Time for a change?

This is interesting: MI6, the UK's Secret Intelligence Service is advertising for recruits via Facebook.

Gone are the days where you are secretly tapped on the shoulder while studying at Oxford or Cambridge universities. Now anyone posting their most personal details on social networking sites can work for MI6.

(Just kidding, I can't work for MI6 because I'm not a British citizen but isn't that the ultimate cover anyway.)

I used to live ten minutes away from MI6 headquarters. I walked past it whenever I walked home from work. The building is bristling with CCTV cameras. I am sure MI6 have lots of grainy black and white photos of me on file.

MI6 headquarters in South London -- isn't it an ugly building? I think of it as a wedding cake.

I used to also republish this blog and my photos on Facebook. I really liked being able to bring my writing and photos to all my more passive and non-RSS-cluey friends through Facebook. Reluctantly, though, I have now deleted almost all my original work due to this statement in Facebook's terms of use:

'By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicence) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorise sublicences of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time.'

I've thought about removing my work from Facebook for a long time. It was a difficult decision -- I feel the risk of Facebook using my work in a way I didn't like was low and the benefits of Facebook delivering my work to friends were high.

But... I found out I cared about these things more than I originally thought when a non-profit website used one of my photos without giving me credit. I was very upset, even in this case, where it is for a good cause. (They denied that it is my photo but I have proof.)

Sigh. Oh well.

Marigolds

For me, washing dishes is meditative. As I wash the dishes, I am also flushing away all my worries. Also, dishwashing is exciting -- SUDS, water water water, CLEAN! It's like magic.

The day after moving into my Cambridge home, my housemate Di exclaimed, 'Joan, you're so funny! What are the marigolds for?'

'Marigolds?' What was she she was talking about?

Di pointed to the new yellow dishwashing gloves that I had just hung over the kitchen sink. 'That's what we call kitchen gloves in the US.'

I had bought the gloves on my first trip to the supermarket. Gloves are an important aid to my dishwashing habit.

'Why are they called marigolds?' I asked.

'Oh, I think it's a brand name,' Di said.

Interesting. What was it about Marigold gloves that had turned the brand into a generic noun? (*)

The next time I was in the kitchen section of the store, I noticed the hanging rack of Marigold kitchen gloves. I wanted to try them out but I hesitated. They were more than four times the cost of the basic brand of gloves I had bought (£1.25 compared to £0.30 a pair). Could Marigolds really be that special?

I shrugged and picked out a small yellow pair to put in my shopping basket.

I have now been buying Marigolds for all my dishwashing needs for two years. They really are the best ever dishwashing gloves. Lined with flocked cotton, Marigolds feel so nice when I put them on. They also last a lot longer than the basic gloves.

In conclusion, Marigolds make dishwashing even more enjoyable.

(*) Other brands-turned-generic-nouns/verbs include:

• 'Gladwrap' for 'cling film' (Australia)
  
• 'Hoover' for 'vacuum cleaner' (UK)
  
• 'Xerox' for 'photocopier' (USA)
  
• 'Kleenex' for 'tissue' (USA)
  
• 'Fedex' for 'courier' (USA)
  
• 'Ramen' for 'instant noodles' (USA)
  
• 'Tivo' for 'hard disk recorder' (USA... can someone confirm this?)
  
• 'Rollerblade' for the noun 'in line skates' (international?)
  
• 'Photoshop' for 'Digital image editing' (international?)
  
• 'PowerPoint' for 'computer presentation slides' (international?)
  
• (defunct?) 'Walkman' for 'portable casette player' (international)
  
• (emerging) 'Google' for 'web search' (international?)
  

Goodness! Of course I should have expected it -- people have written about this topic already. See Wikipedia -- Genericized trademark, and a slideshow on AOL -- Brand Icons That Made a 'Name' for Themselves (a bit US-centric but I didn't know jacuzzi was a name brand!).

Other suggestions welcome, especially for Australia (I suspect 'esky' is one of these).

And why does it seem that the US is prone to turning brand names into generic labels? This is also interesting -- examples from other languages and countries.

The 'indefensible' 5% target

Since the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper was released on Monday, I have been perplexed.

It had all been going so well. Kevin Rudd (my Facebook friend) fulfilled my little heart's desires when he ratified the Kyoto Protocol. After seeing Penny Wong speak in London, I was so impressed that I adopted her as my hero.

But now this -- the unconditional 5% by 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target. Five per cent? Did I hear correctly?

On the face of it, it seems so pitiful, so unambitious. I didn't understand! And until I understood Kevin and Penny's rationale, I would withold condemnation.

Today, I read through the executive summary and selected chapters of the White Paper.

Now I understand.

Before anyone protests or supports this scheme and its target, please, please take the time to read at least the executive summary to understand the key details. (In fact, I beseech you to do this for any issue on which you wish to express an opinion.)

5% from what baseline?
My first question was what the baseline year for the 5% reduction was. The Kyoto Protocol and European Union policies (with which which I am most familiar) are based on 1990 emissions. So when the UK says it's aiming for a 26% reduction by 2020, it's compared to the 1990 baseline year.

Our 5% target is from a 2000 baseline year. After looking through our greenhouse inventory and the ABS, it turns out that this is not much different to the 1990 year (although the Australian Government have argued that 2000 is a more challenging baseline).

Year	Net greenhouse gas emissions (tCO2e)	Australian population	Net greenhouse gas emissions per capita (tCO2e/capita)
1990	552 648 000	17 million	33
2000	552 813 000	19 million	29

tCO₂e -- tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Other greenhouse gases are converted into the same global warming impact as a tonne of carbon dioxide. For example, over 100 years, methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide so one tonne of methane is 25 tCO₂e.

Why our 5% is worth their 20%
The Government believes that a 5% cut by Australia represents the same effort as the European Union's 20% cut because of this key point: Australia's population will grow by 45% between 1990 and 2020, while the EU's growth has flatlined during the same period. You can see how it is harder to stabilise (or reduce) emissions while your population grows. Each additional person will produce additional emissions through his or her direct consumption (electricity, heat, food, goods) and employment activitiy.

So the logic is that if Nations A and B set the same target, and Nation A's population doubles, then Nation A has to work twice as hard as Nation B to achieve the same absolute reduction in emissions.

Table E1 of the White Paper executive summary compares Australia's total and per capita reduction commitments with those of the EU, the UK and USA. I've reproduced it here.

