get me wrong, I can find plenty to occupy my time and mind with. I have millions of jobs to do at home (just not necessarily the money to do them), there are a gazillion things I'd like to read and as for things I'd like to do today, well, I've already been to the dentist and I plan to go to the gym but I also need to get petrol, fish and possibly some noodles because I can't remember whether we have any at home. The trouble is that these are not things I should be doing in work time and hence getting paid for.

Laptop battery bingo

I'm fairly pleased with myself at the moment in that I managed to successfully purchase a new laptop battery from eBay. My battery hasn't worked for about 6 months, which kind of made my laptop less of a laptop and more of a desktop, which isn't really what I forked $3000 out for. I tried to do this some time back and was bamboozled by the fact that none of the numbers on the batteries on eBay seemed to match those on my battery. I had already tried to get one from Dell and they quoted me $175 which seemed like rather a lot of money, given my computer was only 18 months old, and surely a battery should last longer than that.

I kept periodically returning to eBay and getting bamboozled so eventually I decided just to buy one from Dell. At least that way I could be sure of getting the right part and didn't have to try and figure anything out for myself. This time they quoted me $290!!!! For a battery!!! A new Dell laptop costs $750 and that comes with a battery! So I did a bit more research and discovered that the confusion is caused by Sony's insistence on measuring their batteries in watt hours (Wh) when everyone else uses miliamp hours (mAh), sneaky devils.

Thankfully, there is one common component on all batteries and that is voltage. Once you know the voltage and either Wh or mAh you can do a simple conversion using the formula:

watt = amp * volt

or

amp = watt / volt

Thanks to camerahacker.com for helping me figure this out.

It's probably a bit more complicated than this but it was close enough. I found a battery with similar power outage on eBay, which I could get shipped from Hong Kong for $87!!! What a bonus. A saving of over $200! At that price I figured I could take a risk as I wasn't able to get full use of the laptop, and I wasn't likely to pay $300 for a new battery. Well, the battery arrived yesterday and I'm happy to say seems to be working well. Kudos to me and ya boo suks to Dell!

Willie Wagtail pursues wife

Just for fun, and to stop everyone else becoming as bored as me, here's a lovely little photo of me and a Willie Wagtail on our wedding anniversary the other weekend (that's mine and Toby's anniversary, just in case that sentence caused any confusion). It was taken at Point Cartwright, near where we were married and the little bird seemed to be oblivious to the fact that I am now a married woman and was following me around rather ardently.


Right ho! I think I have procrastinated enough for one day. I shall go and do something a bit more worth getting paid for but probably terribly boring, and perhaps amuse myself with some Skunk Anansie (that's the kind of mood I'm in) for the remaining hour of the working day.

TTFN!

Do you remember the one with the Dambusters?

For some inexplicable reason, possibly relating to the deluge of old school photographs that are currently finding their wicked little ways onto Facebook, today I started to reminisce about really bad old music.

It may also have been due to the discussion in the office as to how London is possibly going to outdo Beijing in the Olympic Opening Ceremony and ideas as to what the London ceremony might consist of.

The Hairless suggested:

"I am thinking of Charlie riding in all dolled up in his medals and feathered hat upon his faithful steed Camilla mumbling "I'm here Mummy...where is the fireplace that needs lighting?" sounds like the best option."

Sanchez preferred a cockney theme:

"I can see Chaz and Dave getting a good cockney knees up going and the pearly king and queens performing a dance.

"Then we will bring on an army of chavs to drink 5 pints of stella and have a fight.

"I think the finale will involve the Queen waving her hand as usual.

"Quality...."

I liked the cockney theme but went for something a bit grander:

"I think there'll be a million morris dancers prancing around the stadium with their handkerchiefs and sticks, jangling their bells, followed by a massive 500 metre may pole with lots of coloured ribbons and more prancing around.

"Then about half a million cockneys, accompanied by pearly kings and queens and the odd beefeater, will march in and do the lambeth walk. Then we'll bring in a huge replica of the spanish armada, light torches all around the stadium to signify the warning of the armada's approach, then set the ships of the armada on fire (and they'll be full of fireworks so there'll be a massive firework display... in fact... we might even have a few of them sail up the Thames just to be a bit beyond-the-stadium, like in Beijing) and use that to light the torch before flying off to bomb a German factory."

