Sweet sweat

I got sick of checking my map (you'll find it at the top of the side-bar; just click for entry!) because no-one ever seemed to pin it, then today I discovered that three more people have done so since I last looked. It's quite silly how exciting it is to find someone's been prepared to put a message and their location on your map. Thanks heaps to Harmless from USA (does SC stand for South Carolina?), Paul from Great Britain (Leeds) and Adam from Western Australia (sure Adam, leave a message on the blog if you are heading to Darwin anytime and I'll show you the sights!). Harmless is already linked in my side-bar. He and his wife Daisy (also linked) write really interesting blogs that tell me all about a far different life-style than mine but there's still lots in there I can relate to - particularly Daisy's lovely family stories. If I can find blogs for Paul and Adam, I'll link them too so you can check them out. In fact I'm going back into that map and see if I can work out links for all my blog friends around the world. I know there are more readers out there; it would be great if you pinned the map too so I can revel in our diverse and far-flung cyber-community.

Adding to yesterday's list of frustrations, today I can add the big one...automated telephone answering systems. 20 minutes wait on Optus today, but at least, for once, I did receive satisfaction when I spoke to a real consultant. At least I think I did. Ever since I changed my mobile provider to Optus, I no longer get caller ID coming up. It used to appear on Telstra. Finally I got around to asking about it and it seems they had not checked the right box. I'm assured it will work now. Can somebody I know that has caller ID activated on their phone give me a call on the mobile so I can see whether it does work now? While on the path of correcting the faults in my mobile phone, I spoke to Nokia to find out why (once again only since I changed to Optus) the incoming voices are so faint that I can only hear about 30% of most calls and need to keep irritatingly begging people's pardon. Seems there is a function (using the up arrow during a call) that increases the volume - I tried it and it works. I've been putting up with these irritations for about 2 years now without trying to do anything about them. No-one can say I'm slow!

I find it rewarding out of all proportion when I finally get stuff fixed that's been annoying me for ages, but then I wonder, - why do I just put up with things for so long before taking action?

I like frogs. Tonight I found a great blog where I found a wonderful -though somewhat sad- frog story. Sorry if the link doesn't take you directly to the post but you'll find the frog story easily enough with a quick scroll-down.

This reminded me of my friend Nicky the frog. Now I might have told you before that I live in a city a long way from all my family and old friends and sometimes that can get a little lonely. I spend a lot of time sitting on my first floor balcony watching the palm trees wave, and one night, discovered to my joy that I had a beautiful green tree frog visiting me. He was so handsome in his dinner jacket of lime green with bright yellow shirtfront and his big, black eyes followed my every movement. I called him Nicky.

Every night for 3 weeks, Nicky arrived seemingly from nowhere to sit by my chair and hunt the insects attracted to the light. He slept in the water trough under a pot plant during daylight hours.

Nicky and I bacame fast friends but then I had to make an interstate business trip for a week.

When I came home, Nicky was gone. No amount of crawling around peering into the watering holes under the pot plants could elicit that happy sight of Nicky's pointy nose and sweetly closed eyes.

I'd left watering and care instructions with my partner, but he didn't really like Nicky, and Nicky was prone to sitting in the middle of the door mat - right in the line of careless feet!

By now I had grave fears for Nicky.

Then, about a month later, he arrived again one night, bold as brass he hopped over from a palm tree and proceeded to gobble insects. But he never stayed around for long after that; just the occasional visit for a night or two.

Maybe Nicky found a mate and moved to a new home. I hope so - he was a great pal.

Have you ever been desperate for a midnight snack and tried to open the pack on a Mars Bar or Picnic? Packets of chips are the same. I swear they make them tougher every day.

How about when you're really tired and just need to look up one more blog before bed and that horrible "page is unavailable or the website must be experiencing some difficulties" message comes up on the computer?

Or when you need a glass of wine and you need it now and the cork crumbles and comes out in pieces after three attempts to open it, or even worse, when you've got a bottle but no corkscrew. I once broke the neck on the bottle with my frantic attempts to open it with a knife!

Or when the other residents of your unit block overstuff one garbage bin till the garbage is overflowing, while a second garbage bin sits right next to it, only slightly less accessible and totally empty!

Ms foot in mouth strikes again.

