Sign #234 that I’ve grown up…

I always thought that lectures were something that you prepared in an oak panelled room with shelves of books behind you while you listened to Prokofiev’s “Dance of the Knights” while conjuring a “dialectic” on paper with a fountain pen.

I was wrong.

That, or universities are short on real estate. Because this is the third time that I have had to write them in bed with a heat pack to my “desk jockey” back while rubbing my eyes every 10 minutes to stay awake.

I don’t think I was cut out for academia after all…

What I am cut out for is bursts of creativity…and I can’t wait to get back into sewing. A and I are going to attempt another Pattern Magic 3 item together: the sine wave sleeve top. Or, at least that’s what I’m calling it. And I still have to use up an amazing fabric I picked up from Tessuti which looks like some sci-fi city or crystal. If I had another day to procrastinate I’d be tracing the pattern now instead of blogging.

Going into the Deep End

I used to, and probably still do, have a great fear of deep water. You know, the type where you can’t see the bottom and the sides of the pool. For some reason, despite spending most of my childhood swimming and in later years seeing a clock and thinking “on the red top, on the black top”, I am so scared of deep water.

The Sea is the height of fear for me. Not only is it deep, it is full of living things that can not be reasoned with. I had this conversation today, actually: Please don’t eat me. You’ll regret it the next day. I’m full of cholesterol and fat – and not in a good way Mr Shark.

Now given this fear, I was the last person who would willingly throw themselves into the Sea with some somewhat robust breathing gear and flippers. To be fair, I hardly threw myself off the boat willingly. Wayang (or botakto his colleagues) reached a point where he actually tried to keep my hand away from the post on the boat. I digress. I never imagined that I would be scuba diving and seeing walls of coral sloping up into the infinite blue.

I’m still reeling from the experience. I want more, it’s like a drug. The silence, the exhilaration, the warmth of the water at the surface, and the sensation that you are a floating insignificant spectator to an elaborate performance which you will never understand and always be amazed by. As much as I fancy myself as a bit of a flaneur on some days, being one underwater does not give you any more insight into the world as much as it made me feel like I was viewing the world at the wrong scale.

I was a bit sad that night when we returned to the hotel. I felt anxious and agitated…I felt like I had something to scream but I didn’t know what or who to scream at. Then it clicked: I wanted to pick up the phone and tell my dad. Ahhh that old chestnut…unable to pick up the phone and just tell them. It’s almost like I’m saving up all these events just so that the next time I see him I can lay a little booklet down next to him and say “when you’ve got a moment, have a browse. I’ve been trying to live without you…but I can’t help but think of you everytime I try and live a little”.

Anyway…this year, I hope to get my license and then go to Bali again and contiuue diving in the north. Because you know, you only live once.

Beauty Radiated in Eternity

Beauty radiated in eternity
With its light;
Love was born
And set the worlds alight.

It revealed itself to angels
Who knew not how to love;
It turned shyly towards man
And set fire to his heart.

Hafiz, 14th century Sufi poet. Excerpt from the Divans of Hafiz.

I learned two things today:

1. People still read Divans of Hafiz today as a way to reflect on their lives by opening the book and reading whatever page you land on.

2. I must buy a copy. It’s on parallel with the first experience of reading Siegfried Sassoon’s War Poems.

I don’t read poetry as often as I should, but when it affects me the images and emotions it evokes are often so much stronger than what I experience with the same number of words in prose. In this case the verse speaks of Beauty in a way that makes it unclassifiable and powerful…which to me is often what we are struck with when we encounter it (in life, landscapes, objects, and sometimes even people).
Mystified, curious, tentative, but engulfed by a feeling that makes it impossible to look away or forget.

I need to make more time to read.

What weekends are about

Making lor mai kai for dinners and lunches. With an extra parcel for M and her budding +1!

Women don’t lack spatial awareness

Today during a meeting, I found out that one of the myths surrounding the inferiority of women in the built environment is – in fact – a lie.

I will have to reference it beyond my hearsay source…but it’s too late for that now and I’m writing this while waiting for my soup to defrost on the stove.

