1. Saw glimpses of a trailer when we were fast forwarding commercials during The Colbert Report. I made Tim go back to it because I thought I saw Hugo Weaving.
The movie was Man on a Ledge. It doesn't have Hugo Weaving, but it does star Sam Worthington.
So my Australia-radar was working. I just had the wrong Aussie.
Oops.
And no, I didn't confuse Weaving with Worthington. There was a different man that got me confused.
I then watched another trailer, and it was one of those that make me say, Cool. Thanks. Now I won't need to watch the actual movie. The trailer had so much in it. I'm not sure why I'd ever need to see the actual movie.
At around 1:37 Worthington sounds a little bit Australian.
At 1:48 he sounds very Australian.
Maybe he's actually playing an Australian in the movie?
Or maybe he's playing a person with a hybrid accent.
2. Wanted to add that Titus Welliver, from Lost, is in the movie. I like that guy...at least when he's doing Lost stuff. I get kind of sad when I see Lost actors doing non-Lost stuff. I'm possessive that way.
You know what, though. I think maybe Welliver is who I mistook for Hugo Weaving.
I just found this photo of Welliver, and I can kind of see a Hugo Weaving resemblance.
3. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read a story called The Fun Never Ends.
It would be nice if the fun never ended. But it would have to be that the fun never ended for everyone. If it never ended for only SOME people, I'm guessing the fun would be at the expense of others.
Anyway...
The story takes place at St. Ringo's Wizarding Hospital.
The stars of the story are Nicole Barkwith and Sanjiro Tanaka.
I think Sanjiro is new to me.
4. Started to read.
It's the morning of Thursday, January 5.
Nicole got injured by a bird—not a Magpie, but a Hippogriff.
Is a Hippogriff a bird? I'm not sure.
Well, I consider it a bird.
Nicole is pretty badly injured—bad enough that she has to bring herself to the hospital. She doesn't have to call an ambulance and wait in agony for it to finally show up. She just apparates there.
5. Learned that Nicole is officially dating Stuart....I forgot his last name. This is what happens when I've been gone too long.
6. Remembered his last name. Good! I was about to go look it up, but my memory kicked in for me.
It's Blair. Stuart Blair. He's the Victorian Minister of Magic.
I vaguely remember him going on a date with Nicole.
7. Started to read Sanjiro's post. I was wondering where he'd fit into the drama. Then I saw that he's a healer. I bet he'll be Nicole's doctor.
8. Learned that Sanjiro's kids don't like to give him privacy, even when he's using the toilet. That happens with kids sometimes.
I can't really remember not having toileting privacy with Jack except when he was an infant. But I may be forgetting things.
9. Learned that Nicole has been a fairly regular at the hospital. The Hippogriff injury wasn't a one time thing. Nicole and Sanjiro already have a patient-healer relationship established.
They get along well.
How well?
Will Nicole fall in love with the magical doctor? Will there be a love triangle?
Speaking of love.
I'm still worried about Sergei. I hope he finds love again.
Or maybe he'll still be with James, and it will be an off camera type storyline.
10. Got the idea that Nicole was pregnant. Bad tasting things are tasting worse than usual. She's feeling nauseated. She's dizzy.....
11. Thought that Nicole has a good heart. The animal injured her, but what's forefront on her mind is finding a good home for it.
12. Wondered if maybe Nicole isn't pregnant. Maybe she was poisoned or something?
No...
I think she's pregnant.
I guess we shall see.
13. Looked at the biography of Sanjiro Tanaka.
His face claim is Takeshi Kaneshiro.
Lord Wiki says Kaneshiro is a Taiwanese-Japanese actor and singer.
Here's a video of him being interviewed. He's making a strange face. People are laughing.
I'm not sure what's being said. It's not in English.
Kaneshiro reminds me of an Asian version of Edward Cullen; or really an Asian version of Robert Pattison. We could bring it back to Harry Potter and say he's an Asian version of Cedric Diggory.
14. Went back to reading about Sanjiro.
He was born in Japan.
His Patronus is a Nine-Tailed Fox.
15. Consulted Lord Wiki about the Nine-Tailed Fox. He says it's a mythical creature.
I wasn't expecting that. I thought the nine tails thing was figurative.
16. Saw that Sanjiro likes to be barefoot at home.
I'm the same.
