Sweet sweat

He'll be two soon and the imperative is there, he's my grandson, I have to (indeed want to) buy him a birthday gift.

Unfortunately, in common with most of the privileged children I know, he is already 'the man who has everything' and if he doesn't have it personally, then either of his two sisters undoubtedly does.

My kids were pretty 'spoiled' for toys too. It's kind of difficult not to 'spoil' them in our society. Even if you start out with clear convictions not to encourage them to become mindless consumers, somewhere between their grandparents, aunts and uncles, hand-me-downs from older family members and all those birthdays and Christmases, they end up with too damn many toys.

My grandson's home is so full of toys there's often not room to sit down and you know whatever you buy it's likely to be the second, third or even sixth of its kind languishing in a corner of one of the packed toy boxes. So I ask mum, I mean he's two, how many more toys can he use, and she suggests a collapsible arrangement of tent/tunnel/cube things- he likes to play hidings. Okay I think, at least it's not branded Barby or Power Ranger and it encourages creative play - I can live with that (unnecessary addition though it is to the stockpile).

In fairly short time I find something on the K-Mart website from their current catalogue - which must be where mum saw it because it answers the description exactly - tent linked to cube by a tunnel...ahha! that was easy. Of course the one store in Darwin has sold out. I try the store nearest to where they live - they've sold out as well. I attempt to find a customer service phone number -nowhere to be found on the website. I ring another store in NSW and ask if there is a central office I can ring. I finally get a 1800 number, only to be told customer service closes at 4pm and can I ring tomorrow. It's looking horribly like I'm not gonna be able to find that fantastic adventure play cubby.

In the meantime, a like-minded friend has berated me with the waste and political incorrectness of buying excess toys for children and told me about a book they had when they were kids that suggested one thousand and one things to do when you're bored.

Hmmm....perhaps if I got him the book and a blanket to throw over the table - do you think that would work in today's world?

I really hate starting things.

I hate getting up in the morning and will go to any lengths to delay. This has resulted in many instances of discord and even more instances of lateness causing inconvenience, stress and embarrassment. The nice ex-husband (the one I still talk to) will remember how, early in our relationship, we missed a plane because I wouldn't get up even one minute earlier than I deemed necessary. A former boss was almost driven to a nervous breakdown (being a stickler himself for punctuality)until he lit upon a novel solution to the problem of my tardiness - he made a decision, he told me years later, that I started at 9.05 - then I wasn't late!

Going to bed at night is another daily problem for me. That's why I'm called night-rider - I'm always riding the computer until the early hours of the morning. By 11pm I'm quite tired; by midnight I'm exhausted to the point of feeling ill; by 12.30am I'm trying to drag myself away from reading other people's blogs or playing a last game of Super Collapse. Then, by the time I have a shower and get to bed I'm not tired any more and end up tossing for an hour before I finally drift off around 2am.

I hate getting in the shower. I love the shower once I'm in there but it seems such an effort when I contemplate the mechanics involved that I delay.

I absolutely hate starting the house cleaning or the ironing... sometimes I've been known to quite enjoy doing it, once I get started, but I often have to trick myself into starting. I say to myself - I'll only vacuum today and wash the floors tomorrow or next week... then once I've started, I quite often clean the whole place. Another ploy I use to trick my mind is to talk on the telephone while I iron. It plays hell with the neck muscles but it makes the ironing go so much quicker. But hell... quite often I have trouble making myself start a telephone call.

I think about my family all the time. In the morning I think I'll ring J tonight. Tonight comes and I convince myself they wouldn't welcome the call, they are probably tired, busy etc... I'll ring them tomorrow... this has been known to go on for weeks. I think there is a bit of fear of rejection and fear of interfering in their busy lives in this that compounds the fear of picking up the phone (avoidance of starting a call) because funnily enough I have no problems initiating a phone call at work. Nope, even the most feared of phone calls - cold calling sales is not much of a problem for me...but you see to my mind, this is work and the hard thing about work is starting the effort to get ready to go there.

And I have the same attitude to coming home from work. Do I look forward to knock off time, down tools and flash out the door? Of course not... I dilly, dally around, make one more phone call, write one more email and never, ever leave on time.

Yep if I could learn to like starting things my life would run a whole lot smoother I reckon.

