Last Post ... for 2013

I've just returned from viewing the first of two New Year's Eve firework displays in Armidale. This was the 9 pm version designed for families with younger children and old fogeys like me. Dot stayed behind looking after her brother who is currently staying with us.

The display took place in the parkland running through the city centre along both sides of Dumaresq Creek and was excellent. Thanks go to the nearby Wicklow Hotel and Bowling Club, both of which supported the event financially and to Father Holy Smoke, one of the local Catholic Priests, who organised the display. The large crowd of maybe 1000 people was delighted.

Taking photos of the rapidly changing texture and brightness of exploding fireworks is a little difficult, but here are some my impressions. I seem to remember that the last major post about fireworks was my reporting of the Independence Day display at Baltimore's Inner Harbour (or perhaps Harbor) on July 4th 2008. Why does Independence Day keep cropping up? One of the Wicked Deals I included in my Christmas bridge competition was played by one Thomas Jefferson just after signing the declaration of independence! And, for the critical, yes ... I know that bridge was invented during the 20th century!

AS

Phew it's hot

Armidale's average summer temperature is a pleasant 26 C (79 F), but this year we're ending with a bang. Today we reached a rather humid 34 C (93 F), which is - the observant among you might already have observed 8 C above average. It felt more like the Persian Gulf rather than a mid-latitude hill town! And believe it or not a strong easterly sea breeze has arrived despite our being perhaps 170 km from the coast and over a mountain range. I guess the heat here is rather greater than the coast and our rising air sucks in the moist easterlies, but the effect is greatest in late afternoon. I was about to head off for a cycle ride a short while ago, but the combination of strong winds and considerable heat wasn't attractive even at 7 pm in the evening! I'll leave that task until 6.30 tomorrow morning.

AS

Revulsion Rather Than Horror

My previous post warned readers about the potential hazards of 2014. If that worried you, you will be revolted by this post, which also indicates that I've been reading some strange literature over the Christmas break.

An American scientist, who shall remain nameless, has invented a new form of cheese! Most cheese involves adding heterofermentative bacteria and even fungal spores to milk to kick-start fermentation. However, our scientist has added bacteria from less usual sources to the process. Those sources are parts of the human body and especially the nose, the mouth and one's sweaty armpits!! These house various bacteria quite capable of fermenting milk and apparently the resulting taste sensation is palatable. 

Given the free availability of these ingredients, especially so in the case of nursing mothers, you might like to experiment and let me know the outcome. Maybe you'd give Brie, Emmental, and Gouda a run for their money and create in the process new and profitable home-based industries.

If you'd like to follow up on this, try reading The New Scientist, #2948, 21/28 December 2013, pp 78-79. The article in question is entitled "Curd your enthusiasm".

AS

The Run-up to 2014

I have just read an interesting article which warns about the hazards of years ending in '4'. Consider the following. 2014 marks:

1. The centenary of the start of the Great War (July 28, 1914).
2. The 20th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan Genocide (April 6, 1994).
3. The bicentenary of Napoleon’s exile to Elba (April 20, 1814).
4. The 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid in South Africa (April 27, 1994).
5. The 25th anniversary of Tiananmen massacre (June 4, 1989).
6. The 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in which the heroic Scots prevailed over the numerically stronger British (June 23-24, 1314).
7. The 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that gave carte blanch for Lyndon Johnson in his conduct of the Vietnam war (August 2, 1964).
8. The bicentenary of the British sacking of Washington and the crafting of the Star Spangled Banner (August 24, 1814) [Dot and I have been to Fort McHenry where the defenders fought off a subsequent British attempt to sack Baltimore - leading to the writing of the Star Spangled Banner]
9. The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989).
10. The 25th anniversary of the US invasion of Panama (December 20, 1989).
11. The 50th anniversary of the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
12. The 70th anniversary of Anne Frank’s arrest by the Gestapo.
13. The 75th anniversary of the start of World War II.
14. The 650th anniversary of the founding of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland) where I'm likely to present a paper to a conference next August.

Many of these events were not very nice, so perhaps you should take to your beds for the next 365 days.  On the other hand items 4 and 14 were quite inspiring so perhaps things will not be so bad after all in 2014. I'll leave the decision up to you. I tend to be an optimist, so the number 4 won't faze me, but it does the Chinese because 4 in their language - si - is homophonous to the word death.

