G-n-L Ganesh and Lauren

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Comfort Food

Saturday, 31 January 2009

I have developed a strong interest in cooking since we moved... I'm not sure why... But this domestication has engulfed me recently... After a terrible week at work resulting in my resignation I set off to work in the kitchen. I think it's quite soothing... Playing around with tastes and colours. An elderly gentleman from work who lives quite close to me dropped in a bag of plums from his garden so I set to work making plum sorbet and a cardamon plum cake with a buttery icing... I was considering plum jam but we don't really eat jam so there are still a few left if anyone has any ideas! I also whipped up some orange/raisin sugarless cookies (I WILL overcome the failed sugarless cake!) and some capsicum pasta with garlic... The problem is I naturally gravitate towards unhealthy foods! I don't seem to know how to cook anything else... and everything I do cook ends up tasting sweet/unhealthy anyway! :-) Fortunately one of my web clients who dropped around a CD for me liked the cooking a lot and offered me a job! Not sure if I'll take it or not as it's not exactly what I had in mind... but it's good to know that there's a backup out there, and that the power of food can overcome much! :-)

Labels: comfort food

The cycling chronicles

Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Sometimes I live a little inside my head... Like when I ride to work I imagine that I'm effortlessly gliding through pristine wilderness on a vintage bicycle feeling refreshed, alive, and stylishly at peace with the world... Like the girl to the left... In reality of course I'm a heaving, bright red, mass of exhaustion, clambering down the road blindly at a snails pace. Occasionally cars stop and look sympathetically at me like I have some sort of terminal illness and someone once even offered me a lift - not my finest moment. To try and take my mind of this reality I devised a game to play on the roads.

It's very simple. The rules are as follows:

For a person I overtake that:
is much smaller than me/disabled: 1 point
is wearing jeans/heavy gear: 2 points
is bigger than me: 3 points
is wearing lycra bike gear: 4 points

For every person who overtakes me that:
is much smaller than me/disabled: -3 point
is wearing jeans/heavy gear: -2 points
is bigger than me: -1 points
is wearing lycra bike gear: -0 points
(and yes, I have been overtaken by a man with no legs, but he did have an exceptional 4 wheeled device and very muscly arms)...

Despite it being my invention and weighted in my favour, I'm still losing... but it's inspiring me to try and go that little bit faster... :-) Hmm... I probably shouldn't have written all that... Please dismiss as a brief interlude of insanity!

Labels: bike, cycling chronicles, game

Lucky Bamboo

Monday, 26 January 2009

Happy Australia Day (though sincere apologies to the indigenous community)! And Happy Chinese New Year! These 2 celebrations coincidentally fall on the same day this year... a remarkable coincidence :-)

I had a lovely surprise today when Xin came over... She bought a beautiful lucky bamboo plant as a house warming present! And she educated me on the plant itself! I'm very excited... Apparently in Chinese lucky bamboo is called Ji Ji zhu. Ji means both segment and luck (the bamboo grows in segments and the more segments you have the luckier the plant is!). Every aspect of the lucky bamboo is significant... The 5 aspects of earth, water, wood, fire and metal are represented by the rocks and water in the pot, the bamboo and the colourful adornment around the neck... even the number of stalks has a meaning. I have yet to find out what 12 stalks mean but I know it's a 'Yin' or feminine number. The plant itself is actually native to Africa and is not actually a bamboo at all but was popularised in China through the principles of Feng Shui.

According to the principles of Feng Shui it's best to place it in a wealth area of the home, such as the far left corner of a desk... Or in a sharp corner to shield from "secret arrows" or to activate yang energy wherever there is stagnant chi or in the east/southeast which is the wood section of the home... I don't actually know where there is stagnant chi... Or where there are secret arrows, so I've placed the plant on the top left corner of the desk (which happens to be in the most south-eastern room in the house). Fingers crossed for a bountiful year!