Before I go on, can I please point out that I do not advocate the bombing of anything German and that reference was meant to be purely tongue in cheek. However, Sanchez picked it up and suggested a Spitfire flyover and some tribute to the Dambusters, to which I recommended getting all of the athletes to dambust around the stadium on their march, to the Dambusters music, arms outstretched pretending to be aeroplanes, or fingers round their eyes as goggles.

This, of course, is what triggered the old memory of the song that used to always get played at parties where everyone did the actions and sang along to the Dambusters theme. I got confused and distracted at first by the Superman song (remember that one? Comb your hair, spray, Superman!!) but eventually I identified the Dambuster one as being The Music Man. Both were recorded by Black Lace to annoy people at parties for the duration of the eighties and most of the nineties. And so, for your delight and delectation, here are some awful YouTube versions of both. Reminisce to your heart's desire.

Randoms doing the Superman song at work:



Black Lace sing Music Man on Top of the Pops or something. Bad copy but it's the best I could do. Dambusters are about 2 minutes 50 seconds in for those that can't bear to watch the whole thing.



And just for a laugh, and to show I'm not proud, here's one of the old photos a school friend put onto Facebook, depicting me and my good friend Bev, her with classic poodle perm and me with scary Michael Jackson-style white-face make-up:

Everything is arbitrary

We recently had the University website redesigned by an advertising agency. One of the requirements was that the site must conform to Priority 1 World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at a minimum, and that it should also conform to Priorty 2, preferably Priority 3.

On delivery I noticed they had a green box with white text. The green was mottled and graduated and became yellow in places. It was obvious to me, with my reasonably good eyesight, that white text is not easy to read when on a yellow-ish background (it doesn't really take a genius or a blind-man to figure that one out now, does it?). So the Marketing team sent the image back to the agency and requested a new one.

The new one was much better. I could definitely read it. Just to be sure I ran the colours through an online colour contrast analyser. The difference in colour and brightness was still not quite enough to meet the Priority 2 WCAG checkpoint 2.2 regarding colour contrast. However, it was pretty close so I left it up to the Marketing team to determine whether they were happy with it.

They weren't.

The agency sent another image along with the following comment:

"The algorithms are a useful guide to ensuring sufficient contrast and colour difference, but the precise thresholds are somewhat arbitrarily chosen (strange that the human eye works in such neat numbers, 125 and 500 ;)"

Isn't this a bit like saying:

"Hmm, it's a bit strange that water just happens to boil at exactly 100°C, isn't it?"

or

"How perculiar that 1 Litre of water weighs exactly 1 kilogram."

or

"Strange, don't you think, that a day is exactly 24 hours long?"

Well, I've got news for you Mr Smarty-pants-Multi-media-degree-don't-you-know-Ad-agency-man, a day isn't exactly 24 hours long. We make it that long so that it's easy to measure. Water only boils at 100°C because we decided that would be a good way of measuring temperature. Time is arbitrary, everything humans measure with is arbitrary. Don't you think perhaps they decided that 125 and 500 were nice, round, easy numbers to remember and developed algorithms accordingly? Dear me...

Grammar Nazi: Gil Mayo corrects "would of"

One of the reasons I like Gil Mayo (The Gil Mayo Mysteries, ABC1, Thursdays 8.35pm) is that he is a stickler for grammatical correctness. The show doesn't contain much "laugh out loud" material and is at times a bit weird and contrived, but occasionally it hits the right spot and extracts more than a mere chuckle from me.

A classic scene was when Kite, the Welshman, was asking for a code and the others kept asking "a cord?" until he put on his poshest English accent and pronounced code with a long vowel. It's a phonetic joke and hard to transcribe onto paper (or blog) but suffice to say, having experienced a similar encounter myself when ordering a vodka and coke in a London bar ("a cork? What, like just a vodka and er.. a cork?"), which resulted in me also having to adopt my best posh English accent, this scene certainly had me laughing out loud.

Another scene I chortled away at occurred last night and went a little something like this:

Neil, the accountant: I was afraid he'd lose his job.
Clair, the bar owner: Well, he would of.
Gil, the grammar nazi: Have.

