I found this treasure on Flickr today.
Thanks to Tiabunna for scanning it and uploading it.
I was listening to this song when I found the photo.
I thought it fit my mood quite well.
Showing posts with label Australia history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia history. Show all posts
Kosciuszko, Moreton Bay, Bernard Fanning, and An Irish Mystery
1. Had deja vu when I saw this article.
A doctor from Egypt, working in Western Australia, has been denied permanent residency because his daughter is disabled. She has cerebral palsy, and the government thinks she'll be a burden to the health system.
A few years ago the same thing happened with a doctor who's child had Down Syndrome.
I think they eventually let the family stay, but it was a battle.
I would have hoped their battle would have prevented other people from having to endure the same battle.
2. Learned from my Australia travel guide book that Mount Kosciuszko was named after a Polish freedom fighter.
I didn't know that.
Lord Wiki says the name of the mountain was originally Mount Kosciusko. Then in 1997 they changed the spelling of the name to better match its namesake.
The guy who named the mountain was Pawel Edmund Stzelecki. He was a Polish explorer who climbed the mountain and named it.
3. Consulted Lord Wiki about Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
He wasn't just a Polish freedom fighter. He was an American freedom fighter.
He fought on the side of the colonies during the American Revolutionary war. Then he became an American citizen.
4. Learned from Lord Wiki that Kosciuszko eventually left the United States. He left with Thomas Jefferson as the executor of his American estate. He requested that his money be given to a fund that would free African slaves and help them become educated and independent.
Unfortunately, that went wrong. People did wrong. And none of the money went where it should have gone.
5. Felt a little emotional when I saw from Lord Wiki that there are many places around the world named after Kosciuszko.
There's a Kosciusko, Texas. It's near San Antonia. I think it's a pretty small town. I have to zoom in a lot on Google Maps before I can see it.
Lord Wiki says America also has a few statues of Kosciuszko. There's one in Washington D.C
6. Saw that the Australian dollar has gone up even more. It's now equal to 1.03 American dollars.
I have to go back to my old post to see what it was last time. I think it was 1.01 or 1.02.
7. Saw that the last time I looked at the currency thing was Sunday. And the Australian dollar was worth 1.02 American dollars.
It's comparison to the British pound has stayed relatively the same. It's still worth about .65 pounds.
It's worth 6.81 Swedish Kronor. Last time I checked it was 6.78. It's gone up a bit there.
The Australian dollar has also gone up in yen. The last time I checked it was worth 78.12 yen. Now it's worth 79.1 yen.
8. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read a story thread called Or Perhaps You'd Rather Be Nude.
It takes place in a wizarding robe store in Oliphant Lane, Melbourne's wizarding village.
The two characters in the story are Eudoxia Karras and a new guy named Henry Hunter.
Henry is a professor of practical magic...probably at the university, but I'm not sure yet.
9. Started reading the story.
It's the evening of Sunday, October 16.
It looks like Henry Hunter has recently moved to Victoria. In his previous hometown, the robe shop folks knew him very well. He could just walk into the store and they would have clothes ready for him. They knew his size and what he liked. Now Henry is wondering how long it will be before he has that type of relationship with the shop in Oliphant Lane.
Eudoxia is also in the shop. She's looking for robes for her brother. He has a thing about starting fires, so she's thinking of getting him a fireproof robe.
That might be wise.
10. Saw Eudoxia and Henry exchanging some small talk in the shop. It started with a question about the weather.
11. Learned that Henry is from England, and he's teaching at the university.
12. Started to read the biography of Henry Hunter.
His face claim is Gordon Ramsey—the cooking guy. From what I know of that man, I don't like him. But then I really don't know much, so I suppose I'm being a bit prejudice.
13. Watched a video of Gordon Ramsey getting angry.
There's a lot of videos on YouTube with him getting angry.
He has quite a reputation.
And maybe there's more to him than that. Maybe he has anger issues, but is really nice when he's not angry. Maybe he gives a lot of money to charity.
I'm trying to think positively here....
14. Learned from Lord Wiki, that Ramsay would lie to vegetarians and feed them soup with chicken stock.
Yeah. I'm not finding much to love about this guy.
15. Started to read about Henry Hunter.
He's 42. He was born in London. His Patronus is a hedgehog.
16. Learned that Henry Hunter is not like his face claim. He's friendly and has a good sense of humor. He likes games and jokes.
17. Thought of the dad in Gremlins when I read these lines.
The man is perpetually tinkering with one thing or another irrespective of the time of day or the season (or what company may or may not be over at the time), and he has invented just as many useless things as he has destroyed.
18. Learned that Henry is a bit sexist....or maybe a lot sexist.
He doesn't think women are suited for proper charm work.
19. Saw that Henry does have something in common with Ramsay. He has a hot temper. However he doesn't hold grudges.
I wonder if Ramsay holds grudges.
20. Started to read about Henry Hunter's history.
His father is a wizard, and his mother is a Muggle.
The two met at a benefit event for Muggles. The wizarding Hunter family cared about Muggle-welfare and involved themselves in those types of charities.
21. Learned that at Hogwarts, Henry was sorted into the Ravenclaw house.
22. Learned that Henry lost his Ministry job in the UK because he started a lab fire.
He escaped to Australia feeling they were a backwater continent, and therefore probably wouldn't have heard of his reputation yet.
23. Amused by this bit about Henry.
Easily tricked or distracted out of a temper (or assignment... or anything) with questions about things that interest him.
That's kind of cute.
Henry Hunter is described as being a mad scientist. Besides the Gremlins dad, it also reminds me of the Back to the Future guy.
Henry is creative, but dangerous.
It sounds like he's a bit like Eudoxia's brother. I wonder if she'll come to realize that.
24. Read something in Summerland that reminded me of Sarah's fight with the bullies, in the Tallygarunga story I read yesterday.
The narrator of Summerland says,
If a woman has obvious flaws, a man can, mentally, take out his anger upon them. He can silently curse her breasts slopping across her like a pair of jowls, her rippled cellulite, her thick waist, her lank hair. And then his recovery starts: he scolds himself for his unfair wrath.
I think that's fascinating, and I feel there may be some truth to it.
Our anger at people can make us think really nasty things—superficial things, bigoted things, unfair things. I know I've done this at times.
If we're relatively decent, we feel guilty about these things. Then maybe some of the anger and disgust we direct at the other person is redirected towards ourselves. This might somewhat calm our anger towards the other person.
The key word, though, in Summerland is silent. When Sarah insulted the bully for his weight, she was far from silent. Because of this, I'm tempted to believe she sees no fault in her way of thinking, and no guilt for her words.
I could give her the benefit of the doubt if something slipped out once. Sometimes our secret shameful thoughts are blurted out in a moment of negative passion. But if they're said repeatedly, I would think there's no shame.
25. Saw that my Australian of the day is George Appel.
He was born in Germany in 1823.
When Appel was fifteen, he went to London and started working in a bank.
In his late twenties, Appel decided to seek gold in Australia.
He arrived in Melbourne and then headed off to Bendigo. He didn't have much luck there.
He moved on to the Moreton Bay area, which is a little bit north of Brisbane.
He took part in the German community and was a founding member of the first Lutheran church of South Brisbane.
If I'm reading this right, Hamburg Germany appointed Appel to be a sort of consul to Brisbane. I guess he was kind of a liaison between Germany and Queensland.
26. Went to Silkw0rm1982's YouTube channel.
Here's his cover of Crowded House's "Fall At Your Feet".
I think he has a nice voice.
27. Listened to Silkw0rm1982's cover of Bernard Fanning's "Wash Me Clean".
It's quite lovely.
I'm not sure I've ever heard the original.
28. Started looking at John Lampard's Flickr set of a garden in Mt Eliza Victoria.
29. Saw that Mt Eliza is a tiny bit south of Frankston.
One of my favorite Australians lives in Frankston.
30. Liked the trees in this picture.
31. Looked at the Australian Monopoly board.
The next space for me is Wickham Terrace. Lord Wiki has nothing to say about it. But I'm assuming since it's part of the red property group, it's in Brisbane.
I'm not saying the color red symbolizes Brisbane. But the other two red properties were in Brisbane, so I'm assuming that's the case for Wickham Terrace.
32. Found Wickham Terrace on Google Maps. It's near Brisbane Private Hospital.
33. Saw on Google Maps, that there's a Wickham Park.
34. Learned that the name Wickham comes from a guy named John Clements Wickham.
He was a captain on the HMS Beagle. This is the ship that was made famous by Charles Darwin's adventures.
He later became a police chief of the Moreton Bay area.
This is the second time I've run into Moreton Bay today.
I'm having Moreton Bay synchronocity.
35. Saw that there's one of those non-sleepover hotels on Wickham Terrace.
It's called The Mill Hotel.
I'm looking at their menu right now.
They don't have a vegetarian option on their kid's menu. I don't like that. There's not many vegetarian options on the menu...period.
That doesn't necessarily mean there's no food for vegetarians. They might be willing to make something vegetarian or put together a side plate of vegetables.
I've been to some places in which every dish has meat, and if you ask for something without meat, they look at you like you've lost your mind. Actually....I've been to only one place like that recently— a Vietnamese restaurant in Fort Worth. Most places these days are vegetarian friendly. The thing is, it's not just vegetarians who want to order meatless dishes. Before I was vegetarian, I often wanted meatless meals.
36. Wondered. If I expect meat restaurants to serve vegetarian food, should I then expect vegetarian restaurants to serve a few meat dishes?
I decided my answer is....
No.
There's a difference.
Meat eaters usually still eat vegetables, grains, and other stuff. Unless they're on some kind of extreme protein-only diet, they should be able to find a vegetarian dish they can eat.
I do think the best restaurants are those that serve meat from ethical sources, and then also have a lot of vegetarian and vegan options. Elevation Burger is like that. The dead cows they use in their burgers are grass fed, organic, and free range....all that fun stuff. Then they also have a vegetarian burger AND a vegan burger. Oh, and what I love is they have a burger called Half The Guilt Burger. You get one beef patty and one vegetarian patty.
37. Looked at my Australian travel guide. I read about an explorer exploring a place.
Guess what place it was....
Moreton Bay!
That bay is haunting me today.
I'm going to be honest here.
The Australian travel guide is my designated bathroom book. I like to read when I'm on the toilet. I don't often mention that, because it seems to be such a guy thing. But...well....there you go.
Maybe most women do it too. Maybe I'm not alone. It's just I more often hear men admitting to it.
Anyway, so I went to pee and ran into Moreton Bay again.
38. Consulted Lord Wiki about Moreton Bay.
Lord Wiki says it's the only place in Australia where the dugong gather in herds. I guess it's their hang out place.
39. Learned the Aboriginal name for Moreton Bay is Quandamooka.
40. Learned that Moreton Bay is named after a Scottish astronomer named James Douglas. He was the Earl of Morton.
The change from Morton to Moreton was due to a spelling mistake. Oops.
James Douglas was the 14th Earl of Morton. Now Scotland is on their 21st Earl of Morton. This guy's name is John Douglas.
I'm guessing all the Earls of Morton are related.
Why do they use the name Morton?
Why not say they're the Earl of Douglas?
41. Learned that Captain James Cook only passed by the bay, and that's when he named it. That was in 1770.
Twenty-nine years later, in 1799 Matthew Flinders was the first to go IN the bay.
Twenty-five years after that, a guy named John Oxley brought in the first settlement.
It's amazing to me that so much time passes between these events. My brain knows that. But a part of me imagines it all happening at once. Well, I don't picture it happening simultaneously. I imagine it happening within a few months or years. Sometimes, though, it's decades.
So in the 1820's, there were convicts and soldiers in the area.
In the 1840's, ships with immigrants started to arrive.
41. Saw that one of the immigrant ships has the same name as a Tallygarunga wizard. Artemesia.
Artemisia was the first ship to bring immigrants into Moreton Bay. She arrived in December 1848.
42. Learned from Lord Wiki that the relationship between the Quandamooka people and the Europeans was not a sweet one. The white people showed a lack of respect for Aboriginal marriage rules and they desecrated sacred sites. The other problem is the white people took over the land and there were not enough places for the Aboriginal people to hunt and father food. They started going after the stock animals, which I think is fair and understandable.
The cattle grazers didn't think so. They thought this gave them valid reason to massacre the Quandamooka people.
43. Learned that, in March 2009, there was an oil spill in Moreton Bay. It was an environmental disaster.
That's bad, but the badness doesn't end there.
In the 2011 Queensland flood, contaminated water got into the area. Fishing folks were told not to catch anything. The water was investigated, and the investigators learned there was sewage, pesticides, and metal in the water.
44. Learned that there are 360 islands in Moreton Bay.
One of the islands is Bribie Island. I think I've heard of that.
Peel Island was used as a leper colony from 1907-1959.
45. Learned from Lord Wiki that there's a song called "Moreton Bay".
Now that he's said that, I'm thinking I've heard it before.
46. Watched video with Moreton Bay song and scenes from the Ned Kelly movie.
It's a pretty song.
Lord Wiki says it's about convicts being treated with brutality by a guy named Patrick Logan.
Logan was in command of the penal colony there from 1827-1830.
The convicts thought he was hateful, but some people see him as the father of Queensland.
It's interesting how there can be so many varying views about a person.
47. Learned Bernard Fanning is the one singing "Moreton Bay" in the video above.
It reminds me of this song that played at the end of this TV movie about Protestant and Catholic Irish children. I forgot the name of the movie. There was a program in America where they'd take in two kids—one from each side of the conflict. It was a peace initiative.
I like stuff like that...things that promote peace.
48. Struggled to find the name of the movie. This is frustrating. It's so rare that I can't find the answers with googling.
I DID find that the program is called The Irish Children's Fund.
You'd think knowing that would help me find the movie, but I'm still not having luck.
Anyway, it was a good song...in the movie. I used to love it. They played it during a tearjerker moment.
I'm guessing it's a style of music. Irish folk music, perhaps?
Lord Wiki says "Moreton Bay" is an Australian folk song, which makes sense since it is about Australia. I'd also say it was Irish, though, since the creator of the song was an Irish convict.
49. Listened to John Denver sing "Moreton Bay" on Spotify. I downloaded Spotify months ago, but didn't have a need to use it until today.
I tried to find Denver's performance on YouTube so I could embed it, but no such luck......
50. Listened to Barry Crocker sing "Moreton Bay".
I'm falling in love with this song.
I can totally imagine it making me cry if I heard it in a movie.
51. Remembered the name of the TV movie!
I'm so happy.
It's called Children in the Crossfire.
I found it by looking at the RareTvMovie YouTube channel. They have a huge collection of American TV movies. I actually didn't see that movie. I saw a movie called Cross of Fire. But that triggered my memory of the other movie's name.
I think if I kept digging on this channel, I'd find Children in the Crossfire as well. They seem to have everything.
52. Searched through the channel. It seems they DON'T have Children in the Crossfire. Oh well. I'm still grateful to them for helping my memory out.
Now that I've found what I was looking for, I have to admit I kind of enjoyed the challenge of searching.
53. Thought I wouldn't be able to find the song in the movie, but I did!
I thought the song was played only in the end, but it's also played in the beginning....at least a little bit of it.
Google Video has it.
54. Found the name of the song!
It's called "The Town I Loved So Well" and it's by the Dubliners.
I think these are the lyrics that are played at the end of the movie.
But when I returned how my eyes have burned
To see how a town could be brought to it's knees
By the armored cars and the bombed-out bars
And the gas that hangs on to every breeze.
Now the army's installed by that old gasyard wall
And the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher
With their tanks and their guns, oh my god what have they done
To the town I loved so well.
Now the music's gone but they carry on
For their spirit's been bruised never broken
They will not forget but their hearts are set
On tomorrow and peace once again.
For what's done is done and what's won is won
And what's lost is lost and gone forever
I can only pray for a bright brand-new day
In the town I loved so well.
Here's a video of the song.
A doctor from Egypt, working in Western Australia, has been denied permanent residency because his daughter is disabled. She has cerebral palsy, and the government thinks she'll be a burden to the health system.
A few years ago the same thing happened with a doctor who's child had Down Syndrome.
I think they eventually let the family stay, but it was a battle.
I would have hoped their battle would have prevented other people from having to endure the same battle.
2. Learned from my Australia travel guide book that Mount Kosciuszko was named after a Polish freedom fighter.
I didn't know that.
Lord Wiki says the name of the mountain was originally Mount Kosciusko. Then in 1997 they changed the spelling of the name to better match its namesake.
The guy who named the mountain was Pawel Edmund Stzelecki. He was a Polish explorer who climbed the mountain and named it.
3. Consulted Lord Wiki about Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
He wasn't just a Polish freedom fighter. He was an American freedom fighter.
He fought on the side of the colonies during the American Revolutionary war. Then he became an American citizen.
4. Learned from Lord Wiki that Kosciuszko eventually left the United States. He left with Thomas Jefferson as the executor of his American estate. He requested that his money be given to a fund that would free African slaves and help them become educated and independent.
Unfortunately, that went wrong. People did wrong. And none of the money went where it should have gone.
5. Felt a little emotional when I saw from Lord Wiki that there are many places around the world named after Kosciuszko.
There's a Kosciusko, Texas. It's near San Antonia. I think it's a pretty small town. I have to zoom in a lot on Google Maps before I can see it.
Lord Wiki says America also has a few statues of Kosciuszko. There's one in Washington D.C
6. Saw that the Australian dollar has gone up even more. It's now equal to 1.03 American dollars.
I have to go back to my old post to see what it was last time. I think it was 1.01 or 1.02.
7. Saw that the last time I looked at the currency thing was Sunday. And the Australian dollar was worth 1.02 American dollars.
It's comparison to the British pound has stayed relatively the same. It's still worth about .65 pounds.
It's worth 6.81 Swedish Kronor. Last time I checked it was 6.78. It's gone up a bit there.
The Australian dollar has also gone up in yen. The last time I checked it was worth 78.12 yen. Now it's worth 79.1 yen.
8. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read a story thread called Or Perhaps You'd Rather Be Nude.
It takes place in a wizarding robe store in Oliphant Lane, Melbourne's wizarding village.
The two characters in the story are Eudoxia Karras and a new guy named Henry Hunter.
Henry is a professor of practical magic...probably at the university, but I'm not sure yet.
9. Started reading the story.
It's the evening of Sunday, October 16.
It looks like Henry Hunter has recently moved to Victoria. In his previous hometown, the robe shop folks knew him very well. He could just walk into the store and they would have clothes ready for him. They knew his size and what he liked. Now Henry is wondering how long it will be before he has that type of relationship with the shop in Oliphant Lane.
Eudoxia is also in the shop. She's looking for robes for her brother. He has a thing about starting fires, so she's thinking of getting him a fireproof robe.
That might be wise.
10. Saw Eudoxia and Henry exchanging some small talk in the shop. It started with a question about the weather.
11. Learned that Henry is from England, and he's teaching at the university.
12. Started to read the biography of Henry Hunter.
His face claim is Gordon Ramsey—the cooking guy. From what I know of that man, I don't like him. But then I really don't know much, so I suppose I'm being a bit prejudice.
13. Watched a video of Gordon Ramsey getting angry.
There's a lot of videos on YouTube with him getting angry.
He has quite a reputation.
And maybe there's more to him than that. Maybe he has anger issues, but is really nice when he's not angry. Maybe he gives a lot of money to charity.
I'm trying to think positively here....
14. Learned from Lord Wiki, that Ramsay would lie to vegetarians and feed them soup with chicken stock.
Yeah. I'm not finding much to love about this guy.
15. Started to read about Henry Hunter.
He's 42. He was born in London. His Patronus is a hedgehog.
16. Learned that Henry Hunter is not like his face claim. He's friendly and has a good sense of humor. He likes games and jokes.
