Throwing Away a Magical Life

Today on my episode of The Elephant Princess, Alex signs away all her rights to being princess of the magical alternate universe of Manjipoor.  She gives up her teleporting elephant, her princess position, and her servant...who also happens to be her best friend. She gives it all up so she can have a normal life.  AND...she never wanted the magical life. It took an episode or two for her to warm up to the idea that she was a princess and had magical powers.

Then this afternoon we watched Doctor Who. Amy and Rory are living two lives now— a normal one and one that takes them on adventures throughout space and time. They start thinking that maybe they want to give up the adventurous life and just be normal.

I thought about the similarities of the themes between these two episodes. At first, I thought, what the hell is wrong with these characters?  Who wouldn't want wild adventure, magic, and a huge sense of importance?  Why would anyone want to return to the mundane?  I wouldn't!

Or would I? I started wondering.  I've never had any big wild adventures. I haven't discovered I'm a witch or wizard. I haven't been asked to travel with a time traveling alien.  I haven't become friends with a family of vampires, and nor have I fought against zombies in an apocalypse.

My adventures are fairly mild, and usually in the form of travel. Going to Australia is my adventure. Disney World. Road trips. Family get-togethers at the lake house.  I love all that stuff. Sometimes I feel life is about waiting for those things to happen. But then when they are happening; when they come to an end; I often look forward to returning to my normal life.

The truth is I'm a total homebody. I think I prefer vicarious adventure through reading and television. I like watching other people go on adventures.

Then again, I might be that way because of my dreams. They're very vivid and adventurous.  So maybe in some ways, I'm like Amy and Rory. Maybe my dreams are like the Tardis...or Alex's elephant. They transport me to my own little magical adventure zone.

Yeah. I like that idea. Then it makes me the person who DOES choose the magical adventure life. Otherwise, I kind of feel lazy and pathetic.

Anyway...Alex's choice to be normal isn't going to stick.  There's a whole other season, and a few episodes left of this season. I seriously doubt the rest of the show is going to be about Alex-the-girl-who-could-have-been-a-magical-princess-but-now-she's-just-a-high-school-student.

And on Doctor Who, in the end of the episode, Amy and Rory decided they wanted to keep going on Tardis adventures, after all.  Knowing what's going to happen to them in the next episode...well, they might have been better off staying home.

What about you? Assuming you're not one of the Doctor's companions or a wizard at Hogwarts, are you satisfied with your life? Do you wish you had magic? More adventures?  Do you feel your life is important? Or do you often feel like it's meaningless?

What would our world be like if we
knew for sure there 
was life after death, and 
we could easily talk to our 
dearly-departed on the Internet?

The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts 



Sophie Myles Sort Of Looks Like a Neighbours Actress

This morning I was looking at my Instagram Feed.  The Doctor Who account had a photo of Madame de Pompadour from the "The Girl in the Fireplace" episode.  I thought she looked familar....beyond us seeing her in the episode several weeks ago.  I had this feeling I've seen her more recently.

My immediate idea is that we saw her in another BBC show recently. Tim and I watched Blackpool last week, and this week we're watching Extras.  I thought maybe she was in one of those.

Then I realized she reminds me of an actress from Neighbours.  It took me awhile to find photos to compare the two, because I didn't even know the name of the character in Neighbours.

I found it after some searching.  It's Georgia Brookes played by Saskia Hampele.

The Doctor Who actress is Sophie Myles.

I compared the Google Images pages of both actresses (Hampele and Myles).  I think they look very alike in some photos, and very different in others. But then in photos where Hampele looks very different from Myles, I also think she looks very different from what I know of her from Neighbours. And when Myles looks very different from Hampele, I also think she doesn't look like Madame de Pompadour.

Oh...goodness. I just looked at Sophie Myles' filmography.   It turns out I was right the first time. She WAS on Extras!  We just saw her a couple of days ago. She was in the episode with Orlando Bloom. I'm disappointed in myself for not recognizing her...as herself; or mistaking her for an Australian actress.

It's weird how the brain connects things. Or at least my brain.  As I've been watching Neighbours, I never thought the Georgia character reminded me of Madame de Pompadour.  Although maybe it did on a subconscious level?  And when watching Extras, I didn't do my very common: Who is that actress? She looks so familiar.  Yet today I saw the Doctor Who photo, and started wondering things.  

Adam Willits

Today I'm going to learn about Adam Willits. He's the actor who played Steven on Home and Away, and he's been on other things as well. I don't know how many other things, but I do know he was on some children's show with Justine Clarke.  I learned that when I did my post about her.

Steven is one of my favorite Home and Away characters.  My favorite storyline on the show centered around him.  This is when...feeling despair over his uncle's death, Steven latches onto a hoodlum named Dodge. Dodge brings the message that life is short and you should just be wild and enjoy it. Why study for your science test when you might die tomorrow?  What Steven doesn't know is Dodge isn't just an unfortunate soul who sometimes resorted to petty crime to get by in life. He's a psychopath who is actually the one to blame for Steven's uncle's death.

There's a beautiful episode where Steven has to come to terms with Dodge's identity; and then the betrayal...the disillusionment...and the desire for revenge.

What's interesting is that a similar thing happened to Steven in a previous storyline. Again, he had latched on to the wrong mentor. In this case, it was an abusive gym coach.

I'm intrigued by this type of storyline. Maybe it's because I can relate on some level. I'm sure most people can. I don't know if I've ever latched on to the wrong person, but I have latched on to the wrong idea or belief. And once I had a whole set of best friends that turned out to not even exist. So I can REALLY relate to the feelings of betrayal and disillusionment.

It also makes me think of Bill Cosby.  After I read some articles about the rape charges, it made me come to a decision. I will never again label a real person as my hero.  Not that Bill Cosby was my hero. I mean I loved the Cosby Show, but that was a long time ago. And Bill Cosby is not a celebrity, I've ever really been into.  BUT...I started thinking that a celebrity I do admire can be hiding some really shameful secrets. And of course, it's not just celebrities. It can be a family friend I adore.  It can be a local person I've read about in the news.  It can be someone that's seem by the masses as being a hero.

So for now on...if I need a hero, it will be a fictional one. That to me is pretty safe.  So if it's a choice between JK Rowling and Dumbeldore, I pick Dumbeldore.  David Tennant, and the Doctor? I pick the Doctor.  Easter Bunny or a local fireman who saved a bunch of children? The Easter Bunny. Now that doesn't mean I'm not thankful for the fireman's actions. He did a heroic deed, and I'd admire him and be grateful. But I'm not going to see him as a great person, because who knows what he does when he's not saving lives. Maybe he beats up his wife. Maybe he forces himself on his daughter. Maybe he bullies young kids on the internet.

Anyway....I should get on to learning about Adam Willits.

I'm going to start with his bio page on IMDb.

Willits was born in Sydney on February 18, 1972.  He's nine months older than me. When I watched the early Home and Away episodes, I often related more to the young characters rather than the adults.  I think the main reason is, I'm immature. But maybe it's also because during the time period of the episodes I was watching, (late 1980's) I was the same age as the teens on the show.  That being said, if I watched current episodes of Home and Away, I might still relate more to the teens. I really don't know.

Now I'm going to look at Willit's filmography.  His first screen thing was in 1984. It was the thing with Justine Clarke: The Maestro's Company.   It was a children's show about opera.

I thought, when I had done the post on Clarke, that I had found a clip from the show. But now I can't find it.  Maybe I should look at the Clarke post.

Nope. I hadn't found a clip, after all. You know...maybe they were on ANOTHER show together. Or maybe there's another show with Clarke, and I thought Willits was on that one instead of the Maestro one. Or maybe they've been on three shows together.

In 1985, Willits was in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.  Justine Clarke was in a Mad Max movie too! Maybe this one?  I'll go look at the credits.

Yep! They were in this together. So Clarke and Willits HAVE been in three things together. And there might be even more stuff.

In 1987, Willits was in a John Williamson story called The Perfectionist.  From what I see in the credits, it looks like Willits played the son of Jacki Weaver and John Waters.

Here's a review of it. I wonder if Willits will be mentioned.

The reviewer is quite negative. He doesn't think the filmmakers did a good job adapting the play to screen.  He says the acting is bad, but doesn't mention Willits personally.  I think he was more bothered by the adult acting.  Willits was just a kid at the time.

Willits started working on Home and Away in 1988. He was there from the beginning.  According to IMDb, he was on 508 episodes. His last appearance was in 2008.

I don't think Willits was on the show continuously as a main star for twenty years. I'm thinking he left and then came back. What I don't know is, if he came back as a cast member or just a guest appearance.

Maybe looking at the list of episodes will give me an idea of things.

It takes a long time to load the list....

Okay. He left in 1991.  Then he came back in 1995 for many episodes. So I think he was back as a cast member.  He was also there a lot in 1996 and 1997.  He made one appearance in 1998.

From 2000-2008, he was in eleven episodes. I'm guessing those were guest appearance type things—reunions, weddings, funerals...that kind of thing.  When Willits would return, was he glad it was only a guest appearance? Or did he wish they'd ask him back as a full-time cast member? I can see from his filmography that he's no longer doing much film and television work. Is he okay with that? Or does he miss it?

In 1991, Willits was on a comedy TV show called Hampton Court. Maybe he left Home and Away for this show?

Lord Wiki says the show was a spin off to Hey Dad...!  There's one thing that comes to my mind when I think of the show, and it's similar to the Cosby situation. It's hard to learn these things about actors in shows we used to love.  But yeah. I know. It's much worse for the victims, of course.

Hampton Court was about four people sharing a flat together in a building that has a no-baby rule. And one of the four tenants has a baby.  They're trying to keep it a secret.  I guess that could be funny.

Here's a very short promo for the show. Willits gets bitten by a budgie.

Oh! There's an episode here too. I'm not going to watch the whole thing, but I'll watch a few bits and pieces.  Willits is the second person featured in the credits. He was one of the main stars.

There's a scene with Willits starting at 3:36.  His character doesn't have money to pay the rent, so he's walking the landlord's dogs instead.  It reminds me very much of a 1980's TV show—the kind that might have made me laugh back then, but now I mostly just end up cringing.  It feels very forced.

There's only two more things on Willit's filmography.  In 2002, he appeared on an episode of All Saints.  I came across this a few weeks ago when I did a post on Willit's co-star, Vanessa Downing. I think they were in the same episode? Or they both appeared on the same season. I forgot.  But I do remember that Willit's character had been in a fight with his wife—a fight involving bows and arrows.

