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.