17. Thought of the dad in Gremlins when I read these lines.
The man is perpetually tinkering with one thing or another irrespective of the time of day or the season (or what company may or may not be over at the time), and he has invented just as many useless things as he has destroyed.
18. Learned that Henry is a bit sexist....or maybe a lot sexist.
He doesn't think women are suited for proper charm work.
19. Saw that Henry does have something in common with Ramsay. He has a hot temper. However he doesn't hold grudges.
I wonder if Ramsay holds grudges.
20. Started to read about Henry Hunter's history.
His father is a wizard, and his mother is a Muggle.
The two met at a benefit event for Muggles. The wizarding Hunter family cared about Muggle-welfare and involved themselves in those types of charities.
21. Learned that at Hogwarts, Henry was sorted into the Ravenclaw house.
22. Learned that Henry lost his Ministry job in the UK because he started a lab fire.
He escaped to Australia feeling they were a backwater continent, and therefore probably wouldn't have heard of his reputation yet.
23. Amused by this bit about Henry.
Easily tricked or distracted out of a temper (or assignment... or anything) with questions about things that interest him.
That's kind of cute.
Henry Hunter is described as being a mad scientist. Besides the Gremlins dad, it also reminds me of the Back to the Future guy.
Henry is creative, but dangerous.
It sounds like he's a bit like Eudoxia's brother. I wonder if she'll come to realize that.
24. Read something in Summerland that reminded me of Sarah's fight with the bullies, in the Tallygarunga story I read yesterday.
The narrator of Summerland says,
If a woman has obvious flaws, a man can, mentally, take out his anger upon them. He can silently curse her breasts slopping across her like a pair of jowls, her rippled cellulite, her thick waist, her lank hair. And then his recovery starts: he scolds himself for his unfair wrath.
I think that's fascinating, and I feel there may be some truth to it.
Our anger at people can make us think really nasty things—superficial things, bigoted things, unfair things. I know I've done this at times.
If we're relatively decent, we feel guilty about these things. Then maybe some of the anger and disgust we direct at the other person is redirected towards ourselves. This might somewhat calm our anger towards the other person.
The key word, though, in Summerland is silent. When Sarah insulted the bully for his weight, she was far from silent. Because of this, I'm tempted to believe she sees no fault in her way of thinking, and no guilt for her words.
I could give her the benefit of the doubt if something slipped out once. Sometimes our secret shameful thoughts are blurted out in a moment of negative passion. But if they're said repeatedly, I would think there's no shame.
25. Saw that my Australian of the day is George Appel.
He was born in Germany in 1823.
When Appel was fifteen, he went to London and started working in a bank.
In his late twenties, Appel decided to seek gold in Australia.
He arrived in Melbourne and then headed off to Bendigo. He didn't have much luck there.
He moved on to the Moreton Bay area, which is a little bit north of Brisbane.
He took part in the German community and was a founding member of the first Lutheran church of South Brisbane.
If I'm reading this right, Hamburg Germany appointed Appel to be a sort of consul to Brisbane. I guess he was kind of a liaison between Germany and Queensland.
26. Went to Silkw0rm1982's YouTube channel.
Here's his cover of Crowded House's "Fall At Your Feet".
I think he has a nice voice.
27. Listened to Silkw0rm1982's cover of Bernard Fanning's "Wash Me Clean".
It's quite lovely.
I'm not sure I've ever heard the original.
28. Started looking at John Lampard's Flickr set of a garden in Mt Eliza Victoria.
29. Saw that Mt Eliza is a tiny bit south of Frankston.
One of my favorite Australians lives in Frankston.
30. Liked the trees in this picture.
31. Looked at the Australian Monopoly board.
The next space for me is Wickham Terrace. Lord Wiki has nothing to say about it. But I'm assuming since it's part of the red property group, it's in Brisbane.
I'm not saying the color red symbolizes Brisbane. But the other two red properties were in Brisbane, so I'm assuming that's the case for Wickham Terrace.
32. Found Wickham Terrace on Google Maps. It's near Brisbane Private Hospital.
33. Saw on Google Maps, that there's a Wickham Park.
34. Learned that the name Wickham comes from a guy named John Clements Wickham.
He was a captain on the HMS Beagle. This is the ship that was made famous by Charles Darwin's adventures.
He later became a police chief of the Moreton Bay area.
This is the second time I've run into Moreton Bay today.
I'm having Moreton Bay synchronocity.
35. Saw that there's one of those non-sleepover hotels on Wickham Terrace.
It's called The Mill Hotel.
I'm looking at their menu right now.
They don't have a vegetarian option on their kid's menu. I don't like that. There's not many vegetarian options on the menu...period.
That doesn't necessarily mean there's no food for vegetarians. They might be willing to make something vegetarian or put together a side plate of vegetables.
I've been to some places in which every dish has meat, and if you ask for something without meat, they look at you like you've lost your mind. Actually....I've been to only one place like that recently— a Vietnamese restaurant in Fort Worth. Most places these days are vegetarian friendly. The thing is, it's not just vegetarians who want to order meatless dishes. Before I was vegetarian, I often wanted meatless meals.
36. Wondered. If I expect meat restaurants to serve vegetarian food, should I then expect vegetarian restaurants to serve a few meat dishes?
I decided my answer is....
No.
There's a difference.
Meat eaters usually still eat vegetables, grains, and other stuff. Unless they're on some kind of extreme protein-only diet, they should be able to find a vegetarian dish they can eat.
I do think the best restaurants are those that serve meat from ethical sources, and then also have a lot of vegetarian and vegan options. Elevation Burger is like that. The dead cows they use in their burgers are grass fed, organic, and free range....all that fun stuff. Then they also have a vegetarian burger AND a vegan burger. Oh, and what I love is they have a burger called Half The Guilt Burger. You get one beef patty and one vegetarian patty.
37. Looked at my Australian travel guide. I read about an explorer exploring a place.
Guess what place it was....
Moreton Bay!
That bay is haunting me today.
I'm going to be honest here.
The Australian travel guide is my designated bathroom book. I like to read when I'm on the toilet. I don't often mention that, because it seems to be such a guy thing. But...well....there you go.
Maybe most women do it too. Maybe I'm not alone. It's just I more often hear men admitting to it.
Anyway, so I went to pee and ran into Moreton Bay again.
38. Consulted Lord Wiki about Moreton Bay.
Lord Wiki says it's the only place in Australia where the dugong gather in herds. I guess it's their hang out place.
39. Learned the Aboriginal name for Moreton Bay is Quandamooka.
40. Learned that Moreton Bay is named after a Scottish astronomer named James Douglas. He was the Earl of Morton.
The change from Morton to Moreton was due to a spelling mistake. Oops.
James Douglas was the 14th Earl of Morton. Now Scotland is on their 21st Earl of Morton. This guy's name is John Douglas.
I'm guessing all the Earls of Morton are related.
Why do they use the name Morton?
Why not say they're the Earl of Douglas?
41. Learned that Captain James Cook only passed by the bay, and that's when he named it. That was in 1770.
Twenty-nine years later, in 1799 Matthew Flinders was the first to go IN the bay.
Twenty-five years after that, a guy named John Oxley brought in the first settlement.
It's amazing to me that so much time passes between these events. My brain knows that. But a part of me imagines it all happening at once. Well, I don't picture it happening simultaneously. I imagine it happening within a few months or years. Sometimes, though, it's decades.
So in the 1820's, there were convicts and soldiers in the area.
In the 1840's, ships with immigrants started to arrive.
41. Saw that one of the immigrant ships has the same name as a Tallygarunga wizard. Artemesia.
Artemisia was the first ship to bring immigrants into Moreton Bay. She arrived in December 1848.
42. Learned from Lord Wiki that the relationship between the Quandamooka people and the Europeans was not a sweet one. The white people showed a lack of respect for Aboriginal marriage rules and they desecrated sacred sites. The other problem is the white people took over the land and there were not enough places for the Aboriginal people to hunt and father food. They started going after the stock animals, which I think is fair and understandable.
The cattle grazers didn't think so. They thought this gave them valid reason to massacre the Quandamooka people.
43. Learned that, in March 2009, there was an oil spill in Moreton Bay. It was an environmental disaster.
That's bad, but the badness doesn't end there.
In the 2011 Queensland flood, contaminated water got into the area. Fishing folks were told not to catch anything. The water was investigated, and the investigators learned there was sewage, pesticides, and metal in the water.
44. Learned that there are 360 islands in Moreton Bay.
One of the islands is Bribie Island. I think I've heard of that.
Peel Island was used as a leper colony from 1907-1959.
45. Learned from Lord Wiki that there's a song called "Moreton Bay".
Now that he's said that, I'm thinking I've heard it before.
46. Watched video with Moreton Bay song and scenes from the Ned Kelly movie.
It's a pretty song.
Lord Wiki says it's about convicts being treated with brutality by a guy named Patrick Logan.
Logan was in command of the penal colony there from 1827-1830.
The convicts thought he was hateful, but some people see him as the father of Queensland.
It's interesting how there can be so many varying views about a person.
47. Learned Bernard Fanning is the one singing "Moreton Bay" in the video above.
It reminds me of this song that played at the end of this TV movie about Protestant and Catholic Irish children. I forgot the name of the movie. There was a program in America where they'd take in two kids—one from each side of the conflict. It was a peace initiative.
I like stuff like that...things that promote peace.
48. Struggled to find the name of the movie. This is frustrating. It's so rare that I can't find the answers with googling.
I DID find that the program is called The Irish Children's Fund.
You'd think knowing that would help me find the movie, but I'm still not having luck.
Anyway, it was a good song...in the movie. I used to love it. They played it during a tearjerker moment.
I'm guessing it's a style of music. Irish folk music, perhaps?
Lord Wiki says "Moreton Bay" is an Australian folk song, which makes sense since it is about Australia. I'd also say it was Irish, though, since the creator of the song was an Irish convict.
49. Listened to John Denver sing "Moreton Bay" on Spotify. I downloaded Spotify months ago, but didn't have a need to use it until today.
I tried to find Denver's performance on YouTube so I could embed it, but no such luck......
50. Listened to Barry Crocker sing "Moreton Bay".
I'm falling in love with this song.
I can totally imagine it making me cry if I heard it in a movie.
51. Remembered the name of the TV movie!
I'm so happy.
It's called Children in the Crossfire.
I found it by looking at the RareTvMovie YouTube channel. They have a huge collection of American TV movies. I actually didn't see that movie. I saw a movie called Cross of Fire. But that triggered my memory of the other movie's name.
I think if I kept digging on this channel, I'd find Children in the Crossfire as well. They seem to have everything.
52. Searched through the channel. It seems they DON'T have Children in the Crossfire. Oh well. I'm still grateful to them for helping my memory out.
Now that I've found what I was looking for, I have to admit I kind of enjoyed the challenge of searching.
53. Thought I wouldn't be able to find the song in the movie, but I did!
I thought the song was played only in the end, but it's also played in the beginning....at least a little bit of it.
Google Video has it.
54. Found the name of the song!
It's called "The Town I Loved So Well" and it's by the Dubliners.
I think these are the lyrics that are played at the end of the movie.
But when I returned how my eyes have burned
To see how a town could be brought to it's knees
By the armored cars and the bombed-out bars
And the gas that hangs on to every breeze.
Now the army's installed by that old gasyard wall
And the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher
With their tanks and their guns, oh my god what have they done
To the town I loved so well.
Now the music's gone but they carry on
For their spirit's been bruised never broken
They will not forget but their hearts are set
On tomorrow and peace once again.
For what's done is done and what's won is won
And what's lost is lost and gone forever
I can only pray for a bright brand-new day
In the town I loved so well.
Here's a video of the song.
Balmain, Redfern, First Fleet, and Pretend Julia Gillard
1. Reminded by my new Treasures of Australia book that the Sydney suburb of Balmain was named after a surgeon on the First Fleet.
William Balmain.
Lord Wiki says he delivered the first baby on the First Fleet. I wonder whatever became of that baby. Did it survive? Does it have descendants?
2. Learned that William Balmain ended up getting together with a convict named Margaret Dawson. They ended up having a child together.
Did I do a post on Dawson?
I can't remember.
I'll go check.
3. Saw that I did do a post on her.
I shall read it and relearn what I learned almost two years ago.
I wonder if I mentioned William Balmain.
4. Read some of the post and saw that I did mention Balmain.
I also mentioned the fact that Redfern was named after a surgeon as well.
I was thinking before that Balmain had impressed me for some reason; but now I'm remembering that it was Redfern. There was something I liked about the guy, but I can't remember what it was.
5. Consulted Lord Wiki about Redfern.
That surgeon had William as a first name too.
William Redfern was a convict.
What got him into trouble was being part of a mutiny.
He was a doctor before becoming a convict, and in New South Wales he became a doctor again.
William Redfern spoke up against the sanitary conditions of the ships. His words were heard and improvements were made.
Lord Wiki says Redfern can be considered one of the fathers of the Australian medical profession.
6. Read article that says there have been huge storms in south-east Queensland.
It sounds very intense. I hope people and other animals stay safe.
7. Read Andrew's distressing post about the mistreatment of chickens.
This is timely for me since I accidentally bought products with egg in it.
I guess on the plus side, the protein bars probably don't have a lot of eggs. I think there's a difference between eating an omelet which uses a 2-3 eggs per serving and eating a baked good or other product that uses 1-2 eggs for many servings.
8. Agreed with what Andrew and Anonymous discussed in Andrew's comment section. Anonymous says.
The fact is modern farming practices and thinking have reduced animals to products where the bottom line is the almighty dollar - farmers and corporations want to make high profits and consumers want cheap, plentiful food. To get either, food animals must live appalling lives where terrible cruelty is commonplace and sanctioned at most levels of society.
Andrew replies, You may well be a few months younger than me, but you would remember when chicken was a luxury. It was a luxury because it was expensive. Now it is so cheap, because of the mass production of chicken meat.
Yeah. I think meat and other animal products should be expensive. I don't think everyone needs to be vegetarian. But I do think meat should be something people have once in awhile, rather than on a regular basis.
Meat shouldn't be mass produced and cheap.
9. Thought maybe there's a correlation between the obesity issues, that people worry about lately, and factory farming. People want to pay low prices for huge portions. To keep up with that, there needs to be factory farms.
10. Went to Kevin Rudd's Twitter page. I thought this Tweet was cute: The students at the model UN were first class. A few too many future foreign ministers for my liking… I better watch out. KRudd.
11. Read article about asylum seekers. It sounds like good news. Although some of it confuses me.
Some people who come by boat are going to be put into what's called community detention rather than mandatory detention.
Rather than being isolated from the community, they'll live in the community. But they'll be monitored and required to check in with officials.
12. Read the article more closely. People won't automatically get released into the community. They'll spend a short time in the detention centers for medical and identity checks.
I wonder how long they'll be in there? Days? Weeks? Months?
The people released into the community will have what's called a bridging visa.
A human rights advocate named Marion Le worries nothing will change. She's concerned that the bridging visa is just another name for the protection visa. With the protection visa, sometimes it would take three to four years for people to get one.
Hopefully her suspicions aren't warranted, and people won't get locked up for that long.
13. Read editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald about the best characters on television.
Only one character is Australian and it's Tim Mathieson from At Home With Julia. I heard of that, but I didn't know it was an actual show. I thought it was a one time special.
Most of the characters on the list are from American shows.
I don't watch a lot of Australian television, so I don't have much to go by. But my favorite characters are probably Maggie Beare from Mother and Son and Billy Proudman from Offspring.
14. Went to the website for At Home With Julia.
I was sort of right. It was a miniseries—not an ongoing thing.
15. Started to watch the video clips they have on the website. The actress who plays Julia Gillard does a good job of imitating Gillard's voice.
I laughed a few times during that. The show looks pretty good.
16. Watched more of the show. I'm finding that I agree with the editorial's pick of best character on the show.
17. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read History of Magic: The First Lesson.
It looks like there's a new professor for that.
I think last semester the class was taught by Professor Rodrigez.
Now we have Edvard Adalwin.
18. Started to read.
Professor Adalwin is a bit nervous about teaching his first class at the school.
He eats a Bernie Botts bean and gets pumpkin pie.
I think of pumpkin pie as being an American food. I guess because of Thanksgiving. I wonder if other countries eat it as well.
I peeked at Adalwin's biography. He's from Norway.
I wonder if Norwegians eat pumpkin pie.
19. Consulted Lord Wiki about the history of pumpkin pie.
It's pretty interesting.
He said pumpkin seeds were first found in Mexico. They made their way to France, and then to England. The British started using pumpkin as a pie-filler. Then it was brought, by the pilgrims, to America.
20. Went back to reading about the Tally class.
The students are entering the room.
21. Wondered about Reade's line here.
Sure, he was still feeling the lowest he ever had, with the Arti situation hanging over him, but History was his favourite class and it was brightening up his day considerably just thinking about attending it.
So what is the Arti situation now? This story takes place on October 10. I need to go see when the coma storyline took place.
According to Reade here, is Arti missing? Does he know she's in the hospital? Does he know what has happened to her?
22. Went to the coma storyline....or the awakening-from-the-coma story.
It takes place on October 5.
So by now, Reade should know Arti is in the hospital—unless she's being hidden.
23. Intrigued by the fact that the class is going to be learning Australia history.
Riley's not at all excited about it.
I wish I could trade places with him—well, just for a few hours.
I'd love to hear about Australian history through the eyes of a wizard.
24. Read Sarah Kent's post. She's very excited to see Victor Hartwell in the classroom.
That triggered my memory. Victor's the one who has recently found out he's William Kent's son. This means he's Sarah's half-brother.
I'm guessing, from her excitement about seeing him, that she knows they're siblings.
Or maybe she doesn't know and adores him as a friend?
25. Finished reading the story thread.
Most of the students are not at all excited about history. The exceptions are Reade and Juli Preston.
26. Wondered what kind of magic was happening in the beginnings of Australia.
Any witches and wizards on The First Fleet?
Maybe that baby, William Balmain delivered, was a wizard. Or maybe the intrusion of Muggle medicine in his childbirth messed things up, and the baby became a Squib.
27. Went to the biography of Mr. Edvard Adalwin.
His face claim is Vincent Furnier, who is also known as Alice Cooper. I didn't know that. Lord Wiki had to tell me. I'm usually ignorant when it comes to music stuff.
I know of one Alice Cooper song: "Welcome to My Nightmare".
I think, for some of the Tallygarunga students, they're biggest nightmare is attending history class.
28. Learned that Edvard is in his early sixties.
He's tall.
It sounds like he's a skeleton. In fact, one won’t find an ounce of fat or muscle on his body.
What is he? Skin and bones?
29. Reminded of myself when I read this. He loves natures and strolls out through forests and wooded areas but cannot stand humid, stick heat or the frigid, chilling cold. This is why he so often spends his time indoors.
I'm very picky about weather. Anything over 82 degrees is too hot for me, and anything under about 70 degrees is too cold.
30. Liked this detail about Edvard. Also when out on strolls, assuming his attire has pockets, his hands will typically be shoved deep into pockets.
I think it provides insight into both his appearance and personality.
I'm not sure what it says about his personality though. What kind of person sticks their hands in their pockets?
Maybe....
My guess is it's someone who's a bit nervous and insecure. They may be trying to hide a part of themselves, in a subconscious way. They also might be holding something in their pocket to give them security.
In the story, Edvard had candy in his pocket. I wonder if that's usually the case for him.
31. Learned that Edvard has the type of face that makes him look grumpy, but it doesn't match his personality. He's pleasant and likes to joke around.
32. Reminded strongly of someone I know when I read this line about Edvard.
He can keep his cool around certain company like strangers or pupils, but behind closed doors, if one is disrespectful or overly-insulting with their words, he will not hold back his fury.
Some people are very good at controlling their temper in some situations, but unable to control it in other situations.
