dear friend

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Last Friday, I went out to buy new running shoes. The reason I needed new running shoes warrants a post of its own, so I’ll leave that for another time. Anyway, as I was already out, I figured I’d stop by at the Lifeline Bookfest. I’d gone the week-end before with a friend, but hadn’t found anything I wanted, so I left empty-handed. This was kind of to make up for that, and I was sure I’d find something.

After much wandering, I found a Russian for Dummies book, which will hopefully be a good introduction to Russian whenever I decide I’m finished with learning Persian and want to move on to Russian; and I also found a decent copy of The Hobbit, which I bought because I’ve been wanting to re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy for ages, and had started Fellowship of the Ring earlier this year, but stopped after a few pages because I thought I really should re-read The Hobbit first. Continue reading →

from chin-ups to chilli

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Earlier this year, I wrote a post about health and fitness goals in which I said I wanted to teach myself to do chin-ups. As we’re approaching the halfway mark for the year, I’m glad to announce that I’ve now managed to do five consecutive, unassisted chin-ups. I’m actually surprised at this because my “training” was getting pretty irregular, and by the day that I actually achieved it, I probably hadn’t practised in weeks.

I suppose it’s like a lot of other things in the sense that practising a number of other things (in this case, push-ups, weights, etc) can help achieve the thing that you think you should be doing all the time (i.e. chin-ups).

Full disclaimer: It’s probably more accurate to call them half-chin-ups, since I didn’t extend my arms to their full length before pulling up into the next rep. Is that cheating? Like people who do push-ups on their knees? Not the same? Continue reading →

last minute, next minute

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In the last week-end of May, I flew down to Canberra to visit a friend. I called her on the Thursday afternoon to check if the guest room was set up yet (they’d moved over a month prior, but I knew they’d been pretty busy). Having confirmed everything was ok, I booked my flights that night. About 14 hours after that, I was on the plane.

Last week, on a bit of a whim, I decided to go to the Rudimental concert. Ok, there was a fair bit of deliberation about this, but only for a few days, and right up until I bought the ticket, I was still equivocal about the whole thing. I left work on Monday, half-convinced that I shouldn’t go, but by bedtime, I was 100% committed to going. Continue reading →

these days

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When Rudimental released dates and venues for their Toast to Our Differences World Tour, I was really disappointed to see that Brisbane was not on the list. Apart from major Australian cities like Melbourne and Sydney, they were also going to go to Darwin and Mount Gambier …but not Brisbane. I mean, no offence to Darwin and Mount Gambier, but they’re significantly smaller cities. It didn’t make sense.

I suppose they’re not in it for the money (?) Continue reading →

descant

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There’s a rather peculiar phenomenon that happens sometimes when I listen to music. I know I’ve posted a fair bit about classical music lately, but this time I’m referring to pop music or mainstream music.

When I drive, I sometimes listen to the music on my phone, which means I hear random Persian lessons in amongst the reasonably small selection of songs which comprise my “Home” playlist. I think I called it that because they’re all the songs I feel most at home with, and can listen to over and over again without getting sick of them. Well, on most days, anyway. Continue reading →

a capital autumn

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I had written up a short post on Saturday morning, and I thought I’d published it successfully from my phone, but now I cannot find it amongst my published, draft, scheduled or discarded posts, so I have no idea what happened to it.

But, whatever, there wasn’t much in it. Just that this week has been a bit busy. Add to that an impromptu trip to Canberra, and it hasn’t left me much time to blog. Even so, I’m not ready to break my long-standing post-per-week streak (as tempting as it is, I think it’s also a matter of pride).

Hopefully back to “normal” next week.

And by “impromptu” I mean I booked the flights on Thursday night, and I was on the plane Friday morning. Don’t worry, it wasn’t for any serious emergency, unless you consider providing emotional support an emergency (although I think the trip did me just as much good as it did for my friend).

As it turns out, Canberra is really pretty in the autumn. My favourite sight was the trees with a gradient of leaves from green in the lower branches, to yellow then orange and red and brown at the top. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me to take a photo at the time, but I got a few other magnificent landscapes. Here is one for now:

I suppose to most people autumn is a lacklustre time when everything and everyone is preparing to enter some kind of dormancy or hibernation, but autumn is actually my favourite season. To me, it’s full of amazing colour, vigour and vibrancy.

Seeing trees aflame with deep red leaves, or shimmering with golden sequins, or even to see ghostly bare branches casting intricate patterns across the sky – these are the sights that evoke wonder and intrigue.