Epossums change of address

Hello Possums. This is my last post as bindi nestor. Epossums is nolonger my everyday blog. I will now be writing at this new address under the new name of ejenne ( translated as ‘electronic jenny’, in sync with epossums or ‘electronic possums’). Thank you for reading these pages. I hope we can continue our efriendship xx

Conversations in the Car 2: In which a parent is berated by her eight year old for excessive computer use

Sally is eight. Sometimes she makes up little songs. I’ve already shared with you her song entitled “You eat your own crap and I think its gross”. Lately she has been singing a little ditty, the words are “I’m good at maths yeah”, and the tune varies from day to day. She has been selected for an advanced maths group at school and this has affected her self image considerably. 

On Thursday morning I had to drop all four of my kids off at different locations for them to start their school days. Kat and Rosie to the bus stop and secondary school respectively, Emma to soccer training and Sally to primary school. Sally was the last one left in the car. She chatted to me from the back seat all the way from the soccer ground to primary school. She chose the topic. She was on my case:

“Mum, what percentage of your time do you estimate you spend on Facebook?”.

“Oh, that varies Sally. Sometimes I get sick of it and don’t go on for days. I’m having a patch at the moment though where I’m probably on everyday”.

“Yes, but what is your estimate for the average time you spend on it as a percentage?”.

“Oh, gosh, not that much. I’d say point two percent”.

Sally starts laughing in the back seat. I was sure she wouldn’t understand what point two was so I clarified my position:

“Point two is less than one. Its a fifth of a percent”.

Sally continues to laugh but through her laughter she manages to articulate the reason for her mirth:

“Point two of one percent!”, she says with laughter bubbling through her words, “that’s really funny because my estimate would have been seventy-five percent!”.

Oh god, I thought, she is a clever one. I laughed too, out of surprise and delight at how well she understood her percentages. Her perception of my computer use, however, has given me food for thought!

Here is a video sent to me by a close friend who is also on facebook. She is currently living in the UK. We share photos by sending them through the ether via facebook, we use the chat on facebook to sync times for phone calls. If you are on facebook too you might appreciate it:

Part of the Furniture

“I want to talk to you about a problem”, said the principal of the school where I’m working at the moment as a visiting science teacher. He had sidled up to me in the corridoor during the lesson I was teaching with a class of enthusiastic grade 3 and 4 kids today. We were in the corridoor measuring how far the cars they had designed and built out of recycled materials and some you-beaut plastic wheels went after being released down a ramp. 

Its not unusual for him to pop in on my lessons. He likes to know what’s going on. His comments about my work are usually supportive and positive. He had been talking to me about how impressed he was with the thought the kids had put into designing their cars and how the activity had promoted parental involvement. I was a little surprised when he changed the topic to broach a “problem” in the middle of a lesson and concerned that his timing could reflect its urgent nature.

I looked at him questioningly waiting for him to continue. When he recognised concern in my expression he smiled. His eyes lit up with happy creases. He has a very cheeky smile, this experienced and active principal who is close to retiring. I relaxed, smiled and waited. He had my full attention and he continued, “Yes, its a problem I’ve noticed. But I’ve already done something about it. I’ve noticed the gradual build-up of science equipment that’s been spreading around the school”.

“Oh yes! Um, sorry. I’ve got stuff piled up in the staff room, in the room opposite us and also in the other corridoor”, I admitted sheepishly.

“Mmm yes. So what I’ve done, is ordered two large double cupboards. I’ll put one in this corridoor and one in the other one”. His smile bubbled into an almost laugh. He was having fun delivering me the directive to be more orderly and tidy with my science equipment, in the nicest possible way.

And the up-shot is: I’ll have two special cupboards! I was already starting to feel like part of the furniture at this school. This has sealed it! 

 

Tripping over modern art and other weirdness

I was waiting for Libby in a public space in Federation Square last night. We had been in mobile contact. I knew she was somewhere close, but as yet we hadn’t found each other. I resisted the impulse to wander in search of her. Like a lost child, I stood alone in the cold wind reassuring myself that if I stood still, it was more likely that she would find me. 

Resigned, I took up my post in a place where I could see people approaching from three directions: up from the carpark, down the stairs from the interior of the building and down a further wide set of stairs to the bank of the Yarra. Satisified with my positioning, I stood alert for shapes and sounds that resembled Libby. It was then that I saw it. It wasn’t immediately recognisable as sculpture, but I wandered over to it and read the plaque: ‘The Membrane’, part of a modern art exhibition in the public spaces of Federation Square.

The angle shown above in the photo seemed to me to be the ‘front’. It spoke to me from this angle more than the others. From here I could imagine a scene: connected tunnels, openings, burrows, a purpose. Ramshackle but possibly representing activity or some usefulness in its strung-together structure, like something that allowed the dwellers to make do and get on with whatever it was they did. A bit urban, a bit desperate, a bit neglected. 