33. Started to read Edvard's history.
His mother is a witch but worked at a Muggle department store.
His father made money casting runes. He would do this for both Muggles and magical folks. The Muggles saw it as mostly entertainment.
34. Learned that, although Durmstrang is the closer and more logical choice of wizarding school for Norwegians, Edvard was sent to Hogwarts. The reason is his parents didn't like the school's association with the dark arts.
35. Learned that Edvard was sorted into Hufflepuff.
He would have started school around 1970.
Who would have been there then?
36. Consulted Lord Wiki's cousin about Sirius Black. He was born in 1959, the same year as Edvard.
So he'd probably be in the same year as a lot of Harry Potter people—Black, James Potter, Lily Potter, Snape, Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew.
37. Saw that when Edvard finished with Hogwarts, he went to London's Magic University.
He didn't do so well there—too much partying. He was kicked out. His dad was very angry about that. He refused to pay for any more of Edvard's education.
Edvard worked instead. After struggling, he made enough money to pay for his own education. That's where he learned the history stuff.
38. Intrigued by these lines.
His luck took a turn for the better though in his early forties when at least a teaching position had opened up. The Hogwarts History of Magic professor had grown deathly ill and had to take an extended leave of absence; unfortunately, the professor’s conditions never improved and died a few months later.
I wonder if that's referencing a Harry Potter character.
39. Did the math. That would have been around 1999, and that's after the battle at Hogwarts took place.
It still could be a Harry Potter character though.
Who taught History of Magic?
40. Consulted Lord Wiki's cousin again. The class is the one that's taught by a ghost.
I'm guessing the ghost wasn't the one who got sick. And it really couldn't have died.
Maybe someone else was hired to do the job, and then he or she got sick?
41. Did another Australian accent practice video. I followed the advice of a friend who suggested I try reading nonfiction. So I read about Broken Hill in my new Treasures of Australia book.
I think (hope) that this time I sound more Australian and less British. That's not to say I don't love British accents.
42. Went to the YouTube channel of Stephniijane.
She's another singer, and has done a lot of videos.
Her profile says she has a degree in zoology and is a wildlife demonstrator.
At the time she wrote the profile, she was living in London as an au pair. I wonder if she's still doing that. I also wonder if she liked the job.
43. Listened to Stephniijane sing the Glee version of "Defying Gravity"
It's interesting. I don't think I've ever seen an interesting cover on Glee. I need to check it out.
44. Listened to Glee's version of "Defying Gravity".
It's less interesting than what I hoped for.
It sounds very much like the one in the musical.
45. Thought it would be funny if Stephniijane was simply singing the song wrong, and I'm liking it because it's different.
I think her version sounds different from the Glee version.
46. Listened to Stephniijane sing Katy Perry's "Firework".
In some parts, her voice sounds good.
Often I can't hear her well over the guitar.
47. Watched Stephniijane do one of her animal demonstrations.
This is with her pet potoroo. I've never heard of that.
She mentions that her most popular video is of her singing Lady Gaga's "Just Dance." She talks about how she gets mixed reviews. Some people love it and some people hate it.
I decided I'd watch it and see for myself.
I don't think she has a very powerful voice, but she does have a cute one.
48. Consulted Lord Wiki about the potoroo.
He says there are four types. Two of them are endangered. One of them (Gilbert's Potoroo) is the most endangered animal in Australia. There's not many of them left.
49. Learned from my Treasures of Australia book that the main streets in Broken Hill are named after minerals.
I'm looking at it on Google Maps.
I see Silver City Highway.
There's Argent Street. Is that a mineral?
Lord Wiki says it's a tincture. I wasn't sure what that was; so I asked him. He said it's a color used on a coat of arms.
50. Saw Galena Street.
Lord Wiki says Galena is the mineral form of lead sulfide.
There's a Gypsum Street.
Gypsum is made of calcium, sulfate, and water.
Lord Wiki says gypsum is used in the making of tofu. Interesting......
51. Saw that my Australian of the day is John Macquarie Antill. He's the grandson of the guy I wrote about two days ago: Henry Colden Antill.
Henry worked with Lachlan Macquarie, so I'm guessing that's why John Antill has Macquarie as his middle name.
52. Saw that John Antill did military work.
He won medals for that.
53. Saw that one of Antill's pastimes after retirement was "bowls". I'm not sure what that means.
He also liked gardening, woodwork, reading, and writing. He and his daughter wrote a play about William Redfern. It was called The Emancipist.
It's funny to read that since I was thinking about Redfern last night.
54. Amused because I saw, from IMDb that the woman who plays Julia Gillard in At Home With Julia was one of the stars of The Upside Down Show.
Her name's Amanda Bishop, and she played Mrs. Foil. I don't remember her...except maybe vaguely. It's been a long time since we watched that show.
55. Saw that Phil Lloyd, the guy who plays Tim Mathieson, is also the writer of the series.
56. Started to look at more of John Lampard's Flickr photos.
Today I'm going to look at his Spot Food and Film Festival pictures.
It's part of the Australian Film Festival.
Here's their website. They have a page about the Spot thing.
57. Thought these cupcakes are cute and colorful.
58. Saw different names on a walk of fame type thing. Here's one for an actor named Steve Bisley.
Lord Wiki says he was in Mad Max and currently he's on Sea Patrol. He was also on Water Rats and Sea Rescue.
I really haven't seen any of that stuff.
59. Saw Claudia Karvan has a circle on the Walk of Fame.
60. Saw that Peter Garrett was at the festival.
I have to admit, it took me about three seconds to remember who he was.
But I'm pleased with myself for figuring it out eventually.
61. Continued to watch At Home With Julia.
It has a lot of funny parts.
62. Found article about At Home With Julia. It's about Tim and Julia having a sex scene involving the Australian flag. I saw the headlines a few days ago, but didn't pay much attention. It wasn't of interest to me. Now that I've seen the show, I'm interested.
Some people were offended by the flag thing.
A spokesman for the show responded.
If it's OK for others to drape themselves in our flag for all manner of occasions, I really don't see why it can't be draped over our prime minister as a symbol of love.
Yeah...why not.
63. Read blog post from someone who found the show to be funny but disrespectful.
Scarlett Harris liked the first two episodes and felt it made Gillard seem more human. But she pointed out anti-feminist aspects of the program.
She doubts a show like this would be made about other Prime Ministers. She acknowledges that Rudd and others have been mocked in comedy, but it was about their public lives and not their private ones.
I don't know. She might have a point. There's probably some gender prejudice involved in the motivation behind the show.
But I still like it.
Gillard and Mathieson are portrayed as being kind of buffoons. But I think they're very sympathetic characters.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where no one would think twice about a female Prime Minister being in a de facto relationship with a hairdresser. Someday that will probably be the case. But I CAN imagine that there's truth behind the show. It can't be too easy being Mathieson in today's society. We still cling to the idea that in heterosexual relationships, it's the man who should have the more powerful career.
I imagine it's hard enough for most men to be in a relationship where his partner has more power and money. I think it would be even more difficult when you're constantly under media scrutiny.
That being said...is the show adding more salt to the wounds?
Maybe? Or maybe Tim and Julia find it funny. Do they have the ability to laugh at themselves while watching the show? Or do they feel it goes too far?
Do they even watch it?
64. Decided I personally feel the show isn't disrespectful or cruel. Why? Because it's actually made me kind of LIKE Julia Gillard.
I don't often give Tim Mathieson a lot of thought, but after seeing the show....I'm liking him too.
The characters are a bit silly, but they're also very lovely.
Now instead of seeing Gillard simply as the anti-gay marriage person who stole Kevin Rudd's job, I also see her as the woman wearing a bathrobe who doesn't know her way around Canberra.
65. Looked at the Australian Monopoly board.
Today's street for me is Victoria Square.
Well, I guess it's not really a street.
Lord Wiki says it's a public square.
66. Learned from Lord Wiki that Victoria Square has a statue of Queen Victoria.
67. Found Victoria Square on Google Maps.
It looks like there actually is a street called Victoria Square.
It's to the east of the square.
68. Read article from May 2010 about fixing up Victoria Square.
It seems for a long time there has been talk about fixing up the square, but people were slow at making actual plans to do something.
There's a Hilton in/near the square. The general manager of the hotel, Michael Schmitt feels revitalizing the square will be good for business. He says, Victoria Square at the moment is the centre of the city but not the heart.
I'm not sure if that's true or not; but I think it's a great quote.
69. Went to the Adelaide City Council's page about the redevelopment of the square.
One of their taglines is a bit off to me. They say, think inside the square.
I'm guessing it's a play on, think outside the box.
And in that saying , thinking INSIDE the box is a negative. The whole point of thinking outside the box is to be original.
So what's the point of thinking inside the square. Does it have a meaning? Or did they just like how it sounded?
I think it sounds cute, but I'm not sure if the message works for me.
70. Decided it probably works all right if you don't connect it to think outside the box.
William Balmain.
Lord Wiki says he delivered the first baby on the First Fleet. I wonder whatever became of that baby. Did it survive? Does it have descendants?
2. Learned that William Balmain ended up getting together with a convict named Margaret Dawson. They ended up having a child together.
Did I do a post on Dawson?
I can't remember.
I'll go check.
3. Saw that I did do a post on her.
I shall read it and relearn what I learned almost two years ago.
I wonder if I mentioned William Balmain.
4. Read some of the post and saw that I did mention Balmain.
I also mentioned the fact that Redfern was named after a surgeon as well.
I was thinking before that Balmain had impressed me for some reason; but now I'm remembering that it was Redfern. There was something I liked about the guy, but I can't remember what it was.
5. Consulted Lord Wiki about Redfern.
That surgeon had William as a first name too.
William Redfern was a convict.
What got him into trouble was being part of a mutiny.
He was a doctor before becoming a convict, and in New South Wales he became a doctor again.
William Redfern spoke up against the sanitary conditions of the ships. His words were heard and improvements were made.
Lord Wiki says Redfern can be considered one of the fathers of the Australian medical profession.
6. Read article that says there have been huge storms in south-east Queensland.
It sounds very intense. I hope people and other animals stay safe.
7. Read Andrew's distressing post about the mistreatment of chickens.
This is timely for me since I accidentally bought products with egg in it.
I guess on the plus side, the protein bars probably don't have a lot of eggs. I think there's a difference between eating an omelet which uses a 2-3 eggs per serving and eating a baked good or other product that uses 1-2 eggs for many servings.
8. Agreed with what Andrew and Anonymous discussed in Andrew's comment section. Anonymous says.
The fact is modern farming practices and thinking have reduced animals to products where the bottom line is the almighty dollar - farmers and corporations want to make high profits and consumers want cheap, plentiful food. To get either, food animals must live appalling lives where terrible cruelty is commonplace and sanctioned at most levels of society.
Andrew replies, You may well be a few months younger than me, but you would remember when chicken was a luxury. It was a luxury because it was expensive. Now it is so cheap, because of the mass production of chicken meat.
Yeah. I think meat and other animal products should be expensive. I don't think everyone needs to be vegetarian. But I do think meat should be something people have once in awhile, rather than on a regular basis.
Meat shouldn't be mass produced and cheap.
9. Thought maybe there's a correlation between the obesity issues, that people worry about lately, and factory farming. People want to pay low prices for huge portions. To keep up with that, there needs to be factory farms.
10. Went to Kevin Rudd's Twitter page. I thought this Tweet was cute: The students at the model UN were first class. A few too many future foreign ministers for my liking… I better watch out. KRudd.
11. Read article about asylum seekers. It sounds like good news. Although some of it confuses me.
Some people who come by boat are going to be put into what's called community detention rather than mandatory detention.
Rather than being isolated from the community, they'll live in the community. But they'll be monitored and required to check in with officials.
12. Read the article more closely. People won't automatically get released into the community. They'll spend a short time in the detention centers for medical and identity checks.
I wonder how long they'll be in there? Days? Weeks? Months?
The people released into the community will have what's called a bridging visa.
A human rights advocate named Marion Le worries nothing will change. She's concerned that the bridging visa is just another name for the protection visa. With the protection visa, sometimes it would take three to four years for people to get one.
Hopefully her suspicions aren't warranted, and people won't get locked up for that long.
13. Read editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald about the best characters on television.
Only one character is Australian and it's Tim Mathieson from At Home With Julia. I heard of that, but I didn't know it was an actual show. I thought it was a one time special.
Most of the characters on the list are from American shows.
I don't watch a lot of Australian television, so I don't have much to go by. But my favorite characters are probably Maggie Beare from Mother and Son and Billy Proudman from Offspring.
14. Went to the website for At Home With Julia.
I was sort of right. It was a miniseries—not an ongoing thing.
15. Started to watch the video clips they have on the website. The actress who plays Julia Gillard does a good job of imitating Gillard's voice.
I laughed a few times during that. The show looks pretty good.
16. Watched more of the show. I'm finding that I agree with the editorial's pick of best character on the show.
17. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read History of Magic: The First Lesson.
It looks like there's a new professor for that.
I think last semester the class was taught by Professor Rodrigez.
Now we have Edvard Adalwin.
18. Started to read.
Professor Adalwin is a bit nervous about teaching his first class at the school.
He eats a Bernie Botts bean and gets pumpkin pie.
I think of pumpkin pie as being an American food. I guess because of Thanksgiving. I wonder if other countries eat it as well.
I peeked at Adalwin's biography. He's from Norway.
I wonder if Norwegians eat pumpkin pie.
19. Consulted Lord Wiki about the history of pumpkin pie.
It's pretty interesting.
He said pumpkin seeds were first found in Mexico. They made their way to France, and then to England. The British started using pumpkin as a pie-filler. Then it was brought, by the pilgrims, to America.
20. Went back to reading about the Tally class.
The students are entering the room.
21. Wondered about Reade's line here.
Sure, he was still feeling the lowest he ever had, with the Arti situation hanging over him, but History was his favourite class and it was brightening up his day considerably just thinking about attending it.
So what is the Arti situation now? This story takes place on October 10. I need to go see when the coma storyline took place.
According to Reade here, is Arti missing? Does he know she's in the hospital? Does he know what has happened to her?
22. Went to the coma storyline....or the awakening-from-the-coma story.
It takes place on October 5.
So by now, Reade should know Arti is in the hospital—unless she's being hidden.
23. Intrigued by the fact that the class is going to be learning Australia history.
Riley's not at all excited about it.
I wish I could trade places with him—well, just for a few hours.
I'd love to hear about Australian history through the eyes of a wizard.
24. Read Sarah Kent's post. She's very excited to see Victor Hartwell in the classroom.
That triggered my memory. Victor's the one who has recently found out he's William Kent's son. This means he's Sarah's half-brother.
I'm guessing, from her excitement about seeing him, that she knows they're siblings.
Or maybe she doesn't know and adores him as a friend?
25. Finished reading the story thread.
Most of the students are not at all excited about history. The exceptions are Reade and Juli Preston.
26. Wondered what kind of magic was happening in the beginnings of Australia.
Any witches and wizards on The First Fleet?
Maybe that baby, William Balmain delivered, was a wizard. Or maybe the intrusion of Muggle medicine in his childbirth messed things up, and the baby became a Squib.
27. Went to the biography of Mr. Edvard Adalwin.
His face claim is Vincent Furnier, who is also known as Alice Cooper. I didn't know that. Lord Wiki had to tell me. I'm usually ignorant when it comes to music stuff.
I know of one Alice Cooper song: "Welcome to My Nightmare".
I think, for some of the Tallygarunga students, they're biggest nightmare is attending history class.
28. Learned that Edvard is in his early sixties.
He's tall.
It sounds like he's a skeleton. In fact, one won’t find an ounce of fat or muscle on his body.
What is he? Skin and bones?
29. Reminded of myself when I read this. He loves natures and strolls out through forests and wooded areas but cannot stand humid, stick heat or the frigid, chilling cold. This is why he so often spends his time indoors.
I'm very picky about weather. Anything over 82 degrees is too hot for me, and anything under about 70 degrees is too cold.
30. Liked this detail about Edvard. Also when out on strolls, assuming his attire has pockets, his hands will typically be shoved deep into pockets.
I think it provides insight into both his appearance and personality.
I'm not sure what it says about his personality though. What kind of person sticks their hands in their pockets?
Maybe....
My guess is it's someone who's a bit nervous and insecure. They may be trying to hide a part of themselves, in a subconscious way. They also might be holding something in their pocket to give them security.
In the story, Edvard had candy in his pocket. I wonder if that's usually the case for him.
31. Learned that Edvard has the type of face that makes him look grumpy, but it doesn't match his personality. He's pleasant and likes to joke around.
32. Reminded strongly of someone I know when I read this line about Edvard.
He can keep his cool around certain company like strangers or pupils, but behind closed doors, if one is disrespectful or overly-insulting with their words, he will not hold back his fury.
Some people are very good at controlling their temper in some situations, but unable to control it in other situations.
33. Started to read Edvard's history.
His mother is a witch but worked at a Muggle department store.
His father made money casting runes. He would do this for both Muggles and magical folks. The Muggles saw it as mostly entertainment.
34. Learned that, although Durmstrang is the closer and more logical choice of wizarding school for Norwegians, Edvard was sent to Hogwarts. The reason is his parents didn't like the school's association with the dark arts.
35. Learned that Edvard was sorted into Hufflepuff.
He would have started school around 1970.
Who would have been there then?
36. Consulted Lord Wiki's cousin about Sirius Black. He was born in 1959, the same year as Edvard.
So he'd probably be in the same year as a lot of Harry Potter people—Black, James Potter, Lily Potter, Snape, Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew.
37. Saw that when Edvard finished with Hogwarts, he went to London's Magic University.
He didn't do so well there—too much partying. He was kicked out. His dad was very angry about that. He refused to pay for any more of Edvard's education.
Edvard worked instead. After struggling, he made enough money to pay for his own education. That's where he learned the history stuff.
38. Intrigued by these lines.
His luck took a turn for the better though in his early forties when at least a teaching position had opened up. The Hogwarts History of Magic professor had grown deathly ill and had to take an extended leave of absence; unfortunately, the professor’s conditions never improved and died a few months later.
I wonder if that's referencing a Harry Potter character.
39. Did the math. That would have been around 1999, and that's after the battle at Hogwarts took place.
It still could be a Harry Potter character though.
Who taught History of Magic?
40. Consulted Lord Wiki's cousin again. The class is the one that's taught by a ghost.
I'm guessing the ghost wasn't the one who got sick. And it really couldn't have died.
Maybe someone else was hired to do the job, and then he or she got sick?
41. Did another Australian accent practice video. I followed the advice of a friend who suggested I try reading nonfiction. So I read about Broken Hill in my new Treasures of Australia book.
I think (hope) that this time I sound more Australian and less British. That's not to say I don't love British accents.
42. Went to the YouTube channel of Stephniijane.
She's another singer, and has done a lot of videos.
Her profile says she has a degree in zoology and is a wildlife demonstrator.
At the time she wrote the profile, she was living in London as an au pair. I wonder if she's still doing that. I also wonder if she liked the job.
43. Listened to Stephniijane sing the Glee version of "Defying Gravity"
It's interesting. I don't think I've ever seen an interesting cover on Glee. I need to check it out.
44. Listened to Glee's version of "Defying Gravity".
It's less interesting than what I hoped for.
It sounds very much like the one in the musical.
45. Thought it would be funny if Stephniijane was simply singing the song wrong, and I'm liking it because it's different.
I think her version sounds different from the Glee version.
46. Listened to Stephniijane sing Katy Perry's "Firework".
In some parts, her voice sounds good.
Often I can't hear her well over the guitar.
47. Watched Stephniijane do one of her animal demonstrations.
This is with her pet potoroo. I've never heard of that.