Country	2020 targets	2020 per capita reduction	2050 targets
Australia	5-15% below 2000 levels (4-14 per cent below 1990 levels)	27-34% below 2000 levels (34-41% below 1990 levels)	60% below 2000 levels (60% below 1990 levels)
European Union	20-30% below 1990 levels	24-34% below 1990 levels	60-80% below 1990 levels
United Kingdom	26% below 1990 levels	33% below 1990 levels	80% below 1990 levels
Proposal
United States (proposal of President-elect Obama)	Return to 1990 levels	25% below 1990 levels	80% below 1990 levels

60% by 2050
The White Paper states that the Government is still committed to reducing emissions by 60% by 2050 (presumably from the 2000 baseline). This is in line with the EU and, until recently, the UK (who just this month set itself an 80% target by 2050). I am not sure how the Government expects to ramp up from 5% to 60% reduction over 30 years, and I will be looking at the strategy if/when it is released. However, I believe that getting the emissions trading scheme established is an important structural change to the economy. It could be the thin edge of a giant wedge of change.

20% renewables by 2020
I was worried that the 5% target would not be big enough to transform the energy market to support competitive renewables. Although emissions trading is the Government's main climate change mitiation measure, I am relieved that there is a separate target for renewable energy --- 20% of electricity supply by 2020. This isn't as ambitious as it could be but at least the commercialisation of renewable energy is recognised as a strategy to be specifically managed.

Credit where credit's due
I wish to give credit where credit is due. When it is implemented, Australia's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) will the broadest in the world. Below, I've compared it to the world's first scheme, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).

	Australia CPRS	EU ETS phase 1 (2005-2007)	EU ETS phase 2 (2008-2012)
Coverage of greenhouse gas emissions	75%	40%	46%
Participating sectors	Energy activities, transport, leakages/losses, industrial processes, waste and forestry*	Energy activities, ferrous metal and mineral industries, pulp, paper and board activities	As for phase 1, plus a number of new industries (e.g. aluminium and ammonia producers)
Greenhouse gases included	All six Kyoto Protocol gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, and perfluorocarbons	Carbon dioxide	Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and perfluorocarbons

* Excludes agriculture and deforestation (17% and 10% of emissions in 2000, respectively)

It is useful to note that the aim for Phase 3 of the EU ETS (post-2012) is to cover all greenhouse gases and all sectors, including aviation, maritime transport and forestry.

In non-conclusion
My quick review of the White Paper has led me to conclude that the Government's proposal is defensible in terms of international standards for action on climate change.

However, please note that I have made no comment on:

• the justness or effectiveness of relying on a (single) market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions;
  
• the adequacy of the targets set by the EU, UK and US (to which Australia claims parity); or
  
• the reliability, desirability or controllability of the population projections that have led the Government to its small absolute target.

But I am relieved that there is a logical basis for the 5% target, which I can now explain to those people who are equally perplexed as I was.

Bibliography
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2001), 'A century of population change in Australia', Year Book Australia: 2001, catalogue number 1301.0, available online here, accessed on 18 December 2008

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2002), 'Population size and growth', Year Book Australia: 2002, catalogue number 1301.0, available online here, accessed on 18 December 2008

Carbon Trust (date not given), 'The EU Emission Trading Scheme', last update not given, Carbon Trust website, available online here, accessed on 18 December 2008

Carrington D (2008), 'Australia pledges to cut emissions by up to 15%', The Guardian, 15 December 2008, available online here, accessed on 18 December 2008

Department of Climate Change (2006), 'Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts', 2006 inventory year, online emissions database available here, accessed on 18 December 2008

Department of Climate Change (2008a), Carbon pollution reduction scheme: Australia's low pollution future, White Paper, 15 December 2008, available online here, accessed on 18 December 2008

Department of Climate Change (2008b), 'Australia's renewable energy target', Department of Climate Change website, last updated 17 December 2008, available online here, accessed on 18 December 2008

Dimas S (2005), 'EU climate change policy', speech at the Conference of National Parliaments of the EU and the European Parliament, 21 November 2005, available online here, accessed on 18 December 2008

European Commission (2008), 'Questions and Answers on the Commission's proposal to revise the EU Emissions Trading System', press release, 23 January 2008, available online here, accessed on 18 December 2008

Messy in translation

I was enjoying yum cha at a Chinese restaurant in Bayswater, west London. Yap said to me, 'Do you know that word?' He pointed to this character.


'Luàn,' I read. I knew this word. My mum had always lamented at how luàn my bedroom was. 'It means messy.'

'Ah,' Yap nodded. He smiled. 'Are you sure?' Yes, I was sure, but then Yap pointed to the small print underneath the character.

Oh. Perhaps my mum had been more distressed about the state of my room than I thought.

Home, year 2

At 2 AM last Tuesday, Damjan and I flew into Tullamarine Airport. Home! Home, for the first time in over a year. Perhaps annual trips home will be the normal pattern of things.

Previously, I had made a list of distinctively UK features. I am now seeing Melbourne as if I am a newcomer, and here are some of my observations.

As soon as I walked out of the airport, I smelled Melbourne. Melbourne smells like vegetation and rain. London never smells like that, even though it rains a lot and there a big parks about.

Despite my first week here being cloudy and rainy, when the sunlight appears it is as white and bright as I remembered.

There is much less advertising in Melbourne compared to London. It is refreshing to take public transport without being bombarded by ads. I love sitting in my suburban train to the city facing a shiny white wall. However, Melbourne trams are as ad-heavy as London buses.

Only about one in ten people on the train are wearing headphones. In London, 90% of people use headphones! There are also relatively few people talking on their mobile phones. In the UK, more than half the people I see on public transport and walking on the street are on the phone (if they're not wearing headphones).

It's easy to slip back into car use, both as a passenger and a driver. Melbourne is so car friendly that car feels like the natural mode of transport. London is so car unfriendly that even short car commutes have made me feel ill and stressed.

The kids from my high school look puny.

Boots twin

I am a little freaked out after visiting Boots today. There are really big posters of a mother and daughter hanging from the ceiling. The mother's face is obscured and the daughter is smiling into the camera. I had to look twice to confirm it but it's true -- the girl looks almost exactly like me!

Making things clear

I was in the fifth floor kitchenette at work, watching Dave fill up his plastic cup of water. When he finished he turned to me, expectant and uncertain. Clearly, he sensed the 'I want to say something to you' vibe of my loitering.

Indeed, there was something I wanted to ask. I have spent the past year watching people fill up plastic cups of water in the kitchen. People would take a plastic cup, fill it, drink from it, then very conscientiously place it into the plastic recycling bin. Meanwhile, two shelves of perfectly reusable ceramic mugs hovered above the filtered water tap.

My company is full of environmentally friendly people, yet despite recurring requests, the stacked column of plastic cups continues to be replenished.

I wanted to ask someone about this. Today was my lucky day because Dave is a nice Englishman and probably wouldn't be offended.

'Dave,' I said. 'Is there some reason you use a plastic cup instead of a mug? Is it...' I paused, '...a cultural thing?'

Dave looked surprised, then lifted up his cup of water and gazed at it for five seconds.

'I don't know,' he began. 'I guess I wouldn't drink water from a mug. I never thought about it.'