The last item on Willit's filmography is an appearance on Rake. He was a policeman. His character wasn't given a name, so I think it was a small part.

I'm getting the idea that Willit's has become a struggling actor.  Tim and I have been watching the TV show Extras, which is all about the plight of the struggling actor.  It doesn't look easy.  What's harder, though, an actor who was once successful and is now not finding work or an actor who has never been able to find work?

I kind of think the first one is harder. As a writer, I'm a total nobody. That's hard on my self-esteem. But I think my self-esteem would be more damaged if I had once gotten a lot of money and attention for my writing.

That being said...I might be wrong about Adam Willits being a struggling actor. He could be a former actor who's very satisfied with his non-acting life. And maybe he decided, just for fun, that he'd go on an episode of Rake.

Also, he might still be acting. Maybe he's doing theater instead of screen stuff.

Well, enough guessing. I'm going to try to find out more about Willit's life. Though I might not be able to find much. So then I'll have to keep guessing.

Lord Wiki says Willits dropped out of acting and now works in insurance.  No wait. I misread that. He doesn't say he dropped out of acting. He says he dropped out of the limelight.

Does Willits miss the limelight?

The other thing that Lord Wiki says is that Willits was part of a UK stage musical tour version of Home and Away.  Justine Clarke was in it too, along with Julian McMahon, Sharyn Hodgson, and Mouche Phillps.  I wasn't sure who Mouche Phillips was, at first, but now I'm thinking maybe she played Viv?

Yeah. I just checked. I'm right.

Anyway, I would love to see that musical.  I wonder if there's anyone in the world who has a recording of it.  The sad thing is there might not be.  Usually, video-taping is forbidden in those types of things.  And it's not like people, in those days, could be sneaky with their mobile phones.  But maybe the production company itself has a recording.

I found a news clip about the musical. At least that's been uploaded...for now.  And it does include some scenes. So, that't awesome.

They're talking about how most of the actors in the play were NOT from the TV show and not even Australian. They were from the UK.  But I do see Sharyn Hodgson. So far, I'm not seeing Willits. Though that doesn't mean I think Lord Wiki has his facts wrong. They only showed a little bit from the play.  There's a lot of stuff I'm not being shown, and that might include Willits.

Lord Wiki has stuff to say about Steven on Home and Away, and some of it is about Willits.  He says Willits felt he was very different from Steven.  It seems Willits wasn't too impressed with Steven's nerdiness and dorkiness.  I like Steven for being that way. It kind of reminds me of The Big Bang Theory.  I've watched stuff about the actors, and have gotten the sense that they're embarrassed for their characters—that they want to make sure people know they're not geeks like that.  But I LIKE geeks and nerds, so seeing the actors want to distance themselves from all that is kind of a turn off for me.

Lord Wiki has information about what eventually happened to Steven. Maybe I'll read it, because I doubt I'll be able to watch the show anytime soon. Though I haven't checked to see if it's back on YouTube.  But even if it was, I'm not sure I'd watch it. I'm busy with other shows now.  And if I scheduled in time to watch it, I'd worry that eventually the YouTube account would be suspended, and I'd be left out in the cold again.

So...what happened to Steven?  The last I saw of him he was playing hard to get with Viv. He liked her, but she wasn't interested. Then she started liking him, and he gave her the cold shoulder.  Wait...maybe Emma liked Steven? Yeah. I think that's what happened. And I think when Emma started showing interest, that led to Viv being interested.

I might have it wrong.....

Lord Wiki doesn't really say anything about Viv and Emma. He pretty much just talks about Dodge. Then he jumps to 1995.

Steven comes back as a teacher, and has a short-lived romance with Marilyn Chambers.

Then he has an affair with a student. Yikes! That turns out to be a bit of a mess.

Dodge returns and tries to threaten Steven with jelly beans.  He pretends they are drugs, or something like that. There's a  blackmail thing. Sally gets abducted. There's a fight on the cliff. Steven alienates his family. Then he leaves town.

The student (Selena) returns to Steven's life.  They almost get married; then they don't get married. But then later they do get back together.

Selena and Steven were very on-again/off-again.

I'm going to look at the Back to the Bay site.  I want more information about Steven's 1991 storylines. I want to know what happened after I lost touch with Summer Bay.

I think they might have their facts wrong; or I've forgotten something. They say, in high school, Steven has an affair with an older woman named Jennifer.  He has a brief dating thing with an older woman, but not Jennifer.  I think it was Narelle.

Maybe there was a Jennifer after Viv and Emma?  But the way it's written here, it sounds like Jennifer came before Dodge.

Whatever happened with Steven and Viv? Did they ever get together at all?  Or maybe it's not important. I know now that they didn't end up together.

Well...I've been struggling to find more information about Adam Willits.

I finally found this business resume type thing. It might be the right Adam Willits. I hope.

Wait...yeah. It's him. Home and Away is mentioned.

If I'm reading things right, Willits works for something called Australian Institute for Credit Management.  Here's their website. It's an organization for people in the credit industry. Is that like credit cards?

I think I have things wrong. This might not be Willit's job.  Yeah...the website was just saying he's a member of the organization.

His profession is being the director of sales and services for a company called Ahead of the Curve. When I tried going to their website, I got a 500 Internal Server Error page.

In the past, Willits worked for a company called AATP. They're a telecommunications company. And he worked for Medfin Finance.  I wonder if Willits likes this kind of stuff.

I'm not finding anything else, unfortunately.

Whatever Willits is doing out there...I hope he's doing well.












Dream about Returning Again and Attention from Children

I dreamed about Australia last night.

We've come back from a fourth trip to Australia. It seems it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. I had a good time, but feel a little ashamed that all we did was visit Sydney again. I tell myself it's because it was a short trip, but then I realize it really wasn't. Though we've just returned from Australia, I'm already eager to return. We're supposed to wait several years, but I don't really want to. I consider maybe entering some win-a-trip-to Australia contests.  

I am also wanting some Australia food. I have this idea that we might have hard candies left over in our pantry from our first trip (2007). I go in there to look for them.

I was going to say that dream is incredibly unrealistic. There's no way we'd have leftover candy from Australia. It gets all eaten quite quickly. But...no. Hard candy is a different story.  That often gets left behind. I think we had some British lemon sherberts lying about for many years. I think I finally threw them away. Then I think we still have a small bag of eucalyptus candy.  That's probably a year or two old. Maybe I'll look for it and eat it today.

Also last night...I dreamed this about my dad.  My dad and I sit down to eat lunch between two kids with autism. They're having a conversation. My dad doesn't like their conversation and says someone should intervene. I then go totally off on him and say his so-called intervening never helped me as a child. It didn't help me have more friends. And I say he didn't care about my well-being. He just wanted to be popular with our young friends. He likes being liked by children. I tell him I noticed this at my niece's birthday party.  

My gripes didn't really make sense, since I complained about his wish to intervene but then bitched about his lack of intervening when I was a child.  Or maybe there's a difference between intervening to bring two people closer, and intervening in a way that brings the attention to yourself.

Anyway, then this morning I was reading my old LiveJournal entries that I wrote a few days after returning from our first Australia trip.  I wrote out this long list of people we talked to and/or befriended in Australia.  For #7 on the list, I wrote, Twins at Manly Beach. These adorable little blond girls became attached to us. They were so cute. I felt bad because they had no adults with them--just a granny or nanny off in the distance. They seemed very eager to have an adult play with them....


It was funny reading that after dreaming what I dreamed about my dad.

As for real life, my dad does like being liked...whether it's by adults or children. I can't remember being bothered, though, about him not helping me with my friendships.  I also don't remember feeling that he was stealing attention away from me. Now my older sister...THAT'S a different story.  I definitely had some jealousy there.

Like my dad, I do like being liked, by both children and adults.  It doesn't happen to me, though, as often as it happens to him.  I do think for the most part I've been more concerned with children's relationship to Jack than concerned by how much they're showing adoration towards me. I think the Manly twins were an exception. And I don't remember much of it, anyway. Maybe they were giving Jack as much attention as me, and that's why I wasn't worrying about it.

Well, actually. I just reread what I wrote. I said the girls became attached to US, not me. So I think they were loving on both me and Jack. Tim might have been included as well, but I kind of remember that not being the case. I think he was busy being the photographer.


How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   


The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts 



Statcounter Google Maps Game (Part 4)

I'm going to play my Statcounter Google Maps game...AGAIN.

Eventually, I'll get tired of it.  But for now, it's a lot of fun for me. I'm hoping someone out there gets some enjoyment from reading it.

Anyway, in the game, I look at Statcounter to see the location of the next seven entities who visit my blog. Then I find the location on Google Maps; I randomly pick a place to view via Street View; and then I ramble on and on about various things.

I used to make a judgement of what I saw on Street View, saying whether I'd want to live on the street, visit the street, or avoid it. But that wasn't really adding anything to the game.  It's hard to judge a place based on one image of one street. I'd end up cheating. A street would be beautiful, but I'd say I wouldn't want to live there because I know it has harsh winters. Or there'd be a street not so beautiful, but I would want to live there, because it's in Australia.

While I wait for visitors, I shall start watching another episode of The Elephant Princess.

Speaking of television, I was very pleased with Tim yesterday. I've been pressuring him to watch John Safran's Race Relations, and yesterday I learned he watched a couple of episodes.  I think it's annoying and kind of rude to pressure someone to read or watch something. Unfortunately, I've been guilty of it at times. But in this case, I don't feel guilty.  John Safran's Race Relations seems like it was almost made specifically for Tim. He loves humor about race and race relations.

A few days ago, I pretty much forced him to watch the beginning of the blackface episode.  I couldn't tell if Tim liked it or not. Then yesterday he told me he watched the rest of that episode on his own plus the Fiddler on the Roof one. Those were my two favorite episodes. I also, for some weird reason, like the scenes about the discount DVDs at Kmart.

1. I finally had a visitor.  Statcounter says they're from Garland, Texas, which I think is close to me.

With Street View, I landed on Sunflower Drive.  That's a nice name for a street.

I see a guy, in a purple shirt, standing on his porch. I wonder if he knew he was being photographed.

I also see a house, that's at least partly pink. Breast cancer pink. I really wish Breast Cancer hadn't hijacked that color.

