My Car on a Photoshoot

Having just returned from almost a week in chilly Dunsborough, here's a pretty pic of my car, taken with my iPhone and post-processed with the Camera+ app, the best photography app in the known universe.

Mature Content Warning

Seen in my garden last week, a ladybird giving another a piggyback ride. It was obviously weary after a day of eating and flying.

Where Is This?

Scary Forecast

This forecast from last week looks similar to Perth's next week.



 And here's Perth's.

But I don't care ! I'm heading south to chilly Dunsborough where it will struggle to reach 30 degrees.

Quito Cloisters

Monks built this monastery in Quito from 1550 onwards, for me to photograph it nearly four centuries later. Thanks very much padres. It's the Iglesia y Monasterio de San Francisco.

Majestic Clouds

Another sunset shot from my iPhone.

Atomic Sunset

At a Simple Minds concert in Kings Park a couple of weeks ago, the most wondrous sunset unfolded. It resembled a nuclear explosion.

From my iPhone.

Santiago

Just minutes before catching a taxi to the airport to go home, this was the view from my hotel in Santiago, capital of Chile. The Andes tower over the city, but most days its too smoggy to get a good view. So it was fortunate that as the sun was setting on the final day, the view cleared up nicely.

Why You Should Order from Overseas

The funnest part of ordering from overseas is tracking the shipping. My new watch from Amazon was ordered on Friday evening and travelled from Louisville Kentucky to Perth by Monday. I had expected it would be held up by the huge volume of mail at this time of year, or by Australian customs, but no.

Monday, December 17, 2012		Location	Time
14	Forwarded for delivery	PERTH - AUSTRALIA	14:03
13	Clearance processing complete at PERTH - AUSTRALIA	PERTH - AUSTRALIA	13:15
12	Scheduled for delivery	PERTH - AUSTRALIA	10:06
11	Arrived at Delivery Facility in PERTH - AUSTRALIA	PERTH - AUSTRALIA	09:52
Sunday, December 16, 2012		Location	Time
10	Departed Facility in HONG KONG - HONG KONG	HONG KONG - HONG KONG	19:02
9	Processed at HONG KONG - HONG KONG	HONG KONG - HONG KONG	18:54
8	Clearance processing complete at HONG KONG - HONG KONG	HONG KONG - HONG KONG	18:30
7	Arrived at Sort Facility HONG KONG - HONG KONG	HONG KONG - HONG KONG	14:48
Saturday, December 15, 2012		Location	Time
6	Departed Facility in CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA	04:20
5	Processed at CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA	02:40
4	Arrived at Sort Facility CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA	00:01
Friday, December 14, 2012		Location	Time
3	Departed Facility in LOUISVILLE - USA	LOUISVILLE, KY - USA	20:47
2	Processed at LOUISVILLE - USA	LOUISVILLE, KY - USA	20:47
1	Shipment picked up	LOUISVILLE, KY - USA	16:58

Meet the Moai

From Easter Island.

At High Altitude

Quito, Ecuador's capital is 2,800 metres up in the Andes, surrounded by mountains and volcanoes up to 6,000 metres. It's on the equator but the elevation keeps the temperature mild.

Easter Island Moai

Having just returned from Easter Island, the iconic statues still haunt my dreams. They are called moai, and traditionally they have a topknot "hat" balanced on top.

Varied Roofs

Of Valparaiso. From our hotel balcony. On a foggy morning.

Living Sans iPhone

Since losing my iPhone last week, my quality of life has plummeted by over 20%. I can no longer sit in my lounge room and know in which direction the International Space Station is flying over my head. I can't be watching a tv show and see a familiar actor and work out where I've seen them before. I can't play chess whenever I want. I can't listen to podcasts while gardening, or check the weather every 30 seconds. I now have gaps in my schedule that can't be filled since I've now lost the ability to amuse myself. If I get desperate I'll pick up a book or find a radio to listen to, but my fingers are itchy, wanting to fiddle with a smartphone that is no more.

It's a sad tale, but there's a happy ending. Father Christmas is likely to reward me with a replacement phone if I behave for the next two weeks.

A Light Lunch

At the same winery, here's the finale to our light lunch - a desert platter to end all desert platters. Please have sympathy for me - my lunch companions only nibbled at the edges so I was left alone to polish this off. And I was only halfway through a full day of winery visits so I somehow had to find space to accomodate yet more drinkies.

Wine Tasting in Casablanca

This is the third winery of the day, and you can tell by the size of the samples, it was a struggle to get through it all. Casablanca is a commune between Chile's capital Santiago, and the port of Valparaiso.

Chilean Cemetery

Even the cemetery in Valparaiso is exuberantly colourful.