Miscellaneous conversation follows, then:

Clair: I resent the implication that he would of.
Gil: Have.

Refer to my previous post, Should have, should've, should of to see just why this tickled me.

Grammar Nazi: The Importance of Order

Read the following paragraph from the BBC News website:

Mr Rudd issued his landmark apology for the abuse and discrimination the country's indigenous people have endured since European colonisation in February, soon after taking office.

The order of the wording implies that the European colonisation of Australia occurred in February. Colonisation occurred over two hundred years ago; Rudd's apology was made in February. This is a surprising grammatical, or rather semantic, error from an institution such as the BBC. The paragraph should have been worded:

In February, soon after taking office, Mr Rudd issued his landmark apology for the abuse and discrimination the country's indigenous people have endured since European colonisation.

What a massive difference to meaning is made by the order in which those few words appear in the sentence.

World Youth Day

Crowds at the official opening of World Youth Day. From: www.news.com.au

Had anyone reading this blog heard of World Youth Day before about a month ago? Have the British residents amongst you heard of it at all? I don't know whether I've been sleeping under a rock for the last 32 years or whether an almighty fuss is suddenly being made of it in Australia right now but I hadn't a clue what it was until a few weeks back.

For those of you who are still clueless, it's a massive meeting of young Catholics. It happens about once every three years and it's an international event. Despite the name, "World Youth Day", it actually happens over about five days. (I always was sceptical about the story of creation happening in seven days and now I suspect it was actually thirty-five, which is still quite impressive.)

Basically hundreds of thousands of these young Catholics congregate on a city (in this case Sydney) and party and pray for a few days. That seems like such a strange combination of words to place in one sentence: Catholics, party, pray.

I will probably be flamed for this but I am astounded at the number of enthusiastic young devotees being portrayed on the news (every day). I always thought of Catholicism as the kind of religion that kids were dragged into (often literally and hungover) and given names like Mary and Bernadette and Joseph, because their parents were Catholics and their parents' parents were Catholic and no one ever questioned it. Most of the Catholics I have known stopped practising as soon as they left home, and have felt forever guilty about it, and everything else for that matter. It seems like such an old-fashioned religion somehow and I suppose I imagine young folk getting more into the relatively modern protestant denominations of Christianity, such as Pentecostalism (HillSong certainly seems popular in Australia) or not bothering at all.

World Youth Day is expecting 125,000 international visitors. The opening mass at Darling Harbour yesterday attracted over 150,000 pilgrims and the papal mass on Sunday is expected to address a congregation of half a million. According to the World Youth Day website it is the biggest event Australia has ever hosted, attracting more overseas visitors than even the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and providing Pope Benedict XVI's first ever visit to Australia. The television coverage is greater than the Tour de France and the Olympics combined, although I suppose there isn't too much to report on the Olympics at this stage. Still, I am finding the extent of the coverage of an event I had never even heard of before quite bizarre. Images flash on the screen of young people wearing their national colours and World Youth Day t-shirts shouting, singing, being generally rowdy and happy, fireworks and pop concerts, not the sort of things I ever associated with the stuffy old Roman Catholics.

It's all been a bit of an education to me really. Catholicism can be cool (in a Guy Sebastian kind of a way) and Catholic kids know how to party (as long as it all wraps up by 10pm and involves a few prayers here and there). Sydney must be a crazy place right now.

Oh, and just for the record, I think priests should be allowed to be gay. Unless they're Catholic, in which case they can be gay but celibate, merely because Roman Catholic priestly sex is against the rules.

One last thing, as we're on the subject of religion, isn't this a brilliant headline:

Mormons make missionary position clear

I love it! The best thing is, it's about young (male) mormon missionaries posing semi-naked for a calendar. Brilliant.

Eating soup with a teaspoon

Today at work I had to eat my soup with a teaspoon.

It was a frustrating experience. It occurred because of a lack of resources (i.e. normal-sized spoons). The teaspoon was an inadequate alternative, particularly because some of the vegetables in my soup were bigger than teaspoon-size. Whilst I achieved my goal of consuming my soup, it was a lengthy experience and my enjoyment was diminished.

Eventually I found a cheap, plastic spoon in my desk drawer. This wasn't as shiny and smooth as the teaspoon but at least it allowed me to get a reasonable mouthful of soup.

