Room Temperature

Antipodean Meme

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:47:28 +1000

What were you doing ten years ago?
I was working for a concert presenting organisation as an artistic planner-in-the-making.

What are 5 things on your to-do list today?
Laundry
Tidy lounge room to make space for anticipated new loudspeakers.
Proofreading
Writing
Listening (for work).
I suspect I won't get around to tidying the lounge room.

What snacks do you enjoy?
Dark chocolate
Crystallised ginger
Nuts
Arnott's ginger nut biscuits
Darrell Lea liquorice

Things that you would do if you were a billionaire?
I would make a modest home somewhere; travel widely; take time to study, write and be generally creative; and give generously to the causes that are close to my heart. Oh, and for all its modesty, that home would have to include the library/music room with floor to ceiling shelves and sliding ladder that I have wanted ever since I was small.

Three of your bad habits?
Unstructured procrastination
Forgetting to eat lunch
Neglecting to mow my little lawn
All sins of omission, you'll notice.

Five places you have lived?
Four suburbs in Sydney, NSW; another major Australian capital city; and a very musical almost-mid-Western city in the US.

Five jobs you’ve had?
Flute teacher
High school music teacher
Calligrapher
Writer/editor
Concert programmer

How did you name your blog?
I was inspired by Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia. The complete line is in my profile.

This meme comes from Our Great Southern Land via Dancing about Architecture, who (curiously) doesn't take the name of her blog from the quote I know – Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – but a variant.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Unread Books Meme

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:28:11 +1000

This one comes from LibraryThing. Members are taking the current top 106 unread books and marking it up according to their own reading. Here's mine:

* = I own the book
Bold = I’ve read the book
# = I read the book for high school or university
Italics = I’ve started the book
~~Stricken~~ = I hated the book
Underline = on my current to-read list

1. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide by Douglas Adams
2.   Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
3. The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy*
5. The illearth war by Stephen R. Donaldson
6. Life of Pi: a novel by Yann Martel
7. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra*
8.    Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
9.    One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
10.    Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray*
11.    The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien*
12.    Ulysses by James Joyce
13.    War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy [abridged edition]
14.    Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert*
15.    Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
16.    The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
17.    Catch-22 a novel by Joseph Heller
18.    Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
19.    The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood*
20.    Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
21.    A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens*
22.    The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie
23.    Middlemarch by George Eliot
24.    Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi
25.    The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco*
26.    The Kor'an by Anonymous
27.    Moby Dick by Herman Melville
28.    The Odyssey by Homer*
29.    The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
30.    Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
31.    The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
32.    The historian: a novel by Elizabeth Kostova
33.    Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco*
34.    Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand*
35.    The history of Tom Jones, a foundling by Henry Fielding
36.    The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas*
37.    The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas*
38.    The Iliad by Homer*
39.    The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner*#
40.    Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
41.    Emma by Jane Austen*
42.    Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
43.    Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
44.    Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift*
45.    The house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
46.    Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond
47.    Dracula by Bram Stoker
48.    Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
49.    A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers
50.    Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
51.    The once and future king by T. H. White
52.    Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe*
53.    To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
54.    Mansfield Park by Jane Austen*
55.    Oryx and Crake: a novel by Margaret Atwood*
56.    Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
57.    Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
58.    Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy*#
59.    Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond
60.    The corrections by Jonathan Franzen
61.    Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
62.    Underworld by Don DeLillo
63.    Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
64.    The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck
65.    Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
66.    Count Brass by Michael Moorcock
67.    The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake
68.    The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
69.    Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy
70.    The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
71.    Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
72.    A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce
73.    A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain*
74.    The divine comedy by Dante Alighieri
75.    The inferno by Dante Alighieri
76.    Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
77.    The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
78.    Swann's way by Marcel Proust
79.    The poisonwood Bible: a novel by Barbara Kingsolver
80.    The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay: a novel by Michael Chabon
81.    The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James*
82.    Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen*
83.    Silas Marner by George Eliot
84.    The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
85.    The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
86.    The god of small things by Arundhati Roy
87.    The confusion by Neal Stephenson
88.    One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey
89.    The book thief by Markus Zusak
90.    Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
91.    The system of the world by Neal Stephenson
92.    Bleak House by Charles Dickens
93.    The elegant universe: superstrings, hidden dimensions, and… by Brian Greene
94.    Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
95.    The known world by Edward P. Jones
96.    The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger
97.    The mill on the Floss by George Eliot
98.    The English patient by Michael Ondaatje
99.    Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
100.   Dubliners by James Joyce
101.   The bonesetter's daughter by Amy Tan
102.   Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
103.   Infinite jest: a novel by David Foster Wallace
104.   Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
105.   Beloved: a novel by Toni Morrison
106.   Persuasion by Jane Austen*