Have a careful New Year!

AS

Xmas 2013

We had lovely day yesterday driving the 100 km to Tamworth down the New England Highway, which was almost deserted, to have our Xmas dinner with Bec, Rob's parents, and Max. They live in the pretty Cockburn Valley up towards the southern escarpment of the New England Tablelands.

The picture shows the view northwards with Bruce's olive trees in the foreground and the ranges behind. Before dinner we sat out on the verandah admiring the view and sipping beer or whatever tipple one fancied. There were lots of us - 11 in all, including our hosts and Rob's brother and Max was something of a live wire giving us a tour of the tree house he'd constructed and his ability to use a stock-whip to lasso a block of wood lying on the ground.. He could also crack the whip ... glad I wasn't on the receiving end!

It was a really traditional meal: lots of turkey and ham, cranberry sauce, roast veggies, sparkling wine and beers, ever-so-rich Christmas Pudding, crackers ... with awful jokes and party hats. It was all well organised and enjoyable.

The occasion was also an opportunity to discuss who looks after Max when during the remaining 4 weeks of the school holidays. We'll host him for at least 2 weeks, so expect a few posts as we tour around.

The only blot on the day was the weather! It rained on and off and was much cooler than I expected. Tamworth, at this time of the year, is mostly 30 C or more. And of course I was under-dressed for those conditions in my singlet and shorts!

AS

Amazing Coincidence

Have you ever had someone knock at your door and offer to buy flowers out of your garden> Well, it's just happened to me. A passing florist stopped and asked if he and his wife could cut the heads off some of our hydrangeas as there is apparently big demand for pink hydrangeas for weddings. We have two such bushes, with masses of large well-formed flowers and I said OK. They didn't pay much - only $12 for the lot, but they still left most flowers on show and they were beginning to get past their peak. After placing the heads in a large tub of presumably nutrient-rich water they headed off back to Toowoomba in southern Queensland a long way north of here. Quite why they selected our street I don't know but maybe they met someone who knew about our bushes.

That's the first part of the story. The second part was equally interesting. The wife was an agricultural research scientist and he was a student of modern politics and while the flower heads were being cut we had long discourse on rural and regional Australia, the need for increased spending on rural industries - predominantly agriculture, and the need to create fast-changing and risk accepting business cultures. These are the very themes I've been working on and reporting in various publications. So our discussions were very friendly and concordant. In retrospect it was a wise decision to grant them the right to buy our flowers. By the way, part of her research is into the use of cyanobacteria for various uses - including production of synthetic fuels. I already knew that such bacteria are probably been responsible for most of the world's oil reserves over millions of years.

All this made my day .. not forgetting that Dot and her brother, Dick, arrive back on the flight arriving at 4.30 this afternoon. After our lengthy discussions, that's only three and half hours away!!

AS

An Unusual Sort of Day

I arose really early this morning and was out on my bike by 6.30 ... by which time the temperature was already 20C and on its way to a forecast 32C. It's amazing to see how many people were lut at the coolest time of the day, walking dogs, jogging, on their bikes, and even I suppose going to work. I must now do this regularly because the riding conditions were comfortable with only light breezes compared with later in the typical day.when the easterlies set in - what we used to call the trade winds at school. In fact, conditions were so good that I did 12 km in almost record time - just 33 minutes at 22kph (or 13.75 mph). Remember that (a) I'm 68, (b) a cardiac patient (of sorts), and Armidale is quite a hilly town. At that rate I'd cycle from London to Brighton in under 4 hours.

After that I tried to get my hair cut for Xmas, but my barber, Al, had a long line of customers with the same idea as me every time I passed the doorway ... starting at 8 am and thereafter twice more. Oh well, it now looks like I'll have to await the new year for that event. I walked around the town and some parts were manic - especially the Centro shopping centre housing one of the town's three large supermarkets and one of two large general stores. Each of these is on a par size-wise with anything in the UK, but Armidale is only home to 25,00 people. On the other hand, the main open-air 'shopping mall' was almost deserted. This mall is now mainly a lifestyle strip with travel agents, three book-stores (remember the population size again), up-market boutiques, and plenty of cafes or other eateries. I guess that Armidale's professional workers (a much greater % of the populations than most places) are mostly out of town at this time of year on holidays. The mall was a bit sad with the local brass band trying to raise money by playing Christmas carols to an extremely limited audience. In fact, they only had one while I was there ... me!