I just moved a bit on Street View, and now I see there's a school  (Memorial Pathway Academy) right down the street. So, children in the neighborhood have an easy walk.  IF they go to that school. Some might homeschool, and others might go to a private school.

Actually, looking at their website....it's a high school. So it's more that the teens of the neighborhood (rather than the children) can walk to school.

I just checked the distance between our house and Sunflower Drive. It's only an hour away from us. It's even closer to my sisters and their families.

Lord Wiki says Garland is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. We're made up of a handful of cities.

Lord Wiki also says that there are a lot of Vietnamese folks living in Garland.

If someone is into cowboy hats, they might want to pay a visit to Garland. It's home to a company called Resistol Hats, which is known for making cowboy hats. Known to some people but not to me. But to be fair, I'm not really into cowboy hats. If I was, I bet I'd know about Resistol.

2.  The next visitor is from Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.

I've heard of Warsaw, Poland. I never knew Warsaw was inside something called Mazowieckie. Maybe that's like the state or territory.

The first thing I think of when I think of Poland is the Holocaust; and then I specifically think of Lilly Brett's book Too Many Men.  It's one of those books that I feel should be much more popular than it is.

The book is about an Aussie woman who travels to Poland with her Holocaust survivor father.  It's very sad but also funny.  The father is adorable.

One of the things I remember about the book is that the protagonist is bothered by some of the Jewish-related tourism in Poland. Or maybe it's more about some of the souvenirs she sees at gift shops. There's this idea that modern Poland is somewhat profiting off what happened to the Jews. I forgot the exact details.

I'm on Street View now. I've landed in a place called Ludwika Kondratowicza.  It looks like a busy area.

There's a Coke truck.  It's kind of cool, because the truck is red. Then next to the red truck are two red cars.

There's something that looks like it might be a museum. It has these flags that look like tourist attraction type flags.

There's a group of people with shopping bags, so I guess there are shops nearby.

My Google Maps just froze. I couldn't leave that Street View.

Now I'm looking at the street via the map rather than Street View. It's hard for me to understand much, because it's in Polish.

It looks like Ludwika Kondratowicza is a major street, and it goes past two parks.

There's also a bank.

That's pretty much all I can tell.

Lord Wiki just reminded me that Warsaw is the capital of Poland. I think I knew that. Probably. Or at least it's the city that's most familiar to me. If someone said name a city in Poland, I would probably say Warsaw.  But most-familiar-city doesn't always equal the capital. Australia is a great example of that.

There are two famous people from Warsaw that I know of, but I didn't know they were from Warsaw.—Marie Curie and Frederic Chopin.  I don't even think I knew they were Polish.

Lord Wiki says that before World War II, Jews made up about 30% of Warsaw's population. There are much less Jews now there, but I can't find exact numbers.

Here's a positive article though. It talks about how the small group of Jews in Poland are doing well—having a bit of a revival, I suppose.

Well, actually there is a number here, but it's for Poland in general; not Warsaw. They say there are twenty-five thousand Jews.  This other website says the pre-Holocaust Jewish population of Poland was three million. So, that's quite a change.

3.  The next visitor is from Kew, Victoria. That's in Melbourne, I believe.

I think it's near the CBD. Or maybe I'm wrong. I wish I had an idea of where it was.  East of the CBD...west? Maybe north?

For Street View I've landed on Barrington Avenue.  It has lovely houses and trees.

I see a lot of red brick.

I just zoomed out. Kew is north-east of the CBD.

Crap. My mind has gone totally blank. I'm trying to remember the name of that place in Melbourne. It's modern and has a big screen.  There's a media museum there.  My friend and I sat there for a long time waiting for the others, in our party, to return from a football game.

Federation Square!  Thanks, Google. Although, there was a list of attractions in Melbourne, along with icons, and they didn't list Federation Square.  I had to click on the ACMI museum to get the name of the area.

Lord Wiki says there was a lunatic Asylum in Kew (Kew Lunatic Asylum).  I think these days, the name would be very politically incorrect. I'm guessing that several decades from now, the term mental illness and/or psychiatric will be politically incorrect. Language keeps changing.

This website lists places in Australia that are seen as being scary. The Kew asylum is one of them.  It says here that, when the hospital was closed in 1988 (with a new name), it was turned into a residential building.

From what I'm seeing by Googling, though, it seems there's a rehabilitation centre near, or at, the place where the asylum used to be.

No. Wait. I think I had the wrong information. I was misled!

According to this Walking Melbourne site,  the address of the asylum is 1-258 Wiltshire Drive.

When I Googled the address, a big box appears in the search engine with the address 1 Yarra Boulevard. Underneath that, in smaller print, is the name The Royal Talbot Rehabilitation Centre.

According to Google Maps, the two locations are a six minute drive from each other. They're not one and the same.

The past-asylum is a really beautiful building. though.  I wonder if I'd want to live in the apartments that are there now.  Would I be scared and disgusted by the dark history; or would I be somewhat thrilled?  Well, I'd probably feel a combination of emotions.

It's like the Holocaust...and things like 9/11 and the Titanic. There's fear and sadness, yet many of us are drawn to it. We read the stories, visits the sites, watch movies made about it, etc.  And yeah, people profit from it.  But it's all complicated.  I wrote a novel about Neurofibromatosis.  It's not selling well at all. But if it was?  Then people could say I'm profiting from a medical disorder that causes many people a huge amount of hardship.  When I wrote it, though, it's not like I sat down, laughed an evil laugh, and thought, I want to make money from other people's suffering.

I guess it's all just part of the human experience.

4. The next location is Paris, Ile-De-France, France. I have no idea what Ile-de-France means. Maybe it's just another word for France?

Lord Wiki says it's a region of France.  Okay. That makes sense.

With Street View, I've landed on Notre Dame de Nazareth Street.  It looks very fancy...as I'd expect from Paris. It's a narrow street with beautiful architecture and a lot of shops.

When I left Street View, and looked at the map, I saw that there's a synagogue on the street.  Lord Wiki says it's the oldest of the great synagogues of Paris. What does that mean, though?  Could there be not-so-great Paris synagogues that are older?

I was trying to get my bearings, and sought what was most familiar. So....Notre Dame de Nazareth Street is twenty minutes east of the Eiffel Tower.  I wonder if that takes traffic into account.

5. The fifth location is Perth, Australia.  I get a fair number of Western Australians on my blog, but mostly I get visitors from Melbourne and Sydney.  I hardly ever get anyone from the Northern Territory.  I guess it's mostly about population, though.

For Street View, I've landed on Bannister Road.  There's a large silver building. It looks like the type of place that sells cars. Across the street is a place where you can buy sheds.

I've left Street View.  Now I can see that Bannister Road is quite large.  I'm pretty sure, that in the past, when you left Street view, Google would take you to the exact location you were viewing. But now that's not the case. It's kind of frustrating.

Okay....I finally was able to find the part of the Bannister Road I had been viewing. According to Google Maps, the shed place has closed.

The silver building MIGHT be ALS industrial.

Or maybe not.

I'm lost and confused.

Bannister Road is part of a suburb in Perth called Canning Vale.  Lord Wiki says there are many distribution facilities there. It makes sense. It looks quite industrial.

6. The next place on my Statcounter is very exciting! Kampala, Uganda! I rarely have Africa on my Statcounter.

Unfortunately, the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Uganda is not a good thing at all. It's that horrible disease that causes children to be brain damaged. Some refer to it as a zombie-like state.

Here's a video about it. The illness is called Nodding Disease.

It's really scary and sad.

I have serious doubts there's going to be Google Street View in Uganda.  But I'll check.

Yep. There's no Street View.

I can at least see the location of Kampala though. It's in the southern part of Uganda, and it's coastal.

Well...no.  I just zoomed out. That's not the ocean. It's a lake.  Sadly, I'm not very good at African geography. Otherwise, I would have known that Uganda itself isn't on a coast. It's surrounded by Kenya the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda.

Lord Wiki has photos of Kampala. It looks like a regular city.  In my head, it was a bunch of people living in huts surrounded by streams filled with germs that turn kids into zombies.

Lonely Planet describes Kampala as being modern and safe.

I really need to broaden my view of Africa.  While reading about Ebola a month or so ago, I read about how some Africans are very tired of being viewed as simply a charity case. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm the only person, outside the continent, to view Africa as being a vast land of unfortunate people.

I just consulted Lord Wiki about nodding disease. He says it's been found in northern Uganda. So people in Kampala are not getting it.  Though according to this article, a couple of years ago, there was an outbreak of Ebola near Kampala.

7. The last place for today is The Netherlands. There's no specific city listed.

With Street View, I've landed on a lovely place called Raadhuislaan.  It might be a street name. I'm not sure. It looks very cute and European. Unlike Kampala, it fits the stereotype in my head.

It seems there are multiple Raadhuislaan's in the Netherlands. I looked closer at the map, though, and found the one I was looking at is in Abcoude. Is that a city?

Lord Wiki says it's a town in the province of Utrecht.  Yeah. That word was on the map too, but I had ignored it.

This tourism website says Utrecht has beautiful canals.  It's interesting. The site is a UK site, and they refer to the country as Holland. We used to call it Holland. Now we call it The Netherlands. Why? And what do they call themselves?

Lord Wiki says Holland is a region in the Netherlands. Outside of the Netherlands, it is often used to refer to the whole country. He says some people are insulted by that.  I guess it would be like us calling Australia "Queensland" or "New South Wales".

Here's a whole article about the name of the country.

You know, I thought the Netherlands changed their name, and that's why we now refer to it differently. But I think it's more of a case of people becoming more sensitive and knowledgable.

Or maybe not. I just read the article.  At some point, the Netherlands didn't exist. It was just north and south Holland. When did that change?

Google says the Netherlands was founded in 1648. So this isn't something that happened recently.  I'm not sure if that's the time that the word Netherlands began.  I'm all confused.

I think I'm going to quit and go eat some breakfast.  Although it's actually lunch time now.




How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts 



















Statcounter Google Maps Game (Part 3)

I decided I'm going to play the game again.

I have fun doing it. I like seeing all the places and learning a bit about them. Well, I'm not learning a huge amount, but at least yesterday I learned that the war in Croatia has been over for several years. The game is making some of my horrible ignorance lessen a bit.

It's not that I thought there was a major war happening in Croatia.  I guess I didn't much think of it at all. But the first thing I think of, when I see Croatia mentioned, is war and ethnic cleansing. I had no idea when the conflict ended.

