1. Had an Australia related dream. I'm at the grocery store. I look for Australian food. I'm doubting there will be anything, but I check anyway. I look to see if they have any Milo even though I don't expect to find it. I later talk to someone about foreign foods. I say if we want more at restaurants and the grocery store, we have to buy what's already there. We need to show them that these things are in demand.
2. Read article about the Deadly Awards. These are the awards for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
Deborah Mailman won for Offspring! I'm happy to hear that. I like when my shows win things.
Jessica Mauboy won for best female artist.
Another music person who won was Gurrumul Yunupingu. I think I remember him.
The literature award went to someone named Anita Heiss. She wrote a book called Paris Dreaming. I'll have to look into that.
The band of the year award went to a group called The Last Kinection.
The film of the year was Mad Bastards.
3. Watched Jessica Mauboy's "Inescapable" video.
It's a fun song.
4. Learned from Lord Wiki that Jessica Mauboy is half Indonesian.
She was an Australian Idol contestant. I don't think I knew that.
5. Watched video for Jessica Mauboy's "Running Back".
6. Learned that the rapper in that video is an American rapper. Flo Rida. I wonder if Tim knows about him.
Tim's into rap music.
7. Listened to Gurrumul Yunupingu sing "Bapa".
8. Listened to The Last Kinection sing "Black and Deadly".
It has some angry lyrics.
Lord Wiki says they're the ones who did the remake of "I Still Call Australia Home". I can't embed it, but here's the link.
Those lyrics too are angry...and very clever. I'm impressed with their writing.
9. Went to the Last Kinection's official website.
They use a very small font. Is this their way of trying to punish white people? Make us blind?
Then again, black people don't have super strong magical eyes.
Or do they?
I think it's all a conspiracy.
10. Went to The Last Kinection's MySpace page.
I'm going to listen to more of their music even though my eyes hurt now, and it's all their fault.
11. Started to listen to "I Can Feat Radical Son". It's their most popular song on MySpace.
It's pretty awesome. It's hip hop, which I tend to like. Then in the beginning, it sounds kind of American-Western, and then it sounds Aboriginal. It's a nice mix.
12. Read some of the bio stuff on the MySpace page. The three people in the group are Naomi, Joel, and Jacob. Naomi and Joel are brother and sister.
In 2008, the group was in a very bad car accident. They had severe injuries. Fortunately they recovered. I like hearing about people recovering from bad injuries. It makes the world seem a little less scary to me.
13. Watched trailer for Mad Bastards. It was an American trailer, so I guess it's been shown here.
At first it looked like the type of movie I wouldn't like. But then towards the end, it started looking good to me.
14. Went to the website of Anita Heiss. She's the one who wrote Paris Dreaming. They have a picture of the book on the site. It looks kind of like chick-lit.
15. Looked at the book descriptions on the site. Heiss DOES write chick-lit. I don't think I've ever encountered Aboriginal chick-lit.
I need to try and find her books. They sound fun. I especially want to read Manhattan Dreaming.
16. Read Anita Heiss' FAQ page.
Her proudest moment was graduating from the University of Western Australia. She was the first Indigenous Australian do to so.
She likes chocolate.
She's bad at rapping.
She doesn't cook much, but sometimes she eats kangaroo.
She doesn't like jokes based on race and disability.
I don't like MEAN jokes based on race and disability. If a subject is never joked about, though; then it's kind of like we're saying the subject is too depressing and serious. In a way, that's more insulting than a joke.
I think some jokes about race and disability can point out the elephant in the room, loosen the tension, open up discussion, etc.
17. Enjoyed reading about Fruitcake's journey to Melbourne; though I feel sympathy for her. She's starting a new job, and it sounds like she has a long commute.
I like what she says here. One of the great joys of suburban train travel anywhere, of course, is perving into people’s backyards. Everything from trampolines and junk to carefully landscaped, regularly manicured gardens.
I like looking into other people's lives. I like looking into yards. I love when you can see into someone's window. I like walking past restaurants where you can see people eating.
I like looking at people's photo albums on Flickr.
I sent my friend a link to Flickr for her homeschooling adventures. I said it was a great way of learning about other countries. She wrote back using the word "creepy".
I think, to my friend, I am creepy in many ways. A week or so ago, I was bitching a bit about this unschooling conference. My friend responded by saying something like, I don't know what awful thing happens in someone's childhood that makes them choose unschooling.
Hello? Excuse me? What are you trying to say?
My friend couldn't understand why I'd be offended by that. She was offended that I was offended.
Lesson relearned that day: Don't complain about your life to people who already believe your lifestyle, politics, beliefs, etc. are creepy. You're just adding more fuel to their fire, and they'll be ever so happy to shoot.
