I had the best Australia Day that I’ve had for a good many years. Brunch with the closest thing I have to family in Darwin, and then a barbeque and game of cricket at Lee Point, followed by a critical review of the Triple J hottest 100, and a public discussion on how much more awesome than England we are. It wasn’t extravagant, deeply-moving or particularly well organised, but as I stood with my cold coke at deep mid on and watched my friends and compatriots trying to bowl outswingers with a tennis ball, found myself thinking
“Yeah, this is the way it should be.”
It was such a gloriously simple affair that it made me realise how simple it can be to have the absolute time of your life. All we needed was some crude sports equipment and a critical mass of friends around and we were set. To me, it was all the evidence I needed that Australian culture, while unable to be defined by academics or social commentators who think they’re academics or self-opinionated bloggers who think they’re social commentators (Yes, I do include myself in that last category) is actually tangible.
It’s hard to believe that all that was just 24 hours ago as I now sit here at my desk at work. I’ve once again come to the end of my list of things to achieve today (it’s currently 10:00am as I write this) but all my supervisors are too busy and important to set me anything new to do.
The simplest answer would be to just sit here and browse the internet and make myself look just as busy and important as everyone else. Unfortunately my desk is immediately adjacent to the HR manager’s desk. My HR manager (who, by the way, is English; make of that what you will) has been known in the past to make less than subtle observations to me if she hasn’t heard my keyboard making any noise for a while. So now I’m writing a blog post at work, because in order to keep HR off my back, I need to make sure my keyboard is making noise.
“Yeah, this is the opposite of the way it should be”.
I realise that most people don’t like having to work for a living, but I’ve come to the realisation that I really don’t like my job. The idea of what I’m supposed to be employed to do sounds magnificent, but the amount of time I spend actually doing that seems to be minimal.
To top it off, my car is still sitting in the Ford mechanic’s car park waiting to be dealt with. There’s a whole other post coming on that epic and tragic saga, but suffice it to say that despite my grand dreams of a new decade in which I’d be zipping all over the city working on outlandish schemes for whoever needed me, four weeks in I’m still grounded and now spend my weekends whinging about my job to… whoever happens to bother reading this (I’m going to go with… no-one, with the possible exception of my sister who will get a link on her blogger dashboard).
Furthermore, I still haven’t generated a convincing sign-off line, so for this week I’m going to have to borrow someone else’s. I promise I’ll give it back when I’m finished with it.
Thanks for watching Spicks and Specks. My name's Adam Hills. Goodnight Australia.
Garry with 2 Rs
27 January 2010
13 January 2010
Flueber's Theorm
Okay. So I’ve settled into my new life in Darwin. I’ve landed a job which, while not the most stimulating or challenging role I’ve ever filled, is keeping me out of mischief (or at least, forcing me to concentrate my mischief on weekends). I’ve bought myself a car (and then smashed it into the beast from Marlow’s Lagoon – still waiting on the quote from the insurance assessor to come through). I’ve come to grips with the fact that I live in Palmerston. So I guess it’s time to come clean on what I’m really doing here.
In the spring of 1976 a Dutch mathematician named Hans Flueber theorised that for all X where X is acted upon by an exterior force (let’s call that force “Garry with 2 Rs”), the probability that Garry with 2 Rs would act upon X was inversely proportional to the number of well meaning friends telling him he should totally act upon X.
Obviously old Hans faced a few challenges when it came to proving his theory. Firstly, it didn’t have any numbers in it, so all his mathematician friends started laughing at him. Secondly, I (Garry with 2 Rs) wasn’t born until 1983, which, while proving how far ahead of his time Flueber was, made it difficult to define a meaningful set of testable variables. Also, he was mute, invisible, a pirate and made of grape flavoured jelly, so people tended not to take him seriously.
The point is (yeah, believe it or not, there is one) I’ve decided that while I’m here and not suffering from the same shackles and obligations that many of my friends do (spouses, children, a social or biological imperative to grow up and act responsibly, etc.) now is the perfect time to launch a theory of my own (this time it’s real. I’m not made of jelly or any other sort of desert as far as I know. I do really like ice cream though).
Wait… I just read back over the second paragraph. I think I should clarify; X is not a woman. X is more abstract, and basically stands for the stuff everyone tells you that you should do, because it’s established social convention, or popular ‘wisdom’ dictates it as the appropriate choice.