Mommycool is a new blogger who left me a message. Check her elegant blog. Interesting short posts set out in a well organised and crisp design, it promises lots of interest, particularly to young mums who can do with a bit of an escape hatch or some good advice.
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One after another: a moving van, a furniture delivery van and a motorhome passed my door yesterday. It seemed significant in some way.
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We had State elections here last week and the old conservative party was decimated by the young labor party - looks as though the conservatives will hold only 4 seats in the new parliament and even their leader lost his seat. An Aboriginal friend noted that we now have more indigenous people in our parliament than the conservatives have seats! An amazing turnaround when you realise that up till 4 years ago, the conservatives had held government in the Northern Territory for over 20 years without any serious challenge.

The Northern Territory has a reputation in Australia for being a 'red-neck' place but it's interesting to note that we also now have 9 women in Government and a female Chief Minister...maybe the times they are a changing.
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I thought I had lots of little snippets to share, but can't think of any more now, let me leave you with this thought for the day:

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not

Thanks to Garza who signed my guestmap, I've gained a reader in a new State in the USA. I'd recently printed out a map of the US so I could get some mental picture of where my blog friend were writing from and, if I'm reading it correctly, it looks as though Garza, who worked in Australia for 2 years, is living now in Alabama.

Isn't it amazing how much of a kick you get out of seeing a new pin on your map? I love knowing I'm talking to people in the USA, a culture so like and yet so unlike my own... so thanks Garza - hope you visit more often and comment sometimes as well.

Maybe I'm coming to some sort of water-shed in my life. I seem to have come to a decision - not consciously but through some sort of osmosis- that it's time to get out of my rut - work, wine, cigarettes, sleep, tv, computer treadmill. So at the weekend I did the Wordstorm thing. Then I saw an ad in the paper for a free information seminar promoting a weekend intensive workshop coming up soon.

"The Journey. Deep inside you a huge potential beckons, waiting to set your free... Real tools. Real answers. Real healing... Real Freedom!" So I went along. Hell, what did I have to lose; it was free, right?

I'm still processing what I heard. My mind tells me this is garbage. Someone is making a lot of money out of giving hope to desperate people. My heart says:'what if it's true?'. It's a feeling akin to the urge to buy a Lotto ticket -just in case it's your lucky day.

Now I very rarely succumb to the Lotto ticket syndrome, and I can't buy the 'making the lame walk and the blind see' claims of this program, and the format and the speakers were really over the top...but- what if even part of it's true?

I talked to people who were not part of the establishment but had dabbled to a greater or lesser extent. Without exception they praised what they'd learnt - 'changed my life', 'so valuable'. In the end I compromised and bought the book. I think it will be garbage - but I should try it. Watch this space for any revelations. I don't think I'm going to go all out for the intensive weekend.

The program is called The Journey and it's promoted by an American woman called Brandon Bays (can that possibly be a real name?). If any of you have heard of it, make a comment please. If it can deliver even a smidgeon of what it promises it will bring joy to every aspect of my life, spiritual healing and forgiveness for past wrongs (done by and to),and unlock the full potential of my life...oh and incidentally heal any arthritis or tumours I happen to be harbouring!

Sounds more like a religion than a self-help program doesn't it?
Which leads me to repeat this news item heard on radio yesterday>

"The IKEA catalogue has surpassed the bible as the most read publication in the world. " I forget the numbers printed in the USA but in Australia last year 213,000 copies of The Bible were published and 4 million IKEA catalogues. Bizarre!

This weekend was the NT Writers' Festival "Wordstorm 2005". There were over 70 different events and workshops offered and for a town the size of Darwin, that's a pretty good effort.

Wordstorm's only in its second year but I reckon it's the most professionally-run event I've encountered in Darwin. Congratulations to the hard-working members of the NT Writers Centre who put it all together.

I dipped my toe in rather than going all out to attend every possible event of interest - I mean one does have other responsibilities on the weekend such as washing, ironing, shopping and all that other dreary but necessary stuff- but I thoroughly enjoyed it all and would certainly have liked to do more. Next year I might organise myself a bit better in advance and take Thursday and Friday off so I can fit more in.

