Singular Scene

So Singular in Each Particular

Back in the Motherland

by

Mission Bay, Auckland, New ZealandWhen you make a decision to blog about everything other than work and family it seems that life conspires against you to throw you content that ONLY fits into one of those categories… so for the last little while all the interesting things in my world are somehow rendered unbloggable.

I could blog about the cat… but then I’m firmly cemented as that crazy cat lady and I’m less than keen to be so branded.

So while I haven’t blogged, I’ve been in New Zealand for 10 days, and I have a few more to go and so I shall give you a list of things that I love about this small meek country, my homeland, just to serve it up as a reminder for you that this blog exists, and as a reminder for me that I do appreciate New Zealand enormously, not only for what it has been to me but for the great place that it is.

  1. The climate, while cooler than Sydney, is a lot more universally bearable than extremes of heat often experienced in Australia… let’s face it, it’s easier to get warmer than it is to cool off…
  2. Quite frenkly, I love the Kiwi eccent… I realise that mine has mellowed over the yees, and the fect that uh strong Kiwi eccent sounds almost unusual to my ears, it is a but lovely ectually!
  3. I love driving around Auckland and the Waikato and finding that, while a lot has changed over years, more hasn’t!
  4. I love corner dairies with spearmint leaves that aren’t covered in sugar.
  5. I love that my family are all within striking distance.
  6. I love that I’ve a bunch of friends I can catch up with at a moment’s notice and who it feels like it’s only been moments since last we caught up.
  7. I love that it’s civilised enough that I can work from here – even though the office is 2 hours behind me!!
  8. I love that NZ knows how to do good coffee. As well as, and sometimes better than, Sydney
  9. I love that most cafes will serve ginger crunch, even though I won’t eat it.
  10. I love that I still know my way around even though inspite of the above, I actually feel more like a stranger than a local most of the time.

 

There are more things, but I’m blogging from a cafe at lunchtime and I suspect I’m about to get turfed out for taking up too much space…

King for a Day

by

I’m not generally given to reading non fiction but for some reason I found the images and the story within the pages of “The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen” by Howard Carter absolutely riveting. It was one of the books on my father’s bookshelf, and even as a child, it fascinated me.

So today, given that I have a few days left of my stay in Melbourne, I took the opportunity to go visit the touring Tutankhamun Exhibition that’s based here for a while.

Here’s what you’ll see if you go.

Here’s what you won’t see…

Now, it helped that I’d had prior warning that some of the bigger pieces I’d have read about as a child weren’t on display, and it helped also that I’d been warned that some of the stuff was small! I’d also googled and noted that the burial hood, surely the most recognizable treasure from the tomb wasn’t Down Under with this other collection.

You also have to get your head around the fact that there are SO many people going along to see it… the sessions for viewing are carefully controlled to keep numbers flowing through, and if you want to see it after hours, it costs you more than the daylight visits. Additionally, there are a LOT of people visiting the exhibition… so if you’re not a fan of big crowds you’ll have to weigh up whether your desire to see the exhibition is greater than the fact that there is a fair bit of waiting to go past the pieces, and for that matter, waiting to get into the room to see anything!

BUT

Seriously, try and get your head around the fact that these pieces are older than Jesus… and ask yourself if you want to miss seeing them… because what you see are amazing artefacts you might never see again.

Oh, and if you really want to see King Tut’s burial mask? You’ll have to start saving now for a trip to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Where is she now?

by

She was a really quiet girl, meek, actually, and she always came across a little as if she couldn’t quite believe people had enough faith in her to do her job.

She did, and well, dilligent, even.

I’ve never met anyone whose self esteem had taken such a hammering.  She may not have seen it in herself but she was one of the most courageous people I’ve known.  You have to be to beat down anorexia.  It’s part of her her history, and one she was encouraged to tell – as others often do, in church, to wow the crowds at the goodness of God. So she delivered, when asked to, a testimony of how her faith had made her well, and while she wasn’t exactly articulate, the pictures more than made up for the faltering words even though they were terrifying, so close to death, but thankfully, so long ago.

She worked a few cubicles away from me, and she worked in accounts. Ridiculous hours, fielding the disgruntled calls from creditors, calling in debts from the debtors.

She always said she was fine if she was asked, she turned down offers of help… not that I’d be any good at helping out with accounts… but at least I’d have been company.

She came to my house for tea, I thought she may have become my friend.

But then… she broke.

She walked into the boss’ office and quit, then walked out of the building, the church and out of my life, turning her back even on her closest friends, obviously wounded and protecting herself from further harm by withdrawing completely.

Church is supposed to be a place of solace.

It wasn’t for her.

I send the occasional text, assuming, perhaps wrongly, that her number is the same, that maybe my messages don’t just go out into the ether, maybe one day she’ll reply.

I ask after her in circles that go beyond our former workplace, just in case someone’s seen her, heard from her. They rarely have.

I’ve since left that workplace, that church too.  I’d like for her to know.  I’d still like to be her friend.

I wonder where she is.

I wonder if she’s ok.

Da Do Run Run

by

I’m surprised as you are… I exercised 5 days of the last week.  Three I can usually accommodate, and those usually at the gym. But last week I was struck by a completely random thought that sounded rather a lot like “I feel like going for a run”.

I know, I’m as surprised as you are.  Me. Running. I who had never made the connection in my head that people who do it actually like it.  It isn’t just a means to a ‘smaller’ end.

So, I went with the thought, and as is often the case, tweeted it.

and again… when the urge struck a 2nd time…

I had a whole HOST of reasons in my head why I shouldn’t/couldn’t do it… things like

  1. You’re too heavy, think of the damage to your knees
  2. It will hurt.
  3. You won’t like it.
  4. You do enough exercise anyway.
  5. You’ll look like an idiot.

So it would appear to me that this business of expending more energy has put me in a state of having more energy to burn, to the point I actually can talk my way through the bullshit above – and so, after a day welded to a chair at the office looking at a screen, coming home and just laxing out on the sofa doesn’t sit well [see what I did there??].

This running thing is part of a change in my routine in that I now exercise on the way home from work, or as soon as I get home from work. Until now, I had got out of the house and exercised before the day really started.  Turning that on its head has been surprisingly great. I’m even working out harder at the gym that I do in my half awake state – and I’m spending less money getting coffee on the way home from the gym.

Now I just have to make peace with the fact that at my gym visit on the way home from the office on Wednesday will actually incorporate Zumba with my Curves workout.

The gods laughter at my expense is now complete.