Libby arrived finally. We embraced in front of The Membrane. She glanced at it. “Is that supposed to be art?”. I answered in the affirmative. She walked over to read the plaque, like me, needing reassurance that its intention was piece-of-art. “The Membrane” she read. “How ridiculous”, she laughed. Dismissing The Membrane with a toss of her head, she turned away and we headed off via the downwards stairs to Southbank. 

I took the photo of The Membrane this morning when I went back to Fed Square to retrieve my car, and reflected on what a weird evening I had had painting the town with girlfriends. Beginning with The Membrane, everything that happened, happenened in unexpected ways. From being stuck in traffic and losing Libby at the start of the evening, to finding ourselves invited to dinner with a large group office workers, to dancing in a bar later to Leo Sayer (!), being unexpectedly reuinted with a colleague/flame after fifteen years and getting home at a quarter to three!

A Little Ray of Sunshine

“A little ray of sunshine 

Has come into the world

A little ray of sunshine

In the shape of a girl”

by Glen Shorrack (The Little River Band).

In the mornings the sun streams through the large window at the front of our house. Sally’s window art comes alive and casts colourful dots into the room. If you look closely, each little speck of colour is an individually crafted work of art portraying her shiney young and joyful view of the world. 

Sally’s joy and love is captured in her artwork. It spills off the windows… 

… and onto vases:

This vase has happy little fish added to it.

This one has smiley faces, hearts and flowers.

On this one, Sally has added a little bee in a garden of flowers.

She’s my Little Ray of Sunshine.

The Hot Pink Coat

Last night I went to a theme party. You had to go dressed up as your favorite character from TV. My daughters went as: Ash Ketchum (from Pokemon), Sponge Bob, Mulan and Robin the Boy Wonder. The hub went as Leonardo (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).  This is the story of how I chose my character.

I’ve had a busy week. I’ve been teaching, had a couple of seminars to attend in town, had heaps of errands to run (like getting the operating system on my laptop upgraded) and out in the evening twice during the week: once to dinner with girlfriends and once to a primary school disco decoration-making working bee. The theme for the disco this year is Outer Space. At the working bee I drank too much champagne and covered trillions of donated CDs with sparkly contact (these will hang from a large net on the ceiling and reflect the disco lights). And on top of that, the Real Estate Agent wanted to bring people through our house to begin the process of selling. 

On the night before the house inspection we had a massive tidy-up. I even finally decided to tackle the tiles on the kitchen walls that had been ‘burnt’ a few weeks ago. I had been heating up a pan of olive oil, forgot about it, the result being greasy, black stains on the tiles above the stove. When I tried to clean the tiles I could get one layer of black off, but the remaining layer was impossible to shift. I tried detergent, Ajax surface spray, Jiff, bathroom tile cleaner and I would have tried suger soap but we were out of it. Every cleaning agent I tried just seemed to shift the greasy black from one spot to another. It looked dreadful on the cream tiles. Out of sheer desperation I decided to give the Windex a whirl. I couldn’t believe the result! The grease dissolved before my eyes. It wiped completely clean with no effort at all. I am not a sharer-of-house-cleaning-tips by any stretch of the imagination, but I was so impressed with the Windex that I felt like ringing all of my friends to pass this one on. I called my family in to witness the miracle. “Look: this is what happens if I use the Ajax. Now look at the Windex”. Squirt! “Wow!!!”.

I’m not the only one who knows about the special powers of Windex either. The young man at the Apple Computer Shop used it to clean the keys on my laptop for me when I went to pick it up. He extolled the virtues of Windex (ammonia-free) to me as he cleaned. He said it was possible to purchase expensive cleaning agents for the keyboards. “But they probably are made of this stuff”, he beamed as he held up his Windex bottle. I told him my Windex cleaning story. He nodded and anticipated parts of the story, finishing my last sentence for me, “and it dissolved completely?”. “Yes!”. We smiled at eachother, bonded for a moment by shared awe for Windex. (I have never felt so connected to a computer sales person before!).

When Kathleen asked me to decide on my costume for the fancy dress I said I wanted to go as Kaptain Windex! “No you can’t! You just made that up. It has to be a character from TV”. “Damn, I’ll have to save that one for a super hero party“.  

I was stumped, tired, uninspired and considering piking on the whole dress-up thing. “Come on mum”, said my kids, already costumed-up themselves, “get off Facebook and think of a costume”. Then it hit me! I could wear my hot pink Donna Koran coat, recently purchased in New York on a whim and not yet worn (due to the fact that it is incredibly loud), and go as Agent 99 from Get Smart, my all-time favorite TV show from the seventies. 

