Apple pancakes anyone...? Anyone...?

Warum? Warum ist die Banane krumm? ~ Why? Why is the banana crooked? German expression, used when a question has no answer.

I doubt Jack Johnson could sing about apple pancakes with the same nostalgia, I know that a smoothie now requires thought and construction, I suspect that Weet Bix has counter-intuitively become less healthy and more boring, and I downright oppose the notion of carrot bread for breakfast. That's right, the banana drought in Australia is very much upon us, with a myriad of unseen repercussions. It's turning breakfast on its head, causing cafes to change their tried and tested menus, reducing lovers of the fruit into "let's do breakfast" weekend recluses, and causing me to curse at anyone named Larry. I miss them!!

While still available at exorbitant prices (exorbitant for bananas anyway), the decrease in average intake of this once common, lowly regarded fruit must come at a price.

I read somewhere... that bananas contain tryptophan, a protein that converts to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Low serotonin is associated with low mood. While it's not like antidepressant medication sales are going through the roof at present, including tryptophan in your diet everyday for over 20 years, as I have, and suddenly not getting your daily hit could potentially affect a person. Though it might be nice to blame Monday morning grumpiness, PMS and any shameful chocolate binges on a natural disaster and protective import policies.

Age-old proverbs like "You dont know what you have until it's gone" or "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" might be replaced with "You dont know how much you like a fruit until a cyclone hits" and "Absence makes the stomach grow louder."

I was worrying what I would tell my grandkids, with no experience of war or economic depression, no "we had to walk 20km in the snow with no shoes in the mid of winter to school" stories. Now I have the "Great Banana Drought of '06" to remind them that life used to be a lot tougher, that breakfasts used to be a lot plainer. While they complain about eating their own breakfast I will remind them that banana pancakes were once considered an unforgivable extravagance, what with all the (banana) starving children in the country, and that they "don't know how lucky they have it."

No longer can we say someone "is going bananas" with a cheeky smile and good intention. The phrase has taken on a more ominous meaning. Bananas are going and things are not the same.

And they thought Galileo was crazy

It's true, the universe does not revolve around Earth. Click here.

I thought this was a lovely example of grasping an abstract idea, understanding something on an intellectual level, but still not "getting it." I tried- I looked up at the stars, I imagined I was a grain of sand, I thought about being up in space looking down on an ever-shrinking planet, I said to myself, "We are a cosmic accident," I thought about the Big Bang and all those algae-like life forms, and how the earth has been around for a fraction of the time the universe has, and also how in an eyeblink of that time we have managed to completely and thoroughly stuff it up, then I got too pessimistic and distracted myself. But I tried, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't understand. Not really.

There are a couple of things in life I find similarly difficult to understand, no matter how hard I try... Hunting, anorexia and Tom Cruise are up there.

(Thanks to Aaron for the link!)

Blind luck

"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies" ~Aristotle


Blue Steelin' it at the East Sydney Hotel- me, Blake, Hel, Rosco and Neil

The DCPers, last day of the course

Kritsin, me and Bron at Liv's birthday

Trace and Ana on the ferry


Me, Lis and Blake in the Blue Mountains, happy hours before Lis' accident ;o(

Rosco, Hel, Neil, Ana and Lyndel at Trace's BBQ

Me and Sal at the DCP Ball, Centrepoint Tower

Kristin and Phil, a favourite picture

Blake, Rosco and I at the DCP Ball

Ana and Niel on Pittwater

At the office- Belinda, KT, Blake, Sadhana and Ana

I am nearly there. I can see the finish line for all its promised freedoms, can smell the scent of living life on the other side, can hear the bursting exhalation from family who have- till now- been holding their breaths, can feel the proverbial weight lift from my collapsed shoulders, can taste the yeasty bubbles of that celebratory glass of Bollinger... yet, for some reason I hang on.

I have no reason to stay in this limbo, I have been here too long. But something, and I suspect, some people, are giving me reason. I read somewhere... that true friends are hard to find. Not for me. I walked blindly into the most arduous three years of my uni "career," expecting nothing and noone. Ok, I expected a huge academic learning curve, I must admit. I expected an outcome that generally saw me becoming a psychologist, a job that has- and still does- give me not only work- but life-satisfaction (as well as keeping me firmly on a "scenic path" that will never cross the highways of the corporate world). I got all of this.

What will I remember? What will I be forever grateful for? I walked blindly into a group of people who have opened my eyes to the unconditionality of true friendship. A group of people, who without knowing it, have showed me that life should be smothered with laughs, albeit peppered with tears. A group of people who reassured me that when there are tears, they are nature's way of calling on your friends.

I never used to drop to the ground from laughing.

I think I walked blindly into me.

Some interesting stats

"Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not" Oscar Wilde

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south, 8 Africans
52 would be female, 48 would be male
70 would be non-white, 30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual,11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the US
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a tertiary education
1 would own a computer

Thank you stranger

"Smile... It confuses people" Sandi Thom (title of album)

I just walked past someone with the biggest smile on her face!! I want to know what she was thinking, I want to tell her "thank you," and I to walk past a smile like that more often! I know there is no recommended daily intake for smiles, but there should be. There is for vitamins, carbohydrates, salts... all to improve health. Why not for smiles, laughs and grins, with a warning against too many frowns and sneers? Whatever the minimum recommended dosage, we are all not getting enough of the leafy green vegetables, the potassium and the iron of what is needed for "head-health."

I wonder if she was thinking about her friends, or maybe she is in love for the first time? She may have won $10 on scratchie, or actually (for once) remembered a good joke. Who knows! That's what's nice about it.

