53 posts tagged “miscellaneous ramblings”

See I've been here nine years now so I'm a) almost a local and b) hooked into the climate here now.  So I now know that Anzac Day, aside from being a day of sombre reflection, also marks the official beginning of the cold weather here in Canberra.

For example - today is a perfectly glorious miserable winter's day.  Maximum of 11 degress, raining on and off with possible storms later, and lots of gusty wind about to add further chill.  And I love it.  I love it so much.  My standard line is a thing about "tundra blood" and being of northern european stock, "you call this cold" blah blah de blah, but days like this you just want to sit on the couch under a favourite blanket and watch dvds or muck about on a games console all day long.

And just check out the forecast for the next several days:

Monday         Mostly fine day.            Min 3    Max 13
Tuesday        Mostly fine day.            Min 6    Max 14
Wednesday   Mostly fine.                  Min 4    Max 14
Thursday       Fine.                            Min   4    Max  15
Friday           Fine.                            Min   4    Max  15
Saturday       Mostly fine,                   Min   3    Max  16

Great stuff.  Finally we get to wear scarves, and layers, and torment little children with cold hands, or, as per my wife's habit, harrass our partners with cold nose nuzzles.  We trudge into the office and the coat stands fill up by 9.  Trips out for a coffee run start needing rock-paper-scissors to decide who goes. 

So yeah, Anzac Day = winter starting. 

And this is how the rest of it works.  Autumn usually starts right on the equinox (March 21st-ish) but this year it didn't arrive until just a couple of weeks ago.  Spring starts in early October or so, then it's brisk to mild until the warm weather starts to kick in from Remembrance Day onwards.  We start getting the hot, dry days come late December with a good blast of a few weeks of temps in the high 30s and early 40s in January.  This year was particularly bad, and not just here of course but right through the inland and coast from Adelaide east.

In February we get a week of cooler weather, with max temps usually in the late teens and early 20s, which promptly freaks all the trees out (they start turning much too early) and provides a signal, through a wonderful autumnal smell in the air that you catch ever so briefly in the evening, that winter's coming eventually.  Then we get another few weeks of hot, blasty, dry and windy weather until mid March.  By which point everyone starts getting sick of daylight saving.  Then it's the equinox and we're back to the cooler weather again.

I reckon late March through to late April is the best time to visit Canberra.  The older suburbs, with their streets lined by well-established oak trees, put on these picturesque diplays.  It's pleasurably cooler in the day and cold enough at night to be snug.

When I was new here I used to get asked how I liked it, having come from Brisbane and calling myself a queenslander, but I have no problems.  I prefer the summers here, without the cloying humidity you deal with closer to the sea.  But autumn and winter, my oh my, for me they are compelling reasons to keep me from thinking about leaving. 

What three things do you regret not learning to do?

This is sort of an odd question - there's still time for nearly all of us to learn new things, isn't there?  So I'm going to answer it as "three things I intend learning how to do" instead.

1. Make puppets and plush toys.  This is something I wanted to learn while I was at home with The Boy full time for a year but just sort of didn't get to it.  But I've had this idea for ages of making my own hand puppets (a ninja, pirate, king, monkey, those sorts of characters) and then constructing a little Punch and Judy style stage thingy to put shows on for the kids.  Honestly.  How much fun would that be?
2. Purchase and learn how to play a piano accordion.  My wife, naturally, isn't too keen on this one, but it's one of those instruments that I've always had a desire to master.  That way, when I'm in my 60s, I can be one of those old guys in a beret sitting on a bench at the neighbourhood shops/mall playing lovely continental tunes.  Not to mention all the tango and traditional Finnish music I could learn as well.  Oh, and I'm hoping to get a digital drumset at some point and teach myself drumming, something I can plug headphones into so I can keep it to myself until I'm at least listenable.
3. Read the classics.  I still haven't read authors like Dickens, Hemingway, Proust, George Orwell's essays, some of the ancient Greeks, you know what I mean. 