Needless to say, I have also gained much amusement from this volume*.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Vox Hunt: Freaky Friday

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Sat, 10 May 2008 19:15:28 +1000

Show us the person you'd most like to switch bodies and lives with for one freaky Friday.

Audrey Hepburn

Ok, she's dead, but the gorgeous Audrey Hepburn would be my choice. She was beautiful and elegant and, as this set of pics shows, she aged gracefully.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

The Privilege Meme

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:05:42 +1000

There's a privilege meme circulating the blogosphere. Its initial source: the work of doctoral students of Dr Will Barratt at Indiana State University.

The original authors of this exercise are Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, and Stacy Ploskonka at Indiana State University. If you participate, they ask that you acknowledge their copyright. Hereby acknowledged! ©

***

Bold the true statements. You can explain further if you wish.

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
My father went to university after he began working, so he was studying part-time as a mature age student.

3. Mother went to college.
4. Mother finished college.
My mother went to an excellent high school and then won a full scholarship to train as a teacher, but my grandfather wouldn't sign the bond that committed to repayment of the scholarship should she fail to complete the degree. So she couldn't take it. Ironically (sadly, since I think she would have made a fabulous teacher) there was little likelihood of her failing. When, later on, she studied pattern making and fashion at a technical college she topped her year: not that she ever told anyone, I discovered this as a teenager when I found the prize books they had awarded her.

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
I was a voracious reader and my memory is of the house being full of books of all types – I could read anything I wanted to. Also – important – we didn't have a television until I was about 14. That was a deliberate choice on the part of my parents.

9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
One of my fondest memories is of my dad reading me Treasure Island and then Kidnapped. But as soon as I could I preferred to read for myself.

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
So in all that time when I wasn't watching television… I learned ballet (later adding in other types of dance), drama, piano and flute, and I was in swim squad. I am hugely grateful to my parents for making these kinds of extra-curricular activities a priority in my life.

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
I'm not sure. I would say I dress in a way that's unremarkable for someone of my age who has a creative office job in the arts. For an Australian I have a relatively neutral speech style (I can put on the "ocker" accent, but only for fun). As for what I talk about…I'm of an intellectual bent although not an academic by "trade", some aspects of pop culture have bypassed me and are simply a distant source of bemusement, I read a lot, I'd rather own a piano than a television… In all? I don't think I could say that my "type" is ever portrayed in a particularly negative fashion. Perhaps we're the subject of gentle mockery sometimes? And a certain envy other times? But basically, positive.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
Oh no – my mother was violently anti-credit. She wouldn't even let me get an ATM card for my school savings account when they introduced that technology, so I had to stick with a passbook. Soooo daggy! I was mortified. (I got my first credit card when I got my first full-time salaried job. I was 23.)

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
For my undergraduate degree, yes. But this was in Australia, so the American experience of fiendishly high tuition fees for university didn't apply. And I lived at home, since the away-from-home college culture isn't particularly widespread in Australia either.

16. Went to a private high school.
But I went to a government selective school. Which meant I enjoyed the core benefits of a private school (i.e. motivated, high achieving peers and a parent body that was supportive of learning and education generally) with none of the costs.

17. Went to summer camp.
Music camps during summer, yes. But these are not at all the same animal as "summer camp", I suspect.

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
Didn't need one. Not sure what would have happened if I had needed one. Somehow I don't think I would have had a private tutor; perhaps my parents would have coached me a little.

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
Well, my purchased clothing was all new, but as the youngest of three I inevitably wore some hand-me-downs (including some that were much-admired and long-awaited!). However, more significantly, much of my clothing was made at home (see comment for point 3 above). This meant I was able to have enough/plenty of interesting clothing without my parents having to spend a fortune. Oh, and my maternal grandfather was a shoemaker, so under no circumstances would my mother have ever allowed me to wear pre-worn shoes. Very bad for the feet.

