The other day was the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. This is the well-known sign over the gate of the camp. Rough translation: work will make you free. 

Radio, someone still loves you.

Happy 30th birthday, Double/Triple J!

Sure, sometimes I get sick of you. Yeah, sometimes I do switch you off in disgust and try my luck with Mix 106, especially in the evening during Super Request, like the other night when Rosie decided to get people to ring up and read out their tedious text messages. Sometimes I just want something to sing along to in the car, and I may prefer to hear a bit less Australian hip-hop, but that’s just personal preference. People say you’re less alternative than you used to be….but I only have to change over to an Austereo or Nova station for a few minutes to hear there’s still a big difference.

You do such cool stuff, like recording and playing some amazing live sets. Giving a leg up to new bands. Taking the time to tell the full story of a band or artist. Wacky science with Dr Karl and sport with Roy and HG. Most of your current affairs coverage is aimed a little below my age group, but I really liked the way you encouraged young people to register to vote, well in advance of last year’s federal election.

I still think you’re cool.

 

Thanks to Bertie for the tip-off about an easy way to post photos using Hello. Finally, the photos that go with this story, concluded here. 

Warm fuzzy bookshop

Yesterday I stopped in at Hawker shops to check out Ron's Bookshop. This secondhand bookshop used to be at the Jamison Centre but has recently moved to a larger space at Hawker shops. I was looking for a Phil Rickman book but instead I got the first in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. Yeah, it's (kind of) a kid's book. So when I brought it up to the counter, Ron asked me, "Are you a teacher?" I said "no", and didn't add, (I just like reading kids books). He could see what I was thinking, and told me that he only asked because often teachers come in and buy kids books for their schools, using their own money. He said he keeps a stash of kids books to give free to teachers.

How cool is that? Three gold stars to Ron.

UPDATE: Clearly Hawker Shops is the place to be, at least if you're me. I had dinner last night at Rock Salt. I've heard a lot of buzzing noises (the good type) about this slightly pricey restaurant for ages but this was my first time there, mainly because I'm cheap and I live walking distance from Dickson with all its lovely and economical restaurants. Rock Salt specialises in duck dishes and lots of other meat-y things. As a vegetarian, I didn't think this would be the sort of restaurant where I would fare too well. I received the menu and thumbed through several pages of exotic meat dishes, noting a couple of side dishes that might do as a meal for me. Then, to my surprise, I hit... the vegetarian page! Yep, a whole page of vege entrees AND mains. Choice!

All of the food was beatifully presented and everyone seemed happy with it. My meal of pesto risotto followed by apple and nectarine crumble, was fantastic. They even served the ice cream in a separate bowl which made me super happy, because I hate melted ice cream with hot food. They even served little dishes of lemon sorbet between entree and main. So, Rock Salt gets gold stars too.

Footballer killed in a tsunami? Priceless

I was going to reply to Jo's and Polarbear's comments on my previous post, but I wanted to get further into the topic in another post, anyway.

Yes, there is extended coverage of Australian footballer(s) who have died. I don't think this is simply the lure of a sports angle... though there is an issue to be explored there, about whether we value our sports heroes higher than other achievers like scientists and musicians. You do sometimes get the impression in the news that an elite sportsperson who dies tragically was somehow more in the prime of life than anyone else could possibly be. Their "prime of life" is probably quite a short period compared to a cancer researcher or a poet or a politician.

The focus on the death of a footballer gives a focus to a vast and remote tragedy. It's a loss that many people can relate to. It does have a resonance with the Bali bombings. But the real reason that it's so predominant in the news, is that footballers = NEWS. Hmmm, this fishing village was wiped out, and that fishing village, and this string of tourist resorts, etc etc. Wa-hey! A local footie hero!

But there have been plenty of other interesting stories about westerners, like this guy who surfed the tsunami, and this 10 year old girl who recognised what was happening and raised the alarm. (By the way, is it time yet to call for a ban on the use of the phrase "10 old British schoolgirl"? It seems archaic to me: all ten year old girls in Britain are in school, with the exception of truants and the home-schooled. It's useful if you want to conjure up images of knee socks and shiny shoes.)

I was feeling very snarky when I wrote posted the previous, though I'm not sure it fully came across that way. It's hard to know how to react to something like this. Not just because it is on such a huge scale; it's always hard to know how to feel, and what to do, when terrible things happen out there and my life just buzzes along merrily. Should I feel sad? Why am I able to think about it for a while and then go back to whatever I was doing?

This tsunami has left far too many victims in its wake, on many different levels, to be able to keep them all in focus at once. I've been wondering what to think and by extension what I might write here about it. And coming up with very little. 'Gee it's so sad' doesn't get you very far. Picking on the media coverage seemed like something to do. Sometimes I get the impression that the media have hit a macabre jackpot - it's the biggest natural disaster in modern history! The death toll is still going up! On the other hand I have to admit that there is also some sensitive, heart breaking journalism happening. And it's been said before that the constant coverage surely helps to stimulate donations of money and other aid.

Damn 'seeing both sides'. This blog might be more interesting and controversial if I was more opinionated! But that wouldn't be me.

