Diazepam diary

philosophicdreamer has been sleeping soundly for a couple of years.  But several other blogs* have popped up that are keeping me busy:

Skriften på veggen 
Slapp av
polsciphil
mat for alle
ordene
The Anchored Nomad
The Hyperglot
Vagabond Diary
philosophicdreamer 

And if you would like to read about my travels in France with Little Mother, go to deux-voyageuses.

And my photographs are on flickr.

*semi-categorised repositories for interesting articles/photographs I have found.

Vale, Bryan Clothier

My dear Uncle Bryan passed away on 14 November this year as a result of a tragic accident.  There are no words to describe the loss our family feels.

Below is an obituary written by Steve Butcher at The Age.

The pen as healer

During times of great sadness, sorrow and pain writing acts as an incredible therapist. It enables one to step past the numbness and emptiness and acts as a guide into the abyss where fear and loss and love and heartbreak collide and we are shattered into a million pieces and where we seek solace in the flow of words.

Thank our lucky stars

Today I stumbled across some old letters I wrote to the Editor of  The Age.  The one below was published under the heading of "Thank our lucky stars" back in July 2013 in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin.  Although this tragic event was worlds away from our little neck of the woods it touched me and reminded me of the gun amnesty we had in this country after the Port Arthur massacre.

We sit in our homes without bars on our windows in our nation of strict gun control with free healthcare and a social welfare system and thank our lucky stars that our crime rate is comparatively low and hooded teenagers can buy Skittles in the middle of the night without an overly vigilant armed Neighbourhood Watch heavyweight taking them to an early grave (''Zimmerman found not guilty'', 15/7).

Our country may not be perfect, nothing is, but at least our common man has the good sense to recognise that guns don't belong in society. John Howard's gun buy-back scheme resulted in more than 600,000 guns being destroyed; 85 per cent of us welcomed a change in legislation.

It is a shame that our old friend from ANZUS days continues to suffer due to its inability to move on from its antiquated constitution declaring the right to bear arms when a right to live in peaceful harmony would be a more sensible option.

The reference above to "bars on our windows" really relates to the eye opening experience I had when I was in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico some years ago.  I saw not a home anywhere that didn't have some sort of high level security.  I saw high brick walls with broken beer bottles deliberately cemented on top in an attempt to ward off would be intruders; ferocious guard dogs trained to rip out carotid arteries; grim looking wrought iron bars on doors and windows; sophisticated security systems.  Even in the favelas and shanty towns there were bars on the windows of the houses and when my Brazilian friend came to Melbourne he was astounded that our houses, with their big and open floor to ceiling windows and flimsy glass, were naked of any form of protective cover.  In Latin America, houses like ours would have been an invitation to smash the glass and empty it of its the contents:  a sign of the huge gap between rich and poor and the struggle to survive.

These experiences travelling and seeing how the rest of the world lives makes me realise how incredibly fortunate I am that I live in my safe little suburb with the beach at the end of the street and the freedom to come and go as I please and food readily available and medical assistance free and accessible and no need to fear.

However, I am acutely aware that here in Australia we do not live in a perfect society.  After all, every where I go I am constantly reminded of the white invasion of this land and the ongoing battles the rightful custodians of this vast continent endure.  And so, there, ever present, hovering in my mind, are the faces and voices of this country's indigenous leaders who fought and continue to fight for the rights of their people.  The "close the gap" policy hasn't worked so perhaps, as a work colleague stated, we need to focus on "narrowing the gap".  Not just narrowing the gap in relation to health equality for Indigenous Australians, but narrowing the gap in relation to equality, period.  However, I believe we also need a narrowing the gap campaign for non-indigenous Australians in relation to their level of awareness of Indigenous culture, history, language and issues that Indigenous communities face.  It's a two way street.  The greater awareness the non-indigenous population has about indigenous issues, the sooner we'll arrive at "closing the gap" and the sooner we'll arrive at total equality.

Failed?

Unfortunately the recent removal of one of my body parts (my gall bladder) put me out of action for a couple of weeks.  Initially I thought that as the surgery required only an overnight stay in hospital that I would be up and about in no time doing what I usually do.  Unfortunately this was not the case.  I didn't even have enough strength to participate in the Intentional Blogging Challenge.

However, with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) commencing tomorrow, I have a second chance at putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard!) and churning out some literary brilliance... or rather, an attempt at literary brilliance.  I recall someone saying that there is no such thing as good writing, only good re-writing.  So perhaps what I can aim for is a good first draft, a solid foundation upon which to re-write a story.

The Intentional Blogging Challenge: Day One

When I started this blog back in 2004, it was an exercise to encourage me to write something every day. And it worked, although most of that writing has been removed from this site. As a writer, Procrastination with a capital P is my enemy. Doubt, with a capital D, comes in a close second. That is, doubting my writing abilities, doubting my writing purpose, doubting the point of it all. Ah yes, nihilism does creep in at times. But over time I realised none of that really matters. Writing and reading others’ writing are two of the greatest pleasures in my life. The manipulation of language on a page is magical. Twisting and turning words to create images and sensations; conveying a message, an opinion, an attitude; inspiring and engaging others with a simple combination of letters. The pen really is mightier than the sword; perhaps it’s time we encouraged others to down their weapons of bloody human destruction and take up the noble art of writing.