I wonder if most people are like that. Or are there a lot of people who wear shoes while they're at home?
I SHOULD wear shoes while at the lake house, because there are scorpions hanging about. I usually don't, though.
Our house isn't' always safe either. Earlier this week I stabbed my foot with some sharp thing sticking up from a carpet. That hurt a bit...but probably not as much as getting attacked by an ornery Hippogriff.
17. Learned from Sanjiro's biography that there's something called the Martin-Schultz scale. It's about eye-color.
Either Sanjiro's role-player or Lord Wiki is confused.
Lord Wiki says the darkest eye colors would be 16 on the scale. Sanjiro's eyes are dark brown and he's said to be a 1 on the scale. According to Lord Wiki, if he was a 1, he'd have blue eyes.
18. Learned that Sanjiro is very aware of other people's emotions but keeps his own emotions hidden.
Maybe he's an Empath. That would probably work well with the healing profession.
19. Liked this line about Sanjiro. He is more loyal to his own set of rules and guidelines and sometimes has trouble following rules set by others.
I think I'm that way too. I'm usually good at following my own rules sometimes to the point of being anal about it.
I'm probably okay at following other people's rules, but I can be a bit reluctant about the whole thing.
20. Started to read Sanjiro's history.
He was not so nice as a child.
He was born an heir, and that knowledge made him spoiled and selfish.
21. Learned that what changed Sanjiro was moving to Australia and attending Tallygarunga. I guess being in a place where the language wasn't his birth language humbled him a bit.
22. Learned that as a teen Sanjiro had an affair with an older woman, nineteen years older than him. Yikes.
A baby came out of the union.
The woman, with a taste for younger men, (or at least in that case) worked for Sanjiro's father. Grandpa wasn't so happy about the new baby, but he didn't fire the mother. He just asked her to keep the father of the baby a secret.
A few years later, Sanjiro and his older woman got together again. They made a second baby.
They ended up breaking up, but they have a peaceful non-relationship.
It's kind of nice that an illicit relationship eventually turned into something fairly decent.
23. Learned that Sanjiro is very good at cooking. He's like Tim.
Tim made very good pizza last night.
He also made good Asian food the other night. He said something like, See I CAN make good Asian food.
I said it was very good but it still tastes like white-person Asian food. Then I realized, what do I know? It's not like I eat authentic Asian food. The Asian restaurants we go to are usually geared towards non-Asian people....at least in Fort Worth. Maybe Tim's food is real Asian, and I'm used to something else.
His food, though, tastes like the Asian dishes you'd get at a non-Asian restaurant. That doesn't mean it's not good. It just means it doesn't often taste like the food I'd buy at an Asian restaurant.
24. Saw that my Australian of the day is Sir Alfred Norman Armstrong.
He was a banker.
He started his banking work when he was 15, which was in 1914.
About two years after that he started working for the Commonwealth Bank.
If I'm understanding things right, Armstrong was known for helping manufacturing businesses.
25. Learned that Armstrong was tall, had red hair, and was a bit of a loner.
I like all these little personal things. That's probably because it's a distraction from the intelligent economic information that goes way over my head.
26. Started to look at Fredweng's 14th day in Australia Flickr set. There's a lot of photos, so I'll probably take a few days to get through it.
It looks like he was on Kangaroo Island. I mean I'm guessing that from seeing the collection of thumbnail shots.
We'll see if I'm right.....
27. Saw that I'm probably right. I think this is the ferry terminal with the ferry that takes people to Kangaroo Island.
I looked at the ferry during my blogging hiatus. It's expensive!
It's $88 return for adults and $44 for kids. Then if you want to bring a car that's an additional $172.
I think that's a lot of money for a forty-five minute journey.
The trip from Circular Quay to Manly is thirty minutes—not much different than the trip to Kangaroo Island. It costs only $14 for a return ticket.
Then there's Bruny Island in Tasmania. The ferry ride there is free for passengers. You just have to pay for your car (if you have one).The price is fairly reasonable. It's $28 for a small car.
28. Wondered about these birds that Fredweng saw on the way to Kangaroo Island.
What are they?
They look sort of like penguins, but not exactly.
29. Thought about the Kangaroo Island part in Matthew Flinder's book.
He and his men killed a lot of kangaroo there. If I remember correctly, that's why they named the place Kangaroo Island.
There was a lot of animal killing in that book.
