1. Saw article saying the Australian dollar went very low today.
The article says it was .948 cents. Now it's up a bit to .954 cents.
The Australian dollar hasn't changed much in terms of the British pound. It's equal to .63 cents. It's actually up a bit because the last time I checked it was at .62 cents.
2. Saw the Australian dollar is equal to 6.60 Swedish Krona and 73.17 Japanese yen.
I think the Australian dollar has lowered a bit in that regards.
I'm looking at my previous blog post. Last night when I looked, the Aussie dollar was worth 6.67 Swedish krona and 74.68 Japanese yen. I'm not sure if the reduction is significant or not.
It seems like the only really big dip of the three is with the American dollar comparison.
3. Learned from Lord Wiki that the oldest working cane sugar mill in Australia is the Harwood Mill.
I looked it up because I dreamed about the name Harwood. I was wondering if I could find anything about the name in relation to Australia.
My dream had nothing to do with sugar, though. It involved a whimsical window attraction in a church—maybe related to a famous children's story.
4. Saw on Google Maps that Harwood is about two hours south of Byron Bay.
5. Saw pictures from Melbourne's Acland Street on Andrew's Blog. He has photos of cute shopping decorations.
Then I read comments and saw one from Hels. She said, What is the chance of two people in the world, neither of them Acland St citizens, writing about that one tiny shopping strip in the same day? Bloody miracle, I say!
I think that's a pretty cool coincidence—or a miracle. Another term I use sometimes is synchronocity.
Anyway, I went to Hel's blog to read her post about Acland Street.
Hel's post is about asylum seekers— past and present.
She talks about Holocaust survivors from Poland who opened up a cafe on Acland Street called Café Scheherazade. And now there's a play about the cafe.
Then Hels says, There is nothing unique about this – I am certain the Afghanastani and Iraqi refugees are in the same position in 2011 that the Jews were in 1951. Refugee lives face universal problems, whether they analyse the issues in Yiddish, Polish, Russian, Arabic or Uzbek.
I agree.
I think there will always be people looking for a new country to call home. And unfortunately there will always be people who tell them, You're not welcome here.
The good news is sometimes people get past all that, and they end up being okay. Sometimes they even end up being happy, successful, and a integral part of the community.
6. Introduced to a Swedish pop star thanks to James' blog post.
I like what James says here. Even now, I sing it from time to time. Heaven knows what my colleagues, or people on public transport make of it when they hear me singing along to lyrics like “Natalie keeps coming back from the dead again. She’s a little bit too much even for my friends. She’s just so unstoppable…”
I would love to see James' singing on public transport.
7. Bewildered by article about the dangers of co-sleeping.
An Australian investigation shows that 72 babies died mysteriously in their sleep within three years. Out of those 72 deaths, 33 had been sleeping with adults.
The conclusion made by the investigation? It's dangerous for babies to sleep with adults. Parents shouldn't co-sleep.
Okay.....
But what about the 39 babies, who died in their sleep, who were NOT sleeping with an adult? Where were they sleeping?
The only thing I can conclude from this study is that perhaps co-sleeping doesn't do much to prevent SIDS. It doesn't seem that it's much safer than putting a baby alone in a crib.
I would need more information though about the parents sleeping with their kids. What percentage were carefully following safe co-sleeping procedures? Just as there are guidelines to safe crib sleeping, there are also guidelines for safe co-sleeping.
Out of the 33 babies who died while sleeping with an adult, how many were in a safe co-sleeping situation? I'm sure there were some. No matter how many safety precautions you follow, in terms of baby sleep, sometimes tragedies still happen. This goes for both cot-sleeping and co-sleeping.
8. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read a story thread called You're Awful I Love You.
The stars are Adele Devylissia and her man David Tallenery. From what I've seen on Adele's daughter's posts, Adele and David are married now. But I don't know if they're married in this story thread. It takes place awhile back....September 16.