So he thought about it. 'I think it is a cultural thing. I feel like I need to drink water from a clear cup.'

Now this was something that hadn't occurred to me! I had speculated to myself that there was something wrong with having a handle on the cup, or that mugs were too big for water.

'Oh! Thank you for that,' I said.

Later, I tried to corroborate my findings with Chris, another Englishman.

'I use a mug for water,' Chris said. 'But I can see why others might not want to. I think it's because mugs are sometimes stained. When you have tea or coffee, then you don't mind because you can't see. But because water is transparent, the staining probably puts people off.'

Play time

While cooking my week's worth of food this evening, I listened to a programme on BBC's Radio 4 about the games that kids play. It reminded me of the things I used to do to while away play lunch, lunch time, and after school. What games did you play?

Prep
I can't remember a single game I played in Prep.

Grade 1
I think roleplay games were pretty big. I remember playing 'mothers and fathers'. Back in grade 1, everyone wanted to play a mother or father. For some reason, as we got older (grades 2 and 3), we tended to want to play the baby.

I definitely remember playing tiggy, which I felt to be a terrifying game. Being chased made my heart beat in fear, not just exertion. Then there was the feeling of resignation when I got tigged (or 'tagged'). It would always take me a long time to tig someone else because back then I was a slow runner.

As a variation on tiggy, I remember being swept up in about a week of 'bum tiggy'. Some kid decided that tiggy would be improved if the aim was to whack people on their backsides. This indignity, combined with my general fear of tiggy, caused me to rebel and I sat on a bench to thwart anyone who would want to tig my bottom.

One of my favourite games in Grade 1 was 'statues'. The music goes on, everyone dances, the music stops, then you freeze. Someone goes around and if he or she detects you moving, you're out.

I loved statues. There wasn't the panic of tiggy, and I liked dancing.

I think I also played with the monkey bars. I remember falling off the top level of the monkey bars and hitting the bark-covered ground head first.

Grade 2
Two words: clapping games. The girls went a bit crazy with clapping games that year. You know the ones I mean, right? You recite ditties and clapped hands with a partner (and sometimes, even two partners, if you could form a ring of clapping people). The more complicated the clapping sequence, the more prestigious. I remember being taught some of these. I think I caught on pretty quickly.

Grade 2 was also the first wave of marble mania. 'Marble season', as it was called, seemed to come every year or second year. I found marbles to be quite a distressing game. I hated losing my marbles, so I engaged only in the collecting and trading activities of marble season.

I think there was a skipping season in Grade 2 (and this reoccurred in Grade 5). We favoured the big skipping ropes, one girl at each end and people timing their entry and exit into the looping vortex. Actually, boys played with us too. Skipping seems to have enough of a physical activity component so that boys enjoy it too.

Grade 3
Grade 3 was my favourite year of school and play. We had a teacher, Miss Kingman, who would bring our games into the classroom, and would take the classroom to our games. I spent a lot of time in Grade 3 making sand cakes. There was a sand pit at the end of the primary school and we would make three tier sand cakes (no castles). After play lunch or lunch break, Miss Kingman would take the whole class down to the sand pit to see what people had made.

When marble season came back again in Grade 3, I was making 'marble traps', which were hidden tunnels designed to capture marbles. I would come back to my trap at the end of the lunch session to see if there were any marbles. There never were.

The other thing we played was 'Space Jump', which is actually a sophisticated improv game that adults play. For those who don't know it, the game master sets a topic. The first person comes on to role play that topic. Then the game master shouts 'Space Jump!' and the next person comes it, picks up on the first person's position and pose and completely changes the topic. The first person has to fit right into the second person's scenario. Then another 'Space Jump!' is shouted, and a third person goes in. This is repeated for the fourth person.

After the fourth person, the whole thing unravels. After 'Space Jump!', the fourth person leaves, and everyone goes back to the third scenario. This is repeated until only the original person in the original scenario is left.

Thinking back, as kids, I think we were amazingly inventive and brave. Everyone played, no one was self conscious. We played in class, we played outside class. It was my all time favourite game.

Grade 4
As I remember, Grade 4 was dominated by two games: 40-40 and elastics. 40-40 is a variation of hide and seek, where the aim is to return to base before someone spotted you and yelled '40-40, I see Joan!' I really liked this game. It wasn't scary like tiggy.

Elastics were more fun than skipping. I remember being quite good at it. I also remember mum making me my own equipment with with elastic from her sewing kit. Thanks mum!

Grade 5
Besides the return of skipping season, I think Grade 5 was the first time we started playing 'two square' and 'four square'. Two square is like playing tennis but with your hand as the tennis racquet. There were two options: you could play 'on the full' (the you had to hit the ball straight to your opponent's square like in tennis) or with a bounce (like table tennis, you hit the ball into your own side before it bounces into your opponents).

Four square is similar with the added nomenclature of rankings: king, queen, jack and dunce, where the aim is to move from dunce up to king.

Damjan just reminded me of a game he calls 'downball'. At our school, we played 'deadshot'. For us, the difference was that downball used a larger ball like a basketball and deadshot used a tennis ball. We bounced the tennis ball on the ground, then a wall, before someone caught it. I can't remember who was meant to catch it. Did it go in a sequence of people? (i.e. did I have to catch it on my 'turn'?)

Regardless, I remember being surprised that I wasn't bad at this game. It seems that in Grade 5, my physical prowess improved a lot. I could suddenly keep up running with my class mates, I did the 3 km fun run quite easily, and I could catch a ball.

Grade 6
I noticed that as we grew older, we played fewer and fewer active games and spent more time sitting around chatting during play time. I think Grade 6 was the start of this trend. Certainly, in high school, we only sometimes played two square, four square and dead shot, and spent more time gossiping. Later, breaks were spent working and being in the debating club. Others played Magic, chess, did choir... I'm not sure what the non-nerds did.

The golden hours

I really like the light in Cambridge and London, which are the places that I've lived in the UK. When the sun is out, we get a soft golden light. It's the same as the light we get on an early Melbourne morning, only we're getting at two or three o'clock in the afternoon in London/Cambridge.

The 'golden hours' are when sunlight comes in at low angles. In Melbourne, I could get this kind of light at 7 AM on a spring morning. By 9 AM, though, the Melbourne sun is bright and white, which makes shadows pretty hard. Here, though, the golden hours last much longer.

For a long time, I wondered if I was just imagining it. Maybe I was exaggerating the brightness and directness of Melbourne light in my mind. Maybe I've just been paying more attention to the light here.

However, someone has given me a plausible explanation for London/Cambridge's extended golden hours. I've been living at 52 degrees north. Melbourne is 38 degrees south. The difference in distance from the equator could mean that the elevation of the sun (the inclination?) is lower here in London/Cambridge than it is in Melbourne.