Where was I?
Yes. My theory is that in a city the size of Darwin, for a citizen of that city as well known to many of its other citizens as I am and for someone who’s been bouncing around the Christian scene for as long as I have, it is not necessary to limit one’s abilities and influences to the service of just one branch thereof. If that didn’t make any sense to you, don’t panic. It’s only just starting to make sense to me. For now, I’ll just introduce you to my first running total for this year. It’s over there on the right hand side of the blog, under my profile description (maybe I should update that too… although I think all that stuff is still true).
I had my first conversation with someone who told me I needed to get planted last weekend. While I respect the opinion of the man who told me this, he’s completely wrong. I'm convinced that it's possible to be a functional member of the Church of Darwin without confining myself to membership of just one congregation. This year, I intend to prove it.
I aim to misbehave
Garry with 2 Rs
(Yeah, I know I can’t actually use that as my new sign off, since it’s already been done by Captain Reynolds. It would be awesome though…)
In the spring of 1976 a Dutch mathematician named Hans Flueber theorised that for all X where X is acted upon by an exterior force (let’s call that force “Garry with 2 Rs”), the probability that Garry with 2 Rs would act upon X was inversely proportional to the number of well meaning friends telling him he should totally act upon X.
Obviously old Hans faced a few challenges when it came to proving his theory. Firstly, it didn’t have any numbers in it, so all his mathematician friends started laughing at him. Secondly, I (Garry with 2 Rs) wasn’t born until 1983, which, while proving how far ahead of his time Flueber was, made it difficult to define a meaningful set of testable variables. Also, he was mute, invisible, a pirate and made of grape flavoured jelly, so people tended not to take him seriously.
The point is (yeah, believe it or not, there is one) I’ve decided that while I’m here and not suffering from the same shackles and obligations that many of my friends do (spouses, children, a social or biological imperative to grow up and act responsibly, etc.) now is the perfect time to launch a theory of my own (this time it’s real. I’m not made of jelly or any other sort of desert as far as I know. I do really like ice cream though).
Wait… I just read back over the second paragraph. I think I should clarify; X is not a woman. X is more abstract, and basically stands for the stuff everyone tells you that you should do, because it’s established social convention, or popular ‘wisdom’ dictates it as the appropriate choice.
Where was I?
Yes. My theory is that in a city the size of Darwin, for a citizen of that city as well known to many of its other citizens as I am and for someone who’s been bouncing around the Christian scene for as long as I have, it is not necessary to limit one’s abilities and influences to the service of just one branch thereof. If that didn’t make any sense to you, don’t panic. It’s only just starting to make sense to me. For now, I’ll just introduce you to my first running total for this year. It’s over there on the right hand side of the blog, under my profile description (maybe I should update that too… although I think all that stuff is still true).
I had my first conversation with someone who told me I needed to get planted last weekend. While I respect the opinion of the man who told me this, he’s completely wrong. I'm convinced that it's possible to be a functional member of the Church of Darwin without confining myself to membership of just one congregation. This year, I intend to prove it.
I aim to misbehave
Garry with 2 Rs
(Yeah, I know I can’t actually use that as my new sign off, since it’s already been done by Captain Reynolds. It would be awesome though…)
09 January 2010
Not my best start ever
And so the New Year has rolled around. A year for finally sending down some roots. A year for laying the foundations for making something semi-permanent (or least, slightly less piecemeal) of myself. A year for getting around to some of those ambitions that never really made sense without a stable base of operations.
And a year for getting over the old black layout and … basically renovating my entire blog. Fear not (or alternatively… be appropriately afraid); I’ll still be documenting my adventures in ecumenical mischief with the same unjustifiable arrogance as ever. I just can’t really claim to be far from home anymore. That ship has sailed. And then come back.
This is also a year for doing something about the black hole of financial disasters that was 2009. I’ve set out budgets, planned my repayments and got everything categorised in nice neat boxes. This was an entirely unnatural process for me, so used to flying by the seat of my pants and touching the ground only long enough to take stock of my next leap and, on occasion, to repair the seat of my pants.
I was feeling so unreasonably proud of myself that I must have upset the universe somehow. It seems to be an immutable fact of life that just when it looks like I can sort myself into some sort of rhythm and make some sort of progress, the universe bowls me a googly.