This month the Intentional Blogging Challenge takes place. I’m a bit slow to start this 21 day task, but I’m full of enthusiasm. My blog serves no particular purpose other than a commitment to write. I do not aim to collect a loyal following or a book deal with Harper Collins or to impart wisdom or inspiration. This blog exists as a contract with myself. A contract to defeat the Doubting Procrastinator – I am, therefore I must write. So to that end, let it begin today.

I commit to writing even when I think I have nothing to write; even when that Doubting Procrastinator is the domineering force of the day; and even when that nagging nihilist goblin is tapping inside my head.

Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack"

After writing my previous post, I was reminded of American Peggy McIntosh’s 1989 essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack”. This essay was a study in how race and colour play a role in society; that is, how it affords both advantages and disadvantages. McIntosh states that white privilege is like "an invisible package of unearned assets which she could count on cashing in each day, but about which [she] was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks".  (Tim Krier has written an essay dissecting McIntosh's here.)

Her essay is an interesting read. How it relates to my previous post is that being able to eschew my previous philosophical obsessions and focus solely on having fun is part of my own invisible back pack. But perhaps if we look at it on a global scale the contents of my invisible back pack are not focused solely on race or colour but on the luxuries afforded to me because I was born and live in a wealthy functional Western country.

I have a job that enables me to feed and clothe myself and put a nice roof over my head – even if I am renting. If I want to change my job it is relatively easy to do. If, for some reason, I find myself out of work – which has happened to me in the past – I can rely on government services to provide me with an income and rent assistance until I can find a job. And if I want to go to university to study, I can also get an allowance from the government to help me do this. I can turn on the tap in the kitchen and get clean, fresh drinking water. I can walk into a supermarket and buy food. When I am ill there is a clinic around the corner from my house where I can visit a doctor and it won’t cost me a cent because through paying my taxes there is Medicare. I also have the option to take out private health insurance, something I have never been without since I was born. When I want to take a holiday I can because I get 4 weeks’ paid annual leave a year. I also get 10 days paid sick or carer’s leave a year and in the event I am really ill, after 3 months arrangements through employer will ensure I receive 75% of my wage. If I had children, and they were ill, my employer would let me leave work to care for them.

If I think even more about this I realise that I can walk around in public with no fear of being shot, of a bomb being dropped on me or stepping on a cluster bomb. I have no need to seek asylum, hop on a leaky boat to escape my warring country or pay a coyote to get over the US border in seek of work. I am not trapped in an occupied territory, living in a land that has known nothing but war, or in a country that is ravaged by AIDS. I don’t have to walk miles to get water or to get to a UN run refugee camp. I don’t have to seek out food packages from international charities or watch children die from malnutrition.

I can have fun all the time. And I can - because I am able to - have fun because by some strange twist of fate I ended up being born here in this relatively safe country where, compared to the rest of the world I can live a beautiful life.

Door stopper philosophy

I have Jean Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness” on my coffee table at home. It’s a giant tome. Suitable as a door stopper. In fact, most of my personal library is full of philosophical bricks such as these. I have spent much of my life contemplating philosophical questions. My earliest memory of this is as a young girl – early primary years – returning from Sunday Mass with my mother and brothers and asking my poor bewildered mother whether or not we’d “got it right”. The crux of my dilemma was that if the Catholics thought they had it right, and the Jews thought they had it right and the Hindus thought they had it right and the Muslims thought they had it right, who was right? Clearly my mother hadn’t anticipated giving life to a child who spent too many hours deeply contemplating the meaning of everything. I don’t recall her answer, perhaps she didn’t give one. However, she is a wise and compassionate woman and as such she tried to guide me towards a more spiritual, rather than religious path.

Now I am attempting to eschew my previous habit of spending hours thinking or reading about thinking. France cured me. Hedonism versus Nihilism. The former won. Too much thinking, too much questioning and never finding an answer is futile. What purpose does it serve? The meaning of life? Who knows. But what we do know is that life is indeed short so let’s make the most of it. Enjoy it. Relish it. Delight in all that it offers. And most importantly have fun.

And as for those brick-like texts full of the thoughts and beliefs of philosophical thinkers?  I'll be moving them to make room for absolutely nothing!

Au revoir La France... bonjour Melbourne's cold weather

This time last week I was in La France (you can read all about it here). Now I’m back in Australia and back at work eating a sub-standard pain au chocolat purchased from Baker’s Delight. Unfortunately there is nothing delightful about their pain au chocolat making skills. So I’ve hunted out a recipe from GourmetTraveller and will give pain au chocolat making a go in the near future. Whilst a career as a pastry chef is most alluring, the ungodly hours would surely kill me (during my travels in La France with the Little Mother I discovered that I am not a morning person – but more on that later). I’ll post the results of my pain au chocolat experience on my uninspiringly named blog “The Big Cook Up” which has been dormant for a while – 2 years in fact, however this should be no reflection on my love of cooking, albeit an amateur self-taught.

I’m now wishing that I had have placed less focus on the lovely rosé wine I scoffed each evening at Moulin de la Ville and paid more attention to Steve’s cooking skills – after all, guests are encouraged to watch him cook and learn some new skills. How often do you get a chance to witness a Michelin starred chef (classically trained at the Savoy Hotel in London) in action? Perhaps I could indenture myself to him and Sue for the next seven years and ask him to do a brain dump of his cooking skills? I plan on going back next year – for an extended period – and hopefully I will pick up some new cooking skills from this amazing chef. Currently I’m living off a diet of chile con carne, burritos and indian curries – all heavily laden with chiles – to ward off the horrid Melbourne winter cold. It has rained non stop this week and I can feel the cold in my bones.