She also bought a stapleless stapler - something I hadn't seen before - which is very environmentally friendly! It's a fact that if every office worker used 1 less staple per day for a year we would save 120 million tonnes of steel. The hole it makes is very cute and it makes the document much easier to shred later! It's especially good for klutzes such as myself who shouldn't be trusted around sharp pointy metal objects! It would be fantastic if we could make these out of recaptured waste!

Anyway... My journey through the world of Feng Shui and the Chinese New Year websites must now cease... The predictions for 2009 are causing me to unnecessarily worry for no good reason! (I know we create our own destiny but I can't help but feel the impending doom of the predictions!)

Thanks for the beautiful gifts Xin! Environmentally friendly, practical, beautiful and lucky! What more could you ask for? :-)

Labels: feng shui, lucky bamboo

Malthusian Catastrophe

Sunday, 25 January 2009

Happy Australia Day Weekend! And fingers crossed that the new date K Rudd promised the indigenous community will happen this year too!

I've actually had an extremely relaxing weekend and some unexpected time today meant than I've done even less than I planned! I stumbled across a large box of old readers digests I had collected and forgotten about during the move. They are mostly from the 50s, 60s and 70s. I wasn't ever sure why I collected them but it felt like they had some historical value at the time... or perhaps I'm just a pack rat (or ferret as my family has so lovingly been calling me for years)! Flipping through them some of the attitudes are hilarious and some frightening especially as it was so recent... but in particular the June 1971 Australian edition (back cover pictured) caught my eye. Apart from a story about Luxembourg that made me want to instantly pack my bags, the tale of a wealthy school girl turned revolutionary who was murdered, the anticipation of the 'computer age', Cuban submarines and the difficulty of life as a black man by the Olympian Jesse Owens the particular article that grabbed my attention was entitled 'Nature and the Case for Birth Control'. The article talks about humans being the only animal species to refuse to acknowledge natural law. I found this extremely interesting as the notion of the population explosion as being the root cause of the environmental problems we now face is a very recent one.

The article illustrates that while Thomas Malthus may have been correct about humans multiplying too rapidly and outstripping the food supply, they are alone in this regard and it is not a feature of all populations. Interesting examples of Guppies cannibalising to maintain a "optimum number" regardless of the food available, mass suicide of the lemming, hierarchy of feeding amongst lions with cubs last all illustrate the point. While the author believes humans will never outstrip the food supply (Yikes! It's happening less than 40 years later!) the case for birth control is a strong one in the face of 'death by stress' as the author refers to it.

A few notes, nothing more!

As an update to new years resolutions:

Kilos lost to date: None... though I finally realised that if I bake bread and cake every weekend it doesn't matter how many kms I ride during the week! So no more cake from now on sadly...
Carbon Footprint:: I planted a few more trees today and propagated a number of peace lilies to clean up carbon monoxide in the air at the office! (I give one to each person on their birthday for their desk). I also refrained from purchasing a large canvas for my next painting and instead endeavoured to find a second hand one on ebay (no luck) but I'll check out garage sales next weekend!
Style: I have no style! Help! Though I did see a gorgeous outfit on 'eco girl' that is inspiring me to be more creative with how I dress!
Creative Recycling: I haven't done much in the way of coding, but I have downloaded large numbers of example products to help populate the site at the beginning which is quite fun!
Voluntary Work: I'm still waiting for my application to go through so all my voluntary work is still web related at the moment - for Sustainability Street, Friends of Royal Park and EWB...
Learning: I have been reading... I'm thinking releasing a podcast would be a more fun (and productive) way to learn Nepali... No dancing schools anywhere near the new house unless you're under 5 or over 55 so still looking on this front! And have applied to join toastmasters during lunch times to improve speaking skills... Missed the first meeting though as I had to work.
Friends: No updates on this front, though I car pooled the 2 other girls from work to the office and am trying to say 'yes' to everything rather than always feeling an inexplicable urge to go home...
More focused blog posts: I may have to let this one go... I can't see it happening!
Adventure: Still deciding on next months adventure... Perhaps a horse ride through the Man from Snowy River country?!

