An interesting concept I read today.
To follow "True North" within ones heart and soul.
I like this idea.
True North is magnetic and compelling. When one just ALLOWS oneself to spin into its central node, just like the arm of a compass does, we end up at True North and all possible directions are clear and established around us. We can choose to travel in whichever of these directions we want, but it is more reassurring and confidence building when we have a built in sense of our North - the direct pathway toward our best self.
True North is the souls intention matching the hearts direction. We are what we say we are and behave in kind. We are true to ourselves but also provide a comforting pointer for others to follow if they are so inclined.
True North of the heart gives confidence and courage in the face of the maelstrom. True North is positive, joyous, intentional and serene. It sticks and it does not waver.
We do not pander or ponder in confusion or disarray when we follow True North. Our steps are sure and our vision is clear. We know what we are in the greater scheme of things and we know where we want to go!
I'd like to re-centre so I can spin naturally toward the direction of my own True North. This may require a shift in direction...perhaps unexpectedly; I don't know! I don't mean I want to spin out of control in pursuit of the stability of my true North but I will spin even so. The thing is that the spinning is not forced. It is just a gentle swinging until the polarity is found and settled into place. The compass just drifts the spindle toward the magnetic attraction - it does not need to seek it, it just knows its there and allows itself to be spun into its direction naturally and spontaneously.
My faith inclines me toward the True North of belief in Jesus. My soul wants to travel along the path of its North with hope, joy, peace and love. My heart wants to smile in relief that it is not lost or alone because the compass rarely lies.
Yeah! True North! Everything is clear once one knows their right direction on the journey.
If my sky does indeed have five directions, then my True North is somewhere in the vast infinity of that globe which surrounds me and I will find it soon enough - if I just allow it to find me and take me there.
Monday, March 17, 2008
the heat goes on
relentless and unyielding, the Wimmera heat scorches and burns whatever is left of the will to do.
Water!
What we need now is water! Not from bores, not from dams, not from tanks or wells.
We want natural life-giving rain from the Heavens to soak us and wet us through.
Will we complain once we are soggy and mouldy from such rain?
Yes! Positively yes we will complain for the human memory is dull once acquaintance is long past. It remembers only that which is etched into the membranes like photographs.
So yes, we will of course complain if we get so wet the water is lapping at our feet, we will complain to God that we cannot endure another moment of being so deluged by the rain.
We are greedy, fickle, self-obsessed and ego-centric enough to believe that our happiness is fundamentally from outside of our natural selves. So while it is so hot and while the days curl our toes and teeth with the melting intensity of sunshine, we will crave being wet to our ears!
When that day comes and we have the water again... we will undoubtedly crave to be dry!
It's inevitable and unequivocable that we will never be content with our climate in the moment of its fact.
Water!
What we need now is water! Not from bores, not from dams, not from tanks or wells.
We want natural life-giving rain from the Heavens to soak us and wet us through.
Will we complain once we are soggy and mouldy from such rain?
Yes! Positively yes we will complain for the human memory is dull once acquaintance is long past. It remembers only that which is etched into the membranes like photographs.
So yes, we will of course complain if we get so wet the water is lapping at our feet, we will complain to God that we cannot endure another moment of being so deluged by the rain.
We are greedy, fickle, self-obsessed and ego-centric enough to believe that our happiness is fundamentally from outside of our natural selves. So while it is so hot and while the days curl our toes and teeth with the melting intensity of sunshine, we will crave being wet to our ears!
When that day comes and we have the water again... we will undoubtedly crave to be dry!
It's inevitable and unequivocable that we will never be content with our climate in the moment of its fact.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
the thing not said
I wonder how many of us carry the deep unspoken "Thing" we must and "should" say but cannot find in ourselves to say.
It might be anything.
It might be a memory not shared.
It might be a pain not expressed.
It might be a future unexpected.
What are the words we want to say but cannot?
Is it about timing? Or is it just about fear?
There are two questions every human being that ever lived asks if they have the courage to hear the answers.
"What do I want?"
"What is my deepest fear?"
Once we know ourselves enough to be able to clearly and calmly answer them, we grow exponentially into our potential for Love and Integrity.
It might be anything.
It might be a memory not shared.
It might be a pain not expressed.
It might be a future unexpected.
What are the words we want to say but cannot?
Is it about timing? Or is it just about fear?
There are two questions every human being that ever lived asks if they have the courage to hear the answers.
"What do I want?"
"What is my deepest fear?"
Once we know ourselves enough to be able to clearly and calmly answer them, we grow exponentially into our potential for Love and Integrity.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
soulmate movies make me cry
I watched the movie "The Notebook" here on Preciousss tonight. While husband slept in the chair in front of some airline crash doco on satellite tv... and daughter disappeared into bedroom to talk for hours and hours to boyfriend on the phone and while son is at a youth camp down south overnight...I watched a movie about the depths and breadth of love.
Noah and Allie fought all the time, but there was one thing they had in common; they were crazy about each other!
yeah!
Lovers who met and fell in love in their youth one pristine summer when things were hopeful and wonderful before wars and cruel pain enters their world of pre-adult starry-eyed wonder! Lovers who were thwarted in expressing that love by other people! Lovers who hated each other and loved each other with every soul stretched breath between them.
They were not so compatible those two with their feisty and belligerent ways. She called him an arrogant arse-hole; he called her a self-absorbed brat and then they would look into each others eyes and know that they were meant for no other person on earth but each other.
Together they created a better world. He made the pitiful wreck of a house into something wonderful. She brought colour and light into the world with her music and art.
When they were with others, they both died a little inside and stopped creating. When they were with others, no matter how much they loved them, they could not stop, either of them - even through the long dry years without contact - remembering that summer of wild and free love between them!
It was real.
Souls like birds.
free to be themselves but more whole when together. Content and happy because they are blessed to be with someone so wonderful, so beautiful, so extraordinary.
And even when they fought, they were fighting for their soul union to be made even more complete, more connected, more real, more everything!
And in the twilight of their years, when shadows fall across the mind and the forgetting is more common than the remembering; when the heart can no longer stand to be broken each day by that forgetting; when there can be no life worth living without that other beside you...they fade together into other realms of reality and find their truth again as one soul, united for eternity, in the pureness and rightness of Love.
Noah and Allie fought all the time, but there was one thing they had in common; they were crazy about each other!
yeah!
Lovers who met and fell in love in their youth one pristine summer when things were hopeful and wonderful before wars and cruel pain enters their world of pre-adult starry-eyed wonder! Lovers who were thwarted in expressing that love by other people! Lovers who hated each other and loved each other with every soul stretched breath between them.
They were not so compatible those two with their feisty and belligerent ways. She called him an arrogant arse-hole; he called her a self-absorbed brat and then they would look into each others eyes and know that they were meant for no other person on earth but each other.
Together they created a better world. He made the pitiful wreck of a house into something wonderful. She brought colour and light into the world with her music and art.
When they were with others, they both died a little inside and stopped creating. When they were with others, no matter how much they loved them, they could not stop, either of them - even through the long dry years without contact - remembering that summer of wild and free love between them!
It was real.
Souls like birds.
free to be themselves but more whole when together. Content and happy because they are blessed to be with someone so wonderful, so beautiful, so extraordinary.
And even when they fought, they were fighting for their soul union to be made even more complete, more connected, more real, more everything!
And in the twilight of their years, when shadows fall across the mind and the forgetting is more common than the remembering; when the heart can no longer stand to be broken each day by that forgetting; when there can be no life worth living without that other beside you...they fade together into other realms of reality and find their truth again as one soul, united for eternity, in the pureness and rightness of Love.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
A little hot under the collar!
It has been inconceivably HOT this past two weeks!
We have had a number of days well over 35 degrees now for what has seemed like an age. I don't know how much longer our poor land here can survive under this heat.
My town where I live has been put on part bore water just last month. Drinking water from the tap takes on a whole new connotation when it tastes so brackish and "underground'ish".
About 12 years ago....the drought here in Western Victoria was a significant and challenging event we had hoped would only last that year.
Sadly, the suicide and depression rate among farmers rises with each year we face such dry conditions.
No one can cut a break! The only businesses doing well are those which are directly funded by Government or food businesses and even some of those will feel the pinch over the winter months if this dry keeps going.
I once had a thought that we might perhaps be half way through a 30 year drought! Who knows? I hope not but still, it seems to be a never-ending cycle of dry here. What was once a lush, beautiful, water-rich environment is now parched and spare...the foliage dry beyond belief!
Some might say that this is a direct result of global warming and climate change. I don't know! Climate is an entity we are only just beginning to understand, and we as a species have barely scratched the surface of what climate will/can do on earth.
The weather is the weather no matter where you are in the world and the only difference is degrees.
I could not be stuffed going to the gym this afternoon after work. I am TIRED and my body aches with a fatigue I can only attribute to the prolonged heat of this current period.
Quite possibly, I will be whinging about how freaking COLD it is come August! :) I just hope I can whinge about the cold and still rejoice that its raining!
Please God ....make it RAIN!
We have had a number of days well over 35 degrees now for what has seemed like an age. I don't know how much longer our poor land here can survive under this heat.
My town where I live has been put on part bore water just last month. Drinking water from the tap takes on a whole new connotation when it tastes so brackish and "underground'ish".
About 12 years ago....the drought here in Western Victoria was a significant and challenging event we had hoped would only last that year.
Sadly, the suicide and depression rate among farmers rises with each year we face such dry conditions.
No one can cut a break! The only businesses doing well are those which are directly funded by Government or food businesses and even some of those will feel the pinch over the winter months if this dry keeps going.
I once had a thought that we might perhaps be half way through a 30 year drought! Who knows? I hope not but still, it seems to be a never-ending cycle of dry here. What was once a lush, beautiful, water-rich environment is now parched and spare...the foliage dry beyond belief!
Some might say that this is a direct result of global warming and climate change. I don't know! Climate is an entity we are only just beginning to understand, and we as a species have barely scratched the surface of what climate will/can do on earth.
The weather is the weather no matter where you are in the world and the only difference is degrees.
I could not be stuffed going to the gym this afternoon after work. I am TIRED and my body aches with a fatigue I can only attribute to the prolonged heat of this current period.
Quite possibly, I will be whinging about how freaking COLD it is come August! :) I just hope I can whinge about the cold and still rejoice that its raining!
Please God ....make it RAIN!
Thursday, March 06, 2008
River deep
It has been over a week since landing back home here.
I have come down from the Mountain High of February.
How do I feel?
Dunno actually!
Reality is a strange thing. One can be content with reality when one accepts it just as it comes without complaint.
Thing is...one is ever rarely content with mere Status Quo.
The heart yearns for adventure and rich experience. The mundane butts up against the cruel taunts of time and I am caught in the middle.
I think Nürnberg changed something inside of me. I miss the energy and the freedom.
Perhaps that is just a fantasy. Maybe I am just rebelling against the expectations of my reality!
I wonder now ..... what IS my role here and WHY?
I have come down from the Mountain High of February.
How do I feel?
Dunno actually!
Reality is a strange thing. One can be content with reality when one accepts it just as it comes without complaint.
Thing is...one is ever rarely content with mere Status Quo.
The heart yearns for adventure and rich experience. The mundane butts up against the cruel taunts of time and I am caught in the middle.
I think Nürnberg changed something inside of me. I miss the energy and the freedom.
Perhaps that is just a fantasy. Maybe I am just rebelling against the expectations of my reality!
I wonder now ..... what IS my role here and WHY?