There are, of course, more items that I could add to this list.  As I think I've mentioned in the past, I tend to find a topic and learn everything I can about it.  Lately it's been fedoras (after a bit of research and consideration I picked one up the other day, which means that I'm now "that guy in the hat" as I walk to and from work), but study has meant that I've pretty much had to put my own eccentric interests aside and focus on specific subjects instead.  Having knocked off one more course last week with a less than satisfactory 6,700 word essay, I have one more course to go before finishing the Masters completely. 

And it happens to have its assessment due about a week and a bit before K's due date, which, considering that The Boy was six weeks early, means that realistically I should aim to have the single 7,000 word essay submitted by the end of June.  So having had last weekend off, I'll be back into reading and research come this Anzac Day long weekend and all the weekends after... 

Over at Ellie's blog I recently mentioned the Helsinki scene from Jim Jarmusch's film Night on Earth, and, thanks to YouTube, I thought I'd share it more broadly.  He's one of my favourite directors and, at the risk of sounding like a complete wanker, I'll say that he's the only non-Finn I've ever seen who "gets it" about them. 

Now I should also say that while the whole thing is sprinkled with a wonderfully touching sense of pathos, part 2 has a particularly sad story that is quite affecting, especially if you're at all sensitive about premature births.  Stay with it if you can though.  Enjoy.

Army by Ben Folds Five.  This was the song of the moment when The Boy joined us so I have a very clear memory of singing this out the window at 3am in the morning, just a few hours after he'd been born, driving back home from the hospital.  And I gave it another crack yesterday after spending Good Friday holed up at work typing up study notes.

Funny where a thread can lead you.  Last week I decided most properly that what I really needed was a snap brim wool felt fedora in black or charcoal that I could wear walking to and from work.  Figured it would be a good use of a David Jones gift card I recently came into possession of (well, really I guess I kind of earned it) though, sure enough, DJs don't appear to stock anything of the kind so I'll hold off for a while hoping they'll magically appear over winter.

Anyway, not just the hat thing but that whole sort of mood, the idea of the "look" that a fedora is associated with has been bumping around my head.  And then I see this over at the RiotACT which is about swing dancing run in Canberra by a mob called Jumptown.  Here's the video from the RiotACT post:

A few fedoras there, and that "look" I was thinking of.  So taking a look at Jumptown got me all curious about this Lindy Hop style of dancing.  Thank you wikipedia: 

The Lindy Hop is an African American dance, based on the popular Charleston and named for Charles Lindbergh's Atlantic crossing in 1927. It evolved in New York City in that year and was a fusion of many dances that preceded it or were popular during its development, but it was mainly based on jazz, tap, breakaway and Charleston. The Lindy Hop co-evolved with jazz music and is a member of the swing dance family. It is frequently described as a jazz or street dance.

...which then led me to YouTube and this video which is simply delightful and, I reckon, worth sharing with you all.  Enjoy.

It was when the Sifu started enthusiastically telling the students that the sound a breaking elbow makes is akin to that of ripping your pants (and how goddamned hilarious that was to him at the time) that I decided I should start looking for another club.

I've been meaning to write about this ever since I joined vox, and have been prompted a little by the street fight scene in Watchmen where the aforementioned move occurs (terribly graphically which is probably why it's stuck with me) along with a couple of others that looked familiar.

For a few years, right up until I moved here to Canberra and for a while afterwards on my own and with a couple of students I found, I was studying a form of kung fu called Wing Chun.   I got up to mastering the second form, the Chum Kiu ("seeking hands"), and was about to start on the wooden dummy form before I left Brisbane and began pursuing a new path down here.

I need to make it clear that I am not a violent person and that I didn't take up kung fu to learn how to hurt others.  My own personality traits, combined with professional training and experience in dealing with cranky people, means that I generally have the situational awareness and communication skills to be able to avoid or defuse a likely conflict before it escalates.  And when I was teaching I'd usually spend the first class with a new student going through these awareness and communication skills before getting anywhere near how to strike or block.   

I cannot emphasise just how important this is.  Learning a martial art - the right kind of martial art, I should say - will give the student the confidence to be able to not fight.  It translates into little things like the way you walk, your posture, and your attitude that will actually make you less of a target of physical violence.  The self defence aspect of a martial art should really be about protecting yourself and neutralising a given threat or threats with as minimum force as required before running away. 

The school I moved to, on the recommendation of my housemates at the time, emphasised the art as opposed to the practice of kungfu.  The focus was on the forms, especially the first form the sil lam tao ("little idea", also called siu nam tao), and how everything flowed from those.  Once you reached a certain level of understanding the teaching also moved to chi, to internal energy, and how the structures and movements enabled a whole new level of comprehension of the art.

And I think that this is the reason why it's never left me.  I simply got to a point where I couldn't unlearn what I'd learned.  Sort of like music, I guess - the years of heavy practice associated with classical piano means that the discipline and basic skills and knowledge are now ingrained in me, inseparable. 

So it's a little crazy but I think about it every, single, day.  The tan sau, bong sau, fook sau, the four gates, the endless chain punching drills, remembering how the senior students would hang back after training every Monday night for an hour long intensive chi sau ("sticking hands") session and we would close our eyes just before contact with our partner and seek the centre by touch alone - you could feel when someone moved their foot mere centimetres just through the change in their structure and energy.  While it lasted (as unfortunately it inevitably went broke) the school under Sifu G was a very special experience indeed.

I'll leave it at that for now.  I think the next time I write about it I'll talk about lineages and the differences in approach, and what you'll commonly encounter at most schools. 

It's been a hard week. 

You know, I started going into details about it all just now but thought no, best not to share it.  They're just details and they won't add anything. 

So I got in the car to drive home and I remembered those Friday nights when I'd head to a friend's place, others would gather, a drink, a smoke, a joke, and eventually guitars would come out and be passed around and we'd sing, sing, sing.  There's a Buffalo Tom cd in the car and I know what I have to do.  I sing Taillights Fade, twice, and am pleasantly surprised to hear that over 10 years later I can still hit the high notes.  I'm running through the chord changes in my head, E minor to C, D to G to D then it starts again.  The window is open as I drive around the lake, I'm taking the scenic route home and part of me is secretly hoping I'll be heard.  I sing, sing, sing.

How are you a better person today than you were ten years ago?
Sponsored by Nature Made.

Phew.  This is kind of a tough one.  I mean, I was what I was then and I am what I am now - maybe it's not so much about good and bad and just different.  Ten years from now I'd prefer not to be beating myself up about what a dick I am now when that's not really the case.  And nor was it back then, though my oh my, I can hang on to my mistakes.

Nevertheless, this is something I've sort of been thinking about anyway given that I'm coming up to nine years of living in Canberra.

I think I'm less selfish than I used to be.  And that this is largely due to my wife, who stuck with me when I worked out all the guystuff I had to work out.  I know I've got a little more white in my beard, and that it gets whiter every time I shave my beard off (usually every equinox and solstice - so this Saturday will be the first for the year). 

I'm a little less strong but I'm much surer, deft, even, about how to use the strength I've got.

I think I'm both smarter and wiser, noting that the former comes from study and the latter from reflection and experience.

I have a bit more confidence, which probably comes from caring less about what others think of me.  With this, however, is a certain degree of arrogance.  Humility is something I've been contemplating for the past few months now, how to live it.

I think I have a lot more love, and that it's due in no small part to fatherhood.  Speaking of which, I'll end this odd little post with no. 2 news - 20 week scan last week, two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, big brain, beat beat beating heart, amazing little thing, felt the first kicks a few weeks ago.  We're having trouble coming up with boy names which is leading me to think that my initial instincts about having a girl may be off the mark - we had the same problem with R, lots of names for girls but only a handful for boys.  We'll see.  But yes, so far so good.

I'm not quite sure what the following is, 'tis but a mere whimsy if anything, but it's here, and it has been bombing around my noggin since a conversation with my wife earlier today where I started talking about how I couldn't really ever be a secret agent (too tall, too damned handsome, you know how it is) but second-in-command to a supervillain, fine with that.  Heck yeah, that's the job for me.  Not the supervillain itself, mind, but the dude who stands by the supervillain's side, sneers at the hero, and takes care of the henchmen.  Henchpeople, rather.  'Cos henchpeople are easier to boss around than other minions. And so...

See, it's the monkeys I can't stand.  No More Goddamned Monkeys, that's the rule now.  Nobody appreciates how difficult those little bastards are to keep.  Like, you need special wranglers and everything on staff, you can't just leave that stuff to your garden variety minions. 

But still there are supervees not getting it.  "I can make them fly," they say.  "I'll simply attach these vat-grown wings/antigravity belts/dimensional spells etc".

No.  Monkeys are primates.  They belong in trees and reruns of BJ and the Bear.  Monkey don't fly.

So this is the sort of inanity I'm thinking as the Maniacal Dr Mimorski (was it maniacal? M-something, one of the usual stupendous appellations) stands on the raised dais to my left addressing the henchmen - sorry, henchpeople - below.

Humans.  Regular old wharf and western suburb thugs.  Good.  Much easier to work with than ninjas, or robots, or yes, those goddamned monkeys.  Humans have motivations, needs, impulses.  Tangibles and manipulables.  And the ability - generally speaking - to understand a clear order and then take a reasonable crack at carrying it out.

I can tell Mimorski's winding up so I get ready to start playing my part.  Again.  Stupid bloody specialist skill sets.  Head of henchpeople/supervee second-in-command doesn't have its own entry in the career guidance handbook.  A little bit of prior warning may have been useful back in the day.

"...and so, my most loyal minions, soon will be our time, soon we will play our momentous role in shaping order from disorder, harmony - my harmony - from chaos, and soon we will implement a just and benevolent rule from the so-called "free world".  Obey me absolutely and the rewards shall be yours!"

The doctor sweeps his cape and departs.  Faces - oh my, ugly, ugly faces - swivel to me.  My turn. 

"Right you degenerate scum, you know the drill.  Standard two-hour perimeter patrols, six by three, reporting on randomised contact from HQ.  I expect you have ignored the briefing provided in your induction and orientation pack about those who are likely to interrupt us here.  Maybe you were also not paying attention during the "Boobytraps - not what you think we mean" session held yesterday after lunch.  I can assure you that this merely means you are just that much more likely to die during your stay here.

I see a few familiar faces from previous enterprises so that means you at least had the balls to survive.  Please understand that I do not care for you insofar as you are merely another body for our enemies to surpass in order to reach the good Doctor.  You have your job to do, so do it.  Remember the "no dickheads" policy and you might get through this and be staggeringly rich at the end of it.  That is all.  Piss off to your duties."

Specialised skill set.  Indeed.  My shoulder starts aching (a remnant from the last job) as I turn and start making my way to the control room.

...see, thing is, I've been pretty sick for a little while, must be about 7 or so weeks now.  And I'm thinking that one of the reasons I'm a little crook is because I haven't been processing things properly.  Maybe the act of writing, especially in the absence of other activities like regular exercise, or piano practice, or revisiting kung fu forms, is a way towards healing that I need to acknowledge.  On the good side, I've dropped like up near 8 kilos, and a slimmer daddy-fu is a happier daddy-fu. 

So with this newly-realised commitment to writing, things could get a little rambly around here, and I'd like that to mean rambling in a cool, Kerouac-in-a-fast-car sort of way (which, you know, could well happen), but let's face it, ultimately I'm probably just another cushy-arsed Australian suburbanite ranting on teh intertoobz.  Last night I wrote down a list of stuff I could start on, ranging from a series of minor confessions to recollections to self-indulgent justifications for irrational behaviour - for example, I've been mentally working on a post about how to correctly stack a dishwasher for months now.  That should be a corker once I work out the diagrams and stuff.

In other news:

• I encourage you to send a little love Peta's way, and I think her blog is going to be worth reading over the next year or two (and if you're reading this Peta, let me know if you guys are interested in receiving a Digger's gift membership);
• The Boy is now 95cm tall, with feet an amazing 17cm long from heel to the end of the big toe, and thanks to my expert and enthusiastic tutelage he is probably the best under 3 air guitarist in the nation (*sniffle*, that's my boy...); and
• My beautiful darling wife is pregnant again, due around the end of July.  We're very happy, as well as a little anxious.  So it's daddy-fu times two soon.

Thanks, back again in a little bit.