Labels: malthusian catastrophe, readers digest

Ma première carte postale...

Thursday, 22 January 2009

My first Post Crossing post card arrived today... It was from a lady from Menton in the French Riveria... (a lovely old door from Menton is pictured left)... Almost on the border of Italy. Very picturesque! (I thought I would try to begin in good spirits).

Unfortunately apart from that there has been some bad news... Ganesh had a car crash in the little yellow extremely fuel efficient 2 door car (the canary) - yes, I'm trying to justify having a car at all - though he is quite alright the car is somewhat less than ok and appears to no longer be driveable... You can drive it but it makes really strange noises and the brakes are very soft. It's quite a shame given that we only had 3rd party property and it was technically his fault... So no more car for a while unless we can find spare parts at the wreckers. This is sure to help my carbon footprint and bike riding initiatives though so all is not lost!

Apart from that work has been particularly hectic... Somehow I managed to get stuck doing IT help desk stuff all week... I'm not particularly good at it so it takes me much longer than it would normally take someone who knows what they are doing! I also managed to bake the worst cake ever imaginable. I got a sugar free recipe from the web because one of our staff is a diabetic and it ended up tasting like playdough - with the same consistency! The diabetic appreciated it though and ate the entire cake... Everyone else has since banned me from the kitchen!

Well, I'm rambling about nothing in particular and certainly nothing interesting so I'm going to stop here and salvage at least a tiny portion of my commitment to write more focused blog posts...

And I thought I'd leave the other bad news to the end... Some how I managed to gain 1.5kg despite the bike riding so I'm now up 0.5kg rather than down at all! Disaster!

Labels: post card, rambling, weight

Home is where the heart is

Sunday, 18 January 2009

Book of the Week: The Invention of Clouds... The extraordinary tale of Luke Howard and the birth of meteorology... What is most amazing is how by simply defining 6 words this discipline took off in leaps and bounds. Highly recommended!

You will be pleased to know that Green Card is back online... Someone managed to guess the password somehow - rather than any particular flaw in the code (human error I guess you could call it - I made the password too simple or distributed it to too many people!)... At least I hope that's all it was!

pond

Apart from that it has been a weekend of home improvements... Mostly turning over the soil for growing veggies (and finding some very weathered 1958 pennies in the process), planting fruit trees and native herbs, and repainting old furniture with the spare paint from the shed. I read that the imagery of a pair of birds in feng shui is suitable for the southwest corner of the bedroom so I repainted my previously fluorescent blue and yellow chest of draws to match the room with a simple design... It worked out well as the yellow blended into the walls and so the room still looks spacious! While I was doing that Ganesh started work on the pond... When I planned the garden out I decided to capture the water from the shed roof via a simple water wheel into a pond as extra water storage for when the drought is extreme. He did a fantastic job digging a deep hole, about 2m long 1m wide and 50cm deep... It will have to be reduced to 30cm deep to comply with the law, but the amazing part was that we struck a layer of clay at the bottom. We had a lot of fun spreading clay all over the sides of the hole to seal it... I felt like I was in a New Zealand mud spa - the texture of the wet clay was like cream! I finally understand why people enjoy mud baths!

This evening we had dinner with my aunts and uncle at a lovely Thai restaurant in Alphington and tasted some deliciously sweet mulberries from their farm... we are now listening to Osho videos on you tube. Osho turns out to be on the surface a crazy Indian guru... "I know for sure God does not exist. And thank-God he does not exist!"... But under his jocular exterior he makes some interesting points, and he also is a fantastic example of a person who so easily introduces humour into his speech. While his humour is a little more crass, Osho does remind me of Douglas Adams - the greatest author of all time!