After this quick survey, I bought a few hardware items for the garden and spent much of the rest of the day pottering around, fertilising this that and the other, and watering heavily to rescue some droopy plants and shrubs wilting in the heat.

One thing caught my eye in the main ABC news tonight. There was a long segment about a catholic priest n the little town of Guyra 26 km north of here ... though not you usual thing. It was about a Father Anthony Koppman who rejoices in his other name: the organiser of Holysmoke firework productions. I was unaware that before becoming a priest a decade or so ago he was a pyrotechnician by trade. And he still attracts people to the church by staging large firework displays.

That was the second brush with the catholic church in 24 hours because yesterday at 5.40 pm I attended my first-ever Mass. The occasion was itself unusual. A long-time colleague and co-researcher / author of mine, Herb Weinand, died a few weeks ago after decades of ill-health. He had a private family-alone cremation and friends of is wanted a memorial service. Herb was a long-time member of the church and indeed I had testified to his and wife Rhonda's suitability to adopt their son Ricky. So I trotted along to what I thought was a me memorial service, but it seems that what happened was they tacked a group of Herb's former colleagues and spouses (about 15 of us) on to the usual Friday night Mass. We out-numbered the rest of the congregation, but apart from the actions of one or two of our party associated with Catholicism, we didn't know what to do - stand up, sit down, murmur this or that, and so on. In a way, it was quite comical and out of keeping with the seriousness of the occasion. The other strange thing was that Rhonda couldn't attend because she was with her family in Toowoomba (350 km north of here). Oh well! It was a new experience. I've attended one Eastern Orthodox equivalent of a Mass - 47 years ago at Zagorsk north-east of Moscow, and Jewish and Islamic weddings.

And another strange event tonight was Honey, our cat, catching a bird ... something she's not done for ages partly because she's so well fed and partly because she's slowing down at 12+ years of age. That had a sort of happy ending. I ordered her to drop her catch and she obeyed! And wow, the bird was still alive though a little dazed. It was tiny - half the size of a sparrow - but managed to flutter away when I took it outside!

And the final thing I did was to communicate with colleagues in Tel-Aviv, Nagoya and Lisbon about putting in for a research grant from the European Union. So, today was all over the place. And it's not going to get any easier in the next few weeks.

AS

Harry's Cafe de Wheels

A short while ago, Bec and I attended the State of Australia's Cities (SOAC) conference in Sydney. The run-up to the end of the year is very busy in Sydney and reasonably priced accommodation was in very short supply. In the end, Bec arranged an apartment in trendy Woolloomooloo (how many o's and l's are there in that name!) for three nights. It was 25 minutes walk to our conference venue at the Shangri-la Hotel, but the route was very scenic taking us through the Botanic Gardens and Sydney's domain (which is edged by Parliament House, Government House, the State Library, and the Art Gallery of NSW). Then we had to hoof it down Martin Place (the banking quarter) or past the stock exchange towards the historic Rocks area settled in around 1788. The photos show the area where we stayed, but the most interesting feature by far was the mobile cafe called Harry's Cafe de Wheels. This institution is the same age as me exactly having been founded in 1945. And it is still going strong as evidenced by the queues of diners at seemingly all hours. Of course, we had to eat there too, but the area was littered with pubs and open-all-hours little corner stores. Here's the rather modest cafe ... now less mobile. And do you recognise the two well-known diners - Bec and Dot. We had all just driven from Canberra to our apartment, but I drove Dot back shortly after to stay one night with her brother before driving alone the remaining 500+km to Armidale the next day.

The views from our apartment were pleasant. The first shows the northern Central Business District with the harbour on the right hand end. The middle looks across the domain, and the third show the former finger wharf transformed into luxury apartments with marina access. You can just make out the harbour bridge in the background. 

Close by there was one of the tall ships that used to ply the trade in the 19th century between London and Sydney ... and also a modern, but less attractive, suite of recent apartments close to the botanic gardens. At least they've got parking for their boats!

Now for a couple of pubs with names reminiscent of the places sending boats to Australia. The top one shows the 'Tilbury', named after the port on the river Thames. And the second is the Frisco. Pommie readers are probably unaware that during the 19th century there was a constant flow of sailing ships across the Pacific to and from the USA. And while the California gold rushes were taking place Australia also had its gold rushes which often left vessels without crews as members set off for the 'diggings'!