I have the worst problem with relationships: at work, at home, casual or intimate it seems it's only a matter of time before I offend someone. Often how I offend is by being too honest. If I think something or take some action, I readily, freely and without provocation, tell the person concerned. Something in me screams that it's only fair they should know if I've spoken about them to someone else or have drawn some conclusion about them- after all, it's their life too, they have a right to know, a right to comment, ... or so it seems to me. But no, this is not a good way to run relationships.

People have their own picture of their relationship with you, and it's the one they are comfortable with. Most of them don't give a damn whether you share this vision or not. In fact, they don't give a hoot what you really feel or think - or say about them behind their back- as long as they don't have to confront it. In fact, I question whether many of them value honesty of thought or action to any degree at all.

Today I had this brought home to me yet again in connection with an internet penpal. In a short space of time I'd made quite an intimate connection with this person. We'd discussed all sorts of topics, bared our souls, shared confidences and just generally chatted. Somehow we got onto the matrimonial aspirations of some people we know and that's where it all went pear-shaped. I passed on some of his comments to one of the people we were discussing and of course, being me, I fed her comments back to him - after all, I thought we were all involved in this discussion in one aspect or another. Then I get a hurt and offended email from him accusing me of betraying his confidence by passing on his comments! Wha???

You see, I'm just not aware of the sub-text, the subtleties, the sensitivities. To me, this was just a friendly, joking discussion. A bit of harmless matchmaking fantasy. To him it was personal between him and me. What I did wrong was not to betray his confidence (since I didn't realise it was a confidence), it was to treat the discussion as honest and open and relay it back to him... oh well, guess he can just join the long list of my offendees.

I had a good friend. At least I thought she was. We knew each other for many years. Then one day I stupidly put her name up for a job. She plagued me for additional information. I told her I couldn't provide this. She was annoyed. I sent her a long email trying to explain honestly how I felt about all this. She was even more annoyed and offended and the long friendship bit the dust.

My former partner avoids truth in any form; like the plague. He is the most pleasant and reasonable of men unless he is faced with an unpalatable truth, or evidence of his own lies. Then he becomes intractible, stubborn, stony-faced, and nothing or no-one will get him to admit he's lied or accept the honest reality of a situation. He only want to see what he wants to see. Moreover, he doesn't really care that you see through his lies, as long as you don't confront him with your knowledge. As long as he doesn't have to face it, it doesn't exist.

I know I'd have far more friends if I could learn to be a little more discreet, to keep my honest opinions to myself and tell them what they want to hear or avoid the issues I know we'll disagree on.

Why did I tell that internet pal I'd passed on his comments? Why did I face my former partner with every infraction of the truth? Why didn't I just avoid that good friend's business questions instead of trying to explain how I felt? I don't know, but what I do know is that I don't learn from these mistakes. For me it's somehow a question of integrity; of feeling a relationship is not worth having if it can't be open and honest - from a pen-pal to an old friend to a work situation to the most important relationship in my life.... I just can't bloody sustain this adult, prevaricating, sugar coated, secretive, lying, cheating, hiding, pretending bloody life of half truths and half lies.

Think I'll just curl into the foetal position, suck my thumb, close my eyes and let that big, grown-up, clever, manipulative, civilized, sweet-talking world out there play games on its own for a while.

Angela's wedding 

Sometimes I just spend too much time emailing and not enough time blogging. More often, I just can't think of anything interesting to blog about. If this was a real diary and not an online journal, I could post my innermost thoughts, but often enough these are too personal or too transient to allow access, not so much to my unknown readers, as to my known readers. What I really miss is blogger idol - that wonderful thought-starter that set us all blogging about diverse subjects every week. So, I'm going to start my own version - just come up with a fairly random topic, blog on it, and hope some of you, my readers, will be inspired to blog on the same topic. If you like this idea, just make your own blog entry, and link to it through a comment on this page. Let's get this thing going again. Feel free to interpret it any way you wish. By the way, if you have any ideas for topics, please suggest them.

The Topic for Week 1 of Hard Starters is: "What's in a name?"

My young friend Angela got married yesterday and this made me wonder: What's in a name?

When she was born, how did her rather ordinary, working class parents come up with the name Angela. Little Angel...of the angels...angelic... Angela is all those things. Why not Jean or Joan or Gladys; Beth or Briony or Catriona? But no, Angela it is and angel-like she is.

First; she's beautiful. I wonder if someone named Angela could be less than beautiful? Her dark hair has tints of deep auburn, is thick as clotted cream and falls with a hint of a wave. Her skin has the warm, pinkish tones of her Celtic and Germanic forbears and her smile is big and white and even and lights up the sky.

