... deafening

i've been interested to see and hear the reportage and discussion surrounding the recent racial unrest in sydney, and what's being said, and who's saying it.

i've never really been one for the beach, slightly remarkable given my childhood in the illawarra, an area noted for its near-heliotheistic worship of beach life. just saying the word beach makes me feel like i've got sand in my underpants. (excuse me...) so in a sense, i really have very little invested in a discussion of the tribal conflicts of sydney beaches. on the other hand, i have a keen investment in orderly society, and as a Christian i have an intensely keen interest in a society of justice and compassion. tolerance is all very nice, but there are some things that should not be tolerated.

i've got to gather my thoughts about this. i'll be pondering over the weekend, putting my thoughts in order. chances are i won't have that much to say, given how little i think of what i think in the grand scheme of things. Still, i have begun writing in this forum and it's something i'm thinking about and want to say something about.

stay tuned...

... premature

i think that in light of the weather in the sydney basin yesterday, perhaps my rant about the weather on monday was a tad premature. however "unprintable" my feelings on monday, my feelings yesterday would probably have been labelled "obscene and unfit for publication". i hate this hot, humid weather.

on the other hand, i love sauteed mushrooms on toast and my new favourite cafe, vanilla bean & lime (61 howard rd, padstow, +61 2 9774 3875). lou does them in garlic butter, and i could barely see the plate underneath them this morning, as with saucer-eyes i beheld the procession of delicious delectables that made up my breakfast: mushies on toast, olive and cheese melt (yummy!), and my perennial mocha coffee. with abba music in the background, i don't think i could have enjoyed breakfast any more than i did.

it was exactly the springboard i needed to make a better job of my day. i even slept well last night! (who'd have thought?)

... unprintable weather

when i first read isaac asimov's foundation series, one of the things i found terribly quaint and humourous were the instances of the word "unprintable". i occasionally asked myself, what was so bad that it was unprintable? given that i was about 9 or 10 years old when i first read foundation, i suppose i hadn't really thought too creatively about it. now i'm a bit older and far more cynical than i was then (starry-eyed i was at that tender age... well, before i turned 9 at any rate), and thinking creatively i can guess what "unprintable" might have meant. rather a lot like i feel about this weather we have in sydney at the moment.

i drank 4 gatorade bottles' worth of water yesterday - roughly 2.5 litres - just at work, notwithstanding the other liquid i consumed before and after work. if anyone has a work position available on a ship bound for antarctica, i'm happy to peel potatoes, sort screws, whatever it takes to get to somewhere colder...

... ch-ch-ch-changes

i've added a couple of links to the right-hand side here ---------->
for some things i've seen that have really made an impact on me. the creating passionate users site i linked to from cafedave, and it looks like it's going to be well-worth trawling through in times when i feel like having a quiet, brain-fertilising read. the piled higher and deeper page is another comic strip that i fell in love with while i was away on holidays.

(erk, as our latest phd condidate, it may prove useful reading for you!)

... glorious

read about this blog when i was on the train tonight coming home. definitely worth a look.

grab your fork

a blog you can sink your teeth into.

... already?! (2)

well, i'm back from the states and already it's been over a week since i blogged! i can't believe how quickly the time flies. just a few notes... hopefully i'll have a bit more tomorrow.

1. the trip from jamaica center to jfk in the "airtrain" was pretty good... reminded me a lot of the monorail around sydney, although it also put me in mind of the l-train in miami in "driver". i was sad leaving, but glad to have had the opportunity to be able to leave... i at least was there for a while.

2. united are way cool... i like them a lot. everyone was very helpful and friendly, even when they were really tired (and i liked that they could admit to being that tired!). if i travel to america again, i'll definitely be flying united.

3. when i check in at jfk united bumped me to an earlier flight to lax, and i ended up sitting two seats to the left of where i was when i flew lax-jfk! then boarding the plane at lax for sydney, i was sitting one seat to the right of where i'd been coming over!

4. i've got hooked on hot apple cider, and (to my shame) i have been into starbucks (twice) to imbibe. once i've found a sufficiently sweet apple juice on its own that i can nuke in the microwave, i won't have to visit... there... again.

5. work has been very busy, and already i want another holiday. roll on Christmas hols! (only 22 sleeps until the last work day of the year!)

as an aside i now see what erk was talking about viz. the time- and date-stamping for posts. i guess i'm just going to leave it in the lap of the gods. for the record, my time is 13h46 (EDST) 1/12/2005.

toodles!

... almost

well, one more sleep and then i'm back off home. new york city has been a whirlwind visit... or maybe i should say hurricane, after the rain and extreme winds up on top of the empire state building today. the rain let up this afternoon, and julie and i did some rather more serious shopping. we looked around macy's, checked out a rather nifty french language librarie, and had dinner at a particularly nice risotto restaurant. after the risotto dinner, we meandered around to the cupcake place... ummm... magnolia bakery(?) and got some cupcakes. i'm sure we'll eat them in the morning on the way to the met.

after the met, i'm off to catch the air train to jfk. julie wants to pack me onto it at jamaica center, which sounds like a fair enough plan... it'll be touch and go if i can find where i'm going to when i get to jfk anyway, but if she has any doubts about me finding the right terminal, i suppose she'll feel it incumbent upon her to make sure i get there ok. which of course means i feel it incumbent upon me to make sure she doesn't have to.

it's snowing in ithaca (bugger!!!) and julie is hoping to get back there not too late, so i'm equally keen to make sure she gets on a reasonable bus home. neither of us is travelling particularly light (i have souvenirs and julie has... stuff), but all in all i've had a good time here in new york city.

i'll blog again later about my overall impressions... i think it'll make for a fairly lengthy post and one i'm not about to waste my meagre internet cafe time on now. i'm due to arrive in sydney between 8 and 8:30am on friday morning (25 november) for anyone who's interested. if you're desperately keen to meet me at the airport (after all, i travel overseas ALL the time), you can email me at adam_lavery at operamail dot com.

... already?!

well, today's my last day in delightful ithaca, ny. it really is gorges here... lots of them. i walked down one yesterday called cascadilla gorge, and i think if i'd gone down it on my first day here i might have wasted all my time thinking up ways of staying here longer... instead of wasting my time... the way i have... ummm... yeah... anyway...

point being is that i've had a great time here. julie's been an awesome hostess, by which i mean to say that she's been as welcoming as i could possibly have hoped, introduced me to her friends and coworkers, which has been great, and all of whom strike me as being the good value kind of people i feel comfortable having around a friend. i've tried to be as low-impact as possible, and hopefully i've been a not entirely unpleasant guest to have stay.

ithaca by turns reminds me of kiama, and canberra, and wollongong. it's not as cold as i was hoping (not that i'm going to be looking for a refund on my gloves!) but it's been much cooler here than sydney... i'm SO not looking forward to the humidity of sydney after the delightful dry atmosphere here. julie's been complaining about frizzing hair, but i've not felt so healthy for some time. the temperature, the humidity, the distinctly relaxed atmosphere... melbourne is looking more attractive for me all the time.

tomorrow is new york city, then wednesday i'm off home. up until thursday just gone it felt like time was taking ages to pass, but in the last few days it's been hard to believe that time has gone by so quickly! relativity's a pain in the butt.

i've been writing, though, and i'm looking forward to going to mars hill when i get back. hopefully i'll have enough energy to enjoy it.

... well, here we are

actually, if you read kim stanley robinson's novel red mars you'll see that those are the first words spoken by man on mars. in a way, ifeel a little like that's what's happened to me in the last couple of days... it's a bit like being on mars: you can look at it, think you're prepared, and when you get there it's not quite what you expected.

my flight was due to leave sydney at 4.25... it didn't actually leave until about 6pm. that meant that i missed my connecting flight in LA for NY. customs didn't take long to process us, and they didn't take the timtams i brought (very nice of them, as they were very well received) but baggage claim for rebooking took ages, and rebooking itself likewise took rather a while.

as i was standing in the queue, i took a moment to observe the departures board and decided instead of taking the next flight, arriving in NY at midnight, then hinewyork about 12.30am, then getting to port authority for 8am, i decided that a late flight would be better. i rebooked for the 10.10pm from LA, cancelled my booking at hinewyork, then bummed around LAX for 7 hours. i formed a few lasting impressions about the US, and about myself in the process, which i may decided to share later.

after a near miss at LAX, when i found out with 5 minutes to board that i was at the wrong gate, i boarded without further incident and headed east. what an awesome time to travel. i must have dozed from time to time - i didn't sleep as far as i know at any part of the journey, but i definitely dozed - but i did get to see the lights of many US cities. gorgeous. what during the day would have been generally drab green or blue/grey cityscape at night became dazzling gold stars on a rolling sea of black velvet. NY was great to see like this. by the time i got to the bus to port authority, the dawn was just peeking through road pylons and buildings, gibbous and orange.

the bus driver to port authority was cool, which might have been a good karmic opinion to form when, upon buying my bus ticket to ithaca, i realised that i didn't have my luggage! i ran out of PA onto 8th avenue, turned the corner onto 42nd, praying he'd be there still...

and he was!

arrived at ithaca about 1pm. i realised that from the time i was supposed to depart, to the time julie picked me up, i had been in transit for almost 37 hours.

but i can't express how glad i am to be here...

... straws

i just heard from my boss that a man in melbourne was arrested for firing oranges at houses from a p.v.c. pipe gun. apparently, frozen oranges, fired using sufficient accelerant or other explosive charge from the tube, could actually go through a car door! a wag has been heard to comment, "so would that constitute a navel attack?"

two sleeps to go until i fly off the city so nice they named it twice. i'm rather looking forward to getting away from this crappy sydney weather - i can do without the humidity that makes an ordinary temperature extraordinarily annoying. my level of keenness to be enjoying the closing weeks of a new york autumn is matched only by my dread at the thought of coming back to this foul, steamy, can't get away from it without air conditioning weather that we've developed here in sydney. as i write this, i am aware of a southerly change that has arrived, bringing with it some rain, possibly a storm, but pessimist that i am i can't help but think this is more fuel for the mugginess.

currently reading lectures by wittgenstein on the foundations of mathematics (oxford, 1939)... interesting, especially given the interplay by people like alan turing during the lectures...

... eight sleeps to go...

i'm just a little bit excited because i only have a week to go until i leave to go to new york. it's only just kind of settling into my brain that that's actually what's happening... it's been a plan for so long, i don't think i'll really believe i'm going until after i've come back and had the pictures developed!

judging by the amount of sleep i've had this week, i'm not really expecting to get much more next week, which (hopefully) means i'll be snoozing all the way to america... which would be nice.

... time marches on

not in a "for whom the bell tolls" (metallica) kind of way, maybe. circumstances have reached a kind of ... intersection in my life where i've been thinking a bit about what kind of life i've lived and where i've been and, to a certain extent, where i'm going.

in the short term, i'm going to america! (only 11 sleeps to go!) this has actually been one of the things i've been thinking about.

the last time i went overseas, i went to china with a group from my old school. that was in january,1993. thinking about it, i have memories that feel like only yesterday, although some memories have devolved into those facts-and-figures style memories that aren't true ones, but rather the stories that one tells about some past event, stories you remember better than what they actually describe.

in other news, it's my birthday this month, but other people are also having their birthdays earlier than mine... (happy birthday for friday, motherly type person!!! heheh) i turn 31, which feels kind of... old. it's the stupidest feeling in the world, because i'm the youngest person at my workplace by about 4 or 5 years. what i think it is, is that when i look back on my life thus far, there's more to catalogue than i can actually remember.

ask me what i did this week just gone, and i can remember in broad strokes what i did, but my memory is beginning to fail in the details. i wasn't actually expecting to notice that kind of thing until, oh, i had kids, or some other life-changing event. i find i'm longing for the kind of memory that sax russell (one of the main protagonists of kim stanley robinson's mars sequence) worked to develop, with more room and better filing.

i don't think i've actually lost memories. i think i've just lost access to them. i often in conversation refer to my brain as a library using old-fashioned file cards to index it. while the library itself is theoretically infinite (given the laws of functioning l-space, viz terry pratchett's discworld novels), the file card box i have for indexing it is proving to be about the size of the shoebox a kindergarten kid's first school shoes come in!

curiouser and curiouser...

(i should say more curious and more curious, but even then it doesn't make much sense...)

... blue

i never said
don't
and i
never said
please

... t-minus 24 sleeps...

i've had a request for travelling details. i'm making two trips in the near future.

trip number 1: melbourne.

whoop-di-doo, i hear some people breathe, but it's this weekend, and i'm flying down - first time i've been in a plane since i went to china (and for those who don't know that was a good 12.5 years ago)... it's a bit of a dry run to make sure i don't freak out in the enclosed space. i know i probably won't, but it's also a nice excuse to visit a city i really enjoy being in. i can also catch up with a few friends down there, barb, sally and sue-ellen.

trip number 2: new york state.

i leave on november 12 and arrive back home on november 25. i'm flying to new york city, staying overnight (since i arrive 9:30pm local time) then catch the bus to ithaca, where i'm going to be staying with julie for a week, then i believe we're both coming back to new york city where we'll be another two nights looking around the place, then i'm back home. bit of a whistle-stop visit, but there you go.

i haven't been on holidays overseas for ages, and it's kind of exciting now to actually be going again. i always had an excuse - my sister's been living overseas for ages, but i hate enough that we have trouble getting along while she's here in australia, i couldn't bear having fights with her while i was overseas. julie was gracious enough to say that i could stay with her, and i'm taking her up on that. it'll also be nice to see someone i only get to talk to in the morning when i'm journalling over my coffee... not that i get much of a reply that way, but i do hear stuff after a while! :)

i'm looking forward to getting away from my life here in australia for a little while, hopefully making a good start on some writing ideas i have, and thinking through stuff that's on my heart to think about. God's been doing so much in my life, in my thoughts and my heart, it'll be nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and just ... be.

and i'll be seeing my best friend, which is always nice.