The weather here is in stark contrast to the long and lovely sunny days in beautiful Beaumont-du-Périgord. The sun rose early, set late and the weather hovered around 30 degrees. Here in dreary Melbourne it is dark when I rise and dark when I leave the office and I'm lucky if I get one hour of exposure to the sun in the middle of the day when I venture out of the highly airconditioned office that is my home for 7 hours a day.

I am looking forward to this coming weekend when I will see the light for extended periods and be able to take a long look at my little garden and marvel in its growth. My daphne is sporting a flower - the first since Mum and Dad gave it to me for a present 2 years ago; my hoya has woven itself into even more intricate patterns; my meyer lemon tree fruited well and I have harvested 12 lemons. And of course the weeds had a field day in my absence so they will require some attention.

Should we write?

Julie Cameron says:

“We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.”

“It is all too easy as an artist to allow the shape of our career to be dictated to us by others. We can so easily wait to be chosen. Such passivity invites despair. To remain healthy and vital, artists must stay proactive in their own behalf.”

The Uruguayan Poet

Uruguayan poet, Mario Benedetti, moved on to another life in 2009 and left a legacy of exquisite literary works. One of these is one of my favourite poems,"Táctica y estrategia". Unfortunately the English translation does not do justice to the original Spanish which emits a wonderful sensation, after all the true meaning is generally lost in translation. A little like the first line of Pablo Neruda's "Soneto XX": "Mi fea, eres una castaña despeinada" which is frequently translated to "My ugly love, you are a messy chestnut".

The Sentimental Blogger: Writings on Love

Nostalgia has its grip on me today as I revisit older blog posts:
A Song of Loving Memories: musings on the love of grandparents
Conditions of Love: a philosophical approach to love
Beautiful child: love at first sight

Kindness

There is a dearth of kindness in the world. Even in the sterile bubble in which I live in Australia, where one should imagine there to be kindness in abundance, there is a dearth of it. Our democratically elected government incarcerates innocents as punishment for traversing land and sea to escape states of terror, trauma and torture; random acts of unkindness are perpetrated against women, children, men; corporations fold leaving workers unemployed and destitute; indigenous communities still suffer as a result of the British invasion of 1788; and the sensitive among us ache with the resulting injustice of unkindness.

I come from a long line of kindness keepers. We were born with a genetic predisposition to perform acts of kindness upon random strangers. We let fall upon others a gentle smile, a soft caress and soothing words. Our hearts are worn upon our sleeves. We love like there is no tomorrow. We laugh together and our small worlds become a brighter place.

But we weep in our souls at the sight of unkindness. We are saddened by others’ suffering. We wish for a more sympathetic society; a more compassionate government; a more considerate neighbour.

With kindness comes tolerance and patience; consideration and generosity; benevolence and affection; thoughtfulness and tenderness; joy and happiness; love and adoration.

Let us all embrace the inherent kindness within us – for this does exist within – and let it multiply and spread throughout the world, touching each and every one gently, softly, tenderly as a parent caresses their new born child.

Reinstating four years of blogging

Today I commence a rather mammoth task in that I will be reinstating four years worth of blog posts - from 2004 to 2007.  In particular I want to revisit the 3 months or so I spent in Mexico in late 2006.  There were some interesting experiences and if I remember correctly I was most diligent about recording these.

In addition, with Mater and I heading off to France in late May this will encourage me to put pen to paper again in preparation for what I hope will be some detailed recordings of our upcoming trip.  Our first trip together twenty years ago was full of laughter and fun and hilarity and I have no doubt this one will be the same.

The focus of the France trip will be the battlefields outside of Amiens where my maternal grandfather, Cyril, was stationed as a mechanic/medic and had the god-awful task of collecting the dead and injured from the battlefields.  Later we'll head down south so that Mater can pull out her easel and plein air paint while I click away with my digital & analogue cameras.  I might even pull out the watercolours for a little dabble.

So stay tuned for silly stories from Mexico and sophisticated ones from France!

Malcolm Fraser and me: mumbling, bumbling, star struck interviewee

When I was a child my mother took my brothers and I to a Catholic Mass service every Sunday. My mother was a woman with deep compassion and sensitivity with a strong sense of justice and fairness and whilst not fervently religious, she had a deep spirituality and faith. This was also mirrored in my father who, whilst not subscribing to a specific religion (after all, his family’s fanatical Protestantism caused him to be ostracised from them when he married my Catholic mother against all their advice), once told me that he tried to emulate Jesus’ life. He believed that it didn’t matter if one believed in the existence of Jesus or not, if one lived according to the written teachings of this good man that was a pretty good way to live one’s life. As such my parents’ belief systems strongly influenced my brothers and me.

