Writer's Strike

Yet again my team of writers is on strike. They're demanding to be let out of the writing shed (in which I safely lock them away out of trouble), not only for toilet breaks but also to see their families and to go home at night. Well it's not going to happen. Last time they were released I spent weeks tracking them down again. It was only the fact that I had implanted chips in the back of their necks that let me find them using my iPhone "track down your slaves" app.

They are actually still writing for me, so technically they're not in breach of their contracts, and I am still obliged to feed them their daily gruel. But they are only coming up with Justin Bieber fan faction, and Lady Gaga fantasies. Totally unusable for a serious intellectual blog such as this one.

Thai Takeaway

My fancy pants camera being hardly used last week, my blog is facing lean times. So let me present to you a snap taken from my mobile while waiting to pick up a delicious takeway from Mai Thai in Applecross as I found myself sitting underneath this fellow..

 

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Skipping versus Doughnutting

Having access to a box of doughnuts this week, my temptation overcame my willpower and I had no choice but to eat three of them. We also have a skipping rope in the office, and I was curious to know how many skips I would need to burn off the calories from these doughnuts. Assuming a glazed doughnut has 200 calories, and a skip burns 0.1 calorie, I'd need to get through an astounding 6,000 skips before my guilt is gone. At one skip a second, that would take a solid hour of agony.

Huggy Cat

I snapped my sleepy cat as he was hugging a chair recently.

Slowing to Zero

Have you ever been walking along, perhaps on your way into work, when you see someone heading the same way on a converging path, someone you don't feel like talking to first thing in the morning. You know that unless you take evasive action, you're going to meet this person in 30 seconds, and you'll have no choice but to politely make small talk with them about the weather, about their weekend. So obviously you feel like diving into the nearest bush to wait until danger has passed, but the less dramatic solution is to either slow down your walking pace so that they pass in front of you, or speed up dramatically.

This morning I may possibly have taken the slowing down option, it being the less energetic technique. But no sooner had I halved my speed, I noticed that my prey had done the same ! She must have secretly spied me and had exactly the same idea, and now we were both stuck. Being anxious to head into work to get started on some important business, the last thing I wanted was to be walking at a snails pace in some weird anti-race with some near-stranger who happened to work in the same building. And yet here I was. I stopped completely, contemplating an emergency tying of the shoelaces. I looked over and my prey had now disappeared - she must have doubled back or taken a radically different route.

How silly we are !

Foggy Mistycism

Another one from my evening lost in the fogs of Lake Monger. This one is at ground level because my legs stopped working after a couple of hours of trudging around, and I had to crawl on all fours, smelling the path back home.

Meeting a Chair or Chairing a Meet?

My secret lapel camera captured this scene today as I chaired a meeting of EW#21A-Supplementary Committee.

Foggy Bottom

Lost in the Swirling Mists

It was nearly midnight yesterday when I was wondering the streets, alone and cold. Eventually I remembered where I lived and found my way home, cold and miserable but at least I had a couple of decent snaps.

Triple Gassy

Yesterday morning in Perth we had a rare weather event. We awoke to a combination of smoke (from burnoffs in the forests), mist (from the rain), and fog. So not only did the air smell of smoky BBQ (yum), low lying and damp areas were shrouded in fog, and the rain was misting down, all at once. It would have been the perfect day for some atmospheric photography, but in my morning rush to work, I left the camera at home. But luckily the fog returned in the evening, and I went out on a night-time expedition, the results of which you will see on this website very soon.

Forgetfulness

I had a brilliant idea to talk about some element of forgetfulness and memory today, but for the life of me, I can't remember what I was going to say. I was distracted just as was going to start typing, and now I've lost that inspiration. Does anyone know what I had in mind? Is there a technique I can use to extract this thought that never made it into my long-term memory?

Lame Planking

With the planking craze sweeping the world, our office is caught up in it too, but with a twist. Rather than seeking out the most outrageous location, the most precarious position, our aim is to find the lamest planking situations you can think of. Here's our first attempt.