Anyway, I guess I should briefly go over the game rules again.

What happens is, I take the next seven entities who appear on my Statcounter. Then I look at the posted (maybe not accurate) location on Google Maps. I randomly pick a Street View from that location. Then I say whether I'd want to live there, visit there, or avoid it all together.  If I was strict with myself, I'd probably be more definitive about those three choices. But I'm often quite wishy-washy about the whole thing.

1. I just took a break from my episode of Elephant Princess, and found I had a visitor!  They're from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

To further illustrate my ignorance: I knew Montreal is in Canada, and I knew Quebec was in Canada. But I didn't know Montreal was in Quebec. I get all that confused.  I think Quebec is where they have a lot of French speakers. Maybe?

I also don't know where Montreal is in Canada. All I know is that Vancouver is on the west side.  I'm going to guess Montreal is more in the center. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's in the east?

Now I'm going to check Google Maps.

I did Street View. I landed on a Mill Street bridge. Unfortunately, there's some ugly graffiti.

There's a building with white stuff on it. It kind of looks like frosting. Maybe it's snow?

Well, no. I don't see snow anywhere else.

Besides, the graffiti, the place looks okay. I wouldn't want to live on that exact street. I wouldn't go out of my way to visit.  I'm just talking about this particular street. I'm sure there are many beautiful places in Montreal.

I'm seeing a lot of Rues on Google Maps.  I'm assuming that's their word for street.  In Street View, it said Mill Street. But when I got out of Street View, and searched for Mill Street, I got Rue Mill.

On the map, near the bridge, I see something called Seagulf Marine Industries. It's a ship supplying company. Does that mean they build ships? Or do they sell stuff that people would need on the ships they already own?

Well, their history page says they began in 1958, and their purpose was to provide Canadian vessels with quality marine products and spare parts.  So, that answers my question.

Now I'm zooming out on Google Maps, so I can see the location of Montreal.

It's NOT in the middle of Canada. It's on the east, above Vermont. Google Maps says it's about a two hour drive from Vermont to Rue Mill.  And actually, that's to around the center of Vermont.  To get to the city Highgate, which is on the border, it would take only an hour.

Since we used to live in Manhattan, I was curious about the distance from there to Rue Mill.  It's 5.5 hours away.

Lord Wiki says I was right about the French stuff. French is the official language of Montreal.   67.9% of the population speak French at home. He also says that outside Paris, Montreal has the largest French-speaking population.

Well, I'm still waiting for another visitor. I finished watching The Elephant Princess.  I love the show, but sometimes there are things that make no sense to me.  In today's episode, a jewel is stolen from Anala the elephant's headdress thing. They say the jewel is needed for Anala to have the power to take people with her as she travels between worlds. Yet at the end of the episode, the Australians are returned to Australia from the magical kingdom of Mangipoor.  How was that done without the jewel?

2. I just watched an episode of Neighbours.  When I finished, I saw I had two more visitors.

The next one is from Columbus, Ohio in the United States.

Well, I landed on a photo rather than Street View. I'm going to try again.

I've landed on Hull Alley. It's an alley between two restaurants.

One of the restaurants has a large amount of outdoor seating. It has Corona beer umbrellas.  I wonder how that works. Does Corona provide the umbrellas to the restaurant, and in return they get free advertising?

I've gotten out of Street View, and now I can see the names of the two restaurants.  The one with the Corona umbrellas is La Fogata Grill.  The one across the way is Union Cafe.

La Forgata Grill, in Columbus, doesn't have its own website. But here is its Yelp page.

It has only 2.5 stars. That's not very good.  But I do see some positive things here. Some people say they like their margaritas. And they have something called a dessert pear that a few people like.

Wait. I found the website. There's a link on Yelp. I saw the website before, but it was for a different location. I wasn't sure if it was the same restaurant, or not. But it turns out it is.

Here's the website for Union Cafe. It looks fun.  On Sunday they have a showtunes sing-a-long thing.

Tonight at 8 pm, they're having a Christmas showtunes event.

Now I'm looking at their menu. They have an all day breakfast which includes salty caramel French toast.  I've been really bad about my plan of staying away from eggs. Just wanted to confess that.

The menu indicates which food is vegetarian, vegan, and/or gluten-free. And there are a lot of those items. So I definitely give the menu a thumbs-up.

I'd probably be interested in visiting Hull Alley in Columbus Ohio just so I could visit the Union Cafe.

3. The next place is Concord, New South Wales. I don't think I've ever heard of Concord.  Is it a suburb of Sydney, or not a suburb of Sydney?

I see that it's a suburb of Sydney.  It's near the Parramatta River.

I landed on Rose Ave.  Like Rose Tyler!  It's a beautiful name for a beautiful street.

I would definitely be happy to visit there. It's hard for me to answer the question of whether I'd want to live there. I think I'd be happy living anywhere in Australia.  But, though, the street is beautiful, it's not calling me there. Or I can't picture myself living there.

It seems to be a nice neighborhood, though. It's a six minute walk to Rothwell park.  That's a strange name. It makes me feel like I'm trying to say Roswell, but with a lisp.

If you walk in the other direction, eight minutes later you'd find yourself at Henley park.

I wonder if those parks are nice.

Lord Wiki says Concord, New South Wales is named after Concord, Massachusetts. He also says yes, there are a lot of parks in Concord and not just the two that I mentioned.

Oh! Here's some fun trivia. A hospital in Concord was used for the hospital exterior shots for All Saints.  Some of Packed to the Rafters was filmed there as well....along with some other shows.

I'm looking at a real estate page for a house on Rose Ave. It's a pretty small house, and it's $795,000. It's not easy to afford living in Sydney. The website says the medium house price is 1.3 million. Ouch.

I'm pretty sure Sydney homes weren't always this expensive. There're probably many Sydneysiders who bought their homes at a much lower price and if they wanted to, they could sell their home and end up very wealthy.  Then if they move to a place like Texas, which has much lower prices for houses, they could probably buy a mansion.

Or they could probably move elsewhere in Australia. It's probably less about Australia vs. America, and more about city vs. regional.

4. While I was looking at Ohio and Concord, I got some more visitors. The next is from Oberhausen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

There's no Street View in that area; though there is in the surrounding area.

I zoomed out on Google Maps.  Oberhausen is in the eastern part of Germany. It's near the border to the Netherlands.  So, back in the Berlin Wall days, Oberhausen would be part of East Germany, and therefore Communist. Right?

In Lord Wiki's first paragraph about Oberhausen, he says Oberhausen was the home of Paul the octopus. Paul lived at the Sea Life Centre which is owned by Merlin entertainments, the same people who own the Sydney Aquarium and the Aquarium in Dallas.

Lord Wiki says Paul the Octopus was thought to be an oracle, because he made accurate predictions about the World Cup. That's pretty awesome.

I like octopus, whether they can predict things or not.  Though I do kind of prefer the ones that don't cause your heart to stop beating.

5.  The next place is Nashville, Tennessee. I actually DID live there for a few years. It was nice. I attended Hillsboro High School for my senior year. I dreaded leaving my old school but ended up liking Hillsboro so much more.  I was really into writing novels back then, and the teachers were so supportive and encouraging. I really appreciated that.

I just did Street View, and I've landed on a Street called Beddington Park.  It looks really beautiful...and expensive.  Though the huge houses are probably cheap compared to the tiny one I saw in Concord, Sydney.

I actually don't really see the houses. I see lots of trees, and glimpses of buildings. I get the sense though that there are big houses beyond the trees.

You know, I'm going to cut out the part of the game where I say whether I want to live, visit, or avoid a place. There are too many factors, and it's not making much sense. I prefer just reading about a place, and looking at it.

I thought I saw an elephant in the picture, but I got closer. It's just a bush. It's not Anala.

I wanted to find out how far Beddington Park is from our old house. But I can't remember our address. Wait! I do remember our first address. We had to wait for our house to be built, so we stayed at a rental house on Harding Place.

 It's sixteen minutes away from Beddington Park.

Here's a real estate page for a house on Beddington Park.  It's about 1.4 million. But that's for 6,400 square feet. You get four bedrooms, and five bathrooms. Plus, you get something called a mother-in-law.  That's one of its listed features. I'm guessing that's an extra room for someone?

Here it says that a mother-in-law is a suite that has its own bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom.  It sounds like something you could rent out.

6. The next visitor is from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Where is that in Canada?

I'm going to guess it's on the far east.

I've landed on 21 Street East.

If I woke up and found myself on the street, I would never guess I had left the United States. I might not even guess I left Fort Worth.

I've zoomed out to find that I was incredibly wrong. Prince Albert is not on the east. It's more towards the west.  It's above Montana.  To get to Vancouver, you'd have to drive 19 hours west. To get to Montreal, you'd have to drive 35 hours east.  Canada is a big country!

Google Maps shows that to drive from Prince Albert to Montreal, you have to drive through the United States.

Why is that?

I'm going to see if I can get through Canada.

Well, I added Ontario, because that's between Prince Albert and Montreal. Google says the area is out of their current coverage area.  Maybe you can drive through Canada to get to Montreal, but Google doesn't have it in their map system.

Lord Wiki says there's a Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan. It has a wealth of wildlife.

Prince Albert has a small population.  In 2011, it had 35,000 people.  It has one of the highest ratios, in Canada, of Aboriginal people (41.5%).

There's a maybe-supernatural thing in the Prince Albert area called the St. Louis Light.  I guess it's sort of like the Min Min lights in Australia.  The St. Louis light are lights that change colors and change in brightness.

Here's a video about the St. Louis Light.

Some people believe the light is a ghost train.

The video is a bit long.

A writer named Phil Campagna has a theory about the light.  He hints towards what it is, but won't share his theory on the website, because he doesn't want to ruin it for people.  If you email him, he'll tell you.  From what I understand, he knows, but he's not 100% sure. And he seems to feel bad that he might have an answer that could ruin the magic.

I think unsolved mysteries make the world more exciting. On the other hand, I think there's a strong temptation to find out what's causing the mystery.  I think then people can be divided between those who want the mystery to be replaced by reasonable scientific explanations, and those who want the mystery to endure.

I'm definitely in the latter group. I like believing in psychic octopus and magical lights.

7.  The last place for today is Midvale, Utah. From what I've heard, Utah is a beautiful place. And I've seen a few nice photos.