9. Started to read.
The story is about their marriage. It hasn't happened yet, but it's going to happen very soon.
Adele is feeling a bit nervous.
Marriage had never really gone well for her, she worried that on some obscure level, everything would change once the papers were signed and their life together would fall apart.
10. Read Dave's post.
He's a bit nervous too.
I'm not sure that signing papers magically sours a relationship. I think it's other things—such as time. People simply get tired of each other.
Then there're the stresses. Children are one of them. You see happily married couples who can't keep their eyes off each other. They whisper in each other's ear. They hold hands.
Then the baby comes along.
The husband and wife are now tired. They're stressed. They feel the other isn't doing their share of the work. They used to baby each other. Now they have a baby to baby.
11. Decided maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the marriage can sour a relationship just in the fact that it makes things official. People may feel trapped. And when someone feels trapped, they usually have a desire to escape.
12. Saw that my Australian of the day is Eric Norman Ansell.
He was born in London in 1878.
His mother's maiden name was Solomon, so maybe Eric was Jewish.
13. Learned that Eric worked in the rubber industry.
14. Learned that Eric also worked on a ship called the Omrah as a purser.
I forgot. What does a purser do?
15. Consulted Lord Wiki.
A purser is the person who handles the money on the ship. I guess he's like the treasurer.
So if Australia was a cruise ship, Julia Gillard would be the captain and Wayne Swan would be the purser. What would Kevin Rudd be? And who'd be the cruise director? Maybe it would be someone not in politics. I'd vote for Rove McManus; or maybe Adam Hill.
Andrew Denton might work too.
16. Learned from Lord Wiki that the purser on The Love Boat was a guy named Gopher. I don't know if I remember him.
Anyway, he was played by an actor named Fred Grandy. Lord Wiki says Grandy became a Member of the U.S House of Representatives. He later attracted controversy by making anti-Muslim remarks on a television show.
17. Watched a video of Gopher.
I sort of remember him now.
18. Learned from Lord Wiki that the SS Omrah was sunk in 1918 by a German submarine. At that time, it was a military ship. But before that, the Omrah was used to take passengers to and from the UK and Australia.
19. Learned that while Eric was doing his purser job on the Omrah, he had a romance with a passenger who was heading back to Geelong.
Eric and his new love ended up getting married.
Wow. It's a real life Love Boat story.
20. Learned that Eric and his wife lived in Melbourne.
Eric set up his own business. He manufactured condoms.
I wasn't expecting rubber to refer to that type of rubber; but I did think of it when I saw the word rubber.
21. Went to the Ansell website. They're still out there in Australia making condoms, rubber gloves, and other stuff.
22. Learned that Ansell has numerous condom brands, including ones sold in America.
Or I guess they manufacture the condoms sold by other brands?
23. Saw that Ansell has an American division.
They make Lifestyles condoms.
24. Excited to know a major product in America is owned by an Australian company.
25. Saw that Lifestyles has their own YouTube channel.
Here's a video about how condoms are made.
The video shows them doing massive testing of the condoms.
Do they do this to condoms that are later sold or just to condoms that won't be sold?
I'm just thinking with all this abuse of the condom—what if they become weakened by the time they're sold?
Well, I'm going to guess that they don't test the actual condoms that are going to be later used. I'm thinking they just test the same product.
26. Learned that Ansell makes a condom for a Portuguese speaking country called Blowtex.
Maybe it's Portugal?
What other countries speak Portuguese?
I think Brazil does......
27. Learned that Ansell makes a condom for Germany called Condomi.
28. Went to the YouTube channel of AdzharAbdul.
Here he sings a song he wrote himself. It's called "A Song For You (All My Time)"
It's sweet.
29. Wondered where Adzhar is originally from.
He doesn't have an Aussie accent.
My guess is... maybe he's from Indonesia?
30. Listened to Adzhar do a cover of a song called "I Just Want You".
I think it's a nice song; and I think Adzhar does a fine job with it.
