I have tended lately to blog only when I have found the time to do so rather than make the time like I once did. There are a few reasons for that, a busy job, a more settled life, and sometimes maybe a lack of inspiration. I think all bloggers face that at times. I once had delusions of being a writer and blogging was a vindication of that, there were plenty of visitors, a lot of comments and Technorati links of more than 100.
But it was hard work getting there, lots of memes done, linking to lots of people, some of whom I never read, commenting on as many blogs as possible in the hope that they would visit mine etc. And the nature of my posts keeps changing - at one stage I was trying to maintain three separate blogs but since blogger allowed the feature of merging them into one, I did that.
Lack of time has also meant that I haven't found as much time to visit those of you who I consider to be my blogging friends so first and formost I apologise for that. I do still try and return the favour of commenting back on people's blogs who show me the courtesy of doing the same and I try and visit those who follow me. But instead of daily, that tends to be something of a weekly event.
If I was to line up every post on this blog and try and put them into a category I would say that the majority may fall into the reflective category, followed by current events in my life, things that have moved and or angered me, and a bit of whimsy thrown in now and then. I once thought that there was a theme but I do tend to wander a bit more widely now in my thoguhts than I once did. I think that I've let go of some of the loneliness and anger that categorised a lot of the early stuff but what I'm moving onto I will only know when I get there.
So if there is a meme to this post then let it be this. Tell me what the theme of your blog is and how it has changed over time. I tag all those who follow me, all those I follow and anyone else who is on my blogroll or who cares to comment.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
One loaf short of a curl
I was coming in on the train this morning and was sitting near a bloke with shoulder length curly hair who looked a liitle like James May with the craggy features of Don Chipp and the beginnings of a Friar Tuck tonsure. Which will mean nothing to anyone who wasn't a Top Gear watching, Australian Democrat voting, Robin Hood fan of roughly my vintage.
And before I cop too much flack let me explain that I did in the dim deep past vote Australian Democrat when Chippy was party leader and before they became wig wam living, tofu and lentil eating believers in the doomsday version of climate change and that trees have souls. Not that I'm saying trees don't have souls, just that for me the jury is still out, just like it is for global warming, which is another whole reason for a blog post.
But I digress.
Seeing the curly hair on this bloke on the train [remember him from paragraph one] reminded me of my two male cousins on my Mum's side, both of whom had curly hair. Actually I had three male cousins but one of those is 10 years younger than me and therefore he is set aside for the purposes of this story. My hair, on the other hand was straight and I always had a crew cut as a kid, so it wasn't until the 70's came and I grew my hair that I found out it did have a bit of a wave. But both these guys had tight ringlets and I couldn't understand why given we had at least one set of grandparents who were the same that I didn't end up with curly hair too. Any knowledge of genetics and hereditary were still a long way in my future.
Then my Mum came up with a fantastic bit of folk wisdom - "Eat your crusts and your hair will curl" she told me. So I did. I even took to eating everyone elses crusts and it didn't work. Sometime around the time I stopped believing in Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny, I stopped believing that crust eating would curl my hair. As it turned out one of those cousins joined the army and had his head shaved and the other grew his long but spent so much time trying to comb it straight that he went prematurely bald.
I like to think that Mum didn't really lie to me. That maybe I just had stubborn hair. After all when I did grow it long it did have a bit of a wave to it. Maybe I was just one loaf short.
And before I cop too much flack let me explain that I did in the dim deep past vote Australian Democrat when Chippy was party leader and before they became wig wam living, tofu and lentil eating believers in the doomsday version of climate change and that trees have souls. Not that I'm saying trees don't have souls, just that for me the jury is still out, just like it is for global warming, which is another whole reason for a blog post.
But I digress.
Seeing the curly hair on this bloke on the train [remember him from paragraph one] reminded me of my two male cousins on my Mum's side, both of whom had curly hair. Actually I had three male cousins but one of those is 10 years younger than me and therefore he is set aside for the purposes of this story. My hair, on the other hand was straight and I always had a crew cut as a kid, so it wasn't until the 70's came and I grew my hair that I found out it did have a bit of a wave. But both these guys had tight ringlets and I couldn't understand why given we had at least one set of grandparents who were the same that I didn't end up with curly hair too. Any knowledge of genetics and hereditary were still a long way in my future.