Sunday, March 02, 2008
The dishes and the washing!
I collected my baggage from the baggage carousel in Melbourne and promptly broke the carry handle on my almost new suitcase pulling off that stupid whirling thing! I am rather cross about this! The luggage is like brand new this year! I bought it off Graysonline for a song but yeah...it now has a broken carry thingy. And it's too late to get a return on it! Oh well....live and learn. I may be able to fix it with gaffer tape. One can fix almost anything with gaffer tape.
I declared my shoes! Australia has very strict quarantine rules and being a long-time farm girl from years ago I am highly conscious of the dangers of soil-born diseases and spores in the soils on shoes that have travelled to yonder shores. I don't care if it does seem a little bit over the top - I like declaring if I have been wandering around fields near sheep and horses in foreign countries and I get my shoes checked to ensure that what I bring home will remain safe and clean for my own country.
I declared the Lebkuchen I bought back from Nürnberg too :)
Everything was cleared.
I managed to make it in time to get the 2pm shuttlebus to Ballarat. I dozed on the shuttle bus, it taking some 90 minutes to reach Ararat train station. Then I found I had a four hour wait before the train left the station to Ballarat and my subsequent bus back to my home. What an annoyance!
I am so tired by now, I can barely think. I have not really slept soundly for the past 40 hours. My brain is this numb mush of thoughts so brief they are forgotten like cotton threads on the wind.
I decide to store my luggage in a locker at the station and I go for a meander (literally a meander in the style of someone who may have had too much to drink), toward the main street in Ballarat. I walk as far as a favourity pizza restaurant of our family, that we frequent when here and I have a small pizza and a coke. I really don't actually feel like eating much though. I feel stuffed, uncomfortable, weirdly out of zone with myself. But, like some automaton who must eat at 5pm each day, I eat and feel strangely guilty about it like I went behind someones back.
I go back to the train station and try to rest on the hard planked seating until my train arrives. It is late! There was a suicide on the line down in Melbourne somewhere causing chaos with the schedules in stations across the state. I send up a silent prayer for the family and friends of the person who so chose to die this way.
I board the train. It is a short trip to my next stop, only 45 minutes or so. I note the difference between this train and the ICE I travelled on only two days ago. This one is neat, tidy, clean and comfortable too. The only thing it lacks is ....Panache! The ICE is more than a train, its like the luxury liner of the railway, it makes my basic aussie train look pedestrian and "common".
I've always loved train travel, as a kid going to boarding school and then in my late 20's on regular hospital visits to Melbourne for eye treatment, I have always enjoyed the strange solitary nature of my train travels. I find trains a kind of meditative experience where my mind is free to expand its horizons even while my body is encapsulated by speed within steel. Train trips soothe me.
I arrive to collect the bus for the last leg of my journey. Buses are not so comfortable as trains. They are cramped, bumpy, and they are noisier I think too. I don't like bus travel as much as train travel!
Back in my home town, I wait just a little longer and get a taxi home. I walk in my back door at 11pm Australian time. I have been more or less awake for over 48 hours. My dear son hugs me at the door and I peer over his shoulder into the kitchen to see the sink piled high with dishes!
Mum is home.
Since being home, I've done dishes, bookwork, washing by the truckload (10 loads on Tuesday and Wednesday of my arriving home no less), errands, grocery shopping, phonecalls, visits with telco companies, friends, relatives; I've baked, cooked, cleaned and blogged.
Mum is going back to Germany! hahahaha
I declared my shoes! Australia has very strict quarantine rules and being a long-time farm girl from years ago I am highly conscious of the dangers of soil-born diseases and spores in the soils on shoes that have travelled to yonder shores. I don't care if it does seem a little bit over the top - I like declaring if I have been wandering around fields near sheep and horses in foreign countries and I get my shoes checked to ensure that what I bring home will remain safe and clean for my own country.
I declared the Lebkuchen I bought back from Nürnberg too :)
Everything was cleared.
I managed to make it in time to get the 2pm shuttlebus to Ballarat. I dozed on the shuttle bus, it taking some 90 minutes to reach Ararat train station. Then I found I had a four hour wait before the train left the station to Ballarat and my subsequent bus back to my home. What an annoyance!
I am so tired by now, I can barely think. I have not really slept soundly for the past 40 hours. My brain is this numb mush of thoughts so brief they are forgotten like cotton threads on the wind.
I decide to store my luggage in a locker at the station and I go for a meander (literally a meander in the style of someone who may have had too much to drink), toward the main street in Ballarat. I walk as far as a favourity pizza restaurant of our family, that we frequent when here and I have a small pizza and a coke. I really don't actually feel like eating much though. I feel stuffed, uncomfortable, weirdly out of zone with myself. But, like some automaton who must eat at 5pm each day, I eat and feel strangely guilty about it like I went behind someones back.
I go back to the train station and try to rest on the hard planked seating until my train arrives. It is late! There was a suicide on the line down in Melbourne somewhere causing chaos with the schedules in stations across the state. I send up a silent prayer for the family and friends of the person who so chose to die this way.
I board the train. It is a short trip to my next stop, only 45 minutes or so. I note the difference between this train and the ICE I travelled on only two days ago. This one is neat, tidy, clean and comfortable too. The only thing it lacks is ....Panache! The ICE is more than a train, its like the luxury liner of the railway, it makes my basic aussie train look pedestrian and "common".
I've always loved train travel, as a kid going to boarding school and then in my late 20's on regular hospital visits to Melbourne for eye treatment, I have always enjoyed the strange solitary nature of my train travels. I find trains a kind of meditative experience where my mind is free to expand its horizons even while my body is encapsulated by speed within steel. Train trips soothe me.
I arrive to collect the bus for the last leg of my journey. Buses are not so comfortable as trains. They are cramped, bumpy, and they are noisier I think too. I don't like bus travel as much as train travel!
Back in my home town, I wait just a little longer and get a taxi home. I walk in my back door at 11pm Australian time. I have been more or less awake for over 48 hours. My dear son hugs me at the door and I peer over his shoulder into the kitchen to see the sink piled high with dishes!
Mum is home.
Since being home, I've done dishes, bookwork, washing by the truckload (10 loads on Tuesday and Wednesday of my arriving home no less), errands, grocery shopping, phonecalls, visits with telco companies, friends, relatives; I've baked, cooked, cleaned and blogged.
Mum is going back to Germany! hahahaha
The one about the stop over in Bangkok
Our flight from Frankfurt arrived a little bit late to Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok just after 1:30pm Bangkok time on 24th Feb 08.
It was here that I would spend the next 11 or so hours before the next leg of my journey homeward to Australia.
I wasn't as panicky about being here as I had been the first time. Truth be told I was looking forward to kind of chilling out a bit in the departures level and scanning the wares in the shops and having a long slow cup of tea as I wrote emails to friends on my laptop.
Well, the lap top thing never got to happen in the end. The wi-fi at the airport was down for maintenance and I found myself rather tired already from the first leg of my journey anyway.
I did scan the shops for awhile, having cashed in my last Euros for Baht. I had some nice food in one of the many cafe's and restaurants.
I walked the length and breadth of the 4th floor (Departures) and most of the 3rd floor (arrivals) looking for the Dayrooms where I thought I might be able to get some rest on a bed of some kind for a few hours.
Well, what with carrying the 7+ kilos on my shoulder and in the deep throes of that weird spacy over-tired feeling one gets with sleep deprivation, I just couldn't find them, despite consulting the touch screen info stations on more than one occasion. I suspect I just didn't walk far enough down along Level 3! Next time I find those bloody dayrooms! :)
I decided that the seating in the very busy Chang Thai Massage hut on Level 4 looked like a reasonable alternative - at least for an hour or so - to the hard, cold metal seating available in the general hall. I had a pedicure and then a manicure.
The lovely Thai girl doing my nails was a little flustered to find that my manicure was not going according to plan given that I had visited Jackie from Jackies Dreamhair in Germany only two weeks prior and she had given me nails so hard and intractable as to be the equivalent of industrial quality polymer and cement! The nail polish on my fingernails had to be filed off!
In the end, I had three girls all filing furiously away at my fingers to rid me of the current colour. The acrylic coating on my nails more or less remained (it will have to grow out apparently *gulp*). Once I had as blank a canvas as they could create, the Thai girl then gave me a colour. I had to return later after I bumped my still drying fingers to have a retouch but all in all it worked out okay.
I did a bit of souvenir shopping for family and friends back home; my first ever Duty Free purchases. I bought chocolates in the shape of wee elephants and cute coin purses on keyrings that I hope will last the distance, and t-shirts for the kids. I still think that for Bangkok, where the exchange rate to the Aussie dollar implies that stuff would be incredibly cheap... what they sell in the Bangkok airport is relatively very expensive for what it is! There were lots and lots of cute things, but not a lot that was really very practical or useful as such.
I did seriously consider an electronic translation machine about the size of a PDA but on consideration later, decided that 14 languages is probably more than I need in my lifetime! I am so intrigued by cute gadgets though that it was kind of hard to let go of the idea even so.
Finally, I had a gate number for my flight. I deliberately didn't go rushing through customs though and waited a little longer eating a Burger King meal with a giant bathtub of coke to rev up my adrenal system and wake me up enough to last the next four hours!
When I finally ended up in the boarding area, I was surrounded by a large mass of slightly scruffy, tanned and ethnically attired young 20 somethings with Aussie Accents. Most of them boasting to each other about how many times they got thoroughly drunk each night on their recent sojourn in Thailand!
I sat next to a young man in the terminal who proceeded to chat up and woo the young woman in the seats behind him! They worked out that they had seen each other on a number of previous occasions during their respective Bangkok holidays! Now, on this last day, as they were going home, they were getting down the very serious business of first courtship. There was the coquettish, flirty pitch in the girls voice, the smooth magnanimous gesture from the boy as he offered his lap top so she could look at her My Space page; the exchange of work and address information back home in Melbourne etc.
So very sweet. My romantic side hopes that this pair of kids may end up being an actual couple for a very long time and they will tell people, in years to come, that they met in the airport boarding lounge in Bangkok one February a long time ago! :)
I half expected the flight to be a little noisy what with all the young people aboard, but it wasn't so. In fact, I think everyone was so tired from their various holidays that the flight to Melbourne was spent in near silence.
I watched a couple of movies on my personal screen in the seat in front of me. I recommend the movie Stardust - what a wonderful pleasure that was to watch. Very entertaining.
We arrived in Melbourne just after 1:30pm Australian time. My journey back is almost done.
It was here that I would spend the next 11 or so hours before the next leg of my journey homeward to Australia.
I wasn't as panicky about being here as I had been the first time. Truth be told I was looking forward to kind of chilling out a bit in the departures level and scanning the wares in the shops and having a long slow cup of tea as I wrote emails to friends on my laptop.
Well, the lap top thing never got to happen in the end. The wi-fi at the airport was down for maintenance and I found myself rather tired already from the first leg of my journey anyway.
I did scan the shops for awhile, having cashed in my last Euros for Baht. I had some nice food in one of the many cafe's and restaurants.
I walked the length and breadth of the 4th floor (Departures) and most of the 3rd floor (arrivals) looking for the Dayrooms where I thought I might be able to get some rest on a bed of some kind for a few hours.
Well, what with carrying the 7+ kilos on my shoulder and in the deep throes of that weird spacy over-tired feeling one gets with sleep deprivation, I just couldn't find them, despite consulting the touch screen info stations on more than one occasion. I suspect I just didn't walk far enough down along Level 3! Next time I find those bloody dayrooms! :)
I decided that the seating in the very busy Chang Thai Massage hut on Level 4 looked like a reasonable alternative - at least for an hour or so - to the hard, cold metal seating available in the general hall. I had a pedicure and then a manicure.
The lovely Thai girl doing my nails was a little flustered to find that my manicure was not going according to plan given that I had visited Jackie from Jackies Dreamhair in Germany only two weeks prior and she had given me nails so hard and intractable as to be the equivalent of industrial quality polymer and cement! The nail polish on my fingernails had to be filed off!
In the end, I had three girls all filing furiously away at my fingers to rid me of the current colour. The acrylic coating on my nails more or less remained (it will have to grow out apparently *gulp*). Once I had as blank a canvas as they could create, the Thai girl then gave me a colour. I had to return later after I bumped my still drying fingers to have a retouch but all in all it worked out okay.
I did a bit of souvenir shopping for family and friends back home; my first ever Duty Free purchases. I bought chocolates in the shape of wee elephants and cute coin purses on keyrings that I hope will last the distance, and t-shirts for the kids. I still think that for Bangkok, where the exchange rate to the Aussie dollar implies that stuff would be incredibly cheap... what they sell in the Bangkok airport is relatively very expensive for what it is! There were lots and lots of cute things, but not a lot that was really very practical or useful as such.
I did seriously consider an electronic translation machine about the size of a PDA but on consideration later, decided that 14 languages is probably more than I need in my lifetime! I am so intrigued by cute gadgets though that it was kind of hard to let go of the idea even so.
Finally, I had a gate number for my flight. I deliberately didn't go rushing through customs though and waited a little longer eating a Burger King meal with a giant bathtub of coke to rev up my adrenal system and wake me up enough to last the next four hours!
When I finally ended up in the boarding area, I was surrounded by a large mass of slightly scruffy, tanned and ethnically attired young 20 somethings with Aussie Accents. Most of them boasting to each other about how many times they got thoroughly drunk each night on their recent sojourn in Thailand!
I sat next to a young man in the terminal who proceeded to chat up and woo the young woman in the seats behind him! They worked out that they had seen each other on a number of previous occasions during their respective Bangkok holidays! Now, on this last day, as they were going home, they were getting down the very serious business of first courtship. There was the coquettish, flirty pitch in the girls voice, the smooth magnanimous gesture from the boy as he offered his lap top so she could look at her My Space page; the exchange of work and address information back home in Melbourne etc.
So very sweet. My romantic side hopes that this pair of kids may end up being an actual couple for a very long time and they will tell people, in years to come, that they met in the airport boarding lounge in Bangkok one February a long time ago! :)
I half expected the flight to be a little noisy what with all the young people aboard, but it wasn't so. In fact, I think everyone was so tired from their various holidays that the flight to Melbourne was spent in near silence.
I watched a couple of movies on my personal screen in the seat in front of me. I recommend the movie Stardust - what a wonderful pleasure that was to watch. Very entertaining.
We arrived in Melbourne just after 1:30pm Australian time. My journey back is almost done.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Last days
I rubbed the rabbits tail.
Der Hase is a latter 20th Century sculpture based on a popular painting by Albrecht Dürer.
It's as ugly as hell...the rabbit in question is presumably dead! But the level of detail and its links to the famous painter make it a worthy sight-seeing venture. It's also a recent legend of sorts that if you rub the rabbits tail, you will have good luck! :) Man-kind is ever the superstitious type huh? :)
Thus my first visit to Nürnberg city finished.
The next day, Friday saw me packing my suitcases and running to the post office to post back a parcel of goodies that would not fit into my suitcase. I'm still waiting for it as I type this back home :)
Bat and I finished our visit together with more DVD watching that evening. I will miss the bloke very much. It's rare to find people who "match" you and yet stretch you too. He is a wonderful person and very clever. He sleeps a lot but I rather like him anyway I think. Hahahaha ;)
I shall miss the darling S and my wee Niece and Nephew by proxy, Fizz and Schnu. I hope to see them again in the flesh as often as time and finances will allow in the coming years.
Saturday I was nervous about my forthcoming hours of travel and very sad to be leaving Nürnberg and my wonderful friends. It really IS tough to say goodbye to loved ones when you don't know when you will see them again. Even Raphi cried apparently when I left, the dear little man.
I got the ICE train to Frankfurt from Nürnberg. It's a very comfortable train and even though I was rather forlorn at this stage in my early journey, I did find myself soothed and comforted by the speed, efficiency and calmness of this public transport. I amused myself by trying to translate the gist of the german text that was displayed in red LED over the end carriage doorway.
Once I got to Frankfurt Airport, I confess to getting somewhat confused about where I was supposed to go to check in for my flight. I seemed to walk from the train and go up and down escalators and around corners for an age. I followed all the signs for the terminal I required but it seemed to be taking forever to get there.
My confused state must have be quite obvious as a gentleman approached me and asked if I needed some help. In carefully constructed English, I told him where I was required to be. He offered to help me and promptly grabbed my suitcase from my hand and led the way up even more escalators.
We talked some, his English being quite good albeit slow. We seemed to walk for ages through the airport terminal and at one point I had a crisis wondering if my naiveté had gotten the better of me and I was about to be taken to dark corners for foul deeds. But, he kindly led me to my correct check in counter and then promptly requested I pay him EU$5.00 for the privileges he had just granted me! I accepted with relief. I figured it could have been very much worse. Besides, I was grateful he had got me here...I'd have been quite thoroughly lost I'm sure otherwise.
Checking in was a breeze. My suitcase was actually LESS heavy than when I had arrived in Germany. My dear Preciousss though still weighed an insufferable amount on my shoulder, but there is no WAY I will ever let from my sight on these travels even so.
I paced the departures hall for the two hours and ate a rather old stale Brezeln for my supper along with a lovely cup of tea. I phoned bat from the boarding lounge to reassure him and the family I was okay.
The flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok was long and tedious as usual. I was stuck in the middle row of seats and had to tap the poor Gentleman beside me and ask him in my halting German if he would allow me out so I could go to the toilet on more than the odd occasion *blush*.
I was surrounded by middle-aged, neatly if somewhat blockishly attired, semi-retired German couples all travelling for various reasons to Asia via Bangkok.
It was a long, not very uncomfortable flight. The lady next to me fed me chocolates by surprise - mainly because she was on my blind side and I didn't see them coming - she was a sweetie even so despite the fact we could barely communicate with each other. We got on even so.
Tales of Bangkok Airport to follow. :)
Thankyou S. Rita, Raphi, Schnu and my dear Martin for allowing me into your life and country this past month. Friends forever huh? :)
PS - I still haven't smelled the coffee! Yet to be accomplished. :)
Friday, February 29, 2008
Death 14th Century style
S took me to the City Hall, the old one on Thursday 21st Feb. It was raining in Nürnberg that day but we weren't daunted. Little schnu had been unwell for most of this past week but seemed reasonably able to cope with a morning out with her Mama and her Tante Mitch from Australia.
Besides, in the Rathaus, way upstairs worked her beloved Oma, so Schnu was also looking forward to be cuddled by her Grandmother too.
Below the Alter Rathaus, lie the creepy, low ceiling'ed Dungeons built to house criminals sentenced for trial (and inevitable execution) during the 14th Century.
It's dark down there. Very dark. The tour was all in German for me, but I received an english translation on a sheet of paper of the basics. S did as best as she could to translate what she could for me during the tour which goes for about 20+ minutes.
Imagine living in a hole in the ground where it is deathly dark. You are naked. You are given barely one meal of gruel and bread a day. If you are lucky and can bribe the guards, you can get coals to fill the tiny brazier in the centre of your cell, it gives you the eerie glow of warmth and light. Such a small cheer but totally worth the price you pay for it.
If you have been suspected of very serious crimes, you are taken to "The Chapel", which is a high vaulted room with a large round beam across the width of the room. On this beam are ropes. You are tied by your wrists to this beam and then winched upwards, the ropes winding around the beam above your head. You are left to hang there, maybe beaten, maybe managled around your neck and feet as well. You are possible poked with all manner of cruel implements in the freezing emptiness of this cavernous room.
If you didn't cave with that treatment and "confessed" to your sins, you were taken to tiny cells and squeezed in behind a low wall. You would sit as comfortably as you could with your hands firmly locked in front of you through the two small holes in the low wall in front of you. There was one hole in the centre of the floor through which you could defecate IF you were able to access it. It was hard if there were three of you side by side in that cramped space. The moaning and crying for mercy in the night still echoes throughout these sad chambers.
Grizzly, crude, impossibly inhumane by our standards today, these dungeons - all still in original and intact condition, remind me how cruel man is to mankind. What we don't understand, we persecute - viciously if allowed or sanctioned by our ignorance. Life for a 14th Century prisoner, be they guilty or innocent, was a tortourous experience in suffering.
While many today would suggest that perhaps we would have less crime if more punitive punishments were imposed on prisoners today, I don't believe them! If the kinds of hard punishments of the past could not prevent crime back then, they will not prevent crimes now.
Punishment that is violent and cruel makes people become even more violent and cruel. Yes! Society needs protection from those who have no social empathy or compassion or moral compass. However, our prisons today can be just as punitive in their approach to "rehabilitating" the criminal mind as they were back in the 14th Century on criminal bodies.
These days we seem to think that punishing a person through their mind and emotions is legitimate, just as 14th Century authorities assumed that beating a person with iron skewers and casting them naked into freezing blackness was legitimate.
Compassion begets compassion...at least for most sane people.
The actual tour through the Lochgefängnisse was interesting even though I could not understand the words being spoken by the tour guide. The passage ways were very low in places and the steps down into the cells themselves, were steep and uneven - a result of being hand carved I guess.
Freezing cold air from the street above poured down into the cells through long deep open vents. It would have been a nightmare down here for sure.
After visiting the Dungeons, S and I went for a walk through the Nürnberg streets in the drizzly rain. Schnu's grandmother had commandeered her beloved wee Granddaughter, so we were free agents. We found a wonderful chocolate shop and I spent the equivalent of a third world country's GNP in chocolates! Alcoholic ones too no less. Bat and I would consume these watching DVD's over the course of the coming days.
After that, we met with Oma and Schu in a tiny little retaurant in the heart of town called the Bratwürsthausle. Modelled on 14th Century Nüremberg Bratwurst shops, this one is popular, unique and serves totally awesome traditional Franconian food on classic Nürnberg "zinn" (pewter) plates.
It was a good day. Even the rain could not dampen my spirits...not like "The Chapel" did anyway.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Remembering Nürnberg
Yes I realise its been over a week since I last posted from Germany.
I am now back in Australia. Time shifted all too quickly and I lost the impetus to keep posting regularly amidst all the flux and change of my final week in that most lovely of cities.
I shall now attempt over the course of a few posts in quick succession to recall and describe the last week of my journey. Forgive me if my memory has gaps and is a little fuzzy around the edges.
I also have to go back and correct a word in one of my previous blog posts which will make it turn up in peoples blog readers again no doubt...sorry about that! The word is Klöse ...at least I hope it is. I thought I'd copied it correctly but apparently not. It is that potato dumpling so indicative of Franconian German cuisine. More research required.