31. Skimmed through Damon Young's editorial about Twitter.
32. Learned from Lord Wiki that Damon is a philosopher from Melbourne.
33. Started to read the editorial more carefully.
Damon talks about the benefits of Twitter.
Twitter rewards decisiveness. It is a lesson in clarity of thought and brevity in language - exactly what many rambling, muddled boffins need.
That's probably why I don't do well on Twitter. I like to ramble on and on and on.
Although I managed to come up with two Tweets in the last few days. One was about Benjamin Mee's book and the other was about The Walking Dead. I managed to get both of them under the maximum character allowance.
Honestly, I don't have much to say on Twitter, because I say so much here. What's left?
I more often respond to other people's Tweets on Twitter. Sometimes I'm tempted to try and talk to Alyssa Milano. But then I feel I'll look foolish. I'll look like one of those desperate people who have delusional fantasies of becoming friends with a celebrity. And I often AM one of those people, but I try to do it discreetly.
The other day I responded to a Kevin Rudd Tweet. Then I felt embarrassed. All my Twitter followers are going to see that I'm trying to get the attention of Kevin Rudd.
34. Finished reading Damon Young's editorial. He pretty much says there are good things about Twitter and bad things about Twitter. It's all what you make of it.
I think saying Twitter is bad is like saying the telephone or email is bad.
The telephone can be great. It all depends on who's calling you.
35. Went to Damon Young's website. It's actually done on Blogger, but it looks more fancy than other Blogger blogs I've seen.
It has a link to his Twitter account.
I love his most recent Tweet.
A helpful corrective for peer pressure: imagine yourself through the eyes of a biographer. Suddenly today's stares and glares seem dimmer.
I like that a lot. I think it's more effective than simply telling people, It gets better.
The truth is, It doesn't get better.
Well, it does get better, sometimes. But then it gets worse again.
At times when life is bad, I think Damon's advice might be somewhat helpful.
36. Thought of another exercise. Maybe every so often we should stop and imagine how our actions would be presented in someone else's biography.
I won't count biographies written by overdramatic and dishonest people.
But if we imagine decent and honest people including us in their biographies someday, maybe we'd think twice about acting nasty towards them.
37. Bookmarked Damon's Twitter page.
I might like this guy.
38. Started to look at more of Baroo42's Darwin to Perth Flickr set.
39. Wondered if Baroo42 was Swedish when I saw he took a photo of a Swedish hotel.
We're amused when we're in a different country and see restaurants, stores, hotels, etc. with an American and/or Texas theme. We probably take photos of those things sometimes.
We also take photos if we see someone's name somewhere. For example, if there's a business with the same name as our last name, we'll probably take a photo.
40. Thought this guy looked a bit like Christian Bale. He's like 85% Christian Bale + 15% Gary Oldman.
Maybe there's a bit of Greg Kinnear in there too.
41. Enjoyed this photo of a messy computer desk.
I like looking at other people's messes. I guess it's the voyeur in me.
42. Decided to look at another street from the Australia Monopoly board.
The next street is Smith Street.
Lord Wiki says it's in CBD of Darwin; and he says it the second largest shopping area of Darwin.
43. Learned that there's a popular tourist attraction on Smith Street. It's called the Victoria Hotel.
Lord Wiki says the building was completed in 1890. Back then it was called the North Australia Hotel. Then in 1897, the name was changed to the Victoria Hotel.
44. Learned that the Victoria Hotel was damaged in three cyclones: 1897, 1937, and 1974.
45. Learned that in World War II, the hotel was occupied by American and Australian navy people.
There was a riot at some point, led by the soldiers. I'm not sure what their riot was about.
Anyway, Lord Wiki says a few months later Darwin was bombed by the Japanese. The damage to the Victoria Hotel was minimal, and not much different in severity than the damage caused by the riot.
46. Went to the Victoria Hotel website.
They have a $5 buffet! Cool.