Do you think that's right? Would such a latitude difference be noticeable?

This is Sackler Crossing at Kew Gardens. The light was really, really gorgeous at about 4 PM.



Unfortunately, it seems my lens was dirty. I didn't notice the blemishes in this photo until now. I haven't cleaned my lens recently so it's probably still like that.




Here is the famous Canterbury Cathedral, centre of the Anglican world. (Doesn't it look a lot like the Dom in Cologne? All that Gothic architecture, I guess.)


The cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral, which look a lot like the cloisters I've come across in Oxford.


The herbarium of the cathedral.




The ruins of Canterbury Castle, formerly a vital line of defence against the French, then a storage depot for a gas company.


A nice tree in a nice Canterbury garden.

Rock bottom globes

For my birthday, Damjan and I had a weekend away in Canterbury. I could have asked for the world.

It wouldn't have cost Damjan that much.



Instead, he bought me pigeon risotto with barley pearls.

And then there were the guys in asbestos suits playing big band numbers. They were really cool. One of them was a girl but it's hard to tell which one.

House proud

'House proud'. It's a new term for me, and an unexpected source of stress when I was being kicked out of my first London home.

During the second week after we had been given notice to leave, I got a call on my mobile at lunch time. It was Damian.

'Joan, the real estate agent is going to show some people through the house. Is that okay with you?'

I panicked. I thought of the pyjamas thrown over my computer chair, the unmade bed, books and bills on my desk, towel drying over the radiator, shoes placed around my bedroom to trip unsuspecting guests.

'Erm...' I hemmed.

'I'll say no if you want,' Damian said. 'I told the landlord that we'd have the last stay for showing people through.'

'Ah, no, it's okay.' I was embarrassed. 'Will you be there?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact, I've got a half day off.'

'Um, would you mind going up to my room and shoving the clothes on my bed under the blanket?'

'House proud, Joan? I never knew.'

I never knew either. All of a sudden, the idea of strangers seeing my slobbishness filled me with deep shame.

Ten minutes after Damian hung up the phone, I messaged him to ask him to open up the curtains as well. I don't know why I wanted my room to look its best. It wasn't like I wanted the landlord to sell the house!

After that day, the estate agent showed two more groups of people through and let a builder in as well. Each time, my bedroom was immaculate. I couldn't leave the house without making the bed and putting away bits, bobs and clothes.

You know, keeping your room tidy takes up a lot of time. I got to work five or ten minutes later every day.

The good news is that I've carried my new tidy habit over to my new bedroom. You never know when someone is going to come in...

This fridge magnet features in the kitchen of my new flat. Is it true?

Popular

I was away from work today. Looking at my work email from the internet, I have 31 new emails! I must be popular.

Peak banana

Somehow, a while back, I found out that banana plants were actually giant herbs. I told this to some people and they ridiculed me.

'Giant herbs?' they said. 'You're making stuff up.'

'It's true!' I cried. 'I'll show you. Let's look it up on Wikipedia.'

Wikipedia is, of course, the fount of all knowledge. Imagine my distress, then, when there was no mention of 'herb' in Wikipedia's banana article.*

'But it's true...' I said plaintively.

'Yeah, yeah,' they said.

I started doubting my previous conviction.

Unexpectedly, while visiting the Palm House at Kew Gardens, I received long overdue vindication.


'I told them so! I told them!' I shouted.

Yap passed on some more interesting banana facts.

He said, 'There is a disease killing all the bananas, you know. It's gradually reducing the worldwide banana production.'

'Really?' I said. 'I didn't know that! It must be because all the bananas are clones of each other.'

Yap nodded. 'In fact, due to this disease, some experts have announced that we have reached peak production.' He paused. 'It's peak banana**.'

* The Wikipedia article on bananas now does have a reference to it growing from 'herbaceous plants' in the first line. I swear this wasn't there when looked.

** I thought Yap was joking and I laughed hysterically. But I just now looked it up on Google and found that there are indeed people writing about peak banana.

Speeling

I'm pretty good at spelling. But I tried to spell that word that means really big, starts 'c' and rhymes with 'fossil'. I tried to do it three times: callosal, collosal, collosol. I don't think I've ever used it before! I was completely baffled.

Turns out it is spelled 'colossal'.

Drowned Joanrat

It started on Friday night. I went to a nice quiet bar with my team mates to bid farewell to our team leader, who is leaving for hotter and more lucrative shores. At 11pm, the quiet bar turned into a thumping night club. So I checked my bag and jacket into the cloak room and boogied past the time that Tube trains stop running.

When I stepped out of the bar/club to take a night bus home, I discovered that my Oyster card was no longer in my coat pocket. I ran back to the bar but now that it had turned into a club, there were four burly bouncers at the door and a line of people waiting to get in. I was locked out.

To get home, I had to pay more than twice the normal bus fare by buying a fare from a ticket machine. Okay, fine, I deserved to be punished for being careless. But -- I had no coins in my red wallet to feed the ticket machine! For a few minutes, I contemplated having to walk for 90 minutes in the middle of the night to get home.

I had an idea. If I could find a shop open, I could buy something to get some coins for change! Then I could get a bus ticket.

McDonald's saved the day. I bought chips (yum!) and then had the coins I needed.

The next day, I bought a new Oyster card and loaded it up with a couple of pounds. After a weekend of travelling around London with friends, my Oyster card balance was £2.70 -- enough for one more Tube trip.

I slept badly on Sunday night. I woke up at 3am because my feet were really cold. I got out of bed to put on two pairs of socks and still my feet were icy. I curled up in a ball and hung onto my feet. They must have warmed up because I eventually fell asleep.

Being tired the next day probably affected my thinking. I used up £1.50 of my Oyster credit to get to work. This meant that there was £1.20 credit left, not enough money to get back home but I planned to call Transport for London to transfer the £20 on my lost card to my new card. This they did for me -- but it will only be available tomorrow. That was okay. I would top up my card with the 30 pence I needed to travel home.

Today, winter began in earnest, and rain bucketed down. I stayed in the office until 6:40pm. Monday is my dance lesson night. I had to get to Covent Garden for 7pm.

I packed up my desk, changed into my t-shirt and shorts, then stepped out into the night. Only there, standing at the front of the building, did I realise that there was no umbrella in my bag. I had left my umbrella in my weekend bag. Being tired this morning meant that I had forgotten to transfer things between bags.

Having missed my dance lesson last week, I was determined to make it this week. It was only 15 minutes walk. A little rain never killed anyone. So I headed off, grabbing the first free newspaper offered to me by a street spruiker, and held the paper over my face.

By the time I got to the dance studio, the paper was soaked through and my hair was dripping. At the reception, I reached into my bag to get out £4 for entry fee. My purse wasn't in its usual place. I suddenly got a mental picture of my red purse next to my green umbrella at home. I knew it was fruitless but I dug around in my wallet some more while I thought about what to do.