Then my Mum came up with a fantastic bit of folk wisdom - "Eat your crusts and your hair will curl" she told me. So I did. I even took to eating everyone elses crusts and it didn't work. Sometime around the time I stopped believing in Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny, I stopped believing that crust eating would curl my hair. As it turned out one of those cousins joined the army and had his head shaved and the other grew his long but spent so much time trying to comb it straight that he went prematurely bald.
I like to think that Mum didn't really lie to me. That maybe I just had stubborn hair. After all when I did grow it long it did have a bit of a wave to it. Maybe I was just one loaf short.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Changing Language
I've noticed another trend in the pronunciation of a word recently and I don't know why these things happen. Given you my readers [sounds like there's a lot doesn't there :)] are from many different places around the world let's see if you can help me here.
My name is Laurie, short for Laurence having been named for an Uncle who was killed by the Japanese when they invaded Rabaul in World War 2. Now the phonetic pronunciation of my name is like that of the truck - "lorry". Some of my American work colleagues call me Lawry, and a Malaysian guy I used to work with called be Rorry and himseld Lobert - I didn't get that.
Anyway the word I'm actually talking about today is worry which I pronounce wurry as in slurry. But I've noticed a lot of people lately pronouncing it worry as in sorry or lorry. What is that? Where did it come from and how do you say it?
My name is Laurie, short for Laurence having been named for an Uncle who was killed by the Japanese when they invaded Rabaul in World War 2. Now the phonetic pronunciation of my name is like that of the truck - "lorry". Some of my American work colleagues call me Lawry, and a Malaysian guy I used to work with called be Rorry and himseld Lobert - I didn't get that.
Anyway the word I'm actually talking about today is worry which I pronounce wurry as in slurry. But I've noticed a lot of people lately pronouncing it worry as in sorry or lorry. What is that? Where did it come from and how do you say it?
Prius Drivers the new Volvo Drivers
Everyone knows that it is best to avoid certain types of drivers - mothers dropping kids to school, old men wearing hats, young men wearing baseball caps backwards, women applying mascara and of course anyone who drives a Volvo. Each and everyone of these classes of people seem pretty much oblivious to other road users.
Well let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, having had the pleasure of driving to work several times over the past couple of weeks or so, I want to add another group to the list. Prius drivers, absolute tools. Maybe they think driving an semi-electric car shows they have a green conscience and the rest of us owe them something. I've been cut off, held up, denied lanes and found my presence totally ignored by these Prius driving priapic pricks. And yes I know there is a certain tautology about that statement but I don't care.
Well let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, having had the pleasure of driving to work several times over the past couple of weeks or so, I want to add another group to the list. Prius drivers, absolute tools. Maybe they think driving an semi-electric car shows they have a green conscience and the rest of us owe them something. I've been cut off, held up, denied lanes and found my presence totally ignored by these Prius driving priapic pricks. And yes I know there is a certain tautology about that statement but I don't care.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Remember 911
I am not going to write a long post about this because many writers better than me will do so but I think I would to spend a little time reflecting. There aren't too many events in a lifetime where you can remember the exact thing you were doing when you first heard about it. For me they include such things as the murder of John Lennon, Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, the death of the Princess of Wales and seared into my brain are the events of 911.
I was working two jobs at the time, full time as a security consultant and another 40 hours a week, supposedly part time as the Executive Officer of the Victorian Basketball League. I'd come home from one job and sit down immediately to start work on the other. That was the source of my ex-wifes comments that even when I was home I wasn't there, and maybe there was some truth to that even if it was unfair. But I digress.
In April 2001 I had attended a Counter Terrorist Conference in Washington DC and there were a number of keynote speakers form the US Intelligence community. There were two major topics of conversation. The first the fragmentary nature of the US CT effort and the second the threat Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden posed to the West.
So after my usual 16 hour working day on September 11 2001 I sat down and turned the TV on to watch the late news and watched in horror the footage of those planes crashing into the twin towers. I spent the next several weeks in my security consultant role gethering and analysing whatever open source information we could find, writing threat assessments for our clients and reliving that horror as more and more details were revealed.