The myth is: women do not share the same keen spatial awareness that men apparently have.

Where this myth comes from: our ancient predecessors had a social structure of hunters and gatherers. Men typically represented the hunters, and women the gatherers. This has been extrapolated to mean that women (read: gatherers) have been trained through thousands of years of genetic coding to recognise landmarks (that fruit tree yonder!) rather than distance in terms of length or time (that fruit tree three clicks south south-west!).  Whereas men on the other hand had to actively chase their prey and therefore travelled further in all directions and therefore couldn’t necessarily depend on landmarks all the time.

Myth busted: A team member on a project we’re working on in the CBD who specialises in behaviour patterns and wayfinding asserted that this has been proved to be untrue. From a young age, boys and girls have the same spatial awareness and typically navigate their way around in a fashion that is not gender driven. In fact, some of the myths surrounding women and general lack of direction stem from the fact that men are less likely to ask for directions. So while I amble about aimlessly on some days, I can take solace in the fact that all those people (read: men) who look like they have direction and know where they are going may in fact be as equally lost as I.

BOOM!

I will have to reference this soon enough. Once I get my staff card, JSTOR and I are going to be best friends together with this blog.

But there you go, based on an anecdote shared at a meeting today, I can semi-quasi-safetly say that this bullshit about women being less “spatially aware” is bullshit afterall. And that, along with knowing that I will be in Bali in two weeks, is all that has saved what could otherwise be categorised as a pretty shit day.

Shut your eyes and repeat: green is good

How do you know when you’ve grown up? You crave broccoli like a big chocolate bar. If this soup turns out well…there’ll be a recipe to follow.

update
The soup is delicious if i do say so myself. Its got potatoes, broccoli, vegetable stock, sauteed onions, dill, and flat leaf parsley in it. There’s at least 3 litres and stir in a wooden spoonful of sour cream at the end. Serve hot with crumbled Danish feta sprinkled on top and a drizzle of olive (or truffle!) Oil. I chose truffle tonight.

A girl’s gotta eat!

Over Socialized

If I could sum up feeling over socialized in a haiku I’ll know I’ve reached zen like clarity.

I think it’s time for another sabbatical from 24 hour social media and its consequence: feeling strangely exposed and vulnerable.
I’m certain that there’s a peer reviewed essay on this feeling.

I think it can sometimes feel like a ritual of sharing something in the hope of validation that you are still socially acceptable despite the fact you are effectively “socializing” alone in a highly edited and scrutinized context. And for lack of a better way to put it; its fucked up because real life friendships don’t – and shouldn’t – operate in that environment.

That is all.

Dessert for Breakfast: An Experiment

ABC iView is surely one of the best things that has happened to Australia in the last few years. If you define Australia as just me <insert self satisfied smile here>.

River Cottage is probably one of the best “Lifestyle” shows available on iView. Everytime I watch Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall assemble mouth watering stews, salads, roasts, puddings, sauces, andeverything, I feel like I should decamp to the countryside for a couple of days and cook ridiculous amounts of food. Of course, then eat said ridiculous amount of food wearing a suitably chunky merino jumper made from a pattern taken from a back issue of the Australian Country Women’s Association. Seeing as neither option are readily available, I have no choice but to live out these dreams in the middle of this city I call home.

Last week I was watching River Cottage episode “Fruit” which was all about how fruit is great and how people don’t eat enough of it etc etc. One of the segments on the show was all about compotes. How you can make a number of compotes, match them with a number of creamy yoghurty custardy sauces, to spruce up cakes, crumbles, and meringues. Suffice to say at the end of the show I felt like my life would be incomplete without a serving of rhubarb compote, cream, and cake.

Enter A, who is baking tomorrow and has invited me over to enjoy some of her baked goods. That was all the excuse I needed – I made a beeline for the grocers which sell rhubarb yesterday.