She got married, dressed in blush pink silk encrusted with rose and quartz crystals, under a cloudless blue sky, standing on a carpet of emerald grass lined with white pebbles , while a breeze off the Timor Sea wafted music of guitar and flute across the bay. A fitting setting for the marriage of an angel.

My Angela is kind and gentle, practical and pragmatic, organised and efficient. Are these the attributes of angels? If they are not, then they should be.

Angela has been my true friend although I am more than twice her age. She's propped me up when I've faltered and given me directions when I've been lost. She's shared her hopes and her dreams, her worries and fears...and listened to mine... compassionate, caring angel.

I can only think of two other Angelas I've known. Both had pink complexions, sweet natures and contagious smiles.

I once had a white cat which we called 'Ratso'. My mother-in-law wanted him called 'snowflake' and when he turned out to have a mean streak and a nasty habit of leaping on people from trees, she always maintained it was because he was only living up to his name.

Perhaps it is true that there is more in a name than one might think.

Week 85 of I say - you think?


Pointless:: Blunt
Sadistic:: Mean
Bunny:: Rabbit
Betrayal:: Lies
Oliver:: Hungry
Star Wars:: Space
Let it ride:: gambling
Ray of light:: starlight- starbright
Tight:: corset
Gadget::Inspector


And here's my unconscious story for this week:

It was pointless sending the emissary, like a small furry rabbit anxious to surrender itself to hungry dogs. Why are they always so blunt, so sadistic and mean? What's wrong with gambling on a ray of light?

Starlight- starbright, first star I see tonight; don't lock my body in a tight corset, let it ride in space. Give Oliver the tools of star wars so he's not hungry any more and send Inspector Gadget to the rescue!

No more betrayal - no lies!

Yesterday I received one of those chain emails from a good friend who is quite a smart woman. Reading it made me feel thankful and positive; happy to have what I have and live where I do, so I passed it onto two men I know who I thought would be helped by a bit of positive thinking and counting of the blessings. Big mistake. It seems what appears below is absolute garbage, the maths and the demographics are all wrong and all it engendered in either of them was rage and scorn.

I'm shocking at maths and maybe the demographics are all wrong, but it made me feel lucky; it made me feel good, and I'm sure the sentiments are pretty right, even if there are numerous rich Asians and more muslims and more people with college degrees than this bit of 'garbage' tells me - it still points out to me that I am lucky to be amongst the small percentage of people in the world who have the chance to live a life of peace and prosperity, to have more than enough to eat, to have clean water to drink and the chance of a fine education and a good job!

What do you think?

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be nonwhite
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth, and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder...
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness... you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ... you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.

Morning and night-time views from our window at The Crest Hotel. Don't you just love the angels dancing on the harbour bridge in that night shot? 

I wrote before about Sydney's Korean Ginseng Bathhouse and my blogging guru tells me I get lots of hits on that post, so here's an update. I reckon the reason I get those hits is that it is so difficult to find this place on the internet, so here's the link for when you want to book.

This time we went the whole distance, booking into the Crest Hotel for the night with an inclusive bathhouse package - the cost is surprisingly reasonable - and the views from the room over Woolloomooloo and Sydney harbour are amazing - check out the picture above.

After shedding those confining outer layers of our lives (clothes) we soaked away the cares of the world in the hot ginseng bath alternated with warm and cool baths. This time we needed that cool bath because the ginseng one was sauna hot.

The korean scrub sloughed off every centimetre of old dead skin and brought all the blood tingling to the surface.

A face mask consisting of a coating of warm honey, washed off with milk and followed by icy cucumber puree was applied to set while a full body massage relaxed and rejuvenated us all over.

It's difficult to say what is the most enjoyable part of this experience, perhaps the feeling of basins of warm water sliding down your body to wash off the dead skin, perhaps the scalp massage, or the feeling of those tiny Korean feet walking up your spine (yes, they really do that!), but for my money it's a toss up between feeling that heated oil pouring and running down your body to be massaged in, or the very hot towels that wrap and enfold your arms, your body, your legs, or maybe just the feeling of liberation you get when you shed your clothes and walk naked in such an unthreatening, all female, environment. It's pure, unadulterated, indulgence of the senses. I love it!