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
No. I never got around to learning to drive. They did, however, help me buy my first really good flute, which I wanted far more than a car.

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
As another has said: Not in the sense meant.

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
Ha! No way would that have happened. Indeed, we didn't even have a phone installed until I was about 9 and my big sisters were travelling overseas for the first time. This meme was developed by some very young students, I suspect!

27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
Ha! again. See comments for point 8 and for point 26.

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
Yes. My older sisters purchased an interstate holiday for my parents as an anniversary present when I was about 11. My parents insisted on taking me too. (The whole idea was that I could stay at home and have a good time with my sisters – no such luck!)

31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
I think, collectively, we couldn't have imagined anything more boring! Could we have afforded such a holiday? – my guess is no, because the family's financial priorities were elsewhere.

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
All the time. My favourite weekend adventure was to visit the natural history museum. Loved that place. Made special friends with the stuffed camel. Art galleries not so much. But lots of theatre and ballet, and concerts, and a little opera. (I'm mentioning the performing arts activities here because, surprisingly, there is no point of this type elsewhere in this meme.) Mainly my mother did the taking.

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.
Heating wasn't such an issue (we're talking about a mild climate), but I was brought up to turn lights off and would be chastised if I had the oil heater on too hot for too long in winter. So I was aware that such things cost money and that money was not to be wasted – there was no talk of the environment in those years, of course.
***

If this meme were used in its original form for a classroom or other group activity, "bolding" would be replaced by stepping forward from a common starting point. So I would have taken 17 steps forward, i.e. half way.

That said, I've long believed that I enjoyed an extremely privileged childhood and have been grateful for that. Some of these privileges I understood and appreciated at the time. Others may have irked, especially in my younger years, because I wasn't living quite the same life as my peers (few others wore "bespoke" clothes, everyone else had a television, no one else in my class was taken to see Macbeth or Rigoletto, and until I went to high school (aged 11) I had few friends who pursued as many extra-curricular activities as I did). But in the long run, all those things have shaped who I am and have given me interests and opportunities and pleasures that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

So thanks mum and dad! I know we didn't eat out at restaurants (not once do I recall doing that) and we didn't go to Disneyland (this was in the days when the Aussie dollar was way stronger than the American – Disneyland holidays were quite common even in my lower middle class suburb). I know we didn't get around in a flashy car. I also know that instead of spending on these material (they would have said "wasteful") things, my parents invested a lot of time and money in my sisters and me and in our all-round education. I think the term the academics throw at this is "cultural capital". So no trust fund for me – but loads of cultural capital.

To that end, some of the points in this meme amused me. Clearly leaving them unbolded was intended to be a signal for lack of privilege, but in my case I would consider them the opposite. For example, I would never regard having a television in my room during high school as a sign of privilege, mainly because I recognise that not having a television at all is part of what I'm so grateful for. It's one reason I read so voraciously and acquired a remarkable general knowledge at a young age. It contributed, I am certain, to my academic success. How on earth could have a television (in my room, no less) have been a privilege? Except, perhaps, to the extent that it's a marker of affluence if a family purchases multiple televisions.

But there's the rub. I don't equate affluence or overt displays of affluence with "privilege" in the richer sense.

My family was not, I think, affluent. But we never felt in want of anything. My parents (children of the 1930s) managed their money carefully, invested prudently, bought for quality and longevity rather than quantity, and were frugal in some areas so they could be generous in the areas that were important to them. All values that they passed on to their children. They were resourceful, and used their wonderful creative and practical abilities (mum's design and sewing skills; dad's marvellous woodworking skills) to ensure that we could have lovely things around us for the cost of the raw materials. Or less: one of my favourite chairs, I still have it, was rescued from someone else's household throw-out and refinished by my dad. So while on a traditional socio-economic scale I'm not sure we'd rank as especially privileged, I know I am in many ways tremendously privileged. And I'm humbled by that.