18. Read Andrew's post about HIS Gleeful CD. He got one too.
What's really great is he got different music than I did. Did Jayne randomly pick music for each person, or did she try to guess what we would like?
Maybe she has some kind of psychic music ability. She can read someone's blog and know what type of music would appeal to the blogger.
19. Read Andrew's sad post. They were at a party, and a child, they didn't even know, came up to apologize to them. Andrew and his party-mates had no idea what was going on. Later they found out that the child had misbehaved. One of her punishments was to apologize to everyone at the party.
I'm all for apologies, but I'm not into forced apologies. That's not saying I wouldn't strongly encourage Jack to apologize when he's done something wrong. But I can't imagine ever forcing him to do a mass apology like that. Why the hell do you need to apologize to people who didn't even know that you misbehaved?
What I want to know is if the parents of that child misbehaved in some way, would they apologize to everyone at the party?
I'm sort of doubting it.
20. Made a decision; although I might change my mind later.
If (or when) we go to Australia. I'm going to do what I did in 2009. I'll take notes about our experiences and then write the posts when we get home.
I'll probably end up doing two posts a day, because I'll want to get back to doing these posts. But these posts will probably be much shorter since I'll be busy doing the other posts.
I had been thinking of posting in Australia, but then I was thinking it would be a bad idea. We probably won't have a lot of internet access. During our 2007 and 2009 trips, it was a matter of quickly checking email at internet cafes, restaurants, and holiday park offices. I won't have time to add photos to the post and link to the websites of places we visit. It would be all too rushed and sloppy. I don't want that.
21. Realized writing two extensive posts a day will be way too much work.
I'll just do the trip reports and skip these list-type posts until I'm done.
If something exciting happens in my current (post-trip life), I'll write an extra post about it. That's what I did last time.
22. Checked the money thing.
The Australian dollar is now worth .99 American dollars. It's gone up since the last time I checked.
It's worth .64 British pounds. It's gone up a bit there too.
It's worth 6.71 Swedish krona.
I forgot what it was worth in krona's yesterday.
23. Checked my blog post from yesterday. It was worth 6.68 kronas yesterday.
So it's gone up there too.
How about Japanese yen?
It's worth 76.30 Japanese yen. Yesterday it was worth 78.70. It's gone down in that regards. Or maybe the Japanese yen has gone up.
I have no idea.
24. Learned from Google that today is Google's 13th birthday. Happy Birthday, Google!
I use Google a lot in my blogging. I'm very grateful for it.
25. Remembered that Blogger is owned by Google. I REALLY need to be grateful.
And I also use Google for my email.
I use Google Maps.
I use Google Calendar.
I use Google news.
I don't often use Google+.
But all in all, I'm totally a Google Girl.
26. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read the continuation of Head, Meet Desk. This is the story thread with Stewie, Zara, and a dragonfruit.
27. Started to read.
28. Got the idea that Zara thinks negatively towards lesbians. Her post talks about Tamarah and says, The things she'd heard about Tamarah were far from kind - that she was some kind of weirdo freak, a lesbian, couldn't pay attention for more than a few seconds, that her skull was as thick as a brick wall, that she didn't take anything seriously... the list went on.
She sees lesbian as an insult.
29. Realized that Tamarah and Zara have the same role-player.
That's pretty funny.
So Randi (the role-player) has one homosexual character and one homophobic character. That's probably a good brain exercise.
She has other characters too probably, but I can't remember right now.
30. Continued to read.
Stewie is excited about making a dessert out of the dragonfruit. He doesn't know how to cook, though. He asks Zara to help him.
31. Got an answer to my question the other day. Why did Zara tell Stewie she heard bad things about his sister? It seemed like the kind of thing most people would keep quiet.
Here it says...She'd said something bad, hadn't she? All that talk about her sister not being liked at Penrose had upset him maybe. Gods, why had she even opened her mouth? What would possess her to even say such a thing? Maybe subconsciously she'd meant to drive him away, but now that she'd been seen she wouldn't be ignored.
That's a good theory. Or she could be one of those people who doesn't thinks before she talks.
I do that sometimes.
We all do, probably.
32. Intrigued by this in Zara's post.
Stewie, however, seemed to have a far more refined culinary mind that hers and proposed putting together the kind of weird things she'd only ever heard of Americans enjoying.
Now I have to go back and read Stewie's post. What did he mention that's American?
Okay. He mentions using dragonfruit as an ice-cream topping; and he mentions fried dragonfruit.
Frying a dragonfruit is a strange idea; but I don't think of it as an American thing. Is it? Do Americans fry more stuff than other countries?
33. Learned from Lord Wiki that Scotland was the first country to fry a Mars bar.
Maybe they're the frying country.