I confess to not being a huge fruit fan. I like tropical fruits but they are nearly impossible to get at the market for a reasonable price and I don’t often go to Little Saigon in Footscray. I don’t know what Rhubarb is…in my mind it’s a fruit. But it has no seeds and it’s probably more closely related to celery. *excuses myself to check wikipedia*. From what I can gather, it looks like Rhubarb is indeed a fruit. But that’s a consequence of the Americans deciding that it deserves less of an import tax than vegetables. I digress.

I didn’t want to buy just one sad orange so I decided to improvise. Improvisation is what I think I do best in the kitchen. I don’t often find myself short of an ingredient but when I do, I usually make do. The River Cottage recipe calls for the zest and the juice of an orange, sugar, and some honey. Ignoring all three ingredients, I decided to go with pomegranate molasses and vanilla sugar. I figured the molasses would be a nice substitute for the honey and the pomegranate will heighten the tartness which is so well matched with cooked rhubarb’s creamy texture. And pomegranates and rhubarbs are both red – scientific, I know.

After the rhubarb had been baked, the molasses caramelised further at the base of the dish so I added a bit more water and deglazed the bottom as you would a roasting tray. The result was a deep reddish/brown sauce coating the rhubarb. It looked tastier…and that’s half the battle won.

So the above image is the result. Vanilla rhubarb compote with pomegranate molasses mixed into natural yoghurt.

Baby

“Ohhh Hi Baby! So good to hear your voice!”, he would say.

I’ve never been one to handle being unwell…umm…well. I just feel like crawling under the covers and feeling sorry myself. I like wallowing in self pity and wondering “Why me? Why does my brain keep pouring out of my nose? Why do I keep coughing up my vital organs? O woe is me!”. And then I take some meds, get some rest and feel so much better.

I had a bit of a *duh* realisation last night with M: I don’t treat what happened last year with the same “go with it and feel rubbish” attitude. I feel like I have to be strong. I have to be better immediately. I have to make sure that it doesn’t swallow me whole. Because I don’t know what the equivalent of taking some meds, and getting some rest is when you’ve just lost someone that means everything to you…because they are you. And half of me died last year…half of me has been laid to rest in the ground. When will I feel better? Will it ever feel better? Is it bad to wish that I will feel better? Will I find peace eventually? Will I wake up, remember it, and not feel like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me?

Last night I had an exhibition at work…and it was of a project which he will never see. I never had the chance to show him the photos of the project…I never had the chance to show him what I had been working on for over a year…I never had the chance to point to it, look at him, smile broadly and say “I did that! I was a part of that! What do you think? Are you proud of me?”. And it hurts. It hurts in a way that I don’t know if it will ever go away…and I don’t want to feel it at all…I’d rather pretend he’s still alive in Bangkok and that it’s the tyranny of distance and not death that seperates us.

I miss him. I miss him more and more as each day passes and I realise that he’s not going to call…and that I should delete his telephone numbers in my phone…because he can’t be called anymore. And even if I do call those numbers, it won’t be him that picks up the phone. It’ll feel like there’s been a mistake, that I’ve misdailled and that I should check the number again. Check to make sure that I put the numbers in right and check that I got the country code right. Failing that, I should check the satellite that is transmitting the call because there must be some kind of mistake: why isn’t it putting me through to that voice? What wavelength and band do I need to be on to hear that voice again?

There is no advice line that I want to call. I don’t want to talk to some stranger about someone who meant everything to me. I don’t want to even talk about it to friends half the time because I don’t know how to begin…how do you even start that conversation? “Oh hi, you know that thing that I’ve spent months talking to you about already? Yeah, can we talk about that please?” And while I know that I have kickass friends and they wouldn’t hesitate to sit down and listen to me, it doesn’t matter because I don’t want them to listen to me. I want them to bring him back for me. And that’s not possible. And it’s also an incredibly insane and irrational thing to ask for.

It’s what I wished for on New Years Eve…I wished for just five more minutes. I pleaded with the sky with some of my closest friends as witnesses: just five more minutes. That’s all I want. Please. Give me that time…and I will do anything you ask in return for five more minutes.
And of course, that’s not possible. There is no extra five minutes…I had the time that I had and I will have to deal with the fact that there is no more. And I’m having trouble dealing with that…I have reconciled that he’s gone. But in a really crap way, I think that it’s only fair to expect him to appear for the things that really matter. Like somehow I’ve traded off him not being around on a day to day basis on the belief that he should be around for the things that do matter. And that is utter rubbish…of course that is unreasonable? So how do I slip into the belief that it’s perfectly reasonable at the time?