During the mid-1970s and onwards, when Malcolm Fraser was in power and I was a primary aged girl, many Vietnamese refugees settled in our suburb, some even being provided housing by our Parish in the properties that they owned surrounding the Church. I was very sensitive to their plight and I revered Malcolm Fraser for opening our country’s doors in an attempt to ease the suffering of our neighbours. Simultaneously our Parish priest was in the process of attempting to install a $60,000 pipe organ in the Church. This vain act incensed me as I knew it was wrong and that $60,000 would go a very long way to helping more refugees. For reasons I now forget, the pipe dreams of our Parish Priest never came to fruition and Malcolm Fraser kept the doors to our country open long enough to accept as many asylum seekers as possible. He didn’t care if they came by boat or air; he just cared enough to let them in.

Many years later I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Malcolm Fraser for an Assistant’s job in his office. I failed miserably in that task as I sat star struck in a chair opposite him and blushed with embarrassment and mumbled and bumbled my way through a series of questions that evaporated into thin air the minute they were asked. He was my childhood hero but he was also a serious man who required a serious Assistant. I knew I was not the latter and that boredom, disinterest and disengagement would set in as I typed up letters, created diary appointments and filed paperwork. As such, it was no surprise to me to receive a call that I was unsuccessful.

To this day I find the events of that fateful day of the failed interview to be rather amusing. I was enamoured by the thought of working for a man I admired as a child when the reality was that the job would never fulfil me. I need grit, I need cerebral engagement, and I need challenges. I need to know that my efforts are making a difference to the life of someone else, even indirectly. Now I’m working for a well-known not-for-profit that runs 100s of programs to assist those less fortunate, and whilst I may not be part of the vanguard, I work in the background supporting those at the front line to create better lives for those less fortunate than us.

Handymen, holland blinds and Aristotle

This morning, while I was studying and getting my head around Aristotelian essentialism, the handyman came to fix my holland blinds (why are they called that? There doesn’t appear to be anything Dutch about them), a job that should take about half an hour at the most. Instead he stayed for over 2 hours because he decided I was the type of girl – rightly so – with whom he could enter into a philosophical dialogue about just about everything in the world. Ordinarily I would have embraced this opportunity but I have imposed upon myself a strict routine now that I am – for the foreseeable future – a full time student (albeit, at home via distance education). This routine does not cater for interruptions. It’s almost Rainman-like in its structure. I cannot bear to see any minute wasted and any minute not spent studying causes me to overflow with guilt. Must be something to do with that left over Catholicism that I thought I had recently flushed out of my system.

So the handyman talked about man’s inhumanity to man, the effects of war, the Catholic child abuse scandal, his belief that the Royal Commission is a waste of tax payers’ money and other issues that are perhaps a little too controversial for me to mention. In my mind, I kept telling him to “shut the eff up” in the hope that it would have some sort of effect and I could go back to reading Greek sages.

In the end I realised that it wasn’t really about me. I was doing him a favour. I was listening to him. I was listening to him as he spoke about things that were important to him. And so I stopped thinking “shut the eff up” and started to listen to him and I even helped him fit the strangely named holland blinds.

As for Aristotelian essentialism. Well, he can wait. After all he’s waited over 2,000 years already. He can wait a few more hours.

Adieu vagabond days

I have, finally, after much hard work, secured myself permanent employment. It has taken five months. Five frustrating months as I spent my evenings and weekends customising job applications and resumes and send them off in the hope that I would receive that much desired call to come in for an interview. I was somewhat picky about the sort of job I wanted and the sort of company for whom I wanted to work. Law firms were crossed off my list, never to return to. So were big multinationals with poor ethics and morals and offices in the concrete jungle of the CBD. I wanted to work for a company in which I believed, whose values matched my own.

And so I have found it. I won't divulge the name of the company. All I will say is that they do fantastic work in the world.

The other great, and oddly coincidental, thing that has happened relates to my new Indigenous Studies program that I've just started. The first subject is focusing on the "Andrew Bolt case" currently underway in Sydney and which has had me captivated for months. I was not aware that the main focus of this subject would be on this case. It has been an odd coincidence that I have been collecting material on it for months and becoming more and more obsessed with it. How odd that my subject papers turned up today and discussed it! The gods must be looking favourably upon me.

Beautiful Child

When you were born, beautiful child, you glowed with the wonder of the world. And we looked down upon you, in equal wonder, bathing ourselves in your glowing perfection. You were the first child to be born into our family for nearly forty years. We had forgotten the joy of being in the presence of a sweet smelling infant.

I fell in love with you at that moment, watching you wide awake in your mother's arms. You were so tiny, but you had a look of awareness about you. And when you opened your mouth and we saw your little pink tongue we gasped with glee as we saw your uniqueness in the form of a white spot on its tip.

We were drunk on your newness for months to come. You became our drug of choice. We wanted to watch you day and night. It did not matter what involuntary act you performed, we thought it was the most wonderful act we had ever seen and we talked about it amongst ourselves.

When you entered the world, beautiful child, life was never the same again. It was better. One hundred fold. You raised us up to a new level of consciousness and existence. You caused us to love in a way that we could never have imagined. Our instincts to love and protect you became overwhelming.

When I look at you beautiful child, my love for you melts all my cares away.

Norge

When I was fifteen my parents sent me off to Norway as part of a student exchange program. Except they got no student in exchange for me. They just offloaded a potential timebomb – as fifteen year old girls have a propensity to become – on to someone else. I just flew off to Norway, not knowing where I was going to be living because the exchange organisation had yet to find a family for me. I think this was, in part, due to the fact that on my application form I had stated that I wanted to be housed with a Catholic family. In a Lutheran country. The naïveté of it all. Really. The only Catholics in Norway, as I was soon to discover, were Vietnamese and as they were only recent arrivals into the country – as refugees – they barely had enough money to look after their own kith and kin, let alone that of someone else. Oh, and my grandmother was convinced the exchange student organisation was a front for the white slave trade.