I was piloting the GSS Tarrdis home after celebrating New Year’s Eve in town. I had almost reached the outskirts of Palmerston and was reflecting on what a good run home I’d had. Not another car on the road, no pounding monsoonal downpours and no bastard in a four wheel drive tailgating me all the way along the highway. I didn’t even come across a breathalyser, despite us all having been assured by the police that they were going to check every single driver on New Year’s Eve. Darwin doesn’t have that many roads in and out, but apparently they couldn’t quite cover both of them. No sooner had I thought this than I ran headlong into a subspace anomaly.
Okay, it wasn’t so much a rift in space-time as it was some sort of animal. At the time, I believed it to be a dog, but closer inspection of the dent in my car suggested it may have been a hippo. Either way, there wasn’t much left of it after it stepped into my headlights as I approached at 100 km/h. I take some comfort in the knowledge that it was certainly killed instantly, and probably literally didn’t know what hit it. Shaken, but not stirred, I continued home.
The next day, I inspected the damage. There was dented panelling where I had hit the buffalo and some of the undercarriage had been bent out of shape. I thought it looked nasty, but she would hold up until I took her in for her first service. I hopped in to drive to the supermarket. There was a nasty buzzing sound coming from the bonnet, but I figured that was the dented panelling vibrating. Then the check oil light came on. I decided at that point that I should probably take her into the mechanic on Monday. I drove out of the carport and she stalled. I started her up again and decided to take an experimental lap around the block before I braved the main road. She stalled twice more, before giving up altogether just as I got back to the front gate of our complex. She bluntly refused to start again, so I coasted to a stop and parked on the side of the road outside our unit.
Monday morning I called the Ford service centre and had the Tarrdis towed in to start the fun. The mechanic was a little confused as to what I was doing there, since the receptionist hadn’t filled out the job folder properly, so I explained that I had hit an elephant and torn an oil line somewhere, among other things. I left the car in his capable (I hope) hands and caught a bus in to Casuarina to speak with the insurance folk.
I’m pretty sure the girl at AAMI is thoroughly sick of me. I must have been in to see her half a dozen times at least while trying to get the documentation for my loan sorted out, which wasn’t that long ago. She had a strange look in her eye as I approached. I couldn’t decipher whether it was a look that said “Oh good grief, what is it now?” or one that said “Hmm… perhaps he’ll bring me flowers this time.” Maybe both. She was a little surprised that I was making a claim so soon after having bought the car, but I explained that I had run into a brachiosaurus on my way home from New Year’s and she started processing the claim for me.
Meanwhile, the mechanics had finished their diagnostic tests on my car. Apparently the collision tore the oil filter off and crushed the radiator against the body of the engine. All involved were suitably impressed that I had successfully made it home without the whole thing bursting into flames.
Unfortunately, the protocol of these situations is that the insurance assessor then travels to the workshop to inspect the damage and approve the plans of the mechanics to repair it. The mechanics can’t touch the car until they get approval from the assessor. A week later I’m still waiting to hear back from this mysterious and apparently prohibitively busy assessor. I was going to wait until I heard back before posting this so I could present the full saga in one instalment, but it’s now Saturday and I’m once again stranded in Palmerston for the weekend and it’s raining outside and I’m bored, so I decided to start blogging to keep the tedium at bay for a few minutes more by sharing it with you.
I suppose it is somewhat appropriate in this, the season of new starts, that here I am; right back where I started from.
Insert yet to be determined, classy yet quirky new sign off line here.
Garry with 2 Rs
And a year for getting over the old black layout and … basically renovating my entire blog. Fear not (or alternatively… be appropriately afraid); I’ll still be documenting my adventures in ecumenical mischief with the same unjustifiable arrogance as ever. I just can’t really claim to be far from home anymore. That ship has sailed. And then come back.
This is also a year for doing something about the black hole of financial disasters that was 2009. I’ve set out budgets, planned my repayments and got everything categorised in nice neat boxes. This was an entirely unnatural process for me, so used to flying by the seat of my pants and touching the ground only long enough to take stock of my next leap and, on occasion, to repair the seat of my pants.
I was feeling so unreasonably proud of myself that I must have upset the universe somehow. It seems to be an immutable fact of life that just when it looks like I can sort myself into some sort of rhythm and make some sort of progress, the universe bowls me a googly.