I wish there was a guidebook to navigating loss…one that was written just for me. And the words on the page would speak to me and say exactly what I needed to know. I want the “Lonely Planet” (oh god…this is turning into a total Dad joke) guide to Loss. And it would come packaged up nicely with a short home video from him to me. And he would tell me all the things he was supposed to say before he couldn’t. And he’d advise me on all the things that I would need to do to in life from here and on out without him by my side. Like a concentrated dose of assistance that I could replay whenever I need a bit of extra fortification that he used to supply for me when I felt…unacceptable…or when I felt like I was losing my way.

Or maybe it could be like some kind of virtual reality pod that I could sit in and be brought back to those early mornings when he would take me to the airport to go back to school and it would be us in the backseat staring out the window to a Bangkok that was only just waking up…and in that purplish light he would tell me about life. About things that I should remember, things that I would need to know, things that I should know…and he would tell me about his life, and what I meant to him and as we pulled into the airport he would finish the conversation and I’d have a few moments to dry my eyes follow him to the check in counters.

Then he would stand there, usually telling me that I had packed too much baggage. Again. And he would ask why I felt it was necessary to pack my entire life into a suitcase and that I should lead a much more “minimal” lifestyle. And it’s funny in a really bittersweet way to look back at those mornings. I would stand there rolling my eyes telling him I needed to pack my own shampoo and conditioner. And I needed all 8 pairs of shoes and he would actually listen to me. Probably wanting to roll his eyes so much and ask “Why is my daughter such an airhead?”. But he would still begrudgingly help me lift my bags onto the conveyor belt even when he had just told me how I should learn to lift my own bags to appreciate how heavy they are for the luggage handlers.

He’d then walk me to the entrance of the passport control area, not before asking me if I had any money left from my holiday allowance to pay the 500THB fee and usually I’d just stare back at him blankly as if he’d asked me something requiring intense mathematical scrutiny. And again, probably wanting to roll his eyes and this time ask “My daughter is going to be broke her entire life, isn’t she?”, he would pay and pass me the slip of paper. Then he would pull me in for a hug. Tell me that he loves me and that he’s going to miss me and that I should call to let him know that I got back OK. But no matter how sad I was at that moment, it was reassuring to believe that it’d be OK because we’d be doing the exact same thing in 3 months time.

And it’s those memories that hurt the most but now when I think about it, all of the memories hurt because I know there are no more to be made. And frankly, I have days where I just don’t care anymore if I never “make” anymore memories. What would be the point when I’ve lost the person that I would have shared them with? It’s just going through the motions and pressing on with life because I know he’d slap me if I said I wanted to give up – not that I want to give up at all – but there isn’t a goal anymore. I associated too many of life’s milestones with him. Career? What for – it sucks not having him to talk to about the construction idustry or about business in Asia. Travel? What for – he used to offer to meet me anywhere in the world for a few days if he could get the time off. Fiance? What for – I don’t have him to check over/vett my choice so I’ve probably made the wrong one. Wedding? What for – I don’t want to be “given away” by anyone else. Children? What for – he was going to be the most awesome grandfather/baby-helper on the planet and that was one of the only reasons why I wanted to have kids. In short, I can’t have “life” to the fullest without him because not only because he was supposed to be a huge part of it, he was supposed to be there to help me. And now everything is just harder.

And right now he’s probably checking in on me and asking, “Why is my daughter crying? Aiya, I thought I told her already that she’ll always make me proud? And *looks around my room* I thought I told her to lead a minimal and tidy life?”

*insert wry smile here*

Heat-struck with Inspiration

I think it’s only fitting that the inspiration point for this post comes from David Mitchell; actor, comedian, TV personality, and panelist. On a side note, how does one become a career panelist without having to go back to uni and do a PhD? I think you need at least a level 10 in mental gymnastics and social dexterity. Hmmm…best I don’t quit my day job then.