Films of the Year 2012

With over a hundred cinema visits this year, I should be well qualified to nominate a top ten. But I've slept through over half of them. Of the ones that were stimulating enough to keep me conscious, here are the best.

=10. The Skin I Live In - Pedro Almodovar's horrific thriller

=10. Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows


9. The Avengers - rated highly for Joss Whedon's subversive humour alone


=8. Girl with a Dragon Tattoo - better than the book, and better than the Swedish adaption

=8. Goodbye First Love - a French story of lovesick youths

7. Hugo - the most effective 3D I've seen

6. Arbitrage - a rivetting thriller in the world of finance

5. The Dark Knight Rises - I had to see it twice

4. Ted - funniest film of the year, saw it twice

3. Cabin in the Woods - saw it twice to understand the complex story from Joss Whedon

2. Carnage - stunning adaption of a play about two couples meeting to talk about their sons who fought in a park. The couples end up fighting each other and eventually themselves as relationships unravel.


1. Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson's masterpiece was so moving I saw it three times and would happily live in this film world forever

Colourful Streets

I for one am thankful that Valparaisens are fans of vibrant, gaudy colours. Their lack of taste mirrors mine. In an unrelated factoid, both Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet were both born there (two Chilean leaders known worldwide).

Thinly-Legged Tourists

These people have thin legs so are not locals from Valparaiso.

Valparaiso

Chile's historic port city of Valparaiso is built on the side of steep hills. Residents have muscled legs like tree trunks. And cars need extra low gears.

Quito is Quite-O Nice-O

I'm back from South America, and here's photo number 1 (of 2,594), from Quito, Ecuador's capital, taken from the roof of a cathedral in the rain. Thankfully health and safety hasn't reached this part of the world, and so we were at liberty to wander around on a slippery tile roof without any safety railings in a thunderstorm. I also noted numerous electrical cables lying around, not firmly attached to anything.

Off to South America

Ola ! Tomorrow I'm off to South America for a month. Who knows when I'll next be able to post anything?
Adios.

Oh wait a sec. I just need to say what an absolute joy it is to travel with electrical devices that need recharging. In Chile, power sockets have two different configurations, and in Ecuador there's a third standard. So my backpack will be weighed down with three types of adaptors. There's no room for clothes or books sadly.

Two Generations Ago

Demonstrating that tennis skills have long been in my family, here's my grandmother playing in the 1930s. Her serving style is quite impressive.

She's at St Barnabas Church in West Leederville. Looking at google maps, it seems that this court has been built over although the church survives. Bastards ! They should have demolished the church and kept the tennis.

Three Generations Ago

Here's Beatrice Baxter, daughter of Thomas, in 1907. She's my great-grandmother. Her husband was in the army and they moved to India.

Four Generations Ago

Meet Thomas Baxter, my great-great-grandfather. Born in about 1850, he managed a farm in Huntingdonshire. His dog was born in about 1917 and liked to lick people, and often stole pies.

Leederville Water Delivery

Scanning an old family photo album today, this one interested me more than most. From 1912, it's one of the first water supply trucks in Leederville. My mum's family lived in the neighbourhood back then (and some of them still do), so I presume they received their drinking water from these guys.

Reaching the Edge of Perth

Leaving my fog lights on a few months ago, my car battery was drained and didn't have the juice to turn over  the engine. After a jump start, I needed to drive for 45 mins to recharge the battery, and so I did the obvious thing: drove north up the coast to find the edge of Perth. And this is it. The end of the road.

The sun was brighter up there. It dazzled me as if warning me to turn around and return to the safety of the known lands. The dunes stretched northwards, and a sea breeze whipped up an unwelcoming sandstorm.

I got the message and headed south again, excited at my adventure but relieved it was over.

Spidery Horror Story

Queuing at Hungry Jacks drive-thru on Friday, I eventually reached the window and the lights lit up this enormous man-eating huntsman spider, sitting on my dashboard, waiting to pounce on my French fries or run off with my veggie burger. Deciding to stay calm rather than abandoning the vehicle, I calmy drove off after collecting my order, with the spider right there in front of me. But when I left the well-lit Scarborough Beach Road, the spider disappeared into the darkness. It was still crawling around and I caught glimpses of it when I emerged into light again but every time I cornered, it moved and then it was gone.



Feeling something tickling my foot (I was driving barefoot), I had to focus on not giving into my urge to shake my foot and instead keep driving steadlily. And after the longest 2km drive of my life, I made it home. I ran inside and found a torch and searched for the beast. It emerged again on my steering wheel and I brushed it off and out of the car, to live out the rest of its life quietly in my front garden.

