On how to know if you are leaving a goofy dictatorship

When Margo and Chris were leaving one of the former Soviet 'Stans (Turkemenistan I think), an official took away their digital camera for a while to make sure they hadn't taken any photos of anything didn't officially happen in the 'Stan. The photos didn't have anything more subversive than photos of a historic old quarter, the national museum, a few national monuments, the desert and a few camels. As these photo subjects were utterly innocuous to the government (I like to joke that the security officials had to quickly decide if the camels were the top-secret stealth camels which no-one is supposed to know about), none were censored. After all, the tourism ministry probably wants foreigners to photograph things like a historic old quarter, the national museum and a few national monuments. It may be less keen on the photographing the desert (as it may represent poor environmental management) but it isn't much of a secret! ;-)

For some reason, I was in a goofy mood today and kept coming up with even sillier scenarios. Such as the security official coming back and offering a valid critique of their camera technique ("Your framing of this statue is poor. A better composition would have been to take a few steps back and zoom in a bit more."); a patriotically-inspired censorious nature ("This picture of our wonderful statue doesn't show it in it's best light. I must delete it."); artistic paternalism ("You must go back and photograph this statue properly! Here are the necessary papers!"); or possibly just admiring ("This photograph of the statue is really good! Would you mind if we kept a copy for the next edition of our tourism brochure?")! ;-)

Yes, I am making light of censorship and dictatorial regimes. Yes, said issues cause untold hardships, etc. However, mocking them is one, non-violent, way of reducing their power. On the Flanders and Swann record "Then we wrote", Michael Flanders comments on the censorship exercised by the Lord Chancellor in the United Kingdom at the time. He was ashamed to admit at the time that nothing he had written had been censored. He had also refused to confess that some of his work had come back with appreciative notes written in the margins along the lines of "I like this, and Jolly good!"

I guess I am in a silly mood. There are worse moods to be in.

On the smartphone cover someone should sell

I was lying in the bath the other day when it struck me that Douglas Adams was vaguely prescient in having the fictional Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy be largely written and edited by amateurs. Consider the fact that a recent study concluded that Wikipedia had about 4 errors per entry compared to 3 for the Encyclopedia Britannica. The former being "slightly cheaper". Furthermore, my iPhone was not unlike the electronic version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, though in many ways, rather more powerful than the one Ford Prefect had.

This led me to the realization that what was needed was a smartphone cover that had the words "Don't panic" written on it in large, friendly letters. I'd buy one.

On getting ready for the biking season

This winter has been particularly mild. There is scarcely any snow in evidence. I am questioning whether it was perhaps foolish of me to get a bus pass for March. Anyway, with spring well on the way, I have begun to get ready for the biking season.

Ironically, I started with some less urgent bit of biking business. You may recall that I had a problem with a bit of wire in Leonardo's back tire in Australia. Well, I had never gotten around to taking Leonardo out of his shipping box, let alone dealing with the wire. Consequently, it was only this morning that I opened the box. There doesn't seem to be any damage (thankfully) from Regional Express or Air Canada's treatment of it. I took the tire off the rim, and went to Cycle Technique, the bike store where I had bought it. After some careful examination and a lot of effort, one of the people there was able to extract the tiny piece of wire that was causing the problem.

I returned home where I put the tire back on the wheel. I got Floria out and started to give her a bit of TLC get her ready for regular commuting. After getting the tires up to normal pressure, I noticed her chain was a bit rusty. For some reason, I couldn't find any chain oil to hand. So, I had to go back to the bike store get some. Floria now stands ready in my hallway with a freshly cleaned and oiled chain.

Addendum

As I was assembling my biking gear, I was frustrated by not being able to find the seat cover (A couple of people have described it as a "bike condom") for Floria. (A couple of people have described it as a "bike condom".) I'd given it up to File 13 and made plans to go to MEC for a replacement when I pulled my soft-shell jacket from its winter quarters. I was amused and relieved to find the cover in one of the pockets. I was less happy to find an old cereal bar wrapper as well!

One weird thing I noticed on Floria was that certain parts of her red paint job had faded whereas others hadn't. I can only assume that she has been inconsistently exposed to the UV light coming from the window. I should make a point of putting a cover over her next winter. I am curious to know if there is a well-defined line from the inner tube covering. However, I don't want to bother re-wrapping the bike.

On the summer's biking

Well, I still don't have any hard and fast plans, but there are two leading contenders. One depends on numerous things beyond my control. The idea is that I would fly out to Vancouver for John's wedding in Victoria with the bike. After the wedding, I would head to Seattle and via a combination of bike and train would spend a week seeing Seattle, Mount St Helen's and other assorted bits of Washington State. At the end of the week, I would meet Margo and Chris in Portland, Oregon. From Portland, we would head further South along the coast before heading inland to Crater Lake. From Crater Lake we would catch a train back to Vancouver.