FOOTNOTE: I discovered this meme here, via NaNoBloMo; there's an interesting post about its viral journey here.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Vox Hunt: Tool Time

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:25:43 +1000

Show us your favorite tool.
Submitted by Maraschino.

Rotring 600

Rotring doesn't make the 600 series anymore. In fact Rotring (as a top quality German maker of pens) doesn't really exist anymore. I love the heft of the brass case, the hexagonal cross-section and the knurled grip – it reminds me of my father's workshop and learning how to work with wood and tools as a kid. And they're great to write with too!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Vox Hunt: Treat Your Feet

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:08:31 +1000

Show us your favorite pair of shoes.

Cupid shoes

It's a no-brainer – these are perfect, gorgeous shoes!
"Cupid" by Audley.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

QotD: Outta My Way!

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:34:56 +1000

Have you ever experienced road rage?
Submitted by Question of the Day.

Well, that's a fun one. You see, I don't drive. But I still get to feel the rage – let me count the ways:

Drivers who think that because the only living soul in sight is a pedestrian, they don't need to use their turning indicators. Hey, I'm interested in where and whether you're turning too, especially if I'm waiting to cross the road.
Drivers who aim for puddles when it's been raining heavily. Dumb. And unfriendly.
Drivers who stop for me to cross in front of them when it's evident that I have stopped to wait for them to pass so I can cross behind them.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I want one

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:03:01 +1000

BENTWOOD by contexture design workshop

http://contexture.ca/bentwood/cuff8.php

Arm cuff AND coffee cup holder.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Pet Ownership Wisdom: Treat yourself like a cat

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:08:58 +1000

I must be on a cat roll. This brilliant set of parallels comes from Kate Conroy and her Serenity Now journal.

Treat Yourself Like a Cat – 9 Life Lessons
1/ Get off pills. You don't give your cats drugs, even when they are insane, so why do it to yourself? Whilst some medications are necessary, consider how many you use to regulate mood or pain that can be relieved by being more cat-like?
2/ Eat what you need. I stopped free-feeding my cats and they lost weight, yet I kept stuffing my own face and stayed overweight! Eat protein, eat vitamin and mineral rich foods and the right sort of fats. Check out the complexity of your pedigree cat food and compare to your own diet. Eat grass. I provide cat grass for my cats and they chew on it every day before each meal. Fibre and fresh leafy greens are essential for us every day.
3/ Bathe. The cats know it. The Japanese know it. The muslims know to do it before prayer. We have running hot water in our homes!--That's just crazy, nuts luxury! Enjoy.
4/ Drink nothing but water. Okay, well maybe we'll deviate from this a little, but you get my point right? We don't add sugar, alcohol or caffeine to the drinking bowl, why add it to our own fluid?
5/ Take time to meditate. Every day your cat sits in a comfy position with a calm view with their eyes at half-mast, not asleep, not awake, not focussing on anything. Try it. Every day. It works.
6/ Sleep. As much as you can or want to.
7/ Stretch. Immediately when you get up from being sedentary, do a couple of stretches. Raise your hands above your head, touch your toes, do a push-up and arch your back. A sun salutation or five will really move the blood around and give you all the zing you need to move to the next bit of sunshine.
8/ Run around like a mad thing once a day. If jumping on objects isn't your style, go for a jog, a cycle or a robust walk. Even better, run about chasing a ball or a frisbee. If you're really cat-practised you'll dance around your house nekkid at least once a day to a really rockin' tune.
9/ Snuggle. Touch another body. Bump heads. Cuddle-up every day. And don't just wait for it to happen. Demand it! Loudly and with conviction. nods
Do these nine things every day and you're on your way to being a cat. You'll spend less money (cats are hopeless shoppers unless it's a shiny-thing), you'll desire fewer holidays (cats hate holidays), you'll look and feel fabulous and you'll be grinning like the Dalai Lama all day.

Thanks to Lifehacker.com.au for the link.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Cat plays theremin. Possibly

nobody@vox.com(frindley) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:55:18 +1000

Cat plays theremin. Possibly

[Original description: ブランテルミンを熱演中！]

And the real thing:

Carolina Eyck - Theremin plays Sting

And the seriously real thing: amazing piece by Martinu:

Martinů: Fantasie

Observe how the thereminist has to stand at such a distance from the other musicians.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend