Stocks and flows

Stock movements since Joan arrived in Cambridge.

• % time in good mood: ↓
  
• Academic prowess: ↑
  
• Sociability: ↓
  
• Patience: ↓
  
• Health and fitness: ↓
  
• Tidiness: ↓
  
• Cooking ability: ↑
  
• Dance ability: ↓
  
• Chinese ability: ↓
  
• Piano ability: ↓
  
• Self discipline: ?
  
• Activism: ↑
  
• Self respect: ?
  
• Financial situation: ↓
  
• Photography ability: ↑
  
• Blogging frequency: ?
  
• Friend ability: ↓
  
• News awareness: ↑
  
• Professional competence: ↑
  
• World outlook: ↓

Why, in a desperate bid to halt my chocolate habit, I bought a packet of chocolate chip cookies yesterday

The call of the Amazon

Items that made it to the Amazon checkout last night

• Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World (Paperback) by John D. Sterman
  
• La Revancha Del Tango (Audio CD) by Gotan Project
  
• Great American Musicals (Audio CD) by Various Artists
  
• Les Misérables (Penguin Popular Classics) (Paperback) by Victor Hugo

Other items that were in my Amazon basket, at least briefly

• Les Misérables (Audio CD) by Original London Cast Recording
  
• Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Hardcover) by Graham T. Allison, Philip Zelikow
  
• The Future of Life (Paperback) by Edward O. Wilson
  
• Creating Contagious Commitment: Applying the Tipping Point to Organizational Change (Paperback) by Andrea Shapiro
  
• Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional (Paperback) by A Peck
  
• GIMP2 for Photographers: Image Editing with Open Source Software (Paperback) by Klaus Golker
  
• Hips Don't Lie (Audio CD) by Shakira

Bundle of pink

"Those things are cool," Dom commented. We turned to look at a man in our tube carriage carrying a baby in a sling around his front. The baby was dressed in pink and crinkled its eyes at us in a smile.

"Oh, I love babies!" Toria agreed.

"No! I meant the sling!" Dom quickly corrected. "They used to only have them at the back..."

We laughed. Dom was clearly trying to defend his masculinity. The baby cooed and waved its tiny hands at us. It was the cutest thing in pink.

"Flirt," Dom muttered, smiling.

Chris saves the day

Our group of three girls and two boys were having a council of war on the train. We were on our way to London to meet our project client. Hopefully, this meeting would clear up the project brief once and for all. The fuzziness of our task was starting to worry us all.

"I hate to change the topic," Toria said, during a break in the intense conversation. "I just wanted to ask if Gina or Joan have some hand cream." She looked at her hands, dissatisfied.

"Sorry, no," said Gina.

"Me neither," I replied. "...Maybe you should ask the boys?"

Dom laughed. "No way!"

"Chris?" Toria peered questioningly over the train seat.

Chris was silent for a few moments. "Actually, yes..." he said at last, reaching into his black messenger bag.

We laughed incredulously. "Huh?"

"I'm going to Copenhagen after the meeting!" Chris protested. "It was in my toiletries bag."

Toxic green

Some people have asked about the green skies in photos that I posted a few days ago. On my laptop screen, the green is a nice mild-mannered diffuse heavenly tinge. I edited the photos using Picasa2. I kind of liked the green reflection of the oval in the sky. However, when I saw the photos on flatscreens, LCDs and CRTs elsewhere, the skies looked toxic green. Wah! If only I could control all the screens in the world!

Here are the originals with their boring white skies.

Why climate change prevents me from doing my homework

I had been at my computer since early morning working on an essay. The desk was littered with an empty coffee mug, muesli-encrusted bowl, lecture notes and books.

Someone tapped my door.

"Morning, Dino," I said, swinging my computer chair around.

"Look outside," Dino whispered.

I drew the curtains back.

"Snow!" I squealed.

"That's right! It's snow."