Labels: book, home improvements, osho

Environmental Graffiti

Friday, 16 January 2009

Kilos lost to date: Still just 1kg - despite all that cake we had at work!
Volunteering: I signed up for Volunteers of Banyule to train the community in Internet applications - they didn't have anything else going near me atm but it seemed like a good place to start! I also organised more donations for the Bangladesh computer drive.
Carbon Footprint: I switched my superannuation to socially responsible investments (after trying for years to switch to an industry fund that would allow me to do so) and utilised my buy 1 get 1 free vouchers to purchase Australian native, drought tolerant herbs and vegies for the garden... Plus set up a compost bin... Plus signed up for a plot of land in the middle of the planned runway for Heathrow through Greenpeace so it cannot be built!
Gorgeously Green: I purchased an Australian made, organic, phosphate free, no soap body wash to ensure compatibility with future greywater systems... its yoghurt, almond and honey based and it makes me feel like I'm swimming in a creamy dessert. Showers are now tasty too!

I feel that there's been much progress within the environmental movement at the moment despite the financial crisis. When banks like HSBC and magazines like the Economist, renowned for burying their heads in the sand release campaigns similar to the one at the left you know something's up! Even entertainment can be successful and still carry an important message - World without Oil. This is the type of direction I would have liked to take Green Card but my skills just aren't up to it! I'm glad to see it happening though. What I think is still missing is the interface between the potential humanitarian crisis and preparing communities for the anticipated changes. In Nepal for example, the glaciers in the Himalayas have been melting so fast that 2000 new lakes have formed... 20 of those are due to burst at any time and this would cause a tsunami like effect wiping out some villages and completely removing the water supply for others. The Nepalese Government - already load shedding (turning off the electricity in Kathmandu - the capital) for 40 hours each week is clearly in no position to do anything about this. Where are the NGOs? The humanitarian aid? I feel compelled to do something... To drop everything, march into the villages and do something. But what? Reinforce the lakes? Relocate the people? What do you do in the face of such a shocking danger? It still surprises me how many people remain in Japan despite the hazard of 3 tectonic plates, land slides, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, nuclear disasters (yes, they have a nuclear reactor on a fault line?!?!?!) and the list goes on... Surely these issues are more important than falls in youth employment as a result of climate change, so why is nothing being done??

Oh No! Time to go... Green Card has just been hack attacked!!!!

It's all about image...

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Kilos lost to date: 1kg - the riding kilo is persisting!
Book of the week: Only Forward, Michael Marshall Smith. Ok, so it's a very very old favourite from year 9 but it's important to rediscover old books during a move!
Carbon Footprint Initiatives: Did not turn on the air conditioner last night during Melbourne's 3rd hottest night ever! I do NOT want to be the person that forces them to build a new power station in peak times.

Everything is about image these days... When I searched for answers to my very difficult physics problem on google, I was dazzled with 'about 17,900' answers... Eagerly I started trawling through results in the hope that I wouldn't actually have to think about the answer in order to solve the question... Unfortunately when I was only up to result 169 google gave up. It claimed the other 17,731 results were all duplicates and it would be a waste of my time to read them. I was sorely disappointed. Not only did I have to start turning the cogs of my dusty old brain which had previously relied on google for well, everything from directions to condolence letters, to jokes, to snippets of code... I had been mislead about the number of people dedicated to making websites about my particular problem. Now I assume google isn't to blame - who wouldn't feel cosy and comforted by thousands or millions of results about their question... No one will ever feel isolated or different again! But I wonder how many people actually trawl to the end of the results as I do? In one my uni classes I was told the majority of people never get past the first 2 or 3 results, let alone on to a second page... They trust in google's claim, feel comforted and explore no further.

Not me, however, pioneer of cyberspace that I am (ha ha)... I have been conditioned to think that everything has already been done before and somewhere out there someone will have made a website about it... Unfortunately for me this is quite often not the case... People tend not to post answers to higher level physics problems on the internet... too much fiddling with equations and characters I guess... but it has made me seriously lazy. It's much easier to absently mindedly click through millions of results than be forced to think myself...