I admitted to myself that I couldn't go dancing today. So I ventured out back into the rain, unconvincingly batting away raindrops with my rapidly disintegrating free newspaper.

I very quickly realised I had another problem. The £1.20 on my Oyster card would not get me home on the Tube. I didn't have even 30 pence to top it up.

I thought about begging.

Well, really, I was lucky I had enough for a 90 pence bus fare. Imagine if I hadn't! I would have had to walk an hour through the rain with my bare legs sticking out from under my brown woollen coat to get home! Now though, I just needed to walk 10 minutes in the rain to get the bus, then another 10 minutes in the rain once I got off the bus.

By the time I reached home, my shoes were soaked wet. I was a drowned Joanrat and my feet were cold again.

Dodging homelessness

Last week, our landlord gave us a month's notice to vacate the house. It was a bit of a shock. Although he had been talking about selling the place, considering how sickly the housing market was doing, I figured we had a while yet before eviction.

I've spent a week obsessing over house ads on Gumtree and Moveflat. In a week, I visited five potential houseshares and flatshares. I've been trying to move within walking distance of work. For a place near work, I am willing to pay:

• £80/month, due to travel cost savings
  
• £40/month, to save 10 hours commuting time
  
• £15/month, to avoid the vagaries and germ-spreading of the Tube (although, really, I love the Tube and its glorious convenience)

At the end of Saturday, I found a place in north London. It's a new neighbourhood for me, having lived in south London since last November.

It's 20 minutes walk from work and 10 minutes walk from Regent's Park. I'll be living in a maisonette with a couple (I think they own the place).

I was first a bit worried that it was too expensive for me. After some pondering, I now think it's probably worth pay the £10 a week premium for the niceness of the flat, the size of the room, the fact I won't be sharing it with a zoo of people, the lack of long-term contract (I will pay month by month), the interesting neighbourhood, and, of course, the location.

English spider

'There's a giant spider in my room,' I said conversationally. Damjan and I were talking to each other on the phone.

'Oh! Are you going to kill it?' Damjan asked.

'I can't. When I came in, I saw something black rush across the floor. I just caught a look at a massive hairy spider before it scurried under my chest of drawers. I can't get to it now.'

'You're just going to leave it there?' said Damjan.

'I don't really mind, as long as it doesn't bother me. But if it comes out, it will be sorry. YOU HEAR?' I shouted at my chest of drawers. 'IF YOU COME OUT YOU'LL BE SORRY!'

Damjan laughed. 'My sister would be terrified. She wouldn't be able to sleep in the same room with a spider.'

'Well, it's not like it's an Australian spider. It's just a piddy English spider.'

Lettuce capture and storage

Recently at work, we put in a bid to do a life cycle assessment of a head of lettuce. This is a serious issue. Lettuce wastage rates are very high. We've all experienced having to throw out lettuce because we couldn't use it all up in time, or because the fridge had frozen it. Now, multiply that wastage to retail and agricultural scale, adding in the risks of fluctuating consumer demand, cold snaps, and malfunctions in storage, transport and retail refrigeration.

During our research, we discovered that there is a 'voice of the salad industry' -- the British Leafy Salad Association. Who would have thought? You would not be surprised, probably, that while working on this bid I would spontaneously start giggling at my desk.

As I constantly extolled to my team mates, all the wastage problems could be solved by installing 'lettuce capture and storage' systems alongside farms and major grocery stores.

Excess lettuce would be stored in the less perishable 'rabbit' form. Later, rabbit would be harvested and the useful lettuce nutrients would be returned to the global food cycle.

Civilised?

There's something strange going on in British supermarkets.

In Melbourne grocery stores (and as far as I know, those of the rest of Australia), you reach the checkout, pay for your shopping, then walk to the exit via a kind of corral or corridor.

It's not that way in the UK. When you check out your items, to get to the exit you often have to walk back through the shop. I've gotten lost before, wandering through the aisles in search of the exit.

It would be very easy to pick up something and slip it into your shopping bags on the way out. I'm guessing others have worked this out too; the rate of 'inventory loss' must be very high. (This might even explain why shopping is so expensive here -- the Brits are paying the consequences of poor retail floor layout.)

Last Friday, I went to Chinatown to replenish my Chinese sauces. Then I went to Tesco for a snack. At the Tesco checkout, the lady scanned my bagel.

'Do you need to see my other bag?' I asked helpfully.

'Sorry?' she said, confused.

'Do you need to look in my other shopping bag? In case I stole something?' I reminded her.

'No...' She looked at me curiously. 'Where are you from? America?'

'Australia,' I said.

'Oh. Yeah... I heard they do that there sometimes. You know, check bags.'

Hmm. Maybe the British are just too polite to steal.

LHC rap

Very funny! Here is a rap about the End of World Machine (aka Large Hadron Collider) by the hip dudes at CERN. Commentary and explanation is at the New Scientist blog.


CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

Off line

Hi everyone,

I've been on a blogging and email break because I'm minimising computer time for a while.

I have been chocolate free for almost four weeks. My workmate, Jessen, came back from Switzerland with a giant cylinder of my favourite chocolate -- Lindt balls. My team mates gorged on chocolate, while I huddled at my desk. I almost caved in at one point. This was the biggest test I could ever face -- two solid days of people eating my favourite chocolate within one metre of me.

I did take a single ball and lock it in my drawer. When I get to one month, I will eat it.

In other news, out of curiosity, I looked for the earliest calendar entry in my Palm Tungsten C. I went back to 2005, then 2004. Much to my surprise, 2004 was full of meetings and events. I had to go back to 8 October 2003 to get my first calendar entry. WOW! I've had my PDA for five years! I am amazed that the thing has held up for as long as it has -- and that I've stuck with it.

How do you make yoghurt

'Damian,' I said, 'Is this your milk in the fridge?'

'Yes,' he said.

'It'll be overdue tomorrow... If you don't want it, I can make yoghurt out of it.'

Richard, who was also in the kitchen, perked up in interest. He asked, 'How do you make yoghurt?'

I began to explain. 'Well, you put yoghurt in it...' Before I could finish, Richard and Damian were laughing hysterically.

'What?' I hadn't even said anything funny.

'You put yoghurt into it!' they chortled. 'How do you make yoghurt? You put yoghurt into it!'

'Well, you have to, because...' But they were laughing too loudly for me to justify my apparently inane statement.

'It grows!' I cried, trying to shout over them. 'It's alive! You need to grow the yoghurt!'

I don't think they heard me.

Life explained

This looks interesting -- VideoJug. The tagline is 'Life explained. On film.'

The short films are on topics as diverse as 'How to tie a tie - full Windsor knot', 'International Waltz: Basic steps for a follower', 'How to kiss someone passionately', and 'How to open and clean scallops'.