She mentions that her most popular video is of her singing Lady Gaga's "Just Dance." She talks about how she gets mixed reviews. Some people love it and some people hate it.
I decided I'd watch it and see for myself.
I don't think she has a very powerful voice, but she does have a cute one.
48. Consulted Lord Wiki about the potoroo.
He says there are four types. Two of them are endangered. One of them (Gilbert's Potoroo) is the most endangered animal in Australia. There's not many of them left.
49. Learned from my Treasures of Australia book that the main streets in Broken Hill are named after minerals.
I'm looking at it on Google Maps.
I see Silver City Highway.
There's Argent Street. Is that a mineral?
Lord Wiki says it's a tincture. I wasn't sure what that was; so I asked him. He said it's a color used on a coat of arms.
50. Saw Galena Street.
Lord Wiki says Galena is the mineral form of lead sulfide.
There's a Gypsum Street.
Gypsum is made of calcium, sulfate, and water.
Lord Wiki says gypsum is used in the making of tofu. Interesting......
51. Saw that my Australian of the day is John Macquarie Antill. He's the grandson of the guy I wrote about two days ago: Henry Colden Antill.
Henry worked with Lachlan Macquarie, so I'm guessing that's why John Antill has Macquarie as his middle name.
52. Saw that John Antill did military work.
He won medals for that.
53. Saw that one of Antill's pastimes after retirement was "bowls". I'm not sure what that means.
He also liked gardening, woodwork, reading, and writing. He and his daughter wrote a play about William Redfern. It was called The Emancipist.
It's funny to read that since I was thinking about Redfern last night.
54. Amused because I saw, from IMDb that the woman who plays Julia Gillard in At Home With Julia was one of the stars of The Upside Down Show.
Her name's Amanda Bishop, and she played Mrs. Foil. I don't remember her...except maybe vaguely. It's been a long time since we watched that show.
55. Saw that Phil Lloyd, the guy who plays Tim Mathieson, is also the writer of the series.
56. Started to look at more of John Lampard's Flickr photos.
Today I'm going to look at his Spot Food and Film Festival pictures.
It's part of the Australian Film Festival.
Here's their website. They have a page about the Spot thing.
57. Thought these cupcakes are cute and colorful.
58. Saw different names on a walk of fame type thing. Here's one for an actor named Steve Bisley.
Lord Wiki says he was in Mad Max and currently he's on Sea Patrol. He was also on Water Rats and Sea Rescue.
I really haven't seen any of that stuff.
59. Saw Claudia Karvan has a circle on the Walk of Fame.
60. Saw that Peter Garrett was at the festival.
I have to admit, it took me about three seconds to remember who he was.
But I'm pleased with myself for figuring it out eventually.
61. Continued to watch At Home With Julia.
It has a lot of funny parts.
62. Found article about At Home With Julia. It's about Tim and Julia having a sex scene involving the Australian flag. I saw the headlines a few days ago, but didn't pay much attention. It wasn't of interest to me. Now that I've seen the show, I'm interested.
Some people were offended by the flag thing.
A spokesman for the show responded.
If it's OK for others to drape themselves in our flag for all manner of occasions, I really don't see why it can't be draped over our prime minister as a symbol of love.
Yeah...why not.
63. Read blog post from someone who found the show to be funny but disrespectful.
Scarlett Harris liked the first two episodes and felt it made Gillard seem more human. But she pointed out anti-feminist aspects of the program.
She doubts a show like this would be made about other Prime Ministers. She acknowledges that Rudd and others have been mocked in comedy, but it was about their public lives and not their private ones.
I don't know. She might have a point. There's probably some gender prejudice involved in the motivation behind the show.
But I still like it.
Gillard and Mathieson are portrayed as being kind of buffoons. But I think they're very sympathetic characters.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where no one would think twice about a female Prime Minister being in a de facto relationship with a hairdresser. Someday that will probably be the case. But I CAN imagine that there's truth behind the show. It can't be too easy being Mathieson in today's society. We still cling to the idea that in heterosexual relationships, it's the man who should have the more powerful career.
I imagine it's hard enough for most men to be in a relationship where his partner has more power and money. I think it would be even more difficult when you're constantly under media scrutiny.
That being said...is the show adding more salt to the wounds?
Maybe? Or maybe Tim and Julia find it funny. Do they have the ability to laugh at themselves while watching the show? Or do they feel it goes too far?
Do they even watch it?
64. Decided I personally feel the show isn't disrespectful or cruel. Why? Because it's actually made me kind of LIKE Julia Gillard.
I don't often give Tim Mathieson a lot of thought, but after seeing the show....I'm liking him too.
The characters are a bit silly, but they're also very lovely.
Now instead of seeing Gillard simply as the anti-gay marriage person who stole Kevin Rudd's job, I also see her as the woman wearing a bathrobe who doesn't know her way around Canberra.
65. Looked at the Australian Monopoly board.
Today's street for me is Victoria Square.
Well, I guess it's not really a street.
Lord Wiki says it's a public square.
66. Learned from Lord Wiki that Victoria Square has a statue of Queen Victoria.
67. Found Victoria Square on Google Maps.
It looks like there actually is a street called Victoria Square.
It's to the east of the square.
68. Read article from May 2010 about fixing up Victoria Square.
It seems for a long time there has been talk about fixing up the square, but people were slow at making actual plans to do something.
There's a Hilton in/near the square. The general manager of the hotel, Michael Schmitt feels revitalizing the square will be good for business. He says, Victoria Square at the moment is the centre of the city but not the heart.
I'm not sure if that's true or not; but I think it's a great quote.
69. Went to the Adelaide City Council's page about the redevelopment of the square.
One of their taglines is a bit off to me. They say, think inside the square.
I'm guessing it's a play on, think outside the box.
And in that saying , thinking INSIDE the box is a negative. The whole point of thinking outside the box is to be original.
So what's the point of thinking inside the square. Does it have a meaning? Or did they just like how it sounded?
I think it sounds cute, but I'm not sure if the message works for me.
70. Decided it probably works all right if you don't connect it to think outside the box.
Self-Indulgence, Mothers, Family Trees, and Famine Food
1. Felt angry and sad when reading The Distant Hours.
One of the themes of the book is people who selfishly hinder the dreams of others.
I hope I never do that to anyone—especially Jack.
Some relationships add feathers to our wings. Other relationships add bars to our cages.
Is that a corny metaphor?
Probably.
2. Had a chance to put my self-righteous stances into practice.
Earlier today, I told Jack I really love how we read our books at bedtime together. He reads his book. I read mine. I love that.
I said I hoped we would do it every night—meaning bedtime should be at a reasonable time so we're not too tired to read.
Well, Jack's been really into playing with Legos tonight. He wanted to start working on a Harry Potter set. I warned him there wasn't much time.
Then I thought about how it feels to be really into a project—the dread of having to quit because someone else says you have to.
I went up to Jack and asked him if he would like to skip reading so he can have more Lego time.
He said yes and acted very grateful.
I'm going to read with Mushu instead. He won't read with me, but he'll sit by me and purr.
3. Went to bed and had some Australian and Blogging related dreams.
In one of them, I find a website that has information about Australians who have Cystic Fibrosis. One of them is going to be an actress in an upcoming movie. I watch a short documentary about it, and think of linking to it on my blog.
In the other, Cherie from Waste Not Do Want has a recipe for a tuna fish salad. It has no tuna fish and she's substituted the mayonnaise with cream cheese.
It might be significant that I hate tuna fish sandwiches, and I have a strong aversion to mayonnaise. I'm not sure of the meaning behind the dream though.
4. Prompted by something on Statcounter to find a maybe-clue in my Jessica and Gavin mystery. On the Australian mining website, there's an interview by a person named named Jessica Burke. She's interviewing the CEO from a company called Kingsgate Consolidated. His name is Gavin Thomas.
This could be a dead end on a wild goose chase, but I'm thinking I should at least take a look.
I'll do it later. Maybe.
5. Learned from Jack that Guy Peace won an Emmy.
I didn't know he was nominated.
It turns out he won best supporting actor for a miniseries called Mildred Pierce. It's with Kate Winslet.
6. Consulted Lord Wiki about the miniseries because I thought Kate Winslet was kind of young to be having a daughter so old.
It turns out Kate Winslet is only twelve years older than the actress who played her daughter (Evan Rachel Wood).
7. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read the continuation of I Don't Mean To Stare, We don't Have To Breed.
8. Read my first post about that story thread to trigger my memory. That's actually helpful. I think I'll start doing that more often.
The last time I read the thread it was only one post long. Now two more posts have been added.
So...Frankie is this arrogant actor from a dynasty family. He's dating a girl named Gemini Chevalier. Her post is the second one in the thread.
9. Learned Gemini is from California. She feels somewhat out of place in the Australian-accent dominated Tallygarunga.
10. Finished reading the thread.
Frankie is wanting to have sex, and is hoping Gemini will give into him. He's not too patient about the whole thing.
11. Skimmed the biography of Gemini Chevalier, a bit.
Like Maya Arcemene, she's part Veela. Maya's a 1/2 Veela and Gemini is 1/4.
Also like Maya, she has pyrokinetic powers. Gemini's biography says it's due to her Veela heritage. I was wondering if Maya's pyrokinetic powers were Veela-related, but wasn't sure.
Now I know.
12. Consulted Lord Wiki's cousin about Veelas. I thought I consulted her before. But I must have not read carefully enough. She does say that Veelas can throw fire balls. I missed that the last time.
13. Started to read the biography.
14. Learned that Gemini's Patronus is a gryphon. I think that's magical, right? That's another thing she has in common with Maya. Maya has a magical creature for her Patronus—a dragon.
I'm not sure if Magical is the best term for these animals. They're part of the magical world, but do they really possess magical powers? Then we also can't really call them mythical, because in the Harry Potter universe they're real.
15. Consulted Lord Wiki about gryphons. He says they have the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle.
16. Learned from Lord Wiki that JK Rowling didn't invent the Hippogriff. It was an already established legendary creature—supposedly the offspring of a horse and gryphon.
17. Liked this about Gemini. Gerry has no problem mixing her styles and wearing Converse or army boots with a formal dress or a tiara with a singlet and ripped jeans.
I think that's really brave and creative. I try to be daring sometimes with clothes. It's hard for me to know whether I look innovative or completely foolish. I don't think we can know those things until we look at the photo albums five years later. Then it's either, Well, that looked pretty cool; or it's What the hell was I thinking?
18. Learned that Gemini sometimes sews her own clothes. I definitely admire that.
19. Learned that Gemini plays the guitar. I admire that too.
20. Started to read Gemini's history.
21. Realized Gemini's nickname is Gerry. It's been written that way all along, but I didn't notice until I started reading the history.
Personally I prefer Gemini over Gerry, but that's just me.
22. Learned that Gemini...Gerry....(whatever) was pretty much raised by a single mother. There was a father in the picture; but he was hardly in the picture. He has a thing for traveling, because he's a gypsy.
23. Learned that when Gemini was thirteen, she found out she had a half-sister. She was eager to meet the sister, but the sister didn't want to know her. The rejection was very rough on Gemini, and it led to her and her mom leaving California for Australia.
24. Saw that Gemini's face claim is Hanna Beth Merjos. She's a model. Here's a website about her.
25. Learned that my Australian of the day is Henry Angel.
He was a convict!
I haven't had many of those.
26. Learned that Henry was born in England in 1791.
He was sentenced to Australia when he was twenty-six. For what? I don't know.
He went on a ship called Neptune, and arrived in Sydney in May 1818.
Six years later he was part of an expedition. He went with eight other men, and they discovered the River Murray.
I was wondering why they called it that instead of the Murray River.
Lord Wiki says in South Australia the two words are reversed. It's called River Murray.
That's interesting.
27. Read more from Lord Wiki. He talks about the expedition too. It was led by two explorers—Hamilton Hume and William Hovel. If I'm understanding things right, they found the river near Albany.
Back then though it was neither the Murray River or the River Murray. It was probably just called, Hey, look there's a river over there!
28. Learned from this website that the Aboriginal name for the river was Millewa.
29. Learned, from Lord Wiki, that when Hume, Hovel, and their crew found the river, Hume named the river Hume. He didn't name it after himself. He named it in honor of his father.
Six years later, Charles Sturt (the name sake of Sturt house in Tallygarunga) rediscovered the river. He didn't realize it was already discovered and named, so he gave it the name Murray River.
30. Learned that Henry Angel got a ticket of leave after that adventure. Then he married the daughter of Mary Wade. Wow! I think she's the one who's an ancestor of Kevin Rudd.
Yep. Lord Wiki confirms that.
So Henry Angel is related to Kevin Rudd. I'm not sure how direct the relation is.
31. Wondered about Henry's wife. Her name was Mary Ledwidge. Yet her father's last name was Brooker and her mother's last name was Wade. Why wouldn't she have her father's last name?
32. Tried to find answers on the Mary Wade Family tree site.
It's not easy.
33. Read the Australian Dictionary of Biography more closely. I missed something important. Mary Ledwidge was a widow. That's why she had that last name. Originally her last name was Brooker.
I feel much better now.
34. Explored the family tree more. I'm trying to see if Henry and Mary produced Kevin Rudd's direct ancestors.
They had two kids, but one of them died at the age of two.
The other married a Charles Malcolm Inglis.
35. Struggled more with the family tree. It's hard because I can't see all of it. I don't know if there's some kind of glitch, it doesn't work with my browser, or you have to be a member to see the whole thing.
Or I might simply be doing something wrong.
36. Saw that Mary Wade's daughter (the one that married Henry Angel) was married TWICE before she married Henry.
When she was sixteen, she married John Hart. He died two years after they married.
Then she married Christopher Ledwidge. He died about a year after they married.
I'm trying not to be suspicious here. Maybe it wasn't unusual to have your spouse die young in those days.
37. Decided to give up on the family tree.
38. Went back to reading the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
They say that Mary Angel gave birth to sixteen of Henry's children. She also had two children from her first marriage.
When she died in 1890, she left ninety grandchildren and forty great-grandchildren. By now, there must be tons of descendants. And that's only one line of the Mary Wade family tree.
I think there're probably a lot of Australians who are related to Kevin Rudd.
39. Decided to take my mind off the family tree by reading the Gavin and Jessica mining interview.
40. Found the website for Kingsgate Consolidated Limited.
They do gold mining.
Here's their profile of Gavin Thomas. He's the CEO. One of his exciting accomplishments was discovering a gold deposit in Papua New Guinea.
41. Got mail from Australia!!!!!
I'm so excited!
It's a CD from Jayne from Gleeful. It's full of Australian music. VERY COOL.
And the envelope has koala stamps!
41. Heard bits and pieces of the songs as I labeled them on iTunes. So far I'm loving what I hear which is unusual for me. I rarely like songs immediately.
Maybe Jayne is one of my music soulmates.
42. Went back to Gavin and Jessica.
I was wondering about Jessica? Who is she?
I'm thinking she works for the Australian Mining website?
43. Watched a little bit of the video of the interview. For the most part I'm going to read the transcript though.
But anyway....
Gavin Thomas reminds me a bit of that actor. What's his name? He's the one in Jurassic Park.
44. Remembered the actor. Richard Attenborough.
45. Started to read the interview.
Gavin is a geologist and his mother was a geologist.
In the late 1960's and early 1970's it was hard to find a mining job. He ended up being a field assistant in Papua New Guinea. He loved it there and stayed for a long time.
46. Read that Gavin thinks that miners receive more respect these days than they did in the past.
I don't know enough to argue with him. I'll take his word for it.
47. Lost my respect for Gavin when I read that he said this.
Every person who thinks their mother isn’t s hero, isn’t a human being as far as I’m concerned.
Narrow-minded attitudes like that make my blood boil.
What about people who grew up with abusive mothers? Why should they see their mother as heroes?
There's probably a ton of people out there with bad mothers, but the one that comes to my mind is a fictional one. Rose Pickle. Her mother was awful—drunk all the time and sleeping around. Should she really see her mother as a hero?
I don't know. I guess it's how you define hero. Maybe for Gavin Thomas all you need to do is go through childbirth (or sign adoption papers) and you're a hero.
48. Started to listen to the Jayne CD.
I'm going to listen to more as I look at plants later.
I like listening to music while I look at photos.
49. Watched a video of an Australian guy doing back flips all over Europe. It's pretty amazing.
His name is Tim. He's 17. His thing is tricking. What is that? Magic?
50. Started to watch one of his tricking videos. Maybe that will enlighten me.
It seems to be some kind of gymnastics thing.
I'm impressed.
As a child, I couldn't even manage a cartwheel.
51. Learned from Lord Wiki that tricking is connected to martial arts.
There's a big Trickster community on YouTube.
I love learning new things like this.
52. Looked at massive DK cinema book with Jack. We saw a few photos from Australian movies—Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee, The Year of Living Dangerously.
I was reminded that Peter Weir directed Witness.
It's so weird though. I had no idea we had that book, and I don't remember where we got it. Did we buy it? Get it as a gift? Inherit it?
53. Started to get more plant education from Arthur Chapman's photos.
And I'm also listening to Jayne's music.
54. Liked this photo of Button Everlasting Daisies.
Lord Wiki says the Latin name of this flower changed in 2008. It used to be called Helichrysum Scorpiodes. Now it's called Coroindium Scorpiodes. I wonder if the scorp is related to the scorp in scorpion. Is scorpion a Latin word?
55. Learned from this etymology dictionary that the word scorpion comes from the Latin word scorpionem.
56. Wondered why Latin words are italicized.
57. Liked this photo of the Trailing Guinea Flower.
58. Thought these flowers looked like purple poodles.
59. Thought these Broad-Leaved Drumsticks looked interesting.
The Australian government has a page on them on their website. They say the flowers are related to Banksias. That's one of the May Gibb flowers, I believe.
60. Reminded by Lord Wiki that May Gibbs had Banksia Men. They're the villains in the book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.
61. Consulted Lord Wiki about Morinda citrifolia.
It has a variety of common names including Indian Mulberry, dog dumpling, kumudu, beach mulberry, and cheese fruit.
Arthur Chapman uses the cheese fruit term.
Lord Wiki says the plant is native to South East Asia and Australasia. Now it's cultivated in many tropical areas.
62. Learned the fruit has a bad smell....I guess like smelly cheese. And some people call it Vomit Fruit. Yuck!
It reminds me of the Durian. I've never eaten a Durian, but I've tasted Durian ice-cream. It tasted kind of cheesy.
63. Learned that the Cheese fruit is a famine food.
Lord Wiki explained to me that this is a food people eat during hard times. It's associated with starvation and poverty. I guess other foods in that category would be potatoes and cabbage.
64. Reminded by Lord Wiki that lobster used to be seen as a poverty food.
I remember learning that in the past and thinking it was quite fascinating.
65. Saw that Lord Wiki doesn't list cabbage and potato as poverty foods. I guess maybe because they're eaten all the time? I think maybe famine foods are ones that people usually avoid eating when there's no famine.
66. Saw a picture of the inside of the Cheese fruit.
67. Read article about the lobster thing.
It's amazing.
Before the 1880's, it was seen as an almost shameful food. American servants negotiated agreements promising they wouldn't have to eat lobster more than twice a week.
Then it started becoming more popular. The prices became high around the 1950's because of overfishing. There were less lobsters and rare things are usually more expensive.
68. Watched the season premiere of season 3 of The Sing Off. One of the groups has an Australian! I'm excited about that. Sadly, he wasn't on the first episode because he had to return to Australia. One of his family members is ill.
My heart goes out to that family.
One of the other groups did a song called "Secret" by One Republic. I had one of those moments of I've heard this song before. WHERE?
Lord Wiki said it's been played in various TV and movie trailers.
I looked it up in reference to Lost and found this beautiful promo. I don't think I've seen it before tonight.