So I came to the realisation in the middle of my physics issue... that instead of trying to look for what's been done I should attempt to forge into the unknown... for even if it has been done by others, it hasn't been done by me and those neural pathways might come in handy one day!

Labels: image

Defying Gravity

Monday, 12 January 2009

Firstly, apologies for the delay in posts... There was a telecommunications disaster which involved an early disconnection of services and a yet to be reconnection (fingers crossed for wednesday) - which to be honest was probably a good thing because I'm sure I wouldn't have unpacked anything had there been an internet connection working at home! The move went very smoothly, we rented a little budget truck and got everything across in one afternoon. Mum in particular has been showering us with beautiful house warming gifts but what surprised me the most is the sense of possibility - it's so refreshing to be in a home we own! All be it a very very very small portion. We've been planning out what we'll do, where the vegies will go, how the furniture will be arranged... And the best part is we can make plans that will take years, because we have years and years to pay off the mortgage!

We can get involved with the local community too... Ganesh has joined the local cricket club - his first session is tomorrow - so it's just up to me to decide what I'd like to do and if it's available! Unfortunately there are no dancing classes anywhere nearby unless you're under 10 or over 55, but I'm looking for environment groups, book clubs, woodworking workshops or anything that could remotely improve my 2-left-feetedness.

Day 1 of the healthy lifestyle plan also made progress with the first day back at work... I rode both ways - a total of 2 hours and 30km for the day, and I followed the CSIRO diet precisely (apart from an extra tim tam at work because we had a new staff member joining). When I got home I had lost 1kg!! I think it was mostly sweat though because I regained it after dinner! It was encouraging to see a lower number on the scales though. I might even ride tomorrow despite the 37 degree forecast just to witness the temporary reduction again...

Apart from that the only event of note was Wicked! The musical was worth every cent of the exorbitantly priced tickets. I thought the way every part of the original Wizard of Oz tale was creatively included and accounted for was great, the sets were exquisite, the music very catchy and the story beautifully told - even the glowing green cocktails were lots of fun :-) To top it all off there was a man on the street busking on the recorder to 'somewhere over the rainbow'! You had to love people who take advantage of marketing like that :-) Highly recommended!

Overall I'm inspired by the new year and the change of scene. There is hope that the world will improve this year :-)

Labels: csiro, musical, wicked

Call me ug...

Tuesday, 6 January 2009

As you probably already know, I'm definitely not what you would call 'a people person'... My social skills are about as well developed as Australia's climate change policies, I'm way too serious, work too much and am never ever funny (intentionally anyway!). I feel a bit 'grey' sometimes, almost like a weak cup of tea which really is unpalatable... While I recently discovered that my lack of social graces could be due to being a few rungs down on the evolutionary ladder (I have neanderthal genes - type O blood, fair skinned, freckled and gingerish hair describes me very well!), I feel that this is causing problems with the people around me. This was well illustrated when a certain someone, MUM, abandoned me in mordialloc today because of my lack lustre personality (amongst other things).

When I finally made it back to civilisation I decided that it was time to work out how to be funny and 'good company' in person rather than a presence from afar (which is very easy with an internet connection). I think this nicely feeds into my 'art of conversation' resolution as well as learning to make more friends! Apparently there is a formula to being funny and it involves a series of steps:

Chilling out: You have to be relaxed to find humour in a $200 speeding fine or a very large bruise!
Be Pop Culture Savvy: Looks like I need to start watching tv again!
Find a Style: This sounds like the hard part! If I had a style I wouldn't be in this trouble in the first place...
Have a joke pool: Hmm... this is a good idea... All I need to do is memorise a very large number of jokes for different situations and I'll be covered! Taking a leaf out of my brother's book - anytime anyone burps I just need to say "Just as good the second time?"... I will have to find a way to get over the distasteful images this brings to mind though and the obvious crassness (see, there I go again, no wonder I'm not funny!)
Look funny: Apparently eccentric behaviour, weird clothes and funny props all help in the fight against boredom... Perhaps it's time for me to get a mohawk, a talking parrot and a monacle!