34. Finished reading the story thread. There was a big twist at the end.
Zara used to be a boy.
I didn't see that coming.
This girl is interesting.
She sees it in a negative light, though.
No... Stewie wouldn't do that, would he? Unless he found out that she used to be a boy; then he might get angry for touching him. Even though he didn't mean it in a birds and the bees way there was still the possibility that he wouldn't like her near him if he knew things.
Why was Zara once a boy? Why did she change into a girl? Why does she see lesbianism as a bad thing?
I'm eager to read this girl's biography.
I'm trying to decide if I should start reading it now or wait until after I get my flu shot.
We're going to leave in about 30 minutes.
I better wait. Otherwise I'll get all into it, and we'll be late. Then it might be crowded because it will be post-school time. Plus I want to eat some lunch before we go.
35. Looked up fried banana, because Stewie mentioned it.
This website says it's popular in Brazil.
I assumed when Zara thought of America, she was referring to the United States. But maybe she meant South America. Maybe they eat a lot of fried stuff.
36. Wondered if any fried foods were invented in Australia.
37. Listened to more Jessica Mauboy music while eating lunch.
38. Returned from getting my shot. Now I'm ready to read about Zara.
I'm excited.
39. Saw that Zara's face claim is Haley Pullos from General Hospital.
She also plays young Melinda on Ghost Whisperer. I guess that's Jennifer Love Hewitt's character?
Here's an interview with her.
In that interview, Haley LOOKS like Jennifer Love Hewitt. So good casting there.
40. Learned that Zara is a third year student.
She was born in Melbourne.
She likes brightly colored clothes...despite being shy.
I get the feeling she's the type of person who maybe doesn't want to be shy.
Then again, does any shy person want to be shy?
I hated being shy.
41. Learned that Zara has multiple personalities; or at least one other personality—Reagen.
Reagen is a boy and evil.
Does she have another personality...like a psychological thing? Or is she possessed?
Is there that much of a difference between the two?
How do they know for sure that people with dissociative identity disorder aren't possessed?
42. Started to read Zara's history. Maybe I'll get some answers.
There's some great stuff here.
It starts with a woman named Layla. She's a witch but leaves that all behind. What does she become? A preacher's wife.
The preacher and the ex-witch had a baby boy named Reagen.
Reagen showed a tendency to like traditionally feminine things. He wanted long hair. He liked playing with dolls.
The ex-witch and the preacher tried to discipline their son into changing. They turned him into an over-obedient and quiet child.
I guess it didn't work, because, at school, it became known that Reagen liked girlie things. He was ridiculed for it.
Reagen snapped and became a bit scary and evil. But then that became a second personality. He buried himself deep into quiet Reagen's little brain. He emerged only when Reagen was asleep.
43. Continued to read.
Marriage problems emerged between the ex-witch and the preacher.
The ex-witch decided to not be so ex anymore. When Reagen received his you're-invited-to-wizarding-school letter, she wanted to let him try out that path.
44. Read that Reagen admitted his transgender issues to his mother.
It sounds like she was relatively supportive. She at least allowed Zara to take anti-testosterone medicine.
Evil Reagen didn't like it, and fought the whole thing.
45. Saw that things were quite awful for Zara and her mother. They tried to commit suicide together.
Evil Reagen saved them. Granted he probably did it to save his own behind, but still. He did a good thing.
46. Learned that Zara eventually went into foster care. Her mother is in a mental institution, since she tried to drown her own daughter. Yeah. Even if your kid thinks they WANT to die, it's really not okay to murder them. Parents are the ones who are supposed to talk their kids out of suicide not help them along. There might be drastic exceptions to that—parents who euthanize their kids to avoid extreme physical suffering.
Let's say a family is in a war-torn country and soldiers burst into the house. If the mother believed her children were going to be tortured and raped, she might kill them so they could avoid worse suffering.
I don't know if that actually happens or not. It probably does.I definitely can't judge these parents because I have no idea what I'd do in the same situation.
And I NEVER want to be put to that particular test.
But anyway....depressing topic there.
Back to Zara.
She's had such a bad life. I don't know how anyone could overcome something like that.
Can she ever be healed?
I don't think so. Maybe partially. But not completely
I had very minor childhood upsets and I still haven't healed completely from those. With that in mind, I can't imagine Zara completely overcoming her problems.
Does anyone overcome their problems, though?
Probably not.
Maybe it's enough to just sort-of heal.
47. Decided Reagen is probably more of a psychological thing than a possession thing.
OR maybe all of us are born with more than one spirit/soul. Maybe for most of us, we have one dominant soul and the other spirits stay quiet. They just come along for the ride—watching and observing. Every so often they whisper advice to us, and we assume it's our own thoughts.