By the time I landed in Oslo a temporary family had been found for me in Tyristrand where I lived for two weeks until the exchange organisation could find a permanent one for me. The temporary family consisted of Mor & Far and their two daughters: LT, a 6 ft tall 12 year old potential super model and AK, a hyperactive 8 year old. I loved living with that family and I loved Tyristrand. We lived in a little wooden house in the middle of open spaces, not far from the Tyrifjord where we spent our days swimming because it was summer and school had not yet started for the year.

After the two weeks were up I moved to my permanent host family in Sætre, down south on the Oslofjord in a province called Hurum. I didn’t have as pleasant a time with this family as I would have liked, mainly because the father in my “host family” was a racist, misogynist overseer. And I don’t particularly like racist, misogynist overseers. And being extremely shy I found it rather difficult to defend myself against him. Sometimes it was quite excruciating. He was not at all happy about the Iranians who had moved into the town next to ours, Åros. Never mind that they were all Baha’i and escaping persecution, detention and death in their homeland. He just didn’t want them in Norway or in any country where the nation’s airline, SAS, for whom he worked as a pilot, conducted business. And so, as those Iranians became friends of mine, he was not particularly happy with me. One of those Iranians (let’s refer to him as P) was the boyfriend of my best friend (L) at school. Some years later they married and my mother and I attended their beautiful wedding on a boat on the Oslofjord on midsummer night’s eve.

To get a bit of extra pocket money, I got a job at the Shiraz Café in Åros which was owned by P’s parents. So all in all, I was not a popular gal in my host family’s house. I was an Iranian sympathiser! And to make matters worse, I was Catholic (my host father hated Catholics) and if that were not bad enough I did not hang out with his definition of the right class of people so I got double demerit points for both of those grand sins.

The Iranians next door in Åros were magnificent people. P’s mother, X, appeared to be somewhat of a polymath to me. She was an intellectual who, amongst many other talents, spoke seven languages and could cook the most exquisite pastries. Part of my job in the Shiraz Café was to clean the pastry making equipment. I never ceased to be amazed that this woman could speak seven languages and still make skolebrød (a traditional type of pastry that I was addicted to – which, upon my return to Australia, caused my youngest brother to ask me if I had contracted the mumps in Norway!).

X was a wise woman too. I participated in a number of Baha’i meetings and learnt a lot about spirituality. But it was not so much her and her family’s words that had an effect on me, but rather their actions. They were so gentle. Facta non verba. They were so accepting of this Irish-Australian Catholic girl who was so incredibly green around the gills. They just opened their world to me.

I was sure that if my host father, O, met these wonderful people he would change his mind. One day L and P came over to my house, the first and last time, and it became apparent that O wasn’t going to change his mind. I was utterly embarrassed at his rude attitude towards them.

The other incredible woman who had a great influence on me was L’s mother, K. K was a social worker-turned-Persian-carpet-seller (and a brilliant one at that too) and her husband V was a cooking teacher at my school. There was an incredible amount of laughter in their house. Both V and K were extremely happy people and had permanent smiles on their faces. V used to tell lots of stories about his days working as a chef on naval ships and having served the King of Norway whose name really was Oscar, just like the sardines! K was simply love personified and when I started to become quite unhappy living with my host family she called her family together and they decided I should live with them. But I declined the offer. I thought that by living under the steely gaze of the evil overseer that I would become stronger and toughen up. In hindsight, I wish I had moved in with L’s family. K passed away at the beginning of this year and I was inconsolable. It was such a shock. I always thought I’d have another opportunity to see her again and tell her how much I loved her, but it was not to be.

That year in Norway taught me a lot about the world, instilled in me a love of other countries, cultures and languages and changed me in ways that I could never have imagined. I am still in touch with L and P and also with my first host family in Tyristrand and one day I hope to visit them again... and eat more skolebrød.

I wonder if my wanderlust is genetic

My great-grandmother, Frances Catherine, was a tall (over 6ft), lean and elegant woman who moved her family around the country to such an extent that by the time my grandmother, Leila Josephine, was 15 she had been to 26 different schools. This might explain why my grandmother loved geography and always had an atlas on hand. No, not just a Melways, but a full blown Times atlas of the world.

As background to this, my great- grandmother’s first husband – Arthur Devlin Bond – passed away, leaving her with four young daughters – the Bond Girls, I call them. Arthur’s wealthy family were Protestant and not particularly happy that their son had married a Catholic (it really must have been true love!) and so they offered to take the four progeny of their son on the condition they be raised as Protestants. Frances Catherine responded with a stern no and so the wealthy in-laws of my great-grandmother turned their back on their Catholic relatives and nowt was heard of them again. Sadly, two of the Bond Girls subsequently passed away. Edna was not yet 5 when she died as a result of eating a poisonous toadstool and Catherine Frances died at the age of 15, shortly before she was due to travel to London to study at the Conservatory of Music. She was a great pianist. As was Frances Catherine and all her daughters.