Half an hour later, I had abandoned my essay and was heading out with scarf, gloves, a feather-down coat and camera.

This is a photo of the Fenner's Cricket Ground and one of my college's buildings.

My college often rents this building out for conferences. The poorer colleges often rely on funds from conferences to eke out an existence. Other colleges, on the other hand, own major British docks and science parks.

This might be a sundial. It wasn't working today for some reason.

Ah, Joan. Using that tired old 'framing with stuff onsite' composition. This is the stuff of cheesy postcards :)

This is the back of the main building at my college. The front is prettier but there are unattractive cars and fences that I can't Photoshop out.

Some of my college mates live here. This was the first time I stepped into the courtyard. It's quite a pretty space.

Some smart cookie knew it was going to snow. Either that or their bike seat is too tattered to sit on without wrapping it up with a plastic bag from Sainsbury's.

Square pegs in round holes

My finger hurt. Do you know why?

Because I went bowling on the weekend and my fingers were too fat to fit into the little holes of the bowling ball!

Campaign for real beauty

You'd think that someone with a supportive family, a good brain and happy outlook on life would be in the best position to ignore media pressure to be conventionally beautiful. I'm afraid not. Despite all reason and logic, I have, at my core, tied no small measure of my sense of self-worth to how my skin is behaving, what my hair looks like, if the clothes I used to wear still fit, and if I can wear the clothes that people think I should wear.

I found this interesting -- Dove's Evolution Film. Women are told all the time, "It's all make-up and Photoshop." It's one thing to be told. It's another to see it.

Thanks to sharnofshade for the link.

Chinese dolphins

I watched a debate at the Cambridge Union. Halfway through her speech, I realised that one of the speakers was an Australian. This is how I recognise fellow Aussies: I don't notice an accent. Only when I notice that I feel completely comfortable listening to someone speak, do I think, 'He /she must be Australian!' This is a much slower process than pinpointing people's English, German, American, Chinese accents.

My mum says that I speak Chinese with an Australian accent.

When I saw Indian people selling clothes and food in a Taipei station, it occurred to me that there must be people who speak Chinese with an Indian accent.

On that same trip to Taiwan, I went to Hualien Ocean Park, where I watched dolphins performing. As the dolphin trainers called out to the dolphins, I started laughing: 'Those dolphins speak Chinese!'

The Oming Crossroads: War

Previously -- Part 1: Technology

They used the fireballs seven times. Each time, the Prime Lower Omings picked a densely Wooded city. There was no way to throw the fireballs at long distances – the Lowers were too small and, despite their efforts, their new stone materials could not be fashioned into a launcher. There was no alternative but to send in small troupes of Lower Omings with blue fires enclosed in stone boxes. The soldiers crawled in the darkness of night when the Omings were respiring. The night would soon be bright with dying Woody Omings.

The technologists found that although the Woody Omings could not move to escape the way Lowers could, fire did not spread as easily as it might have at the equator. In the rich equatorial cities, the ground was littered with Omings that had died naturally and were returning their nutrients to the soil. In the Woody cities, the ground was almost bare. Therefore, for each mission, the Primes asked more than twenty Omings to carry their deaths to the enemy. In a community still tied closely together, the deliberate deaths of hundreds of Lower Omings were wrenching.

The Heartwood called for a ceasefire.

‘Stop,’ it said. ‘We cannot run the way you can. It is a massacre.’

‘We ran when you invaded,’ the Primes responded. ‘Yet, you chased us down. Running has not been a way out.’

‘How can you destroy so many? How can you ask your own to die in flames?’ the Heartwood wept.

‘We have no options.’ The Primes also wept. ‘We have nothing left.’

‘What do you want?’

‘We want a Homefield.’

‘How can we give you a Homefield where there was a city you burned to nothing?’

‘It was ours before,’ they said. ‘We know what it is like to have your home taken away. This is justice.’

‘There is no justice in killing those that were not alive when that happened!’