Unending Jobbies

It's so easy to be sidetracked when you're doing little jobs around the house. With a lack of discipline, you can find yourself in a weird situation whereby you're both very busy and very unproductive. It can all start with a deceptively simple job of pruning a rose.

1. You go to the cupboard to find the secateurs.

2. Opening the cupboard door, you notice that handle is slightly loose.

3. You look for a suitable screwdriver in the toolbox, but can't find one.

4. You drive to Bunning to buy a new one.

5. On sale are some rolls of turf, just what you need. So you buy some and forget the screwdriver.

6. Unloading the turf from your boot, you find loose soil everywhere. What you need is some tarpaulin to protect the car in future.

7. Head back to Bunnings for the tarpaulin. Again forgetting the screwdriver.

8. Back home, your car is still soiled, so you vacuum it. The vacuum dies so you drive over to your mum's place to borrow hers.

9. She mentions that her gutters need cleaning, so you spend a few hours on the roof removing leaf litter.

Now it's lunchtime and it's time to reflect. After several hours of activity, one small task has morphed into four with no end in sight, and the initial enthusiasm has been replaced by a weary resignation that it's not going to end today.

A Photo I Took

Helmetted Drivering

On my friend's way home from work is a notoriously busy intersection at which the lights take up to three minutes to change, and long queues of cars quickly build up. He arrived at the lights at the front of the queue, just behind a lady on a motor scooter. After a while, the lady comically put her hand to her head, felt around and realised she'd forgotten her helmet. She slapped her face with her hands, put the scooter on its stand, walked to the pannier and retrieved the helmet. Naturally she did this while the lights were green, and blocked any cars from getting through. Everyone patiently waited for the lights to change again but they never did - it cycled through the pattern six or seven times, skipping their turn. Being scientifically minded, my friend realised that because the vehicles in his queue were stationary, they were not generating any electric current in the magnetic loop buried under the road. So the lights were not detecting the presence of the ever-growing lines of grumpy drivers. He solved the problem by gradually edging forward over the magnetic loop, and finally the lights responded.  

Let that be a lesson to you, should you ever be in such a situation.

Appropriate Tuesday

After a recent escalation of office gossipping and shocking language, today was dubbed Appropriate Tuesday and my colleagues were asked to maintain decorum and dignity at all times. However after a subdued morning, things went horribly wrong at afternoon tea time when one inhabitant of my room was communicating down the corridor to a male colleague. Just as he shouted out "wiggle your botty", a woman emerged from a side-corridor and was shocked and startled, and would have been mortified, unsure whether she was the intended recipient of the request. It demonstrates that a whole day of acting appropriately was unrealistic from the start - next time we'll aim to survive a morning.

Setting the Time

An interesting trick from an unnamed friend, we shall name Mlle Z. She has a special technique for setting the time on clocks around her house. The various appliances (oven, microwave) each have their own obscure combination of buttons to press, and so instead of fiddling around reading manuals, she turns off all appliances and then at midnight, runs around the house madly, turning them all on.

Who's Been Eating my Herbs?

I found this critter, well disguised but not well enough to fool me. He was munching the mint I had potted only last week.

Praying Mantis

Pruning a grevillea yesterday, I disturbed a resident praying mantis. I found him on my hand running around frantically looking for a leaf to hide under. Eventually he settled down and I snapped him, before returning him to his home. Click on the photo to zoom in and see his cute face.

Random Vanishing

Now that you've identified a hoarder in your household, you need to treat them in a sensitive and respectful way. I'd recommened an approach called "random vanishing". The idea is that over time, one or two items might somehow find their way into the bin while nobody is looking. A couple of months later, perhaps a few more items have disappeared and after a few years, that old tatty pile of magazines is only a third of its original height. This also applies to electronic junk. For example if you have a PVR that gradually accumulates more and more unwatched tv programs and movies, it's only natural that perhaps once every few months, a two hour documentary on the misery of war vanishes without a trace.