My final week was a collection of very personal events with people I have come to love and appreciate very much. My "other" family overseas are dear to my heart and inspire me with their warmth, generosity and genuine care of me and my own family. I intend to visit them as often as time and circumstances allow...plane seats that lay flat would be useful but that is a story for later :)
My week started out on Monday with a trip out to stay with S and the kids in the wee apartment upstairs! I mean literally up stairs! I think they climb about 4 flights of 8 steps each to access their front door at least three or four times a day! It's a bloody nightmare on the knees but you certainly don't need a stair-stepper machine when you have free ones right outside your door! The washing machine is downstairs so laundry takes on a whole new perspective when you have those stairs to think about along with a tonne of washing to do too! ungh!
S and went for a wee jaunt through Nürnberg before we left of her home to see if we could find my mum a tatting shuttle and some books and patterns by Erika Rolfe. We got a few blank stares. Nevertheless, the resourceful and forthright S made inquiries to the point where we had a couple of basic tatting shuttles ordered at the very least. She may post these to me at a later date OR....I just go back and collect them *grin* *giggle*
Then we went to the Hauptbahnhof to purchase my ICE ticket for the following weekend. We used the automated ticketing system and after an initial glitch with me ordering merely a seat for EU$4 instead of the actual ticket, we successfully managed to get a fully booked seat and ticket on the 1528 train to Frankfurt Airport on the 23rd of Feb.
Then we hit the supermarkets to purchase ingredients for the cheesecake and lasagne we planned to make for supper that evening. I was suitably impressed to note that some larger car parking venues provide whole sections just for female drivers. These are close to the main doors and are well lit and have security cameras operating 24 hours a day. This keeps women safe. It's a sad indictment that in the name of equality, women must be singled out to be given this kind of privilege but I can totally see its merit. Not only that but the position of the parking also allows for mothers with young children with all the ensuing paraphenalia convenient and practical support for their shopping. Damned good business if you ask me!
I LOVED the huge organic/bio supermarket we went to later that afternoon. It was huge for a place dedicated to all things "Whole, Fresh and Chemical Free". I loved the smell of it. The cheese cabinet was a vision in gourmet excess and I drooled quite literally at the choice of products available. What a wonderful experience. I really "should" have taken photo's but of a supermarket? No one would get it I guess! This was a very special supermarket! Not one I get to see every day anyway.
We made it home to climb those nasty ubiquitous stairs. We rested from our frantic labours over hot tea and conversation and a late lunch of of bocconcini mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, olive oil and fresh basil spread on to the most delicious assortments of bread. My favourite is the same as S. Swedish Smød Brot. It looks a little like a salada biscuit but is chewy and has a somewhat sweet nutty flavour. It's awesome. I even had butter! *gasp* I know! After all this strange health diet stuff I'd been doing this past year...I finally weakened and enjoyed the delicious flavours of bread and butter. Oh my! What an awesome lunch that was.
Little Fizz was home from school and moaning vociferously about his homework as kids will do. He got there in the end with a lot of prodding and encouragement from his mum. We went out to collect Schnu from kinder. The gorgeous little one (my Goddaugher no less), was keen to show me around her wee "school" albeit it being closed. I didn't get to go inside but the exterior is cute and charming all the same.
Later, Sandra baked. She'd whipped up her amazing baked cheesecake in the time between lunch and picking-up-kidlets. I had been busy transcribing the recipe and doing the dishes. Then she set to baking the lasagna for the evening meal. She's a good cook. S is a Jill-of-all-trades really. Not only can she cook and wash clothes, bring up children and take care of her - slightly odd - husband in another town (I shall get totally killed by said husband for that line. I bet! *giggle*)... she is a deft hand with the drill and hammer too, having extended her kitchen work area herself by installing the extra bench space. I admire this woman and she has welcomed me into her life and family with all the grace and style of an Angel.
The lasagne was eaten late that evening after the children had been fed and sent to bed. Little schnu looked so cute curled up like a wee mouse on the foot end of her bed. Fizz took longer to get to bed given that he had been calculating the time it would take to save enough money to buy a certain kind of Lego Fizz counts everything in the price of the average Bionicle. An average Bionicle in Germany is around EU$9,00 so Fizz does mental maths in multiples of 9 Euro's. It's very cute and rather clever for a seven year old I think.
S and I talked late into the evening. It was well after midnight when we finally went to sleep. I dreamed strange dreams one of which I remembered as having lots of small dolls with blonde pigtails and enormous blue eyes. Surreal and strange dreams that no longer stay in my memory but are dark shadows of non-recollection.
The next morning I assisted with clean up and getting children off to school. After the house was quiet again, S and I spent a long few hours lingering over hot tea in the lounge room talking and imagining. S specializes and is trained in a unique type of meditative counselling called Personal Totem Pole Process. We talked about this for some time. S did a great job in trying to speak to me in English. Her English is very much better than my German but it still took time and patience for us to communicate. However, with the use of a good English/German dictionary we managed to make ourselves understood. Poor S was very tired though by the end of the two days having spoken more English than since her school days; the level of concentration she put into this was quite extraordinary and I'm deeply grateful to her for making the effort.
I missed out on getting photo's of the village of Lauf outside of Nbg. It's a sweet little village with all those tudor styled houses with their peaked roofs and cobbled streets. Next time I guess :)
The next few days I spent mostly walking around Nürnberg shopping and obtaining some souvenirs to take home to family. Bat and I went to the Thai Resturant near the cave and enjoyed a lovely meal over pleasant conversation. We hit the local Döner Kebab take away yet again. In fact I think we hit it twice this week! :)
We also took a trip into town and had a bit of a buy up of some DVD's. Bat's collection got a serious update with purchases such as "Love Actually", 300 and Sin City
Sin City is a total creep out, I'd not seen it before but while its artistically very good it was quite a difficult watch and one I won't be repeating in too much of a hurry. It was great to see 300 and Love Actually again though.
Next installment of my final week soon. The prison under the Rathaus.
Friday, February 15, 2008
The one about the St Valentines Day vortex of a thousand spiral staircases
Blimmin' stairs!
I have climbed and decended down so many steps today, my legs still feel like jelly!
I went early into town today and was hoping to go see the Handwerkerhof near the Hauptbahnhof but it's closed until March 14th! humpf!
So I walked right into the centre of town and climbed the steep hill from the Hauptmarkt towards the castle, Der Kaiserburg. On the way I asked a stranger to take my photo twirling the shiny brass ring on the main fountain in the Hauptmarkt - it's supposed to make your wish come true when you turn it three times! It's almost impossible to turn it precisely around three whole times - you more or less just tweak it - so I turned it a few times in the hope that a full three circles were completed and made my wish. I hope to return...is all I wished for :)
On the way I decided to stop at Albrecht Dürer House which is now a monument and museum to the famous painter. It was very interesting there. I really enjoyed this place. The home of Albrecht and his wife is now over 500 years old. It has been painstakingly restored since having half its guts ripped out by a bomb explosion back in WWII. Most of it is still original though except for some of the furnishings of course. The audio tour in English was most helpful and entertaining. Unfortunately, not a lot of the original art of Albrecht Dürer remains in Nürnberg as it is now in fine galleries around the world. I bought a book of his life and work which showed some of the artworks still here and which I saw in his home.
I have yet to see the Hans Sachs sculpture of the Hare, a famous painting by Dürer. Might try to see that tomorrow or next week I think.
The house was 4 floors and all accessed by spiral staircases...most of which are original.
From there I walked around the back of the Kaiserberg Castle and then through one of the ancient tunnels to the main gate into the Castle itself. I purchased a single ticket for the museum and a tour of the well and the tower. The museume was rather interesting except that 99 percent of the descriptions of the equipment was in German without any English translations. That kind of made it a little tough but I am glad of my rudimentary German language lessons as it did help a lot with deciphering some of the artifact information cards.
It was a little surreal walking around the floors in this museum and noting all the old armour and weaponry from the late 15th century. I rather felt like I was sliding into a Age of Empires simulation - at least thats kind of what it felt like anyway.
Oh and btw... armour is small! Those images we have of big burly blokes on giant horses seems rather silly having seen the real thing. Most of todays blokes wouldn't have a hope of fitting inside this armour! Even bat would be hard pressed to comfortably fit inside it - and he is slightly built compared to a goodly proportion of the germanic male population! ;)
I did rather like how the stupidity of mankind attempts to lure beauty from the bloody instruments of war. The irony of a beautifully handcrafted and engraved blade which very well may have been thrust into many fleshy human sides of heretics and heathens! Who knows?
Again I seemed to encounter endless stairs in this building. Climbing up or down in circles was beginning to take its toll already and it was only 1pm!
The Kaiserberg in Nürnberg is on the highest point of the city and as such is rather steep. So not only does one have to negotiate lots of steps, one has to negotiate the slopes of cobblestones pathways outside.
I took the wee tour of the deep well which once supplied the castle and outer surrounds with fresh drinking water. The tour guide lady let down the candlelit chandelier into the heart of the murky depths. It took an age to descend. Then she poured some water from a jug and a full 5 seconds passed before we could hear the splosh in the water below. Amazing.
The tour up the tower we did ourselves. A couple from Portugal and myself. Once we were let in, the tourguide bid us "Bis Bald" and we entered the door to ascend the 138+ steps to the viewing platform at the top of the ancient castle tower.
Typically, with my luck being such that it is, the sky was heavily clouded and foggy today over Nürnberg. The bright rather warmish sunny days of the past week were well forgotten today with the air being very fresh indeed. There had even been a fine dusting of snow on the cars as I'd walked to the Shoppershof U-Bahn station that morning!
I took a lot of disappointing photos of the rooftops of Nbg from the tower ramparts. Disappointing only in that visibility was so much lower today than it had been thus far in my trip.
Next stop was Fembomuseum. I hadn't anticipated doing this tour but seeing as I had a ticket from Albrecht-Dürer that could be shared between a few of the main museums in the town, I took advantage and went on in. This amazing house from the very wealthy family Fembo has stood for about 500 years as well. It was large and ornate and you could feel the opulence and wealth present in the detailed ceiling paintings and stucco. Some of the info panels had English translations which also helped a lot with absorbing the history. I loved how the wooden floors creaked under my feet, original and still highly polished but ancient beyond belief really! :)
I was going to head back towards the main shopping precinct for my lunch when I stumbled by accident on the Spielzeugmuseum. My ticket from earlier in the day also covered this tour so I again took advantage. Nürnberg has become synonymous with the toy trade since the early years of the 20th century. It's reputation as a crafts and trading city has cemented it as a central place for all things toy related in recent years. The Spielzeugmuseum celebrates with colour, light and entertaining delight, the world of toys. Toys, ancient and new are displayed here for all ages to remember, to marvel at and enjoy.
I was pretty much in sensory overload by now though, so I'm hoping to go back with bat tomorrow and really absorb this museum properly once more. The history here is superb - from Teddy's to Meccano and everything in between! :)
Yet again, I was immersed in a world of vortex like spiral staircases. I think I've climbed somewhere in the vacinity of 1000 steps today, the majority of which were in circles! I am still dizzy!
I staggered rather than walked to the U-Bahn at Lorenzplatz and caught the train to Hauptbahnhof - grabbed the U2 to Shoppershof and breathed a prayer of thanks, I'd not gone shopping mad or I'd have been not only dead on my feet, but weighed down by purchases as well.
Its always best to travel light when one climbs spiral staircases all day.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
the pace thickens
I have every intention of writing heaps of stuff about what I'm doing here in Germany but the days are filling with so many details and things and stuff and inspiration and walks that I find blogging the day at the end of the day almost physically impossible.
Sunday saw us travelling some 200 + kms east to the "new" state of Thüringen to a small village called Lebensgrün to visit with Martin's papa, Volker Spernau, or "Opa-mä" and to pick up R. who had been holidaying there for the past week.