Magnificent Banksia

Sighted at Bold Park last weekend.

Bee on Rose

Bold Park Paws

Bold Park was disappointingly devoid of wildflowers last week, although this kanagaroo paw stood out.

Why My PC Died

Three of the pc's fans totally stopped working, clogged by five years' accumulation of fluff and dust and cat hair, and the power supply unit overheated. This is the dust from just one of the fans. Once clean it happily started spinning again.

Cat tv

The cats spend hours transfixed by the goldfish. It's endlessly fascinating for them. And yet they haven't tried to eat them in the last ten years. They're either too lazy, or can't be fussed getting wet, or they're too well feed. One cat did fall into the pond last week, but that was a result of clumsiness rather than an attempt to grab a fishy snack.

Encroaching Dumbness

When you're fresh out of school or university, your brain is crammed full of knowledge, theories, facts, analytical ways of problem-solving and current understandings of science and the humanities. So what happens over the years as you spend your days and months watching tv, reading comics, playing computer games, gossiping and spectating sports? You're crowding out that academic knowledge with low brow nonsense and trivia. Day by day, you're dumbing yourself further, so that instead of understanding the difference between a cumulonimbus and a stratocumulus, you're following the ups and downs of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's relationship, or you're learning special key combinations for your X-Box kick-boxing game. I'm not talking about myself here, I haven't fallen into this trap at all. But if this strikes a chord with you, please save your intellect immediately and turn the tv off, delete your bookmarks to celebrity gossip websites and become a Wikipedia editor or learn a language.

And read this:

Every hour of TV watching shortens life by 22 minutes

 

Muscle Damage

After intense exercise, after cooling down and rehydrating, it's so satisfying to put your feet up and feel that ache in your body. Perhaps it's just me, but I feel I've survived a torture session and am now safe for a few hours. And even though I've torn countless muscle fibres in my legs and arms, by tomorrow they'll be well on their way to repairing themselves, and they'll be even stronger and more resilient for next time.

Chess Idiocy

I'll always remember legendary journalist Alistair Cooke using a chess analogy to describe the meeting between Ronald Reagan and Michael Gorbachev at a summit on arms reduction in the 1980s. It was similar to an unknown American player meeting a chess grandmaster and the yank makes a seemingly obviously stupid move, and the grandmaster hesitates and thinks that there must be some deep underlying strategic reason for this move. And he eventually plays the game out several moves further ahead in his mind and sees that it is indeed a brilliant move. So he reacts defensively, to save himself from future embarrassment. But in reality, the yank did just make a stupid move.

This is how I'm able to beat my iPhone at chess at progressively harder levels. If I play enough times, eventually I make a stupid move that the iPhone realises will lead to a positive outcome for me several moves ahead. So it reacts and sacrifices a rook or retreats and I won't understand why except I'll know that I'm the unknown American player against the grandmaster.

Anyhow, I recommend the free chess.com app. If you're ever stuck in a queue or waiting for an appointment, you have time to lose several times to it.

ps. Here's a reference to the Alistair Cooke story.

Where are the Nanoparticles?

Using a particular sunblock this week has left me with abraded, gritty, dry skin. It's very uncomfortable and I can't wait for my natural oils to return. And the reason for this unpleasant effect? Microparticles. If only the sunblock had used nanoparticles, I'd feel fine. But these enormous microparticles have wreaked havoc on my skin's ecosystem. Grrrrr.

You can experience the same squeaky dry skin affect by visiting Reykjavik's Blue Lagoon. Promoted as a panacea for many medical conditions, I emerged from it feeling as if the outer 2mm of my skin had been removed. It took a month to recover.

Movie Mistake

The most common mistake in historical movies is sparklingly clean cars. When you're engrossed in a story, be it gangsters in Chicago, or punks in 1970s Manchester, or California in the 1950s, pay attention to the background and you'll see period cars in immaculate condition. They've obviously been borrowed from a collector or a museum, and they're in pristine condition. After all, only a well cared-for car will survive the decades without rust or obvious deterioration. But that's not how most cars look. Your average automobile is caked in mud, has a broken antenna replaced by a coathanger, is plastered with bumber stickers (Go Freo etc.), and might show evidence of car park bingles or run ins with bollards. So, if any movie makers are reading, please take note. Mess those immaculate looking cars up so they're real, not straight from some vintage car museum.

Too shiny

A regular car. 