Frances Catherine subsequently remarried a Mr Kaye, or Face Ache, as my grandmother used to refer to him. When I was a child, eating jam fancies at my grandmother’s dining room table, this term used to make me giggle. I tried to get my grandmother to tell stories about Face Ache but she refused, in a roundabout way so as not to upset me. She told me stories about every other aspect of her long life but Face Ache was forbidden territory. She obviously did not have a pleasant time growing up with him as a step-father. Fortunately for my grandmother, he left his new wife and step-daughters shortly afterwards. And so Frances Catherine was left alone again to raise her daughters. And my grandmother was happy again, without the evil Face Ache.

Frances Catherine knew New South Wales and Victoria like the back of her hand. She was a great cook and business woman and so after she was abandoned by Face Ache, in order to support her remaining two daughters, she would move around the country side setting up little restaurants. Whilst she spent time building the business, my grandmother and her older sister Eileen Adele were put in to board at the local convent, together with their dog, Scotty, and their pet sulphur crested cockatoo, Cocky. Regardless of the convent in which they were boarding, the nuns always delighted in the pets which of course had a positive effective on Eileen and Leila. My grandmother had many tales to tell about the antics of Cocky.

Cocky was notorious for getting in to their beds and nipping at their toes. Cocky would sit on the tennis net and run back and forth while the nuns tried to play tennis. Cocky would sit on the shoulder of the nuns, and make his way under their starched white guimpe where they kept pins which he would pick at until they were all on the ground.

During their travels they collected sheet music. They collected all the most popular music of the day. They would sew silk ribbon down the side of these booklets of music to keep them in good condition and on the top of each booklet there is the name of one Bond Girl, the name of a place in New South Wales or Victoria, and a date. Nowadays the collection is somewhat tattered from both age and that time one of my grandmother’s cats decided to nest in the music box, in preparation of having kittens. But we can still map the paths of the Bond Girls around the two States, until finally they came to rest on the Mornington Peninsula, by the sea, in tranquility.

A Clayton's job - the job you have when you don't really have a job

A perplexing thing about my current temporary employment assignment is that I have very little work to do. I’m not quite sure why I am here, other than to answer the phone, buy coffee for my boss and print off the occasional document. I have another four weeks of this and whilst I would love to utilise the copious amounts of spare time on my hands by reading my favourite news sites online, the dilemma I find myself in is that IT will surely come rapping on my knuckles and tell me that I’ve exceeded my “reasonable personal use” quota.

But this is where Project Gutenberg comes in handy. They have a rather large collection of free e-books available online which can easily be copied into a MSWord document and read on screen. Of course it doesn’t have the same sensation as feeling the texture of paper between one’s fingers. Or, if it is an old book, that alluring musty smell that emanates from between the frail pages. But, the basic content is the same, albeit without the extra sensory attraction and atmosphere that only a real book can provide. And it can keep me entertained for hours while I sit at my desk waiting for the next request for a coffee run to come in.

Temporary contract work has its positives and negatives. The positive is that one only needs make a short term commitment and if one doesn’t like it, one knows that the end is nigh. The negative aspect is that one receives no leave benefits. That is, should I happen to be ill to such an extent that I cannot work, I receive no sick leave benefits. But on the upside, should I wish to take off for a week or a month or three (like I did in ’06 when I traipsed off to Mexico), it’s simple to do so at the end of a contract. Taking extended leave when holding down a full time permanent job has usually resulted in me simply resigning from my job, which, I might add I find to be deeply satisfying and liberating.

However, having said all that, as much as I have a fear of commitment (in case you had not already reached that conclusion), I am starting to feel an attraction to job permanency. There is, of course, that little hint of fear that after two months I will have become bored and disinterested in my job and dying to take off for Abu Dhabi or Damascus (yes, my latest fantasies), but that’s a risk one takes. Permanency and I have never had an easy relationship. It feels unnatural. The life of a temporary contractor has always been one of freedom and variety. As a friend once said to me “I don’t want to eat beef for the rest of my life. Sometimes I want a bit of chicken”. But that comment was not in relation to his gastronomic preferences, nor even in relation to employment. In fact, it was in relation to his inability to stay faithful to his girlfriend. Anyhow, I still think it’s applicable to my situation of being a temporary contractor: I want beef, chicken, 'roo, venison, fish and lobster.

Dormant blog

It has been just over one year since I blogged. Quite a change from when I first commenced blogging in 2004 and continued blogging religiously until the middle of 2007. I archived those hundreds of posts in 2007 and not much blogging has taken place since then. However, today I have decided to resurrect them and return them to their rightful (writeful!) place, here The Philosophicdreamer.

My initial reason for commencing a blog was to give me some drive and motivation to write. Essentially I was using it as a tool to overcome writer's block. It served me well. In addition, when travelling overseas I was able to use it as an electronic postcard so that family and friends could read my travel tales instantaneously and view my photographs within hours of them having been taken.

It will take some time to return 4 years' worth of blog posts to Philosophicdreamer. But it feels good to have revived a past time that gives me pleasure. And as my mother says, everyone needs a creative outlet.