Opa lives in a very old house. He's been doing it up over the course of the years. The houses in this region are very long and narrow as the blocks were built to be only 12 metres wide. So while the house is over 35m long, it is "only" 6m wide. It has a cellar, which is constantly damp and floods a lot, and an attic, which is commandeered by various family members as a viable source of long-term storage.
The old stable area down on the ground floor has been turned into a sort of curiosity shop, where Opa sells knick-knacks and oddments. The middle floor is the main living area with bedrooms, kitchen and comfortable lounge.
We spent a lot of time looking around the farmlet, walking down the slightly sticky clay soil and grass towards the back of the property where Opa is constructing a sort of garden. He also keeps a small mob of shy, shaggy sheep who ran the moment I stepped towards them.
The village of Lebensgrün is about 600 years old and while I didn't really get a chance to go walking through it to take photo's of the unusual houses, it was quite the pleasure to be in a part of germany that is off the beaten tourist track.
We then went to a lovely quiet little restaurant and although almost too late for lunch were offered two meal choices. I chose the vennison.
Sliced and swimming in a salty gravy with a tiny garnish of a lettuce leaf and a tomato on the side. A bowl of Klöße arrived. This dish is a typical Frankonian dish of mashed potatoes shaped into large dumplings. The Klöße is cooked, mashed and when sort of dry is then mixed with a special kind of flour or finely grated potato. Then it is shaped into balls and boiled again in salty water. It is thick, gluggy, salty and moreish.
We also had Blaukraut, which is basically red cabbage boiled in a way to change its colour to either a deep purple/blue or red. It too was salty and vinegar-like but incredibly tasty and more'ish.
We had Lebkuchen for dessert. I had bought a Lebkuchen Herz (Lebkuchen Heart) at a stall in the heart of the city a couple of days before. So on our travels home, we broke into it and munched happily on the slightly spicy, chewy texture of the Lebkuchen. It was quite yummy.
Sandra has suggested that we spend a day in my final week here, when she has more time to teach me how to bake Lebkuchen for myself. I'm hoping that we will get that opportunity. Might be a new bakery line for the shop back home huh? hahahaha
The countryside is beautiful here. The fields are so small though in comparison to home. I'd love to learn more of the different farming practises here but I guess I can catch up on that info in future visits as I become more fluent in the language and getting around by myself. Yes! I do intend to return :)
So since Sunday, Bat has taken me for a jaunt around the Hauptbahnhof in the centre of town. He knows it quite well having spent many years commuting for work. There are some building works going on there too so there is a whole "new" floor he has yet to figure out how to get around :) I will be catching the ICE back to Frankfurt from here come the 23rd.
We found the Post office too today, so now I've posted some of my postcards. I have to get some more actually and get them sent off ASAP too or I shall be home before they are!
Sometime this coming week, I plan to do some gift buying for family and friends if possible (if finances allow) and maybe do a seamail post back home to keep my luggage allowance under control. It means we have to wait until around May to get our stuff, but that's okay. :) Patience is a virtue is it not? *smirk*
I have even booked myself a visit to a beautician here who has set up a store practically 10 steps from the door of the batcave! She can't speak English and I can't speak German but we've arranged to take off my gel nail-polish which is starting to look a bit tatty around the edges. That appointment is tomorrow at 1330 :)
I also hope to go back to the middle of town tomorrow afternoon and see the Kaiserberg and other sights that I've not yet had to chance to go see. There is a toy museum to see and other general Museums etc...Oh my! So much to do!!!!! It's great to visit with friends but its so easy to get caught up in conversations at home rather than getting out and about. Because bat is visually constrained, its much harder for him to show me stuff like others would be able to, so its really up to me to venture out and be proactive with the sight-seeing stuff.
If I don't stop eating soon, I shall have a mammoth task to get my weight back down when I get back to Australia too! The gym will need to become a high priority I think once home again. :)
Some days I want time to slow right down to the pace of a snail so I can fit in a life-time of experiences into this three week window. It's a bit frustrating having to sleep really but yeah...I am pretty much exhausted come 2100 in the evenings! Bat then makes me sit up to watch DVD's with him.... he is the night owl sort it seems!
Today, we are all off to see Flocke, the new Eisbär (polar bear) at the zoo. Then we plan to go out to a restaurant to eat schnitzel mit pommes :) I so love the food here! *sigh*
You can find my photo's of this trip here
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Even the doggies go shopping.
I got up late again today. The cave is very quiet and dark and the light doesn't really penetrate until it is well after 9am.
I always kick myself when I lose daylight time. There seems to be so much to do and see and yet I find my mornings sliding gently away with little tasks and pleasant conversation.
Rushing may not be in my best interests really. I hope to come back to Nürnberg so it's not like I'm going to miss seeing any of these things again. :)
I walked all the way into the heart of town today. Left bat - still snoozing - at around 12:30pm German time, packed light and easy. I wore a few more layers today thinking it might be quite chilly. By the time I'd walked 1km though, I'd removed the raincoat! hahaha The scarf remained firmly around my neck for most of the day though.
It's surprises me how compact everything is here. It's probably only a couple of kms into the centre of town. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the sights as always.
I enjoyed another Nürnberger for lunch and a Brezeln with salami. I also tried a small cone of hot chips called "Kartöffeln" with a curry ketchup sauce on them. Absolutely delicious. With this kind of food, I am sure to gain weight! Interestingly, I see very few grossly overweight Germans here. Most are of average weight for their height. Despite the heavy high carbohydrate foodstuffs available so readily, the people seem to be fit and healthy...at least on the face of things.
I bought a few things but being on foot was conscious of weight so was careful to go small and light. The main shopping centre seemed to be rife with sales - my kids would be going mad with greedy delight in the shoes and clothes shopping that could have been done today! ;) I was so tempted to buy, buy, buy for the family back home but I was actually reasonably conservative for a change. The family gift buying spree will perhaps come later.
I had to smile at the dogs that were prevalent throughout the whole shopping precinct. People apparently like for their dogs to go on shopping trips with them. The doggies were on leashes of course and all were behaved and socialised. They were even allowed to enter stores with their owners! No tying up doggie to a pole outside like in my town! I never saw dogs inside food shops but I had the interesting experience of seeing one with its owner deep inside the confines of a busy clothing store, it enjoying being feted upon by the staff!
The street performers, clowns mostly, all seemed to have a dog a a side-kick. The dog seems to be a strong element of Nürnberg culture! Even bat talks a lot about getting a dog of his own.
We had visitors to the cave tonight. Dominic came to discuss a new "Ecliptic" plot with bat for their August 08 meeting. Ecliptic is the Live-Action-Role-Playing group that meet about three or four times a year. It's based on a Startrek theme and the group develop the story of the Starship Ecliptic, its crew, the adventures they undertake with all the fervour of Paramount Pictures!
We ate another common take-away food here called Döner Kebab. Just around the corner from the cave is this great Döner takeaway. We ordered the chicken ones. Dominic had something a bit different. A typical Döner is made of a roasted, marinated meat, shaved, served with mixed vegetable salads and a tasty mayonnaise. It's really messy but really yummy too! Later we ate our Eisbärdonuts, which were little bear face donuts, complete with a marshmallow nose and some gooey, chocolate fudgy stuff in the middle! I'm so getting fat! ungh! The food is just way too good!
The blokes are sitting over the way here deep in planning now. I am surrounded by the aural sounds of german conversation. My own german language training is getting a good deal of practise this past few days. I have even been congratulated for it by the lovely folks in stores, who learn of my foreigner status.
This place is really getting under my skin. I'm loving this city! I will miss the energy here. I feel very much at home in some ways but in others it's all strange and new. When I have better German it will be even easier to make my way around I think.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Wandering and Wasch
I got up quite early today. Spent some time chatting with folks back home over skype and generally just getting into the day. A light brekky and shower and then a short trip to the local laundromat just up around the corner.
I really struggled to figure out the machines there. To pay meant going to one corner of the building and actually putting in the number of the washing machine one was using and then paying the right amount into the vending machine. I chose the large machine as I decided to take quite a bit of bats washing as well. I figure I might as well pull my weight seeing as they're putting me up for three weeks.
That's the great thing about making friends over the net. You get the kudos of being able to go to far away places and not have to pay a lot for accomodations :) Still! It is polite to try and contribute something back...so I opted to be washgirl.
The dryers took ages though. Every 12 mins I'd have to put in another 50cents Euro just to get them going again and you couldn't put in more than one coin at a time which was rather inefficient I thought!
I read a bit and sat on the big comfy couch they had there for patrons and also shouted myself a hot tea with lemon from the hot drinks dispenser! Marvellous really even if the tea was sweeter than I usually have.
The afternoon was the coldest I've experienced thus far. Bat and I went for a walk to the U-Bahn and he showed me how to get around using this form of public transport. Then we caught the train to the Hauptbahnhof and got off to walk the rest of the way through to the centre of town.
Nuremberg is a lovely place. There is so much that I find beautiful in terms of the architecture and the sculptures that litter the pedestrian ways here.
It doesn't feel "old" here. The town itself has this sort of freshness about it. maybe it's because its all so new for me. I don't get a sense of the ancient and wonderful history of this place quite yet but I do know its here. It's obvious in the church buildings and the streetscapes that the place is old but at the same time I feel a strange sense of newness about Nürnberg.
The town was almost flattened during World War II and has been meticulously rebuilt to reflect its historical significance and character so that may account for my feeling that it is "New" here rather than very very old.
The crowds were quite large. I thought the CBD in Melbourne was a crowded and busy place but that seems sparse in comparison to the density of humanity that roamed the cobbled streets in the heart of Nbg today. It will be interesting to see what it's like tomorrow when I venture out by myself to see the Haupmarkt that happens every Friday.
As long as I can find my way back home again on the U-Bahn, I intend to roam around the town again taking as many photo's as I can while the light is good. It gets quite dark around 4:30pm for taking good photo's.
I ate a ridgy-didge "Nürnberger" which is a small bratwurst sausage sandwich. Absolutely delicious! Then I bought a big "Brezeln" which is a kind of bread shaped like a pretzel. I got one with Camembert cheese and butter! Oh my giddy aunt!!!! YUMMY! I shall put on all the kg's I've lost at this rate!
I find I get tired very quickly in the afternoons. I'm not sure if its because I'm missing one of my medicines I normally take for asthma (I discovered the box was actually empty in Bangkok airport. Silly me for not checking all my meds were actually inside their packaging before leaving!), and I'm in a state of withdrawal; or if it is still a bit of jet lag or if indeed, it's just the higher than usual concentration required to understand where I am and what I am doing! It could be it's a combination of all three I guess.
The cold here isn't nearly as intense as I thought it would be. I have actually dressed a lot lighter than I did earlier in the week and find it a comfortable balance between indoors (which can be very dry and warm), to outdoors. Today was probably the coldest I've been so far.
Yesterday, when I had just completed some grocery shopping, I watched a hail storm come pelting down outside the exit door to the Supermarkt. I haven't seen a good solid hail storm for some time. It lasted for about 5 minutes but the hail stones were already beginning to melt within a few minutes of it ending. I've not yet seen snow here.
I'm about to fall asleep on the keyboard here. Cu tomorrow maybe.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
February 3rd 2008 was 36 hours long!
I have arrived!
Yes! I am late posting this as I really "lost" most of my Monday here to sleeping.