And the surrounding streets were full of picturesque little houses - originally owned by workmen in a fairly rough neighbourhood. Nowadays, they're gentrified and expensive ... pleasant little places with close access to the city and its amenities. Note also the pedestrian-only street with its palm trees. I could live around here!

AS

Lanyon Homestead

Dot, I and Bec visited the historic Lanyon Homestead just south of Canberra the other day - one of the oldest country homes open to the public and decorated in high Victorian style mimicking Britain at the time. Indeed, parts of the complex date back to convict days - earlier than 1850. The commentary we had from our guide was detailed and informed .... all the way down to the treatment of the convicts, which was pretty terrible. The surrounding country in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains was also attractive. Rob and Max were also there, but did not come into the house.

AS

Au Revoir Ella and Flynn

Our 10 days with Em and her family ended a couple of days ago when I, Dot and Bec drove to Sydney. Dot was on her way home via her brother's home and I and Bec arrived for a conference on the State of Australia's Cities (SOAC). Here are some of the final pictures of the grand-kids we took this time round. They were mostly taken at Canberra's lovely Arboretum, especially in the playground attached, which is decked out with equipment resembling plants and shrubs!

AS

An Unusual Meal

Kids are often not very adventurous when it comes to consuming new and unexpected foods. We had an opportunity last night to test this hypothesis when nine of us (six adults and three children) went out to dine. We chose, bizarrely you may think, a Peruvian restaurant in Canberra's suburb of Dickson called Cholo's! And, on the menu, were such delicacies as Ox Heart and tongue and Llama chops along more usual foods cooked in Peruvian style. The kids, by the way, were Flynn, Ella, and Max, pictured successively here. Despite the late hour - about 6.15 pm - they seemed to be alert and connected. We were originally booked into a Brazilian restaurant, but when we reached there the music was so loud and the promised entertainment of scantily dressed women dancers was iffy for young minds that we cancelled that in favour of the opposite side of the continent separated by the Andes.

I also have to say that Flynn was spared the choice of food. He chose the safety of breast milk and some manufactured purée. Max and Ella, on the other hand dived into ethnic food and found it tasty - no complaints. I guess she's used to Mexican, Ethiopian and other menus, so the new didn't come as a shock and the meats were attractively disguised!

If you sight a Peruvian restaurant in your neighbourhood, I'd recommend giving it a go, even with young kids in tow.

AS

Sporting Max

Max's parents have introduced to a large variety of sports, other than BMX bike riding, skateboarding, fising and that sort of thing, In winter he plays soccer, in summer cricket and tennis, and all year round there's swimming. We went over to the impressive swimming centre in down-town Belconnen - one of Canberra's major suburbs - last Tuesday evening to see his coaching at all of the major styles - back-stroke, breast-stroke, free-style and even butterfly. Here he is in action:

Last night he went to a cricket match lasting about 2.5 hours and both sides were required to play in full regalia. Here he is preparing to bat, and the second picture shows him at the crease on the right in the red helmet.

And an action shot shows trying to hit a ball, though in this case he missed.

And here's Max bowling.

Part of the game was watched by Ella and Flynn. Actually the latter was sitting on the grass with his back to the game, while Ella started her cricket career trying to hit Em's deliveries - maybe she'll play for the Matildas one day.

Finally, a group photo of Max and his cousins illuminated by the setting sun.

AS

Playing in the Park

On a nice fine day we met up with Emily Ella and Flynn in a lovely park close to the centre of Belconnen and Lake Gininderra. We started at the lake-side where the kids caught sight of their first Black Swans and a variety of other bird life. Even I learned something new. The cygnets actually have greyish plumage, not black, as you can see here.

But most of our time there saw Ella try out a variety of standard and even strange play equipment: a rocking contraption, the inevitable slippery dip, a spinning cage, and amazingly a flying fox. Mind you, Ella had to be held on tightly, especially as it moved quite quickly. She's only 2, but very game when it comes to trying out these things.

Then came a spinning device, which even Flynn tried at his tender 9 months.

All this took place in lovely surroundings - lots of tall trees, grassy banks, and even cascading water nearby.

AS