The Primes were silent for a long time. The path they had chosen was already deep with sacrificed Lower Omings. ‘We have nothing left... except more blue fire.’

What they did not say was that they would run out of Omings willing to carry the fires. Near the barren poles, the population was dwindling and families were drawing younglings closer, warily.

At the end of the five day ceasefire, the Heartwood came to the Primes with a proposal. The Lowers could populate the seven charred fields and the Woodys would not send spores by air into those fields. The Primes conferred quickly and realised that the seven sites could not support the entire Lower Oming population. An eight field was needed.

‘We need more soil to grown on,’ they stated.

The Heartwood hesitated. ‘The world’s productive fields are occupied, except for those that were... cleared. The Woody Oming are not mobile. We cannot voluntarily... clear... another field.’

The Primes called for their technologists.

‘We are fifteen years away from a solution,’ the technologists said. ‘We are developing solar catchers that can take the sun falling on the open ocean and transport it to the dark and cold poles. The soil under the frost is rich enough in nutrients. If we bring sun and warmth in, we open up entire continents of fields.’

The Primes turned to the Heartwood. ‘All we need is fifteen years.’

The Heartwood heard this and presented his final offer. ‘Athomfield is eleven days flight south of here. It is a field you have never colonised. We discovered it three years ago and have sent some spores there. There is a copse of about 100 Woody Omings already established. There is room to grow. We had planned to send further spores.’

The Primes understood the magnitude of the offer. ‘We can share Athomfield for fifteen years.’

‘Share your solar catching technology with us,’ the Heartwood said quickly. ‘This technology will benefit all Omings. The sun is unlimited; there will be no wars to catch sunlight.’

‘We will send technologists to Athomfield and train the Woodys there,’ they agreed. ‘Athomfield will be a place for learning.’

So the peace agreement was signed by the Lower and Woody Omings, and witnessed by the Canopys. A year later, the Athomfield University was founded when the Lower Oming technologists and their families joined the Woody copse.

It took twelve years to develop the first large-scale solar catcher. It was not yet transportable but it could catch and store sunlight. Sunlight from the unpopulated corners of Athomfield was caught and released to the city, boosting the temperate climate to the same productivity as the warm equator. Soon, the Lower and Woody Omings were joined by Canopy Omings. The Canopys brought with them great experience in the governance of diverse Oming societies.

In the years the scholars took to develop transportable solar catchers, Athomfield became a known as a centre for knowledge, peace and productivity.

Orange in a grocery stack

Somewhere in the £83 of groceries Tesco delivered to the house is one orange. When the driver arrived in the evening, he said, 'There have been some substitutions. Let me know if there are any problems.'

Well, they substituted the 1 kg of oranges I ordered with a single orange. Tesco must have just run out. I would have been more upset except that I had also ordered (and received) 1.6 kg of mandarins. A girl needs her Vitamin C, you see.

Some funny pictures I found

I found a group on Facebook called 'If I were an enzyme i would be DNA helicase so i could unzip your genes'. They seem to collect science-related visual jokes. Here are the ones I found the funniest.

I'm going to one of Stephen Hawking's lectures later this month.














This is a ferrous wheel.

This one is my favourite. You know how I like Venn diagrams.

The Oming Crossroad: Technology

The Omings are green. They live on a rocky planet circling around a mid-sized yellow star. The Lower Omings were once nomadic, roaming the continents to follow patches of sun. They had to move because even when they had colonised a place first, the Woody and Canopy Omings would eventually grow up around them and starve them of sunlight.

The Lower Omings didn't have many options. They were tied closer to the soil than the others. There was once a great Oming civilisation rooted in the fertile soil of an old volcano. The city grew and flowered for thousands of years until the Invasion. The Woody Omings somehow discovered a way to send their seeds by the wind. It was frightening to the Lower Omings, who could only creep. That's why the Lower Omings traditionally had strong family connections. They never strayed far from their parents or siblings.