I was piloting the GSS Tarrdis home after celebrating New Year’s Eve in town. I had almost reached the outskirts of Palmerston and was reflecting on what a good run home I’d had. Not another car on the road, no pounding monsoonal downpours and no bastard in a four wheel drive tailgating me all the way along the highway. I didn’t even come across a breathalyser, despite us all having been assured by the police that they were going to check every single driver on New Year’s Eve. Darwin doesn’t have that many roads in and out, but apparently they couldn’t quite cover both of them. No sooner had I thought this than I ran headlong into a subspace anomaly.
Okay, it wasn’t so much a rift in space-time as it was some sort of animal. At the time, I believed it to be a dog, but closer inspection of the dent in my car suggested it may have been a hippo. Either way, there wasn’t much left of it after it stepped into my headlights as I approached at 100 km/h. I take some comfort in the knowledge that it was certainly killed instantly, and probably literally didn’t know what hit it. Shaken, but not stirred, I continued home.
The next day, I inspected the damage. There was dented panelling where I had hit the buffalo and some of the undercarriage had been bent out of shape. I thought it looked nasty, but she would hold up until I took her in for her first service. I hopped in to drive to the supermarket. There was a nasty buzzing sound coming from the bonnet, but I figured that was the dented panelling vibrating. Then the check oil light came on. I decided at that point that I should probably take her into the mechanic on Monday. I drove out of the carport and she stalled. I started her up again and decided to take an experimental lap around the block before I braved the main road. She stalled twice more, before giving up altogether just as I got back to the front gate of our complex. She bluntly refused to start again, so I coasted to a stop and parked on the side of the road outside our unit.
Monday morning I called the Ford service centre and had the Tarrdis towed in to start the fun. The mechanic was a little confused as to what I was doing there, since the receptionist hadn’t filled out the job folder properly, so I explained that I had hit an elephant and torn an oil line somewhere, among other things. I left the car in his capable (I hope) hands and caught a bus in to Casuarina to speak with the insurance folk.
I’m pretty sure the girl at AAMI is thoroughly sick of me. I must have been in to see her half a dozen times at least while trying to get the documentation for my loan sorted out, which wasn’t that long ago. She had a strange look in her eye as I approached. I couldn’t decipher whether it was a look that said “Oh good grief, what is it now?” or one that said “Hmm… perhaps he’ll bring me flowers this time.” Maybe both. She was a little surprised that I was making a claim so soon after having bought the car, but I explained that I had run into a brachiosaurus on my way home from New Year’s and she started processing the claim for me.
Meanwhile, the mechanics had finished their diagnostic tests on my car. Apparently the collision tore the oil filter off and crushed the radiator against the body of the engine. All involved were suitably impressed that I had successfully made it home without the whole thing bursting into flames.
Unfortunately, the protocol of these situations is that the insurance assessor then travels to the workshop to inspect the damage and approve the plans of the mechanics to repair it. The mechanics can’t touch the car until they get approval from the assessor. A week later I’m still waiting to hear back from this mysterious and apparently prohibitively busy assessor. I was going to wait until I heard back before posting this so I could present the full saga in one instalment, but it’s now Saturday and I’m once again stranded in Palmerston for the weekend and it’s raining outside and I’m bored, so I decided to start blogging to keep the tedium at bay for a few minutes more by sharing it with you.
I suppose it is somewhat appropriate in this, the season of new starts, that here I am; right back where I started from.
Insert yet to be determined, classy yet quirky new sign off line here.
Garry with 2 Rs
01 January 2010
Happy New Year
It’s been far too long since I celebrated New Year in Darwin. It’s always an event marked with excitement, sobriety, flair and sophistication. This year was no exception. A group of mates and I had arranged to car pool into town with Macca, who doesn’t drink. It’s always a good standing plan to have a non-resentful designated driver onside.
So there we were, cruising townwards along Tiger Brennan Drive; me, Macca, Davo, Obi-wan and Brian. We weren’t really looking for an overly wild night. We were just heading into the foreshore to catch the fireworks, before possibly grabbing some celebratory brews at one of the local pubs to toast the New Year and indeed new decade with style. Or at least what passes for style in our social group.
The foreshore, of course, was packed. Fortunately we were able to grab a spot on top of a hastily constructed Taj Mahal which some of the local girl guides had built as a fund raiser for a new stealth bomber or something.