On Friday evening, "Dismantle" visual art exhibition offered artworks by well known local artists around the theme of the short story "Who can blame us for that" - winner of the 2004 NT Literary Award. Hearing the author and friends read this story added interest to viewing the artistic interpretation. We followed this with an "Off the Page" event featuring Samuel Wagan Watson, Martin Harrison, Nick Earls, Sue Woolfe and Linda Christanty set in the tropical gardens of Mirambeena Resort and with musical interludes by Jillaine Jones. The atmosphere was great and it was pretty good value for the $15 entry fee - although I have to say,philistine that I am, that listening to a very long story based in legend in both the original Bahasa Indonesia and English translation did get a bit tedious.

A 3 hour Saturday morning workshop "Creating Characters" with Nick Earls was the highlight for me - he talks as funny as he writes!. He managed to lead even the most talentless of us into creating original and interesting characters. Gotta say there were some pretty talented people in the workshop though.

Foregoing the Saturday evening performance of three award-winning Aboriginal short films out of pure exhaustion, I managed to rouse myself to attend a free poetry-reading/open mike session at a local bookstore down by the marina this afternoon. Free wine and food, lots of talented readers and the bonus of hearing from Robert Dessaix and Dorothy Porter.

I'm just now getting to read the full program and kicking myself for all I missed... ah life in Darwin in the dry season is just so full of good things to do.

I've been feeling a little tired lately. A friend recommended a naturopath/herbalist to me and I decided to give her a try.

I may have told you that I have a morbid fear of the medical profession, so don't keep any kind of an eye on my health, for me that's the best way to stay healthy - just ignore any imagined ailment to see whether it goes away of its own accord and so far I've been lucky.

What I got for my money was an hour and a half of her time which included a detailed history-taking - including such things as my exposure to chemicals, use of antibiotics, allergies, what I normally ate for each meal and lots of medical, semi-medical and lifestyle questions. This was followed by an iridology assessment, a 10 minute deep breathing and meditation exercise and a neck massage. I was told what vitamins and minerals I was most probably lacking, how to modify my diet in a fairly minimal way to give me more energy, given a herbal tonic and most importantly, some information on hydration.

Now I always knew most people don't drink enough water. You hear about it all the time and most of us pretty much ignore it, but this time I was given an information sheet that astounded me. Even if half of it is medically proven, it's enough to prove to me that I should make a real effort to drink lots more water.

John Toomey is apparently one of Australia's leading health educationalists and you can read his article on hydration and health here. It may be the best 10 minutes you ever spent

Here are some highlights: You lose 1.5 litres of water a day via normal circulation -without exercising. Excess water is stored in the bowel, if there's none there, water volume in the blood drops. Your body lacks oxygen, you yawn and crave sweet foods, the pituitary gland releases a hormone called anti diuretic hormone - this causes the body to store fluid.

The pamphlet quite convincingly links the following diseases to dehydration: heartburn, arthritis, back pain, angina, migraines, colitis, asthma, high blood pressure, adult-onset diabetes, high blood cholesterol, depression, loss of libido, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy.

Apparently a 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory and difficulty focussing on the printed page or computer screen. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decreases the risk of colon cancer by 45% and breast cancer by 79% and halves the risk of bladder cancer.

Sending you this information in such an abbreviated form does not pack the punch of the actual article -I just wanted to sound the warning for you - I'm sure you can all do your own research but for instance, here's what it had to say about

Colitis: colitis pain is a signal of water shortgage in the large gut. It is associated with constipation because the large intestine constricts to squeeze too much water from the excrements- thus the lack of water lubrication. Not recognizing colitis pain as a sign of dehydrtion will cause persistent constipation, which can result in fecal impacting, verticulitis, hemorrhoids, polyps and increase the possibility of developing cancers of the colon and rectum.

Weight loss: some female patients lost 5 kilos in the first week by increasing their water intake.

The recommendation is to drink a litre of water per 25 kilograms of bodyweight per day -more if exercising- and to be patient: it will take up to six weeks for a chronically dehydrated body to re-hydrate and during this time you have to put up with frequent urination which will settle down once optimum hydration has been achieved. One suggestion is to try drinking 50% of the daily water requirement for the first week, then raise it by 10% per week over five weeks.