I wonder if the food is any good.
The article says it was .948 cents. Now it's up a bit to .954 cents.
The Australian dollar hasn't changed much in terms of the British pound. It's equal to .63 cents. It's actually up a bit because the last time I checked it was at .62 cents.
2. Saw the Australian dollar is equal to 6.60 Swedish Krona and 73.17 Japanese yen.
I think the Australian dollar has lowered a bit in that regards.
I'm looking at my previous blog post. Last night when I looked, the Aussie dollar was worth 6.67 Swedish krona and 74.68 Japanese yen. I'm not sure if the reduction is significant or not.
It seems like the only really big dip of the three is with the American dollar comparison.
3. Learned from Lord Wiki that the oldest working cane sugar mill in Australia is the Harwood Mill.
I looked it up because I dreamed about the name Harwood. I was wondering if I could find anything about the name in relation to Australia.
My dream had nothing to do with sugar, though. It involved a whimsical window attraction in a church—maybe related to a famous children's story.
4. Saw on Google Maps that Harwood is about two hours south of Byron Bay.
5. Saw pictures from Melbourne's Acland Street on Andrew's Blog. He has photos of cute shopping decorations.
Then I read comments and saw one from Hels. She said, What is the chance of two people in the world, neither of them Acland St citizens, writing about that one tiny shopping strip in the same day? Bloody miracle, I say!
I think that's a pretty cool coincidence—or a miracle. Another term I use sometimes is synchronocity.
Anyway, I went to Hel's blog to read her post about Acland Street.
Hel's post is about asylum seekers— past and present.
She talks about Holocaust survivors from Poland who opened up a cafe on Acland Street called Café Scheherazade. And now there's a play about the cafe.
Then Hels says, There is nothing unique about this – I am certain the Afghanastani and Iraqi refugees are in the same position in 2011 that the Jews were in 1951. Refugee lives face universal problems, whether they analyse the issues in Yiddish, Polish, Russian, Arabic or Uzbek.
I agree.
I think there will always be people looking for a new country to call home. And unfortunately there will always be people who tell them, You're not welcome here.
The good news is sometimes people get past all that, and they end up being okay. Sometimes they even end up being happy, successful, and a integral part of the community.
6. Introduced to a Swedish pop star thanks to James' blog post.
I like what James says here. Even now, I sing it from time to time. Heaven knows what my colleagues, or people on public transport make of it when they hear me singing along to lyrics like “Natalie keeps coming back from the dead again. She’s a little bit too much even for my friends. She’s just so unstoppable…”
I would love to see James' singing on public transport.
7. Bewildered by article about the dangers of co-sleeping.
An Australian investigation shows that 72 babies died mysteriously in their sleep within three years. Out of those 72 deaths, 33 had been sleeping with adults.
The conclusion made by the investigation? It's dangerous for babies to sleep with adults. Parents shouldn't co-sleep.
Okay.....
But what about the 39 babies, who died in their sleep, who were NOT sleeping with an adult? Where were they sleeping?
The only thing I can conclude from this study is that perhaps co-sleeping doesn't do much to prevent SIDS. It doesn't seem that it's much safer than putting a baby alone in a crib.
I would need more information though about the parents sleeping with their kids. What percentage were carefully following safe co-sleeping procedures? Just as there are guidelines to safe crib sleeping, there are also guidelines for safe co-sleeping.
Out of the 33 babies who died while sleeping with an adult, how many were in a safe co-sleeping situation? I'm sure there were some. No matter how many safety precautions you follow, in terms of baby sleep, sometimes tragedies still happen. This goes for both cot-sleeping and co-sleeping.
8. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read a story thread called You're Awful I Love You.
The stars are Adele Devylissia and her man David Tallenery. From what I've seen on Adele's daughter's posts, Adele and David are married now. But I don't know if they're married in this story thread. It takes place awhile back....September 16.
9. Started to read.
The story is about their marriage. It hasn't happened yet, but it's going to happen very soon.
