Tale of a Saturday Ride

Saturday afternoon on the bike path, and the sun is golden and the trees rush past, and I hear a beep from a passing station wagon and a friend waves heartily.

Cruising through the park three boys in footy shirts kick a ball around. I wonder briefly why one has turned away, then the light catches a liquid arch. Ok.

Turning down a quiet street, a granny watches patient from her tidy porch - the little patchwork world goes by.

As I pass a smallish figtree, I see a man, arms stretched to guard. A small voice cries,
"I can see the whole world from here!"

Another little person waves madly at me from the cosy grasp of mother's arms. Dad smiles,
"Hola".

A huge pom-pommed, blow-dried poodle trots by, owner in tow. I see a large man with a small dog, and a small lady with a large dog.

Among the rows of lonely boats, a cheery bunch of blokes enliven one craft - a tight rowdy circle, sipping their beers.

Down by the fish shop a mop-haired toddler dances on a grate while dad looks on.

I sit by the pearly water in my own mind as the waves crash and the sun ebbs.
The pebbled stone is warm beneath me.

Coming home two girls are faced away from the road, peering through a fence. One catches my quizzical glance and turns around. Lurching toward me, arms outstretched she intones,
"It's the end of the world", and collapses into giggling.

I laugh back.

Favourite Thailand Times

..in no particular order.

-Watching tiny baby Piccolo, Dee's latest addition to the family, pulling tiny baby faces.

-Riding an elephant through the jungle, and then rafting down a gorgeous misty little river afterwards.

-Our last night at Sankla children's home: Games with the kids, communal outdoor hotpot (big steaming pots of broth over fires, in which we cooked meats and vegies and noodles), watching the kids play with glowsticks, singalong by a bonfire.

-Completing a nice long chunk of fence.

-Visiting a family Dee was helping out during the flooding, and unexpectedly being treated to a lovely Thai feast.

-Singing and sharing in the evenings at Dee's house.

-Helping with the big Sunday cookup, kitchen humming with activity, mortar and pestle beating away..

-Dee's amazing, varied, endlessly trumpeting laugh (no reason required).

-eating.(and more: eating.)

-Crazy scootering around Samed Island (I didn't die, or kill anyone, so it's all good.)

-Watching the gorgeous Mocha dance.

You may have figured this was a kinda different Thailand trip to many!

QUAFL Cup 2011: a selection of the funny shots

Why yes I am playing inter-university Quidditch in Sydney this Saturday, how did you guess?

The Quidditch Universities of Australia Federation League (QUAFL) Cup


Dear Muggle,
We are pleased to inform you that you that the QUAFL Cup, the very first inter-university Quidditch tournament of its kind in Australia is here! Come along and watch as over 5 teams from across NSW and the ACT compete for honour and glory in a sport that many Harry Potter fans have fantasised. 
Featuring entertaining, action-packed matches between teams from UNSW, UoN, UWS, UoW, and ANU, expect an epic clash of bludgers, brooms and pride.

For those of who feel like they've been hit with the Confundus Charm when thinking how a sport like this could possibly work, Muggle Quidditch is best described as a mix of European Handball and dodgeball with a human snitch!

Come along and support...
A competition where competitors would rather prefer a bruised arm then a bruised pride...in a sport only suited to those who can keep up with up to four different balls flying around or at them...in an arena where only those who fear fear itself are tolerated, and those who don't, are told to grow some Yule balls.

Which team will rise from the ashes to claim the Cup & become inaugural champions? Will their matches be more one-sided than a Snape versus Lockhart duel?
Will there be a beater so feared that they deserve the moniker "Death-Beater"?
And which Snitch runs faster than Snape confronted with shampoo?

Games begin at 9am on the 26th November, and the finals end when the snitch is caught (by 6pm so we can grab some dinner).
During the lunch period, food and butterbeer will be on sale, and a limited number of spectators will also have the chance to compete in a few friendly Quodpot/Quidditch games from 12-1, & 3-4pm.

Watch teams with more spirits than the Great Hall in Hogwarts, more strategy than Wizards Chess, and more enthusiasm than the Creevey brothers battle it out on the pitch, all for free!
There are no tickets, so we encourage you to invite anyone and everyone, from mudbloods to elves.
Spectators are invited to brings folding chairs or blankets to ensure they have a comfortable place to view some of the finest quidditch Australia has to offer.

Interested sponsors, media, and volunteers, we await your owl at the following address: unswquidditch@gmail.com

Competitors, it's BYOB. Bring your own brooms of requirement, polish your handles and clip your twigs. Brooms up!

