Word for the day...

con·nip·tion n. Informal

A fit of violent emotion, such as anger or panic. Also called conniption fit.

A colleague used this (not referring to me!!), and I hadn’t the foggiest idea what it meant until I looked it up. Seems to be a useful word - am storing it for use at Christmas, as conniptions seem to be common in my family!!


On Rotation…

Food:
nectarines, mangoes, strawberries, mangoes, bananas, mangoes.

CD’s:
Skylarking - XTC;
Music for Airports - Brian Eno;
Aether - The Necks;
His’n’Hers - Pulp;
The Very Best of Elvis Costello

Books:
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
Love in the time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marques

Skirts:
Every skirt I am wearing seems to be rotating around on me. Mildly irritating in some cases, close to a fashion faux pas in other cases (splits rotated around 180 deg to the front or side). Not sure what is causing this… Am I normal?

Iron woman

Well that’s probably taking it a bit too far.

But, I am going in a 2.3 km swim around Cockatoo Island this Sundy Morn.

Wish me luck. I’ll make it to the end, no worries, but it’s the harbour water and what’s in it that worries me most….

Check your ethics

For years, everyone except perhaps the most macrobiotic dieters among us have been thinking “what could possibly be wrong with taking vitamin tablets? It can only be good for you, right?” The so called health industry has been raving about antioxidants…. Fruits and veges have lots of them, therefore the logical conclusion was made by many that these compounds compressed into a pill for you to take can only make you healthier...

Not necessarily. See linked article.

This article highlights the problem of fully private funded research, and how some companies are (likely to be) keeping certain results commercial-in-confidence whilst releasing research that is in their favour. Products are probably out there despite the fact that there may be unpublished data showing that a product is not effective or even detrimental to the circumstances it claims to improve. Disturbing when it's your health they're messing with....

This is why we can’t entirely trust the private sector to fund all of our research. But even in a society where we have both govt and privately supported research, how do we ensure that companies are acting in the interests of the health of the community, without totally removing any competitive advantage they might rightfully gain from funding their own research…??

Diary of an intermittant insomniac....

12:30am
Lying awake, mildly annoyed that I can't get to sleep tonight.
Can't be daylight savings, as that only accounts for an extra hour awake.
Brain ticking over, going over the days contradictions.
OK - time to start thinking of more pleasant, menial, daily things, the weekend.
Worked for a bit, then back to days events....
Get up, do things until I feel tired again...
Go back to bed.

Look over at partner blissfully doing sleepy activities - regular breathing, occasional snore and roll over. Jealous. Must keep some herbal sleeping tabs for moments like these - only happens half a dozen times a year... Must get some headphones for late night music listening...

2-3:00am
I don't even feel remotely tired.
Beginning to worry that I will be so tired tomorrow, that I won't do a decent day's work.
Recalling helpful insomnia hints: make sure you wind down before bed (tick); make sure you keep active during the day and try to go to sleep at regular time(tick); get up when it is light, no matter how tired you are (tick); remember, setting standards that you need a certain amount of sleep creates needless anxiety and will keep you awake longer (ohh).

6:30am
Wake up, relieved that I got to sleep at all, mildly panicky about the day ahead. How vague will I be?

Here's to an early night....

Turning 29 is A*C*E !!

My 30th year has got off to a cracking start!

Woke up early to a bright, sun-lit room (that’s a good thing - I like being woken by the sun)…. C-chan made me coffee and a banana smoothie, and played me happy birthday songs on the CD player while I opened pressies. I got:

- 2 new books (that I can’t wait to read)
- cheque to contribute to bike fund (to replace stolen bike)
- CD of Oboe concertos
- Candle
- Book voucher
- Dept store voucher
- Pudding basin

The latter was a present on request… puddings are going to be my latest cooking craze – you can look forward to it when you next come to dinner – chocolate steamed pudding, sticky date, golden pudding, jam pudding…

Good day all up!

Defeatism...