Now I'm stuck back into one of my Lost crying moods. You know how some people get drunk and become annoyingly emotional. I don't do alcohol to get that effect. All I need is to watch a Lost video on YouTube.
69. Thought I'd want to watch another Lost video.
Instead I found myself wanting to hear this song.
Now I'm missing Lost AND Offspring.
The good news is Modern Family is coming back on Wednesday. I'll have that.
70. Decided I have to watch one Lost video.
I'm going to forgo the childbirth one this time, and do Ben scene instead.
I think the Emmy's should have awards for best scenes, and this could definitely be a winner.
And here's one of my other favorite scenes...not a Lost one. It's from True Blood.
I'm being very self-indulgent right now.
I better post before I end up with 50 embedded videos.
One of the themes of the book is people who selfishly hinder the dreams of others.
I hope I never do that to anyone—especially Jack.
Some relationships add feathers to our wings. Other relationships add bars to our cages.
Is that a corny metaphor?
Probably.
2. Had a chance to put my self-righteous stances into practice.
Earlier today, I told Jack I really love how we read our books at bedtime together. He reads his book. I read mine. I love that.
I said I hoped we would do it every night—meaning bedtime should be at a reasonable time so we're not too tired to read.
Well, Jack's been really into playing with Legos tonight. He wanted to start working on a Harry Potter set. I warned him there wasn't much time.
Then I thought about how it feels to be really into a project—the dread of having to quit because someone else says you have to.
I went up to Jack and asked him if he would like to skip reading so he can have more Lego time.
He said yes and acted very grateful.
I'm going to read with Mushu instead. He won't read with me, but he'll sit by me and purr.
3. Went to bed and had some Australian and Blogging related dreams.
In one of them, I find a website that has information about Australians who have Cystic Fibrosis. One of them is going to be an actress in an upcoming movie. I watch a short documentary about it, and think of linking to it on my blog.
In the other, Cherie from Waste Not Do Want has a recipe for a tuna fish salad. It has no tuna fish and she's substituted the mayonnaise with cream cheese.
It might be significant that I hate tuna fish sandwiches, and I have a strong aversion to mayonnaise. I'm not sure of the meaning behind the dream though.
4. Prompted by something on Statcounter to find a maybe-clue in my Jessica and Gavin mystery. On the Australian mining website, there's an interview by a person named named Jessica Burke. She's interviewing the CEO from a company called Kingsgate Consolidated. His name is Gavin Thomas.
This could be a dead end on a wild goose chase, but I'm thinking I should at least take a look.
I'll do it later. Maybe.
5. Learned from Jack that Guy Peace won an Emmy.
I didn't know he was nominated.
It turns out he won best supporting actor for a miniseries called Mildred Pierce. It's with Kate Winslet.
6. Consulted Lord Wiki about the miniseries because I thought Kate Winslet was kind of young to be having a daughter so old.
It turns out Kate Winslet is only twelve years older than the actress who played her daughter (Evan Rachel Wood).
7. Went to Tallygarunga.
Today I'm going to read the continuation of I Don't Mean To Stare, We don't Have To Breed.
8. Read my first post about that story thread to trigger my memory. That's actually helpful. I think I'll start doing that more often.
The last time I read the thread it was only one post long. Now two more posts have been added.
So...Frankie is this arrogant actor from a dynasty family. He's dating a girl named Gemini Chevalier. Her post is the second one in the thread.
9. Learned Gemini is from California. She feels somewhat out of place in the Australian-accent dominated Tallygarunga.
10. Finished reading the thread.
Frankie is wanting to have sex, and is hoping Gemini will give into him. He's not too patient about the whole thing.
11. Skimmed the biography of Gemini Chevalier, a bit.
Like Maya Arcemene, she's part Veela. Maya's a 1/2 Veela and Gemini is 1/4.
Also like Maya, she has pyrokinetic powers. Gemini's biography says it's due to her Veela heritage. I was wondering if Maya's pyrokinetic powers were Veela-related, but wasn't sure.
Now I know.
12. Consulted Lord Wiki's cousin about Veelas. I thought I consulted her before. But I must have not read carefully enough. She does say that Veelas can throw fire balls. I missed that the last time.
13. Started to read the biography.
14. Learned that Gemini's Patronus is a gryphon. I think that's magical, right? That's another thing she has in common with Maya. Maya has a magical creature for her Patronus—a dragon.
I'm not sure if Magical is the best term for these animals. They're part of the magical world, but do they really possess magical powers? Then we also can't really call them mythical, because in the Harry Potter universe they're real.
15. Consulted Lord Wiki about gryphons. He says they have the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle.
16. Learned from Lord Wiki that JK Rowling didn't invent the Hippogriff. It was an already established legendary creature—supposedly the offspring of a horse and gryphon.
17. Liked this about Gemini. Gerry has no problem mixing her styles and wearing Converse or army boots with a formal dress or a tiara with a singlet and ripped jeans.
I think that's really brave and creative. I try to be daring sometimes with clothes. It's hard for me to know whether I look innovative or completely foolish. I don't think we can know those things until we look at the photo albums five years later. Then it's either, Well, that looked pretty cool; or it's What the hell was I thinking?
18. Learned that Gemini sometimes sews her own clothes. I definitely admire that.
19. Learned that Gemini plays the guitar. I admire that too.
20. Started to read Gemini's history.
21. Realized Gemini's nickname is Gerry. It's been written that way all along, but I didn't notice until I started reading the history.
Personally I prefer Gemini over Gerry, but that's just me.
22. Learned that Gemini...Gerry....(whatever) was pretty much raised by a single mother. There was a father in the picture; but he was hardly in the picture. He has a thing for traveling, because he's a gypsy.
23. Learned that when Gemini was thirteen, she found out she had a half-sister. She was eager to meet the sister, but the sister didn't want to know her. The rejection was very rough on Gemini, and it led to her and her mom leaving California for Australia.
24. Saw that Gemini's face claim is Hanna Beth Merjos. She's a model. Here's a website about her.
25. Learned that my Australian of the day is Henry Angel.
He was a convict!
I haven't had many of those.
26. Learned that Henry was born in England in 1791.
He was sentenced to Australia when he was twenty-six. For what? I don't know.
He went on a ship called Neptune, and arrived in Sydney in May 1818.
Six years later he was part of an expedition. He went with eight other men, and they discovered the River Murray.
I was wondering why they called it that instead of the Murray River.
Lord Wiki says in South Australia the two words are reversed. It's called River Murray.
That's interesting.
27. Read more from Lord Wiki. He talks about the expedition too. It was led by two explorers—Hamilton Hume and William Hovel. If I'm understanding things right, they found the river near Albany.
Back then though it was neither the Murray River or the River Murray. It was probably just called, Hey, look there's a river over there!
28. Learned from this website that the Aboriginal name for the river was Millewa.
29. Learned, from Lord Wiki, that when Hume, Hovel, and their crew found the river, Hume named the river Hume. He didn't name it after himself. He named it in honor of his father.
Six years later, Charles Sturt (the name sake of Sturt house in Tallygarunga) rediscovered the river. He didn't realize it was already discovered and named, so he gave it the name Murray River.
30. Learned that Henry Angel got a ticket of leave after that adventure. Then he married the daughter of Mary Wade. Wow! I think she's the one who's an ancestor of Kevin Rudd.
Yep. Lord Wiki confirms that.
So Henry Angel is related to Kevin Rudd. I'm not sure how direct the relation is.
31. Wondered about Henry's wife. Her name was Mary Ledwidge. Yet her father's last name was Brooker and her mother's last name was Wade. Why wouldn't she have her father's last name?
32. Tried to find answers on the Mary Wade Family tree site.
It's not easy.
33. Read the Australian Dictionary of Biography more closely. I missed something important. Mary Ledwidge was a widow. That's why she had that last name. Originally her last name was Brooker.
I feel much better now.
34. Explored the family tree more. I'm trying to see if Henry and Mary produced Kevin Rudd's direct ancestors.
They had two kids, but one of them died at the age of two.
The other married a Charles Malcolm Inglis.
35. Struggled more with the family tree. It's hard because I can't see all of it. I don't know if there's some kind of glitch, it doesn't work with my browser, or you have to be a member to see the whole thing.
Or I might simply be doing something wrong.
36. Saw that Mary Wade's daughter (the one that married Henry Angel) was married TWICE before she married Henry.
When she was sixteen, she married John Hart. He died two years after they married.
Then she married Christopher Ledwidge. He died about a year after they married.
I'm trying not to be suspicious here. Maybe it wasn't unusual to have your spouse die young in those days.
37. Decided to give up on the family tree.
38. Went back to reading the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
They say that Mary Angel gave birth to sixteen of Henry's children. She also had two children from her first marriage.
When she died in 1890, she left ninety grandchildren and forty great-grandchildren. By now, there must be tons of descendants. And that's only one line of the Mary Wade family tree.
I think there're probably a lot of Australians who are related to Kevin Rudd.
39. Decided to take my mind off the family tree by reading the Gavin and Jessica mining interview.
40. Found the website for Kingsgate Consolidated Limited.
They do gold mining.
Here's their profile of Gavin Thomas. He's the CEO. One of his exciting accomplishments was discovering a gold deposit in Papua New Guinea.
41. Got mail from Australia!!!!!
I'm so excited!
It's a CD from Jayne from Gleeful. It's full of Australian music. VERY COOL.
And the envelope has koala stamps!
41. Heard bits and pieces of the songs as I labeled them on iTunes. So far I'm loving what I hear which is unusual for me. I rarely like songs immediately.
Maybe Jayne is one of my music soulmates.
42. Went back to Gavin and Jessica.
I was wondering about Jessica? Who is she?
I'm thinking she works for the Australian Mining website?
43. Watched a little bit of the video of the interview. For the most part I'm going to read the transcript though.
But anyway....
Gavin Thomas reminds me a bit of that actor. What's his name? He's the one in Jurassic Park.
44. Remembered the actor. Richard Attenborough.
45. Started to read the interview.
Gavin is a geologist and his mother was a geologist.
In the late 1960's and early 1970's it was hard to find a mining job. He ended up being a field assistant in Papua New Guinea. He loved it there and stayed for a long time.
46. Read that Gavin thinks that miners receive more respect these days than they did in the past.
I don't know enough to argue with him. I'll take his word for it.
47. Lost my respect for Gavin when I read that he said this.
Every person who thinks their mother isn’t s hero, isn’t a human being as far as I’m concerned.
Narrow-minded attitudes like that make my blood boil.
What about people who grew up with abusive mothers? Why should they see their mother as heroes?
There's probably a ton of people out there with bad mothers, but the one that comes to my mind is a fictional one. Rose Pickle. Her mother was awful—drunk all the time and sleeping around. Should she really see her mother as a hero?
I don't know. I guess it's how you define hero. Maybe for Gavin Thomas all you need to do is go through childbirth (or sign adoption papers) and you're a hero.
48. Started to listen to the Jayne CD.
I'm going to listen to more as I look at plants later.
I like listening to music while I look at photos.
49. Watched a video of an Australian guy doing back flips all over Europe. It's pretty amazing.
His name is Tim. He's 17. His thing is tricking. What is that? Magic?
50. Started to watch one of his tricking videos. Maybe that will enlighten me.
It seems to be some kind of gymnastics thing.
I'm impressed.
As a child, I couldn't even manage a cartwheel.
51. Learned from Lord Wiki that tricking is connected to martial arts.
There's a big Trickster community on YouTube.
I love learning new things like this.
52. Looked at massive DK cinema book with Jack. We saw a few photos from Australian movies—Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee, The Year of Living Dangerously.
I was reminded that Peter Weir directed Witness.
It's so weird though. I had no idea we had that book, and I don't remember where we got it. Did we buy it? Get it as a gift? Inherit it?
53. Started to get more plant education from Arthur Chapman's photos.
And I'm also listening to Jayne's music.
54. Liked this photo of Button Everlasting Daisies.
Lord Wiki says the Latin name of this flower changed in 2008. It used to be called Helichrysum Scorpiodes. Now it's called Coroindium Scorpiodes. I wonder if the scorp is related to the scorp in scorpion. Is scorpion a Latin word?
55. Learned from this etymology dictionary that the word scorpion comes from the Latin word scorpionem.
56. Wondered why Latin words are italicized.
57. Liked this photo of the Trailing Guinea Flower.
58. Thought these flowers looked like purple poodles.
59. Thought these Broad-Leaved Drumsticks looked interesting.
The Australian government has a page on them on their website. They say the flowers are related to Banksias. That's one of the May Gibb flowers, I believe.
60. Reminded by Lord Wiki that May Gibbs had Banksia Men. They're the villains in the book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.
61. Consulted Lord Wiki about Morinda citrifolia.
It has a variety of common names including Indian Mulberry, dog dumpling, kumudu, beach mulberry, and cheese fruit.
Arthur Chapman uses the cheese fruit term.
Lord Wiki says the plant is native to South East Asia and Australasia. Now it's cultivated in many tropical areas.
62. Learned the fruit has a bad smell....I guess like smelly cheese. And some people call it Vomit Fruit. Yuck!
It reminds me of the Durian. I've never eaten a Durian, but I've tasted Durian ice-cream. It tasted kind of cheesy.
63. Learned that the Cheese fruit is a famine food.
Lord Wiki explained to me that this is a food people eat during hard times. It's associated with starvation and poverty. I guess other foods in that category would be potatoes and cabbage.
64. Reminded by Lord Wiki that lobster used to be seen as a poverty food.
I remember learning that in the past and thinking it was quite fascinating.
65. Saw that Lord Wiki doesn't list cabbage and potato as poverty foods. I guess maybe because they're eaten all the time? I think maybe famine foods are ones that people usually avoid eating when there's no famine.
66. Saw a picture of the inside of the Cheese fruit.
67. Read article about the lobster thing.
It's amazing.
Before the 1880's, it was seen as an almost shameful food. American servants negotiated agreements promising they wouldn't have to eat lobster more than twice a week.
Then it started becoming more popular. The prices became high around the 1950's because of overfishing. There were less lobsters and rare things are usually more expensive.
68. Watched the season premiere of season 3 of The Sing Off. One of the groups has an Australian! I'm excited about that. Sadly, he wasn't on the first episode because he had to return to Australia. One of his family members is ill.
My heart goes out to that family.
One of the other groups did a song called "Secret" by One Republic. I had one of those moments of I've heard this song before. WHERE?
Lord Wiki said it's been played in various TV and movie trailers.
I looked it up in reference to Lost and found this beautiful promo. I don't think I've seen it before tonight.
Now I'm stuck back into one of my Lost crying moods. You know how some people get drunk and become annoyingly emotional. I don't do alcohol to get that effect. All I need is to watch a Lost video on YouTube.
69. Thought I'd want to watch another Lost video.
Instead I found myself wanting to hear this song.
Now I'm missing Lost AND Offspring.
The good news is Modern Family is coming back on Wednesday. I'll have that.
70. Decided I have to watch one Lost video.
I'm going to forgo the childbirth one this time, and do Ben scene instead.
I think the Emmy's should have awards for best scenes, and this could definitely be a winner.
And here's one of my other favorite scenes...not a Lost one. It's from True Blood.
I'm being very self-indulgent right now.
I better post before I end up with 50 embedded videos.
Finnikin, Fakeness, Forgiveness, And Frans
1. Realized I may have to follow through with my new rule of quitting a book after two chapters. I read the first chapter of Finnikin of the Rock. So far I'm bored with it. I'll read one more chapter and see what I think. If I don't like it, I'll return it to the shelf and maybe try again one day.
I don't think it's a bad book. I've heard very good things about it. It's just not my thing.
Well, it could be my thing. Who knows. Maybe something in the second chapter will grab me.
2. Read James' post about his return to Sydney. He was a recipient of someone's random act of kindness. That's really cool.
That actually happened to us in New Jersey. We were at an arcade and someone gave us their leftover game tickets. I realized then that although we've occasionally given tickets to strangers; I think New Jersey was the first time tickets were given to us. It was pretty cool.
I disagreed with James when he said, That said, the first day back at work after a holiday always tends to be a fairly nice day doesn’t it? You spend a lot of the day answering the question “how was your holiday?” and receiving compliments about your tan.
I used to hate going back to school or work after a holiday. I always found it depressing. The only exception would be if the holiday wasn't that great; and I had a major crush on someone back home. Then I might be eager to return.
3. Went to Tallygarunga. I'm going to read the continuation of Advanced Dada Lesson 1: Boggarts and Ridikulus.
Two students have entered the story; Reade Ainsworth and Cecilia Chorrol.
Cecilia is new to me.
Reade is nervous to be in the class because Arti isn't with him. He's a bit attached to his girlfriend; not just for romantic reasons, but because Jackson (the bully) tends to leave him alone when Arti is around.
Cecelia is optimistic about the class even though she doesn't tend to do good in school. It says here, Professor Rodrigez seemed like she'd give Cecilia a fair shot at a passing grade if she put enough effort in, so she was going to try her best. Of course, Cecilia's best was a little less than everyone else's average, but this was beside the point.
Some people have to work much harder than others to learn things.
Well, hopefully she'll enjoy the class and do fairly well in it.
4. Finished reading the first two chapters of Finnikin of the Rock. I think I'll continue with it. Some if it's getting interesting, sort of a reflection of our own world. It's confusing though. There're all these names that are unfamiliar to me, and I end up getting people confused with each other.
It would be helpful if the book had one of those character guides.
5. Consulted Lord Wiki about the characters in Finnikin of the Rock, and I think I just got a major spoiler. It's my fault. I knew the risks of talking to Lord Wiki about fictional things. He tends to give away too much information.
I guess I thought I'd be safe if I avoided the plot description and looked at only the characters.
6. Started to read the biography of Cecilia Chorrol.
Her face claim is a Norwegian singer named Marit Larsen.
Here she is singing at a green grocer in Oslo.
She's very cute. And I like her singing.
7. Learned that Cecilia was born in Kilcoy, Australia. It sounds familiar to me...I mean in a Tallygarunga context. Was there another character from there?
8. Googled Kilcoy and Tallygarunga. I found only Cecilia's biography, so I guess she's the only witch or wizard from there.
9. Consulted Lord Wiki about Kilcoy. He says it's in Queensland.
Here it is on Google Maps. It's about 1.5 hours north-west of Brisbane.
10. Learned that Cecilia is a fourth year student. She's Muggleborn, and her Patronus is a wasp.
A wasp? That's very interesting.
11. Learned that Cecilia is petite, but in excellent physical shape from doing work on the farm.
12. Learned Celia is not up to date with pop culture. She's an old fashioned farming type girl.
She believes in using good manners. It says here, She thinks things like politeness and company manners have the utmost importance even if there is no sincerity behind them.
What is meant by sincerity? I think there's sincerity just in the fact that someone is trying to be kind. I think some people are so worried about being fake that they're rude to people they hardly even know. To me gross fake is when people are overly enthusiastic about getting together with you when they don't even like you. Oh! We really should get together and have lunch!
But I think it's nice to greet people in a friendly way. I think it's nice to say please and thank you. I think it's nice to say sorry if you bump into someone.
If someone gives you a gift, is it fake to say thank you if you dislike it? I don't think so. You can at least be thankful that they made an effort. What's gross fake to me is acting overly excited about a gift when you don't really like it. To me, action speaks louder than words. If you say you totally love the necklace I bought you, I'm not going to believe it if I never see you wearing it.
13. Learned that Cecilia is not always very nice.
Cecilia may be quiet and a little passive, but when it comes to fulfilling her aspirations she can be ruthless. She is capable of doing amoral or even cruel things if she feels the path to her goals is being threatened.
Yikes.
I don't know if I know anyone like that. Well, at least they're not open about it.
I mean nothing is screaming out to me right now. Yes, that reminds me of so and so......
I guess that's a very good thing.
14. Started to read Cecilia's history.
She's a twin.