 

Slow Serving

A radar gun was being used at my tennis lesson last week. Not to measure how fast I drove out of the car park, but to demoralise us with the knowledge of the slowness of our serves. I took a few warm-up swings and then gave it everything, blasting the ball with all my might. The gun said 124 km/h.  Do you know how slow that is? It's less than half the speed that top men reach. The Williams sisters can serve over 200 km/h. And I remember as a teenager visiting the Questacon science museum in Canberra where they had a radar gun in a funnel and you could throw tennis balls at it. And I could throw over 125 km/h. So how on earth, with a high tech, highly strung racquet with thousands of practices can I be serving slower than a teenage boy can throw?

I suspect the point of the radar gun is to entice us into paying for more coaching, to learn the magic techniques that allow a twelve year old girl to serve faster than an adult. And yes, I will play along and continue paying until I can serve at least as fast as I can throw !

Disco Flooring

Attending the Potted Potter play last night at the State Theatre Centre, I was captivated by the disco  floor leading to the entrance. This photo doesn't do justice to the strobing, ever-changing patterns that sweep up and down, encouraging passing pedestrians to jive and jiggle in time with it. I'd go as far as saying that this creative lighting was even more enjoyable than the play.

Secret Rat Running

On heavy traffic days like today, a feeling of dread hits me and my car as soon as we reach the street  and all we see ahead are red tail lights and queues of cars idling. So I took the emergency rat run route, just a couple of streets west of the main road through the suburb and was pleased but amazed to find it completely deserted. How can commuters be so ignorant that they'll be stuck in congestion for 10 minutes when there's an alternative route only a few hundred metres away? I've never once seen anyone use my shortcut. Perhaps my hatred of waiting around and restless nature means that I can't stand not moving and will instead explore alternative routes, whereas others put up with the delay without thinking. Whatever the case, I dread the day that built-in car navigation systems become ubiquitous, and smart enough to start rerouting people through my shortcut to avoid congestion, and I can't use local knowledge to my advantage.  

Counting Pressure

I long for the innocent days before I started obsessively documenting my life. From the early 1990s I've recorded every cinema visis. This year I've started listing all books read. My photography has grown from an occasional activity for special occasions (overseas holidays and birthdays) to a regular database of images, archived every few days. I've keep a diary of dreams since the 1980s. And some years I write a diary.

No longer can I live in the moment. Instead I'm monitoring how many films I've seen this year, or is my book count high enough. There are performance targets I must meet and they influence my behaviour. No longer can I live in the moment, instead I'm driven by numbers.

If only I was strong enough to throw away the lists and records and break free. But no, it's not going to happen. I'm devoted so much time to this I can't stop now.

Bindoon Graveyard

The graveyard at Bindoon church last week. I came across one very long-lived family here - a couple of centenarian sisters were buried near each other.

Another Unidentified Fleur

From the Valley of Chittering.

Not a Bottlebrush

I'm gonna call this a melacaula flower. But I don't think that's right. Mostly because I just invented that word.

Too Many Colours

This patch of wildflowers is ridiculously colourful.

Delicate Orchid

From the Chittering Valley.

Carrom Ball

BREAKING NEWS. I am now announcing that over ten years ago, I independently discovered the revolutionary third method of spin bowling in cricket called the Carrom Ball, (however it's more properly known as Lewk's Finger Flick).

Due to my inability to master conventional spin techniques, I was forced to use a weird flicking of the fingers to impart rotational velocity to the ball. And now it's all the rage in international cricket. 

What next? Will international chefs be rediscovering my incredible cheese on toast technique of hiding cream cheese underneath the cheddar. Or my invisible bookmark technique (to be explained later)? 

Passion for Committees

When I'm not immersed in my latest novel (reading, not writing), my next favourite pastime is to read minutes of committees. A google search will find any number of examples online, from local councils or administrative offices around the globe, all caught up in their own exciting little worlds. And it's always a highlight to see an item like this:

REVIEW OF PERFORMANCE AND OPERATION OF COMMITTEES

A Working Party has been established, with the support of the Director, to consider a range of issues associated with further improving the administrative efficiency and effectiveness of the committee system.  

This is the type of activity that office prisoners such as myself live for. Lazing at home on a Sunday arvo, only the thought of contributing to such a working party would motivate me to come to work early on a Monday. As a child with so many career options ahead, you'd never even contemplate you could make such a difference, but now, with the potential to streamline committee systems, just wow.

Floral Uncertainty

In my world of botanical guesswork and uncertainty, here is a blue lechenaultia and an orange scrunchy flower, intertwined. Sadly there's no way of knowing whether my identifications are correct.

Isopogon

Could this be an isopogon?

Surprise Banksia

This one lives on the ground.

CORRECTION. I've just been informed that this is a honeypot dryandra.

Purpleness

No idea what this flower is. Please tell me !

Kanagaroo Paw of Bindoon

On a wildflower expedition to the Chittering Valley today, this kangaroo paw was by itself.