I'm convinced it's worth a try. Today I've drunk 2.7 litres (my recommended dose) and it hasn't been that difficult - more a matter of always having a glass of water near at hand.

Oh, I found a new idea for exercise too. An article in the paper said that recent research has found that 30 seconds of hard exercise (pedalling an exercise bike flat out), repeated 4 times with a 4 minute rest between each time, 3 days a week gives equal health benefits to 6 hours of moderate exercise a week. Well, I'm not sure about this one but I'm going to add it to my gentle exercise schedule and see how I feel after a few weeks.

Must be my week for new beginnings!

Sweet sweat

Gunlom Falls is about 3 hours drive south of Darwin, in Kakadu National Park. I spent the long weekend camping there, swimming in the natural pools.

The camping area is located at the bottom of the falls where a sheer rock face edges a large pool about 14 metres deep. At this time of year, the falls are a mere trickle and a steep half hour walk up a track around the falls leads you to a series of pools at the top of the escarpment. Here you can enjoy magnificent views over the flood plain or a walk along the sandy creek leading into the top pools.

How lucky are we to have this wonderful place almost in our backyard.

It occurred to me today that blogging relationships are a lot like real life.

You put your opinions, your thoughts, your feelings, your activities and your photos 'out there' and proceed within the reaction you get. Depending on how 'out there' you are, you find readers (= acquaintances), you get 'comments' (acknowledgement that you exist, your ideas/thoughts have some value or strike a chord with that person), some acquaintances keep hanging around and make more comments (overtures towards friendship), some nod hello (make one comment) then disappear back into their own lives, some make more effort and continue to comment. You visit their blogs in return. Some of them seem nice people but you don't think you have much in common with them so you visit infrequently. Some of them seem interesting, so you visit fairly often - occasionally your interest is reciprocated and they keep visiting you. Sooner or later you end up with one or two people you enjoy reading daily, keeping up with their lives becomes part of your own and you have made a blog friend - just as you might make a 'real' friend.

But, beware, there are a few anomalies that make 'blog friends' not quite like 'real friends'.

First, they are pretty much anonymous. Oh they might use their real name. If you are clever with the internet you might even be able to track down their address or where they work - they might even tell you these things. But essentially, unless you are some kind of psychopath, you probably don't want to intrude on them if they wish to terminate the 'friendship' - so if they stop blogging, you've essentially lost a friend. This kind of loss can be almost as devastating as losing a 'real' friend.

Now I'm a bit of a trusting sucker. I got hooked on blogging and it suited me. A way to talk to people and be part of the 'real' world without having to leave the security of my own space. Didn't have to dress up. Didn't have to lay off the wine in order to drive home. Didn't have to put up with boring conversations with people that didn't interest me. No... none of that for me - I'd found blogging.

My first "blog friend" was a woman from the USA. I can't quite remember how we found each other but she was a lovely friend. She blogged every day. She even joined an online group I suggested and we shared long emails. As well as me, she began emailing another member of the group who coincidentally was a correspondent of mine. I even asked for her address and sent her a parcel in the mail.

As well as blogging every day, the thing this woman did was a kind of blog-touting. She commented every day, not just on my site but on many of the hundreds of links she quickly built up, and guess what, her friendly manner and caring commenting scored her hundreds of followers. I reckon in less than 6 months she was consistently achieving 20 comments a day on her blog.

Then she basically stopped blogging. Within a period of a month, her posts had dried to a trickle and then pretty much stopped altogether. Her life changed I know, she got a job, she got pregnant...but it amazed me, how she could go from deliberately building up a whole community of friends, to total neglect of and disinterest in them.

I was in awe at the effort and time she used to put into blogging; and terribly disappointed when she just disappeared. That's the thing with blog friends, they don't have to explain or complain, they can just disappear.

Then I found another good blog friend. We commented back and forth, we got to know each other -I thought. She didn't have a large community of acquaintances, she seemed to develop a few close blog friends. But her posts didn't just dry to a trickle - one day they just stopped and her blog disappeared completely - wiped from the memory of the www. I managed to re-find her and we started emailing each other. There was a lot of important stuff about this blog friend I never learned from her blog but we became even better friends - I thought. Then she stopped answering my emails. She never commented any more on my blog. She disappeared a second time.