This is what I need -- 'Fashion Advice For Your Body Shape: Pear'. Surprisingly, by trial and error, I've worked out the same rules that they've mentioned in this video.

Payslip excitement

Every month, Jane brings around our payslips. I usually ignore it for half an hour. When I take a break from work, I carefully tear away left side of the slip, then the right side, then the top. Once it is open, I immediately look at the net payment.

It's always a bit exciting to open the payslip. I don't know what I expect, though, because the number is always the same.

Sometimes I think I would like that number to change. For it to go up is obviously the ideal situation but, you know, I don't think I would mind if it went up and down so that it averages out to what I get paid now. Little fluctuations like that would justify the flutter of excitement I get when I open that payslip.

Blown over

I went outside for lunch and was almost blown over by the wind. I really had to struggle through the air to get to the pedestrian crossing. I think, in fact, I leaned forward at an angle that would normally result in me falling on my face, but the wind held me up.

As only a nerd would, as I battled against the forces of nature, I thought how this could be represented as a free body diagram.


This doesn't seem right to me. I feel like F_wind was actually horizontal and that a component of my weight force was horizontal in the other direction. Can that be right? For this diagram, I've drawn that the horizontal wind force is opposed by the ground reaction force (GRF). I am almost sure this is wrong because the GRF should actually be opposing the force of the foot on the ground.

I did lots of web searching to find a free body diagram of something toppling over and I couldn't find it. Is it something to do with torque around the centre of gravity?

Sigh. I really should know how to do this. I'm an engineer.

Any help would be appreciated!

Free range chicken

I am a tender hearted person, really. I blink back tears when reading sad stories, watching advertisements designed to tug at the heartstrings, and go to great lengths to avoid maybe possibly slightly hurting someone's feelings.

On the phone, my mum was telling me about this show she had been watching. 'Jamie's Fowl Dinners' had arrived in Australia.

I don't like watching or hearing about animals suffering on their journeys to become food. You might say that I am wilfully ignorant. But there was no way I could ignore it this time because it was my mum telling me.

She said, 'Did you know that chickens only grow for 42 days before they're killed to be eaten? They grow up in cages and there's not enough room for them to stand up. Because they don't stand, they never grown bones properly. Their bones can't even carry their own weight!'

'EEEE, stop it, waaah!' Tears were practically flowing down my face as I imagined the poor chickens, too fat and weak to stand up in the crowd.

'Isn't that interesting?' mum marvelled. 'I never knew!'

'I wish they could grow chickens without brains,' I lamented. 'Just chicken bits that aren't connected to feelings.' Perhaps for some people, a chicken-sized brain is small enough to not worry about the chicken's feelings.

Chicken is my favourite meat but I could no longer plead ignorance. From now on, I will only buy free range chicken. I already buy free range eggs.

Last week, I was proud of myself because to make sauteed chicken breasts with olive and caper sauce, I went straight to the fridge cabinet with the free range chickens. I didn't even glance at the standard chickens.

I am lucky that I like leg pieces (thigh and drumstick) more than chicken breast. Chicken breast is very, very expensive. The free range variety is around £10 for two pieces. I used to buy chicken around once a month. To manage the extra cost, I will probably continue buying at the same frequency but smaller amounts.

Loitering with cheese

With Damjan back in Melbourne, I have been left to entertain myself on the weekends. There is a little Saturday farmers market near my house, which I had not yet visited during my first nine months of living here. I finally got around to it and was really pleased with all the yummy food stalls.

One of the stalls was selling goat's cheese. They had around 10 different samples to try. I am a sucker for food samples. I first tried the black pepper goat's cheese. Then, the chilli goat's cheese. Then a piece of cheese that looked like chocolate, which turned out to be chocolate, planted there to occupy children while their parents tried the more sophisticated cheese samples.

'Hmm,' I murmured. 'Yum!' I nodded approvingly.

And then, without realising it, I had gone beyond the 'acceptable time period one can loiter in front of a food stall without buying something'. So sheepishly (haha), I bought a round of garlic and herb goat's cheese. I also ended up buying a giant slice of almond orange cake and a round of sourdough.

Although the cheese round wasn't large, I did not think I could consume it within the two days, as recommended by the stall holder. Luckily, my favourite cook book of 101 one-pot dishes came to the rescue with 'Chicken with Goat's Cheese'.

I went to Sainsbury's to buy chicken, tarragon and vine-ripened tomatoes. I was lucky. Vine-ripened tomatoes were half price.

I was less fortunate with the chicken. A few days before, I had resolved to buy free range chicken only. All my ethical friends did this, and I wanted to be ethical too! Alas, the 'normal' battery caged chicken meat was on sale and it was a sixth of the price of the free range meat. I could not bring myself to pay that much extra. It was a lot of money. I felt pained. So I bought the remains of the sad chickens.

(I have since gotten back on the free range chicken bandwagon but that is another story.)

Now that I've done 'Chicken with Goat's Cheese', I am now 15% through the 101 recipes.

Giant chocolate square

Abstaining from chocolate makes me think fondly of the last block of chocolate I owned. It was a massive block from Peru, a gift from Damjan's parents. How big was it? It was around 25 cm long, 10 cm wide and 2 cm deep. Divided into around 12 squares, each square of chocolate was five or six times bigger than an average chocolate square.

In fact, someone else had the exact same chocolate and was also struck by the size of the squares. Here is a photo from thinkaholic.


I would break off one square and nibble until I was satiated. By then, I would be halfway through the square. If I was sensible, I would stop and save the rest for later. But, no, I always kept going.

Never has a single square of chocolate yielded so much chocolate yumminess! And the best thing was I wouldn't feel bad because I had eaten only one square!

An evening at Trafalgar Square

On Friday evening, I said goodbye to my colleagues, who were staying behind to enjoy the rest of happy hour at a wine bar. I was going to walk home. The walk takes about an hour so I left while there was still light.

My walking route takes me past Trafalgar Square. A giant screen has been set up there so that people watch the BBC coverage of the Olympics.

As I walked by the Square, people were watching the women's football quarter final and I started thinking. What was I walking home to? At home, I would probably eat leftovers for dinner and spend the evening (alone) watching the Olympics on TV.

The night was warm and there was a Tesco grocery store near the Square. So I decided to buy my dinner and sit with the crowd of strangers to find out whether or not China could equalise with a goal against Japan.

This is the kind of spontaneous decision that in the past I have not been able to make. I find that living by myself (albeit with housemates) has made it very easy for me to do whatever occurs to me.

It was very relaxing, watching football on a giant screen. I didn't mind the couple sitting beside me making cow eyes at each other, and didn't mind that tourists took turns blocking my view by standing in front of me.