At the end of all that, I guess being funny is about showing people you care enough to ensure they enjoy themselves... So I've scoured the internet for my first joke to use, courtesy of Jokes Abyss. The next time someone asks me for a lift I'm going to say "Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it." (groan?) Okay, well I would really appreciate directions to a QUALITY joke pool!

Labels: humour

Ideas...

Sunday, 4 January 2009

Now that it's the holidays I've had time to look around the web and have discovered to both my delight and regret that some of my ideas have now been implemented by other people, but at least they are now available for me to use!These include:

Community Exchange Basically a barter system managed online where people exchange their goods and services with others on the web who can provide other goods or services. Goods and services are valued in 'yarras' (the same as dollars) but no money is ever exchanged :-)

Teach Street Similar to the above but only for teaching various skills. I guess in the olden days a community centre would have served this purpose but now we have the web to bring us back together. Unfortunately this is only available in the US atm but it's such a great idea I'm sure it will be available in Australia soon... Or I could start it up at the new house!
Rudder Personal Finance A way to manage your finances, feed in your bills and have everything in one place. Also only available in the US but this is a good way to watch your money, pay your mortgage and start saving.

Remember the Milk A to do list that can feed into my gmail... I'm a big lister, I have daily, yearly, and life lists so this is very useful. I would prefer it if you didn't have to specify due dates though but it's getting there.
Planet Eye Digital tours of the world! There are a lot more features that could be added to make this amazing, but it's a good idea and you can pick up good tips for destinations around the world. Still a little light on content though.

And some others that are just interesting:

PostCrossing As a long term post card collector I'm surprised I hadn't come across this site sooner! It's a great way to generate pen friends and collect post cards from all over the world... I've sent my first 5 (all homemade) so I'll sit back and wait for 5 to come my way :-)
Pipes An interesting mashup tool - working towards web 3.0 and a more semantic web environment.
Afrigator News, photos and videos from Africa. Basically a digital taste of Africa and another type of interesting mashup.
Fire Eagle A way for people to locate you at any given moment! While this seems a little weird I really love their website design!
Help Exchange Similar to willing workers on organic farms and others but this one is free! (Plus they have listings in China and Japan)
Easy Home Exchange Similar to all the other home exchange websites but this one is free too!

Fortunately I still have a few more up my sleeve!

I'm starting to think that it would be a whole lot of fun to see the eclipse while couch surfing in Japan, and then spend a few days volunteering on an organic farm (or similar). A very different experience to normal tourists, much cheaper, and may help me with my 'make new friends' resolution :-)

In New Years Resolution progress I finally finished Green to Gold (it was a little heavy going at times). The most interesting point they made was of 'ecoadvantage'. It seems that green attributes rarely stand alone.... the environmental story is the second or third button. I guess this will be useful when marketing trash2treasure.com! I also started another book that I found while packing boxes about architecture in England which has been rather enlightening... You always find the most useful and interesting things when you pack... So far I've found a dremel, the missing piece of my wooden Illusionist necklace project, chocolates and the lovely tea post cards I collected at the flower and garden show last year.

There has been some interesting developments in terms of electric vehicles as well! This article mentions that Australia will play host to 'Better Place' recharging stations. So another possible carbon footprint initiative could include converting the little yellow car to electric!

Labels: ideas, websites

Babaari...

Friday, 2 January 2009

Nepali Phrase of the day: Babaari ful ko bot, aayo dhalkaudai jham-jham ista-kot... Which is basically a little ditty about the mint flower plant and being dressed in a stylish coat - I think I have missed the point but it's very cute all the same!
Weight: Please don't ask! Lach made a very very delicious chocolate cake for my b'day yesterday and I had cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner :-S scales don't seem to have ballooned yet, perhaps tomorrow when it all digests though. It was fun though, and very very tasty! I've always wanted to eat nothing but cake for an entire day!