In my other role I had been organising our teams to compete in a National Basketball final series to be held in Bendigo which were cancelled because at the same time the domestic airline Ansett collapsed and I fielded a lot of complaints from people about how upset they were at the cancellation. I wrote an article for our website at the time which said in part that we needed to put things into proper context. Around the world tonight are, I wrote, are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, who would never see their loved ones again, not because those people had done anything wrong, but because someone somewhere had randomly chosen that they were to die as a part of campaign of hatred, as a symbol of philosophical difference. I told people to put things into proper context, that the cancellation of a basketball series was not something which could truly be considered a disaster. Crashing aeroplanes into buildings and destroying lives was a disaster and we should remember the sacrifice of those brave men and women who selflessly entered those burning buildings in an effort to save others lives.
On Friday I asked a number of people at work if they knew what the day was and for most it took a while to make the connection. That came as a surprise to me and the only comfort I took was that when it hit them what the date was that there was an element of embarassment that they had forgotten. Let us never forget because if we do and we let our guard down these things can happen again - we've seen it on October 12 a year later in Bali and on July 7 2005 in London.
I was working two jobs at the time, full time as a security consultant and another 40 hours a week, supposedly part time as the Executive Officer of the Victorian Basketball League. I'd come home from one job and sit down immediately to start work on the other. That was the source of my ex-wifes comments that even when I was home I wasn't there, and maybe there was some truth to that even if it was unfair. But I digress.
In April 2001 I had attended a Counter Terrorist Conference in Washington DC and there were a number of keynote speakers form the US Intelligence community. There were two major topics of conversation. The first the fragmentary nature of the US CT effort and the second the threat Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden posed to the West.
So after my usual 16 hour working day on September 11 2001 I sat down and turned the TV on to watch the late news and watched in horror the footage of those planes crashing into the twin towers. I spent the next several weeks in my security consultant role gethering and analysing whatever open source information we could find, writing threat assessments for our clients and reliving that horror as more and more details were revealed.
In my other role I had been organising our teams to compete in a National Basketball final series to be held in Bendigo which were cancelled because at the same time the domestic airline Ansett collapsed and I fielded a lot of complaints from people about how upset they were at the cancellation. I wrote an article for our website at the time which said in part that we needed to put things into proper context. Around the world tonight are, I wrote, are mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, who would never see their loved ones again, not because those people had done anything wrong, but because someone somewhere had randomly chosen that they were to die as a part of campaign of hatred, as a symbol of philosophical difference. I told people to put things into proper context, that the cancellation of a basketball series was not something which could truly be considered a disaster. Crashing aeroplanes into buildings and destroying lives was a disaster and we should remember the sacrifice of those brave men and women who selflessly entered those burning buildings in an effort to save others lives.
On Friday I asked a number of people at work if they knew what the day was and for most it took a while to make the connection. That came as a surprise to me and the only comfort I took was that when it hit them what the date was that there was an element of embarassment that they had forgotten. Let us never forget because if we do and we let our guard down these things can happen again - we've seen it on October 12 a year later in Bali and on July 7 2005 in London.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Musical Monday - My Little Girl
It's been a long time since I did a musical Monday post but having spent yesterday reflecting on what it's like to be a father I thought I'd post this one for my daughters.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Happy Fathers Day
My Dad died on 14th August 2004, a little over five years ago and that was the catalyst for starting this blog and in so many ways the trigger for most of the changes in my life. It was the moment when the midlife episode hit leading to an awakening and a realisation that things would never be the same again. There's been good and bad since that time for me. I have changed, in some ways becoming more honest, mainly with myself. I have learnt where I was weak and in the process I think I have become a better person. But you know what, hardly a day goes by when I do't think of my Dad, when I don't wish that our relationship had been better, that I had taken the time to spend more time with him, that instead of being just father and son, that we had also been mates.
And I sometimes wonder in looking at myself in terms of that relationship, how I might have been a better father to my kids. I know now that my biggest failure as a person is that I am a master at keping feelings to myself. Ironically that has been seen as a strength by many work colleagues because they percieve me as someone who is cool calm and collected and always in control. They don't realise that sometimes that facade is hiding a little boy who sometimes quakes in hs boots.