Be there or be squib!
UNSW Quidditch Society
QUAFL Cup Organiser (Mischief Manager) - Justin Chau

P.S. PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS

The Tale of the Travelling Cake

Last night I made a cake. It looked like this:

(well, one piece of it did).

I took it to lunch with these girlies, to celebrate Ailie's Birthday.

However being only four of us, there was still a sizeable amount left.

So we picnicked on it outside the art gallery later:

But there was still this much left:

 So I sent it home with this lovely lady after we'd hung out:

 to share with her family.

But wait, there's more!! Literally.

I'd actually baked another little cake with the extra mix, so finally we had fun housie cake times:

Which brings us to: The End. 

(Of the Cake at least.)

:)

Our chain of thankfulness: very pastel, very happyhappyjoyjoys, very fun.

...couldn't resist

Tales from Outer Suburbia - Shaun Tan

the nameless holiday

the nameless holiday happens once a year, usually around late August, sometimes October. It is always anticipated by children and adults alike with mixed emotion: It's not exactly festive, but still a celebration of sorts, the origin of which has been long forgotten.

All that is known are the familiar rituals: the laying out of one's most prized possessions on the bedroom floor; then choosing one special object - exactly the right one - and carrying it carefully up a ladder to the roof and leaving it under the TV aerial (already decorated with small shiny things such as chocolate wrappers, old CDs, and the tops off tubs of yogurt, licked clean and threaded with string, tied with special slipknots).

Then there is the traditional midnight picnic in the backyard, front lawn, or any place with a good view of one's own roof - across the street if necessary, which is why families sometimes gather by the roadside on blankets. Here are born fond memories of freshly baked gingerbread crows, hot pomegranate juice as tart as a knife, and small plastic whistles, inaudible to the ears of both humans and dogs. Not to mention all that excited chatter and giggling, all that polite shushing, everyone struggling to observe the convention of silence.

Those who stay awake long enough are rewarded by a momentary sound that never fails to draw a sharp intake of breath - the delicate tapping of hoofs descending on roof tiles. It is always so startling, so hard to believe at first, like a waking dream made solid. But sure enough, there he is, the reindeer with no name: enormous, blind as a bat, sniffing under the TV aerial with infinite patience. He always knows exactly which objects are so loved that their loss will be felt like the snapping of a cord to the heart, and it's only these that he nudges gently until they become hooked onto his great antlers. The rest he leaves alone, leaping gracefully back up into the cool darkness.

What a remarkable, unnameable feeling it is, right at the moment of his leaping: something like sadness and regret, of suddenly wanting your gift back and held tight to your chest, knowing that you will certainly never see it again. And then there is the letting go as your muscles release, your lungs exhale, and the backwash of longing leaves behind this one image on the shore of memory: a huge reindeer on your roof, bowing down.


copyright Shaun Tan, 2008

A Kite is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

-Leonard Cohen

Successful night out Diving

Er, diving in what, you might ask?

That would be dumpsters (sorry, just no nicer way of putting it).

But hasn't it always been your dream to sneak through darkening alleyways, wirecutters in hand (just kidding. but not about the alleyways), plastic bags in pockets, rubbersoled shoes, wrestling with wet smelly mounds of rubbish in dark dank dumpsters?

I'm sure it has.

It was actually amazingly successful! We didn't get told off once - the closest we came was a few employees and security guys all coming from different places but heading in the general direction of our dumpster. I and my associate at the time simply picked up our box and waltzed smoothly away.
They didn't stop us.


Here's the loot:

2 bags of fruit/veg: apples, pears, nectarines, peaches, red onions and a cucumber
2 bags of perfectly good (though slightly squashed) doughnuts (from different shops)
a silk scarf in its wrapping
2 pairs new, 2 pairs good condition shoes
a bike seat
2 pkts pasta
1 pkt sugar
carton of sealed bottles of water
set of 4 noodle bowls and chopsticks, still in box
pencilcase, with mostly working pens, pencils, and a pair of scissors
choc-coated liquorice, snakes, and some other weird wrapped lollies
2 small saucepans
biscuit jar with sealed pkts of biscuits inside
coathangers (as many as could be desired!)
sweet clock (just needed batteries)
essence of awesomeness


Freegan Awesome Dumpster Ninjas!!!!!!!
To infinity and beyond! or something.

Luscious Lemon Butter

For any who are not acquainted with the goodness that is lemon butter (also known as lemon curd), it is a deliciously tangy but creamy concoction which can be used as a spread a bit like jam (or eaten by the spoonful straight out of the jar, if your self control is of a similar level to my own).

I made a double batch a week or so ago with some homegrown lemons, and thought I would share the recipe here. It's a morphing of my Grandmother's & another friend's, so thank you to
them!