…is a plaguing illness in some work places.

“I tried so many times, but they never change so I’ve given up”
(Ever thought you could try to go about it another way?)

Often you come across people who are fixed in their ways or views, and apparently can’t see how they are wrong or affect people negatively. Often so much is left unsaid, or talked about destructively behind peoples backs, rather than constuctively.

One of the most useful things one of my last bosses said to me, in the context of trying to bring about change of viewpoint, was:
“Just keep chipping away”

In other words: be persistent. (The opposite of defeatism).

But the image of “chipping away” is more powerful to my mind - the image stays there much longer than it would have had I been told to “be persistent”.


Amateur office place behavioural scientist, signing off.

Phrases I don’t care to hear ever again....

“…in terms of…” – often very badly-used sentence joiner that helps you to change tack mid-sentence and re-iterate what you explained badly in the first place

“Give myself permission to….” – counsellor-speak, crossed over into the mainstream

“…step up and take responsibility for...” – as above

“…you’ve taken (insert adjective + noun) and made it your own” – only thing worse than hearing this on TV is when you hear people regurgitating it at morning tea the next day

“…at the end of the day…” – we can blame sports people and commentators for this one, which leads to another whole dialect of bad English...

Bloated-ness (post 2004 federal election)

There are things that you can do that give you more of a warm, fuzzy feeling than paying a thousand per month into your mortgage/investments will ever do. We collectively are doing very little to improve life for much of the living things on this planet.

Lately, I have been pondering a fair bit about human nature, and have a theory that the sort of self-absorption that seems so prominent in society at the moment is probably what spurned religions thousands of years ago such as Christianity (I know too little about other religions to comment on those). Wise people realised that we achieve more when we work towards the common good, and when we look out for only our own interests, we self-destruct.

What is most disappointing is that we don’t show any signs of being much better as a whole than people were 2 millenia ago – wisdom doesn’t seem to have kept up with knowledge. We are unable to reach a standard of living and say “that’s enough, I have everything I need, and I will be satisfied with making other people’s lives better now”.

I myself am sick of having stuff, accumulating stuff, being sent stuff, being given stuff I don’t need just because it’s Christmas, and a society that doesn’t know when it’s taken things too far for the sake of income. Symptoms include:

- useless gadgets that you use once then forget
- needless remakes of films and re-recordings of songs with nothing new or interesting about them
- culture that is either brain-deadening or increased noise, but not at all enriching
- a satirising and cynical sense of humour that makes us feel witty, but seems to smother the urge for serious and constructive critique
- lack of long term policy and public planning
- having better technology but opting for the cheapest model
- packet food that takes just as long to prepare as the real thing, but with 5-times the ingredients, and 5 times the waste

I am party in doing or enjoying so many of the above things. However, last year we gave my in-laws a world vision Christmas card (which had a donation attached), and my Ma-in-law told us that it was the best, most true-to-the-spirit Christmas present she has ever been given. She was truly chuffed! That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?

Get out of my dreams (and stay out of my car too)

Last night, I had a dream about spiders. Arachnids of all kinds are most unwelcome in my dreams, I tell you. I can still remember all too vividly the dream I had as a kid about giant spiders walking out of the house over the road from mine. In real life, I can't help but start at the sight of them, even if they are meters away, and not showing signs of being likely to rear their nippers up at me or take a leap my way. It seems that Arachnids are now the second recurring dream symbol that my subconsious likes to throw up every so often to make its point - the other symbol is the experience of being trapped underwater for a long time by a wave that breaks on me. Great.

In last night's dream, I was in a somewhat vulnerable position in a small room (not trying to be smutty here), then noticed that I was surrounded by several largish spiders that had somehow before escaped my notice. After some expert self-analysis, I have decided that spiders represent things that are most unwelcome in my life, and in this case, popped up quite suddenly.

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Forgive the obscure 80's song reference in this post's title, but you must be used me doing that by now.