It's all changed now. The only way the Lower could survive was by learning to uproot and move. They teach it in Oming evolutionary science, how the soil huggers learned to crawl. They crawled so fast, away from the advancing Woody invasion. They ran for hundreds of years -- but the wind goes everywhere, and every colony was soon followed by more Woody spores.

The Canopy Oming stayed mainly around the equator, where it was warm and humid. Life was easier there. There was so much sunlight that even Woody and Lower Omings could live happily under the shade of the Canopys. But the peaceful sunlight and soil-rich equator was the only place where Lower Omings lived without fear of starvation.

By the time they had reached the barren poles, the Lower Omings were tired of running. So the Prime Lowers directed the smartest of their kind to develop a great weapon, one that could let them defend a Homefield.

The technologists travelled back to the ruins of their original city and listened. They used their roots to follow the rumbles in the ground until they found an opening. It was an opening to a tunnel with shiny walls. Later, they would learn that the walls had been carved out, vitrified, by an outpouring of lava from the old volcano.

They ventured down, surviving only because they carried a newly developed solar storage pack. It didn't give them all the wavelengths they needed but it was enough to survive the journey.

After six days, the Lower Oming technologists felt a great heat. The walls began to glow. To the Oming, it felt like they were approaching a caged lightning strike. Lightning could start fire epidemics. Fire would leap from Oming to Oming, regardless of if they were Lower or Woody or Canopy. Once charred, every Oming looks the same.

The Lower Oming have learned to predict when lightning would come and could move to shelter. But still, every year, the Lowers would keen in despair at having to crawl, crawl, crawl away from enkindled loved ones. Abandonment was the only way to stop the fire from spreading.

In that tunnel, the technologists found what they were looking. There were black lumps of fire so hot it was blue. The technologists had predicted their existence and were ready. They pulled out stone boxes and collected eight of the balls. They held possible death in their hands, as they crawled back to the nourishing sun.

Later, in their laboratories, they would find that they had their ancestors to thank for the blue fire. Thousands of Omings over millions of years fueled a single black ball. With the natural blue fire as their guide and inspiration, the Lower Oming soon had the terrible weapons they were looking for.

2006 in review

I ready Jon's year in review and found it very interesting. You can't always see the overall shape of a year without summarising it like that. So here is my 2006 review.

What amazes me most about 2006 is that on January 1, I had not the faintest clue that by the end of the year, I would have left a job I loved and moved to England to study at the University of Cambridge. A year is a long time.

Early in January, I put in my application to Cambridge. Then I tried not to think about it. There were good things about getting an offer and there were good things about not getting an offer. Although it doesn't seem like it at the time, flip flopping between two equally attractive options is a good position to be in. It's better than two bad options, right?

It has been a year of milestones. I went to my first cricket match, Australian Open match and Aussie Rules football game. I was made a job manager at work and was absorbed by big projects. My team won the company trivia night. I was in the middle of it all. It made me happy.

The long-awaited Commonwealth Games came, and I left for a holiday in England and France. I remember seeing Damjan at the bus station when he came to pick me up. A year is a long time but sometimes, six months is a short time. It was like we hadn't been apart.

I also remember falling asleep in my dessert at the French restaurant. I thought I was immune to jet lag.

Just before I left Australia, I found out Cambridge had offered me a place. The offer meant nothing without a scholarship. I took the opportunity to visit Cambridge anyway and while I was there, I kept thinking, 'Do I really want to be here? Is it the right time?' I felt bad that I was uncertain.

I came home to a life-changing experience. Work offered to put me on a long-term job based in Shepparton in regional Victoria. I, a suburban girl who lived with her parents, would be living with a workmate hours from home.

Shepparton taught me about the problems drought and salinity cause Australian farmers. I learned what it was like to build an environmental management system for a big, complex organisation. I learned to work closely and successfully with another person. Jamie covered for my blindspots and I organised his thoughts. I learned to cook (better). I learned not to be scared of the gym. I learned to keep in touch with my family. I was practicing for Cambridge, wasn't I? But I didn't know I would need this until I got a scholarship in May.