This lovely quote comes from his recent piece on the pitfalls of anonymous comments online:

I’m sure embarrassment is what it is. Like love, hate is something that makes us go red in the face. It’s safer expressed covertly lest it be rejected. If the local cafe knew it was you who found the service unfriendly or the muffins over-priced, it would make you feel vulnerable. This way, you get to call the manageress a wart-faced crone without it getting personal. Anonymity, like a secret ballot, is a guarantee of sincerity.

Mitchell likens comments online to graffiti. My understanding of that would mean that online comments are sometimes amusing, sometimes profound, but most of the time poorly executed and a burden to the general public. And I suppose comments on some articles like “First!” would count as tags. I hate tags. They are the visual equivalent of a mosquito buzzing near your ear and then disappearing before you can kill it. I’ve had protracted debates about this with A and I still don’t see theartistry in them.

It would be deeply un-cool for me to say that I think all graffiti should be removed…or even that some should be removed to make way for others. I think I just have an opinion on it but I would never want it to be removed…even the crappily sprayed swastikas.

I suppose that’s a good segue into online comments. The Age, The Hun, The Guardian, Slate, Gawker, etc etc have articles which the general public can comment on. Unlike The Age, the Gawker media websites make you register first and you can click on a user and see their previous comments. I think that’s a good policy. You can work out the trolls pretty quickly and I think it’d be interesting to review all your comments on a range of topics and check if you are having…uhh…moral and ethical disconnects…within yourself. Or would you accept that, like the world, you are multi-faceted individual who will have views which sometimes don’t sit neatly next to each other?

But on a more serious note, there are the whack jobs who write comments that are so incredibly far out of this world that you wonder if ASIO should be renting the house across the road from where these people live. The internet affords us a veil of anonymity to express extreme views but as I have discovered recently, it’s actually quite easy to find yourself online if you go by only a few usernames online – like I do. I tried to scrub the internet of my older blogs last week in a knee-jerk reaction to something far less sinister than men in suits renting the apartment upstairs.

I’d like to think I can begin to tease out the issues which I felt at the time, and still do, surrounding having a platform online. While it’s cathartic for me to set up my soapbox on this corner of the internet and shout at unsuspecting passersby, I would still feel really overwhelmed if I actually had a readership of actual regular readers. Maybe it’s because I’m not so certain of myself that I’d feel confident enough to be judged, critiqued, or even encouraged by complete strangers. And I also think that I, like Mitchell, believe that the level of anonymity I have as Kaleidoscapes affords me a little more space to be more sincere (and occasionally more flippant) than I normally would be in a similar social situation. For example, I’m not about to start ranting about my views of the hijab to a room full of strangers.

I confess to ‘trawling’ the internet and one of my favourite past times is reading the comments section in any news and current affairs website. I love it. It’s like eavesdropping on steroids. Some people shed light on an issue that you wouldn’t have learnt from the article, other people share how they feel personally and therefore teach me empathy, and others who try and convert everybody else to their beliefs. The latter are my favourite. And I love it even more that these comments are so abundant online, you can establish a blog devoted to just that: the comments of the global village idiots and meatheads. SpEak You’re bRanes (http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/) is such a blog. It is on first reaction a bit of a lame trick: take the most jaw-droppingly idiotic comments you can find on the BBC HYS forum and write about it like you were able to explain to these people why all the immigrants aren’t stealing their jobs. But it’s very well done and often the comments selected are so bankrupt of logic that it is a feat in itself to discredit them without stooping to poo flinging and screeching.

I conclude: In a strange way, anonymous online comments are necessary…people hold all sorts of strange opinions in the dark and they fester and proliferate if no one stands up and methodically (often hilariously) debunks them, one failed supposition at a time. I wish I could write like the speak you’re branes bloggers. But then I might actually get a readership…and I’m not sure if I want that…this is my online equivalent of lying in a dark room and trying to distill my thoughts.