Her story has some similarities to my fictional blog. Cecilia's sister Vivian is a prodigy. The witch in my story has a sister that's very intelligent. It's different though because Cecilia liked fairy tales and daydreaming. In my story, the witch had no interest in that type of stuff.
15. Thought more about fakeness. I feel some people get this idea that they shouldn't be friendly towards people they don't know and love. To me, they appear rude and unwelcoming. They make me uncomfortable. Fortunately I don't encounter these type of people too often.
I think it makes sense not to be overly friendly with people we knowingly dislike. We don't need to go up to our enemies and say, Hi! How are you! Wow you're looking great! We should get together sometime. That's pretty annoying...and confusing. It probably wouldn't hurt though to be civil—give a nod or small wave. It can be like Draco and Harry in the train station.
What would be the best is if the enemies went up to each other, and one of them said, Hey, look I'm sorry for what happened. Maybe we can talk about things and end this whole disaster between us. But people are rarely brave enough for that.
16. Thought about a time recently when I was nice to someone even though I had ill feelings towards them. Was that fake of me? Probably. Would it have been better if I said, Hey, you really bothered me with things you said last time I saw you. I really have lost a lot of respect for you.
I doubt it. Who needs all that extra drama? I think a moment like that is worth it when we really care about the person and want our relationship to be honest and whole. If we don't care that much, I think it's better to just fake it a bit. I wasn't overly friendly and enthusiastic with this person. I was polite and nice, but in a distant and reserved kind of way.
17. Decided to illustrate the difference between okay fake and gross fake—well, in my opinion.
Here's an okay fake email beginning. Hi! It's so nice to hear from you. How have you been doing?
Here's a gross fake email. Hi!!!!! I've missed you so much! I'm so excited to hear from you!!!!!! My husband and I were just talking about you yesterday. We think about you guys a lot. We definitely need to get together soon!
Now if the person really means it, it's not bad at all. It's really nice and awesome. But if they're faking it, it's just too confusing. Then how in the world are we supposed to know when people really DO love us?
18. Saw that my Australian of the day is another Australian who was into the education thing.
His name was Peter Corsar Anderson.
He was born in Scotland.
Peter was good at Hebrew, church history, rifle shooting, and golfing.
He studied theology, but ended up not pursuing it at his career. The reason given by the Australian Dictionary of Biography is that he had a breakdown in health. Yet then he moved to Australia and got a career in the education business. Working with children is a lot of work. I think you'd need to be healthy for that as well.
Well, maybe he started to feel better, but he had already lost interest in theology.
For his health, Peter went to visit his brother in Western Australia. He was in his mid-twenties.
Maybe Peter just needed some clean air and time to think.
He soon ventured off to Victoria and got a job at the Geelong Church of England Grammar School.
After Peter worked there, he went back to Western Australia. He became the Headmaster of Scotch College. He had the job for 41 years. That's a pretty long time. It sounds like he did a good job. The school didn't do well under the previous headmaster. With Anderson in charge, it became one of the leading independent schools in Western Australia.
19. Read article about Jandamarra O'Shane. When he was only six-years-old, a man came to his school playground and set him on fire. Now it's fifteen years later and Jandamarra is ready to forgive the man who hurt him so much. I think that's very brave and noble of him.
I believe in his forgiveness because he's had time to deal with these issues. I find it difficult to believe people who are immediately ready to forgive someone after a tragedy. Yes. You killed the love of my life. But I forgive you. Sometimes people want to forgive; and they say they forgive. But deep in their hearts they don't really feel forgiving. Or maybe they do. I don't know. The idea is so foreign to me.
I think after fifteen years I could maybe forgive someone for doing something totally awful—like setting me on fire. I think my forgiveness would come from the hope that the criminal has regrets for what he has done and has changed for the better. If I found out he didn't feel guilty and was still an evil asshole, I'd take back my forgiveness.
Anyway, I hope the arson reacts in a way that makes him deserving of Jandamarra's forgiveness.
The story sounds familiar to me, by the way. I think I read about it before. I'm guessing maybe he's related to Pat O'Shane and I read it when I wrote about her.
20. Looked at my post about Pat O'Shane. Jandamarra is her nephew.
21. Went to Mousie's Aussie music database.
The song for me today is "Cigarettes and Suitcases" by Something For Kate
It sounds familiar to me. I might have heard it before.
22. Started to look at page 12 of Frans de Wit's Australia set.
This place looks fun. It's little shops—kind of looks historical and touristy.
23. Loved this picture of Australia looking like Ireland.
It's not the first time I've seen Australia being Ireland.
24. Excited to see some snow in Australia.
25. Saw a witch's face in this tree. She looks a little scary, but I think she's probably nice.
26. Saw that I ended up going past page 12 of the pictures. Now I'm on page 13. It's the last page.
27. Heard this song on iTunes.
I was totally in the mood for it.
It's a nice way for me to end my time with Frans de Wit.
28. Felt thankful to everyone who reads my blog. And I'm also thankful for all the writers, photographers, singers, etc. who keep me entertained (for free!) as I surf the internet.
I don't think it's a bad book. I've heard very good things about it. It's just not my thing.
Well, it could be my thing. Who knows. Maybe something in the second chapter will grab me.
2. Read James' post about his return to Sydney. He was a recipient of someone's random act of kindness. That's really cool.
That actually happened to us in New Jersey. We were at an arcade and someone gave us their leftover game tickets. I realized then that although we've occasionally given tickets to strangers; I think New Jersey was the first time tickets were given to us. It was pretty cool.
I disagreed with James when he said, That said, the first day back at work after a holiday always tends to be a fairly nice day doesn’t it? You spend a lot of the day answering the question “how was your holiday?” and receiving compliments about your tan.
I used to hate going back to school or work after a holiday. I always found it depressing. The only exception would be if the holiday wasn't that great; and I had a major crush on someone back home. Then I might be eager to return.
3. Went to Tallygarunga. I'm going to read the continuation of Advanced Dada Lesson 1: Boggarts and Ridikulus.
Two students have entered the story; Reade Ainsworth and Cecilia Chorrol.
Cecilia is new to me.
Reade is nervous to be in the class because Arti isn't with him. He's a bit attached to his girlfriend; not just for romantic reasons, but because Jackson (the bully) tends to leave him alone when Arti is around.
Cecelia is optimistic about the class even though she doesn't tend to do good in school. It says here, Professor Rodrigez seemed like she'd give Cecilia a fair shot at a passing grade if she put enough effort in, so she was going to try her best. Of course, Cecilia's best was a little less than everyone else's average, but this was beside the point.
Some people have to work much harder than others to learn things.
Well, hopefully she'll enjoy the class and do fairly well in it.
4. Finished reading the first two chapters of Finnikin of the Rock. I think I'll continue with it. Some if it's getting interesting, sort of a reflection of our own world. It's confusing though. There're all these names that are unfamiliar to me, and I end up getting people confused with each other.
It would be helpful if the book had one of those character guides.
5. Consulted Lord Wiki about the characters in Finnikin of the Rock, and I think I just got a major spoiler. It's my fault. I knew the risks of talking to Lord Wiki about fictional things. He tends to give away too much information.
I guess I thought I'd be safe if I avoided the plot description and looked at only the characters.
6. Started to read the biography of Cecilia Chorrol.
Her face claim is a Norwegian singer named Marit Larsen.
Here she is singing at a green grocer in Oslo.
She's very cute. And I like her singing.
7. Learned that Cecilia was born in Kilcoy, Australia. It sounds familiar to me...I mean in a Tallygarunga context. Was there another character from there?
8. Googled Kilcoy and Tallygarunga. I found only Cecilia's biography, so I guess she's the only witch or wizard from there.
9. Consulted Lord Wiki about Kilcoy. He says it's in Queensland.
Here it is on Google Maps. It's about 1.5 hours north-west of Brisbane.
10. Learned that Cecilia is a fourth year student. She's Muggleborn, and her Patronus is a wasp.
A wasp? That's very interesting.
11. Learned that Cecilia is petite, but in excellent physical shape from doing work on the farm.
12. Learned Celia is not up to date with pop culture. She's an old fashioned farming type girl.
She believes in using good manners. It says here, She thinks things like politeness and company manners have the utmost importance even if there is no sincerity behind them.
What is meant by sincerity? I think there's sincerity just in the fact that someone is trying to be kind. I think some people are so worried about being fake that they're rude to people they hardly even know. To me gross fake is when people are overly enthusiastic about getting together with you when they don't even like you. Oh! We really should get together and have lunch!
But I think it's nice to greet people in a friendly way. I think it's nice to say please and thank you. I think it's nice to say sorry if you bump into someone.
If someone gives you a gift, is it fake to say thank you if you dislike it? I don't think so. You can at least be thankful that they made an effort. What's gross fake to me is acting overly excited about a gift when you don't really like it. To me, action speaks louder than words. If you say you totally love the necklace I bought you, I'm not going to believe it if I never see you wearing it.
13. Learned that Cecilia is not always very nice.
Cecilia may be quiet and a little passive, but when it comes to fulfilling her aspirations she can be ruthless. She is capable of doing amoral or even cruel things if she feels the path to her goals is being threatened.
Yikes.
I don't know if I know anyone like that. Well, at least they're not open about it.
I mean nothing is screaming out to me right now. Yes, that reminds me of so and so......
I guess that's a very good thing.
14. Started to read Cecilia's history.
She's a twin.
Her story has some similarities to my fictional blog. Cecilia's sister Vivian is a prodigy. The witch in my story has a sister that's very intelligent. It's different though because Cecilia liked fairy tales and daydreaming. In my story, the witch had no interest in that type of stuff.
15. Thought more about fakeness. I feel some people get this idea that they shouldn't be friendly towards people they don't know and love. To me, they appear rude and unwelcoming. They make me uncomfortable. Fortunately I don't encounter these type of people too often.
I think it makes sense not to be overly friendly with people we knowingly dislike. We don't need to go up to our enemies and say, Hi! How are you! Wow you're looking great! We should get together sometime. That's pretty annoying...and confusing. It probably wouldn't hurt though to be civil—give a nod or small wave. It can be like Draco and Harry in the train station.
What would be the best is if the enemies went up to each other, and one of them said, Hey, look I'm sorry for what happened. Maybe we can talk about things and end this whole disaster between us. But people are rarely brave enough for that.
16. Thought about a time recently when I was nice to someone even though I had ill feelings towards them. Was that fake of me? Probably. Would it have been better if I said, Hey, you really bothered me with things you said last time I saw you. I really have lost a lot of respect for you.
I doubt it. Who needs all that extra drama? I think a moment like that is worth it when we really care about the person and want our relationship to be honest and whole. If we don't care that much, I think it's better to just fake it a bit. I wasn't overly friendly and enthusiastic with this person. I was polite and nice, but in a distant and reserved kind of way.
17. Decided to illustrate the difference between okay fake and gross fake—well, in my opinion.
Here's an okay fake email beginning. Hi! It's so nice to hear from you. How have you been doing?
Here's a gross fake email. Hi!!!!! I've missed you so much! I'm so excited to hear from you!!!!!! My husband and I were just talking about you yesterday. We think about you guys a lot. We definitely need to get together soon!
Now if the person really means it, it's not bad at all. It's really nice and awesome. But if they're faking it, it's just too confusing. Then how in the world are we supposed to know when people really DO love us?
18. Saw that my Australian of the day is another Australian who was into the education thing.
His name was Peter Corsar Anderson.
He was born in Scotland.
Peter was good at Hebrew, church history, rifle shooting, and golfing.
He studied theology, but ended up not pursuing it at his career. The reason given by the Australian Dictionary of Biography is that he had a breakdown in health. Yet then he moved to Australia and got a career in the education business. Working with children is a lot of work. I think you'd need to be healthy for that as well.
Well, maybe he started to feel better, but he had already lost interest in theology.
For his health, Peter went to visit his brother in Western Australia. He was in his mid-twenties.
Maybe Peter just needed some clean air and time to think.
He soon ventured off to Victoria and got a job at the Geelong Church of England Grammar School.
After Peter worked there, he went back to Western Australia. He became the Headmaster of Scotch College. He had the job for 41 years. That's a pretty long time. It sounds like he did a good job. The school didn't do well under the previous headmaster. With Anderson in charge, it became one of the leading independent schools in Western Australia.
19. Read article about Jandamarra O'Shane. When he was only six-years-old, a man came to his school playground and set him on fire. Now it's fifteen years later and Jandamarra is ready to forgive the man who hurt him so much. I think that's very brave and noble of him.
I believe in his forgiveness because he's had time to deal with these issues. I find it difficult to believe people who are immediately ready to forgive someone after a tragedy. Yes. You killed the love of my life. But I forgive you. Sometimes people want to forgive; and they say they forgive. But deep in their hearts they don't really feel forgiving. Or maybe they do. I don't know. The idea is so foreign to me.
I think after fifteen years I could maybe forgive someone for doing something totally awful—like setting me on fire. I think my forgiveness would come from the hope that the criminal has regrets for what he has done and has changed for the better. If I found out he didn't feel guilty and was still an evil asshole, I'd take back my forgiveness.
Anyway, I hope the arson reacts in a way that makes him deserving of Jandamarra's forgiveness.
The story sounds familiar to me, by the way. I think I read about it before. I'm guessing maybe he's related to Pat O'Shane and I read it when I wrote about her.
20. Looked at my post about Pat O'Shane. Jandamarra is her nephew.
21. Went to Mousie's Aussie music database.
The song for me today is "Cigarettes and Suitcases" by Something For Kate
It sounds familiar to me. I might have heard it before.
22. Started to look at page 12 of Frans de Wit's Australia set.
This place looks fun. It's little shops—kind of looks historical and touristy.
23. Loved this picture of Australia looking like Ireland.
It's not the first time I've seen Australia being Ireland.
24. Excited to see some snow in Australia.
25. Saw a witch's face in this tree. She looks a little scary, but I think she's probably nice.
26. Saw that I ended up going past page 12 of the pictures. Now I'm on page 13. It's the last page.
27. Heard this song on iTunes.
I was totally in the mood for it.
It's a nice way for me to end my time with Frans de Wit.
28. Felt thankful to everyone who reads my blog. And I'm also thankful for all the writers, photographers, singers, etc. who keep me entertained (for free!) as I surf the internet.
People Smuggling, Cruise Ships, Counting, and 2000
1. Had a dream inspired by Andrew. I'm staying at a beach house with people. We have a big window where you can look out and see the ocean. I start thinking that I need to take photos of the house....lots of them. I decide it would be also fun to take pictures of all the food we have in the pantry.
2. Dreamed about Deborah Mailman. I'm standing in a hallway talking to Jack. Then Deborah Mailman is sitting on a metal chair against a wall. She's wearing a red dress. She watches us. She gets my attention silently and mouths the words "How old is he?" She's very friendly. Strangely, I'm not starstruck about the whole thing.
Later when I woke up I started to worry. What if she wasn't speaking a fake foreign language? What if she was speaking an Aboriginal language and I mistook it for a fake language? What if she thought I was mocking her?
Then I remembered it was a dream, so either way it's probably not a big deal.
And since it's MY dream, I get to say what was happening. She wasn't speaking an Aboriginal language. She was speaking a made-up silly language.
3. Tried to understand world economics by reading this article.
It seems like everything is falling....like dominoes.
Gold is doing okay though.
4. Read Julian Burnside's editorial about asylum seekers and refugees.
He has powerful opinions and powerful words.
He reminds us that asylum seekers are not illegal.
He reminds us that the original white Australians WERE illegal. He says, We forget that the first white settlers in this country were true illegals: sent here by English courts for a range of criminal offences, and the soldiers sent to guard them, and the administrators who, following London’s instructions, stole the country from its original inhabitants who, if possession is nine points of the law, had the backing of 30,000 years of law to justify calling the white invaders “illegals”.
I agree with all that.
I don't think asylum seekers are illegal. But I do think it's unfair for them to think they deserve immediate residency in Australia while there are thousands of refugees waiting in Malaysia.
Burnside says, And how many of us pause to remember how different it was for 85,000 Vietnamese boat people 30 years ago? They were resettled here swiftly and without fuss, thanks to the simple human decency which Malcolm Fraser and Ian Macphee showed, and which Abbott and Gillard so conspicuously lack.
Wow. So Australia brought in 85,000 refugees? In one year?
Maybe there'd be less of a waiting list in Malaysia if they did that.
5. Consulted Lord Wiki about Vietnamese refugees. Between 1976 and the late 1980's, Australia received about 90,000 Vietnamese refugees.
6. Found this website about Vietnamese migration to Australia. They say 120,000 Vietnamese came to Australia between 1976 and 1994. If I divide the number of refugees by the number of years, I get 6,666. They took in more some years than others; but that's an average.
The policy of Australian government right now is to take in 13,000 refugees a year. It doesn't appear that the intake has been reduced.
7. Looked at government page about refugees and asylum seekers.
From 2004-2010, at least 13,000 refugees were given visas.
I added all the numbers up for each of the years, and came up with the number 80,630. That seems like a generous number to me. It doesn't like a country that's locking it's doors against people who need help.
Could Australia take in even more than that. I have no idea. Maybe?
It might get crowded.
Lord Wiki says there are 100,000 skilled migrants allowed into Australia. It's been reduced the past few years. But maybe it can be reduced more.
Am I to believe that all the desperate refugees are lacking skills? Wouldn't some of them have the skills Australia needs?
What gets me is when you have all these desperate refugees; and then some rich Australian businessman pushes Australians to make more babies. Lindsay Fox thinks people should have sex so they can populate Australia. I think that's a sad thing to suggest when so many people out there are in need of a home.
8. Wondered about Julian Burnside's viewpoint of people smugglers. While the government paints them as criminals, he makes them out to be heroes.
He says:
Instead of attacking the refugees directly, which is their real purpose, they attack the people smugglers instead. Because, aren’t people smugglers the worst people imaginable? They forget that Oskar Schindler was a people smuggler, and so was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And so was Gustav Schroeder, captain of the ill-fated MS St Louis which left Hamburg in May 1939 with a cargo of 900 Jews looking for help. He tried every trick in the book to land them somewhere safe, but was pushed away. He ended up putting them ashore again in Europe, and more than half of them perished in concentration camps. Abbott and Gillard forget that Captain Schroeder was a people smuggler.
Are people smugglers doing all this out of the goodness of their own heart? Why are they asking for so much money then? I can imagine they need SOME money. There's expenses to pay. But what about the family that paid $55000 for five people. That's $11,000 per ticket. How can a ride on an unsafe fishing boat coast that much? Why is it cheaper for me to fly to Australia on a relatively safe airplane?
Maybe there are good people smugglers and bad ones? Maybe some do it out of the goodness of their heart and others do it to exploit people in need.
9. Decided it's unfair to assume all people smugglers are villains. At the same time, I think it's a bit ridiculous to assume they're all heroes.
10. Started to read Amnesty International's page on people smuggling.
They say estimates indicate that over 4 million people are smuggled across international borders, and this criminal trade brings in 10 billion dollars a year.
Sorry, but I can't image a business, that existed for mainly altruistic purposes, would be so lucrative.
Amnesty International doesn't seem to support people smuggling, but they believe asylum seekers shouldn't be punished for their chosen method of coming over. They remind us that these asylum seekers are desperate, and that they often fall prey to deceptive people smugglers.
Amnesty International says, Asylum seekers are usually desperate and people smugglers are often deceptive, eliciting further funds from the refugee once they arrive and making threats against family members left behind. There are reports of false promises in relation to visas, treatment and even destination.
Yeah. I understand that Oskar Schindler started out as a greedy womanizer, but I think it's unfair to compare him to the people described above. Did he make threats against the family members of the Jews he saved? Did he give Jews false promises?
I don't think so.