Adele is feeling a bit nervous.
Marriage had never really gone well for her, she worried that on some obscure level, everything would change once the papers were signed and their life together would fall apart.
10. Read Dave's post.
He's a bit nervous too.
I'm not sure that signing papers magically sours a relationship. I think it's other things—such as time. People simply get tired of each other.
Then there're the stresses. Children are one of them. You see happily married couples who can't keep their eyes off each other. They whisper in each other's ear. They hold hands.
Then the baby comes along.
The husband and wife are now tired. They're stressed. They feel the other isn't doing their share of the work. They used to baby each other. Now they have a baby to baby.
11. Decided maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the marriage can sour a relationship just in the fact that it makes things official. People may feel trapped. And when someone feels trapped, they usually have a desire to escape.
12. Saw that my Australian of the day is Eric Norman Ansell.
He was born in London in 1878.
His mother's maiden name was Solomon, so maybe Eric was Jewish.
13. Learned that Eric worked in the rubber industry.
14. Learned that Eric also worked on a ship called the Omrah as a purser.
I forgot. What does a purser do?
15. Consulted Lord Wiki.
A purser is the person who handles the money on the ship. I guess he's like the treasurer.
So if Australia was a cruise ship, Julia Gillard would be the captain and Wayne Swan would be the purser. What would Kevin Rudd be? And who'd be the cruise director? Maybe it would be someone not in politics. I'd vote for Rove McManus; or maybe Adam Hill.
Andrew Denton might work too.
16. Learned from Lord Wiki that the purser on The Love Boat was a guy named Gopher. I don't know if I remember him.
Anyway, he was played by an actor named Fred Grandy. Lord Wiki says Grandy became a Member of the U.S House of Representatives. He later attracted controversy by making anti-Muslim remarks on a television show.
17. Watched a video of Gopher.
I sort of remember him now.
18. Learned from Lord Wiki that the SS Omrah was sunk in 1918 by a German submarine. At that time, it was a military ship. But before that, the Omrah was used to take passengers to and from the UK and Australia.
19. Learned that while Eric was doing his purser job on the Omrah, he had a romance with a passenger who was heading back to Geelong.
Eric and his new love ended up getting married.
Wow. It's a real life Love Boat story.
20. Learned that Eric and his wife lived in Melbourne.
Eric set up his own business. He manufactured condoms.
I wasn't expecting rubber to refer to that type of rubber; but I did think of it when I saw the word rubber.
21. Went to the Ansell website. They're still out there in Australia making condoms, rubber gloves, and other stuff.
22. Learned that Ansell has numerous condom brands, including ones sold in America.
Or I guess they manufacture the condoms sold by other brands?
23. Saw that Ansell has an American division.
They make Lifestyles condoms.
24. Excited to know a major product in America is owned by an Australian company.
25. Saw that Lifestyles has their own YouTube channel.
Here's a video about how condoms are made.
The video shows them doing massive testing of the condoms.
Do they do this to condoms that are later sold or just to condoms that won't be sold?
I'm just thinking with all this abuse of the condom—what if they become weakened by the time they're sold?
Well, I'm going to guess that they don't test the actual condoms that are going to be later used. I'm thinking they just test the same product.
26. Learned that Ansell makes a condom for a Portuguese speaking country called Blowtex.
Maybe it's Portugal?
What other countries speak Portuguese?
I think Brazil does......
27. Learned that Ansell makes a condom for Germany called Condomi.
28. Went to the YouTube channel of AdzharAbdul.
Here he sings a song he wrote himself. It's called "A Song For You (All My Time)"
It's sweet.
29. Wondered where Adzhar is originally from.
He doesn't have an Aussie accent.
My guess is... maybe he's from Indonesia?
30. Listened to Adzhar do a cover of a song called "I Just Want You".
I think it's a nice song; and I think Adzhar does a fine job with it.