The circumstances of this trip more or less dictate that I would have to get a certain set of days for my vacation which is not always possible at work. In addition, there is no guarantee that Margo and Chris will be free of assorted parental obligations relating to John's wedding. To further complicate the picture, Margo is recovering from a broken collar bone which has dashed her hopes of doing a triathlon this month. As well, it has put a spanner in the spokes for their planned trip to Japan and possibly Korea. Hence, therefore, or otherwise, their planned trips are in limbo.

The other plans doesn't require a particular set of dates (aside from being discreetly separate from John's wedding), and therefore it would be easier for me to plan it. Simply put, it would be Calgary to Winnipeg, i.e. the next leg of AMUAM JuNITO. ) Part of my rationale for doing it this year is that I feel like going back to Scotland in 2013, and therefore I should get some AMUAM JuNITOing in this year.

Another bit is that was given a beautiful book written by a pair of Québécois who crossed the continent in order to raise money for some disease that the father of one of them was suffering from. It has wonderful pictures of prairie fields that make me want to do that bit. (While the pictures is enchanting, the text reads rather like an exercise in what not to do.) Doing the prairies would also allow me to set foot in Saskatchewan for the first time.

I am still waffling, as each trip has its merits. Some days one seems more attractive, then I think of some reason that makes the other a better idea. Also, I won't know what I will be able to do because of the afore-mentionned outside elements until late April at the earliest.

On Australia, reflections

Well, it has been several months, so I should lay down some thoughts.

Despite the fact that the size of Australia psyched me out, I rather enjoyed myself there. In fact, I would cheerfully go back there. Heck, I rather think I will at some point.

However, there are a number of disconcerting things about Australia. Most of these are in the form of drive-through bottle shops. These are where you go in your ute to get your slabs of tinnies and stubbies to put in your esky. For those of you not up in your "Strine": "These are where you go in your pickup to get your cases of [beer in] cans and stubby bottles to up in your cooler." In other words, they are liquor stores. The disconcerting thing is that they are often drive-through affairs whereas the grocery stores usually aren't. At least, I didn't see any. Given the emphasis against drunk driving in the last upteen years, I would have thought that separating alcohol and cars a bit more would be a good thing. Then again, I live in Quebec were the acronym for the liquor stores is SAQ and the acronym for the car and driver licensing agency is SAAQ.

Regarding utes, I found it interesting that Australian pickup trucks are generally quite a bit smaller than their North American cousins. Nowadays, all the pickups in North America seem to be these ginormous creatures. The small pickups of my youth are no longer sold. Not Australia. There the small pickup lives on, sometimes in the form of a car-sized version, such as this one in Sydney.There are also more "trucky" versions such as this one in Dimboola:
This one also illustrates a particularly variety of Aussie "ute", namely the tray-back. This is a very utilitarian arrangement. Also of note is the very off-road setup of this one complete with a snorkel for fording rivers in flood. Given the dryness of Australia, I rather suspect that the latter option is more macho appeal than real utility.

Getting back to booze, I was chatting with someone at the Youth Hostel in Hall's Gap. I believe the man's name was Simon. Anyway, I was talking about how I wasn't quite sure if it was culturally sensitive of me to put a sticker of an aboriginal picture of a kangaroo on Leonardo as a symbol of Australia. Given that I had bought the sticker at the aboriginal culture center at the park, chances are it was "OK" and that the image didn't have a particularly deep cultural significance. (Part of this relative worry was inspired by my previous trip to the general area, where at the Te Papa museum in Wellington, New Zealand, there was a display of culturally inappropriate souvenirs. One was a tea-towel with an image of statue of a famous chief. The issue wasn't reproducing the image, it was using it for such a lowly item.) Anyway, Simon commented that if I wanted to really have a symbol of "European" Australia, I should put a sticker of a tinny of beer on the bike!

In other news, I have posted pictures from Christmas. Many of the images feature nieces and nephew.

On my day in Sydney

It has taken me a long time to get around to writing this one.

I don't know if I should thank or curse my friend James. He is a friend I call brother. And as such I readily accepted his request that I buy a Driza-Bone riding coat for him while I was in Oz. His request did come with appropriate qualifiers along the lines of that he would pay me back and that if one didn't cross my path, I didn't have to worry. However, given the esteem I hold him in and my desire to wear one of these Australian icons, I decided that my time in Sydney might well include a search for one of them. Using the Driza-Bone website, I worked out where these coats might be found in central Sydney.

Armed with this information, I proceeded along George Street, which is more or less equivalent to Montreal's Ste-Catherine's street, at least in my frame of reference. The first place was in the Queen Victoria Building which was an experience in and of itself. It had a wonderfully and pointlessly complex clock.The shop in the Queen Victoria Building didn't have a Driza-Bone in the suitable size, colour or style, so I proceeded along George Street to the Rocks area. The Rocks is not unlike Old Montreal or Gastown in Vancouver in that it is one of oldest parts of the city and fell into disrepute before being tarted up for the tourists as an historic district. A short section of street held no less than three stockists of Driza-Bones. The first two proved to be slightly sketchy operations very much aimed at the tourist trade staffed and likely owned by Chinese immigrants with a vaguely shaky grasp of English. They also lacked riding coats in the size (XL) and colour (black) that James wanted.

The next place was very much what was required. The owner and staffer was an middle-aged American expatriate woman who was very well versed in the arcana of Driza-Bone and Australian GST rebate regulations. The store was called Natural Selections and deserves this overdue shout-out. The woman was extremely helpful in making sure that the coat for James was indeed the right size (James is about my height, but has an additional 40 lbs or so of muscle compared to me, but doesn't have my overly long arms) as well as explaining to me the official way of folding and rolling one of these coats for transport. In addition, she explained to me how to apply for an Australian GST rebate on the coat as well as providing me with a can of coat treatment for the coat. As she was so friendly, and the price of the coat was well below the suggested retail price of the coat, I let myself buy one for myself. This had the added benefit of further lowering the price of both James' and my coats as it let me apply for the GST rebate. James had asked for the riding coat which is quite long. I wanted the same, but alas the store only had one in the XL size. (I would normally be an L size, but for my very long arms.) I settled for a short coat in black. (Interestingly enough, when I went to the Driza-Bone website to write this entry, I couldn't find an entry for a short coat in black. Apparently, I have a rare model!)

Anyway, I spent quite a lot of money at the store and emerged with not one but two of the classic Australian coats. Unfortunately, one of the characteristics of these coats is that they are a trifle heavy, so I had to lug them in a bag that ended up making my hands feel very raw by the end of the day. This is part of the reason why I might curse James. Another is that if not for him, I might have spent less money in Australia. While Natural Selections does retail its Driza-Bones at a discount compared to the MSRP, they aren't cheap. The final reason is that my quest did eat up most of my one day in Sydney.

However, the Rocks are just the other side of Circular Quay from the Sydney Opera House. This meant I could pose in an iconic Australian garment in front of the iconic Australian building!
I also got to see something rather like a 12 meter yacht passing under the Sydney bridge. Unfortunately, this photo makes the bridge look small. It isn't. It is the yacht that is bloody big!
There were parrots hanging out near the bay. I took photographs of them.
Unfortunately, they aren't perching on the masts of a sailing ship. They are perching on ornaments of waterfront condos meant to look like the masts of a square rigger!

I didn't take photos of some of the very few Indigenous Australians I saw on my trip. At least, I assume they were Indigenous Australians, certainly they looked the part. However, that is what they wanted to look like. They were fairly actively attracting attention to themselves as "local colour" for the tourists. Had they been First Nations here in North America, I would have said they were "chiefing", e.g. posing in "authentic traditional" outfits for photographs. I have issues with "white" guilt, not in the least abated by the fact that my last name means "white"! There is also that not entirely silly Indigenous Australian notion that having one's photograph taken adversely affects one's soul. Come to think of it, posing for tourists like definitely corrodes the soul!

I headed back toward the Youth Hostel, via the Sydney Aquarium which was a disappointment as I didn't spot their platypus. Along the way, I had supper at an overly expensive restaurant (given the quality of the food). However, it did have a very nice view of Sydney Harbour. Possibly in light of this, someone was having a 18th birthday party thrown in her honour. This someone ran in a crowd with more desire to show off than real sense, evidenced in their choice of footwear.That is way too much heel!

I made my way back to the YHA where I met my roommates. One was a slightly clueless chap from Burma/Myanmar(!) I don't remember where the other one was from (somewhere "British" e.g. the UK, Australia or New Zealand), but he was amused by the note I had left on my bed. If I may explain, the beds in the four bunk room aren't officially assigned. I had made my chosen bed up when I arrived, but there wasn't any very clear indication that it was "mine". Consequently, before I left for the day, I had left a polite note saying that that particular bunk had been claimed by me.

On how one of the barriers to blogging has been removed

One of the reasons I have haven't been blogging was that my 8 year old computer was getting very sloooow. I remedied that by buying a new computer this weekend. It is probably more computer than I really need but then if you are going to buy only one computer every 8 years, you might as well buy a good one. Actually, even adjusting for Moore's Law, it is probably the most powerful computer I have ever bought.Quiet too!

Really quiet!