The trip to Germany was long, and exhausting. Many times I thought to myself, "Okay! I'm done now... can we turn around and go home please?" I spent most of the time in transit being absolutely terrified of what might/could/would/was going to happen.
Melbourne Airport was okay except the last shuttlebus from Ballarat to the airport arrived rather too early for checking in so I lugged my heavy suitcase and carry on luggage around the airport for a few hours. Once I found out the check in gates, I sat myself on a chair and just waited, reading and people watching.
Check in was a surprisingly easy affair and I had no problems going through getting tickets or going through customs with Preciousss! :)
I tried to sleep on the plane to Bangkok but it was so cramped in our seats on that plane, my hip ached a lot. I think I did doze but in a sort of awake kind of way... totally aware of everything happening around me, despite the earplugs and eyecover I was wearing :)
We arrived on time in Bangkok and I entered the stage of my journey I had been dreading the most. A 7 hour stopover in Suvarnabhumi Airport
I felt so lost and small there. The building appeared reminiscent of a gangly and spacious octopus with these tentacles that wandered out from a central core. Each tentacle was made almost entirely of glass and steel so that you could see outside. Outside was grey and overcast and the sky was heavy with the portent of rain.
Once I found the departures section, I wandered about there for an age in a hopelessly lost state. I could not see the connecting flight showing on the information boards and I was a bit panicky after a couple of hours that I may have perhaps had to move to a different airport to connect to my flight to Frankfurt.
I found someone who spoke reasonable English in the First Class lounge for Thai International Airways and she confirmed that a gate number had not yet been assigned to that flight so I would literally have to wait until it showed up. I was relieved to a point.
I went back upstairs to departures and found a cafe. I had purchased about 100 Baht in Australia thinking that that would be HEAPS of cash to spend. It cost me around AU$10.00 for that 100 Baht.
I bought one cup of tea! It cost me almost my entire 100 Baht!!! So now I couldn't even afford to buy water unless I went and did an exchange at vast expense! I opted for going thirsty! But I won't do that again in a hurry...next time I will spend what ever it takes to get WATER. I got seriously dehydrated in the next 20 or so hours of travelling as a result of that decision.
The gate number appeared on the board and like a rocket I went straight for it and went through customs with my carry on luggage thinking that I could just wait in a comfortable lounge on the other side!
No so.
Embarrassingly, I was about 5 hours too early to wait for my flight and now I was stuck on the other side of customs in a large rather empty and forbidding hall with nothing much to do but sit and wait. I tried to read, I tried my computer with some small success at connecting to the internet, I tried to sleep. By the time other people started to arrive for the flight, I was in some kind of weird zone of not being able to think inside my head. I could only just note things and let them slip past me inside my mind without too much consideration. Exhaustion was setting in.
I did smile when it finally rained. The rain streamed down the outer shell of the clear tentacle I was inside and made the effect like that of being enveloped inside a blanket of water. The air temperature was already cool inside the airport but it dropped quite a lot after that rain.
Some lovely german people arrived and I spoke to them briefly in my halting German to confirm that I was indeed at the right gate for the connecting flight.
We waited and waited. Delay!
We boarded the plane about half an hour later than scheduled. The flight was full! At least it seemed like it was.
Oh to be wealthy enough to easily justify and afford first class travel! What I would have given in that next 12 hours to be able to stretch out and just relax into sleep. To no avail. Uncomfortable took on mammoth proportions! The plane was slightly more spacious than the one I travelled on between Melbourne and Bangkok but still, there was just no way I could find a zone for sleeping comfortably and effectively.
The hours drifted by nonetheless and I guess I just spent most of them in a kind of surreal zone of brain-dead survival. The coming three weeks had better be worth this pain and endurance! I am totally glad I have lost a lot of weight, I feel very sorry for larger than average sized people who have to travel on long haul flights like this...it must be absolute torture on their bodies.
We arrived in Frankfurt only about 15 mins behind our sheduled arrival. I left the plane a bit apprehensive about the forthcoming "grilling" I had expected from German immigration! The guy just took one look at me, stamped my passport, waved me through and I just had to go find my luggage after that! I was stunned!
It took me an age and a lot of walking to find baggage claim! I basically just went to the carousel that had the largest number of people around it and looked for faces I recognised from my flight! :) I waited for my luggage with some trepidation hoping it had actually managed to get onto this second plane! It arrived! I think I squeaked "ES KOMMT!" in German when I saw it come out of the luggage chute! A bloke beside me went "Huh?" hahaha
I half expected to have to have all the plastic wrapping taken off it by some official and the contents perused, but as I went to go through an exit there was no one at the desk at all. I had nothing to declare but still, I was dubious about just walking out , but a lady passenger just said "Go through, it's okay".
So there I was. In Frankfurt Airport having somehow managed to circumnavigate a vast variety of apprehensions I had expected and dreaded.
Now I had to find bats wife who, with her best friend, was to pick me up from the airport. I found a german "Treffepunkt" ... a specially marked Meeting Place and sat. My mobile phone then rang which surprised me! It was bat saying "WHERE ARE YOU?"
I was "I have no idea!"
I stayed put and the next thing I saw S. and R. turn up. Hugs and tears (from me) ensued. I was so relieved.
They very kindly bundled me into the car and I was whisked out of the range of the airport. We stopped at a petrol station so I could go to the toilet and S. showed me the ticketing system they use for public toilets! We realised only slightly later we had entered the male toilets instead of the womens! *giggle* The cleaner guy was shaking his head at us and smiling at these strange women! hahaha
I think I actually slept in the car better than I had for the entire trip thus far. R. drove at the speed of light (about 210km an hour on the autobahn) but it felt so safe and okay. I just relaxed into the spirit of the occasion and felt totally at peace.
I met bat in the flesh for the first time. It was... well... it was very moving for me. Expectations met and assumptions unmet.
But I have been tired this past day or so. Totally jet-lagged so I really didn't do much my Monday except eat a bit and chat to my daughter in skype then go back to sleep.
Today, I felt energised and ready to explore this new world I am currently in. I walked the streets of Nuremberg a little today just soaking in the difference in the buildings and style of things I am not used to. I even went supermarket shopping by myself for the first time with everything kind of similar but oh so different too.
A lady in a bakery even congratulated me on my rather limited German which I managed to speak to her...effectively telling her I was from Australia and didn't know much German! :)
Today has been a good day. I made german scrambled eggs and bacon for my breakfast, bought bread and some stuff from the bakery, went grocery shopping up the street, window shopping down another street and have laughed and chatted with my dear friend (when he finally woke up that is)!
Tomorrow, I shall venture out a little further as I orientate myself to the streets and directions here. I hope to explore the Hauptmarkt by Friday ...and find a laundromat to do my laundry! :)
Cu tomorrow maybe.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Almost ready to trip and trade
What a week it's proving to be!
I'm in the final throes of organising my forthcoming trip overseas to Germany and will be heading off this coming Saturday.
I leave behind my dear husband and kids to fend for themselves for about three weeks.
*gulp*
On top of this, DH will be opening our business up again for trade at the new premises early next week! I won't even be here to see that small milestone!
We have been married and in business together for 18 years! Life seems to be in flux and spinning us around as if we are on a wheel! I never expected, in a million years, to be travelling at the same time we'd be changing our business location.
I could have perhaps post-poned this trip but that costs money. As it was, it cost a bucket load of extra cash to change our planned flights to Darwin we missed out on over Christmas.
I weighed up if I should perhaps change my timing for going to Germany but have decided that under the greater scheme of things, it's more efficient and economical to just go and do it and then come home ready to put in a solid effort into making a living for the rest of the year.
The kids...and hubby... are going to survive! :) it IS only three weeks!
Whether I will survive is quite another question *gulps again* I am having travel dreams now, mostly stressing out over my stop-over in Bangkok of all things. I'm sure it will be fine, but those 5 hours flopping about in an airport terminal have a mysterious, thriller-esque quality to them that is making me feel a little squeemish to say the least!
The days from now until Saturday are picking up speed exponentially. Technically I really should be on the PC in the other room sorting out a lot of paperwork and I'll do that shortly. I need a shower too! It has been very dirty, dusty work today moving stock and general "stuff" from the old shop to the new. Bakeries are not the cleanest places truth be told. We do our best to keep the dust bunnies at bay, but there's only so much flour one can remove before the next haze has settled again. It just goes with the territory of foodservice, that there will be a balanced choice made between keeping certain things scrupulously clean and what other things can be safely left another day.
But! Looking at the new shop today I am quite proud and pleased. What has been accomplished in a matter of 8 weeks is nothing short of astounding! In a bizarre twist, Baz's illness has forced our hand and made us get things happening that have been so slow in coming for the past 4 years to date! That time out over the new year has given us a window of opportunity we'd not have had if we'd been still trading from the old shop!
Sometimes, God uses the testing times in our lives to make other necessary stuff happen! :) For this providence I'm particularly grateful, even though I won't get to experience the newness of it for a month or so.
Understandably, baz is very nervous about using the new oven, but I personally think he'll fall into the work again like a duck to water and fall in love with his brand new shiny oven as well by the end of next week. :)
I've packed and re-packed my poor suitcase trying to keep it under maximum weight allowance. Danged hard you know when one is travelling from very hot to very cold weather! How many thermal underwear vests does one need do you think? My suitcase seems to be mostly laden with hardware like chargers, mini discs and shoes, rather than actual clothing! I just hope German opportunity/thrift shops are abundant if I am a bit light on with the warm clothing :)
So anyway, trepidation abounds on all fronts here. Excitement and terror mixed together like an explosive cocktail of delight and/or anxiety. I suppose it will be perspective that chooses the resulting flavour.
Wish us all God speed and Bon Voyage into our future. :)
I'm in the final throes of organising my forthcoming trip overseas to Germany and will be heading off this coming Saturday.
I leave behind my dear husband and kids to fend for themselves for about three weeks.
*gulp*
On top of this, DH will be opening our business up again for trade at the new premises early next week! I won't even be here to see that small milestone!
We have been married and in business together for 18 years! Life seems to be in flux and spinning us around as if we are on a wheel! I never expected, in a million years, to be travelling at the same time we'd be changing our business location.
I could have perhaps post-poned this trip but that costs money. As it was, it cost a bucket load of extra cash to change our planned flights to Darwin we missed out on over Christmas.
I weighed up if I should perhaps change my timing for going to Germany but have decided that under the greater scheme of things, it's more efficient and economical to just go and do it and then come home ready to put in a solid effort into making a living for the rest of the year.
The kids...and hubby... are going to survive! :) it IS only three weeks!
Whether I will survive is quite another question *gulps again* I am having travel dreams now, mostly stressing out over my stop-over in Bangkok of all things. I'm sure it will be fine, but those 5 hours flopping about in an airport terminal have a mysterious, thriller-esque quality to them that is making me feel a little squeemish to say the least!
The days from now until Saturday are picking up speed exponentially. Technically I really should be on the PC in the other room sorting out a lot of paperwork and I'll do that shortly. I need a shower too! It has been very dirty, dusty work today moving stock and general "stuff" from the old shop to the new. Bakeries are not the cleanest places truth be told. We do our best to keep the dust bunnies at bay, but there's only so much flour one can remove before the next haze has settled again. It just goes with the territory of foodservice, that there will be a balanced choice made between keeping certain things scrupulously clean and what other things can be safely left another day.
But! Looking at the new shop today I am quite proud and pleased. What has been accomplished in a matter of 8 weeks is nothing short of astounding! In a bizarre twist, Baz's illness has forced our hand and made us get things happening that have been so slow in coming for the past 4 years to date! That time out over the new year has given us a window of opportunity we'd not have had if we'd been still trading from the old shop!
