Libraries: The Ultimate in Recycling

Whale Sunday

Humpback Whale off Sydney Head, Sunday 18 October 2009

The day did not start out well with scattered showers.  We thanked forethought and the advice given on the whale tours for insisting we brought a good warm coat as it looked cold out on the water.

It looked even worse as we left the Darling Harbour.  I wished I thought to bring a simple plastic bag to protect my camera with as it looked like we’d be shooting in the rain.

My fears were unfounded as we slipped through the head the day showed it could be kind to whale watchers and broke up the sky enough for us photographers to take our eyes off the sky and put it on the ocean, searching for signs of whale.

The tour guides had been tipped off on a pod of four whales making their way down the coast that they hoped to intercept as they travelled past the heads.  Unusally for this time of year it was a group of four adults as individuals and mother/calf groups are more common.

There was a two foot swell outside the heads which doesn’t sound like a lot until you have to find our footing, hold onto breakfast and keep an eye our for whales all at the same time.  All this became particularly hard when the whales were spotted and the captain manevoured the boat so it was side on to the waves.  Now instead off just going up and down the boat seemed to roll in lazy circles taking my stomach with it.  But I was too busy to pay any attention to rolling stomach’s as the whales surfaces maybe 2oo metres from the boat.

I understand we spent two hours following the pod as they zig-zagged their way down the coast as far down as Bondi.   I can honestly same I don’t know where the time went.  Before I really felt the desire for land the captain turned the boat back to the heads.  There another pod, this time a mother and calf.  Like the captain, they seemed to be in a hurry to get where they had to go and didn’t hang around to look at the boat.

Though not a dramatic whale watching experience, it was impressive to see these animals up close.  To say they are big doesn’t describe them.  They are the largest animals that any of use are likely to see, and too think they go straight past Sydney’s doorstep is incredible.

I think I should like to go out and wave g’day to them again when they make their trip north next April.

If you want to see some mighty impressive whale shots or read the whale blog by Jonas the Photographer click on the image below.

Your honour, I text my case.

I was reading an article on teenagers and text speak recently and nearly laughed out loud…which is a bad thing as I was reading at work and I work in a library.

Not at the almost unintelligible number, letter and symbol combinations.  Many of these are clever and I wish I’d had them when I’d been a teen so I could have text my friends in our secret code.

It was the third last on the following list that caught the laugh in my throat:

2MI Too much information

4EA3 Forever and ever

AAS Alive and smiling

AOTA All of the above

B/F Boyfriend

CD9 Code 9 (parents are around)

F2F Free to talk

LMIRL Let’s meet in real life

n00B Newbie

OL Old lady

OOTO Out of the office

POS Parent over shoulder

PTMM Please tell me more

RMMM Read my mail man

ROTFL Rolling on the floor laughing

SPST Same place, same time

SWMBO She who must be obeyed (wife or partner)

T+ Think positive

:@  What!! 

:@  is right!  What is a phrase like “She who must be obeyed” doing in a list of hip sayings like T+ or CD9?!  Instantly I hear Leo McKern in the  sharp and cranky tones of  John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey growling about the latest restrictions enforced by the formidible Hilda, the aforementioned  and original “She Who Must Be Obeyed”.

That a pudgy little middle aged man with the wit as sharp as a teenagers fashion critic could possibly be on the cutting edge of teen pop culture makes me ROTFL.

TTFN SPST

Something dark is spreading…

I smell a conspiracy theory…

… and it smells like yeast extract.

A certain brown substance has been making news lately when a competition it ran to name its new product failed to produce a name that appealed to the Australian public.  In fact, we hated it. 

It made it into mainstream newspapers

Ebay is awash in brown as people sell cases of the rejected product all over the world.

Even the evening news commented on the backlash.  It was a national scandal!

Now the company claims it was not a publicity stunt.  That it honestly thought they’d found a good name for their new flagship product. 

Really?  

If  all this is not a publicity stunt using one of Australia’s iconic symbols as cannon fodder, can I assume that the judge were all from the land that felt secure with huge lending bodies with the farm friendly names of  Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac and be happy to call computer game consoles after bodily waste?

I’m really hoping for the conspiracy theory myself.

A post for me

This is so me at the moment…roll on ANOTHER birthday.

Love thy neighbour

Even in our modern isolationist society, neighbours have to help each other.  Even the most difficult of neighbours.

Our house faces parkland where many native species make their living.  With most of them we are on good terms.  The sulphur crested cockatoo can be loud but they are a good natured family and if you don’t mind them snacking on your sunflowers very easy to live with.  The native black ducks and geese keep to the creek and the rainbow lorikeets to the trees.  I’m trying t invite frogs and lizard to our place, but they are shy and very much like the human residence of our street, only interested in their own lives.