I promised Kate I would tell the story of the first time I wore the coat. My promise has now been fulfilled and here is a pic to cap it all off:

 

Next time I will listen

I kid myself that I have psychic powers. No. What I’m really trying to say is that I have an inner voice. This inner voice rings alarm bells when things don’t feel right. It has premonitions. It comes up with ideas that are so clever I sometimes wonder if its actually me. The only problem is I generally ignor it.

I pulled up in Richmond the weekend before last to do a spot of shopping in between dropping Emma at a bowling party and picking Kathleen up from drama. I like to check out the shops in Bridge Rd, not necessarliy to always buy. I had time to kill that day. As I parked the car I had a weird premonition that I would meet someone I knew. Sure enough, as I was pulling out of my parking spot half an hour later a close friend wandered into view strolling up the other side of Bridge Rd with her new boyfriend (likely found on the internet, but that’s beside the point).

I was at slalom training last night with Rosie. Despite the down pour of rain we had during our session, we had a lot of fun. Our coach set up a little course for us and timed each of our runs. Rosie is generally faster than me. (A fact I find difficult to swallow). On one of my runs I went really hard and cleared all of the gates to beat Rosie and others in the group by a good three seconds. I basked in my victory, which was short-lived because I didn’t listen to my inner voice. It said, “quit while you are ahead”. I actually felt really tired and didn’t feel like doing another run, but when our coach announced we had time for one more each, I went for it anyway. On the third gate, my hand slipped on the draw stroke and I knocked myself on the helmet with my paddle. This action not only slowed me down a couple of seconds, it was noticed by everyone in the group who launched into fits of laughter. They were still laughing when I completed my run and paddled back up to join them. “Did you notice what I did?”, I asked sheepishly. “Oh yes, it was hilarious!”, replied my coach. “What did it look like?”. “Donk!”. The coach and Rosie delightedly demonstrated knocking themselves in the head with their paddles. “Do I get points for entertainment value?”, I enquired. I laughed along with everyone else despite my embarrasment (laughter being fairly contageous), but I regretted the run. I should have listened to my inner voice. 

Haunting Sounds

Hello Possums. As I write I am listening to a recently acquired CD produced by a long term acquaintance. The CD is called ‘Cloudhands’ by Bruce Rogers. He did engineering with one of my best friends and, through this connection, I have known Bruce for over twenty years. He makes digeridoos, has a successful business and reputation for his craftmanship and artistry world wide. But two weeks ago was the first time I heard him play. 

When you listen to the digeridoo every fibre of your body resonates with the sound. You become transported out of yourself. You imagine damp earth, clean air. You could be a patch of soil, a piece of bark, a bird. Your soul becomes reduced and expanded at once. Reduced in your own significance. Expanded, connected. 

Beautiful V from India, tall and exotic, said after we listened to Bruce’s digeridoo concert “I thought I would have to go back to India to experience spirituality. But I have found it in Australia”. She and her son went with the digeridoo players the following day to protest China in Tibet. The plan was to gather didge players and blow together in protest, using the didge as a horn. Her son played. She was very proud. 

My father came over this moring to take Sally for a bike ride. He has a long standing arrangement with my girls (his grandchildren). Every Saturday he takes at least one of them out on their push bikes. It was his idea. This is how he stays connected with his grand daughters. He shares his love of cycling with them. They talk along the way. 

He reports family news, the latest being: my brother is suffering from stress-related health problems. Situations at work and with is ex take their toll on this easy-going man who wants to avoid confrontation and tries to please everyone. He surfs. He has a great sense of humour. He lives in a tranquil location. He has an adoring wife. Its not enough. 

The didge concert was part of a series. Its African Drums next month. One of the new people I have met recently asked me if I’d heard African Drums played before. I told him that I own a djembe and have practiced on it with a teach yourself CD. He laughed. “You are open to the world”, he said. “What do you mean?”. He explained that, like him, I appear to stay open to learning from what the world has to offer. I took him to mean ‘other cultures’ by ‘the world’, but on second thoughts he could have also been referring to technlology. I do tend to dabble in things. I hold learning in high importantance. I don’t believe modern society has answered the question of how to live well.  

Lust and Friendship Through the Written Word (highlights from NYC continued).

2. I could easily have been a groupie.

I can fall in love (lust) with someone based purely upon their mind. A person’s writing is often taken to be a reflection of their mind. As a creature of modern culture I tend to hold this assumption intuitively. There are two people in particular who have had this effect upon me. One is a fiction author, considerably older than me and not always a popular character. But I loved his writing so much that my bookclub friends roll their eyes and look at me every time his name is mentioned. For my part I can imagine myself lining up just to be with him.