Lemon Butter

4 eggs
1 cup lemon juice (fresh!!)
zest of 2 lemons
1 1/2 cups white sugar
125g butter

Whisk first 4 ingredients together, add chopped butter, place in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water, and keep stirring until it thickens (this will take a little while).
Ladle into sterilised jars, and away you go! (It will thicken a bit more when it's cooled).

It will keep for a month or so in the fridge (maybe more).

yum :)

Small friend

i have a small friend who i get to hang with every week.
he is very fun.
his skills have increased by leaps and bounds just in the short time i have had the pleasure of 'sitting' him.

he can now climb everything in the loungeroom - except for the mantlepiece (though he has not left it untried!) - no coffee cup is safe, nor handbag placed however high.
no plate or keyboard, phone, computer plug..

if i do not pay him enough attention, he will fix me with a mournful gaze and sign for a drink - upon reception of which, he pushes away scornfully. afterwards he allows himself a cheeky grin.

his vocabulary is also growing at a great rate. there are a few small quirks - like persisting in calling both parents 'dad-ad-ad' - and he has quickly worked out how to turn new knowledge to his own ends..

apparently just the other day he was in bed protesting his imprisonment most passionately. his protests went ignored, until there were soft calls of 'poo, poo..' a parent came quickly - only to discover a very small boy crying wolf: the nappy was empty.

small friend wakes from sleep so cheerily content.
eyebrows raised, eyes wide, mouth a narrow 'o', he flaps his arms wildly when excited.

small friend is quick to rush to the pram when the words 'outside' 'walk' or 'pram' are mentioned. even hunting for keys does the trick.

small friend has the sharpest eyes and ears. he will spot a bird when it's just a dark stripe on the horizon, and point with wondering excitement whenever he hears their song.

small friend acts the baby bird himself - ducking to get food from his elders, mouth wide open and limbs outstretched.
small friend totters round the yard with fangs of baked bean sauce dribbling down his cheeks...

small friend is growing too fast!

parrty week

Another week in the life of yours truly, which happened to be of a rather party-ish nature:*

Sunday: Community BBQ lunch at a friend's place on a dreamful, summery afternoon
Monday: Essay-writing party(?!) - no, this wasn't actually a party, but there was a short diversion which involved driving around the neighbourhood with my housemates collecting 'useful' things from other people's hard rubbish deposits!
Tuesday: A spontanteous pre-birthday cake-eating party
Wednesday: Birthday dinner for a housemate o' mine
Thursday: Terrific and Tantalising Tea party - so much tea, so many teapots, so little time..
Friday: Another Birthday dinner for my housie!
Saturday: Soccer 'Ball' - celebratory season ending dinner, presentations, champagne and dancing into the night - woot!


*disclaimer: it may appear that I am always riding merrily high on a torrent of good spirits, wild abandon, and, er, feasting. Well, this disclaimer is just to say that I'm not. (well, the last mentioned is practically eternal, but apart from that -). Sometimes (strangely, it often seems to happen when I have a major assignment due the next day) I am very much not so, and would like to curl up in a corner and die quietly for a while. Actually, I think somewhere towards the end of the above week, I did just that. Fortunately for me, the sun never stays away too long..

Waking up on two legs

"Children ten years old wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or drowning: in media res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighbourhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just converged with their bodies, just flown down from a trance, to lodge in an eerily familiar life already well under way.
...
Consciousness converges with the child as a landing tern touches the outspread feet of its shadow on the sand: precisely, toe hits toe. The tern folds its wings to sit; its shadow dips and spreads over the sand to meet and cup its breast.
Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after."

[An American Childhood by Annie Dillard. HarperPerennial, 1987]

I love how Dillard describes this coming-to-awareness. Beyond the waking as a child, I know the strange feeling of suddenly noticing oneself - that feeling when you step back, step outside yourself and become your own self's observer, just for a moment.

"Who turned on the lights? You did, by waking up: you flipped the light switch, started up the wind machine, kicked on the flywheel that spins the years. Can you catch hold of a treetop, or will you fly off the diving planet as she rolls? Can you ride out the big blow on a coconut palm's trunk until you fall asleep again, and the winds let up?
...
Knowing you are alive is feeling the planet buck under you, rear, kick, and try to throw you; you hang on to the ring. It is riding the planet like a log downstream, whooping. Or, conversely, you step aside from the dreaming fast loud routine and feel time as a stillness about you, and hear the silent air asking in so thin a voice, Have you noticed yet that you will die? Do you remember, remember, remember? Then you feel your life as a weekend, a weekend you cannot extend, a weekend in the country."

May I stay waking, and ride it well.