... gordon greenwood... i mean, graham goldsworthy...

i've been having a terrible time lately telling people that i'm reading gospel and kingdom by graham goldsworthy. every time i try to say graham goldsworthy, i go to say gordon greenwood. "who is gordon greenwood?" i hear you ask... well, he wrote a book called the modern world, which we used as a textbook in 2- and 3-unit modern history when i did the hsc in '92.

anyway, a bit i read in g&k today gave me pause, and i thought i'd blog it. i journalled it too, but my reader won't get to see it for a while, since it's in the interim journal!

...[w]hen we allow the whole Bible - Old and New Testaments - to speak to us, we find that those subjective aspects of the Christian life which are undoubtedly important - the new life, faith and sanctification - are the fruits of the gospel... [it] is rooted and grounded in the history of redemption. It is the good news about Jesus, before it can become good news for sinful men and women...

[ just before the end of chapter 1 ]

i don't know if i've ever really considered my faith or new birth as fruits of the gospel - gifts from God certainly, but not as flowers on the orchid of the gospel! the importance of the gospel is then... proportionately (?) so much greater for looking at it like that!

also exciting but not quite so much is reading it explicitly said that the gospel is about Jesus before it is for people, sinful people (to use a tautology). to see it written down explicitly in black and white... exciting.

... travelling

after many years of poking and prodding by my family, i am travelling again. twelve years ago i went overseas for a couple of weeks, and now, in november, i'm going to be travelling again. i buy my ticket this week, and i'm actualy starting to get excited.

t-minus 32 sleeps and counting?

... oi, oi, oi...

well, i finished seven ancient wonders yesterday morning, not early after midnight, but early after breakfast. it was a great read...

... but it's the first matthew reilly book i've read that hasn't blown me away.

i can't believe i'm saying that, but that's how i feel. even hell island was impacting. that was like an awesome ten-minute preview to a movie, or one of those awesome advertisements that's almost better than the movie you're going to see at the cinema. (the advertising campaign "revolution" for the sega saturn game console was like that... shame the console never really took off - it was a brilliant advert... )

it was fast, but not that fast. it was exciting, but not as exciting as temple, say. i think... i think it would've been a better follow-up book.

maybe if i'd read a novella or something about jack west, jr, beforehand? about what happened at basra? it all just seemed a little bit... contrived?

i wish i wasn't saying this, but it's the first matthew reilly novel i've kind of felt a bit... unsurprised at.

it's good. don't get me wrong. it's good.

i'm just not sure it's as good as his other work. it's the latest, but i'm not sure it's the greatest.

sorry, matthew. please believe me when i say, i'm a fan of your work until the day i die.

... reilly! reilly! reilly!

JUST bought matthew reilly's new book, seven ancient wonders.

at k-mart.

for $26.95.

in hardback.

(until i actually read it, i don't think there's much else to say. why are you stil here? go buy the book!!!)

... temple

temple is the second of matthew reilly's books that i ever read, ice station being the first and contest being the third. anyone who knows me and who's heard me talk about his books knows i get very evangelistic about them. (not infrequently do i wish i could bring myself to be so engaged about the Bible!)

i finished reading it again this morning, on the way to work. it would make an excellent film (of course, all of his books would - be looking out for news about the production of hover car racer, once hollywood gets its butt in gear...)

i was thinking who i would cast the film with. frank nash would easily be played by brian cox (slight typecasting, but i don't think he'd mind). the other cast would be a bit harder, but i was thinking william race could be played by edward norton... similarly to the character in primal fear, but instead of swinging wildly between the two, norton would show a gradual strengthening in the face of opposition as race discovers just how heroic he could be. brendan fraser would be too nice, i think, although i still haven't seen the quiet american yet.

and for ice station readers, how about rob morrow from numb3rs and northern exposure to play shane schofield?

... rhyme

This is the house that John built.

This is the rum that lay in house that John built.

These are the rats that drank the rum that lay in house that John built.

This is the cat that hid from the rats that drank the rum that lay in house that John built.

This is the dog that shamed the cat that hid from the rats that drank the rum that lay in house that John built.

These are the pigs that followed the dog that shamed the cat that hid from the rats that drank the rum that lay in house that John built.

These are the sheep ruled by the pigs that followed the dog that shamed the cat that hid from the rats that drank the rum that lay in house that John built.

This is the game played by the sheep ruled by the pigs that followed the dog that shamed the cat that hid from the rats that drank the rum that lay in house that John built.

These are the snakes that win the game played by the sheep ruled by the pigs that followed the dog that shamed the cat that hid from the rats that drank the rum that lay in house that John built.

This is the weasel that charmed the snakes that win the game played by the sheep ruled by the pigs that followed the dog that shamed the cat that hid from the rats that drank the rum that lay in house that John built.