That little boy tends to reflect on days like today. I remember going to the local shopping centre on Saturday mornings and getting a hair cut with Dad and then sprinting along the street to the milk bar for a milkshake. I remember him sitting on my bad at night smelling of beer and cigarettes and fetching me a glass of water. I remember the cubby houses we would build out of sheets of masonite he would bring home from work, and the days spent setting up my cowboys and indians and farm yards on the lounge room floor. I remember playing marbles in the backyard.
After I separated from my then wife and whilst I was living alone in a flat no one came to about two years after Dad died he came to me and sat on my bed. I know I was more than likely asleep but it was a very vivid dream and I was once again that little boy who got comfort from that nightly visit by his Dad.
I expect to see three of my four kids today. I fear it's not because they want to but because they think they should and maybe that is a reflection of the type of father I have been. My ex did tell me after I left that they kids had discussed things and thought that I was never there when they were growing up. And it's true I worked long hours but I never missed an event or any of the many games of sport they played. I didn't play cowboys and indians with my sons, nor marbles, nor did we build cubby houses, but we played basketball and built lego towns and I read them stories at night whilst they fell asleep. Could I have done more? Undoubtedly. But I was what I was and that is all I was.
For anyone who is interested I have looked back over the posts on this blog and found some familiar themes in older posts.
Bad Jokes Good Father?
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Father
Things I miss
Cats in the Cradle
Parents and the Damage Done
Josie's Interview Part 2 - A non-sozzled Loz
So if you happen to be lucky enough to still have your Dad, make sure you contact him today and tell him you love him. Don't end up with some of the regrets that I have. And if you happen to be a Dad make sure you also tell your kids how much you love them, that if at times there have been some cats in the cradle moments, that is a weakness most fathers have. We carry that burden of provider, pre-programmed into us and for some of us it is something we will bear till the end of our days. If we're lucky our inevitable midlife episode may give us a shake and awaken us to some of the other possibilities. Maybe that's why some of us make far better grandparents than parents. Perhaps being that little further down the road means that we can choose to live the moment differently.
And I sometimes wonder in looking at myself in terms of that relationship, how I might have been a better father to my kids. I know now that my biggest failure as a person is that I am a master at keping feelings to myself. Ironically that has been seen as a strength by many work colleagues because they percieve me as someone who is cool calm and collected and always in control. They don't realise that sometimes that facade is hiding a little boy who sometimes quakes in hs boots.
That little boy tends to reflect on days like today. I remember going to the local shopping centre on Saturday mornings and getting a hair cut with Dad and then sprinting along the street to the milk bar for a milkshake. I remember him sitting on my bad at night smelling of beer and cigarettes and fetching me a glass of water. I remember the cubby houses we would build out of sheets of masonite he would bring home from work, and the days spent setting up my cowboys and indians and farm yards on the lounge room floor. I remember playing marbles in the backyard.
After I separated from my then wife and whilst I was living alone in a flat no one came to about two years after Dad died he came to me and sat on my bed. I know I was more than likely asleep but it was a very vivid dream and I was once again that little boy who got comfort from that nightly visit by his Dad.
I expect to see three of my four kids today. I fear it's not because they want to but because they think they should and maybe that is a reflection of the type of father I have been. My ex did tell me after I left that they kids had discussed things and thought that I was never there when they were growing up. And it's true I worked long hours but I never missed an event or any of the many games of sport they played. I didn't play cowboys and indians with my sons, nor marbles, nor did we build cubby houses, but we played basketball and built lego towns and I read them stories at night whilst they fell asleep. Could I have done more? Undoubtedly. But I was what I was and that is all I was.
For anyone who is interested I have looked back over the posts on this blog and found some familiar themes in older posts.
Bad Jokes Good Father?
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Father
Things I miss
Cats in the Cradle
Parents and the Damage Done
Josie's Interview Part 2 - A non-sozzled Loz
So if you happen to be lucky enough to still have your Dad, make sure you contact him today and tell him you love him. Don't end up with some of the regrets that I have. And if you happen to be a Dad make sure you also tell your kids how much you love them, that if at times there have been some cats in the cradle moments, that is a weakness most fathers have. We carry that burden of provider, pre-programmed into us and for some of us it is something we will bear till the end of our days. If we're lucky our inevitable midlife episode may give us a shake and awaken us to some of the other possibilities. Maybe that's why some of us make far better grandparents than parents. Perhaps being that little further down the road means that we can choose to live the moment differently.
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