Sometimes, God uses the testing times in our lives to make other necessary stuff happen! :) For this providence I'm particularly grateful, even though I won't get to experience the newness of it for a month or so.
Understandably, baz is very nervous about using the new oven, but I personally think he'll fall into the work again like a duck to water and fall in love with his brand new shiny oven as well by the end of next week. :)
I've packed and re-packed my poor suitcase trying to keep it under maximum weight allowance. Danged hard you know when one is travelling from very hot to very cold weather! How many thermal underwear vests does one need do you think? My suitcase seems to be mostly laden with hardware like chargers, mini discs and shoes, rather than actual clothing! I just hope German opportunity/thrift shops are abundant if I am a bit light on with the warm clothing :)
So anyway, trepidation abounds on all fronts here. Excitement and terror mixed together like an explosive cocktail of delight and/or anxiety. I suppose it will be perspective that chooses the resulting flavour.
Wish us all God speed and Bon Voyage into our future. :)
Sunday, January 27, 2008
a fine romance
Now, I realise that this will sound a little silly really, given that this sort of product has been around for quite some time now; but, I've fallen totally in love with iTunes!
I've used iTunes sporadically for a LONG time! But have not really done a whole lot with it as such other than listen to iTunes Radio stations! Today I "discovered" some of the audio treasures available in the iTunes Store and bought my first download from there! A fond revisit to some of my favourite music from my early 20's :)
Of course, now all this has me writing a wishlist with the view to acquiring "new" music in times to come :)
I have downloaded music off the net before but never from iTunes itself as such. I recently acquired the new Radiohead album direct from their site and it neatly slotted itself into iTunes without any help from me! :) I think that kind of simplicity and synchronous deployment is just beautiful in tech huh? :) (Yes! I paid a fair price for "in Rainbows" thanks. No guilt here on nicking someones' hard yakka!)
Along with Preciousss here (my MacBook), iTunes syncs beautifully with all kinds of media.
Uploading CD's from our collection to iTunes over on the PC was always a bit of a tedious process, clunky and not very efficient I thought. Here on the Mac however, it's simplicity plus! The Apple guys just know how make things WORK without the stodgy, frustrating and convoluted stress! It's quite simply a revelation for me!
In the past day or so, I've easily uploaded upwards of 60+ CD's, with a fair few to go too :) It is proving to be a fun and edifying process. I am now going to be able to listen to music I don't often to get to hear, other than in the car!
Between the personal CD collection and the amazing variety of sound in iTunes Radio, music takes on an other-worldly dimension unmatched since the advent of the first sound recordings!
So, Okay? Now I AM blushing! I get it now maybe! hahaha
I've used iTunes sporadically for a LONG time! But have not really done a whole lot with it as such other than listen to iTunes Radio stations! Today I "discovered" some of the audio treasures available in the iTunes Store and bought my first download from there! A fond revisit to some of my favourite music from my early 20's :)
Of course, now all this has me writing a wishlist with the view to acquiring "new" music in times to come :)
I have downloaded music off the net before but never from iTunes itself as such. I recently acquired the new Radiohead album direct from their site and it neatly slotted itself into iTunes without any help from me! :) I think that kind of simplicity and synchronous deployment is just beautiful in tech huh? :) (Yes! I paid a fair price for "in Rainbows" thanks. No guilt here on nicking someones' hard yakka!)
Along with Preciousss here (my MacBook), iTunes syncs beautifully with all kinds of media.
Uploading CD's from our collection to iTunes over on the PC was always a bit of a tedious process, clunky and not very efficient I thought. Here on the Mac however, it's simplicity plus! The Apple guys just know how make things WORK without the stodgy, frustrating and convoluted stress! It's quite simply a revelation for me!
In the past day or so, I've easily uploaded upwards of 60+ CD's, with a fair few to go too :) It is proving to be a fun and edifying process. I am now going to be able to listen to music I don't often to get to hear, other than in the car!
Between the personal CD collection and the amazing variety of sound in iTunes Radio, music takes on an other-worldly dimension unmatched since the advent of the first sound recordings!
So, Okay? Now I AM blushing! I get it now maybe! hahaha
Saturday, January 26, 2008
addict?
A very few of the people here in my first life are questioning if I have become addicted to Second Life.
I possibly am.
It has been holidays more or less for us since the beginning of January...at least it was for the first two and a half weeks. I indulged my hobby in that time and spent a great deal of time building and talking inworld. It was a lovely cathartic and enjoyable space for me.
First Life cannot and will never be superceded by Second Life.
As I said, Second life is an extension of ones First Life, not a replacement!
Flesh, blood, reality, physicality, face2face, meatspace: whatever you want to assign to First Life, Second Life will never match it on those levels at all.
Besides, it is busy again now as we get sorted on setting up the new shop. My hobby will be relegated to the odd hour here and there in my day, once more, while First Life responsibilities dominate our days.
No biggie!
I confess to being a bit cross with the well-meaning folk who suggest that I am "losing it" on this one. That may or may not be a symptom or sign of addiction, I don't know; however, when was someone last chastised for playing golf, or sewing, or scrapbooking, or simply playing?
Is it because it's on a computer that my hobby makes it less acceptable?
Yes! I agree that computer addiction possibly exists and might be a problem and a threat - even though research is suggesting it is perhaps more a compulsion based on underlying emotional issues within the individual using the computer than on the tool itself.
You might want to suggest I am also "addicted' to food too! And if I have a glass of wine, I could be lumped by some into the "alcoholic" box!
Addictions are prevalent yes! Some people are susceptible more than others. If I am one of them, then let me come to that realization and choice myself. I am perfectly aware of how much time I spend on my computer. I am also perfectly aware of how it can affect my loved ones and my objectives in First Life. I will balance these things accordingly.
A computer is more than a box of neat tricks. It is a device to think with. I don't care much for what goes on under the hood, but I care very much about what it delivers to me in terms of human contact, information and ideas, and creative expression.
THOSE things I AM addicted to!
I possibly am.
It has been holidays more or less for us since the beginning of January...at least it was for the first two and a half weeks. I indulged my hobby in that time and spent a great deal of time building and talking inworld. It was a lovely cathartic and enjoyable space for me.
First Life cannot and will never be superceded by Second Life.
As I said, Second life is an extension of ones First Life, not a replacement!
Flesh, blood, reality, physicality, face2face, meatspace: whatever you want to assign to First Life, Second Life will never match it on those levels at all.
Besides, it is busy again now as we get sorted on setting up the new shop. My hobby will be relegated to the odd hour here and there in my day, once more, while First Life responsibilities dominate our days.
No biggie!
I confess to being a bit cross with the well-meaning folk who suggest that I am "losing it" on this one. That may or may not be a symptom or sign of addiction, I don't know; however, when was someone last chastised for playing golf, or sewing, or scrapbooking, or simply playing?
Is it because it's on a computer that my hobby makes it less acceptable?
Yes! I agree that computer addiction possibly exists and might be a problem and a threat - even though research is suggesting it is perhaps more a compulsion based on underlying emotional issues within the individual using the computer than on the tool itself.
You might want to suggest I am also "addicted' to food too! And if I have a glass of wine, I could be lumped by some into the "alcoholic" box!
Addictions are prevalent yes! Some people are susceptible more than others. If I am one of them, then let me come to that realization and choice myself. I am perfectly aware of how much time I spend on my computer. I am also perfectly aware of how it can affect my loved ones and my objectives in First Life. I will balance these things accordingly.
A computer is more than a box of neat tricks. It is a device to think with. I don't care much for what goes on under the hood, but I care very much about what it delivers to me in terms of human contact, information and ideas, and creative expression.
THOSE things I AM addicted to!
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
half way through a lifetime
Yesterday... 22nd January 2008... I had my birthday and turned 46 years old.
I am, to all intents and purposes, halfway into my life!
What I have been and where I am going is my unique stamp on the world. *I* have created impact on this planet just by virtue of my being here! Everything that makes up who I am is cause and effect for some other "thing" that happens - then, now, to come!
Chaos rules the bounds of structure in time, place and person after all. What *I* do to... and what is done to *me* is every bit as important as waves, earthquakes, winds and weather!
I live ON this planet and I engage WITH it along with all the other multitudes of life that exist here. Separate but not indivisible really under the *laws* of Creation.
My "goals" for the coming half of my life to its end?
Freedom!
Intimacy!
Solitude but not isolation!
I think...at this moment anyway...that I want a life that is unbound.
I want the freedom internally to be myself without constraint either by my own or others choosing.
I want amazing CLOSENESS to certain people from my past, in my now and in my life to come. A closeness of soul, intellect, emotion and physicality. I don't want to be beholden to these people out of obligation or ambiguous societal notions of morality...but I do want to be connected to them out of Love and selfless interest. I just want to LIKE and LOVE the people I like and love! No obligations, no expectations, no justifications or imposed beliefs required.
I think I am called to a solitary life... not necessarily what you might expect though. A solitary notion of inner being more than a physical reality as such. I MAY indeed become "solitary" in my physical environment! That is common in people who enter their twilight years anyway but I don't expect it right now of course.
What I mean is, I think I am by nature and by intent, within my natural temperament, to be Solitary inside of my being. An inner core of gentle calmness within the self-state of supra-consciousness; one that is neither overly confident but nor is it undermined by notions of self-deprecation or "smallness". It is a state of self and one that can be shared with others in proximity. It is not so much about being alone but it is about the comforting reassurance of quiet self-company! A state of inner Grace that is not aware of itself... it just is.
The first half of my life was learning how to master my Machiavellian narcissism born of my fears of abandonment and rejection. I am a hyper-follower wanting to be my own individual self but also fearing to be rejected for that very thing! I just always wanted to "fit in".
Now I know I don't have to anymore.
I crave Solitude away from the group mind, because I as I grow older, I see so very much more clearly, how effective I am in my work if I am unrestrained or unhindered by the expectations of that mind!
As a balance to this though, I suspect I will always battle with the dichotomy between being Team orientated and group focussed and that craving to respect and indulge my Solitudinous instincts!
I believe that I will be a very different person in this next half of my life than from the one I have been. For good or ill, I don't know!
QYB
I am, to all intents and purposes, halfway into my life!
What I have been and where I am going is my unique stamp on the world. *I* have created impact on this planet just by virtue of my being here! Everything that makes up who I am is cause and effect for some other "thing" that happens - then, now, to come!
Chaos rules the bounds of structure in time, place and person after all. What *I* do to... and what is done to *me* is every bit as important as waves, earthquakes, winds and weather!
I live ON this planet and I engage WITH it along with all the other multitudes of life that exist here. Separate but not indivisible really under the *laws* of Creation.
My "goals" for the coming half of my life to its end?
Freedom!
Intimacy!
Solitude but not isolation!
I think...at this moment anyway...that I want a life that is unbound.
I want the freedom internally to be myself without constraint either by my own or others choosing.
I want amazing CLOSENESS to certain people from my past, in my now and in my life to come. A closeness of soul, intellect, emotion and physicality. I don't want to be beholden to these people out of obligation or ambiguous societal notions of morality...but I do want to be connected to them out of Love and selfless interest. I just want to LIKE and LOVE the people I like and love! No obligations, no expectations, no justifications or imposed beliefs required.
I think I am called to a solitary life... not necessarily what you might expect though. A solitary notion of inner being more than a physical reality as such. I MAY indeed become "solitary" in my physical environment! That is common in people who enter their twilight years anyway but I don't expect it right now of course.