The other person is an educational researcher who presented at the conference in New York. I used one of his papers in defence of my research proposal. I love his work, the way he thinks and the way he writes. Of course I went to see his presentations. His current work was equally as impressive as the work that I had already read about. But the thing that impressed me the most was the way he handled the questions from the audience. He uses a theoretical framework that I think is brilliant. It is cutting-edge. This often makes it difficult to respond to questions from people not familiar with this approach. Sometimes a common language is lacking. The theory he (and I) use resists the separation of mind and body. It takes the person holistically. When his responses to the questions stayed true to an holistic approach I could have kissed him. I went up to him afterwards, admitted one of his papers was important in my study, asked him to send me his current paper and whether or not he would read a draft paper of mine. He said he would. He said, keep in touch. I was stary-eyed. 

3. I met a blogging friend for the first time ever!

Lia from Lubeck was in New York City with her family at the same time that I was there. We had been communicating via facebook and set a time to catch up on my last morning for breakfast. 

We had never seen each other face to face. I waited in the lobby of the Sheridan New York carefully studying the faces of all the people. I wondered if I would recognise Lia and whether she would recognise me. I was looking for hints of recognition in people’s eyes, expectant looks, familiar features when suddenly she appeared right in front of me. There was no doubt. I recongised her instantly. It was a happy moment. 

Over breakfast we talked about our adventures in New York, her new job waiting for her to return home, our shared interest in education, our separate research interests, our families, language, life…

She and her family were staying in an apartment. She had been in NYC longer than I had and I could tell she was in holiday mode. She and her two children had been taking in New York. She told a funny story about her desire to witness sun rise over Brooklyn Bridge. The reality of setting off with her children in the dark, cold, deserted New York pre-dawn to do it was not what she’d been imagining. 

Although it was the first time we had met face to face, her company was easy. When we parted she gave me some marzipan from Lubeck coated in dark chocolate. I was touched by her generosity. I have learnt that sharing stories across the ether in the land of Blog can result in friendships rich and warm. And new addictions (where to find that marzipan here…?).

 

Some highlights from my week in NYC

Hello Possums. I have come home from New York City with too many stories. Life goes on and as it does more stories develop. Let me capture some of the highlights from New York before they are completely forgotten (at Charlotte’s request). Here is a collection of highlights from my week in NYC:

1. The Empire State (and other adventures) with Karl.

With a gentle, affable young colleague of mine, I climbed to the top of the Empire State Building at 11 o’clock at night. We took in the retro magnifience of its interior. At the top, despite the freezing temperature and strong cold wind, we went onto the exterior deck. We walked around stopping frequently to stare out onto the sprawling brightness of New York to the horizon in every direction. We pointed out familiar landmarks to each other, including the brightly lit bridges. 

Back on the streets we walked slowly in the direction of our hotel. We were enjoying each other’s company and kept our eyes open for a nice bar to go to. In Broadway we met a police road block. They let us through when we were able to produce our hotel keys. No sooner than we had passed the barricade, a mass of rowdy black youth (girls and guys) rushed towards us yelling and screaming. A large group of police followed them running also. I grabbed Karl’s arm and pulled him out of their way into 47th street and we took slight refuge next to a nut vendor and his cart. After they rushed by, we continued tentatively on our way. We had not been threatened and had whitnessed no violence. The young people looked very well dressed and not incredibly angry. The reason for the stampede was unclear. I half expected to come across a brawl or some sort of ruckus at one of the venues, but nothing could be gleaned from the quiet street after we had left the immediate scene. Karl and I were perplexed.

The following night, Karl and I went to the 65th floor above Radio City. There we enjoyed cocktails overlooking New York City through floor to ceiling windows. We wandered the streets afterwards looking for a place to go, but we hadn’t planned anything. We were both content to walk and talk. 

“If I lived in New York City”, I said, “I would take up smoking”.

Karl laughed and then confessed. “I gave up smoking. But just today I went out and bought a pack of tobacco”.

“You have rollies? Lets have one”.

“But you don’t smoke”.

“No, I’ve never had the habit, but I like the occasional rollie, especially after a drink”.

He laughed again. We walked and talked and smoked for I don’t know how long. 

In the end we found ourselves in the bar at the Sheridon. The bar man made a fuss over pouring me a tequila. It was almost two in the morning when I got back to my room. 

Later in the week I heard that there was a movie being shot in Broadway around the time Karl and I witnessed the “riot”. I texted him the news. He shot back a quick reply about keeping an eye out to see if we make it into the movie as extras.

Yesterday, I thought of Karl, his easy company and the adventures we had together in New York (three weeks ago now). I punched a message into my phone and pressed send, “Hi. How’s things. Are you still smoking?”. “No, I managed to leave the dirty habit in New York. Are you well?”, he replied. 

Its funny how conferences throw people together. Karl is much younger than me. Whilst we will work together in the future and possibly catch up socially with the larger group, it is highly unlikely that we will ever just “hang out” in Melbourne like we did so easily in New York.