The fireworks were pretty good. Obviously it wasn’t quite the same as watching a wall of fire undulate off the Sydney Harbour Bridge or celebrating the destruction of the dalek fleet deep within the Medusa Cascade, but for Macca, Davo and Brian this was just as good as it ever got. And the looks on their faces was enough to keep Obi-wan and I smiling. Davo said it was like someone had set the whole harbour on fire.
It was the first time any of us had been out to town with a fictional character for years. Davo claimed to have been on a blind date with Lady Macbeth a few months back, but we were pretty sure he was full of it. I had forgotten how prejudiced some of the local people could be towards people of non-reality background. We were constantly aware of the looks from people, and the whispers behind hands. Fortunately no-one made too much of a deal out of it, and Obi-wan didn’t seem to mind.
It wasn’t until we stopped in at a bar on Mitchell Street that we had any real trouble. One particularly drunk man from Karama started declaring to everyone how happy he was that the new year had come, how awesome the fireworks display had been and how much better off the world would be when we finally got all the stinking fictional folk out of our country. Obi-wan pleaded with us to ignore him, but it was more than Brian could stand. He grabbed a nearby claymore and brandished it menacingly, asking the drunkard if he felt like he was a real man, just because he was real and a man.
Unfortunately for Brian, the drunkard had brought fourteen of his friends, all armed with pictures of bears holding sharks. Fortunately for Brian, none of them felt like starting any trouble once Obi-wan started swinging his lightsaber in destructive arcs of pure energy. There are some things you don’t mess with, even if you don’t think they’re real.
After that, the night got much more light-hearted. We had a few more drinks at a different bar, Davo managed to convince a European backpacker to give him her phone number. He tried calling it a few days later, but no-one was home (possibly because she’s still in Australia). I got roped into playing tuba for an impromptu Edinburgh Tattoo that some guys put together on Mindil Beach.
Happy New Year!
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
So there we were, cruising townwards along Tiger Brennan Drive; me, Macca, Davo, Obi-wan and Brian. We weren’t really looking for an overly wild night. We were just heading into the foreshore to catch the fireworks, before possibly grabbing some celebratory brews at one of the local pubs to toast the New Year and indeed new decade with style. Or at least what passes for style in our social group.
The foreshore, of course, was packed. Fortunately we were able to grab a spot on top of a hastily constructed Taj Mahal which some of the local girl guides had built as a fund raiser for a new stealth bomber or something.
The fireworks were pretty good. Obviously it wasn’t quite the same as watching a wall of fire undulate off the Sydney Harbour Bridge or celebrating the destruction of the dalek fleet deep within the Medusa Cascade, but for Macca, Davo and Brian this was just as good as it ever got. And the looks on their faces was enough to keep Obi-wan and I smiling. Davo said it was like someone had set the whole harbour on fire.
It was the first time any of us had been out to town with a fictional character for years. Davo claimed to have been on a blind date with Lady Macbeth a few months back, but we were pretty sure he was full of it. I had forgotten how prejudiced some of the local people could be towards people of non-reality background. We were constantly aware of the looks from people, and the whispers behind hands. Fortunately no-one made too much of a deal out of it, and Obi-wan didn’t seem to mind.
It wasn’t until we stopped in at a bar on Mitchell Street that we had any real trouble. One particularly drunk man from Karama started declaring to everyone how happy he was that the new year had come, how awesome the fireworks display had been and how much better off the world would be when we finally got all the stinking fictional folk out of our country. Obi-wan pleaded with us to ignore him, but it was more than Brian could stand. He grabbed a nearby claymore and brandished it menacingly, asking the drunkard if he felt like he was a real man, just because he was real and a man.
Unfortunately for Brian, the drunkard had brought fourteen of his friends, all armed with pictures of bears holding sharks. Fortunately for Brian, none of them felt like starting any trouble once Obi-wan started swinging his lightsaber in destructive arcs of pure energy. There are some things you don’t mess with, even if you don’t think they’re real.
After that, the night got much more light-hearted. We had a few more drinks at a different bar, Davo managed to convince a European backpacker to give him her phone number. He tried calling it a few days later, but no-one was home (possibly because she’s still in Australia). I got roped into playing tuba for an impromptu Edinburgh Tattoo that some guys put together on Mindil Beach.
Happy New Year!
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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