11. Wondered again. Why doesn't Australia send their own boats over to pick up the refugees? They don't have to make people pay with their life savings, but they can have sliding-scale fees. Then that money can go towards transportation costs and providing services for the refugees.
12. Wondered if there are old out-of-use cruise ships that can be donated for this purpose. I'm guessing there are ships out there that are still safe, but out of use because bigger and better ships have come along.
Australia can get volunteers for the ship by creating one of those volunteer holiday programs. People can go on the cruise for a discounted price. In return they have to work a certain amount of hours. They can help take care of children, provide English lessons, entertain the Aussie newbies, provide counseling (if they're skilled in that area), etc.
13. Found this website. They say there are 35 surviving classic Ocean Liners in the world.
They're retired and probably sad.
I bet they would love to go out there and rescue some asylum seekers.
14. Thought about how there's two extremes in the asylum seeker argument. There's the racists who don't want more dark people coming over. They say they don't want Australia to become more crowded, yet they're fine with baby-making.
Then there's the people who think we can and should help EVERYONE. Their heart is in the right place. But we can't save everyone.
It's like the mother who has such a good heart and wants to adopt all the needy children out there. She hates to see a child suffering. Every child deserves a good home. Every child deserves a mother's love.
Let's say she adopts ten kids and they have a happy family. She has done something wonderful. She has saved children who'd otherwise likely have a life of doom.
But then she decides it's too sad that there are other children out there needing a home. She adopts more and more kids. Soon she has thirty of them. The problem is she doesn't have the money or the resources to take care of them. And also while it was possible for her to love and cherish ten kids, it's not easy for her to love and cherish 30 of them. The kids get neglected. They live in crowded conditions. There's not enough money for all the kids to have nourishing food.
Because of the crowded and depraved conditions, the kids become restless and angry. They fight. They don't live up to their potential. Their lives become not much better than it was before.
15. Read fun article about the Australian census that is happening right now. I'm excited about it. I wish we didn't have to wait ten months for the results.
The Australian census is going to have 60 questions. It sounds much more interesting than our recent one. I think ours had less than five. The only thing I remember is they wanted to know if we were Hispanic or not.
16. Looked at US census website. They have the 2010 questions. They wanted to know if we own our home, our sex, age, race, and whether or not we're Hispanic.
17. Went back to reading the article about the Australian census.
Australians have the option of removing confidentiality about their identities in 2110. That way historians can use the information to learn more about the past. That's pretty cool. I personally would say yes.
18. Saw that the article mentions a man named Bikram Adhikar. He arrived in Australia after being a refugee for 18 years! I can't imagine. Now he's helping with the census by questioning people who have limited English skills.
It's nice that Bikram finally has a home. The article has a picture of him and his family. They look very happy.
19. Went to Tallygarunga.
I wonder if wizards fill out census forms.
I was thinking about this for my fictional blog. I actually haven't quit completely. I wrote a post yesterday saying that we're in the wizarding village and have very minimal internet access. In a few weeks I'll decide if they're going to stay in that situation; or get out. If they get out that means I want to go back to writing the blog. They'll go back to the Muggle world and have adequate internet capabilities.
Anyway, I was wondering whether wizards are legal citizens of their countries. I would assume Muggleborn wizards are citizens. Hermione Granger would have been counted when her parents filled out a census form. But how about the Weasleys? Are they legal British citizens or are they unofficial hiding ones?
20. Found the Tally story thread I'm going to read today. It's called One Day Closer. The stars are Tamarah Blair and Forrester Smith.
Tamarah Blair looks different. I don't know if her face claim has been changed, or just the photographs.
Or maybe nothing has changed and I'm imagining things.
21. Saw that the story takes place on the Quidditch Pitch. It's a place for wizards and witches to practice their Quidditch skills.
The timing of the story is the evening of August 8.
22. Started reading the story.
Tamarah is the captain of the all-star team. I didn't know that. The team made up of students from the four houses.
Tamarah is having bad memories and worries about her arch enemy, Sally Fitzgerald. In the past, Sally ridiculed Tamarah for being a lesbian. This is what brought Tamarah out of the closet to her father.
Tamarah reacted to the ridicule by breaking Sally's nose. She's worried she might lose control again on the day of the game.
Why?
Is Sally on the team? Another team? Does she go to Tallygarunga, or another school?
23. Started to read Forrester's post. He's been dropped by the team, but doesn't seem to hold ill feelings towards them. He seems very supportive. I think that's very admirable.
Well, actually...I reread it. I get the idea he's STRUGGLING to be supportive rather than resentful.
I think that's admirable as well.
24. Decided to read the biography of Sally Fitzgerald.
It looks like she's new. It says here that she joined on June 11 and has only two posts. I read an old story that involved her. I can't remember whether or not she was one of those characters that are mentioned, but don't have their own posts. Or maybe she did have her own posts, but had a different role-player.
25. Found the story I had read. It's from October 2010. Sally is mentioned there, but she doesn't have her own posts. I guess now she's a full-fledged character.
26. Learned that Sally is a student at Penrose. That's the private school for witches.
She's Muggleborn. That kind of surprised me. I'm used to the purebloods being the bullies. That's prejudice of me.
27. Learned that Sally is popular. She sounds very typical to me. Her group sets the fashion trends. She's adored by the teachers. She does well in academics and in sports. That's how I remember the popular kids from my school days.
28. Learned that Sally has a sweet and insecure side she hides from everyone except her dad and kitten.
29. Started reading Sally's history.
She had trouble with the whole puberty thing. I think it's because she had an early one—eleven years old. I've heard that's hard on girls.
Sally's mother left Sally and her father for another woman. Maybe this is why Sally has some anti-gay feelings.
I wonder if Sally had an extra hard time with her parent's divorce because she was disgusted and ashamed that her mother was a lesbian.
Or was she disgusted and ashamed her mother was a lesbian because it led to her parent's divorce?
While all this was going on, Sally received the letter informing her that she was a witch and had a place at Penrose. She thought it was a cruel trick and ripped up the letter. I like that. I mean I don't like that she did it. But it seems like a realistic response.
30. Loved what I learned about Sally's dad. He works at a a Muggle hospital on a team that has connections to the wizarding health provider. They help with injuries that may have been caused by magic. He also serves as a mentor to Muggle families recently learning about the magical world. That's very cool.
31. Liked Sally despite her bitchiness and homophobia. I see her as the type of character who can get past most of that. The role-player has the same hopes. She says, Before I begin, let me firstly say that Sally’s view’s are so different from my own! She’s been though a lot and it really twisted her views on things. I’d like to think that there is potential for growth in Sally though at this stage.
I have a big soft spot for bad characters who turn good...or at least, not so bad. I love Draco Malfoy and Dudley Dursley. Ben Linus is another great character like that. Oh, and I guess Sawyer would be too.
32. Lurked in the Tally chatroom and saw that someone was looking for a face claim for their 9 year-old character (Ella). I started frantically searching for young Australian actresses.
I don't know of many. I don't think the Australian shows I watch often have kids, at least not as main characters. Then I remembered flashbacks.
I went to Offspring on IMDb and found Virginia Cashmere. She played "Young Billie" in two episodes.
I googled her and found her listing in a Victorian casting agency. She's very cute.
33. Looked at young Nina. This is cute. It looks like they used sisters to play the sisters. Nina's played by Alexandra Cashmere. She has a video on YouTube, and so does her sister.
Apparently their father has a farting problem in church.
The Cashmere girls probably wouldn't work for Ella because Ella is supposed to have brown hair and brown eyes. I think the Cashmere girls have hazel or blue eyes.
Oh well.
34. Learned that my Australian of the day is Joseph Anderson. He was a soldier.
Like most Andersons I read about; he was born in Scotland.
When Joseph was in his forties he was sent to Sydney. Then he was sent to Norfolk Island. He was commandant of the island from 1834-1839. One of the things he was responsible for was dealing with convicts who participated in a revolt. Thirteen of them were executed.
The Australian Dictionary of Biography says that he was more humane than his predecessor. Under the other guy's rule there were about a thousand lashings a year. With Joseph, there were only around 70-75 a year. The biographical dictionary says, the island was quiet under his administration, and Bourke attributed the tranquillity to Anderson's 'humane but firm and vigilant superintendence.
Bourke was the governor at the time. He liked Anderson, it seems. Not everyone did, though. The island's chaplain accused Anderson of cruelty, fraud, and abuse.
It's kind of like the people smugglers. Some see them as heroes and some see them as villains.
35. Consulted Lord Wiki about Joseph Anderson. He indicates that Anderson could be cruel at times. He says at one time Anderson gave a convict 1500 lashes.
Lord Wiki also says that Anderson overworked the convicts.
36. Went to the Australian Census website. I wanted to make sure it was secure, and that random people couldn't fill it out.
No, I wouldn't do that in my delusional quest to feel Australian. I was just CURIOUS.
Anyway, no. It's not that easy. They've passed out census forms to people in Australia. Then those people get a number they should use to validate their online census form.
It makes me wonder though. If Australia needs to count their Australians, how do they know how many census forms and numbers to hand out?
Well, I guess they do an estimate.
37. Started watching flash program about the census.
It's cute.
38. Started getting worried. This program is asking me all these questions—gender, age, postcode. I hope it's just for fun, and they're not trying to trick reluctant Australians into giving out their info.
Well, I think it's just for fun. Probably.
39. Looked at the infographic the program made for me. They talked about the stuff in the flash program, but it went by so fast.
Anyway, it's a mixture of fact and fiction.
I don't know Australian post codes so I just randomly took one of the examples they provided—2000.
It's somewhere in New South Wales.
40. Looked up 2000 postcode. It's Sydney!
Awesome.
41. Looked at the rest of my infographic.
Close to seven billion people live on Earth.
.3% of the people live in Australia.
It would take me 379 days to shake hands with everyone in my state.
I better have a lot of antibacterial gel handy.
Hey, and does this factor in sleep time and toileting? What about eating?
Maybe people will shake my hands while I'm sleeping?
I don't want anyone shaking my hand while I'm on the toilet. I need my privacy.
Maybe after doing my toilet business, I'll shake hands really fast for awhile to catch up on my handshaking. I'd want to make sure to get in my quota.
42. Saw that 1/2175 Australians are Jewish. I guess that's fairly rare., but not super rare.
As for my country of birth, .3% of Australians were born in America.
There's 295,000 other people in Australia who are 38. That's cool.
I said I do 5-14 hours of unpaid housework each week. I'm not sure if that's true or not. I've never timed my work.
I don't do a lot.
That's why our house often looks like crap.
I'm pretty sure I do at least 5 hours a week.
If I did more than 14, the house would probably be spotless.
43. Figured if I did the cooking, the hours would go up. I think cooking is time-consuming.
The type of jobs I do are quick and gross—like cleaning out the cat litter. I dread it, but it takes only about ten minutes.
Cleaning up cat vomit takes up 5-10 minutes.
Cleaning out the cat's ear takes about 30 seconds. That's all I can manage before the cat runs away and hides.
Unloading the dishwasher takes about five minutes.
Doing laundry is fast if you discount the washing and drying time. The gathering, loading, and putting away doesn't take much time.
44. Saw that the Australian dollar is now at 1.0214 American dollars. It's getting lower and lower. But I don't know if it will stay low.
It seems so odd that the Australian dollar is becoming equal to the American dollar at this time. I understand that America's economy problems are leaking through to other countries. That makes sense to me. But I would think it would be proportional. I would think America's dollar would go down, and then Australia's would go down relative to America's dollar.
I don't know if I'm making any sense.
45. Went to Flickr. This will be my last day of stalking Faun070.
I have two of his albums left.
The first is Kakadu. I'm eager to see that.
46. Saw a picture of Faun070 with Little Corellas.
I think it's some kind of parrot.
47. Consulted Lord Wiki about Little Corellas.
He says they're white cockatoos.
They're known to be a sort of pest because they cause destruction to tree twigs.
48. Noticed that Faun070 uses "gay" as a tag in some of the photos. This one says dutchguygay.
I guess that's fair. We all have our interests. I seek out photos of Australia. Other people might be wanting to see gay men from the Netherlands.
49. Looked through more photos and I'm not seeing any gay tags.
I wonder why they wanted certain pictures tagged that way.
50. Found another couple of gay-tagged photos. Here's one. His pose is sort of sexy.
51. Saw photo of both of the guys together. There's no gay-tagging here, or in any other together-photo I've seen. It's almost like they're trying to appear single and sell themselves to Flickr members.
52. Loved this photo! It's part of the Ubirr Art Site.
Lord Wiki says it has Aboriginal Art.
He says the work has been painted and repainted for 40,000 years; and that the paintings there now are about 2000 years old.
There's a very sacred site called the Rainbow Serpent Gallery. It's supposed to be for women only, but Lord Wiki says the rules are relaxed for non-Aboriginal tourists. That annoys me, sort of. I guess I sort of feel they're selling out. Or it's almost offensive. It's like non-indigenous mean don't count.
Well, no I'm being unfair.
I can understand it if I put it into perspective.
It's kind of like Jewish ways of thinking. Religious Jews believe all other Jews should follow the hundreds of rules. For example, we're not supposed to eat shrimp or lobster. However, these rules apply only to Jews. Jews don't believe that non-Jews need to do these things. They believe non-Jews can get into God's good side by simply following the seven laws of Noah.
In comparison Jews have 613 laws they need to follow.
In a way it's nice. The gentiles supposedly get an easier time on Earth.
But it's also perhaps a bit condescending.
53. Wondered if Faun070 and his partner advertised their gayness in other albums.
I didn't notice, but I don't know if I looked at their tags much on other days.
54. Intrigued by this photo. The two guys are together. They advertise that they're Dutch, but not that they're gay.
You know what. Maybe they're just trying to provide eye candy.
I think people look out for certain nationalities when seeking out people to crush over.
55. Tired of people coming to my blog to see Rachel Carpani nude.
It's getting ridiculous.
Well, I shouldn't say that. Then I'm being judgmental against porno fans and maybe also against Rachel Carpani's body.
I'll just say it's getting tiresome to me.
56. Googled Rachel Carpani nude to see what I'd get...well, in terms of my own site.
I looked at the little snippets provided. One quotes from the post in which so many people are landing. It says, I have Rachel Carpani on my mind. We don't even watch McLeod's.... Then she can let me borrow a nude photo of her and my blog can be REALLY ...
Does it sound like I have a nude photo of Rachel Carpani? Do I sound like a porno site?
And the title of the post is "Well, She's Not Nude, But....."
NOT nude.
So in no way is my blog providing false promises. It says right in the title that I do not have naked photos of this person.
The other post snippet says, Statcounter is telling me a lot of visitors on my blog today are looking for photos of Rachel Carpani being naked. I don't have any nude.....
See. It's right there. I have NO nude photos of Rachel Carpani. I don't have any naked photos of any actress or actor.
57. Started to look at Faun070's other Northern Territory Album.
They have a lot of photos of the Wildman Wilderness Lodge. I guess that's where they stayed.
58. Looked at the website of Wildman Wilderness Lodge.
It's interesting. I guess it's sort of like an all-inclusive resort...or some-stuff-inclusive. You pay per person rather than per room. It's pretty pricey. They have two options. One is a tent, and that's $245 per person. The other one's a habitat, and that's $315. Those are the prices in 2012. The prices for 2011 are lower. And in 2011 they have family tents. In 2012 they don't.
The resort is open only April-November. I guess it's too rainy in the other months.
The price includes the room, breakfast, and dinner. Tours cost extra.
59. Found this picture of the two guys on the boat. This is the first together-photo I've seen in which they tagged themselves as being gay.
60. Finished looking at Faun070's Australian photos.
I might miss those guys.
61. Went to Mousie's music datebase.
First I'm going to listen to the same song as yesterday. I had it in my head when I was taking a shower today.
62. Started to listen to the next song on Mousie's list. It's "Slow Motion" by Little Red.
63. Started to look at page 4 of Frans de Wit's Australia album.
It looks like he went into some actual mines in Coober Pedy.
64. Loved this photo. It makes me think of Mars.
65. Amazed at the clouds in this picture. They look so low!
66. Thought this was an interesting view of Uluru.
67. Happy to see Siany is back to making videos! I was afraid she'd give up after she met her birthday goal.
Here's she's singing a Cat Stevens song.
68. Inspired to watch a Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens video).
It's lovely.
Lord Wiki says Yusef Islam gave up his music when he became Muslim, but then slowly returned to it. That's good.
I think religion becomes scary when it dramatically changes someone; especially when they give up such a beautiful part of themselves. Apparently though, it wasn't the religion itself that stopped Yusef from singing. It was his misinterpretation of it.
69. Listened to this song (which I love because when I was a kid we used to swim at a place called Devil's Lake)
Then I started thinking that Yusef's story is kind of like Footloose.
70. Thought about Anne Rice. She kind of has the same story as Yusef. She re-found the Catholic Church and dropped her vampire writing.
Well....wait....never mind.
I just went to talk to Lord Wiki.
It seems she's gone back to not being a Christian.
But she still follows Jesus. She said, In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen
I like that.
2. Dreamed about Deborah Mailman. I'm standing in a hallway talking to Jack. Then Deborah Mailman is sitting on a metal chair against a wall. She's wearing a red dress. She watches us. She gets my attention silently and mouths the words "How old is he?" She's very friendly. Strangely, I'm not starstruck about the whole thing.
I then introduce her to Jack. I forget her name though. I say to Jack that she's an actress from my favorite TV show. Then Deborah Mailman says something about us needing to move to Australia. Jack says he has only one problem with that...the language. Deborah Mailman is amused. She jokes around by speaking in a fake foreign language. Then I join her.
Later when I woke up I started to worry. What if she wasn't speaking a fake foreign language? What if she was speaking an Aboriginal language and I mistook it for a fake language? What if she thought I was mocking her?
Then I remembered it was a dream, so either way it's probably not a big deal.
And since it's MY dream, I get to say what was happening. She wasn't speaking an Aboriginal language. She was speaking a made-up silly language.
3. Tried to understand world economics by reading this article.
It seems like everything is falling....like dominoes.
Gold is doing okay though.
4. Read Julian Burnside's editorial about asylum seekers and refugees.
He has powerful opinions and powerful words.
He reminds us that asylum seekers are not illegal.
He reminds us that the original white Australians WERE illegal. He says, We forget that the first white settlers in this country were true illegals: sent here by English courts for a range of criminal offences, and the soldiers sent to guard them, and the administrators who, following London’s instructions, stole the country from its original inhabitants who, if possession is nine points of the law, had the backing of 30,000 years of law to justify calling the white invaders “illegals”.
I agree with all that.
I don't think asylum seekers are illegal. But I do think it's unfair for them to think they deserve immediate residency in Australia while there are thousands of refugees waiting in Malaysia.
Burnside says, And how many of us pause to remember how different it was for 85,000 Vietnamese boat people 30 years ago? They were resettled here swiftly and without fuss, thanks to the simple human decency which Malcolm Fraser and Ian Macphee showed, and which Abbott and Gillard so conspicuously lack.
Wow. So Australia brought in 85,000 refugees? In one year?
Maybe there'd be less of a waiting list in Malaysia if they did that.
5. Consulted Lord Wiki about Vietnamese refugees. Between 1976 and the late 1980's, Australia received about 90,000 Vietnamese refugees.
6. Found this website about Vietnamese migration to Australia. They say 120,000 Vietnamese came to Australia between 1976 and 1994. If I divide the number of refugees by the number of years, I get 6,666. They took in more some years than others; but that's an average.
The policy of Australian government right now is to take in 13,000 refugees a year. It doesn't appear that the intake has been reduced.
7. Looked at government page about refugees and asylum seekers.
From 2004-2010, at least 13,000 refugees were given visas.
I added all the numbers up for each of the years, and came up with the number 80,630. That seems like a generous number to me. It doesn't like a country that's locking it's doors against people who need help.