What I mean is, I think I am by nature and by intent, within my natural temperament, to be Solitary inside of my being. An inner core of gentle calmness within the self-state of supra-consciousness; one that is neither overly confident but nor is it undermined by notions of self-deprecation or "smallness". It is a state of self and one that can be shared with others in proximity. It is not so much about being alone but it is about the comforting reassurance of quiet self-company! A state of inner Grace that is not aware of itself... it just is.
The first half of my life was learning how to master my Machiavellian narcissism born of my fears of abandonment and rejection. I am a hyper-follower wanting to be my own individual self but also fearing to be rejected for that very thing! I just always wanted to "fit in".
Now I know I don't have to anymore.
I crave Solitude away from the group mind, because I as I grow older, I see so very much more clearly, how effective I am in my work if I am unrestrained or unhindered by the expectations of that mind!
As a balance to this though, I suspect I will always battle with the dichotomy between being Team orientated and group focussed and that craving to respect and indulge my Solitudinous instincts!
I believe that I will be a very different person in this next half of my life than from the one I have been. For good or ill, I don't know!
QYB
Friday, January 18, 2008
Why I stopped called it "Real Life"
Up until recently, many of my posts in regard to the similarities and differences between the virtual world of Second Life and the life I live in my physical environment have been differentiated by two phrases; Second Life and "Real" Life - SL and RL.
I have since revised this to First Life as opposed to "Real Life". SL and FL
My Second Life is every bit as "real" as the other life I lead.
I have a "home", a place to rent, friends and places to see, things to do in Second Life which to all intents and purposes are just as important to me as the friends, family and things I do in my First Life.
My First Life is charachterized by its physicality. I need to eat, sleep, engage face to face with family and friends, neighbours and bank managers. I need to get the washing done and the toilet cleaned in order for that life to be enjoyed and lived positively as and when it counts.
My Second Life is characterized by its enduring visual appeal and communications. In Second Life, there are people to meet, friends to discuss issues with, new things to learn, places of interest to create and see. I don't "need" anything in Second Life that isn't directly related to 1) creative expression 2) other people or vice versa!
I've said it before and I will keep repeating it. Second Life is an EXTENTION of my First Life. It is neither a game, a mere past-time or a singular "hobby". It is every bit as important to me as the meeting I attended at my local church last Tuesday evening in my First Life.
Just as sewing is important to my mother, Second Life is important to me. Sometimes it might be perceived as an "escape" from the First Life "realities" of existence in this corporeal form of Human. But, most of the time it's simply a different expression of my creative and social nature AS a Human.
My SL won't replace or supercede my FL. But my FL is infinitely richer and more rewarding because of my SL.
I have since revised this to First Life as opposed to "Real Life". SL and FL
My Second Life is every bit as "real" as the other life I lead.
I have a "home", a place to rent, friends and places to see, things to do in Second Life which to all intents and purposes are just as important to me as the friends, family and things I do in my First Life.
My First Life is charachterized by its physicality. I need to eat, sleep, engage face to face with family and friends, neighbours and bank managers. I need to get the washing done and the toilet cleaned in order for that life to be enjoyed and lived positively as and when it counts.
My Second Life is characterized by its enduring visual appeal and communications. In Second Life, there are people to meet, friends to discuss issues with, new things to learn, places of interest to create and see. I don't "need" anything in Second Life that isn't directly related to 1) creative expression 2) other people or vice versa!
I've said it before and I will keep repeating it. Second Life is an EXTENTION of my First Life. It is neither a game, a mere past-time or a singular "hobby". It is every bit as important to me as the meeting I attended at my local church last Tuesday evening in my First Life.
Just as sewing is important to my mother, Second Life is important to me. Sometimes it might be perceived as an "escape" from the First Life "realities" of existence in this corporeal form of Human. But, most of the time it's simply a different expression of my creative and social nature AS a Human.
My SL won't replace or supercede my FL. But my FL is infinitely richer and more rewarding because of my SL.
jane austin genius
One of the things I promised myself on hearing I was "going blind" at age 25 was to read as many of the classics of English Literature as I could before I died.
I have no where NEAR accomplished even a 10th of this promise... even though I can proudly claim to have read both the Iliad and Homer's Odyssey! (Please don't ask me to tell you the plot, I got completely lost in the first chapter of both books! Too many gods, too many ships and too many silly men!)
I have never actually read any Jane Austin books in full. I have always been a little cynical of romantic literature despite a passion for M.M. Kaye and H.R. Haggard and P.C. Wren (ahhh Beau Geste! What a tale that is! *purrs with pleasant memories*).
I have seen quite a few movie adaptations of Janes work though and have thoroughly enjoyed them all.
There is a new modern variation on the JA theme coming to the cinema's at the end of the month. I hope to catch it either at the cinema or on DVD. I am positive I will enjoy it very much.
The website for the movie has this intriguing introduction.
Jane Austen is famous for her spirited and independent characters. Today's world may be far removed from Regency England, but we're still as preoccupied with the complexities of marriage, friendship, flirtations and social manners and mores as Jane Austen's characters were at the turn of the century. Take The Jane Austen Book Club quiz and learn which character from the film is most like you.
so true!
We are exactly that! Preoccupied with the complexities of all relationships both First Life and Second Life! It's our inherent nature to strive for that constancy of Love in our lives.
It strikes me though, that most of our striving is about "us", our SELF: the ego-centric capacity for reciprocated love returned. Maybe this is a cynical belief about the narcissistic nature of most people. We are, of course, quite capable of empathizing with and sustaining relationships based on altruistic love for the other but I believe these kinds of relationships are rare and of course extremely precious.
Most day to day relationships are more about me-It where the "you" in that equation is more an object rather than You. This means that what I gain from you as a person is an objective sense of reward of some kind be it emotional, physical or material. I am in it for whatever gains I might find appealing to my sense of worth. Some of us don't progress very far from our baby-hood in our innate belief that the Universe revolves entirely around our Self!
Our sense of survival runs so deep within that our complex emotional and social makeup, physiologically as well as spiritually demands we do the best we can to "get along" with people to the best of our ability in order that we too get the pay off that that may bring! That we CAN empathize with others is a remarkable gift of human evolution and/or Divine Creation! We can intuit and scan the emotional inner horizons of others and relate to their way and state of being and loop into that mindset, reciprocating those same emotions and joining with them in an empathetic dance of mutual understanding beyond mere physical survival. We can only ever hope to have that same level of attention paid to ourselves by others.
Love IS a kind of essential food group! It is rare for a person to eschew genuine love. We are nourished and sustained not so much by the food we eat as the love we share. The operative word being "Share" here. We give what we get and we get what we give! Sometimes we must give it forward and sometimes we can give it back. It's not a two-way thing is Love - it's a viral thing, spreading OUTWARDS beyond the initial conduit of its development.
Long ago, Ms Austin appears to have instinctively and intuitively understood the inner drive of human beings so well, she documented them in stories that have become modern Aesop's Fables of sorts. These stories still to this day, fully resonate with the common traits of all human beings across centuries. Its not about what we DO - its how we go about doing it that counts.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Second Life as a study in social dynamics
Second Life is seductive, addictive and intimate. It is jolly good fun.
Like Odysseus wanting to heed the Siren's call even as he was strapped to the mast of his ship, I find myself caught between the call of Second Life with its sheer fun, play, friendships and inspirational ideas and the sludgy entrapment of my First Life world with its mundane "duties" and other such responsibilities.
A scene in The Matrix describes how the human being is essentially being used as a "battery" for a vast machine. Our bio-electrical chemistry can be harnessed to generate a sordid, mechanical, austere, hard and blood-thirsty "life" on a post-apocalyptic planet despondent with darkness and barrenness of soul.
The humans who flee being a mere conduit of power for the hungry machines, endure vast hardships in order to remain "free".
One of the characters, Cypher, tires of this hard life and snitches on his fellow compatriots, in exchange for opting out of this life of drudgery and fear and reverting into being a battery again where his body is plugged back into the mainframe but his mind is fed this wonderful imaginary, completely seductive and beautiful "Reality" of existence. He wants to BELIEVE he is a powerful, sexually potent, wealthy and beautiful character inside this imaginary tale, fed into his brain by the machine, which itself, feeds off him.
Second Life has the potential to do the same for many people in this current life we know. We would rather enjoy the freedom inside our imagination even while under physical duress and stress than deal with those stresses and responsibilities in our first life for real!
That is a dark and rather alarming prospect but seriously? Why would ANYONE want to struggle for attention, affection, understanding and admiration in this life when these things are so easy and exciting to grasp hold of in Second Life? The allure of virtual worlds is the escape from the mundane after all.
Second Life is fundamentally about creativity and relationship. We can have either or we can have both. We can be as creative and as imaginative in our expression of our skills and abilities as we want to be... AND/OR we can create the Tribe we want to be with; one which promises to meet our emotional, intellectual and even to a point, our physical needs for intimacy and connection.
I've mentioned before that you can choose to be anything you want to be inside Second Life. You can create a persona that you feel "best" illuminates (or even hides) the true essence of your first life persona. If you choose not to use the voice facility this makes it even easier to create yourself into whatever you perceive yourself to be. You are the hero/heroine of your own story! It may write itself but you control the depth of that process.
As society fragments and we each become more and more isolated physically, in our first life (A recent report into population projections for households in Australia suggests that by 2026, 15.3% of our population will be living in lone households*), virtual worlds will play an increasing role in maintaining our need for social contacts. These contacts will begin to take on significantly more meaning over time to the point where cyber marriages and long-term cyber relationships as a whole, will become increasingly recognized as formal social alliances. The raft of political and legal implications in this trend will be enormous! The new world order of virtual community will begin to create a major impact on physical real life community. The cross-over will be ubiquitous, chaotic, and increasingly difficult for governments of all kinds to control or organize.
This will have both advantages for individuals and also, I believe, gross disadvantages for other socio-political reasons. Not everyone who uses SL is ethical or looking for connection with other like-minded souls...the ability to manipulate people in a virtual world is every bit as real and as potent as it is in FL - and much harder to recognize!
Still! Second Life right now in its toddling first steps as a "new" social paradigm, is effective in transcending time, place, gender and identity. It gives the world a new way of perceiving the Self, the Other and the "Us" of relationship and expands the possibilities of creative process and endeavor.
So while my sense of organization and order in my First Life is being severely undermined by my tendency to engage inside Second Life: while my FL bed stays unmade, my FL work is in a sort of stasis, my FL world is in this rather dreamy, sluggish, meandering mood of summertime laziness; I am compelled and drawn to escaping into another world of my own making and design...the world of my imagination assisted as it is by software and technology.
FL is simply boring at the moment! On the other hand...my Second Life is awash with energy, burgeoning friendships, creative pursuits and even "real" work of sorts (manipulating prims IS hard work you know! :)).
I could not give a fig about the bed I sleep in or the food I eat or the dishes in the dishwasher (hey? at least they are actually IN IT!)... just let me tweak trees and shrubs into position in "my garden"; talk to H and M, the Major, dear Archer and my virtual Landlord in conversations that energize and feed me in so many unspoken ways.
Second Life and the myriad of virtual worlds that are already available to people are here to stay. There may be darkness on their horizon but it won't be any less frightening that the cruel darkness of mundane responsibility we potentially face every waking moment of our First Lives.
(* cited from http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/48723/20050812-0000/acsr.anu.edu.au/APA2004/papers/7C_Jain.pdf)
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