One of the first things I did when I got to work today was organise to do my Swedish homework.
As mentioned previously, it was homework right up my alley: conduct an interview with a Swedish person living in Sydney about their life.
It didn’t need to be a lengthy analysis of their lives and motivations, just a brief chat about how they came to be in Sydney, what they missed about life in Sweden, and whether or not they had plans to return.
As a colleague is half-Swedish, half-Australian, the challenge was easy to organise. And as it was in a medium which I have spent most of my life involved in, it was something which I felt comfortable with.
Nonetheless, I still felt a little bit nervous as we conducted the interview late this afternoon.
“Speak slowly, won’t you?”, I asked her. “Treat me as if I’m a three year old”, I suggested.
She didn’t speak down to me, but she did speak slowly, which really helped.
And I was quite excited that I was able to understand and ask follow up questions.
So overall, it was an exciting process. The next step is to transcribe the conversation and send it off.
Otherwise, it was a reasonably ordinary Wednesday.
I’m a bit tired tonight. I guess it’s because the weekend was so busy. And because I’ve had a non-stop social life since about last Tuesday.
It’s the “hump day”, and I’m anxiously awaiting the weekend as a time just to relax. I might do the odd thing here or there, but basically I’m looking forward to a bit of an afternoon nap come Saturday, I reckon.
I really love Circular Quay. In particular, I love sitting down there quietly having an early morning coffee, and I love watching people having their photographs taken in front of the Opera House or the Harbour Bridge. I love seeing the look of excitement on their faces, as so many of them have come from other parts of the world, including other parts of Australia. They’re all taking very similar photographs, but somehow every photograph is unique as the light and cloud varies fro moment to moment.
These photographs were taken within about sixty minutes of each other. They remind me about how, even now, after 13 years living in Sydney, I still get a buzz out of seeing both the house and the bridge. And I love catching the ferry and taking that trip to Manly, saying goodbye to the city one minute, and then marvelling at its beauty as you return. And even when you’re not taking in the views, and you just close your eyes and enjoy the sunshine or the wind on your face, you know you’re suddenly in a very special place.
As you’ll have noted from my right column on this blog, I’ve become quite an enthusiastic user of Google+ I’m a bit of a Google fan boy to start with, and I’ve had a bit of a bee in my bonnet about Facebook for quite some time. Instead, I’ve found Google+ to be a useful tool both personally and professionally. Even though there’s a circle for my close friends, none of them are using it really. To quote one friend…
Oh I just signed in to Google Plus after eons. And having to reset my password yet again cos I keep forgetting it cos I never sign in. James, you are the only one who posts!
Instead, I’ve been following interesting people from around the world I’ve never met before, especially with radio, tech, photography, and genealogy interests, to name but a few.
The thing I’ve learned quickly is “it’s not Facebook”. It’s more like Twitter (with more characters) or Tumblr. You don’t have know the people to enjoy the posts. I am on Facebook in a limited way, and that’s purely to interact with some close friends who live interstate. I would hate the thought of following 600 people and getting their “I had breakfast” updates. The culture on Google+ is quite different. It’s around interest circles. So I’m following a bunch of people who like stuff that I like. It’s more like a “filter system” for the web than Facebook. It seems a whole lot self-obsessed also. You’re more likely to find someone saying, “I found this great link” rather than “I did amazing things” (or at least in my experience).
Anyway, I’ve stumbled upon a photographer who lives in Sweden who posts interesting stuff. A couple of days ago on Google+ I responded to his photograph of Helsingborg (which was a sunny, happy scene of the deckhairs,with this photograph of the same deckchairs but on a very grey day. I was somewhat amazed at the response it sparked, and then again today, a colleague mentioned today how much he liked the pic. So I felt inspired to post a few other photographs from my grey day in Helsingborg.
Despite the inclement weather I had when I visited, it’s a great little city which I enjoyed very much thanks to my friend (and tour guide) Tony. Nonetheless, I think you could almost name a whole new colour as “Helsingborg Grey”.
“Surry Hills must be the only place outside the former Soviet Union where people queue for bread.”
Bourke Street Bakery in 2007
In the time since, the very popular Bourke Street Bakery has expanded, with a number of other venues across Sydney.
Though it’s only a short walk from where I live, I haven’t visited the bakery for quite some time. The ugliness and inconvenience of the light rail construction on Devonshire Street has kept me away, and I’ve headed further afield for my weekend bread and coffee requirements.