Should your hoarder be especially vigilant, a more complicated approach is needed. More to follow...

How to Identify a Hoarder

Being a fully qualified pseudopsychologist, I'd like to kick-off a series of personality profiles by describing a type of person we all have met, the compulsive hoarder.

* When visiting their home, you notice growing mounds of newspapers, magazines and miscellaneous papers that are apparently too valuable to throw away. Before you know it, these mounds take on a life of their own and can end up covering every available space on tables, desks, sideboards and even on the floor.

* If you attempt to tidy up one of their mounds, they become agitated and stressed. They think that there is a system to their piles and you've disrupted it

* Should you throw away any material which resembles rubbish without their approval, they will head out to the bin to search through it for their "valuables".

Word of the Day - Comity

I don't know what Comity means, but I like the look and sound of this word. After almost three minutes thought, here are my guesses for its meaning. Surely one of these is correct.

• a small community, likely Communist 
• the nickname for a celestial ball of fire 
• a group of bad-spellers who meet regularly

Any more ideas?

High-Diving

My local university is renowned for its high-diving. See the board at the top of the tower? Every midsummer's day, the top divers on campus stage a death-defying competition here. Being safety-conscious, the organisers have arranged for a first aid tent at the base of the tower. And every year a couple of divers actually miss the pool and land on the first aid tent's roof, which is quite convenient.

People have to dive around the planet Venus

Calling in Sick

When calling in sick to work, there are several techniques to consider, each with their own pros and cons.

(1) In the distant days prior to the advent of telephone answering machines, mobile phones, texting and emails, the only option was to ring in and speak to a human, explaining in person how deathly ill you were. Naturally your voice will be weak and faltering, and you'll finish with a worrying throaty cough cough and a sniffle, just to reinforce how infectious you could be. End your conversation with an upbeat "Hopefully I'll be strong enough to struggle in to work tomorrow."

(2) Once answering machines became common, that allowed the more advanced technique of ringing work early enough that nobody is there to pick up your call. You can then leave a pre-prepared message without the problem of having to react to any tricky questions at the other end.

(3) Email allows the process to become even more impersonal. However that can be a drawback. It seems evasive to be emailing if you're capable of ringing up. And how can anyone discern how unwell you are from a few sentences.

(4) Even more advanced is to text your boss. This rates as more convincing than emailing in my eyes - it shows that you care enough to fork out 25 cents on a text, and it's also more immediate than an email.

(5) And finally, this is the winning strategy- get your partner to ring up for you. This has the advantage of the human touch, but it also gives the impression that you're so ill that you're bedridden and not even capable of dragging yourself to a telephone or computer for an email.

Warm Glow of Stonework

I took this photo not at a monastery, but at a university near my home.

Why I Don't Like Coffee

Why does the rest of the world adore coffee, while I find the taste disgusting and bitter? And why do I only appreciate sweet wines, while dry wines revolt me? An interesting radio interview with Tim Hanni explained all. It's down to the number of tastebuds we have, and has little to do with personality or having a sophisticated palate. We can be grouped into four categories.

Tolerant - mostly male, these people have the fewest tastebuds. They tolerate bitter and strong tastes such as Scotch, Cognac, cigars and dry wines. They can drink dark black coffee without sugar or cream.

Sensitive - the bulk of the population are in this category. With more tastebuds, they can enjoy a wide range of foods and drinks. But they do prefer some cream or sugar in coffee, to dampen the flavour.

Hypersensitive - with the greatest density of tastebuds, they pick up the bitter taste in dry wines, and in coffee, and find them repugnant. They very commonly like to add salt to their meals, in order to mask the strong taste of many foods.

Sweet hypersensitives - a subset of the hypersensitives who use sweetness to mask the bitter and other bold flavours. To such people, artificial sweeteners taste metallic and unpleasant, and alcohol tastes like petrol. This is most definitely me.

Why oh why am I physiologically crippled so ! There is no hope for me to ever appreciate a good coffee, or a dry red.

Read more here