I stopped dancing hiphop. I didn't miss it. I do now. My latin dancing improved, though. Vera and I had more than half a year of private lessons with Irina. I am no longer ashamed of my Cha Cha technique.

I worked and studied like a demon in the lead up to September. Somehow, I finished my graduate certificate in conflict resolution before I left.

Damjan came back for his summer break and we flew to England together. It was surreal, that moment I said goodbye to mum and dad. I was homesick and lonely, that first night in the Cambridge hostel. Dinner was a banana (luxury!) and a tub of yogurt.

The next day, though, I instantly had 100 friends. I went on camp with the people who had the same scholarship as me. People from around the world converged on the Peak District with the express purpose of being interesting and friendly. It was kind of overwhelming. But I was thankful for it, oh so thankful, when, in the following hectic days of setting up my life in Cambridge, I kept running into people I knew. I already belonged.

I met my new family. There are five of us in this college house: Di, Alex, Dino, Intan and me. Most of the time, the kitchen sink is pretty clear of any washing. They also looked after me when my computer crashed. I'd say this is a damn fine household.

I met 35 engineers interested in sustainable development. Some want to continue their work with developing nations. Others will work at changing industry from the inside. I'm not sure what I want to do yet. It might be clearer on Monday. I will be talking to a visiting lecturer who has challenged some of my basic assumptions about the world.

From my point in the world, the problem of sustainability is getting simpler and the solutions are getting harder.

In July last year, I wrote about six revelations I had about myself. Just now, I went back to my list. Those revelations have already been absorbed into my fundamental view of myself. It seems strange that I had lived without them.

Finally, just for fun, let's see where I am on the timeline I wrote more than two years ago.

Ha. Two years is a long time.

Tearing down the rainbow

I was waiting for a friend in the surgery waiting room. Beside me, a mother was reading to her daughter on her lap. It must have been a kid's science book or something. I heard mum say 'lightning', 'space' and 'plants'.

The mother read, "Sometimes, after when it rains, there is a beautiful rainbow in the sky." The little girl bounced up and down. Mum asked her, "Do you know how rainbows are made?"

"Oh! Oh! I know this, I really do!" The girl was excited. She concentrated. "Mmmmm...I do know... After lots of rain, God made the rainbow to promise that it would never rain lots again!" She looked at mum, triumphant that she had remembered her lessons.

Mum laughed. "Er...yes. That's... one way to say it. Another way is that sunlight can be split up into lots of colours. Did you know that?"

"No!" the girl cried.

Mum ploughed on. "The light gets split up in the raindrops... But I wonder why the rainbow is curved?"

The look on the little girl's face -- it was like she had just been told Santa didn't exist.

Weapons of mass production

Last December, I heard that the New York Board of Health banned restaurants from serving food with trans fat. More specifically, the law:

...allows restaurants six months to switch to oils, margarines and shortening used for frying and spreading that have less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving. After 18 months, all other food items – including all margarines and shortenings – must contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving.

I had never heard of trans fat, which I read greases the slippery slope towards heart disease. I thought, 'Ah, those fatty New Yorkers. It's probably all that gloopy stuff in super-pizzas, fried chicken and chips. I don't have to worry. I eat healthily.'

But look what I've discovered! This PDF flyer publicising the ban tells me that trans fats are not only in deep fried and fast foods, they're also in margarine and 'most baked goods'.

'Most baked goods'? What does this mean? Am I doomed because I like muffins?

Here it is again, the line-up of the condemned.

• Vegetable oils used for frying, baking, and cooking
  
• Shortening (hard vegetable oil)
  
• Margarine and other spreads
  
• Prepared foods, including:
  • Pre-fried foods, such as French fries, fried chicken, chicken nuggets, fish fillets, chips, taco shells, and doughnuts
    
  • Baked goods, such as hamburger buns, pizza dough, crackers, cookies, cakes, pies, and pastries
    
  • Pre-mixed ingredients, such as pancake mix, hot chocolate, salad dressing, croutons, and breadcrumbs

What a frighteningly comprehensive list!