Could Australia take in even more than that. I have no idea. Maybe?
It might get crowded.
Lord Wiki says there are 100,000 skilled migrants allowed into Australia. It's been reduced the past few years. But maybe it can be reduced more.
Am I to believe that all the desperate refugees are lacking skills? Wouldn't some of them have the skills Australia needs?
What gets me is when you have all these desperate refugees; and then some rich Australian businessman pushes Australians to make more babies. Lindsay Fox thinks people should have sex so they can populate Australia. I think that's a sad thing to suggest when so many people out there are in need of a home.
8. Wondered about Julian Burnside's viewpoint of people smugglers. While the government paints them as criminals, he makes them out to be heroes.
He says:
Instead of attacking the refugees directly, which is their real purpose, they attack the people smugglers instead. Because, aren’t people smugglers the worst people imaginable? They forget that Oskar Schindler was a people smuggler, and so was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And so was Gustav Schroeder, captain of the ill-fated MS St Louis which left Hamburg in May 1939 with a cargo of 900 Jews looking for help. He tried every trick in the book to land them somewhere safe, but was pushed away. He ended up putting them ashore again in Europe, and more than half of them perished in concentration camps. Abbott and Gillard forget that Captain Schroeder was a people smuggler.
Are people smugglers doing all this out of the goodness of their own heart? Why are they asking for so much money then? I can imagine they need SOME money. There's expenses to pay. But what about the family that paid $55000 for five people. That's $11,000 per ticket. How can a ride on an unsafe fishing boat coast that much? Why is it cheaper for me to fly to Australia on a relatively safe airplane?
Maybe there are good people smugglers and bad ones? Maybe some do it out of the goodness of their heart and others do it to exploit people in need.
9. Decided it's unfair to assume all people smugglers are villains. At the same time, I think it's a bit ridiculous to assume they're all heroes.
10. Started to read Amnesty International's page on people smuggling.
They say estimates indicate that over 4 million people are smuggled across international borders, and this criminal trade brings in 10 billion dollars a year.
Sorry, but I can't image a business, that existed for mainly altruistic purposes, would be so lucrative.
Amnesty International doesn't seem to support people smuggling, but they believe asylum seekers shouldn't be punished for their chosen method of coming over. They remind us that these asylum seekers are desperate, and that they often fall prey to deceptive people smugglers.
Amnesty International says, Asylum seekers are usually desperate and people smugglers are often deceptive, eliciting further funds from the refugee once they arrive and making threats against family members left behind. There are reports of false promises in relation to visas, treatment and even destination.
Yeah. I understand that Oskar Schindler started out as a greedy womanizer, but I think it's unfair to compare him to the people described above. Did he make threats against the family members of the Jews he saved? Did he give Jews false promises?
I don't think so.
11. Wondered again. Why doesn't Australia send their own boats over to pick up the refugees? They don't have to make people pay with their life savings, but they can have sliding-scale fees. Then that money can go towards transportation costs and providing services for the refugees.
12. Wondered if there are old out-of-use cruise ships that can be donated for this purpose. I'm guessing there are ships out there that are still safe, but out of use because bigger and better ships have come along.
Australia can get volunteers for the ship by creating one of those volunteer holiday programs. People can go on the cruise for a discounted price. In return they have to work a certain amount of hours. They can help take care of children, provide English lessons, entertain the Aussie newbies, provide counseling (if they're skilled in that area), etc.
13. Found this website. They say there are 35 surviving classic Ocean Liners in the world.
They're retired and probably sad.
I bet they would love to go out there and rescue some asylum seekers.
14. Thought about how there's two extremes in the asylum seeker argument. There's the racists who don't want more dark people coming over. They say they don't want Australia to become more crowded, yet they're fine with baby-making.
Then there's the people who think we can and should help EVERYONE. Their heart is in the right place. But we can't save everyone.
It's like the mother who has such a good heart and wants to adopt all the needy children out there. She hates to see a child suffering. Every child deserves a good home. Every child deserves a mother's love.
Let's say she adopts ten kids and they have a happy family. She has done something wonderful. She has saved children who'd otherwise likely have a life of doom.
But then she decides it's too sad that there are other children out there needing a home. She adopts more and more kids. Soon she has thirty of them. The problem is she doesn't have the money or the resources to take care of them. And also while it was possible for her to love and cherish ten kids, it's not easy for her to love and cherish 30 of them. The kids get neglected. They live in crowded conditions. There's not enough money for all the kids to have nourishing food.
Because of the crowded and depraved conditions, the kids become restless and angry. They fight. They don't live up to their potential. Their lives become not much better than it was before.
15. Read fun article about the Australian census that is happening right now. I'm excited about it. I wish we didn't have to wait ten months for the results.
The Australian census is going to have 60 questions. It sounds much more interesting than our recent one. I think ours had less than five. The only thing I remember is they wanted to know if we were Hispanic or not.
16. Looked at US census website. They have the 2010 questions. They wanted to know if we own our home, our sex, age, race, and whether or not we're Hispanic.
17. Went back to reading the article about the Australian census.
Australians have the option of removing confidentiality about their identities in 2110. That way historians can use the information to learn more about the past. That's pretty cool. I personally would say yes.
18. Saw that the article mentions a man named Bikram Adhikar. He arrived in Australia after being a refugee for 18 years! I can't imagine. Now he's helping with the census by questioning people who have limited English skills.
It's nice that Bikram finally has a home. The article has a picture of him and his family. They look very happy.
19. Went to Tallygarunga.
I wonder if wizards fill out census forms.
I was thinking about this for my fictional blog. I actually haven't quit completely. I wrote a post yesterday saying that we're in the wizarding village and have very minimal internet access. In a few weeks I'll decide if they're going to stay in that situation; or get out. If they get out that means I want to go back to writing the blog. They'll go back to the Muggle world and have adequate internet capabilities.
Anyway, I was wondering whether wizards are legal citizens of their countries. I would assume Muggleborn wizards are citizens. Hermione Granger would have been counted when her parents filled out a census form. But how about the Weasleys? Are they legal British citizens or are they unofficial hiding ones?
20. Found the Tally story thread I'm going to read today. It's called One Day Closer. The stars are Tamarah Blair and Forrester Smith.
Tamarah Blair looks different. I don't know if her face claim has been changed, or just the photographs.
Or maybe nothing has changed and I'm imagining things.
21. Saw that the story takes place on the Quidditch Pitch. It's a place for wizards and witches to practice their Quidditch skills.
The timing of the story is the evening of August 8.
22. Started reading the story.
Tamarah is the captain of the all-star team. I didn't know that. The team made up of students from the four houses.
Tamarah is having bad memories and worries about her arch enemy, Sally Fitzgerald. In the past, Sally ridiculed Tamarah for being a lesbian. This is what brought Tamarah out of the closet to her father.
Tamarah reacted to the ridicule by breaking Sally's nose. She's worried she might lose control again on the day of the game.
Why?
Is Sally on the team? Another team? Does she go to Tallygarunga, or another school?
23. Started to read Forrester's post. He's been dropped by the team, but doesn't seem to hold ill feelings towards them. He seems very supportive. I think that's very admirable.
Well, actually...I reread it. I get the idea he's STRUGGLING to be supportive rather than resentful.
I think that's admirable as well.
24. Decided to read the biography of Sally Fitzgerald.
It looks like she's new. It says here that she joined on June 11 and has only two posts. I read an old story that involved her. I can't remember whether or not she was one of those characters that are mentioned, but don't have their own posts. Or maybe she did have her own posts, but had a different role-player.
25. Found the story I had read. It's from October 2010. Sally is mentioned there, but she doesn't have her own posts. I guess now she's a full-fledged character.
26. Learned that Sally is a student at Penrose. That's the private school for witches.
She's Muggleborn. That kind of surprised me. I'm used to the purebloods being the bullies. That's prejudice of me.
27. Learned that Sally is popular. She sounds very typical to me. Her group sets the fashion trends. She's adored by the teachers. She does well in academics and in sports. That's how I remember the popular kids from my school days.
28. Learned that Sally has a sweet and insecure side she hides from everyone except her dad and kitten.
29. Started reading Sally's history.
She had trouble with the whole puberty thing. I think it's because she had an early one—eleven years old. I've heard that's hard on girls.
Sally's mother left Sally and her father for another woman. Maybe this is why Sally has some anti-gay feelings.
I wonder if Sally had an extra hard time with her parent's divorce because she was disgusted and ashamed that her mother was a lesbian.
Or was she disgusted and ashamed her mother was a lesbian because it led to her parent's divorce?
While all this was going on, Sally received the letter informing her that she was a witch and had a place at Penrose. She thought it was a cruel trick and ripped up the letter. I like that. I mean I don't like that she did it. But it seems like a realistic response.
30. Loved what I learned about Sally's dad. He works at a a Muggle hospital on a team that has connections to the wizarding health provider. They help with injuries that may have been caused by magic. He also serves as a mentor to Muggle families recently learning about the magical world. That's very cool.
31. Liked Sally despite her bitchiness and homophobia. I see her as the type of character who can get past most of that. The role-player has the same hopes. She says, Before I begin, let me firstly say that Sally’s view’s are so different from my own! She’s been though a lot and it really twisted her views on things. I’d like to think that there is potential for growth in Sally though at this stage.
I have a big soft spot for bad characters who turn good...or at least, not so bad. I love Draco Malfoy and Dudley Dursley. Ben Linus is another great character like that. Oh, and I guess Sawyer would be too.
32. Lurked in the Tally chatroom and saw that someone was looking for a face claim for their 9 year-old character (Ella). I started frantically searching for young Australian actresses.
I don't know of many. I don't think the Australian shows I watch often have kids, at least not as main characters. Then I remembered flashbacks.
I went to Offspring on IMDb and found Virginia Cashmere. She played "Young Billie" in two episodes.
I googled her and found her listing in a Victorian casting agency. She's very cute.
33. Looked at young Nina. This is cute. It looks like they used sisters to play the sisters. Nina's played by Alexandra Cashmere. She has a video on YouTube, and so does her sister.
Apparently their father has a farting problem in church.
The Cashmere girls probably wouldn't work for Ella because Ella is supposed to have brown hair and brown eyes. I think the Cashmere girls have hazel or blue eyes.
Oh well.
34. Learned that my Australian of the day is Joseph Anderson. He was a soldier.
Like most Andersons I read about; he was born in Scotland.
When Joseph was in his forties he was sent to Sydney. Then he was sent to Norfolk Island. He was commandant of the island from 1834-1839. One of the things he was responsible for was dealing with convicts who participated in a revolt. Thirteen of them were executed.
The Australian Dictionary of Biography says that he was more humane than his predecessor. Under the other guy's rule there were about a thousand lashings a year. With Joseph, there were only around 70-75 a year. The biographical dictionary says, the island was quiet under his administration, and Bourke attributed the tranquillity to Anderson's 'humane but firm and vigilant superintendence.
Bourke was the governor at the time. He liked Anderson, it seems. Not everyone did, though. The island's chaplain accused Anderson of cruelty, fraud, and abuse.
It's kind of like the people smugglers. Some see them as heroes and some see them as villains.
35. Consulted Lord Wiki about Joseph Anderson. He indicates that Anderson could be cruel at times. He says at one time Anderson gave a convict 1500 lashes.
Lord Wiki also says that Anderson overworked the convicts.
36. Went to the Australian Census website. I wanted to make sure it was secure, and that random people couldn't fill it out.
No, I wouldn't do that in my delusional quest to feel Australian. I was just CURIOUS.
Anyway, no. It's not that easy. They've passed out census forms to people in Australia. Then those people get a number they should use to validate their online census form.
It makes me wonder though. If Australia needs to count their Australians, how do they know how many census forms and numbers to hand out?
Well, I guess they do an estimate.
37. Started watching flash program about the census.
It's cute.
38. Started getting worried. This program is asking me all these questions—gender, age, postcode. I hope it's just for fun, and they're not trying to trick reluctant Australians into giving out their info.
Well, I think it's just for fun. Probably.
39. Looked at the infographic the program made for me. They talked about the stuff in the flash program, but it went by so fast.
Anyway, it's a mixture of fact and fiction.
I don't know Australian post codes so I just randomly took one of the examples they provided—2000.
It's somewhere in New South Wales.
40. Looked up 2000 postcode. It's Sydney!
Awesome.
41. Looked at the rest of my infographic.
Close to seven billion people live on Earth.
.3% of the people live in Australia.
It would take me 379 days to shake hands with everyone in my state.
I better have a lot of antibacterial gel handy.
Hey, and does this factor in sleep time and toileting? What about eating?
Maybe people will shake my hands while I'm sleeping?
I don't want anyone shaking my hand while I'm on the toilet. I need my privacy.
Maybe after doing my toilet business, I'll shake hands really fast for awhile to catch up on my handshaking. I'd want to make sure to get in my quota.
42. Saw that 1/2175 Australians are Jewish. I guess that's fairly rare., but not super rare.
As for my country of birth, .3% of Australians were born in America.
There's 295,000 other people in Australia who are 38. That's cool.
I said I do 5-14 hours of unpaid housework each week. I'm not sure if that's true or not. I've never timed my work.
I don't do a lot.
That's why our house often looks like crap.
I'm pretty sure I do at least 5 hours a week.
If I did more than 14, the house would probably be spotless.
43. Figured if I did the cooking, the hours would go up. I think cooking is time-consuming.
The type of jobs I do are quick and gross—like cleaning out the cat litter. I dread it, but it takes only about ten minutes.
Cleaning up cat vomit takes up 5-10 minutes.
Cleaning out the cat's ear takes about 30 seconds. That's all I can manage before the cat runs away and hides.
Unloading the dishwasher takes about five minutes.
Doing laundry is fast if you discount the washing and drying time. The gathering, loading, and putting away doesn't take much time.
44. Saw that the Australian dollar is now at 1.0214 American dollars. It's getting lower and lower. But I don't know if it will stay low.
It seems so odd that the Australian dollar is becoming equal to the American dollar at this time. I understand that America's economy problems are leaking through to other countries. That makes sense to me. But I would think it would be proportional. I would think America's dollar would go down, and then Australia's would go down relative to America's dollar.
I don't know if I'm making any sense.
45. Went to Flickr. This will be my last day of stalking Faun070.
I have two of his albums left.
The first is Kakadu. I'm eager to see that.
46. Saw a picture of Faun070 with Little Corellas.
I think it's some kind of parrot.
47. Consulted Lord Wiki about Little Corellas.
He says they're white cockatoos.
They're known to be a sort of pest because they cause destruction to tree twigs.
48. Noticed that Faun070 uses "gay" as a tag in some of the photos. This one says dutchguygay.
I guess that's fair. We all have our interests. I seek out photos of Australia. Other people might be wanting to see gay men from the Netherlands.
49. Looked through more photos and I'm not seeing any gay tags.
I wonder why they wanted certain pictures tagged that way.
50. Found another couple of gay-tagged photos. Here's one. His pose is sort of sexy.
51. Saw photo of both of the guys together. There's no gay-tagging here, or in any other together-photo I've seen. It's almost like they're trying to appear single and sell themselves to Flickr members.
52. Loved this photo! It's part of the Ubirr Art Site.
Lord Wiki says it has Aboriginal Art.
He says the work has been painted and repainted for 40,000 years; and that the paintings there now are about 2000 years old.
There's a very sacred site called the Rainbow Serpent Gallery. It's supposed to be for women only, but Lord Wiki says the rules are relaxed for non-Aboriginal tourists. That annoys me, sort of. I guess I sort of feel they're selling out. Or it's almost offensive. It's like non-indigenous mean don't count.
Well, no I'm being unfair.
I can understand it if I put it into perspective.
It's kind of like Jewish ways of thinking. Religious Jews believe all other Jews should follow the hundreds of rules. For example, we're not supposed to eat shrimp or lobster. However, these rules apply only to Jews. Jews don't believe that non-Jews need to do these things. They believe non-Jews can get into God's good side by simply following the seven laws of Noah.
In comparison Jews have 613 laws they need to follow.
In a way it's nice. The gentiles supposedly get an easier time on Earth.
But it's also perhaps a bit condescending.
53. Wondered if Faun070 and his partner advertised their gayness in other albums.
I didn't notice, but I don't know if I looked at their tags much on other days.
54. Intrigued by this photo. The two guys are together. They advertise that they're Dutch, but not that they're gay.
You know what. Maybe they're just trying to provide eye candy.
I think people look out for certain nationalities when seeking out people to crush over.
55. Tired of people coming to my blog to see Rachel Carpani nude.
It's getting ridiculous.
Well, I shouldn't say that. Then I'm being judgmental against porno fans and maybe also against Rachel Carpani's body.
I'll just say it's getting tiresome to me.
56. Googled Rachel Carpani nude to see what I'd get...well, in terms of my own site.
I looked at the little snippets provided. One quotes from the post in which so many people are landing. It says, I have Rachel Carpani on my mind. We don't even watch McLeod's.... Then she can let me borrow a nude photo of her and my blog can be REALLY ...
Does it sound like I have a nude photo of Rachel Carpani? Do I sound like a porno site?
And the title of the post is "Well, She's Not Nude, But....."
NOT nude.
So in no way is my blog providing false promises. It says right in the title that I do not have naked photos of this person.
The other post snippet says, Statcounter is telling me a lot of visitors on my blog today are looking for photos of Rachel Carpani being naked. I don't have any nude.....
See. It's right there. I have NO nude photos of Rachel Carpani. I don't have any naked photos of any actress or actor.
57. Started to look at Faun070's other Northern Territory Album.
They have a lot of photos of the Wildman Wilderness Lodge. I guess that's where they stayed.
58. Looked at the website of Wildman Wilderness Lodge.
It's interesting. I guess it's sort of like an all-inclusive resort...or some-stuff-inclusive. You pay per person rather than per room. It's pretty pricey. They have two options. One is a tent, and that's $245 per person. The other one's a habitat, and that's $315. Those are the prices in 2012. The prices for 2011 are lower. And in 2011 they have family tents. In 2012 they don't.
The resort is open only April-November. I guess it's too rainy in the other months.
The price includes the room, breakfast, and dinner. Tours cost extra.
59. Found this picture of the two guys on the boat. This is the first together-photo I've seen in which they tagged themselves as being gay.
60. Finished looking at Faun070's Australian photos.
I might miss those guys.
61. Went to Mousie's music datebase.
First I'm going to listen to the same song as yesterday. I had it in my head when I was taking a shower today.
62. Started to listen to the next song on Mousie's list. It's "Slow Motion" by Little Red.
63. Started to look at page 4 of Frans de Wit's Australia album.
It looks like he went into some actual mines in Coober Pedy.
64. Loved this photo. It makes me think of Mars.
65. Amazed at the clouds in this picture. They look so low!
66. Thought this was an interesting view of Uluru.
67. Happy to see Siany is back to making videos! I was afraid she'd give up after she met her birthday goal.
Here's she's singing a Cat Stevens song.
68. Inspired to watch a Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens video).
It's lovely.
Lord Wiki says Yusef Islam gave up his music when he became Muslim, but then slowly returned to it. That's good.
I think religion becomes scary when it dramatically changes someone; especially when they give up such a beautiful part of themselves. Apparently though, it wasn't the religion itself that stopped Yusef from singing. It was his misinterpretation of it.
69. Listened to this song (which I love because when I was a kid we used to swim at a place called Devil's Lake)
Then I started thinking that Yusef's story is kind of like Footloose.
70. Thought about Anne Rice. She kind of has the same story as Yusef. She re-found the Catholic Church and dropped her vampire writing.
Well....wait....never mind.
I just went to talk to Lord Wiki.
It seems she's gone back to not being a Christian.
But she still follows Jesus. She said, In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen
I like that.
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