It's rainin', and it's rainin' good

Fell asleep to the sound of rain, woke up to the sound of rain...
Can still hear it raining outside, and I'm presently located not far from the catchment area!
What a nice sound!

Calling all rich business people who are feeling generous....

My challenge is not to award a 15 million pound prize to the first company who can build a passenger plane that can carry 3 passenger astronauts twice into space...

My challenge is do anything else with the same amount of money so long as it does someone good. It can even do humanity as a whole good! Really easy! Lots of options! Just think, you can:-
- build hospitals in impoverished regions of the world (and there are lots of those),
- make townships in remote regions self sufficient with electricity, food and water,
and oh, I don't know,
- fund the development of biodegradable plastics,
- fund a new train line in Sydney (instead of a motorway),
- give your live audience hybrid cars or annual public transport passes.

There, I just came up with 5 ideas for you, really quick! (Whatever you think if his music, at least Bono gets off his bum and does something about raising awareness of AIDS and 3rd world debt).

Heartened by humanity, for a change….

Turn off all the media noise that’s going on around you, switch off to other people’s moans and groans about “person x that did y the other day which makes them evil” and how “something good will never happen in this place, so you might as well give up”… and you might just find something that inspires you!

I must say, I have been a bit of a Lizzie Bennett from Pride and Prejudice of late – “the more I see of this world the more I am displeased by it” (or something similar). But this week at work, no less than 2 people have inspired me a great deal!! I temporarily feel a little bit like my 12-year-old self, when my sheltered and safe existence allowed me to blindly put a positive spin on just about anything.

Person 1 – on a fixed term visa, living here year to year with her family, not knowing where they might end up, learned English as an adult prior to coming here from a former communist eastern European country, not able to get secure employment and has a boss that is quite frankly a prick. We take her out for her birthday, and shout her an inexpensive lunch and coffee. She insists on repaying us by inviting us to her home for lunch, which was delicious. She repays kindness 10-fold and bears her burdens with an amount of grace I rarely see in people.

Person 2 – rich lawyer with enough money to buy yachts and stuff. Donates large sums of money to researcher in desperate need so that important area of research can get off the ground. Doesn’t want to be publicly recognised for what he has done, and wants area of research to be widely available one day soon to people in the third world to help reduce a form of pollution. Lawyer doesn’t see why he should keep all this excess money that he doesn’t need. Donation is not even linked to tax write-off!

I feel myself climbing out of my grey (not quite black) hole this week!

And this weekend, I am going to the nation’s capital, to visit friends!! But more on that next week!

Couch spud

We have recently taken to reading the description of late night movies scheduled to air on our ethnic telly station just for our amusement. Here is a snap shot from 3 movies airing this week:

A certified, yet harmless, nut case is on a five-day "observational" leave pass
from a lunatic asylum. (Greece)

A family of farmers has to deal with the retarded elder son. He gets
everybody bored and tired of him, even the cow, to whom he talks several times a
day. (France)

Otherwise, I am enjoying watching or anticipating watching:
- "6 Ft Under". The new series has just started on the teev - yay, some drama that doesn't explain everything and has some engaging, different characters!
- John Saffran's new show about religions of the world.
- The Chaser (CNNNN) group are taking a break from afternoon radio committments to soon produce an election special! Where would we be without their irreverent humour to keep us sane in the lead up to the Big Poll?
- "People Like Us". If you have never seen this 1/2 hour show, try to watch it. This week it was on 10pm Tues on our national broadcaster. I don't know how to describe it, other than a spoof documentary.

Ch ch ch ch changes…

When you are ready for change, it can’t come soon enough. When it is forced upon you, you drag your heels… unless you can ready yourself – add your own spin to the situation, and take it in a direction you can be content with.

Readying myself (for a potential change in jobs) is my challenge at present. I’m finding it substantial distraction, a background stress that is inhibiting rather than driving me to do what I should be doing.

Must… focus… Must… think… positively!