To be honest, I don't often eat those (yummy, yummy) kinds of food so I'm not going to be changing my lifestyle. However, I'm suddenly sympathetic to all the restaurateurs scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to make cheesecakes and croissants without breaking the law.

Words that almost make sense

I like these words that almost make sense. See this Sunday's Dilbert comic.

Deep breath

I'm feeling anti-social. Talking to people is a bit of an effort. I've been writing through the waking hours of the past four days. For the people in my course, the term starts tomorrow. I know I have to write four essays and one report in the next ten days. Before that marathon starts, I have to read lots and think more. I don't even feel like eating chocolate (yet).

Okay, here goes:

WHINGE

WHINGE

WHINGE

WHINGE

Reality Foto

I used to be happy when I took a photo that looked like what I saw in real life. There is skill in knowing how to use a camera so that the lighting, perspectives and colours are 'right'. I'm getting better at doing this but I still need to take two, three, four or more photos of the one scene before I am satisfied.

Increasingly, I am interested in creating photos that reflect not the reality I see but an image I have in my mind. It seems to me that photography stops being a memory capture process and becomes 'art' when you start heavily post-processing.

I kept about 120 photos from my Yorkshire holiday. Of those 120, there are surprisingly few that I am happy with. Yorkshire at this time of year can be a dreary, grey sort of place. Late last night, I experimented a little on the computer. This is what I came up with.



I just couldn't take a photo of this scene (Whitby Abbey) with a wide enough contrast. Either the ruins and gravestones were too dark or the sky was bleached out. Using the computer, I was able to boost the fill light and contrast, as well as crop out the empty space. One day, I will get a wider angle lens so that I can make real panoramas.



It was a beautiful sight as we rounded the corner, jumped a gate and realised how wide the River Tees was. My photos of the scene were dull and ordinary, probably because it was a dull and ordinary day. Once again, I didn't have a wide enough lens to convey the vastness.

On the computer, there was nothing I could do to make this a panorama shot but at least the colour filter allowed me to create an interesting picture. It looks a little like an old-fashioned painting. If I could recompose the photo with my camera, I would have included a bit more grass at the bottom. Unfortunately, this composition suffers a little from the feeling that the observer is about to topple off the cliff.



This photo modification made me the happiest of Joans! The doctored photo was what I had in mind when I took the original (near Steel Rigg, Hadrian's Wall). Imagine my disappointment at how washed out the colours were! In fact, the original is a pretty good reflection of reality. Reality, in this case, was just not good enough.


Finally, just to prove that I am not completely dependent on post-processing, this photo of York Minster Chapter House is all camera work. Of course, I had to take about eight photos to get this one.

There's never any Joan

I thought of all places in the world, there would be the greatest chance for name products in England to include 'Joan' in their range. Joan is a good English name. It used to be popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

I looked amongst the pea pots in a tourist shop at the seaside town of Whitby. As always, there was no Joan.

Mute point

The house is starting to fill up as people return from their December holidays. Normally, I'm happier when there are people around but it's kind of difficult for me to interact at the moment. I burned the tip of my tongue on coffee a few days ago and it's quite painful to speak. As a result, I'm currently boring and lifeless.

A happy new year in Yorkshire

I've just come back from a holiday in north Yorkshire. Damo and I stayed in a cottage with four other Aussies and a Kiwi. We did a lot of walking, visited castles and cathedrals, and wandered the towns of Durham, Whitby, York and others. Best (or worst) of all, we ate delicious home-cooked dinners, cakes and desserts, and lots of chocolate.

I now have to write a research paper before Monday. I will write a bit later.

Mart leaps over a stream on our walk along the River Tees.