I've landed on 7815 Street. And yeah. It's beautiful. I can see mountains.  The houses look to be about the same size as the houses on Rose Street in Concord, Sydney.  I wonder how the prices compare.

I'm not finding any real estate information.

I'm going to try the cross street instead...Roosevelt Street.

There's a 2,268 square foot house for $198,000.  It's much cheaper than the Concord house.  Though I'm not being very scientific, because I never got the square footage for the Concord house. I'm going by looks alone.

As for Midvale, Lord Wiki says it's part of Salt Lake City.

Some parts of the miniseries The Stand were filmed in Midvale. That's pretty cool.

Well, that's it for today.

I shall probably play again soon.




Statcounter Google Maps Game (Part 2)

Today I'm going to play another round of the Statcounter Google Maps game.

I played the first game about a month ago.

In this game, I use Statcounter to find the next seven entities that visit my blog.  I look at their location; find it on Google maps; randomly pick a street view in that area and then give my opinion on it.  I choose whether I'd like to live there, visit there, or avoid it all together.

Note: I'm not judging the whole city or suburb, just the particular random street.

So...now I have to wait for someone to visit.

I feel like a spider.

In the meantime, I'm going to exercise while watching The Elephant Princess.  In my episode yesterday, Alex met her evil ambitious cousin for the first time. Although I think she had at least seen and/or heard him in an earlier episode.  He had appeared at the market to terrorize the villagers, demanding that they reveal where the "fake" princess is hiding. She was indeed hiding, but I assumed it was in a place where she could still see and hear what was happening. I guess not. Or the writer's forgot.

Okay...I've finished watching my daily dose of The Elephant Princess. And now finally I have a Statcounter hit.

1. Sydney!  I wasn't really expecting an Australian at this time, because it's late morning here which means it's in the middle of the night in Australia; well, at least the eastern part.  But then again, it's the weekend. So there would be more night owls.

I've landed on Captain Cook Drive. It's beautiful.  There are lots of trees, and a body of water. There are no buildings. I think it's just a place for driving.  So I wouldn't want to live there. I might want to visit...in terms of driving past.  That's something, though. Tim, Jack, and I were talking about our recent road trip, and I realized some of my favorite parts were when we drove past beautiful scenery.

Now I'm trying to find where Captain Cook Drive is.  I've left Street View, and I'm looking at the map.  It's near a body of water called Woolooware Bay.

Woolooware Bay has its own website.  It looks like they're trying to sell real estate.

They have a transport page that says it's a fifteen minute walk from Cronulla Beach. I still associate that area with the race riots.  I wonder if Sydney will now be long associated with the hostage situation.  Maybe Martin Place specifically will be associated with it. Well, Cronulla is part of Sydney and we don't associate the whole city with the the riots.

I think whether or not a place has a strong long lasting association with a negative event probably depends on whether people associate it with OTHER things.  I'm sure many people quickly associate NYC with 9/11...if they didn't think much about New York before that. But if you have other memories, images, ideas, etc. about New York, 9/11 might not be the first thing that comes to your mind.

If someone lives in Cronulla or has visited there, they will more likely have a broader idea of the place and not immediately connect it to the race riots.

I have a ton of Sydney stuff in my brain, but for now, the first thing I think of is the hostage tragedy. But it's so recent. I'm sure soon I'll be back to thinking, Opera House, Hyde Park, Darling Harbour, Sydney Harbour Bridge, etc.  Stuff like that.

2.  I finally have a second one.  In-between the first and second, I had some breakfast.

Anyway, the next one is Edgewater Maryland which is in the northeastern part of The United States.

I've landed on London Time Road.  Like the last Street View image, this one is quite pretty. There are a lot of trees, and fluffy white clouds.

There's a little red house, a church, and someone has a boat parked on the street.

I'm looking at the map now. I see a church called Woodland Beach Community Church. I'm guessing that's what I saw. But I'll go look.

Yeah. Here's a Street View image of the church.  It's refreshingly small.  We have churches in our neighbourhood, and they're huge. They look more corporate than religious.  Well, I guess it's not just about size but also ugly architecture.  There are plenty of beautiful big churches in the world that don't look like corporations.

I do like this small little church, in Maryland, though.

Here's the church's website. They say this is the 88th year they've offered Sunday services. It was built in 1929.

They welcome Christians of all denominations. So I guess they'd be called non-denominational.

Anyway...as for this place. I'd like to visit. It looks quite lovely. I'm not sure I'd want to live there...just because it gets cold in Maryland.

3. I already have a third visit. I didn't expect that!

So...this visit is from Splitsko-Dalmatinska, Croatia.

I landed on a Street View of a place called Vinkovacka Ul. I'm not sure what the Ul. means. I'm guessing it's a Croatian word for street.

The image I'm seeing is less beautiful than what I usually expect from Europe.

The buildings are blah.

I associate with Croatia with war. I don't know, though, how things are going in that area these days. I'm so ignorant.

Lord Wiki says the war was from 1991-1995. It's long over.

Now Lord Wiki is telling me about Splitsko-Dalmatinska.  He says its main industry is tourism.

I might not mind being a tourist there, but I probably wouldn't be interested in visiting Vinkovacka Ul.  Other parts of the area might be more beautiful.

4. It was taking a long time to get another visit, so I played Sims 2 for awhile. Once I turned off the game, I found I had two more visits.

The fourth is from Sheffield, United Kingdom.

I've landed on Matilda Street. I definitely associate Matilda with Australia.

I started wondering about the origin of the word Matilda and then had the sense that I've wondered before. And I probably researched it before. Still...I've forgotten, so maybe I should look again.

Or maybe not. I have to get ready soon for our Chanukah party.  Maybe I'll look another day.

Like the Croatia Street, this Sheffield street is much less attractive than what I expect from Europe. There's a lot of graffiti and not the type that's artistic.  This is more the garbage type.

On the plus side, there's an Oxfam shop. I do like thrift stores, so maybe I'd visit for that purpose.

Next to the Oxfam shop, is a restaurant called Brunch N Lunch. It has no specific website but from Google I can see it has multiple locations in the UK.  I wonder why it doesn't have a website.  And no one has reviewed the Sheffield one on Yelp.

5. Next I have another Maryland visitor.  This one is from the land of Hairspray. Baltimore!  Well, see....I don't always associate places with tragedies. Sometimes I associate them with musicals.

I've landed on North Broadway. It looks like a college campus, or a hospital district.

There are some nice flowered trees and some fancy buildings.

I wouldn't mind visiting the area, but I wouldn't go out of my way. Despite the beauty, there's something about it.  I don't know. It feels kind of generic.

I've zoomed out, and now I see I was looking at the Johns Hopkins area.  That's a hospital, I believe. Maybe a school as well.

Lord Wiki says John Hopkins is a research university and hospital.  It's very medical. Maybe that's why I'm not in love with it. Generic was probably the wrong idea. It's probably more the fact, that although it's beautiful, it looks like a place where sickness prevails.  Hospitals are depressing and full of germs.

On the other hand, hospitals save many lives. So it's definitely not all bad.

Lord Wiki says that John Hopkins was rated the best hospital in the United States from 1991-2011. Now it's been bumped to third place. That doesn't necessarily mean it's worsened. It could mean another hospital has just become super great.

What is thought to be the best hospital in the world?

This website says it's a clinic in Cleveland.  The first five hospitals, on the list, are American. The first non-American hospital is a French one.  Australia is on the list at 15 with Royal Children's Hospital.

If anyone is curious, this page explains the listing's methodologies. I don't have time to read it. And if I did, I probably wouldn't understand it.

The website also lists rankings of hospitals per area. They have a whole section about Australia.

I find it all very interesting. America doesn't have very good health care, yet we have some of the best hospitals.  I think most of our problem is with money...affordability.  We can get you good treatment. We can save your life. But then you might end up broke and homeless.

6. The sixth visitor appeared a few hours ago, but I had to leave for the Chanukah party.

Now I'm back.

The visitor is from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.

There's no Street View there, unfortunately. I guess Google hasn't yet visited with their magic trucks.
I'm zooming out to get a sense of where it's at. It looks pretty close to the Nepal border.  Yeah. I just calculated the distance. Google Maps says it's about three hours away.

Lord Wiki says Lucknow is the 8th most populous city of India.

The 2011 population of Lucknow was 2.8 million.

Lord Wiki says the 8th most populous city in Australia is Canberra, and their population is 411,000. For the United States, the 8th most populous city is San Diego at 1.3 million.

Lucknow is known for a special kind of embroidery called Chikan.  Here's a website that sells the Chikan stuff.  It has some photos.  It's all quite lovely.

7. The last visitor I'm going to look at today is from Tucson Arizona. Arizona is now probably one of my favorite places.  I'd put it in my top five.

With Street View, I actually ended up INSIDE a museum of some kind. I'm going to try again, though. I want to find a place outdoors.

Okay, on the second attempt, I landed at South Thunder Sky Way.

I like it.  I'd definitely want to visit. Maybe I'd live there.

What's nice is, it actually looks different. It has an Arizona look to it.  It doesn't look like a street that you'd easily find anywhere in the United States.

I might be getting this totally wrong. But I think maybe some of the houses have an Adobe style. I might be wrongly defining that term in my head.

The street is right near a huge park. I'm not sure of the name, but there are some mountains—Rincon Peak and Mica Mountain.

Well, actually the street is not as close as I thought. I pictured myself stepping out my front door and walking to the park. Google Maps says the walk would take you close to two hours. To drive there takes about nine minutes. The thing is, there's a body of water. I guess you can't cross it at the spot that would make getting to the park much faster. You have to drive around...kind of go out of your way.

Here's a house for sale on South Thunder Sky Way.  It's $185,000 for three bedrooms, two bathrooms. And it's 1525 square feet.  I wish I had enough information in my brain to know if that's a good price or not.

This website  might help. It has the most expensive real estate markets, and the typical prices per square feet. While the Tucson house $121 per square foot, Sydney is about $2000 per square foot.  That's a huge difference!

I just played around with my calculator. The Tucson house in Sydney would be about three million.

The most expensive place on the website's list is Monaco.  The house there would be about eight million.

Now I'm looking at the average per foot price of our city (Fort Worth). It's even cheaper than Tucson; $83 dollars per square foot!

There's that question...would you rather live in a small home in an awesome city or be able to afford a large home in a less fantastic place.

I guess the best situation is when you personally feel that the city with the easy-to-afford homes IS fantastic.  So if someone actually prefers Fort Worth culture and architecture to London culture and Architecture, that's really awesome for them.

Back to the house for sale....I'm wondering about it's architecture. I want to say Adobe, but I think I might be wrong.

No. Well, it seems I might be right. I'm looking at Adobe houses via Google Images, and they look similar to the house for sale.


Anyway....

I think I shall end this post now.

I hope all of you are having a healthy, happy, and safe holiday season.







Georgie Parker

Today I'm going to learn about the actress Georgie Parker. Though I actually thought her name was Georgina Parker.  Google cleared that up for me.

I recently watched Georgie Parker on the first season of All Saints.  I'm pretty sure she's on the show beyond the first season, but I'm not sure how long she lasts. A while back, I watched one of the later seasons (10, maybe?) and I don't remember seeing her then. So I'm pretty sure she left earlier than that.

I think Parker was also on Home and Away.  Or she's still on it. If I'm right about that..I think she plays the second regeneration of Roo Stewart. I'm like 99.5% sure I'm right about this. But I could be mixing up Parker with someone else.

Anyway...let me start my research.  Then the unsureness I'm feeling might disappear.

I'll start with Parker's biography on IMDb.

Well, according to IMDb, I'm right about something I thought I was wrong about. They say Parker's birth name was Georgina.

She was born in Sydney on December 16, 1964.  Her birthday was three days ago.  Her 50th birthday! We're all getting so old.

I see here that Parker was/is on Home and Away.  Though I still don't know if she played Roo Stewart. I'll find that out soon. Not now. I like to keep myself in suspense.

Parker is married to a man named Steve Worland. This year they would have celebrated their 20th anniversary.

Worland has done some writing and acting.  He and Parker have a daughter named Holly.

And last here on the bio....Parker wanted to be a dancer, but she had scoliosis, so that made it difficult for her to go professional with the whole thing.

My episode of The Elephant Princess was about dancing today. It was a bit odd.  Alex finds out that her bratty self-absorbed sister Zoe has been lying about being the lead in a ballet performance of Alice in Wonderland.  It turns out Zoe's conceitedness is a mask to hide her insecurities.  Alex starts to feel bad for her sister, so she puts a magical spell on her shoes to make her dance really good.

But what was the point of all that? Once she stops wearing the shoes, she's going to go back to being a mediocre dancer. How's the spell going to help her in the long run? Besides that, they already had a similar storyline where Alex puts a spell on Kuru to make him popular.  In that episode, Alex learned such spells were more hurtful than helpful.  I guess she (and the writers) soon forgot that lesson.

In my opinion, it would have made more sense for Alex to put some kind of confidence spell on the shoes. Like the whole Dumbo's magic feather kind of thing.

Yeah. I should get back to Georgie Parker.

I'll look at her filmography now.

I remembered to do what I usually forgot to do—look at the section where they list times in which the actor appeared on things as themselves.   I'm not going to go over everything.  I'll just quickly mention some things that stand out to me.

Parker has been on Play School.  It says 2005 with no ending date. I'm not sure if she's a regular or if she just makes occasional appearances.

And the other thing that stands out to me is that she was featured on an episode of Who Do You Think You Are. Maybe I'll find it online somewhere, and I can watch some of it later.

Well, here's a promo on YouTube. I'll watch that now.

Parker has some smart people in her ancestry, and a tragic family secret.

Okay. Now I'm going to go to the regular filmography part.

The first thing listed here is a 1988 TV movie called Reed Down Under.  Parker played a cabbie. I think it's usually American (and Maybe British as well?) that use the term "down under" when referring to Australia.  So I'm going guessing the movie might be not Australian.

Well, it's listed as being American and Australian.  It stars Lee Majors who I'm pretty sure is an American actor. He was on a TV show.  Maybe he played Reed? Maybe this is a special movie for the TV show.

Let me look at his filmography.

Well, it looks like he's most famous for The Fall Guy, and his character wasn't named Reed there.

I guess this was a stand-alone movie thing.

I'm looking at random actors in Reed Down Under. Most seem to be Aussies.

The director and writer, though, are American.

Why am I reading so much into this movie, and Georgie Parker probably had a very tiny role in it.

But sometimes (for me, at least) the fun is going off on these tangents...learning random things.

I apologize if it's boring to people reading.  Though you can just skim past all of it.

Before I look at more of the filmography, I'll go over my usual disclaimer. I skip over one time appearances on TV shows, unless it's one of the shows I watch or watched.  I also tend to skip over movies if I can't find enough about it...meaning the only proof of its existence seems to be IMDb.

Anyway, moving on....

In 1988, Parker was in three other movies. And she started work on a TV show.

I'll do the movies first.

She played a maid in a horror movie called The 13th Floor.

I was thinking this movie sounded kind of familar. I looked at the cast, and Miranda Otto is in it. I wonder if I looked at it when I did a post on her.

I'm tempted to try to watch a trailer for the movie, but I should probably skip it, since I doubt we'll see Parker.

The next movie on the filmography is Dadah is Death. I think I've written about this one recently.

I was wondering why.  It's Kerry Armstrong. She's in the movie.

It's one of those stories about Australians getting imprisoned in Asia for carrying drugs.

Parker did have a character name for this one. She played someone named Corine Johnstone.  I Googled her and am not easily finding anything.

Parker was in Young Einstein!  I vaguely remember that movie. I think it was fairly popular in the US. Parker didn't have a character name. She was just known as "country girl fan".  It kind of sounds like she is a fan of country girls, but I'm guessing they meant she is a girl that lives in the country, and she's a fan of the Einstein guy.

I'm going to watch the trailer.  Maybe Parker will be in it.

At :16, there's a country girl fan screaming. It doesn't look like Parker, though.

The TV show that Parker began working on in 1988 was A Country Practice.  She was on four episodes that year, of season 8.  She played a character named Barbara Gottlieb. '

Then she returned in season 9 as Sister Lucy Gardiner Tyler.  Unless Barbara and Lucy are the same people. Don't nuns change their name sometimes?  I'm assuming Lucy was a nun, which is kind of funny, because Parker also played a nun on All Saints. Talk about typecasting.

Parker had a big part in A Country Practice. She was Lucy for 262 episodes in seasons 9-12.

I thought maybe she was there for the ending of the show, but no. I see here that the show had thirteen seasons.

I'm looking at episode descriptions on the Australian television website.  Barbara was the former boyfriend of someone named Ben. For some reason, he's hospitalized, and she comes to take care of him.

Sister Lucy first appears in the episode "A Call To Arms".  From what I see on the Australian television website, Americans played the villains here. They plan to build a mine that will flood out the town.

It says that Lucy and Matt unearth an old diary.

I just googled Sister Lucy Tyler and ended up with a whole listing of porn videos.  Yikes.

I tried again, just doing Lucy and A Country Practice.  It seems she's more connected to the Gardiner name than Tyler.

There's a Country Practice website, and they have a whole page about Lucy.

In the first paragraph, I've learned she's a nurse. There's nothing yet about being a nun. Maybe nurses are called sister even if they're not nuns?

Parker's character in All Saints, chooses the path of not having children. Here she's forced down the path (at least biologically speaking). She gets Chlamydia which scars her fallopian tubes.

These days I associate Chlamydia with koalas.

Lucy was bubbly and loves animals.

She fell in love with a guy named Matt. Their house was destroyed by a pyromaniac.

They were haunted by the ghost of a little girl named Erin.

Oh! It turns out that Lucy eventually did have a baby. She became one of those people who became very obsessed with fertility.  Luckily for her, the fighting for it paid off in the end.

There's pictures of Lucy here, and I'm wondering about Parker's ethnicity. She looks very Greek to me. Or maybe part Persian?

Here's a 1991 promo for A Country Practice. There's a little bit of Parker in it, but not much.

While searching for that, though, YouTube pointed me in the direction of this Equal commercial featuring Parker.

My aunt would not appreciate the commercial. She's very much against aspartame.

In 1992, Parker was in ten episodes of a TV show called Acropolis Now.  It's about Greek people. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm right about Parker being Greek. She might just LOOK like a Greek person.

Parker's character on the show was called Destina Hatzipapadopoulus.  I'm tempted to think that name is kind of satirical. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Greek people sometimes do have names that long.

Well, according to this genealogy website, there are people who have that name.


For more of my biography posts, click here!  

In 1994, Parker was on a TV show called Over the Hill. It's strange. I can't find much about it.  IMDb has only one actor listed, and that's Parker. They give no information on how long it was on for. But then the Australian television website has a page about it. Yet, that website usually gives episode descriptions, and for this show they don't.   They do provide more information than IMDb, though. They say the show had fourteen episodes. They also list the actors in the show besides Parker.

Wait. I see here that there IS a review on IMDb.  It's about a family who leaves the city to live in the country. So it's kind of like Sea Change, except instead of a beach town, they move to a country town.

In 1995, Parker played a firefighter on a TV show called Fire.  She starred in the first season, but not the second one.

Someone has uploaded the beginning of the first episode.

Parker climbs a very tall ladder for a drill.  Then she drops the fake person she was supposed to be rescuing.  It shows how one must be brave and strong to be a firefighter. I have no idea if I'd be brave enough. I'm pretty damn sure I wouldn't be strong enough.

1998 is the year Parker started working on All Saints. She was on 307 episodes, and her last season was season eight.  I'm tempted to find out what happened to Sister Terri Sullivan, but I shouldn't.  I'll probably end up doing it, though.

Well, I can actually avoid it by simply not reading about her character.  Sorry, but I think I'm going to do that.  But I will say what I personally know. She's a nun.  Well, I guess I already said that.

What else....

She grew up in an abusive home.

One of her best friends is a psychiatrist. Terri was friends with him and his wife but then sadly the wife died. At the end of the first season, the psychiatrist was starting to realize he's a bit in love with Terri. That's kind of a problem, since she's a nun.  I wonder what happens with that.

Hopefully, I'll find out someday.

I'm still relying on Random.org to pick my TV shows for me. So far, it's not had me watching any next season of a show. I keep starting new things. That's fine, though.  I like the variety I'm getting. Right now I'm loving The Elephant Princess and Neighbours.

I'm going to move away from All Saints to avoid spoilers. The next thing on the filmography is The Man From Snowy River: Arena Spectacular. It was a 2003 musical.  Parker played the female lead.

Here's a video about it.

No never mind. That video's about something else—something to do with Beef Australia.

Lord Wiki says the show was a touring production. I guess someone filmed the production at one point. Or they made a movie version.

It's the former, not the latter.  Lord Wiki says that in 2003, they filmed a production of the show in Brisbane.  Then it was released on DVD on Australia Day.

In 2006, Parker was in three movies.

First was a movie starring Susan Sarandon called Irresistible.  Besides the American star, the movie seems pretty much Australian.  The movie was filmed in Melbourne, and the writer-director is Australian.

Lord Wiki has a long drawn out description of the whole plot. I'm not in the mood to read the whole thing.  It's a thriller, though.

Well, I skimmed some of it. Susan Sarandon plays someone who gets the idea there's someone intruding on her home—doing little things. I just read about the ending. It has a dark twist.

Here's the trailer for the movie.

Emily Blunt plays the intruder person in the movie.  I think Blunt is British, so Sarandon isn't the only non-Aussie in the film.

Oh! And Sam Neill is there as well.  So we also have a Kiwi.

I totally forgot I was looking at the trailer because of Georgie Parker, and I was surprised to see her. She's there at about :31.

I was curious about whether the movie got good or bad ratings. That reminded me that I wanted to see the ratings for the new Annie movie. According to Rotten Tomatoes, it's awful.  That's a bummer. I was hoping it might be good.

My interest in knowing the opinions about Irresistible has passed. So I'll move onto the next film.

We have The Society Murders. This is the one where Matthew La Nevez plays the guy who kills his parents.   Parker plays someone named Emma Connell.  Since her name and Parker's name are first on the credits, I thought it would be easy to find information on Connell. But I'm not easily finding anything.

Here....this entertainment website provides some insight. It seems Connell was one of the sisters of the murderer.

There's a picture here. I think maybe Parker is on the right.  I'm not 100% sure, because here she's blond, and usually she's brunette.  I'm pretty sure it's her, though.

The other 2006 movie that featured Parker was a romantic comedy called Stepfather of the Bride. The ABC website has a description.  Basically it's about a wedding with many complications. For example, the best man also happens to be the stepbrother of the bride. That's not a huge deal, but he's also in love with his stepsister.

I don't think Parker played one of the main characters.

In 2008, Parker was in a TV movie called Emerald Falls.  Parker plays a woman who moves to the Blue Mountains after a divorce. She opens up a bed and breakfast. That sounds fun.

I see now though that it's a crime mystery. So I'm betting it actually wasn't so fun.

I'm reading the plot. You know what. It sounds like a little bit. Bates Motel.  Both involve a mother and son moving to a new town, opening up a lodging type place, and a dead body is found.

Someone has uploaded a clip from the movie.  There's a party and then police come and interrupt it.

Now there's a chase.

There's dancing scenes mixed with running among the gum trees.

Also, in 2008, Parker was in a science fiction drama called Scorched. So Australia DOES have some science fiction stuff not geared for children.  It's a global warming disaster type thing. There's a drought and that leads to a big fire.

Rachel Carpani from McLeod's Daughters is one of the stars.

Lord Wiki says the movie originally had another title —Strike Team.  This was used a decoy, because they worried the state wouldn't like the premise of the film.  What state? And why not?

Well, it was filmed in New South Wales. So I guess this was the state.

I'm reading about the plot. If I'm understanding this right, the Premier in the movie seems partly to blame, so that's probably why they worried that the New South Wales government wouldn't be pleased about the movie.  And...by the way, Parker played the Premier.  So I guess she's the villain.

Here's a trailer for the film. Carpani plays a reporter investigating all this drought drama.

I'm not sure if Parker's character is an evil type villain, or just someone who made a really bad decision.

This trailer is incredibly overdramatic and corny.

In 2010, Parker was in two episodes of the fourth season of City Homicide.

The information on IMDb doesn't match the information provided on the Australian television website. The latter has her episodes being in season three instead of four.

Also in 2010, Parker did voice work for an animated movie called Santa's Apprentice. It looks like it was a French-Australian type thing.  The official website has a page of the main characters. Parker's character (Mrs. Poulmer) isn't included, so I'm assuming she didn't have a huge role in the film.

Last, but definitely not least, on Parker's filmography is Home and Away.  And she does play Roo Stewart.  The last episode listed is from December 9, so I'm guessing she's still on the show.

I wonder what the second regeneration of Roo Stewart is like. The first Roo Stewart was played by Justine Clarke, and she too was on the first season of All Saints.  I don't remember her having any scenes with Parker, but I might have just forgotten.

Then again, it seems I would have noticed. Look, the two Roo Stewarts are talking to each other!  Though I wasn't positive that Parker played Roo Stewart.

Maybe I did know in the past, but then wasn't sure about it later. Sometimes I forget what I know and don't know.

The Back to the Bay website has a photo of Roo 1 and Roo 2.  In this case, I might look at spoilers. Because for now, Home and Away isn't on Hulu. So there's little chance, I'll get to find out on my own what happens.

It says here that Roo eventually reunites with the daughter (Martha) that she gave up for adoption.

This is VERY long.  Roo Stewart has had a very intense life.

I'm going to see if Lord Wiki has a shorter summary.

Yeah. He does.  The other was too long. And yes. Saying that makes me feel hypocritical.

Let's see....

When Roo returns to Summer Bay, it's discovered that she's broke.

Then she gets involved with Marilyn Chambers. Marilyn was on when I was watching.

Roo gets involved with Marilyn's man (Sid).  Though it seems, at least at first, Roo is reluctant to do so.

I'm finding Lord Wiki's description hard to follow as well.  I think it's one of those things where you have to "be there".  It's hard to describe TV and movie show plots sometimes.

Instead I'll watch some video clips from Home and Away that feature Parker.

Here's one with Roo getting sick.  She has vision problems and then collapses. What would really be surreal is if she woke up at All Saints, and she saw medical staff that looked like her first self and her second self.

Here's a promo for the return of Roo Stewart.  Actually, it's multiple promos. In the first, Roo talks to herself and refers to herself by name. I think she does that, because otherwise people watching the promo would have no idea who she is.  Georgie Parker looks nothing like Justine Clarke.

As it stands now, I don't like Parker as Roo Stewart. I'm too attached to Clarke in the role. I do like Parker on All Saints, though.  And if I actually watched Home and Away, I'd probably get used to Parker.  Just like I thought I wouldn't like Matt Smith as the Doctor, and now I adore him.

Well, I'm all done with the filmography.

What should I do next?

I was going to look at an interview but ended up with a visit to Lord Wiki instead.

There's some interesting stuff here.

First of all, Parker's husband Steve Worland writes action novels. Here's his website.  I wonder if they're traditionally published or self-published.

Well, he has a page on the Penguin website, so I guess they're the ones publishing his book.

Parker was in a Wiggles DVD called Racing to the Rainbow.

Here's part of it.  I'll see if I can find Parker anywhere.

Yep. She can be seen in the credits at :42.  She plays the Queen of the Rainbow.

I'm skipping through various parts of this to try to find her again.

The DVD is divided up into 8 or more clips.  I'm on the 7th, and still haven't found Parker. Strangely, though...there are American football players here.

Well, I guess it's not that strange. It's just I'd expect to find Australian sports stars.

I give up. I'm not finding Parker. At least I got to see her in the credits.

Besides playing Roo Stewart, it turns out Parker has something else in common with Justine Clarke. They both have made children's music albums.

Parker's album is called Here Comes the Sun.  I think Clarke's music is mostly original compositions. Parker's album is made up of covers.

Here's a video for her version of "Here Comes the Sun".  I'm not sure how I feel about her singing voice.  At first I didn't like it. But it's starting to grow on me.

Lord Wiki has a list of Parker's Logie Awards.  She won some for both A Country Practice and All Saints.

In 2001 and 2002, she won for the most popular television personality. I'm wondering who won this year.  I think Asher Keddie won in recent years, but I'm not sure if she's still winning lately.

Lord Wiki says the winner of the most popular TV personality person is a guy named Scott Cam. I'm sad to say I've never heard of him. I'm not doing a good job being the American obsessed with Australia.

I just learned that Cam is from a reality tv program.  As someone who doesn't like reality TV, I can't say I'm pleased to know the most popular TV personality is coming from that type of show.

Lord Wiki says that in 2009, Parker's album was nominated for an ARIA award, but it lost to a Wiggles album.

Here's a video of Parker on Play School.  It features the Bananas in Pyjamas song. I didn't know there was a connection between the two shows. Or was it like a crossover thing?

I'm consulting Lord Wiki now. He says the show was inspired by a song from Play School. I didn't know that!  I think it's a fun piece of trivia, though.  I hope I don't forget it.

Here's an article about Parker. The title says she's not domestic, because she doesn't have time for it.

I have plenty of time, but I'm still not domestic. Though I do plan to vacuum a few rooms later.  And I unloaded the dishwasher this morning. That counts, right?

Parker says she never imagined being famous. She just wanted to work. I always find it hard to believe actors when say things like that.  The thing is, most of us are exposed to actor in the form of famous ones. So how can someone see all these famous actors, want to be an actor too, and not even remotely consider that fame might happen to them as well?

I totally understand having realistic expectations—understanding that many actors don't go beyond local theater and commercials. But still, having reasonable expectations is far different from NEVER dreaming big.

Parker seems eager to stress that fame isn't important to her.  Her awards are not in any special place around the house. They're kind of just scattered.  If I had a lot of awards, they'd probably be like that in my house as well.  I think I'd treasure my fame and success more than Parker. It's just I'm not very organized.

Also, my dad has a whole room dedicated to his trophies and other awards. He has this and yet has claimed that the reason he aimed for all this success is for our (his children's) benefit. If that was truly the case, I think the awards would be in the attic or thrown in drawers somewhere.

So I do prefer Parker's attitude towards her trophies. It's just she seems so adamant to prove that she doesn't care about fame.  I find it hard to believe. It makes me wonder. Then why star on a top soap opera and other top TV shows?  Why not just do local theater and teach drama school at a high school?

Parker had to wear a brace for her scoliosis.  I guess it didn't provide a 100% cure. She says her back is crooked.

I have back problems too—hunchback type thing.  I'm a bit self-conscious about it sometimes.  I'm a bit self conscious about a lot of things, though.