31. Skimmed through Damon Young's editorial about Twitter.
32. Learned from Lord Wiki that Damon is a philosopher from Melbourne.
33. Started to read the editorial more carefully.
Damon talks about the benefits of Twitter.
Twitter rewards decisiveness. It is a lesson in clarity of thought and brevity in language - exactly what many rambling, muddled boffins need.
That's probably why I don't do well on Twitter. I like to ramble on and on and on.
Although I managed to come up with two Tweets in the last few days. One was about Benjamin Mee's book and the other was about The Walking Dead. I managed to get both of them under the maximum character allowance.
Honestly, I don't have much to say on Twitter, because I say so much here. What's left?
I more often respond to other people's Tweets on Twitter. Sometimes I'm tempted to try and talk to Alyssa Milano. But then I feel I'll look foolish. I'll look like one of those desperate people who have delusional fantasies of becoming friends with a celebrity. And I often AM one of those people, but I try to do it discreetly.
The other day I responded to a Kevin Rudd Tweet. Then I felt embarrassed. All my Twitter followers are going to see that I'm trying to get the attention of Kevin Rudd.
34. Finished reading Damon Young's editorial. He pretty much says there are good things about Twitter and bad things about Twitter. It's all what you make of it.
I think saying Twitter is bad is like saying the telephone or email is bad.
The telephone can be great. It all depends on who's calling you.
35. Went to Damon Young's website. It's actually done on Blogger, but it looks more fancy than other Blogger blogs I've seen.
It has a link to his Twitter account.
I love his most recent Tweet.
A helpful corrective for peer pressure: imagine yourself through the eyes of a biographer. Suddenly today's stares and glares seem dimmer.
I like that a lot. I think it's more effective than simply telling people, It gets better.
The truth is, It doesn't get better.
Well, it does get better, sometimes. But then it gets worse again.
At times when life is bad, I think Damon's advice might be somewhat helpful.
36. Thought of another exercise. Maybe every so often we should stop and imagine how our actions would be presented in someone else's biography.
I won't count biographies written by overdramatic and dishonest people.
But if we imagine decent and honest people including us in their biographies someday, maybe we'd think twice about acting nasty towards them.
37. Bookmarked Damon's Twitter page.
I might like this guy.
38. Started to look at more of Baroo42's Darwin to Perth Flickr set.
39. Wondered if Baroo42 was Swedish when I saw he took a photo of a Swedish hotel.
We're amused when we're in a different country and see restaurants, stores, hotels, etc. with an American and/or Texas theme. We probably take photos of those things sometimes.
We also take photos if we see someone's name somewhere. For example, if there's a business with the same name as our last name, we'll probably take a photo.
40. Thought this guy looked a bit like Christian Bale. He's like 85% Christian Bale + 15% Gary Oldman.
Maybe there's a bit of Greg Kinnear in there too.
41. Enjoyed this photo of a messy computer desk.
I like looking at other people's messes. I guess it's the voyeur in me.
42. Decided to look at another street from the Australia Monopoly board.
The next street is Smith Street.
Lord Wiki says it's in CBD of Darwin; and he says it the second largest shopping area of Darwin.
43. Learned that there's a popular tourist attraction on Smith Street. It's called the Victoria Hotel.
Lord Wiki says the building was completed in 1890. Back then it was called the North Australia Hotel. Then in 1897, the name was changed to the Victoria Hotel.
44. Learned that the Victoria Hotel was damaged in three cyclones: 1897, 1937, and 1974.
45. Learned that in World War II, the hotel was occupied by American and Australian navy people.
There was a riot at some point, led by the soldiers. I'm not sure what their riot was about.
Anyway, Lord Wiki says a few months later Darwin was bombed by the Japanese. The damage to the Victoria Hotel was minimal, and not much different in severity than the damage caused by the riot.
46. Went to the Victoria Hotel website.
They have a $5 buffet! Cool.
I wonder if the food is any good.