But then some people are traumatized. The trauma weakens them, and the other spirits take over. Maybe sometimes they also invite other new spirits to join in the fun.
48. Felt sad for Zara because she's afraid to sleep, is tired all the time, and has extremely low self-esteem.
49. Felt hopeful for Zara because there are nice kids at Tallygarunga. They might help her. There're also other emotionally damaged kids. Maybe they could all provide some type of support for each other.
Could Améa and Zara help each other at all? Or would their interactions cause further damage to one or both of them?
50. Had an idea. Reagen can become friends with Zane. Then they could get in a fight and kill each other. Well, in Reagen's case, I mean a murder of spirit not body.
Améa might be mad, though, since she has a thing for Zane.
51. Had a maybe-brilliant solution to my blogging dilemma.
Maybe I can combine the trip report posts with these type of posts.
Would that work?
I just like using this format. I'll miss writing these type of posts.
I like recording all my Australia-related things in this list type way.
Maybe I'll go back to my original plan of posting these types of posts while in Australia. It'll be more timely that way.
I probably can manage inserting photos. It might be hard for me to do the links. But if people are really interested, they can Google for the website themselves. Then later I can add links if I remember.
52. Wanted to say that I DO understand I'm pathetic for worrying about this so far ahead of time. And it's such a trivial thing to worry about...at least compared to what Zara has had to endure.
53. Thought about the one major problem of writing posts like this while in Australia.
See, I have mentally conditioned myself to feel compelled to write down anything that happens to me Australia-related.
Fortunately, I am able to resist once in awhile.
For example:
I had Australia-related conversations this weekend I didn't write down.
Tim told me he watched an Australian movie last night.I didn't write that down (although I am writing it down now).
I CAN manage to keep some Australia-related stuff to myself...at least temporarily.
I'm not a complete nut case yet.
If I lose this minor amount of self-censorship, I'll end up with epic long posts.
EVERYTHING I do in Australia will be Australia-related—including using Australian toilets and tripping on Australian sidewalks. I'm going to have to tell myself that I must not write it all down.
54. Continued to feel conflicted because I also loved my 2009 trip reports.
But it was kind of a fluke that I was able to remember things so well. It was almost eerie. I guess my notes were good enough to trigger memories. And Jack and Tim (especially Jack) helped fill in some of the holes.
I think my memory has gotten worse since then. I'm kind of worried I'll forget too much stuff before we even get home.
55. Remembered my memory was pretty bad at that time too. There was the incident where the old woman told me the name of her convict ancestor. I was so excited and committed it to memory, so I could google it later. Then I had to bend my body in order to not bump my head in the Endeavor ship thing. I think contorting my body like that caused me brain issues. After we got out, I couldn't remember the name of the ancestor. It was weird because usually I'm able to remember things if I put my mind to it. Or at least I was okay with that in the past.
Maybe my memory problems were caused by The Australian National Maritime Museum. Maybe the ghost of Captain James Cook sucked out some of my brain.
56. Decided I should NOT write posts while in Australia.
It will take up too much of my time. Not only will I spend too much time in the room writing, I'll also feel compelled to read stuff. I'd feel too rude posting posts but not reading other people's posts.
I don't want so spend a huge chunk of my holiday reading and writing.
57. Decided to go back to my plan of writing two posts a day, once we return. But I'll chop out some of my Australia-related activities, and return to them when I'm done with the trip reports.
I'll cut out the Australian of the Day thing. I won't stalk any Flickr accounts.I'll definitely go back to reading Tallygarunga stories. I don't want to get too far behind. But I'll take a break from reading Tally biographies.
58. Saw that my Australian of the day is Hugh Thomas Moffitt Angwin.
There's a picture of him on the Australian Dictionary of Biography. He looks like someone. I'm not sure who. Maybe Guy Pearce...sort of.
Or maybe he looks like a certain American newscaster. I forgot his name.
59. Consulted Lord Wiki. He says the name of the guy I'm talking about is Brian Williams.
I think if Brian Williams made babies with Guy Pearce, the result would be Hugh Thomas Moffitt Angwin.
60. Learned that Angwin was born in Angastan, South Australia. Maybe that's near Broken Hill. I say that, because that's where Angwin attended school. Or his family might have just relocated.
61. Saw from Google Maps that Angastan is 5 hours away from Broken Hill.
62. Got idea that Angwin had one of those childhoods where you move around a lot. For secondary school, he was in Adelaide. He attended Prince Alfred College.
I think that's where Lionel Logue went to school.
Yep....
Lord Wiki confirms that.
Logue was eight years older than Angwin, so they wouldn't have been there at the same time.