Fear

Courtesy of Joseph Tawadros:

I am a boring person. I live in a boring place, in a boring city, with boring people. I work a boring job, for a boring boss, for a boring company, for a boring salary. I love fear, it is my friend. It dictates my life. It protects me from my dreams. It helps me acquire what most people have. I like walking in shadows. They protect me from the glory of the sun. They protect me from myself and extinguish my hope to meet the light which holds adventure. It’s boring that’s true, but I am unlikely to be burned. To die curious, is my destiny. To fail my dreams, is a certainty. But I will continue to live this way, for although my dreams are big, I will never touch them. For my boring self, living content in my fearful prison hidden from the sun will never allow me to.

The Mexile

Have discovered a fabulous blog by an Englishman living in México: Mexile

He is living my dream.

Shorty's Book Collection

Shorty (my maternal uncle, more commonly referred to as Uncle B but hereinafter simply referred to Shorty) had an acoustic neuroma removed three months ago. He’s still recovering and has migrated out of the wheelchair and is using a walking stick – albeit a little wobbly. His eyesight was affected as was some hand coordination. But his sharp mind and quick wit still remain! As part of his rehabilitation I’ve set him up with a blog called Shorty’s Book Collection. There are multiple purposes for the blog – it serves as post-op therapy to improve his hand coordination, provides an opportunity to write about his beloved books and, hopefully, generate some interest from blog followers who may be able to help him offload his massive book collection that fills his double garage and prevents his wife, Aunty D, from parking her car under cover!

Life post-México, antihistamine and potential tachycardia

Life post-México has been somewhat uneventful. Gone are my breakfasts of chilaquiles or huevos mexicanos; goodbye to lunches of tacos dorados de pollo and adios to dinners of... well... tacos dorados de pollo. No more agua de limón. No more tortillas. No more paletas. No more jamaica. No more México. Oh woe is me!

Since returning to Australia I have been fortunate enough to secure a job but unfortunate enough to secure it at the government department of Dung and Irate Inaction (if you are good at decoding anagrams you'll work that one out quickly!). Oh, how I miss the fast paced, frenetic and efficiently organised, effectively managed world of private enterprise (and some weeks ago I professed to being a socialist?! Huh!).

For some strange reason I thought that by stepping up to a state government department things might be a little different. However, my hopes and high expectations were crushed within half an hour of stepping foot into my new place of employment when I discovered that the entire state is run by a bunch of incompetents and no wonder parents elect to send their children to private schools (that's a hint to those of you who still can't work out the anagram!).

Apart from securing employment (which took me, at most, one day after returning to Australia), I secured accommodation at the Goethe Institute. Well, it's not really the Goethe Institute but I have labelled it as such because the delightful flat in East Melbourne where I now find myself living is also inhabited by two fabulous ex-residents of München, Gabi & Stephan. Oh, and Chooky also lives there but unfortunately we have incompatability issues and I am dosed up to the eyeballs on antihistamines as a result of having an allergic reaction to her long and fluffy coat of cat hair! It doesn't come as a complete surprise to me that I am having this reaction to the gorgeous blue eyed Chooky because some years ago I developed the same problem with my beautiful Pablo (who eventually went to live in luxury with Mater and Pater so that I could finally get off the cortisone that was keeping me alive).

So, I have made the decision today that - even after just one week at the Goethe Institute - I must leave and find cat-less accommodation. And, I will also heed Dr George Nicholas Stathakopoulos' advice from years ago that I ought to go on an allergy program and finally eliminate the myriad allergies that plague me. Note, however, that I am only plagued by these irritations when on Australia soil. Even in Mexico I suffered no asthma, no hayfever and no psoriasis. But within a few hours of returning to this land, it all came back again!

Oh Chihuahua, how I dream of your allergy free plains!

Bea*, the narcotrafficante piano removalist and smudge sticks

I was having a conversation with my boss today (yes, the boss that I adore) about house-sharing. And this caused me to remember that one time... at band camp... I mean, it caused me to remember the tale about Bea*, the narcotrafficante piano removalist and burning sage smudge sticks.

I was house-sharing in one of Australia's capital cities* (far, far away from Melbourne) in one of its more funky suburbs* with a friend of mine, Bea*, when Mater decided that it was important for me to have a creative outlet and so she sent to me, via road freight, my upright iron-framed grand piano.

At the moment the piano arrived, Bea and I were performing a cleansing ritual in the house with the use of a sage smudge stick I had pulled together from my herb garden. I felt a bad "vibe" in the house, in particular in the staircase, and wanted to rid the property of bad spirits and figured the sage smudge stick might help. Anyhow, when the piano removalists arrived with my upright iron-framed grand piano, there was - sitting on the coffee table - a bowl full of half burned sage. All quite innocent.

However, the vessel of dried herbs caught the eye of one of the piano removalists (let's call him Joe*) who, I later discovered, believed that it was not sage in the bowl on the coffee table, but rather marijuana and thus he formed the idea that I was a dope-head. LOL. As such Joe immediately became attracted to our household because, as I discovered later, he was a narcotrafficante. He saw Bea and I as potential customers. Potential dope-head fiends! Potential smoking buddies! Argh!

Now at this point I should mention to you that Bea had specifically moved to this funky suburb in one of Australia's capital cities that was far, far away from her home town elsewhere in Australia with the sole intention of escaping her previous life as a "speed" fiend. Thus far she was clean (because she had no narcotrafficante contacts in our new suburb... yet!) and we had a fun and happy house-sharing life together. However, Joe took an immediate liking to Bea and the next thing I knew they were best of friends. Well, more than best of friends. And that wasn't sage-smudge-stick smoke coming out of Bea's bedroom.

