Echo Stress Test

Eight months ago, my Newcastle (John Hunter Hospital) specialist ordered a stress test to find out how my health is travelling. I had it yesterday over about 90 minutes, during which time I was quizzed about lifestyle, exercise routine, weighed, and had a whole lot of electrodes strapped on me. I was then ordered on to a bicycle and watched my heart-beat as I pedalled faster and faster. The team of one doctor and his assistant also took before and after resting measurements.

After all that, Dr Gary Baker broke the good news. It appears that my physical condition is roughly that of someone aged 44, not 64. So, it looks like most of you will have to put up with me for a bit longer than I was expecting. Those results will be passed on to Dr James Leitch (appropriate name for a doctor, eh!) at John Hunter, and Dr Ron Grant, my Armidale GP. When you get news like that, it's worth the A$750 (375 GBP) cost, although I'll get 85% of that back on medical insurance.

Oh well, I'll get back to writing those three journal articles due by next Monday, having spent the morning researching a fourth!! Silly me. I might croak of a brain aneurysm trying to conceptualise 43 behavioural traits in 4 dimensional space, not to mention tossing 60+ variables into the air modelling the global economy. And then I'm trying to explain how those processes relate to quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's uncertainty and Schrodinger's cat. In case you think I'm already falling off my perch, try looking up Shrodinger's cat on Google. The poor animal was remarkably alive and dead at the same time. By the way, my psychological incursion manages to conflate letting the mind wander, unfocusing the brain, playing a musical instrument, horsing around and living in a blue environment - plenty of that around here. If you'd like, I'll explain how these things come together and relate to the philosophy of Friedrich Neitzsche. It occurs to me that I might be stark raving mad, so I'll log off and go and commune with my psychologist colleagues - we're in the same School!

AS

Birds

Years ago Emily presented us with a bird feeder, which we keep topped up with seed. So we have a constant parade of interesting birds through our garden as this picture shows. On this occasion, if I identify them correctly, we have a pair of Crimson Rosellas on the left and a King Parrot on the right. They pair for life and there was a fourth bird on the ground which is, I presume, the partner of the one you can see. They're on the ground because (a) our remaining cat, Honey, sees no mileage in the eating them and was probably asleep somewhere; and (b) the birds have poor table manners and tend to toss out seed randomly from the feeder above.

AS

Summer in Winter

Global warming appears to have reached us here in Armidale. It's still winter according to the calendar, and August corresponds with February in the northern hemisphere. So you'd expect snow on the ground and chilly day-time temperatures?

Well, no. The forecast temperature here today is 26C, which is the average summer maximum and the overnight temperature has been around 10C, again normal for summer. Nor is this a one-off event. Yesterday was a mere 25C and the previous 2-3 days were 20C or above.

So plants are going berserk and the magpie nesting season must be close at hand with its swopping fiends trying to knock me off my bike. I thought I might be spared that a few more weeks, but alas no.

AS

Opera! Opera!

Dot and I have just returned from an afternoon at the opera ... in Armidale of all places! It's amazing how a town of 25,000 people can muster a 60 piece orchestra, a choir of 90, and 4 of six soloists, not to mention >400 people paying members of the audience. And this was the second time through.

Have a look at the program, and you'll see that it was ambitious even though the pieces are popular and well-known. I, for one, have them all on disc. Despite the ambition, the music was very well done: the tempi were authentic, the musicians played ensemble with considerable skill and, to put it mildly, the audience were reluctant to let them leave the hall! As usual a couple of my bridge oponents were on stage, not to mention one of my doctors in the role of conductor - and was he good.

Here's what they played, which contained quite a bit of Bel Canto music:
Mozart: Overture to Marriage of Figaro AND Soave il Vento (Cosi fan Tutte)
Bizet: Habanera AND Toreador Song (Carmen) AND Au Fond du Temple (Pearl Fishers)
Massanet: Meditation (Thais)
Puccini: Un Bel Di AND Humming Chorus (Madam Butterfly) AND Nessun Dorma (Turandot)
Mascagni: Intermezzo AND Easter Hymn (Cavallaria Rusticana)
Donizetti: Chorus of the Wedding Guests and Chi mi frenain tal momento (Lucia di Lammermoor)
Verdi: Va Pensiero (Nabucco), Brindisi (La Traviata), Celeste Aida AND Triumphal Scene (Aida)

I thought the last item could have done with a couple of elephants and a pyramid or two, but I suppose they are in short supply locally.

Judging by the comment at the end, there will be another performance next year including Wagner, Strauss, and Janacek. I'm looking forward to seeing the final act of Gotterdamerung (excuse me the lack of umlauts) on stage where poor Brunhilde jumps on her horse Grane, they leap on to Siegried's burning funeral pyre, Valhalla burns to the ground and Rhine floods to clear the stage. I only hope they've got the stage technicians in Armidale to bring it off.

I'm sorry I can post no pictures; perhaps next year.

AS

Max's Diet

We had an enjoyable few days with family in Canberra, but what amazed us most was Max's diet. These pages already record how a selected a Sushi bar for his 5th birthday party. Well, we had three more exotic meals which we wolfed down on consecutive evenings and his tastes range further and further. On Friday it was Vietnamese, Saturday - Turkish, and on Sunday a Moroccan banquet. The first two were produced by local restaurants, but the last was all down to Emily and Rebecca who bought the right ingredients and then prepared a faultless ethnic meal in Emily's new Tajine. For those not acquainted with a Tajine it's an unusually shaped earthen cooking vessel with a high cover to catch evaporating steam and recycle it.

Congratulations to the chefs and Max for eating such a variety of food. Note that there's nothing European here, and that seems to be the trend here. I haven't yet seen a Burmese restaurant, but one cannot be far away!

We finished off the meal with sparklers for Max's enjoyment, if not Emily who burned herself in the process.

AS

Aboriginal Art

Just before we left Cowra in the Central West of NSW, where we had spent the night, we visited an unusual display of Aboriginal art painted on, of all things, the concrete pylons of a road bridge across the Macquarie River.

If the location was bizarre, the paintings themselves seemed inspired as the photos show

AS

Wellington Caves

We drove down to Canberra to see the family last weekend and, on the way, stopped off at the Wellington caves. This is something we had always wanted to do and, being less pushed for time than usual on the 10 hour journey, we took the opportunity. Different caves are open at different times of the day, and when we arrived the only convenient option was to take a guided tour around a phosphate mine which was operational in around about 1910 - a century ago - but soon abandoned as a financial disaster because of the low quality of the ore. The phosphate was also mixed in with a lot of calcite, which is what one expect in a limestone formation.

Anyway, I have seen a lot of caves which look like each other, but this was very different and interesting. Apart from learning a lot about calcite and phosphate, the caves had interesting origins and contents. To start with, they were close to the surface and the surface had lots of big cracks worn away by rain (much wetter in the past). As the result, lots of animals fell in and the floors and walls were littered with rich fossil beds containing the mixed-up remains of many large and now (in some cases locally) extinct mega fauna from up to 1 million years ago.

We also saw the awful conditions in which the miners tried to get phosphate out of all sort recesses, mostly with little success. The attached photos show fossil beds, some calcite / phosphate deposits, and a view inside the mine towards a sink hole.





AS