63. Learned that, in his adult years, Angwin did engineering work. He worked on pipeline projects and sewer stuff.
64. Decided that I'm totally okay with being labeled weird. I'm very much not okay with being labeled creepy.
2. Read article about the Deadly Awards. These are the awards for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
Deborah Mailman won for Offspring! I'm happy to hear that. I like when my shows win things.
Jessica Mauboy won for best female artist.
Another music person who won was Gurrumul Yunupingu. I think I remember him.
The literature award went to someone named Anita Heiss. She wrote a book called Paris Dreaming. I'll have to look into that.
The band of the year award went to a group called The Last Kinection.
The film of the year was Mad Bastards.
3. Watched Jessica Mauboy's "Inescapable" video.
It's a fun song.
4. Learned from Lord Wiki that Jessica Mauboy is half Indonesian.
She was an Australian Idol contestant. I don't think I knew that.
5. Watched video for Jessica Mauboy's "Running Back".
6. Learned that the rapper in that video is an American rapper. Flo Rida. I wonder if Tim knows about him.
Tim's into rap music.
7. Listened to Gurrumul Yunupingu sing "Bapa".
8. Listened to The Last Kinection sing "Black and Deadly".
It has some angry lyrics.
Lord Wiki says they're the ones who did the remake of "I Still Call Australia Home". I can't embed it, but here's the link.
Those lyrics too are angry...and very clever. I'm impressed with their writing.
9. Went to the Last Kinection's official website.
They use a very small font. Is this their way of trying to punish white people? Make us blind?
Then again, black people don't have super strong magical eyes.
Or do they?
I think it's all a conspiracy.
10. Went to The Last Kinection's MySpace page.
I'm going to listen to more of their music even though my eyes hurt now, and it's all their fault.
11. Started to listen to "I Can Feat Radical Son". It's their most popular song on MySpace.
It's pretty awesome. It's hip hop, which I tend to like. Then in the beginning, it sounds kind of American-Western, and then it sounds Aboriginal. It's a nice mix.
12. Read some of the bio stuff on the MySpace page. The three people in the group are Naomi, Joel, and Jacob. Naomi and Joel are brother and sister.
In 2008, the group was in a very bad car accident. They had severe injuries. Fortunately they recovered. I like hearing about people recovering from bad injuries. It makes the world seem a little less scary to me.
13. Watched trailer for Mad Bastards. It was an American trailer, so I guess it's been shown here.
At first it looked like the type of movie I wouldn't like. But then towards the end, it started looking good to me.
14. Went to the website of Anita Heiss. She's the one who wrote Paris Dreaming. They have a picture of the book on the site. It looks kind of like chick-lit.
15. Looked at the book descriptions on the site. Heiss DOES write chick-lit. I don't think I've ever encountered Aboriginal chick-lit.
I need to try and find her books. They sound fun. I especially want to read Manhattan Dreaming.
16. Read Anita Heiss' FAQ page.
Her proudest moment was graduating from the University of Western Australia. She was the first Indigenous Australian do to so.
She likes chocolate.
She's bad at rapping.
She doesn't cook much, but sometimes she eats kangaroo.
She doesn't like jokes based on race and disability.
I don't like MEAN jokes based on race and disability. If a subject is never joked about, though; then it's kind of like we're saying the subject is too depressing and serious. In a way, that's more insulting than a joke.
I think some jokes about race and disability can point out the elephant in the room, loosen the tension, open up discussion, etc.
17. Enjoyed reading about Fruitcake's journey to Melbourne; though I feel sympathy for her. She's starting a new job, and it sounds like she has a long commute.
I like what she says here. One of the great joys of suburban train travel anywhere, of course, is perving into people’s backyards. Everything from trampolines and junk to carefully landscaped, regularly manicured gardens.
I like looking into other people's lives. I like looking into yards. I love when you can see into someone's window. I like walking past restaurants where you can see people eating.
I like looking at people's photo albums on Flickr.
I sent my friend a link to Flickr for her homeschooling adventures. I said it was a great way of learning about other countries. She wrote back using the word "creepy".
I think, to my friend, I am creepy in many ways. A week or so ago, I was bitching a bit about this unschooling conference. My friend responded by saying something like, I don't know what awful thing happens in someone's childhood that makes them choose unschooling.
Hello? Excuse me? What are you trying to say?
My friend couldn't understand why I'd be offended by that. She was offended that I was offended.
Lesson relearned that day: Don't complain about your life to people who already believe your lifestyle, politics, beliefs, etc. are creepy. You're just adding more fuel to their fire, and they'll be ever so happy to shoot.
18. Read Andrew's post about HIS Gleeful CD. He got one too.
What's really great is he got different music than I did. Did Jayne randomly pick music for each person, or did she try to guess what we would like?