I can see this might prove to be a useful analogy some day.

While my ukelele gently weeps

I don't usually do two posts in one day but this was just too good to ignore.

Driving home, listening to Triple J, the presenter announced a much requested repeat of a hawaiian chap playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps .... on the ukelele! With visions in my mind of George Fornby singing about cleaning windows, I listened on. What I heard amazed me. This guy, known as the Hawaiian Ukelele Wizard but whose real name is Jake Shimabukuro, has a wonderful talent and can make the ukelele take on a whole load of other sounds, such as flamenco and classical guitar. Apparently Hawaiians learn to play the ukelele at school in the same way that Brits and Aussies learn to play the recorder. Most then move onto the guitar but Shimabukuro stuck with the ukelele and made it his own.

Here is a YouTube movie of him performing While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Stay with it, the break about 2.45 minutes in is fantastic and the low res movie can barely keep up with his lightening fast hands. There is a higher resolution movie of him playing this in concert but it's 8 minutes long so I'll let you go and check it out yourself if you're interested. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=3mEqEe-PIC8&feature=related)



It's also worth checking out his website and YouTube site. He has some great original tracks (e.g. Let's Dance) and his version of Ava Maria is just beautiful (navigate to the Gently Weeps album in his audio player). I think I know what my next CD purchase is going to be.

Chunky soup

What's with all the chunky fancy soup these days?

Ever just fancy eating something from your past? By that I don't mean a 10 year old beef and tomato Pot Noodle, rather something that you used to eat and perhaps don't anymore? I caught a whiff of something in the office today and it reminded me of mulligatawny soup and I thought, "well there's a thing I haven't eaten for a while. I wouldn't mind a bit of that."

So off I trundled down to the supermarket and I found myself the soup aisle but no mulligatawny soup! There was beef and potato curry, even beef massaman soup and Malaysian laksa soup and lots of other fancy foreign ones but no straight-forward mulligatawny, nor, whilst we're on the subject, was there any good old traditional oxtail soup. There were all these "chunky", "hearty" soups but I didn't want an entire meal, I just wanted a nice can of Heinz mulligatawny soup.

Maybe it just never made it to Australia.

I'm happy to say that tomato soup did still seem to be available. That was my mainstay as a kid especially when I was sick (or poorly as we say in the north of England) and I tell you something, it made me feel better every time. Perhaps I should have got some to make me feel better about not having mulligatawny.

Dolphin Watching

I've been quiet because since about 5th June I've been laid up with a bad back and have been unable to sit at the computer for more than five minutes. Here's a quick summary of events.

Some time during the week of 19th May: I ride my bike 7.5km to work, then home again. I get a sore back.

Some time during the week of 26th May: I ride my bike 7.5km to work, then home again. I get a sore back again. I decide that 4km to the beach might be okay but 7.5km to work is too much and that I won't ride my bike to work again until I have one with a smaller frame. Toby suggests that I actually have a virus that he's got and that is going around people at his work. It makes you sleepy and gives you a sore back. I point out that I'm not sleepy and that it's the second time I have had a sore back after riding my bike and that I want a new one.

Sat 31st May: About two hours after getting out of bed everything becomes too much for me and I have to go back to bed today. I spend the weekend drifting in and out of sleep. Toby tells me I have the virus.

Thurs 5th June: I do a first aid course all day at work, which mostly consists of bending over on knees performing CPR on a dummy with no legs and arms, and comforting and administering first aid to crazy imaginary drunken mountain bikers and aggitated electricians. My back twinges. Go to yoga. Tell instructor but do mostly the same stuff as the rest of the class. Back twinges even more on way home.

Fri 6th June: Back still twinging. Go to pilates. Tell physio back is twinging. Do lighter version of the exercises. Then drive to supermarket and over-load basket with morning tea goodies for the team. Drag heavy bags into work and back goes into spasm. Most painful. Spasms all day. Sitting at desk makes it worse. Go home that night and collapse on floor in painful teary heap. Stay there a while.

Sat 7th June: Woke up in pain. Toby gave me a massage. Spent most of the day flat on back on floor on top of my hot water bottle. Toby's mum did the housework for me. Toby did all the cooking.