At 9 PM, I was surprised to find out that there would be two live performances as part of the Trafalgar Square Festival. Aqua involved circus performers rolling around in the Trafalgar Square fountains and contorting their bodies on a trapeze. To be honest, that probably sounds more interesting than it actually was.

I really enjoyed the second performance, Toolie Oolie Doolie by ZooNation Dance Company. They danced a combination of hip hop and lindy hop. The show was to reflect the last time London hosted the Olympics (1948) and the upcoming Games (2012). Hip hop and lindy hop are, of course, two of my favourite dance styles. My favourite part of the performance was a particularly funny and expressive sequence showing a boxing match.

People often ask me if I like living in London. This is a difficult question for me to answer.

Some people like living in London because they earn a lot of money. I don't because I'm not a contractor in the finance or IT industry.

Lots of people love the fact that London is a springboard to other parts of Europe. As you know, I don't like travelling so this aspect of London/UK is not particularly interesting to me.

Other people love clubbing, shopping, eating out, meeting people, being in the middle of it all. I'm not a party girl. I don't buy things a lot. I think the food in Melbourne is as good food in London. I meet people no matter where I'm living. I like being with friends and friends are not specific to London.

What I do like about London are:

• Dance lessons at Pineapple
  
• My job
  
• The Tube -- amazingly convenient, no matter how much Londoners complain about it
  
• Public spaces and gardens -- Covent Garden, London parks, Trafalgar Square, and so on. In my opinion, Federation Square in Melbourne is at least as well used as Trafalgar Square. Melbourne, too, has beautiful parks and gardens.

My unplanned community-oriented, cultural and sporting evening at Trafalgar Square made me like London a bit more than I did the day before.

Chocolate withdrawal

I am going through a difficult time now. I have given up chocolate. This is the third day of no chocolate and I am wanting chocolate. I heard from someone/somewhere that after a while of not eating chocolate, the need for chocolate goes away. I want chocolate. I have procrastinated all day about doing this bit of work, and I think chocolate could let me do it. I have drunk three cups of orange tea and eaten two oranges. Orange is no substitute for chocolate.

The bird

While waiting at a pedestrian crossing, I listened to a dance track with a pumping bass on my MP3 player.

I glanced up and jerked my head back in surprise when I saw that a pigeon sitting on the beams of the rail bridge above me was bopping in time to my music.

Bop, bop, bop, flap! Bop, bop, bop, flap!

The pigeon did this for about three bars. Then it stopped and it eyed at me.

I crossed the road.

Being Chinese

From my photo, you can tell that I am ethnically Chinese. Being Chinese is not something I think about too much. I moved from Taiwan to Australia when I was three years old. I don't usually affiliate myself with the Chinese culture except that I love the cuisine and I've had done some years of Chinese language classes.

I could write a lot about why this is, how I've met lots of non-Chinese people who are fascinated with China and how this perplexes me.

But.

I won't.

Not now, anyway. I feel something similar to shame on this topic, which I need to analyse before I can explain myself.

I do, however, have three Chinese-related thoughts I'd like to share now, on the cusp of the Beijing Olympics.

Firstly, as I've explained to a few people recently, the only time I've been harassed in my 'dangerous' neighbourhood was when two black kids, a little girl and a little boy, started shouting 'Ching chong! Ching chong!' at me as I walked home. To which I could shouted back, 'I don't understand what you're saying!'

Secondly, I was struck by a lightning bolt of understanding a few months ago. I like accents. I like hearing English spoken by people from South Africa, France, Germany, America... Yet, I cringe a little when I hear Chinese spoken with an accent. I couldn't figure out why I have this double standard. My mum once said to me I spoke Chinese with an Australian accent -- and this was not a good thing.

Finally, I figured it out. Chinese is a tonal language. Each syllable can be said in four ways, so even small variations in pitch changes the meaning of a word. Speaking Chinese with accent sounds 'wāi wāi' （歪歪）, which means 'wonky'.

Vietnamese has five tones and Cantonese has six tones!

My final Chinese thought -- I have just watched a Chinese man, Ming Yun, pitch for a cash investment on the TV show, Dragon's Den. Inside me, I really wanted him to do well. For some reason, even though I am not very Chinese and I don't know many very Chinese people, I identify with them more strongly than I think I should. When I read about Chinese people who can't afford to buy the right spectacles, I feel like crying. When I see a Chinese baby, I smile. A few months ago, I watched a film in which a father and mother in China were used and neglected by their children, who wanted to live Western lives in the city. It was very distressing and, of course, made me cry.

I think it's because I can imagine Chinese people as my parents, my brother, my grandparents, my aunts and my uncles. Therefore, I am very vulnerable to tears when I hear about the suffering of a Chinese person.

Dancing in the light

On this sunny day, I walked from my home in south London to Notting Hill. It took about 75 minutes and I plotted a lovely route through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. London is full of gorgeous parks, and these are two of the biggest and best.

At Notting Hill, I had dinner with Liezel and Judy. Liezel and Judy are friends from primary school. After 14 years of zero contact, through Facebook we discovered we were all in London. Today was a little reunion.

On my walk back from Notting Hill, I did something a little bit crazy, perhaps. As I said in my last post, I've been feeling frustrated at not being able to dance to my current favourite song. Actually, an even greater source of dance frustration is that I now live in a room/house without any space for dancing. I was very spoiled back home in Melbourne. We had a huge recreation room with a wooden floor downstairs. The room was even big enough for me to have private dance lessons with my Latin American dance teacher.

In Kensington Gardens, between the picnickers, soccer players, people doing yoga, and frisbee games, there was green space for me to dance. Dancing in a public park is something I've done before, so after a short hesitation, I walked over to a patch of warm sunshine and dropped my backpack.

I clicked 'Górecki' on my MP3 player and started spinning. I was happy -- I had so much space! But, sadly, I was self-conscious. I also confirmed that I had no repertoire and could not last the six minutes of the song. Sigh.

After that track, I switched to my hip hop playlist and immediately had a larger bank of moves! I loosened up and started really to enjoy myself.

Halfway through the first hip hop track, a man and woman wandered into my grassy patch and smiled at me. I paused, uncertain. They shook their heads, gave me thumbs up and continued walking by.

I danced this way for about 10 minutes. I don't know how silly I looked, this girl doing hip hop on the grass of Kensington Gardens to music no one else could hear.

In the end, I enjoyed it a lot because that grassy patch was the only space that I've had access to for a long time. However, self-consciousness limited my pleasure. I wish I had some private space somewhere to dance.

Górecki, Lamb

While watching the Doctor Who Confidential episode for Sins of the Fathers, I heard snippets of a song that immediately grabbed my attention. I managed to memorise two fragments of the lyrics -- 'if I should die' and 'loving every breath of you'.

I put these phrases into Google and soon discovered the name of the song. It is called 'Górecki' by Manchester band Lamb. You can hear it here. Supposedly, Lamb based the song on Polish composer Henryk Górecki's Third Symphony Opus 36.