Maybe she has some kind of psychic music ability. She can read someone's blog and know what type of music would appeal to the blogger.
19. Read Andrew's sad post. They were at a party, and a child, they didn't even know, came up to apologize to them. Andrew and his party-mates had no idea what was going on. Later they found out that the child had misbehaved. One of her punishments was to apologize to everyone at the party.
I'm all for apologies, but I'm not into forced apologies. That's not saying I wouldn't strongly encourage Jack to apologize when he's done something wrong. But I can't imagine ever forcing him to do a mass apology like that. Why the hell do you need to apologize to people who didn't even know that you misbehaved?
What I want to know is if the parents of that child misbehaved in some way, would they apologize to everyone at the party?
I'm sort of doubting it.
20. Made a decision; although I might change my mind later.
If (or when) we go to Australia. I'm going to do what I did in 2009. I'll take notes about our experiences and then write the posts when we get home.
I'll probably end up doing two posts a day, because I'll want to get back to doing these posts. But these posts will probably be much shorter since I'll be busy doing the other posts.
I had been thinking of posting in Australia, but then I was thinking it would be a bad idea. We probably won't have a lot of internet access. During our 2007 and 2009 trips, it was a matter of quickly checking email at internet cafes, restaurants, and holiday park offices. I won't have time to add photos to the post and link to the websites of places we visit. It would be all too rushed and sloppy. I don't want that.
21. Realized writing two extensive posts a day will be way too much work.
I'll just do the trip reports and skip these list-type posts until I'm done.
If something exciting happens in my current (post-trip life), I'll write an extra post about it. That's what I did last time.
22. Checked the money thing.
The Australian dollar is now worth .99 American dollars. It's gone up since the last time I checked.
It's worth .64 British pounds. It's gone up a bit there too.
It's worth 6.71 Swedish krona.
I forgot what it was worth in krona's yesterday.
23. Checked my blog post from yesterday. It was worth 6.68 kronas yesterday.
So it's gone up there too.
How about Japanese yen?
It's worth 76.30 Japanese yen. Yesterday it was worth 78.70. It's gone down in that regards. Or maybe the Japanese yen has gone up.
I have no idea.
24. Learned from Google that today is Google's 13th birthday. Happy Birthday, Google!
I use Google a lot in my blogging. I'm very grateful for it.
25. Remembered that Blogger is owned by Google. I REALLY need to be grateful.
And I also use Google for my email.
I use Google Maps.
I use Google Calendar.
I use Google news.
I don't often use Google+.
But all in all, I'm totally a Google Girl.
26. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read the continuation of Head, Meet Desk. This is the story thread with Stewie, Zara, and a dragonfruit.
27. Started to read.
28. Got the idea that Zara thinks negatively towards lesbians. Her post talks about Tamarah and says, The things she'd heard about Tamarah were far from kind - that she was some kind of weirdo freak, a lesbian, couldn't pay attention for more than a few seconds, that her skull was as thick as a brick wall, that she didn't take anything seriously... the list went on.
She sees lesbian as an insult.
29. Realized that Tamarah and Zara have the same role-player.
That's pretty funny.
So Randi (the role-player) has one homosexual character and one homophobic character. That's probably a good brain exercise.
She has other characters too probably, but I can't remember right now.
30. Continued to read.
Stewie is excited about making a dessert out of the dragonfruit. He doesn't know how to cook, though. He asks Zara to help him.
31. Got an answer to my question the other day. Why did Zara tell Stewie she heard bad things about his sister? It seemed like the kind of thing most people would keep quiet.
Here it says...She'd said something bad, hadn't she? All that talk about her sister not being liked at Penrose had upset him maybe. Gods, why had she even opened her mouth? What would possess her to even say such a thing? Maybe subconsciously she'd meant to drive him away, but now that she'd been seen she wouldn't be ignored.
That's a good theory. Or she could be one of those people who doesn't thinks before she talks.
I do that sometimes.
We all do, probably.
32. Intrigued by this in Zara's post.
Stewie, however, seemed to have a far more refined culinary mind that hers and proposed putting together the kind of weird things she'd only ever heard of Americans enjoying.
Now I have to go back and read Stewie's post. What did he mention that's American?
Okay. He mentions using dragonfruit as an ice-cream topping; and he mentions fried dragonfruit.
Frying a dragonfruit is a strange idea; but I don't think of it as an American thing. Is it? Do Americans fry more stuff than other countries?
33. Learned from Lord Wiki that Scotland was the first country to fry a Mars bar.
Maybe they're the frying country.
34. Finished reading the story thread. There was a big twist at the end.
Zara used to be a boy.
I didn't see that coming.
This girl is interesting.