And so I discovered that the piano removalist was moonlighting as a narcotrafficante... or rather the narcotrafficante was moonlighting as a piano removalist.

And so upon recalling those hilarious times on the frontier of the drug industry and the rapid disintegration of my relationship with Bea and the destruction of our once happy and tranquil house-share I resolve never, ever again to permit my upright iron-framed grand piano to travel by road freight. Oh, and I'll never, ever, ever house-share ever, ever again.

*names of persons and places have been changed in accordance with Australian privacy laws and to prevent the possibility of being drawn into a long and painful lawsuit, which could ultimately render me bankrupt and lead me to become a long-term resident of Deer Park Women's Correctional Centre. Oh, so dramatic!

The Quiet Man does an excellent Irish Stew

My brother Anthony came to visit me today. And together we went out for lunch at our local Irish pub, the Quiet Man, where Anthony downed a Kilkenny accompanied by Irish stew (what else would an O'Neil consume in an Irish pub?) and I, saddened by the removal of the Quiet Man's famously delicious beef and burgundy pie from their menu, had to be content with porterhouse steak and mashed potatoes downed by a glass of unchilled water. (Yes, I'm afraid I am a teetotaller.)

Anthony and I were supposed to talk about our upcoming travel plans but got sidetracked... or rather, we didn't get sidetracked because we couldn't get past the usual topic of conversation which always accompanies meals in the O'Neil family.

"Do you remember the time Dad..."

"What about when Greg...."

"And that time, back in 1978..."

But the real highlight of the day was discovering Google Earth! After lunch we hit the PC and performed satellite searches on all the places I've ever lived... we even found Skatvedtveien in Sætre, Norway and Woodstock Avenue in Golders Green, London! Yes - we could zoom in with the satellite and get a birds eye view of the houses where I used to live ALL OVER THE WORLD! It was truly amazing! Big brother is now a global event... so next time you decide to sunbathe naked in your garden, just remember that someone may be "Google earthing" your address!

Being Human

I have just commenced reading Dr Peter Vardy’s “Being Human – Fulfilling Genetic and Spiritual Potential”. I am completely enthralled in his ideas. He makes an interesting comment about the lack of security and order in the world which is driving people to fundamentalism.

Vardy talks about the use of “enhancement genetic engineering” (along the lines of Gattaca) to eliminate defects. However, he also discusses the spiritual side of what it means to be human, challenging Christian views in the process. The book has an Aristotelian flavour to it, promoting ethics as a way of fulfilling human potential.

And for those of you Essendon supporters who think that Number 19 has left the domain of Australian Rules Football to take up a post as a writer, do not despair, the Peter Vardy I am referring to is not the same man as your beloved footballer (but, hey, did you really think an Australian Rules Football player was capable of stringing together more than a few monosyllabic sentences together to form such a brilliant philosophical work of literary art?).

Peter Vardy the Philosopher is Vice Principal of Heythrop College, London where he lectures in Philosophy of Religion.

Brazil vs Brasil

Gringos & gringas take note; the “Z” should be removed from the name Brazil and be replaced with the letter “S”.

The following article discusses foreigners’ disdain of Brazilian culture by their use of the letter “Z” in the spelling of the name Brazil, instead of the letter “S” (which is the Portuguese way of spelling Brazil). However, even the government can’t get it right sometimes and throughout the last century have used either spelling on the currency notes of the country!

However in 1943, the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa established a set of orthographic norms for the Portuguese language and proclaimed that Brazil should indeed be spelt with an S!

Let this be a reminder to all of you disdainful foreigners! Show the Brasileiros some respect and get rid of that “Z”!

"Para os nacionalistas, escrever Brasil com "Z" mostra o desprezo dos estrangeiros pela cultura brasileira. É uma injustiça histórica. O Brasil já teve oito moedas, três capitais e só padronizou a grafia do seu próprio nome com "S" en 1943, depois que a Academia das Ciências de Lisboa estabeleceu as normas ortográficas da língua portuguesa. Antes disso, o governo chegou a imprimir no mesmo ano cédulas em que Brasil aparece escrito com "S" e com "Z". Assim, é difícil acompanhar."

Source: Veja, 25 de agosto de 2004

Brazilian Marathan Man vs kilt-clad de-frocked Irish Catholic priest

Brazil’s hope of securing a gold medal in this year's Olympic Marathon was thwarted yesterday by a kilt-clad de-frocked Irish Catholic priest, Neil Horan.

Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima was attacked by Cornelius "Neil" Horan five kilometres from the finish line. The same serial protester also wreaked havoc on the Formula One course at Silverstone in England last year. He was subsequently arrested and served a two-month prison sentence.

Shortly after the attack Cordeiro de Lima was overtaken by Stefano Baldini of Italy & Mebrahtom Keflezighi of the United States. Stefano finished the race in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 54 seconds to claim the gold medal. Mebrahtom Keflezighi followed with the silver. However, Cordeiro de Lima managed to pull himself together to take out the bronze medal & was also awarded the coveted Pierre de Coubertin medal for exceptional “fair play”.

The Comitê Olímpico Brasileiro (Brazilian Olympic Committee) have filed an appeal on behalf of Cordeiro de Lima requesting a gold medal.