I read up on the song. The song has a large following -- there are many, many fan videos that use this track. Perhaps one of the song's most famous appearances was as Satine died in Moulin Rouge.

I mentioned my discovery to Jessen, one of my team mates, who said, 'I have that song!' I promptly procured it from his MP3 player and have been listening to it non-stop.

One of the reasons I love this song is that it makes me want to dance contemporary to it. I can feel how my body should move to it. Unfortunately, I don't have the training, flexibility, balance, repertoire, or strength for it. I don't know if non-dancers know what it's like. Maybe it's like wanting to sing a particular song and not hitting the right notes. Or knowing what you want to paint but what you put on paper doesn't match your mental image. Hmm. It's probably the same frustration people feel when they can't articulate their thoughts clearly to other people.

Listening to this song and not being able to dance to it is like that, only the tension is physical.

So I looked up 'Gorecki dance' on YouTube and found something like I had imagined could be danced to this song.

No go zone

I don't live in a posh part of London, like Knightsbridge or West Hampstead. In fact, it would be accurate to say that I live in one of the poorest boroughs in London. Still, it ain't that bad! I feel completely safe, walking home from the Tube station at night time.

However, Domino's Pizza is less enlightened and has declared our street a 'no go zone'.

It means that whenever we order pizza, the delivery person calls us when he arrives and we have to meet him on the main street, which is 10 metres from our front door. This is the closest that Domino's employees can get without fear of mortal harm. I don't know where they get their information from.

Richard, whose love of tandoori hot pizza requires pizza delivery boys to risk life and limb.

See? It even says 'NO GO ZONE' on the box!

Sweater organiser

It's the little things that excite me. The latest thing to bring me great joy has been the purchase of a sweater organiser from the Futon Company.

I was originally going to buy a shoe organiser to stop me from tripping over the twenty pairs of shoes that I've managed to accumulate in England (few, compared to what I have in Melbourne). When I realised for an extra £2 I could buy the twice-as-big sweater organiser, I did so. I figured I could store both bigger and more shoes in a sweater organiser.

Once I hung the organiser up in my wardrobe, a change of heart led me to put clothes into the organiser. This freed up wardrobe floor space for a pile of shoes. I am very happy! Only Frequently Worn Shoes are out in the bedroom now.

Look how organised it is! And it's still like that, weeks later. That's how you know that an organiser works!

No matter how little I put on the shelves, the organiser still arches at the top. It pains me. It looks like it's being stretched.

Damian joins blogworld

I welcome Damian, my housemate, to the blogworld -- Worldwide Rants. Damian is ruthless and entirely accurate in his opinions. He likes Jaws and bobbleheads. From his blog, we can expect to read workplace woe, praise where he witnesses (rare) competence, and bobbleheads of the week.

Textbook Joan

You might remember a while back when I was suffering neck pain.

On my second visit to a spinal specialist, he waved my MRI scans at me.

'I knew it!' he grinned. 'Textbook case! Adjacent segment degeneration!'

'I'm a textbook case?'

The surgeon explained that a third of patients who had the same neck surgery that I had when I was 12 years old developed this disease. On the scan, he pointed out the dark spots which showed that extra pressure on one of my discs was wearing the disc away faster than it could regenerate.

'It's exactly what I thought at our first appointment', he said with satisfaction. 'What I need to do is refer you to physiotherapy to strengthen your neck.'

So for the next two months, I visited Sha, a friendly physio from New Zealand. It was really great, actually. I learned from her exercises that not only reduced the soreness around my neck and shoulders, but also got rid of my headaches.

At my final session, I described to Sha a problem I was having with one of the exercises I was meant to do.

'In the dumbell upright row, my arm is fine... but I'm having trouble with my right knee. It feels weak and I'm afraid to lock it, which makes it hard to lift the weights. I've had problems with this knee for a long time.'

Sha moved my knee caps around and felt them click. 'They're very loose,' she commented.

She made me stand and examined my legs. Soon she started giggling.

'What?'

'You're a textbook case!' she said. 'Exactly like in a textbook. See how your knees don't line up with your feet? You've got flat feet. It means that sometimes your knee cap doesn't track properly...'

'Textbook,' I repeated. I had heard this before.

So now I have an extra set of exercises for my second unoriginal problem. The good thing about suffering all these creaks and aches is that now I have real and pressing reasons to go to the gym. The alternative is disablement by torticollis and creaky knees.

Toe running

I did something really quite stupid. I read in one of the free London newspapers that the reason why Kenyans are amazing marathon runners is because, like the ancient humans we evolved from, they runon their toes. That is, instead of first contact being the heel ('heel strike'), Kenyans push off the balls of their feet.

Well, there is no greater authority than the London Lite! So last Saturday, I went to the gym, got on a treadmill, and ran for 10 minutes on my toes.

It seemed to work! I really did run faster with no extra effort.

Unfortunately, I seem to have done something awful to my ankle. I've been limping for a week.

Today felt better so I tried doing a bit of jogging -- and had to hobble home from the gym again.

I guess I'll avoid the treadmill for a bit longer!

Bathroom geography

I'm terrible at geography and do my best to hide it. If someone said, 'I know it's crazy, but Mogadishu is next on my destination list,' I'd nod and say, 'Totally!', with only the vaguest idea of where Mogadishu is.

But no more! There is change in my life and that change is a new shower curtain.


'Do you like the new shower curtain?' asked Damian the next morning.

'It's wonderful!' I enthused. 'I finally know where Malawi is! And who knew Madagascar was so big!'

'The only thing I'm not sure about is that I never see America. It's all the way bunched up in the corner,' Damian mused. 'Maybe every once in a while, we can flip the curtain around so that we can see the other side...'

'An, never mind America,' I dismissed. 'Look how boring it is! Just a couple of big countries, that's all. Now, AFRICA, that's the interesting bit! I never knew there were so many countries in Africa!'

Damian agreed, 'Yes, I suppose you're right.'

America, whose geography is quite dull (without the various States marked in, anyway).

Africa, a far more interesting (and politically troubled) part of the curtain.

My housemates, Damian and Richard, behind curtain number 1.

Undemocratic

From Made in China in The Age.

Yu says [Chinese] policymakers are beginning work on a new five-year plan beginning from 2011 that will intensify the country's current energy, pollution and climate-change efforts. But he says China is sticking to the levers of administrative edict rather than considering a domestic carbon-trading scheme.

"In my view, if there's a huge polluting factory next door, then the best option is to shut it down, rather than allow it to buy credits so it can keep polluting and then pass the higher costs on to consumers," says Yu.

Brilliant. None of this mucking about with this 'market solutions', 'flexible mechanisms' or 'public consultation' stuff, just the all-powerful arm of big government.