Night Out

Last night we watched The Neverending Story at the Rooftop Cinema which was a very cool venue - actually, it was downright cold, but also cool in the less literal sense. The movie was not as magical as it was when I was a ten-year-old bookworm, but it has survived the tests of time better than The Labyrinth. As with most older movies, it is essential to apply liberal doses of imagination to the not-so-special effects. Take, for example, the part when Atreyu tells the scary wolf-creature that he'd rather go down fighting than be taken by the nothing. The wolf leaps toward him, snarling as the wind of the nothing tears tree from rock. The audience sharply inhales and - cut to Atreyu pushing the large, dead wolf away, its legs sticking out at right angles from its torso as it lies on its side. The whole audience, with the probable exception of the young girl sitting in front of us, laughed out loud.

On our way home, a guy around our age got on the tram and loudly asked if there were any English on board, which there weren't (I quickly decided that I'm Ameralian). A couple of stops later, someone got on wearing an English cap. Our "friend" immediately started singing "Four nil four nil four nil four nil" to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. I guess we won the cricket! The guy wearing the cap turned out to be an Aussie, too, and they soon joined voiced in a rousing rendition of "Yellow Submarine" except the chorus went, "We all live in a convict colony, a convict colony, a convict colony...."

It’s Australian for Christmas

When I was about 10, my mum, sister and I moved out of Melbourne to live with my grandmother on her farm near Woodend. One Christmas, my grandmother arranged for one of the neighbours (actually, the only other people living on our dirt road) to dress up like Santa for the benefit of me and my sister. I think that both of us were too old to actually believe in Santa, though there was still something cool about a guy dressed in red with a big bushy white beard. Sometime in the early afternoon, a ute (pick-up) carrying Santa made its way down our driveway with many a Ho Ho Ho. My grandmother, being quite proper, said, “Oh Santa, how nice of you to drop by! Would you like a glass of sherry?” Santa replied, (you’ll have to give this your best Dundee impersonation), “Naaah, but I’ll have a beeeyah.”

This ... again?

This quote comes from an article about the EU's proposed airline green taxes:

"Qantas takes its environment performance seriously and is fully aware of the debate around climate change as an issue of global significance," [Simon Rushton] said.

What debate is he talking about? There is no debate about the fact that climate change is happening and rapidly. And I dare anyone to argue that it isn't an issue of global significance. If only Qantas took science as seriously as it purports to take its "environment performance".

Say what?

I was just awarded one of these:

The Helen Macpherson Smith Scholarships

The trustees of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust have donated funds to establish special scholarships for outstanding women who are entering postgraduate study. Two scholarships are available annually and are normally awarded to the highest-ranked female recipients of an APA or MRS entering a:

1. scientific/technical discipline, and
2. a humanities/social sciences discipline.

This is in addition to the scholarship I've already been given. I am in total disbelief. My husband is not surprised. Which is not surprising. But the money sure as hell is. As is the swing from "How are we going to pay rent?" poverty to "Let's buy a dresser and a new mattress and some clothes to go with that suhweet coat Head and Ether sent" prosperity. It makes by brain go all blooey and my heart beat quickly - which is a good thing. Surprises like this are good for my health.

All in a Name

Some companies work for a humanitarian cause or to create an innovative product or to do offer service. While ultimately the goal may be to make money, they can at least say they’re doing something good along the way. The company I work for appears to exist only to make money. Sure, they’re providing a service that certainly beats the service provided by the likes of Philip Morris, but selling booze is a job that each brewery or winery could do on their own. This conglomeration exists to make money, most of which ends up in the pockets of a select (male) few. It is demoralizing to show up to a desk every day in order to help someone “general manager” rake in bucketfuls of cash.

In addition to General Managers, QA specialists, VP’s, Marketing Coordinators and the like, I have come across several funny titles in my work. I particularly like “Shifty Bugger”, though that’s obviously a joke. Obviously quite serious is “Knowledge Manager”. Uh. Does this employee even know what she does? Can she take herself serious with that title? And then there's my favourite title: “Cellar door”. I wonder if he gets paid to revolve.

And just in case I started to think that funny titles only happen in business, Lumpkin suggested that I get work as a Whale-Vomit Specialist. How truly brotherly of him!

Speaking of names, if one wants a cup of coffee here in Aus, one usually orders something called a “flat white”. Because I can’t drink milk, I end up ordering soy. And because drinking caffeinated coffee makes me twitchy enough to give Z grounds for divorce, I usually end up ordering a decaf flat soy white. It’s an embarrassing drink to order – makes me think of stuck-up people in LA. It’s also quite a mouthful. So Z has given my coffee drink a new title: very flat yellow.

In summary, my family suggests that I be a Whale-Vomit Specialist who drinks Very Flat Yellows. I'm trying to see this as positive. And failing miserably.

Culture

I just finished reading a great book, "The Player of Games" by Iain M. Banks. For those of you who haven't read any of his Culture books I highly recommend them - and this one in particular. It's been interesting to contemplate how life would be if there was no danger, if there were no rules, if death wasn't a lingering threat. What is added to our lives by our mortality? What do we gain? When I was an earnest (ahem) young girl, I remember swearing to my skeptical third grade teacher that, were the future to provide me with a choice, I would opt to do the housework myself rather than letting a robot take care of it for me. I felt then that I would lose some essential aspect of living by relinquishing any part of my existence. Nowadays, I would jump at the chance to have something scrub my toilet, iron my clothes and wash the dishes. But how far would I want to take that? How would it be to live in a society in which there was no need to work unless one was inspired to do so, a society which also has a lack of need? Want to live in a grand house over looking a fjord? No problem. How about a houseboat floating in a sea of jello? No problem - until you find yourself living there, surrounded by jello.

At this point in time, life in the Culture sounds pretty appealing. I would love to have the luxury to immerse myself in various pursuits without the pressures of time/mortality and money. I would learn all about linguistics so that I could better understand the formation of accents and dialects. I would open my own restaurant and try being a chef for a while. I would spend a few hundred years, because that is how long it would take, learning how to draw a decent representation of the world around me. And I would study the fishes in the deep blue sea.

In some ways a PhD does afford this sort of luxuriating. I am getting paid to spend three (and a half) years studying something that I find fascinating. The down-side is that this is just one thing I'm fascinated in - one of many, many things. Some people hear their calling loud and clear; for others there is no calling, just a mumbled cacophony of interesting things to do.

Which brings me to another point that's been making lazy laps around my cranium. I have been asking myself recently if fish/ecology/biology/science is really it for me. Maybe I won't enjoy it as much as I would enjoy owning a specialty organic farm? What I have come to realize is that there can be relief in just making a choice. It doesn't have to be the right choice (is there ever an obvious Right Choice?), it just has to be a choice. And once the decision is made, you can be on the move towards something. Perhaps the particular something doesn't even matter as much as the having chosen it. And so I find myself on the bring of beginning a dissertation in marine ecology...

Which isn't to say that I won't try cooking commercially at some point, or that I won't live on a farm again or - well, ok, so the linguistics thing is probably out.

Don't say that

My Dad is in Hong Kong for a trade show, which he tells me is terribly boring but for the booth girls dressed in leather. When he tries to read my blog, he gets and error message from a Hong Kong url. Certain countries that we visited during our travels didn't like blogger either - I tried to log on for days from Addis Ababa, though that may have been less to do with censorship and more to do with the generally craptastic state of that country.

Speaking of censorship, the company I work for has a "no denim" policy. Seriously. No demin allowed. This makes my brain go waggawaggawhaaa? Dictating what employees can and can't wear to work?!?! That is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. I work for a company that it doesn't trust its employees to choose their own clothing. How hard can it be? Got a big sales meeting? Pull out that suit and tie. Work in IT where the closest thing you get to a person is that email in your inbox? Wear whatever the fuck - sorry, phuck you want. And I don't just don't get it. It takes time and money for someone to come up with a "no denim" policy, time and money for someone to write up a proposal for the exec team, time and money for the exec team to give the ok, and more time and money to communicate to the suckers - uh, I mean employees. This is certainly the most corporate corporation I have ever worked for - and I hope this is as corporate as it ever gets for me.

It's almost enough to make me want to shave myself a mohawk and dye it green and get a Polynesian face tattoo and an excessive septum piercing. Almost.

Speaking of body manipulations, I had the pleasure of having eight electrodes strapped to my chest for a twenty-four hour period this week. It happened to be incredibly hot the day I got hooked up to the heart monitor - I still have a couple of spots on my chest that looked like they had an unfortunately close encounter with an octopus. And no, you can't see. That may have been the only period of time where I actively wanted my heart to do it's syncopated hiccup routine. And did it? Not that I'm aware of. This morning, though, about 15 hours after I removed the heart monitor, it does it again. Should there be a next time where I try to sleep without crushing the machine or choking on the multiple wires, I will be sure to ask my body to misbehave earlier.

On the nose

A lifetime or two ago when Z and I were exploring the South Island, we had a special anniversary dinner at a fabulous restaurant recommended by Mr. Sassyass. We ordered a bottle of local wine and were enjoying it when I decided to red the label. In addition to listing flavors like plum and berry, it listed the words "canned apricot". Canned apricot??? This lead to a hilarious competition to see who could come up with the worst wine description ever. I think the winners were a palate of last year's oysters, and a nose of seal colony.

Today, I was reading through an article describing the top 100 wines of 2006 and found the following:

2004 Carmel Road Monterey Pinot Noir ($20)
Nicely balanced, this wine is aromatic (basil, plum, red cherry and pencil lead), softly fruity (pie cherry) and spicy, with a hint of tar on the lingering finish.

Mmm... just what I want my wine to taste like: pencil lead and tar.