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Overheard on A Current Affair earlier tonight, not an exact quote but something along these lines:

'We hear so much about the Australians and foreign nationals caught up in this tragedy, but think, just for a moment, about the locals whose lives have been devastated'.

A moment? If that's all you need.

Impact Comics website

The eagerly awaited Impact Comics website has arrived! No more excuses for those who don't live in Canberra - mail order is available. Check out the 'events' page for some early photos (it looks even better now).

But wait, there's much more!

So, I've been to Perth and back. And it was grand. But let me tell you a bit more about my trip to England, first. Just pretend you're reading this a few weeks ago.

Naturally, I had to visit the mammoth British Museum. After some contemplation I decided to stick to more recent periods. Because it was school holidays, there were hordes of kids swarming over the Egyptian and other ancient exhibits. I saw the 18th century Enlightenment exhibition in the King's Library, which was presented in lovely mahogany and glass cabinets.

I also went to the Prints and Drawings section to see the Alexander Walker Bequest. Alexander Walker was a well known film critic for London's Evening Standard. Walker was also an avid collector of modern art, especially prints and drawings post-1960. There were also some earlier artists represented including Picasso and Matisse. The exhibition booklet includes several photos of Walker's tidy flat with the walls completely covered with art - he lived with it all around him, even filling all the walls of the bathroom.

A lot of different printing techniques were represented. The one that caught my attention was 'Marta/Fingerprint' by Chuck Close, a portrait by fingerprint etching. The picture was formed of inked thumb prints on translucent sheet of plastic, which is then photographically transferred. Grown up fingerpainting. I was also fascinated by Philip Guston's hooded, creepy 'Little Bastards', with which he shocked the art world in his switch from abstract to figurative painting. He said the reaction was 'as though I had left the church'.

I also took a brief look at an exhibition of Japanese swords, and was amused but not surprised to see that the people in there were almost all men. I do have some appreciation for the craftsmanship and beauty of these swords, but unfortunately I don't know enough about the subject to really have appreciated the display. But, there were an awful lot of them.

I also paid a visit to the Natural History Museum. I wasn't actually planning to go in, I was just walking past and was drawn into the grounds by the building itself. Up high on the corners where you might see gargoyles on some buildings, there were animal statues instead. I wanted a closer look - and some pictures - but my ancient camera doesn't have a zoom lens (or any other features for that matter). So I actually only went inside in the hope of finding a postcard with a closeup of the building. There were several shops inside, which took a lot of wandering to find, and in the end, no such postcard. I did wander through quite a few of the exhibits, though the place is massive and I only saw a small percentage. A lot of the stuffed animals look a bit musty and old, probably because they are. It’s all part of the charm. The fish were fascinating, especially the truly weird ones found very deep in the ocean. I sucked up the courage to walk through the birds exhibit – I did this in Adelaide a couple of years ago too – they are kind of interesting in a scary, beaks and feathers kind of way. The scariest was an ostrich that was in a bundle on the floor, waiting to be wired up into position. I also went into a truly huge room full of minerals: fossils and gemstones, including some jewellery and other items. And of course I couldn't miss the dinosaur skeletons and giant fossils.

Hands down, the tackiest thing I saw in London was the Diana and Dodi memorial in the Egyptian hall in Harrods. The unwashed wine glass from their hotel room that fateful night – a symbol of true love?

*Insert cheesy 'back home again' type song lyric here*

I had an enthusiastic welcome from the dogs. I've eaten some vegemite. I've made a coffee using my beloved espresso machine. (Not for me, for Demelza. I'm off to bed).

The journey home was ok, it was never going to be fabulous. Leaving on Tuesday to arrive on Thursday just feels wrong. Major hiccup at Singapore, where British Airways had some difficulty refuelling the plane. This was announced after we had had the scheduled 40 minutes leg stretching/shopping in the terminal and the crew had changed over, and we had returned to the plane. I gather they would normally have kept us all on the plane, but it was unbearably hot down the back in cattle class (does anyone know why the airconditioning never seems to work until you're in the air?) and after giving out some water to drink, they finally arranged for access to the terminal again. Thank goodness, because the eventual delay was three hours! I discovered that the food outlets will take a variety of currency, but for everything other than Singapore dollars, they round everything up to whole dollars (or pounds, etc).

I had an amazing view of Sydney harbour from my window seat, and it was a beautiful, clear sunny morning. This went some way to making up for the lack of access to the toilet for most of the previous 6 hours, when the two people in my row took sleeping tablets and zonked right out. I prefer to share with people who get up for a bit of leg stretching every couple of hours, like the couple who sat there on the London to Singapore leg.

Catching my non-refundable flight back to Canberra turned out to be a very near thing. We landed at 9:20, took at least 15 minutes just to get off the plane. By the time my enormous overweight purple suitcase came out almost last, and I cleared customs, raced down to the train station, waited 11 minutes for the next train, got to Domestic, and sprinted up to the Rex counter, it was 10:24 for a 10:35 flight. There was only one person in the queue, who smartly got out of the way of me and my purple monstrosity as he remarked 'hey, are you in a hurry?' Helpfully the Rex plane was running ten minutes late, or I might have been on a bus right now.

Anyway, enough of this boring stuff. There's still a lot more to tell from the my last week in the UK, which I'll catch up on ASAP.