She sees it in a negative light, though.
No... Stewie wouldn't do that, would he? Unless he found out that she used to be a boy; then he might get angry for touching him. Even though he didn't mean it in a birds and the bees way there was still the possibility that he wouldn't like her near him if he knew things.
Why was Zara once a boy? Why did she change into a girl? Why does she see lesbianism as a bad thing?
I'm eager to read this girl's biography.
I'm trying to decide if I should start reading it now or wait until after I get my flu shot.
We're going to leave in about 30 minutes.
I better wait. Otherwise I'll get all into it, and we'll be late. Then it might be crowded because it will be post-school time. Plus I want to eat some lunch before we go.
35. Looked up fried banana, because Stewie mentioned it.
This website says it's popular in Brazil.
I assumed when Zara thought of America, she was referring to the United States. But maybe she meant South America. Maybe they eat a lot of fried stuff.
36. Wondered if any fried foods were invented in Australia.
37. Listened to more Jessica Mauboy music while eating lunch.
38. Returned from getting my shot. Now I'm ready to read about Zara.
I'm excited.
39. Saw that Zara's face claim is Haley Pullos from General Hospital.
She also plays young Melinda on Ghost Whisperer. I guess that's Jennifer Love Hewitt's character?
Here's an interview with her.
In that interview, Haley LOOKS like Jennifer Love Hewitt. So good casting there.
40. Learned that Zara is a third year student.
She was born in Melbourne.
She likes brightly colored clothes...despite being shy.
I get the feeling she's the type of person who maybe doesn't want to be shy.
Then again, does any shy person want to be shy?
I hated being shy.
41. Learned that Zara has multiple personalities; or at least one other personality—Reagen.
Reagen is a boy and evil.
Does she have another personality...like a psychological thing? Or is she possessed?
Is there that much of a difference between the two?
How do they know for sure that people with dissociative identity disorder aren't possessed?
42. Started to read Zara's history. Maybe I'll get some answers.
There's some great stuff here.
It starts with a woman named Layla. She's a witch but leaves that all behind. What does she become? A preacher's wife.
The preacher and the ex-witch had a baby boy named Reagen.
Reagen showed a tendency to like traditionally feminine things. He wanted long hair. He liked playing with dolls.
The ex-witch and the preacher tried to discipline their son into changing. They turned him into an over-obedient and quiet child.
I guess it didn't work, because, at school, it became known that Reagen liked girlie things. He was ridiculed for it.
Reagen snapped and became a bit scary and evil. But then that became a second personality. He buried himself deep into quiet Reagen's little brain. He emerged only when Reagen was asleep.
43. Continued to read.
Marriage problems emerged between the ex-witch and the preacher.
The ex-witch decided to not be so ex anymore. When Reagen received his you're-invited-to-wizarding-school letter, she wanted to let him try out that path.
44. Read that Reagen admitted his transgender issues to his mother.
It sounds like she was relatively supportive. She at least allowed Zara to take anti-testosterone medicine.
Evil Reagen didn't like it, and fought the whole thing.
45. Saw that things were quite awful for Zara and her mother. They tried to commit suicide together.
Evil Reagen saved them. Granted he probably did it to save his own behind, but still. He did a good thing.
46. Learned that Zara eventually went into foster care. Her mother is in a mental institution, since she tried to drown her own daughter. Yeah. Even if your kid thinks they WANT to die, it's really not okay to murder them. Parents are the ones who are supposed to talk their kids out of suicide not help them along. There might be drastic exceptions to that—parents who euthanize their kids to avoid extreme physical suffering.
Let's say a family is in a war-torn country and soldiers burst into the house. If the mother believed her children were going to be tortured and raped, she might kill them so they could avoid worse suffering.
I don't know if that actually happens or not. It probably does.I definitely can't judge these parents because I have no idea what I'd do in the same situation.
And I NEVER want to be put to that particular test.
But anyway....depressing topic there.
Back to Zara.
She's had such a bad life. I don't know how anyone could overcome something like that.
Can she ever be healed?
I don't think so. Maybe partially. But not completely
I had very minor childhood upsets and I still haven't healed completely from those. With that in mind, I can't imagine Zara completely overcoming her problems.
Does anyone overcome their problems, though?
Probably not.
Maybe it's enough to just sort-of heal.
47. Decided Reagen is probably more of a psychological thing than a possession thing.
OR maybe all of us are born with more than one spirit/soul. Maybe for most of us, we have one dominant soul and the other spirits stay quiet. They just come along for the ride—watching and observing. Every so often they whisper advice to us, and we assume it's our own thoughts.
But then some people are traumatized. The trauma weakens them, and the other spirits take over. Maybe sometimes they also invite other new spirits to join in the fun.
48. Felt sad for Zara because she's afraid to sleep, is tired all the time, and has extremely low self-esteem.
49. Felt hopeful for Zara because there are nice kids at Tallygarunga. They might help her. There're also other emotionally damaged kids. Maybe they could all provide some type of support for each other.
Could Améa and Zara help each other at all? Or would their interactions cause further damage to one or both of them?
50. Had an idea. Reagen can become friends with Zane. Then they could get in a fight and kill each other. Well, in Reagen's case, I mean a murder of spirit not body.
Améa might be mad, though, since she has a thing for Zane.
51. Had a maybe-brilliant solution to my blogging dilemma.
Maybe I can combine the trip report posts with these type of posts.
Would that work?
I just like using this format. I'll miss writing these type of posts.
I like recording all my Australia-related things in this list type way.
Maybe I'll go back to my original plan of posting these types of posts while in Australia. It'll be more timely that way.
I probably can manage inserting photos. It might be hard for me to do the links. But if people are really interested, they can Google for the website themselves. Then later I can add links if I remember.
52. Wanted to say that I DO understand I'm pathetic for worrying about this so far ahead of time. And it's such a trivial thing to worry about...at least compared to what Zara has had to endure.
53. Thought about the one major problem of writing posts like this while in Australia.
See, I have mentally conditioned myself to feel compelled to write down anything that happens to me Australia-related.
Fortunately, I am able to resist once in awhile.
For example:
I had Australia-related conversations this weekend I didn't write down.
Tim told me he watched an Australian movie last night.I didn't write that down (although I am writing it down now).
I CAN manage to keep some Australia-related stuff to myself...at least temporarily.
I'm not a complete nut case yet.
If I lose this minor amount of self-censorship, I'll end up with epic long posts.
EVERYTHING I do in Australia will be Australia-related—including using Australian toilets and tripping on Australian sidewalks. I'm going to have to tell myself that I must not write it all down.
54. Continued to feel conflicted because I also loved my 2009 trip reports.
But it was kind of a fluke that I was able to remember things so well. It was almost eerie. I guess my notes were good enough to trigger memories. And Jack and Tim (especially Jack) helped fill in some of the holes.
I think my memory has gotten worse since then. I'm kind of worried I'll forget too much stuff before we even get home.
55. Remembered my memory was pretty bad at that time too. There was the incident where the old woman told me the name of her convict ancestor. I was so excited and committed it to memory, so I could google it later. Then I had to bend my body in order to not bump my head in the Endeavor ship thing. I think contorting my body like that caused me brain issues. After we got out, I couldn't remember the name of the ancestor. It was weird because usually I'm able to remember things if I put my mind to it. Or at least I was okay with that in the past.
Maybe my memory problems were caused by The Australian National Maritime Museum. Maybe the ghost of Captain James Cook sucked out some of my brain.
56. Decided I should NOT write posts while in Australia.
It will take up too much of my time. Not only will I spend too much time in the room writing, I'll also feel compelled to read stuff. I'd feel too rude posting posts but not reading other people's posts.
I don't want so spend a huge chunk of my holiday reading and writing.
57. Decided to go back to my plan of writing two posts a day, once we return. But I'll chop out some of my Australia-related activities, and return to them when I'm done with the trip reports.
I'll cut out the Australian of the Day thing. I won't stalk any Flickr accounts.I'll definitely go back to reading Tallygarunga stories. I don't want to get too far behind. But I'll take a break from reading Tally biographies.
58. Saw that my Australian of the day is Hugh Thomas Moffitt Angwin.
There's a picture of him on the Australian Dictionary of Biography. He looks like someone. I'm not sure who. Maybe Guy Pearce...sort of.
Or maybe he looks like a certain American newscaster. I forgot his name.
59. Consulted Lord Wiki. He says the name of the guy I'm talking about is Brian Williams.
I think if Brian Williams made babies with Guy Pearce, the result would be Hugh Thomas Moffitt Angwin.
60. Learned that Angwin was born in Angastan, South Australia. Maybe that's near Broken Hill. I say that, because that's where Angwin attended school. Or his family might have just relocated.
61. Saw from Google Maps that Angastan is 5 hours away from Broken Hill.
62. Got idea that Angwin had one of those childhoods where you move around a lot. For secondary school, he was in Adelaide. He attended Prince Alfred College.
I think that's where Lionel Logue went to school.
Yep....
Lord Wiki confirms that.
Logue was eight years older than Angwin, so they wouldn't have been there at the same time.
63. Learned that, in his adult years, Angwin did engineering work. He worked on pipeline projects and sewer stuff.
64. Decided that I'm totally okay with being labeled weird. I'm very much not okay with being labeled creepy.