I think we notice people more when they are smiling. I do. Is it because so few people smile outside the context of a positive interpersonal exchange, or outside the arena of social expectation? Maybe. I think we are also naturally attracted to smiles, they are not threatening, they do not need to be avoided. People look better when they smile, no? They make the recipient smile, and who doesn't like smiling?

I read somewhere... that the average child laughs around 400 times per day, but the average adult laughs only 15 times per day. Quelle domage!

I read somewhere... that it is not happiness that makes us laugh. It is laughter that makes us happy. C'est vrai, je croix.

A study at UNSW asked participants to solve what they didn't know were unsolvable anagrams (a task often used to induce low mood). There were two conditions: In the first condition, participants were required to attempt the anagrams while placing and holding a pencil horizontally in their mouths. The second group were asked to attempt the same anagrams, while holding a pencil by its end in their mouths. Both groups were then asked to complete a mood inventory. It was found that the second group scored higher on measures of depression following the impossible anagram task. The researchers concluded that the difference in the position of the lips and facial muscles contributed to the difference in scores. Thus, even holding your mouth in a position more smile-like could improve mood/protect against low mood. Bizarre, non?

So, smile and let people wonder. There's benefits.

N.B. "head-health" as it is used here, is a newly coined term that describes good mood, low stress, healthy brain function and everything else the ol' cerebral cortex requires for smiling at a stranger, humming under your breath, singing in the shower or with a hairbrush, and feeling a little like a kid again.

In general, we need to get specific!

"I am not young enough to know everything" Oscar Wilde

Lately I've noticed that some conversations may start out innocuous and mundane but end up heated. The heat has been coming from an old, tried and trusted friend we know as the "generalisation." It's almost as though a small hole in the bucket that is the conversation appears and then the stream of generalisations pour out like a never-ending pack of Tim Tams, with a horde of insatiable followers. Any question is answered with a definitive statement that one or more of the parties agrees with, and then the conversation gains a life of its own, a breathing and sometimes controversial creation that can be as dangerous as it is entertaining. Why, when a specific question is raised do specifics go out the window? Why, when a harmless and positive conversation on love comes up, does it dissolve into a scathing assessment on the differences bewteen men and women??

I've come to a realisation that almost no one is immune to falling into the pit that is the generalisation (ok except you, Hammo- See? I'm not generalising) I wondered why we, as the *liberal "free thinkers" we like to think we are, continually manage to take the simplistic and determinsitic route, wander down the road that is most travelled, and take one person's behaviour and explain it all away with brash generalisations? We do it for nearly everything- the person's sex, culture, religion, birthplace, whether they are an only child or a middle child, -the list is endless. It happens so easily in conversation, yet at close inspection it is often the most insightless and strange response you can come up with.

Here are some recent examples:
"He is the messiest person I have ever lived with!!" Response: "He's a boy"
"She hates eating anything spicy" Response: "She's from the country"
"Why cant he make one phone call instead of sending 50 texts?" Response: "He's Australian"
"She is so indecisive " Response: "She's must be a Libran, or a Gemini.... or a Scorpio, I cant decide"
"He falls in love so easily" Response: "He's very young"

Hmmm... I have said some of these things! I mean, really. What is it with some of these explanations? She's from the country?! So?? It's scary because it's so easy. The other problem is that we dont mind, and in fact welcome, positive generalisations (or when they provide convenient excuses).

"He's so level-headed and practical" Response: "He's a boy"
"She's so down to earth" Response: "She's from the country"
"He is interested in the environment" Response: "He's Australian"
"She's a perfectionist" Response: "She's a Libran" (rather than "She's obsessive")
"He's a player" Response: "He's very young"

Ok, this is all very well and good but one thing always gets forgotten. What about the INDIVIDUAL?? What about the idea he's a player because he is having fun playing or because he hasn't met anyone to be "not playing?" with? What about the notion that she is a perfectionist because she gets a warm fuzzy feeling inside whenever she feels she has put everything into a task, or because she's scared shitless of failure? While we will never know for sure, the reason behind human behaviour, as complex as it inherently is, cannot always be simple. Sometimes it will be, most often it wont.

Camping at the Basin

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." Frank Lloyd Wright

Finally managed to get away camping with the gang. We caught the ferry from Palm Beach with all our gear and had a great two nights in the "wilderness." No cars, no hot water, no mobile reception... Neil brought the Defiance, so we ended up going for a sail. Camilla was scared by a particularly out-of-sorts wallaby, likening it to a James Bond villain. Trace slept on a grasshopper, or so she thought. Ana felt "priviledged" when half the wallabies, possums and bandicoots were in our tent making a mess and eating all our food (others naturally thought this was a disaster), Blake conceded and ended up loving all the camping games (particularly "Crossed or uncrossed??"), Belinda won the attentions of an admirer, Anthony made us all spaghetti bol and cut down a tree (still alive mind you, hmmm) for the campfire, KT amused us all with stories from the other side (of normality), some Irish backpackers showed up, there was a commitment ceremony, Sal caught Camilla rolling her eyes, Richard, well he was Richard, and volleyball never really kicked off. WHY DOES NO ONE LIKE VOLLEYBALL ANYMORE???




Ana on the Defiance in Pittwater

Now that it's over, can I please have it back?

Student Life. Two words that are mutually exclusive, aren't they? As much as I am in a hurry to be done with the student life, the seemingly endless demands of both coursework and internships, the worry and anxiety over a research project that has no one blame but you, juggling two jobs, the need to keep family and friends happy and feeling like a priority in your crazy life, I am starting to realise that not only have I been a student, I have had a life. And a bloody good one at that. So what if there have been moments when I wished I was doing something (anything!) else? These times are always softened by moments when I would wish to be doing nothing else.



It's a hard life, this student life.

(Blake, Ana, Me & Tracy at the Marly Bar in Newtown)