Claire Wainwright, The Snowy Mountains, Doctor Who, and Eating While Walking

1. Had insomnia. I decided, instead of lying in bed and fretting, I'd get up and do some of the stuff I do in the morning.  Most of it is usually Australia-related.

2. Realized I may have been wrong yesterday about the Cystic Fibrosis treatment. Well, the good news is I'm not wrong about it helping people. But I may have been wrong about who gets the credit.

I read this article yesterday from The Brisbane Times and thought it was saying that Queensland researchers led the study. Or maybe I should say, I misread the article.

Because this morning (EARLY morning) I looked at other articles, about the subject, and Queensland wasn't mentioned.

I think what has really happened is that there's an international study. The drug is being given trials all over the world...including Queensland.

Yeah. This BBC article doesn't mention Queensland at all.

3. Saw that I might have been right yesterday after all. And maybe BBC is just failing to give Queensland credit.

I went to a Washington Post article and followed the link to the actual study.

I looked at the first name on the study. Claire E. Wrainright. I'm guessing the reason her name is first is because she's the head of the study. Well, at least I know the names aren't listed alphabetically. I guess it could be randomized.

But anyway...I googled Claire Wainwright, and found she works at the University of Queensland. Her expertise is fighting fungal lung infections in patients with CF.

You know, originally I typed "children" above instead of "patients". I had to change that. In the past, it WAS mostly children who had CF. But thanks to researchers like Wainwright, there are now many adults with CF.

I make it sound like she's giving them CF.

What I mean is, that researchers have found treatments to help people with CF live into adulthood.

4. Saw that the next guy on the research list is from Belfast. So it's not all Queensland. It really is an international thing.

5. Felt wrong about things but not sure where I've gone wrong. Am I wrong about Queensland deserving more credit from the BBC? Or was I wrong to think The Brisbane Times was overemphasizing Queensland's contribution to the study?

6. Watched an episode of The Saddle Club.  Dorothee (Matylda Buczco) looked familiar to me. Nothing on her filmography stood out at me, so I figured she just looks like someone else. While watching today, I figured out who she looks like. It's that actress from Once Upon a Time and How I Met Your Mother.

What's her name?

Jennifer Morrison. Thanks, IMDb.

8. Compared Morrison and Buczco on Google Images.

Here is Buczco.

And here's Morrison.

I think they look similar in some pictures but quite different in others.

9. Felt a sudden rush of love for the Aussie blogs I've been reading lately.

10. Considered visiting the Snowy Mountains while reading Project 2014's post about Kosciuszko National Park. That's one of the places in Australia that calls out to me. Well, almost every place in Australia calls out to me. But there are places that have a louder call.

I Google Mapped it. It's a 6.5 hour drive from Sydney.

Well, that's to the place mentioned in the blog post—Broken Cart Trail. I don't know if that's a place to stay. I think it's just the park entrance.

We'd have to pick a town in the mountains.

Maybe Adaminaby. I've heard of that one.  It's the town that moved so the original could be flooded for the Snowy Mountain scheme.  How long to there from Sydney?

10.  Got directions from Google Maps for Sydney to Adaminaby. It's close to six hours. But it looks like we'd drive through the mountains. That would scare me.

11. Looked at some Street View images of the roads in the mountain area. They look tight, but not high.  But I've only done two views. I might be missing the high, scary ones.

12. Drove on the road using my finger and mouse. It's starting to look scary.

13. Checked to see if we could go another route...via Canberra.  That looks better—much less mountains.

Would it be worth it to go to Canberra again? Maybe. I loved it there.  But I was more into Aussie politics back then. These days, it might be less meaningful.

14. Reminded myself I'm not planning for us to go back to Australia until around 2022. By then I might be totally back into politics.

15. Added Eden to the trip. That place calls out to me too. I don't know why. Maybe I have a thing for dead whales?  Or whaling? Though it's not like I've ever read Moby Dick.

16. Consulted Lord Wiki about the number of episodes for Wentworth.  While getting the number, I saw that he lists the titles. One of them is "Fear Her". That was also a title of a Doctor Who episode. AND that Doctor Who episode has an Australian reference.