Now I have another good blog friend but his posts are drying up. He doesn't write as often as he did. Maybe he's just going through a bad patch, or maybe it's something inherent in blogging. Maybe blogging is just a place for people who can't or don't want to expose themselves to friendships in the real world. Maybe it's a community of lost souls, people with real life problems they neither want to examine nor share and who simply reach out to a community where you can be anyone you want to be and make friends or acquaintances right across the world and never have to talk to anyone when you don't feel like talking or make dinner for another person, or give up your precious free time when you don't feel like it. Maybe you can't make real friends in blogland.

A different type of blogger is the one who essentially blogs for the friends they already have. There's a community of 6 or 8 friends going on here. They chat, they speak the same language, they know the same people, they have the same interests. These bloggers often have links headlines such as 'people I spy on'. I wish I was this sort of blogger. I'd love to be anonymously catching up on the thoughts and doings of people I know but unfortunately, I don't know many bloggers personally.

Mind you knowing that people you know in the 'real world' are reading your blog is quite inhibiting as well. You have to be careful that your words don't offend them. Sometimes they can even be put out by the relationship you have with other bloggers.

It's a whole new community and the rules seem to be pretty fluid - no etiquette books here - but for all its limitations, I'll still take the intimacy of blogging and the sheer selfish pleasure of it over making 'real' friends most of the time.

Guess by my reasoning here that must make me a selfish social misfit.

Oh well; I just wanted to explore these thoughts and you dear blog acquaintance/friend are the perfect person to spill them to.

The three photos below were taken on a sunset stroll along the foreshore where I live. Life in the slow lane, as my blog promises. It's almost like a religion here, you hardly see anybody in the heat of the day, then, when sunset beckons, hundreds of people wander along the foreshore to say goodbye to the sun. Groups of family and friends gather with their picnic chairs and anything from elaborate home-cooked meals to a couple of beers and a paper-wrapped package of hot chips. Lovers take a cooling dip laced with the excitement of a possible crocodile sighting or an encounter with the deadly sting of a box jellyfish. Some just sit alone and contemplate life as the sun sinks into the Timor Sea.

Random thoughts: I am truly over Chardonnay. The last couple of bottles I've had, despite going for the specials on the better quality such as Andrew Garrett with a $5 discount down to around $10 have just tasted horrible -bitter and dead. Has everyone else switched to Semillon Sauvignon Blanc too?

Gourmet tip: The most delicious nibbles in the world. South Cape Cheese Twists - Parmesan and Garlic. They're thick and crunchy and unbelievably tasty. They are displayed near the deli in Woolworths stores. Only they're a bit pricey, $4 a packet and you only get 12 or 13 in a packet. Mmmmm! I mightn't be buying them often because I've already polished off 7 tonight... er make that 8!...9... warning -there's 1730 kj in a pack...goodnight!

Found this fun little game tonight. Try to work out what Google keyword would return these images at Guess the Google . Thanks to the New York girl for the link.

Actually, I don't know how I could stand to play this game tonight because I've had it up to here with images today. We have ordered some new display panels at work and I've been working with another staff member on the graphics and text. Trouble is, she's 3,000 kilometres away and we are trying to do it via email which entails this kind of exchange:

Colleague, chained to a workstation somewhere in the bowels of an anonymous government building in chilly Canberra: Here are PDF files of the revised display panels. These should only require some tweaking of the captions now to finalise.

Me, Drowning under a mountain of cardboard boxes filled with promotional merchandise in a demountable building on a farm in tropical Darwin: Delete the picture of Tony from panel 1A, fill that place with the picture of the mosquito from second row right on panel 2B, John pic - third row 2A -has to be moved onto 1B because it doesn't fit with the text in the header. Captions: change the caption under Angus - bottom row 2C to......, delete the word vet from caption under right hand pic, row 2, panel 2B(there is no vet in the picture) etc... 2 hours I spent on checking one set of displays today because of trying to communicate complicated instructions via email that could have been done in 15 minutes with a bit of paper shuffling and a pair of scissors. Tempers are becoming frayed, friends are being lost!

I took some nice dry season sunset photos on my walk the other day and might post some tomorrow, it's too late now and I'm heading towards bed.