It says here that Parker's hours on Home and Away are from about six in the morning until eight at night.  That sounds exhausting. But I guess it's okay when someone loves the work. She seems to be happy there.

I'm wondering if I'd like being an actor. We were playing a game over Thanksgiving and one of the questions was what's our lifetime dream. I thought it was a bit silly, because who's had the same dream their whole life?  The only thing I could think of that I dreamed of when I was young, and sort of dream about now, is being an actor.

I think for me the big highlight is the fame. It's not like I want to not be able to go to the public library or Disney World without being attacked by fans.  I definitely treasure my privacy.  But I am somewhat hungry for attention.  It might be fun to have people actually care about my Twitter account. I like the idea of saying dumb random things and having 50 people retweet it.

What about the actual acting, though?  Would I like it?  I did like acting when I was young.  I loved pretending to be different people. I spend a lot of time in fantasy worlds. Also, I stopped playing imagination type play at an older age than most people.  I think I stopped around 13, or so.  Maybe a lot of people, though, stopped at that age as well. Maybe most of us just keep it hidden. I don't know.

When Jack was younger, I did a lot of acting for and with him. I really loved that. And I loved acting via reading books aloud to him.

I wonder, though, about being on a set. First of all, I'd hate the long hours. I treasure my free time. Second, I'd worry the world of TV that I love would be shattered if I saw what happened between the scenes.

I do watch behind the scene stuff, but they probably only show you the fun and happy bits.  They're not going to show much of actors looking bored while waiting, missing their family, directors yelling at them, having to redo scenes twenty times, etc.  I'm not sure I could, or would want to, handle any of that.

Here's an old interview with Parker, from 2002—her All Saints days.

She's 162 centimeters. I just used a converter and found she's about the same height as me.  I wonder if her back problems make her shorter. I think mine do.

Parker eats a lot of chocolate.  Or at least she did back in 2002.

I eat a lot of chocolate as well.

There's some stuff about Parker's childhood here.  Her mom supported Amnesty International. I'm not sure if Parker means her mom worked for them. Or volunteered. Or she just supported them.—financially and/or morally.

Her dad was a furniture manufacturer.

Her family traveled a lot.

She went to the school Abbotsleigh, where she learned she wasn't very academic.  She didn't do her homework.

It says here that she couldn't remember her own birthday or the months of the year. But she could memorize plays. That's odd. Not being able to memorize the months of the year make sense to me. But you're own birthday? Then again, the two are connected. Maybe she's really bad at dates...even extremely personal ones.

Parker had a pretty severe case of scoliosis. The nice thing is she says she was never ridiculed for it.  I imagine other people aren't as lucky.

She says in her teen years, she wasn't interested in boys, drinking, or partying. I  WAS interested in boys but not the other two things.

Parker talks about the odd jobs she had while waiting for her acting career to work out. She says one of the things was dressing up as Mickey Mouse to sell Warner Brothers video. Why would Mickey Mouse try to sell Warner Brothers stuff?  I'm guessing she's thinking of the wrong mouse. Or something illegal was going on—some kind of copyright infringement.

There's an Enough Rope interview with Parker. I haven't read one of these in a long time.

It's from 2007.

It's funny. Her mother is interviewed to. She says for her daughter's first few Logie wins, she was extremely excited. Then it became a bit run of the mill for her.

Andrew Denton remarks that Parker seems very happy. I got that feeling when I read the other articles/interviews. She seems to be full of happy energy...almost to a manic degree.

Parker says she was rejected from NIDA. The reason she gives is she was immature. I can strongly relate to both of those things. I'm often rejected, and I'm often immature.

Unlike Parker, though, I've not had the chance to gloat about any of my former rejections.  Not that she's gloating...at least not outwardly. But she could if she wanted to.

I would really like to have reason to gloat.  I think, though, that for me, it's not about gloating to a school that rejected me, a publisher, an audition, etc. It's my dad. I dream of having a major singing or writing success, so I can gloat about him never showing much interest or faith in those activities of mine. Especially the singing. From my own ears and things I'm told by others, I'm pretty sure I am a very good singer.  But my dad rarely says anything positive about it—offers very little encouragement.  Yet he goes on an on about other people's singing talent.  I have fantasies of winning some major singing contest and then in the sob story part talking about how my father never believed in me.

I don't think that will happen, though, because I tend to not sing so good when under pressure.

Well, I'm talking about it here, at least. Here on my blog I can tell my sob stories.

It doesn't really count, though, because people reading this are not hearing me sing. For all they know, my singing might be awful.  Maybe I'm delusional about my talent and all the people who compliment my singing are being fake and feeding into my delusions. Then again, my mom has given me huge compliments, and she's actually a fairly negative and critical person.  Strangely, it's my dad who's the positive one, and he's stingy with compliments about my singing.

I'm really going off on a tangent here—once again, using my blog as therapy. I apologize to Georgie Parker fans who just want to learn about her.  Again...use your skimming skills.

Parker's mother talks about her daughter being eccentric. Then the examples she gives are the birthday and calendar thing.  She also says Parker couldn't read a clock. It sounds to me, Parker she has a learning disability. Or as my sister would say, A learning DIFFERENCE.

Parker talks about how women are embarrassed of their age. She says, Why, why are women embarrassed about the age they are Andrew? And why are they embarrassed about all of the experience they’ve had and all, everything they have to offer? I think women are so conditioned by the media, and by other women essentially, ah that your physical self is a major part of what you have to offer the world and I’ve never bought into that, it really pisses me off frankly.

I like what she says there. I don't like the idea of people being ashamed of their age. Why does it have to be a dirty secret?

It's like on my birthday. Someone joked around and gave me a younger age. Maybe 39?  As if I'm one of those people who hated turning 40.

I'm fine with being 40, and I'll be fine with being 50. Sort of. I have to admit, a part of me misses being young.

I'm reading this book now about a woman with short term memory loss. Before I Go To Sleep.  This woman wakes up thinking she's in her 20's, and in reality she's close to 50.  It's hard for her to deal with the fact that she's not the young beautiful woman she imagines she is.

I can relate to that on a symbolic level. I feel I'm so much younger, mostly, because as I said before, I'm very immature.  For example, I still obsess over my parents and what they think of me.  I'm 42 and still have mommy-daddy issues.

I also regret what I didn't do in my 20's.  I always loved singing but it wasn't until the last few years where I had confidence to sing in front of people outside a very limited circle.  If I had the confidence I have now (plus the internet) I might have actually had some success with my singing.

Career opportunities in artistic endeavors definitely shrink as you get past your thirties...especially if you're female.

Georgie Parker has had a very successful career, so I'm guessing it might be easier for her to age. Or maybe not.  Actresses and actors often lose attention as they get older.  So if that ever happens to her, she might feel differently.  For the last few decades, she's been on top of the world.  If you have a lot of fans, I think it would be easier to have confidence as you approach your fifties.  If you're an actress who was big in your twenties and thirties, but now you're not finding work, you might miss your youth.

I meant to mention this a few paragraphs earlier. I just saw that Before I Go To Sleep was made into a movie recently, starring Nicole Kidman.  I wonder if it was good. I'll have to watch the trailer when I'm done reading the book.

I'm looking at a Georgie Parker twitter account. It's confusing. The photo icon is of the actress, but then one of the Tweets says, Thanks for all the bday wishes..Unfortunately Im the wrong Georgie Parker! I wonder if the actress ever gets mistaken for a hockey player...?

I guess she put the picture up as a joke.

Here's Georgie Parker's Instagram account, and I think it's the right one.  She has close to 85 thousand followers. She's very popular.

I have 29 followers, and I think about only 5-10 of those people pay any attention to my photos.   I can't say I mind, though.  I'm much more of a consumer on Instagram than a producer.  But then with blogs, I'm much more of a producer.  When I follow someone on Instagram, and they follow me back, I'm almost tempted to say Can you read my blog instead? Or one of my novels, perhaps.

Parker's most recent photo is of a beach at sunset.

Parker has a post about her birthday coinciding with the Martin Place tragedy.  She says she feels wrong celebrating, so instead she's going to be thankful about various things. That makes sense. The picture she has for the post is some kind of ride. Maybe? I wonder why she chose that photo. Is it symbolic in some way. Or did she choose it randomly?

She has a really cool photo of cockatoos.

I wish we had cockatoos in Texas.

Here's a photo of Palm Beach...Home and Away land.

Here's a lovely photo of the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains.

I think Parker takes really good photos. There are a lot of lovely scenes on her account.

Maybe her account isn't just popular because she's a popular actress. Maybe people are actually following her because she takes great photos.

Most of her photos are of sunsets and beaches. I do get tired of those after awhile.  Here, though, is a fun photo of a little boy falling asleep in a shop window.

Here's a photo of Parker, which just made me realize she doesn't have any selfies...at least not in the last several weeks.

So maybe she's less into herself than the average celebrity.

Or really....less into her self than the average person with an Instagram account.

In the past, I followed someone not at all famous and every few days, she posted a selfie.

There's nothing wrong with a selfie every so often.  But I'm not going to forget what you look like within a few days.

I just looked closer at Parker's Instagram bio, and she's also the moderator of a nature account called nature_ravens.  It's one of those accounts where they feature other people's photos. I like those types of accounts.

This ones gives credit to the photographer, which I appreciate. I've seen ones where they will post other photos, but there's no link to their photographer's account. I think one of the benefits of being featured on an account like this is you might get new followers to your own account. But if there's no link, it's hard for that to happen.

I've been wondering if there's an account that might take on some of Tim's photos. But most of the good accounts I've found are for photos of Australia.  I wonder if that's the case for Parker's account.  Are they all Australian photos?

The most recent photo is from Australia—Western Australia, I think.

Here we go! The next photo is from Ireland.

It looks like a lot of photos use HD and other special effects. Tim's been learning how to do those things.

Here's a nice photo of the Grand Canyon that he took. I'm not sure, though, if he used any effects. I'm also not sure how much credit goes to Tim for the beauty and how much goes to the canyon itself. I have a hard time understanding photography.

Well, I think I'm going to quit here.

I think this post took me about six hours to write. I shouldn't complain, though. That's nothing compared to Georgie Parker working fourteen hours on the set of Home and Away.  Hey, but she's paid a salary, gets all these fans, and awards, etc.  I'm just doing this for my own entertainment, and the hope that others will be entertained. Though they'll probably just be annoyed that I kept talking about myself instead of Parker.


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How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   


The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts