Hot pool

I have been reading a novel set in my City during the 1950’s or 60’s. It is largely set in the suburb across the river from me. It is a good read. One thing got me intrigued - the author mentioned the hot pool on the banks of the river. I have heard tales of the mythical pool over the years and the nefarious nocturnal activities that happened there. I had also heard the water polo pool on my side of the river was once heated by water piped across the river, maybe from this same source. It was time to investigate.

I sort of imagined me and my son paddling across the river on our surf skis to the spot. My only problem was that no one really new exactly where the pool was. Time to Google.

After trying half a dozen different variations of hot spring and teh rivers name I finally came across an account in the local universities history department web site. I know, I should have look there first given the uni is in the same suburb as the mythical pool.

How sad. The pool is long gone, but at least the various stories checked out. Apparently it was fed by a deep artesian bore that burst its casing and ran down the river bank. I assume the bore was the source for the polo pool heating on my side of the river. Quotes from the local rag (circa 1940’s) proclaime “HIGH JINKS AT THE HOT POOL, 'the squeal of a delightfully offended female' and 'a brassiere fluttering from a car aerial as a badge of Promiscuity'.

The post then went on to explain the source of the bore petered out and the pool became ‘slimy and smelled of rotten eggs'. The paper reported in October 1953 that 'City's too hot pool' had been closed and the bore filled with concrete.

I know the exact location now so I might check it out any way. 50 years have past but I should still be able to find some trace. Sort of a homage to the ‘delightfully offended females’ and those that donned the ‘badge of promiscuity’ so long ago. I wonder if any of them are residence at the nursing home that overlooks that part of the river?

Myth confirmed.

Slow Down!

Feverishly typing at a keyboard gives one the appearance of being busy, which of course, you are. The objective of this activity may not be the one that you are payed for but it helps to vent the soul and that can’t be bad. This raises the point of this post – bludging, slacking off, malingering, goldbricking, to be dilatory, shilly-shally, trifle, drifting, loiter, saunter, twiddling your thumbs and a host of others. May be there are more words for this act than Eskimo words for snow (I’ll let the task of tallying the numbers slide for a while).

Someone famous once said that a language will develop many terms for common objects or ideas (I could find out but I’ll let it drift). My thesis is that the act of avoiding work is common. As I head into this rundown phase of employment with my present company I find many reasons to potter.

In fact I have always had a tendency toward indolence. One of my favourite albums is called the “The Shiftless Merle Fyshwick”. So while I am shirking work at the moment I don’t feel too bad about frittering away a few moments. In fact killing time before heading home to vegetate is a kind of preparation.

So mallingering at work is a way of life for many. Even high executives often get feather bedded, the best employees will goof off from time to time and virtually all workers aim for retirement. My current slow down is more of a cathartic exercise than mere lollygagging.

I could goof off for hours on this subject but it is time to shut down for the day and go home to piddle about in my work shop. I am building a Thermin Synthesiser at the moment, when I pull my finger out I'll write about that.

Duck and Cover. Good advice from a happier time

A Tree

The study at home, where my beloved works, has a bland view into a fence, but, rising high above the fence line a spectacular Gum tree (Eucalypt?) can be seen. Many birds make their home in this majestic tree. It sways to its own rhythm as the life forms that live on it lead their lives. It is prime real-estate for the local birds, its hight and breadth are not surpassed for many hundreds of meters.

During the tornado six or so months ago many trees in the area were destroyed or badly damaged. The birds, of which there are many, are still competing for limited space.

I know my partner spends many hours staring out the window in search of inspiration as she formulates great treaties on saving the flora in our part of the world. In essence her job is to save the trees from a microbial parasite. Saving them from human action is also part of the deal, but only as a vector.

My little patch of suburban sprawl has a limit on the minimum size a housing lot can be. This has left it largely unscared by urban infill. Nearly all the lots around us are, only just, too small to be cut in two for two houses to be built. Most of the neighbourhood has large back yards and the odd big tree is left to push proudly into the sky. This works rather nicely for the birds.

Now, two doors down, a clever chap has convinced his neighbour to collude so that their two “just too small” blocks can be combined then split to create three housing lots. I can’t blame or condemn them – it makes financial sense and suits their circumstance.

This is where the tree comes in. It is in the back yard of the house closest to us and right in the middle of a proposed lounge room. Most of the block has now been cleared except the great tree. It has been damaged in some fatal way by the clearing activities on the block. The leaves are yellowing and dropping away. The birds know there is a problem. Arial dog fights and angry calls are now regulalry witnessed from our study window. This is the price for progress.

Perhaps this note will serve as the only eulogy and epitaph for the tree but it will be missed by many.

An offer you can refuse

I just talked to the VP in charge of projects and yes the job is a globe trotter with no return to my beloved city. Game over.

It's time to accept the other offer and write the resignation letter. Do I go with “I Sincerely regret……all the bets for the future” or “ This letter serves as notice of my resignation and commencement of my notice period as per the contract of employment….I wish to leave as soon as possible”.

Probably the former.

An offer you can't refuse

I talked about my imminent departure with one of the managers at work (not my manager). Word seems to have spread quickly. His boss came to me and suggested I talk to the VP for project development. “There might be a role for you in that group who will be staying in town” hmmm. In the mean time I have a pending offer from the other co.

I really would like a part in a major project role but would hate to go back on the other offer. I hate burning bridges and this is a small town. Turning down the other offer would be bad but a new project development role with my current employer would be great. I guess I will wait and see what is offered.

If the project role is only a year of so in town then a year or so in Huston and then construction phase in some Asian place followed by commissioning based out of another remote spot then I am gone. Especially if it doesn’t result in a permanent role back in town. On the other side of the coin chasing oil projects around the globe for a few years until retirement also has its attractions.

Certainly the offer from company 2 will be much better paid but ultimately it is short term. I know that at current investment levels in the industry I could sustain the higher rate for several years but ultimately it is contract work and so I am guaranteed some period of unemployment. Not that that would be a bad thing.

Just like a dog with two bones.

GOOD NEWS!

Just got a verbal job offer (one of my previous client companies). Good rate, interesting project, and long hours (about what I do now).

Now comes the hard part, resigning with the minimum of notice so I get some time of!

All is well my the suburb tonight…..

When Is Now

Waiting is a perpetual state of looking for conclusion.
The past has no imagination, time gone to waste.
Now is no time, or, inclination to think.
Learning from the past prevents cyclic loops
Ignored history gains redundant information (and that’s a waste).

Life is a four dimensional trajectory with beginning and end.
We don’t control the launch or ditch (no mater how hard we try).
Will effort budge ballistics pre-programmed by fate?
Twists and turns on a length of rope (I really want to use the word dope)

Now is the accumulation of outcomes past
All that will be begins now with you
The initial condition is set but no outcome is fixed
The longer the future, the more distant the past,
the more of now is dependant
Two cones opposing
Now is the locus

No pressure to bear, it will happen or has
trillions of stories have lead to this blink
A billion futures pending with now as a link
Past meet future

A vanishing small point
Planks width, and,
no more.

More WORK

The government of Australia is about to change the industrial relations laws (minimum terms and conditions of employment).

The main change is that everything becomes negotiable. There are effectively no minimum standards for hours of work, penalty rates, holidays and the like for new work contracts. In addition the unfair dismissal parts of our laws are waived for companies with less than 100 employees. Where an unemployed person refuses to accept conditions offered they will loose there unemployment benefits for a period of 8 weeks. So as a small employer you simply sack your workforce and re-hire them at a lower rate – no problem. What a nice way to improve labour productivity.

I am fairly much immune from these changes in the short term. I already negotiate my wages and condition with my employer. I get well paid and I am in a group of professionals that are in demand (given the decline in the eduction system this circumstance is unlikely to change). Like wise the well educated and skilled will do fine – we always do. People with few skills or new entries into the workforce are screwed.

In the longer term I am worried. You see we have had a bit of a housing boom and prices are high. Once again I am O.K. I have a nice house in a good suburb. It transpires that most of the baby boomers and a few of the X generation are also locked in and are riding the real-estate rise. The problem as I see it is with the Y and generation and below (the Clickaratzi?). Even with a decent minimum wage it would be near impossible for a large percentage them to enter the market.

In Australia it is seen as a birth right to be able to buy your own house and that 40 hours work is enough to keep you afloat. At the moment have relatively few poor (typically the long term unemployed: for whatever reason). Basically what is being proposed (and likely to get through the government dominated upper house) is the same deal that US workers get less a solid minimum wage.

A lot of the carefree hippy generation did not save enough to provide for their retirement. So we potentially end up with a situation where a pile of old, retired, people with huge assets are relying on a shrinking workforce of people whose real wage will be lower than previous generations have enjoyed. Maybe having to work very long hours just to meet their minimum needs and with very little chance of getting ahead.

Hmm… a pile of young people on lower wages having to pay more tax to a for group of people with lots of assets. One group of people with high wages and another struggling to survive and provide for their families. Might be a bit of a problem there.

Whacharecon?

Wax

My friends and I have eclectic tastes in music. We listen to every thing from blues roots through to gangsta rap. Someone might discover a new artist and will share it with the group or perhaps just give a copy of an old favourite. Collectively my friends would buy maybe 5 – 10 CDs per week. We talk about them, review them and share them. Of course the last activity is illegal. All this activity keeps you buying music well into an age where you are supposed to be buying gardening magazines and you first sports car.

I don’t know if I am alone on this but when I am buying CDs if I see the copy protected symbol I tend to put the CD back. I am not a rampant pirate, I don’t upload to P-P services but I do buy a lot of CDs. I hate it when I get home and find I have not checked and have a copy protected CD. It stops me enjoying the music that way I want to.

I love music (well, the music that I like anyway). I like to buy the physical media and the utility of an unencumbered disk. I listen to CDs in my car, while I am walking about on my MP3 player, on my computer at work and even sometimes on my home HiFi system. I don’t want to carry a stack of disks everywhere I go. I want to rip/burn and play.

Some times I will make a copy (shock horror, and illegal in this Country) for a friend. Sometimes one of my friends will give me a copy of one of their CDs. I have even experimented downloading music. The thing is I still buy music at the rate of about 1 CD a week (sometimes more but that is release driven). If I didn’t get the freebies I wouldn’t buy any more and over time more likely less.

Here is an example of the way it works. I got a copy of a Spearhead CD about three or four years ago from a friend. I liked it a lot. Since then I have bought all their albums (including the one I got a copy of), all album releases by Michael Franti (the main man) and one release from his previous group - The Disposable Heroes of Hiphopracy. I also went to his concert when he played a local gig. The same is True for Faithless and a number of others.


Now you might say I could have been equally informed by listening to the radio or watching music Vids on TV but this is not true. Most stations play formula based, fairly un-original music pushed by the recording companies. They never play full albums and are repetitive with little room for original music. Worst of all they are packed with adverts and mindless drivel. So without finding new music that I like why would I buy new music?

I don’t want to buy MP3s or equivalent from iTunes etc. They are low quality and lack the utility I want when I buy music. I also strongly resent copy protection because it a) implies I am a criminal and b)is trivially easy to circumvent so the real criminals have no problem producing and selling copies. I just can’t see the point of it.

So no copy protection for me! (actually it should be called preventing the ill-informed from copying protection).

Music is free. Recording companies just figured out a way to make profit from it.

Well!

What would it be like having unexplained symptoms and having to wait for doctors test results? Not nice I suspect. Like some Schrödinger’s cat in a indeterminate state of well being. You know something is wrong but not how wrong. I could imagine the self perception of the mystery illness swinging between mild inconvenience to certain death during this period of indeterminacy.

Perhaps such periods in our life should be given a name – Schrödinger’s diagnostic syndrome or Quantum like heath outcome latency period.

Now imagine after several weeks of not going to the doctor, the doctors tutting, waiting on test for diseases that only have bad outcome and finally waiting for the test results. People don’t wait well, especially concerning bad news.

Waiting for the test results. Waiting in the docs waiting room. Kids with coughing and rubbing there snot on the charis, old people looking grim leaving equally underisable body fluids on the furniture, reading that article in National Geographic (one giving the negative impact of global warming on your part of the world over the next 50 years would set the mood nicely).Finally your name is called.

The doctor fiddles with a sheath of papers and looks over some radiologists handy work and then he (or she) looks at you.

“Well everything seems fine”. “Have you had a change of lifestyle recently?”. “I would recommend a bit more exercise and perhaps these pills will help if it re-occurs”. “If not come back and see me again”.

Wow.

I would imagine after that sort of stress I would go straight out and buy a new computer….and maybe evaluate the global warming thing and where I was going to be living in 50 years…….

Live long and prosper.

WORK

I can’t remember if I posted that my organisation is moving to the other edge of the middle of nowhere. Any how it is time I updated my lone reader with where I am at work wise. THE JOB STILL SUCKS.

The upside is that the company move gives me a great reason to leave – well one that doesn’t leave a job hopper trail on the resume. I have tried to get into client side representation on one of the more interesting projects going down in town but failed. I thought I was fairly well placed but I blew the interview. I was in the middle of an insomnia period. For those of you that suffer this syndrome you will know exactly what the problem is fronting up for an interview for a critical job in a multi billion dollar project with much too little sleep.

Anyhow I have had several offers that haven’t sparked my interest. I have been chasing a lead into a previous client organisation. They started of real keen but have been dragging their feet setting up a deal.

I also had a call from a previous boss who I think is trying to assemble a team for a fairly big project. Couldn’t get any details (who the project was for, duration ect) out of him but what he did tell me sounded interesting.

The best outcome will be the job with the old boss at the rate I have asked for from the previous client. I guess sometimes it is hard to move on….

Dark Tower

Past the Dark tower.

I think it was nearly 20 years ago that my lovely partner excitedly opened the latest delivery from the Double Day book club. It was the first two instalments of the Steven Kings’ Dark Tower magnum opus. I was totally absorbed by these books and kept them in my head for years. Eventually book three came along and that was equally great. After another several years book 4 appeared and was read. I heard of the fifth instalment but didn’t rush out to get it. I can’t remember what was happening in my life at the time but it was more important that following Rolland and his ka-tet.

Last Christmas I purchased the hard cover of book five for my partner. She was/is an avid SK reader who wasn’t quite enough of a fan to buy the hard cover editions for herself. So in due time, after she had read it, I started. I must also admit at this point that I have only read one other SK novel. I’m not to sure of title. It might have been the Green Mile, or may be Stand by Me, or some collection of short stories - obviously forgettable. Reading book 5 I found I was reading one of the best books I had read in a long time. It was totally great. The rich language, the plot twists and integration of the whole narrative into one cohesive work was of the highest order.

I then immediately rushed out to get book six. What a let down. It side tracked, the use of language and the clumsy handling of himself as a story character was sad. It was as if it was written by an understudy - or produced flat out with little re-reading, re-writing and tweaking (that’s only allowed by amateur Blog writers).

Anyhow the good news delivered in the after word of that book was that book 7 was done and it would 100% wind up the series. I had to wait until my Birthday for the final instalment. This also coincided with my battle to finish the Other World series of novels (Tad Williams). That was hard going for someone who is perpetually tired and only reads in bed at night. And so with the Other World series in my past I commenced the final book.

It was as good as book 5. All the elements that had made the whole series great were there. Very clever plot devices, the richness of language and offcourse tying all the threads together completing a masterpiece (except maybe book 6).

My only worry was that when I was about ½ way through there was an announcement that the series would be used as a base for a marvel comic. I read the headline on Slashdot and duly started to pick through the posts on the subject. One reader post about the series chilled me. “I think I will ignore his advice and go and smash his letter box down with a baseball bat”. My immediate though was that the poster had finished the series and was complaining about another dark tower 'to be continued' note in the after word or just a crappy open end. I stopped reading the posts at that point. Thankfully book 7 is it.

While I enjoyed the Dark tower series immensely I don’t think I will read much more of Mr Kings works. I believe he is a great author but horror/suspense is not really my thing. Maybe if he does some more fantasy.....

This brings me to a novel occurrence in my life. I can’t think of any series that I am in the midst of!

Doh’, I just remembered that I promised to read the penultimate Harry Potter book to my son. He has already read it but he wants me read it to him – Just like I did for the other 5 books in the series.

More endings on the way.

To my Son

Forgive this brief change in direction but there has been a project that has been in the back (and fore) of my mind for nearly 10 years. I had this idea that I would write down some thoughts in a sort of essay/report for my son (now nearly 10) to read as he reached certain ages. Sort of like a series of time capsules that would appear at various times. Age 10 would have been the first one.

The form would be some relevant truths (from my perspective) about life, love, work, play, mateship, avoidance of indoctrination, consequence of actions and all that sort of stuff. I wanted to add some insight about where I was at. Some of my life experience at the age he would/will be when a message was opened and may be some recollections of shared adventures, you know, the ‘do you remember when sort of thing’. I would concentrate all effort on aiming at his age group. A 10 year old doesn’t not need to know about negotiating a job but needs plenty of assurance that he can achieve wonderful things if he tries (maybe that one is a constant?). A man of 30 would not be concerned about handling bullies. A man of 40 wants some assurance that it isn’t all down hill from here on (please tell me it isn’t!!!).

I think I haven’t done because it would be very hard. I don’t want it to be some moan or preach fest. I do want it to let him know he is not alone in his deepest feelings – we all have the hidden self to kept hidden (but know the face of the stranger). I want to express how much I care but don’t want to run his life or fill his head with my shit.

I also know it would seem like some drawn out death note.

I though by writing this entry I would find a way forward but it hasn’t happened. Great idea if I had some fatal disease (apart from getting older) that allowed coherent thought but I think I am healthy.

Maybe just keeping a Blog of inner thoughts is the answer, hmm? Do I make an entry in the will “Dear Son I love you very much, please go to http://subrbansurrender.blogspot.com/ and see what I didn’t tell you at the time”? Probably not.

I think I know the answer. Be there, give advice but don’t preach, enjoy time together, share a story or two, maybe a song, and try to understand where his head is (be sensitive to his situation). Much less egotistical and might just helpful.

Everything matters. Everything is important.

I feel quite bad when I think to deeply about the way society is developing. For most of my life I felt that society was getting better, more caring, more accepting of individual rights, more protective of those unable to defend there own rights, more willing to help those unable to help themselves, better education, basically becoming better.

While nirvana was never reached at least the trend seemed positive.

Now it seems that the process is in reverse. Each day it seems I read about a some freedom lost , some new intolerance, a new law that reduces peoples rights, reduces there ability to have a decent life or some way that a special interest group has bent our political leaders ears.

I guess I felt that the community leaders, on all scales, were working for a better future. Some shared vision of what could be. Now I find self interest is the rule. There are pockets of resistance ranging from community groups rehabilitating land or taking care of the elderly through to the likes of Bill Gates donating billions to charities but these are exceptions.

It seemed that even the political leaders, left or right, were at least trying to lift the game. Nuclear arms were reduced and international treaties for the good of all people were developing everywhere. Corporations were putting money into environmental research (and long term/long shot projects) and working on producing better, safer working environments. People played sports and got involved with the political parties (of what ever flavour).

There were lots of bad things going on, I must re-emphasise that, but, the will to change was evident.

Maybe it started some time in the eighties but the cult of self interest is certainly well entrenched now. There are too many examples to point at. I just feel as though the people with power are grabbing at everything and desperately working to seal in their and their heirs right to rule over the masses.

The self righteous and fundamentally religious are increasing their hold on power. I couldn’t of imagined political leaders in Australia turning up to a fundamentalist freak fest but that has come to pass. Imposing their belief that a literal interpretation (or the particular cult leaders interpretation) of the bible must be imposed on all people. The same is true in the Muslim and Hindu worlds as well. So sad to see the rights of the average person crumble under these special interest groups.

Corporate greed and control seems to know no bounds. While not of the highest impact, but the best example, is the extension of copyright periods and DRM legislation. It is apparent that we are all now considered criminals.

Everything matters. Everything is important.