Light rail construction continues in Surry Hills, and in the middle of the night I was, once again, woken to the sounds of jackhammers (or whatever), and this morning, there were still lots of workers around.
Construction on Devonshire Street, Surry Hills.
But it can’t be too far from completion in my area, as they’ve been testing the rail lines for the last couple of weeks.
Testing the new light rail in Surry Hills
This morning, I woke early and headed back to Bourke Street Bakery for a coffee and sausage roll, neither of which disappointed. It was nice to go back and visit a place I used to often frequent.
I was especially excited to see this sign on the window of the Bourke Street Bakery, indicating a push for a community garden, and the re-establishment of Wimbo Park.Wimbo Park Mural
Wimbo Park once existed where the light rail currently does.
Damien and I were watching Channel 10 News with Sandra Sully when news broke of the 9/11 attacks. That was our routine at the time: watch the news, and then head off to bed. I still remember the slightly frazzled look on Sandra’s face as she looked down and read from a piece of paper – obviously too soon to add to the auto-cue – about the attacks.
We stayed watching the coverage for several hours. We spoke to friends on the phone. We drank a bottle of wine. We worried for a while this was going to happen all around the world: New York, Washington, London, Paris, and eventually Sydney. The thought of an attack on Sydney went through our minds for quite some time, especially as we lived so close to the CBD. Weeks later, there were the anthrax scares,
I woke early the next morning, and when I went to work, I had to confront – as a broadcaster – the issue of what to do on the radio on the radio that day. It had been a big week already with the collapse of Ansett Airlines. And now, there a major world story with implications for all. About half of each hour that I was on the radio was dedicated to national news coverage. As I recall, for the remainder of each hour we continued to talk about what had occurred, interviewing people we knew were there – such as a delegation of NSW Farmers – and giving listeners the opportunity to express their feelings.
And on the following day, we had planned an outside broadcast from the Illawarra Folk Festival. As it turned out, it was probably a good thing. The half-hour news specials continued, and in between, we featured a bunch of folk musicians who sang about peace. It was the right combination, I think, in hindsight.
In the UK, it’s the July 2007 events that remain in their minds. In Australia (and Indonesia), it’s the Bali Bombings that remains in our minds.
As I sit and watch tonight’s commemoration I’m reminded of that night ten years ago and think about how much the world has changed. The internet has changed the world with an increasing level of internationalism, which is a good thing. But we’ve also seen a dramatic increase in racism and nationalism, evident in the recent killings in Norway. We’ve also seen some polarisation between religious groups, but also increasing levels of inter-faith activity.
In the same way that Nazism and Communism changed the world, and yet we “recovered”, let’s hope the same thing happens again.
The video of Sandra Sully crossing to the attacks is on Youtube, though unfortunately the sound is really crap.
You know how sometimes you wake up in the middle of a bad dream? Well, this morning I woke up in the middle of a good dream. It would have been nice to go back to sleep and continue the dream, though of course that wasn’t possible. It was a dream about my dad.
I was 16 (twenty-eight yeas ago) when he died from an awful condition called Multiple Myeloma (a plasma cell cancer). With the passing of time, sometimes it’s hard to remember some things about both mum and dad. And yet this morning’s dream was incredibly vivid.
Oddly enough, it had a Swedish connection. Yes, really. In the dream my dad and I were travelling in a car in the countryside. He was driving and I was using my mobile phone to take some video of us together to send back to my mum.
Minutes later we were climbing a snow-capped mountain in Sweden, and somehow we were strong enough to be dragging the car behind us.
It was an obviously very modern dream. And yet I as had the dream, I could almost feel my dad next to me. He was happy and healthy – pre-cancer – and we were having a wonderful time together.
Me and my dad, probably some time in 1966.
The last time I had such a vivid dream about my dad was several days after he died. Both my sister and I had similar dreams that night, and we had compared notes.
Throughout the day I’ve been thinking about what the dream meant, and why I had the dream right now. The conclusion I’ve come to is that it has something to do with my “wanderlust” at the moment with three overseas trips in two years. I can’t help but wonder how mum and dad would have felt, since they both lived most of their lives in Lismore, and only ever left Lismore to visit family and friends in neighbouring towns and cities. Or perhaps it’s not that literal? Perhaps there’s a deeper meaning?
My dad and me…
As I came home this afternoon, I went online to find out what dreaming about your father meant, I found these possible explanations here…
(1) For men, father may be a conscience figure. If this is the case, bear in mind that your father’s prohibitions and commands will probably represent either conventional moral options which may have no relevance to your true nature or ‘destiny’, or irrational fears and feelings of guilt that began to take shape in you in earlychildhood.