Sometimes it seemed like they were shooting animals just for the fun of it. At times Flinders mentioned skinning the animals—using the corpses in some way. Maybe they did that all the time, and he just didn't mention it? I wasn't sure if they were shooting the animals for use or just shooting them because it was adventurous.
30. Thought this sea lion looked a bit dead. But I think he's just sleeping.
31. Thought this was a fun photo of tourists.
32. Realized that when I see sea lions, I think of a shark's dinner.That's what I associate them with.
I guess it's like when some people see a cow, and they think of hamburgers.
33. Decided I'm not a sea lion person. I mean I like them better than crocodiles. But I'm not looking at the photos and thinking, Oh! How cute!
Okay. Well, this one is cute.
And this guy is cute too.
34. Thought this photo was quite lovely.
35. Went to Funtrivia to take another Australia Quiz.
This one is called An Aussie Walkabout Quiz. It's about Australia's natural beauty.
That reminds me of what I learned from the Bank Street science professor. He talked about how human beings are part of nature which means anything that we create is natural as well. A skyscraper is as natural as a bird's nest.
I like that viewpoint.
36. Got question #2 wrong on the quiz and learned that the Nullarbor Plain has a lot of limestone.
37. Got question #5 wrong and learned that Mount Coonowrin in the Glasshouse Mountains is closed to the public.
Lord Wiki says the closing is a safety thing. It's uncertain whether the slopes are stable or not.
38. Got question #7 wrong and learned that something called The Great Artesian Basin lies under 23% of Australia.
Lord Wiki says this basin provides freshwater to inland Australia. So....I guess it's kind of important.
39. Finished the quiz. I got a 7/10 which is the average. I'm okay with that.
40. Wished I knew how to apparate. Then we could eat dinner in Australia tonight, and we wouldn't have to worry about the long flight.
The movie was Man on a Ledge. It doesn't have Hugo Weaving, but it does star Sam Worthington.
So my Australia-radar was working. I just had the wrong Aussie.
Oops.
And no, I didn't confuse Weaving with Worthington. There was a different man that got me confused.
I then watched another trailer, and it was one of those that make me say, Cool. Thanks. Now I won't need to watch the actual movie. The trailer had so much in it. I'm not sure why I'd ever need to see the actual movie.
At around 1:37 Worthington sounds a little bit Australian.
At 1:48 he sounds very Australian.
Maybe he's actually playing an Australian in the movie?
Or maybe he's playing a person with a hybrid accent.
2. Wanted to add that Titus Welliver, from Lost, is in the movie. I like that guy...at least when he's doing Lost stuff. I get kind of sad when I see Lost actors doing non-Lost stuff. I'm possessive that way.
You know what, though. I think maybe Welliver is who I mistook for Hugo Weaving.
I just found this photo of Welliver, and I can kind of see a Hugo Weaving resemblance.
3. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read a story called The Fun Never Ends.
It would be nice if the fun never ended. But it would have to be that the fun never ended for everyone. If it never ended for only SOME people, I'm guessing the fun would be at the expense of others.
Anyway...
The story takes place at St. Ringo's Wizarding Hospital.
The stars of the story are Nicole Barkwith and Sanjiro Tanaka.
I think Sanjiro is new to me.
4. Started to read.
It's the morning of Thursday, January 5.
Nicole got injured by a bird—not a Magpie, but a Hippogriff.
Is a Hippogriff a bird? I'm not sure.
Well, I consider it a bird.
Nicole is pretty badly injured—bad enough that she has to bring herself to the hospital. She doesn't have to call an ambulance and wait in agony for it to finally show up. She just apparates there.
5. Learned that Nicole is officially dating Stuart....I forgot his last name. This is what happens when I've been gone too long.
6. Remembered his last name. Good! I was about to go look it up, but my memory kicked in for me.
It's Blair. Stuart Blair. He's the Victorian Minister of Magic.
I vaguely remember him going on a date with Nicole.
7. Started to read Sanjiro's post. I was wondering where he'd fit into the drama. Then I saw that he's a healer. I bet he'll be Nicole's doctor.
8. Learned that Sanjiro's kids don't like to give him privacy, even when he's using the toilet. That happens with kids sometimes.
I can't really remember not having toileting privacy with Jack except when he was an infant. But I may be forgetting things.
9. Learned that Nicole has been a fairly regular at the hospital. The Hippogriff injury wasn't a one time thing. Nicole and Sanjiro already have a patient-healer relationship established.
They get along well.
How well?
Will Nicole fall in love with the magical doctor? Will there be a love triangle?
Speaking of love.
I'm still worried about Sergei. I hope he finds love again.
Or maybe he'll still be with James, and it will be an off camera type storyline.
10. Got the idea that Nicole was pregnant. Bad tasting things are tasting worse than usual. She's feeling nauseated. She's dizzy.....
11. Thought that Nicole has a good heart. The animal injured her, but what's forefront on her mind is finding a good home for it.
12. Wondered if maybe Nicole isn't pregnant. Maybe she was poisoned or something?
No...
I think she's pregnant.
I guess we shall see.
13. Looked at the biography of Sanjiro Tanaka.
His face claim is Takeshi Kaneshiro.
Lord Wiki says Kaneshiro is a Taiwanese-Japanese actor and singer.
Here's a video of him being interviewed. He's making a strange face. People are laughing.
I'm not sure what's being said. It's not in English.
Kaneshiro reminds me of an Asian version of Edward Cullen; or really an Asian version of Robert Pattison. We could bring it back to Harry Potter and say he's an Asian version of Cedric Diggory.
14. Went back to reading about Sanjiro.
He was born in Japan.
His Patronus is a Nine-Tailed Fox.
15. Consulted Lord Wiki about the Nine-Tailed Fox. He says it's a mythical creature.
I wasn't expecting that. I thought the nine tails thing was figurative.
16. Saw that Sanjiro likes to be barefoot at home.
I'm the same.
I wonder if most people are like that. Or are there a lot of people who wear shoes while they're at home?
I SHOULD wear shoes while at the lake house, because there are scorpions hanging about. I usually don't, though.
Our house isn't' always safe either. Earlier this week I stabbed my foot with some sharp thing sticking up from a carpet. That hurt a bit...but probably not as much as getting attacked by an ornery Hippogriff.
17. Learned from Sanjiro's biography that there's something called the Martin-Schultz scale. It's about eye-color.
Either Sanjiro's role-player or Lord Wiki is confused.
Lord Wiki says the darkest eye colors would be 16 on the scale. Sanjiro's eyes are dark brown and he's said to be a 1 on the scale. According to Lord Wiki, if he was a 1, he'd have blue eyes.
18. Learned that Sanjiro is very aware of other people's emotions but keeps his own emotions hidden.
Maybe he's an Empath. That would probably work well with the healing profession.
19. Liked this line about Sanjiro. He is more loyal to his own set of rules and guidelines and sometimes has trouble following rules set by others.
I think I'm that way too. I'm usually good at following my own rules sometimes to the point of being anal about it.
I'm probably okay at following other people's rules, but I can be a bit reluctant about the whole thing.
20. Started to read Sanjiro's history.
He was not so nice as a child.
He was born an heir, and that knowledge made him spoiled and selfish.
21. Learned that what changed Sanjiro was moving to Australia and attending Tallygarunga. I guess being in a place where the language wasn't his birth language humbled him a bit.
22. Learned that as a teen Sanjiro had an affair with an older woman, nineteen years older than him. Yikes.
A baby came out of the union.
The woman, with a taste for younger men, (or at least in that case) worked for Sanjiro's father. Grandpa wasn't so happy about the new baby, but he didn't fire the mother. He just asked her to keep the father of the baby a secret.
A few years later, Sanjiro and his older woman got together again. They made a second baby.
They ended up breaking up, but they have a peaceful non-relationship.
It's kind of nice that an illicit relationship eventually turned into something fairly decent.
23. Learned that Sanjiro is very good at cooking. He's like Tim.
Tim made very good pizza last night.
He also made good Asian food the other night. He said something like, See I CAN make good Asian food.
I said it was very good but it still tastes like white-person Asian food. Then I realized, what do I know? It's not like I eat authentic Asian food. The Asian restaurants we go to are usually geared towards non-Asian people....at least in Fort Worth. Maybe Tim's food is real Asian, and I'm used to something else.
His food, though, tastes like the Asian dishes you'd get at a non-Asian restaurant. That doesn't mean it's not good. It just means it doesn't often taste like the food I'd buy at an Asian restaurant.
24. Saw that my Australian of the day is Sir Alfred Norman Armstrong.
He was a banker.