Today was one of the those very odd days... My mum had another run in with the police... For such a good person this happens surprisingly often! This time it was just the car though, impounded because the rego had expired. She just forgot to pay! The funniest part was definitely when the police called my brothers to go and pick her up from the station though :-) I'm trying to encourage her to write a tv serial about her life - it would be so funny, though most likely unbelievable! So many things happen to her... Never a dull moment!

ganesh bleached hair

There is also never a dull moment with Ganesh who bleached his hair in an odd sort of gradient pattern, but somehow it still manages to look a thousand times better than mine! There was also an incident today with the hot water tap exploding and us losing almost an entire bath full of hot water before Ganesh managed to force another tap on with sheer brute strength... It doesn't look like sustainability has made a promising start in 2009... He's very lucky though - I thought we were going to flood the house for sure when the emergency contacts for the apartment block all refused to come and help!

Apart from that it's just been a very very lazy day... Didn't pack any boxes... didn't really do anything at all... Spent most of the day looking through all the projects on instructables.com for the house and for Trash2Treasure. The best of the bunch were:

Lightbulb Projects: Snail Aquarium Greenhouse Snow Globes Lamps Wall hook
Bookshelves: Inverted Invisible
Fire Balls you can touch!
900000 volt Van der Graaff Generator

And reading through Couch Surfing profiles to try and find free accommodation for the eclipse in Japan, China and Tibet! I did sign the new house up to be an available couch which might be interesting :-)

Note: Something weird just happened... The gas company said I had already arranged to move the gas to the new house, but I never did!! Perhaps someone's stolen my identity? Or else there really is a magic moving fairy... I know I'm not that senile yet!

Labels: ganesh, gas, mint, mum, police

Mini-Adventure 1 Recap: Sovereign Hill

Thursday, 1 January 2009

Happy 2009 to one and all! :-) I hope you enjoyed bringing in the new year last night and are looking forward to an exciting and prosperous year ahead... I thought I'd give a small recap of this month's adventure (and my birthday present!) - A night in the museum at Sovereign Hill.

We arrived at the Sovereign Hill Lodge, perched above the mining town in time for a light lunch. After meeting the group we were given our costumes and life in the 1850s began! (Bar 1 minor costume change - the first dress they gave me was extra large and bunched down on the ground)... First instruction on the many many layers of underwear ladies had to carry around on a daily basis, as well as how to get a tiny waist! (It's too late for me apparently - you start when you're 12!) and then instructions on how to greet the commoners (tourists) and basic etiquette. Ladies had to be escorted by a man at all times and men had to always remove their top hats before going inside. The crinoline took a little getting used to - especially lifting it up at the back before sitting down while not looking like you were about to go to the bathroom! All 11 of us decked out in our finery took a tour of the township by coach, panned for gold (we found a few flakes!), chit chatted with the shop keepers, had many many photos taken of us, witnessed $125000 worth of gold being poured into an ingot (see the photo) and ventured 100ft underground on a steep incline railway to visit the mines. Dinner was a 5 course banquet (meaning that the 0.5kg I had previously lost is now back!) including oxtail and pig trotter soup and lambs brains amongst other more traditional items! We dipped paraffin candles into coloured wax to make decorative household items, played parlour games and finished the day with the spectacular sound and light show - blood on the southern cross. What I found most interesting though was that all of the negativity had been removed. Last time I went to Sovereign Hill I distinctly remember the appalling conditions in the mine, the racial tension between the Chinese miners and other miners and the terrible treatment of some of the Chinese miners being emphasised. That had all gone. Everything glorified the period (apart from the obvious corruption of the police force and poor governance that arose from creating an entire regulatory body from convicts!). Overall I thoroughly enjoyed it and my many ideas for cultural world theme parks have been reignited! :-) (Thanks very very much Ganesh)...

Labels: mini-adventure, night in the museum, sovereign hill

Happy New Year!

Just wanted to wish everyone (Xin and maybe Anna if her internet is back up!) a very Happy 2009! :-)

Labels: 2009, happy new year