And then there is the Spur-wing family.

The couple, Mr and Mrs Spur-wing are permanent residence of the park.  When there’s not chicks the couple are pretty quiet but as soon as there are eggs in their ground level nest somewhere in the scrub the parents get nasty.  They yell at anyone that comes near, anyone who looks like coming near or anyone that even looks at them.  And it’s not just the alarm call that can go off at any time day or night, if they think you’re particularly threatening they will dive bomb you, particularly if you’re a white fluffy dog…or with one.

So they’re not the best of neighbours.

Just recently they had started their swooping and yelling again so we all knew there was a new clutch.

Friday evening as I drove up after work I noticed with mounting dread that either Mr or Mrs Spur wing was hunched over peering down a storm water drain.

Sure enough when I looked down the grill, both parents dive bombing and screaming murder, there were two fluffy speckled chicks down too far to reach.

So I found two sticks we had lying around and taped an old pot that we use around the garden to one.  With my tools in hand I was determined to get those tiny mites out of the drain.

The first one was easy.  They were small, very young and pretty shook up from falling maybe a metre from road level to bottom of the drain.  There was no resistance on its part and I pretty quickly dumped it out onto the grass.  The second chick took longer.  By this time my neighbour of the human sort had come over to see what I was doing in the gutter, soon followed by his wife.  She informs us both that when she came home there were two chicks out on the road and the ‘mother’ spur-wing was looking down the gutter.  With that same sick dread as beforeI realised there was another chick …somewhere.

Sure enough, after prodding around the in leaf litter at the bottom of the storm water drain we found a third chick, weak and barely moving.  We put the third chick with its two siblings and stepped away.  Without a swoop or a cry mother bird ran to her babies and covered them with her wings.  We left them with the knowledge that no matter what happened next we’d done our best.

Real life stories don’t have happy endings I’m afraid.  The next morning the weak chick was dead, left where we had put it the evening before.  The other two were looked after by the parents for a few days later but on the weekend I heard both parents give their warning cries and fly away.  This clutch of tiny fluffies may have been lost but I was glad I had helped anyway. 

The feeling of being part of nature not just for or against it is powerful.  We have to remember that when it comes to nature we are not in control and we need to let nature take it’s course.  Not in that cheap wildlife documentary way, where the chick is left to die of starvation while the cameras roll, but knowing that in the end, when it comes to the whole of nature, our actions really don’t matter a great deal.

Good fences may make good neighbour, but knowing when to cross them makes us good citizens of the earth.

A public service annoucement

A public service announcement

Let that be a warning to us all online.

Postscript: Sydney’s Interstate Visitors

Now we know who to blame for the dust storm this week!

By the way, sorry NZ.

Sydney’s Interstate visitors

Some may have thought it was the end of the world but could it have been just the latest influx of interstate visitors to Sydney that coloured the sky red and dimmed the sun?

The finest of dust  from South Australia and Western NSW driven in by strong winds made it to Sydney in time for the sunrise from hell. Those of us who washed their cars lamented the time and water wasted while looking like the worst car owners in Australia.  More seriously, those with breathing issues were trapped in their homes fearful not being able to catch that next breath.

The Bull dust may have also contained the almost dust-like eggs of tiny creatures called Brine Shrimp.  Commercially used as fish food in aquaculture and as pets in Sea Monkeys brine shrimp live where ever there is salty enough water, usually in flooded salt pans all over the world.  This includes the 13th largest salt lake in the world, Lake Eyre, conveniently located in South Australia’s central north.

Brine Shrimp eggs are often blown from one place to another by the winds, so it is very likely that some of these tiny fun loving creatures have blown in for a visit.

Visitors?  No worries! Throw another shrimp on the barbie!

My addiction

Fable 2

Time is relative, well relative to the game your  play.  Anyone whose played video game will know the sensation of just sitting down to play a half hour or so and spending hours doing almost nothing in the way of advancing.  Whole weekends can go missing in this way.

Oblivion: Knights of the Nine

As we are a family of Oblivion (Elder scrolls 4) fans we usually refer to this state of mind as being “Oblivious”.  The Fable series is also a favourite, that game is a serious time waster.  When we get into the rhythm of buying and selling we call that “Fumbling”.  Now we’re into Fallout 3 and I’ve had to come up with a new phrase “Falling into Fallout”.

Fallout 3: Megaton

Of course there is a negative side to this addictive gaming for such extended periods.  I couldn’t imagine spending that long focused on anything, even my hero fighting the forces of evil (or good, as my mood takes me) with a fantastical world.

Sometimes I do wonder what useful and constructive thing I could have done with all these hundreds of hours of gaming.  That sort of thinking doesn’t last long though, this is my addiction after all and sooner or later my mind is drawn back to what dangerous situation I can put my character into.