My more thoughful readers will enjoy following this link to something that explains in graphic detail why some of the reactions of Australians to the SC fiasco are such embarrassing nonsense. I found it via Mellipop's link to Blondie etc... ain't the internet a wonderful place for just driftin' around? And if you're interested in another thoughtful view on SC why not pop in here.

I've been socializing and enjoying the delights the small town of Darwin has to offer in the dry season. I say small town because, even thought it's allegedly one of Australia's capital cities, it's small enough that you never go out without meeting someone you know... and it even has erudite residents such as our most famous blogger.

Last Friday evening I went to see three short plays put on by the local theatre company in a gorgeous little historic stone building called Brown's Mart (presumably one of the early markets in this town was held there). It is all very low-key and 'alternative'. The plays were excellent; all built around the linking theme of 'caravan'. One was from the perspective of a 12 year old girl who goes for a beachside holiday in a caravan with her parents. It examined the family dynamics and sexual undertones of the parents and the girl. The second was very dark, about an older couple travelling around Australia in a caravan and his gradual decline in Alzheimers - too close for comfort this one, I could identify with far too many of his symptoms! The third examined the relationships and expectations of people who run stalls at our local markets and posed the question: are people looking to find something or running away from something at these places built on illusion. We had dinner beforehand on the Darwin wharf - sensational fresh barramundi, calamari and prawns - overlooking a harbour that looked like the skin of a blue pearl in the dusk. A million dollar meal for a total of $14 each including the beer- and for US readers, our dollar is only worth about 70 cents US.

Saturday night was another spectacular tropical night under the stars watching the Darwin Symphony Orchestra perform in the Botanic Gardens. A highlight was the appearance of two principal dancers from The Australian Ballet who performed the pas de deux from The Nutcracker. Everyone was there from Ted Eagan, The Administrator (=Governor) and Clare Martin, Chief Minister (=Premier) to thousands of family groups just lolling around on their deck chairs enjoying a picnic and a few drinks.

Last night I went to a charity fund-raiser, fashion parade - once more outdoors- at the Darwin Sailing Club. For $25 entry fee and the cost of a few raffle tickets (with great prizes including an $1800 black pearl necklace and a basket of Clarins beauty products), you got substantial 'nibblies' passed around throughout the evening and as much wine, beer or other mixers as you could drink. Excellent value, and spent the evening chatting to a very amusing and down to earth woman who turned out to be the donor of the black pearl (which I unfortunately did not win). We both became a lot more amusing as the evening wore on and the drinks went down. The fashion parade was quite good too!

And if you don't want to know about SC, or about the social life of Darwin, you could visit Adam for some pretty pure relaxation in one of the most beautiful places in Australia; Broome.

Schapelle Corby - there, I've said it, and that's all I have to say. Never in the history of modern media has such a shameful and cynical display of rampant capitalism and egocentric posturings led to such mass hysteria. It's all been said...and said...and said, so all I have to say is that I heard a media monitoring report on Monday that said that 'that name' had been spoken or written about in Australia 80,000 times since this whole thing started and that was just the mass, monitored media.

Do the dolts who sent the parcel of 'biological material' to the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra not realise they have become terrorists?

OK, so I'm hooked on that game craze that's sweeping the world. They've been printing it in our daily paper and despite initial reservations, they are after all numbers in the squares and I am generally allergic to anything pertaining to numbers, I had a go. It's great. Reminds me of a game we used to play where someone would put 4 coloured pegs behind a visual barrier and the opponent had to guess what they were by trial and error with the first player giving clues by placing black and white pegs in the scoring section - white meant right colour in the wrong space and black meant right colour in the right space - I think it might have been called Mastermind. Anyway, Sudoku is a game of logic, not numbers. If you don't know it, you can see a demo and download a free 28 day trial version .

Also just finished reading a good book. It's only 243 pages so doesn't require a great commitment. Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller. It's about a female schoolteacher who has an affair with a male student and as if the subject matter wasn't kinda creepy enough, the narrator is an older female teacher who befriends the young one and the book turns out to be as much about her and her perceptions and feelings as it does the younger one - and she's REALLY creepy! Tell me what you think if you give it a go. It's quite addictive too in its way. You end up so repulsed by the narrator that you feel sorry for the perpetrator.

That's about it. Is anyone still reading this blog?