Sun 8th June: Woke up in pain. Spent day lying around, stretching and massaging back (with a tennis ball). Was convinced I'd be all better in the morning.

Mon 9th June: Wasn't better. Was exhausted and frustrated. Long weekend but just more lying around and stretching for me. Did a teeny bit of gardening but couldn't spend too long doing anything. Went to yoga and this time concentrated on back problems and did lots of gentle stretching. Started to feel much better.

Tues 10th June: Took day off sick and went to physio then for short walk. Then stretched, slept and massage. Still hurt.

Wed 11th June: Went to work. Set myself one task then left when completed which took five hours. Back was seized up a bit by then. Went home and slept.

Thurs 12th June: Same as yesterday only I exchanged my pilates appointment for another physio session, which helped ease things up a bit more.

Fri 13th June: Local public holiday (Nambour Show Day a.k.a. Maroochy Shire Holiday). Went to Straddie for a weekend of camping. Packing was hard work. Back seized up after sitting in car but spent rest of day lying flat on back in sun at campsite. Started feeling much better.

Sat 14th June: Felt much better and even managed a lovely coastal walk with Toby, Scott and Lucie.

Which brings me to the point of my post. On this walk we saw a pod of about thirty or forty dolphins surfing the (rather large) waves, jumping, spinning and all in all just having a jolly good time. It was such a beautiful sight and kept us entertained for a good 10-15 minutes before the dolphins started to head back out to sea again. Toby took some photos but I haven't looked at them yet so don't know if they'd be any good. The next day we spotted plumes from two whales obviously travelling up the coast together. Apparently loads of whales had been spotted that day.

My back still gets a little bit sore after sitting at my desk but it feels so good to be mobile again.

From a seed grows a tiny green thing

Toby has just reminded me that I should update you on my lovely seeds.

Last week I sowed some aubergine/eggplant, pepper/capsicum and broccoletti. I can only imagine the latter is a bit of a Malcolm, somewhere between a broccoli and a broccolini; a little broccoli but not a tiny one.

My little babies are starting to grow. I have a few red lettuce, one or two green lettuce and loads of broccoletti, keen little devils that they are. Oh and one pepper plant. No sign of the baby carrots yet though, lazy mites.

None of the seedlings look anything like their adult relations yet. In fact they all look remarkably similar. I do hope they're not weeds. Anyway, they're still tiny. A bit like human babies, I suppose they all look the same. Can't wait until they're big enough to transplant to the ground and make room for more.

Is geoengineering a viable solution to climate change?

With climate change a real and increasing threat, scientists are coming up with more and more bizarre methods of prevention or reversal. Amongst those cited in an article in The Guardian are

• putting 1.9 million tonnes of cooling sulphur into the atmosphere, via ballooons;
• placing iron particles in the ocean to increase carbon-absorbing phytoplankton, a form of marine carbon sequestration;
• using large tubes which will move vertically with waves and pump cooler water and nutrients to the ocean's surface and encourage the growth of phytoplankton;
• using giant platforms to re-ice the Arctic by spraying salty water onto ice, thereby increasing its thickness and preventing an onslaught of fresh water when the ice melts in summer, in effect maintaining the threatened Gulf Stream;
• placing light refractors between the earth and the sun to reflect some of the sun's rays back into space. (Far out!)
  

Freaky? I think so. But perhaps not as freaky as the alternative. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. For the full story see http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/29/greentech.geoengineering

Whilst we're on the subject of climate change, one of my favourite topics has raised its head again: the environmental impact of aviation, that is can flying ever be "green"? The London Science Museum is housing an exhibition titled "Does flying cost the Earth?" until November. It looks at the effect flight has on climate change and the new technologies being considered by the aviation industry in an attempt to green up aeroplanes and keep the industry going in a world increasingly concerned by CO2 emissions. I wish I could go. This is one of the things I miss about London. Would someone please go on my behalf and report back?

Coincidentally, perhaps, next week is World Environment Day and the University is hosting the Sunshine Coast World Environment Day festival this Saturday. I had intended to be really green and go along on my bike but a couple of things are putting me off. Firstly, I have recently been suffering from a really sore back following lengthy bike rides, which is a bit annoying as I have been quite enjoying my rides to work. Secondly, the weather is going to be rubbish, otherwise I'd walk. It's only 7.5 km which would be quite pleasant on a nice day. On a rotten minging day, however, it would be very unpleasant so I'll either take the bus or, more likely, drive. If I do make it there, and it's interesting, I shall endeavour to report back next week.

Climate change in Google Earth

Climate Change In Our World is a new Google Earth layer developed by the Met Office Hadley Centre demonstrating current climate change predictions. It's an excellent tool for communicating what climate change can (and will) do to our world and I encourage all of you with Google Earth installed to download the layer.


There is a time line across the top, which you can either slide to a particular year to see what the temperature increase would be, or which you can play as an animation, watching the temperature rise as time goes by. The timeline goes from 1999 to 2099. There is a second animation which flies you around the earth to areas of specific interest, where you can click on an icon and read stories of how climate change is already impacting the world.

Fly over to the Artic Circle and watch the temperature increase at an astonishing rate. By 2018 it is approximately 8 or 9 degrees (celsius) warmer than in 1999; by 2043 it is around 12°C warmer and by the end of the animation in 2099 it has increased by an incredible 18°C. The data used to produce the layer are based upon a mid-range IPCC emissions scenario.

A second Climate Change In Our World Google Earth layer has been produced by the British Antartic Survey and demonstrates the retreat of the Antartic ice shelves over the past 50 years.


These are great educational tools for both adults and kids with links to resources offering further information and practical advice.

Incidentally, I took this opportunity to update my version of Google Earth and installed the latest beta (4.3). It's great. It has its own browser so any links you click on open in the Google Earth window and it comes with lots of really interesting layers. Those that I have found of interest in the few moments I have spent madly clicking around are the National Geographic Magazine layer (under Gallery) and The Earth from Above with GoodPlanet (under Global Awareness) but there are loads of others.


After rediscovering my love of Google Earth I downloaded another layer which demonstrates World Oil Consumption using data from the CIA World Factbook. Fascinating. Next, I think I shall play with rising sea levels. I mean that from a purely educational Google Earth perspective, not from an evil-world-domination-I-like-to-think-I-am-God perspective.

Sowing the seeds of love

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

I have sown some seeds. Actual physical seeds, not metaphorical ones, you understand.

I wanted to share this with you all because it's quite exciting. I sowed them last Sunday and placed them in a little seed box thingy which was left at the house by the last owners. I am sure there is a technical gardening term for the seed box thingy but I don't know it as I am a novice gardener.

I placed a few (between two and four because one was too tricky) in each little pot thing and there were about eight of these per small plastic tray. Again, I'm lacking the technical terms here but bear with me. I have two trays of green lettuce, two trays of red lettuce and two trays of baby carrots (yum! baby carrots).

I lovingly watered them every day for the first three days and then I panicked that I was drowning them and haven't watered them since Wednesday. On Thursday night it poured and we were a bit concerned about our other vegetables but my babies... well embryos I suppose... are protected in their little seed box thingy because it has a lid.

The purpose of these seeds is manifold.

Firstly, I'm sick of supermarket vegetables and Toby and I are trying to "go organic". The supermarket fresh produce can be very hit and miss but often it's over-sized and under-flavoured, covered in pesticides and been in cold storage for a few months.

Secondly, food such as lettuce seems to go mushy before we get to finish them. You have to go shopping fairly regularly to always have a fresh supply. It's great to be able to just pop into the garden and pick only the amount of lettuce leaves we need for that meal.

Thirdly, some veg, such as baby carrots, are a bit expensive for what they are.

So we're hoping to have a constant, fresh supply of seasonable vegetables, gain comfort from knowing exactly where they've come from and how they were grown, save a bit of money, and do something practical with our garden. I'm hoping to border our garden beds with red and green lettuce... I think it'll look quite pretty.

I'll let you know how the seeds get on. I'm anxiously awaiting my first sign of green. I plan to plant some more in a few weeks once these babies have graduated to the garden bed. This should ensure a continuous supply of goodies, providing my green thumb develops, of course.

It wouldn't be fair of me to end this post without mentioning what a fantastic job Toby has done preparing and planting the couple of vegetable garden beds we already have. Can't wait to start harvesting.