He started his banking work when he was 15, which was in 1914.
About two years after that he started working for the Commonwealth Bank.
If I'm understanding things right, Armstrong was known for helping manufacturing businesses.
25. Learned that Armstrong was tall, had red hair, and was a bit of a loner.
I like all these little personal things. That's probably because it's a distraction from the intelligent economic information that goes way over my head.
26. Started to look at Fredweng's 14th day in Australia Flickr set. There's a lot of photos, so I'll probably take a few days to get through it.
It looks like he was on Kangaroo Island. I mean I'm guessing that from seeing the collection of thumbnail shots.
We'll see if I'm right.....
27. Saw that I'm probably right. I think this is the ferry terminal with the ferry that takes people to Kangaroo Island.
I looked at the ferry during my blogging hiatus. It's expensive!
It's $88 return for adults and $44 for kids. Then if you want to bring a car that's an additional $172.
I think that's a lot of money for a forty-five minute journey.
The trip from Circular Quay to Manly is thirty minutes—not much different than the trip to Kangaroo Island. It costs only $14 for a return ticket.
Then there's Bruny Island in Tasmania. The ferry ride there is free for passengers. You just have to pay for your car (if you have one).The price is fairly reasonable. It's $28 for a small car.
28. Wondered about these birds that Fredweng saw on the way to Kangaroo Island.
What are they?
They look sort of like penguins, but not exactly.
29. Thought about the Kangaroo Island part in Matthew Flinder's book.
He and his men killed a lot of kangaroo there. If I remember correctly, that's why they named the place Kangaroo Island.
There was a lot of animal killing in that book.
Sometimes it seemed like they were shooting animals just for the fun of it. At times Flinders mentioned skinning the animals—using the corpses in some way. Maybe they did that all the time, and he just didn't mention it? I wasn't sure if they were shooting the animals for use or just shooting them because it was adventurous.
30. Thought this sea lion looked a bit dead. But I think he's just sleeping.
31. Thought this was a fun photo of tourists.
32. Realized that when I see sea lions, I think of a shark's dinner.That's what I associate them with.
I guess it's like when some people see a cow, and they think of hamburgers.
33. Decided I'm not a sea lion person. I mean I like them better than crocodiles. But I'm not looking at the photos and thinking, Oh! How cute!
Okay. Well, this one is cute.
And this guy is cute too.
34. Thought this photo was quite lovely.
35. Went to Funtrivia to take another Australia Quiz.
This one is called An Aussie Walkabout Quiz. It's about Australia's natural beauty.
That reminds me of what I learned from the Bank Street science professor. He talked about how human beings are part of nature which means anything that we create is natural as well. A skyscraper is as natural as a bird's nest.
I like that viewpoint.
36. Got question #2 wrong on the quiz and learned that the Nullarbor Plain has a lot of limestone.
37. Got question #5 wrong and learned that Mount Coonowrin in the Glasshouse Mountains is closed to the public.
Lord Wiki says the closing is a safety thing. It's uncertain whether the slopes are stable or not.
38. Got question #7 wrong and learned that something called The Great Artesian Basin lies under 23% of Australia.
Lord Wiki says this basin provides freshwater to inland Australia. So....I guess it's kind of important.
39. Finished the quiz. I got a 7/10 which is the average. I'm okay with that.
40. Wished I knew how to apparate. Then we could eat dinner in Australia tonight, and we wouldn't have to worry about the long flight.
The birds in the KI pix are either Pied Cormorant or Little Pied Cormorant. Obviously depending on how big they are which isn't evident from the picture! Here's a link (sorry, you'll have to cut & paste if you care enough to look): http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=pied%20cormorant&source=web&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAustralian_Pied_Cormorant&ei=mZEST53rD-vsmAWzzZz5Aw&usg=AFQjCNEaW0YK8tKwNAC2o_kI05WO4Hvw5A&sig2=y2mfVvgLEGCF_eauLL5oQg
ReplyDeleteRed Nomad in Oz,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the link and the answer to my question.
I didn't have to cut and paste. When the comment came to my email, the link was a link. Although if it wasn't a link, I WOULD have cared enough to cut and paste.
Hi Dina!
ReplyDeleteNo offence intended ... I was just giving you the option of not taking the link!! Weird how it's a link in email, but NOT in the comments!!
Red