17. Saw there is another Wentworth episode with a Doctor Who title. "The Girl Who Waited".
I can't imagine that this is a coincidence. One same title? Yeah. But not two.

Are there anymore?

The only one that jumps out at me is "The Long Game".

They might ALL be Doctor Who titles. I'm really only familiar with season 1-7 of the new series. The other Wentworth titles might be named after the old series or the Peter Capaldi episodes.

18. Did some title googling, and saw that not all the Wentworth titles are Doctor Who titles.

19. Felt the opposite of kinship with Eric Thompson when I read this in his blog post. As it was early Sunday morning the area had a post-party kind of feel to it and careful observation of the ground revealed patches where people had leaked various bodily fluids the night before (mostly vomit- hopefully) 

What?!

What the hell is worse than vomit?

To me that's the worst of the worst.

I'd rather have snot, blood, semen, pee...

Anything other than vomit!

Although for the person expelling the bodily fluid, vomit might be preferable to blood.

I guess it's better to leave a huge puddle of vomit than a huge puddle of blood.

20. Enchanted by Thompson's photo of Mount Fuji. It looks pretty awesome. He says when they first saw it, they thought it was part of the background clouds. It does kind of look that way.

21. Perplexed by what Thompson says about eating. Finding somewhere to sit is a perpetual issue in Japanese cities. It's rude to eat and walk- but there's nowhere provided to eat anything!

Does he mean it's rude to eat and walk in Japan? Or everywhere?

Is it rude in Australia?

Did we eat and walk while in Australia? I can't remember.

And, wherever we're not supposed to eat and walk, is that all food? Or just meal-type food?

22. Remembered that we ate and walked pizza while in Manly. Was this awful of us?

23. Googled rude to eat and walk and ended up on websites about Japan. So, I think this is a Japanese thing.

Can you eat a candy bar while walking? An ice-cream?

24. Relieved to see this website saying it's totally okay to eat meat pies (and other foods) while walking through Australia.

25. Wondered, while watching The Saddle Club, if Pine Hollow Stables is in Canada, Australia, or an alternate universe.

26. Decided on an alternate universe.

I think it takes place on Manjipoor. Or that's what I'm going to imagine.

It's just that I'm unable to handle the ambiguity of setting on that show.

So I'm going to pretend that The Saddle Club takes place in the future...after the events of The Elephant Princess.  The town in The Saddle Club was founded by the descendants of Alex and Caleb; Taylor and Amanda; Kuru and Zamira; AND Veronica and her American boyfriend—people who have the means to travel between both worlds.

Though The Saddle Club takes place 150 years after The Elephant Princess, the story looks like it's happening in 2001-2003, because Manjipoor has always been a bit behind when it comes to style and technology.

27. Understood that I have no clever evidence to back up my theory. I just like it.

It brings me peace.

28. Wanted to clarify something. Veronica did NOT have an American boyfriend on The Elephant Princess.  That's my own invention. Because I need a reason for why some of the characters on The Saddle Club have Canadian-American accents.

Oh! I should change the boyfriend to Canadian.

So here's the story: There was a Canadian visiting the Gold Coast, and he met Veronica. One day they went on a group field trip to Manjipoor. There! I just wrote fan fiction!

29. Had another idea.

If the alternate universe of Manjipoor has an area that corresponds to Australia and the people there have Australian accents; shouldn't there also be other areas that correspond to other areas of our universe?  Why would everyone in an entire alternate universe speak with an Australian accent?

Actually, now that I think of it? Do they all have Australian accents?  Maybe they don't, and I didn't notice.

30. Thought of how all the aliens on Farscape had Aussie-like accents.  Or actually, they spoke alien languages, and they had some kind of thing inside them that translated everything for everyone. But why were those alien languages heard as Australian by an American astronaut?

The thing that really fried my brain is when John Crichton posed as a Peacekeeper. And when doing this, he used an Aussie-like accent as part of his disguise. I don't know how to wrap my mind around that.