(2) For a woman, father may figure in a dream as one who generates affection.
(3) The presence of your father may be a straightforward representation of him, or of the way you see/remember him (which may owe more to your subjective distortions than to what your father actually is or was). In any case, the reason for your father appearing in the dream will be shown by the part he plays in the dream story.
(4) If your father features in the dream as a protector, it may be that you need to ‘grow up’ and rely on your own resources. After all, life can hurt you only if you let it, only if you identify with your emotional self instead of with that deep layer of yourself that is immune to life’s pains and perils.
(5) Father may be an animus figure (see Glossary of Jungian Termnology), representing a woman’s (unconscious) masculine qualities. In this case, the dream may be suggesting that she should cultivate this countrasexual side of her nature.
(6) Frequent appearances by either parent, or both, in dreams may be a sign that you have not thrown off an infantile over-dependence on them. Jung cites a young man’s dream in which the man’s father appeared as a drunken driver, smashing his car into a wall. This is the exact opposite of the real father, who was a most respectable person, rightly – but too too much – respected by the son. What the unconscious was doing through the dream was dethroning the father in order to enable the son to achieve a proper sense of himself as a person in his own right, with his own unique destiny and values.
I’m sure there are lots of other explanations.
Whatever the deeper psychological meaning, I just know it was a lovely dream about my dad, and one that made me feel good as I woke this morning.
A few friends have been noting of late it’s twenty years since the film, “Muriel’s Wedding” was released. I guess it was the article in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day which prompted most of the nostalgia.
For a lot of people, “Muriel’s Wedding” is a light-hearted comedy. For me, it’s actually a heart-felt comic-drama that has usually brought me to tears on the many, many occasions I’ve watched the film.
The first time I saw “Muriel’s Wedding” was at a cinema in Canberra. I was living in Wagga Wagga at the time. Of course there are many laugh out loud moments in the film. But there were also some very sad scenes in the film. In particular, the scenes surrounding the death of the mother. I’d lost my own “mum” at a young age, only a decade earlier. Co-incidentally, my “mum” was also called Betty, and in many ways, she was also neglected and abused by many parts of her extended family. The similarities upset me even now.
Months later, I was living in Sydney, and a couple of my very close relatives, Pat and Michelle, came to visit me. I took them to see the movie at the Cremorne Orpheum, knowing they’d “understand” the film in the same way I did, and they did. In the darkness of the cinema, I suspect they also shed a few tears.
Growing up on the NSW North Coast – not far from the mythical Porpoise Spit – I “knew” those bitches who made fun of Muriel. I could name every one of them. And while I wasn’t Muriel, per se – though I did sit in my room and listen to ABBA songs – I knew the girls who were “Muriel”. They were also taunted, made fun of by the likes of Tanya.
Do you ever feel like you’re nothing?
Throughout my life, I’ve suffered with many of the self-doubts and low self-esteem that Muriel encountered. In lots of ways I’ve been much more fortunate than “Muriel”. I’ve had a good job which has allowed me to move to different parts of Australia. I’ve never had to work in a video store :) But like Muriel, I chose to “escape” the small-town narrow-mindedness of “Porpoise Spit”.
One of my favourite lines – for many reasons – from the film is when Muriel says “When I lived in Porpoise Spit, I used to sit in my room for hours and listen to ABBA songs. But since I’ve met you and moved to Sydney, I haven’t listened to one Abba song. That’s because my life is as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as Dancing Queen.” Though it’s ostensibly about a geographic shift, the line is also about a shift in a state of mind. I don’t dislike the North Coast, but I know I’m probably happier living here in Sydney.
Muriel’s Wedding – You Can’t Stop Progress
Throughout the years, “Muriel’s Wedding” has remained with me.
Memorably, I was in the car with Pat a few years ago. We were doing a “blocky”. I should explain a “blocky” is what you do when you live in a country town and you’re feeling a little bored. You hop in the car and you drive around “the block” which is the main shopping district. As the song by ABBA, “Dancing Queen” came on the radio, without prompting, we began to adapt to a local setting the lines from the closing scene of “Muriel’s Wedding” where Muriel and Rhonda say “Goodbye Porpoise Spit”.
Muriel’s Wedding – Goodbye Porpoise Spit
If, like me, you grew up on the NSW North Coast during the 70s and 80s, and were a little bit “not of the mainstream”, “Muriel’s Wedding” can mean so much more than a light-hearted comedy.