Week 83
I say ... and you think ... ?
Reporter - journalist
Mythology - legend
Wimbledon - tennis
Civilization - caring society
Punctuation - makes sense of nonsense
Party Games - nude twister
Flawless - gem
Unprecedented - unheard-of
Curry- hot
Tropical- Darwin

Here goes for this week's unconscious story (second attempt because blogger lost everything last time when I tried to edit!)

He was a legend in tropical Darwin. The Wimbledon tennis ace turned journalist. Held by our caring society to be a flawless gem of a man- civilized- why they said even his punctuation made sense of the nonsense of the news.

Then, he blew it, in an unprecedented moment of mango madness he threw off his clothes after eating a particuarly hot curry at the Parap markets and proceeded to invite passers by to a game of nude twister.

Now he sells hot dogs at the airport.

I just did this week's unconscious mutterings and wrote a little story made up from the words as I did with last week's list - then blogger lost everything but the title and 'week 83' when I edited the post. That's it. No more time. I may or may not bother to do it all again tomorrow night.

Maybe some reader can illuminate things for me. I keep hearing that our Federal election to take place on 9 October is "all about trust". I think it was the Honourable John Howard who first said it; but young Mark seems to be going along whole-heartedly with the theme.

"You can't trust John Howard," he shouts at every opportunity - "he knew days before the last election that no-one threw their children overboard!".

"You can't trust the inexperience of the opposition. You can't trust a Labor Government to keep the economy strong and balanced"

" You can't trust John Howard, he will not serve a full term, and remember the kids overboard!" trumpets Latham.

"You can't trust the Government not to sell the rest of Telstra, we'll make sure it stays in public hands and focuses on its core business." The opposition says. "And Howard was in it up to his neck in the children overboard scandal."

Excuse me, but with all this focus on trust, what I'm wondering is why the media and the opposition all keep going back, and back, and back (until every voter in Australia is bored to death with it) to the "children overboard" scandal.

Sure everybody in Australia who is not aligned with the Liberal Party is pretty sure John Howard knew those refugees didn't throw their children overboard, days before the last Federal election, and chose not to tell us but... excuse my ignorance...

Why is no-one mentioning the biggest lie of all - That we had to declare war on a foreign country that was not threatening us because "they had weapons of mass destruction" !

Hello - How about trusting a Prime Minister who will not lift a finger to force his great buddy George W to release AUSTRALIAN CITIZENS being held in unlawful detention without charges being laid against them for three bloody years!!!

Forget about children overboard - we know he did it. It was politically expedient and it won him an election. But don't let's lose focus here. Don't let's bore the voters so much they become innoculated to this man's poison.

What about the weapons of mass destruction John? We haven't forgotten them even if the media and the opposition have. We haven't forgotten y0u sending our young people into war so you can stand on the steps of the white house next to your little mate George, so that you both feel tall!

Just piss off John. There are too many truly good people out there now that are embarrassed to say they are Australian because of your political manoeuvreing and your lies!

Your bullshit that we went into Iraq to save the Iraqi people from an evil dictator is so much hot air - you know and we know, you said it was because he had nuclear and biological weapons trained on us - well where are they John?

Stuff the "children overboard" how about bringing our citizens home for a fair trial.

My vote for father of the year by the way; it's not you John - it's Terry Hicks!

August 29, 2004 Week 82
I say ... and you think ... ?

GAME BOY - Play
Biopsy - Operation
Attack - Fight
Convention - Courtesy
Jewels - Necklace
Genetics - Inheritance
Impostor - Fake
Doug - Man's name
Arbitrary - Random
Oscillate -Fan

I'm going to add my own spin to this game each week by making up a little story with the words. Here goes.

Doug and Miranda were on their way to the hospital. Her mother, that old fake who showed courtesy to neither them, nor anyone else, as far as Doug could see, had been rushed in for a biopsy and now an operation, something to do with thyroid he'd been told and as far as he could tell, this meant the ghastly wrinkled neck his wife had inherited from her was about to be decorated with a necklace of scar tissue. Served the old bat right, he reckoned. All she ever did was sit on the couch , directly in front of the oscillating fan and complain. Last time she visited she had all the kids in an uproar because she'd comandeered the Game Boy they'd been happily sharing and wouldn't give it back till she'd got to level two - and the way she moaned about it not being fair and how she kept falling into that pit, it had looked like she'd be still be there clutching the Game Boy when the grim reaper arrived...

Try this yourself with a random group of words - it's fun!