Vegetables

I’m done with the mangoes.  After the Christmas break there were about four more days of work left, but I decided that I couldn’t be bothered going back for just four days.  It takes effort to get back into work mode, and quite frankly I just couldn’t be bothered.  Allan told me I could come back next year, Michael gave me a mango, “the best one I found today”, to “take home for your mum”.  He also shook my hand and wished me luck for my future career.

My immediate male ancestor Russell decided to run over the black dog on Christmas morning.  We took the injured puppy to Cairns (where we were going to meet family anyway) and sent him to the vet.  Broken foot.  6-8 weeks hopping around in a cast.

I decided to make a vegetable patch.  Russell kindly provided some logs from our forestry plot, which he cut with a chainsaw while employing industry-standard safety practices for ear protection.

"Remember to protect your ears kids!"

Bare garden

Our first crop of vegetables

The garden bed was constructed with logs, and the gaps filled with mud (from our dam) and grass cuttings, to stop dirt leaking out after heavy rain.  I felt like I could go to Africa and make mud brick houses for the rest of my life.

The next day was spent filling the garden with lychee leaves, dirt, ash and horse poo.  I had to go round to collect the poo from Dennis (different to the one on the mango farm).  We talked mostly about the task at hand, ‘shit shovelling’, noting that it would have been big business years ago when there were more horses around.  In fact, one could probably have done an apprenticeship in Shovelling.  We imagined there would have been at least one guy (or gal) back in the day who had just finished his (or her) apprenticeship, was a Fully Qualified Shit Shoveller (pronounced Manure Mover by the ladies) and was just about to embark on their career.  For the first time in their life, they would have been ahead – but then along came the steam engine and put them out of business.

We went to buy punnets of vegetables the day after that because I’m impatient and want to see results before I head down south for uni.  Corn, eggplant, capsicum, betroot, rocket, silverbeet, chives, tomatoes, lettuce, choy, basil and other miscellaneous herbs.  We put a net over the top to keep out the large animals.  There – a vegetable garden in three days!

Hurry up and grow!

Mango Farm Madness

It was a week just like any other – hot weather, the hope of storms to send us home early, and dirty paddock talk to occupy our minds.  The way I get myself through the long 11 hour days is by aiming to get to the next break (morning or afternoon tea, and lunch) and hoping that by the time we get back to work a storm will come and wash us away.  The heat and humidity seems to melt time away to insignificance, though.

One day we had a storm building up in the north east, giving me hope before lunch.  It was deep blue and coming towards us, but it ended up wimping out and fading to clear blue sky in the space of about half an hour.  Twenty minutes later, however, my hopes were reinstated at the sight of another storm buildup, this time in the south west.  I called this one Gladys, and invited her to come for a cup of tea and scones.  It took her an hour or two, but she came.  I went home.

As I eat my lunch I am usually interrupted by a little dog, a cattle dog the size of a jack russell.  It runs around everyone’s feet and stands up on its hind legs begging for food, but I just kick it or give it a slap on the nose when it does that to me.  It’s almost learnt not to bother any more, but it’s still a stupid dog.  After charming a morsel of sandwich of the idiots who feed him, he drops its hind legs to the ground and walks forward on his front legs, rubbing his evidently itchy balls on the grass.   After I eat I have my grandad nap, either under a mango tree or – more recently – on a comfortable seat near the farm house.  I am joined by guinea foul – stupid birds who come to investigate the intruder into their territory.  One afternoon I witnessed a pair chasing each other all around the paddock, back and forth and around in circles for hours.  No joke, hours.  They were like the distance runners from Kenya with agile, skinny legs that propel them at high speeds without ever tiring.

Lunchtime Companion

Robin tells me guinea foul run wild in Africa, where he grew up.  He recounted a childhood spent with his mates rounding them up into a corner (stupid birds are not tactically minded), whereupon they would produce shotguns, fire and sufficiently injure a couple.  What do you do with an injured guinea foul?  I’m told you pick it up by the head and swing it around in circles – soon enough, its skinny neck will snap, the body will go flying and you’ll be left with a bird head covered in blood in the palm of your hand.  Robin says his Anglo-Indian friend’s mum made a top-notch guinea foul curry.

Ben, my age, tells me he used to be quite the distance runner.  We probably raced against each other back in our school days at the regional meets.  David, who I met at my previous farm and also my age, had a similar story.  Why do all the runners end up on mango farms?

This week, we were discussing spies on the mango farm.  Was anybody amongst us an undercover intelligence officer?  Korean spy?  Snoop from a rival farm?  The employee population on the farm is not entirely dissimilar to that of a horror movie, or even Big Brother.  Not long ago, we had a dozen people.  The high school graduate made his money and quit; Julian’s car broke down and prompted him to move to Cairns; a couple of other guys had had enough by week’s end.  Perhaps they’re all defecting to the other farms, or the communists.

While we’re on the topic of other farms, the allegations against my previous mango boss were flying across the paddock.  For those of you that don’t know, Mr N. is of Italian heritage, quite rich and runs a large, regimented farming operation.  Word of mouth is it’s the last place you want to work, but somehow I found myself there (for the record, it was weird – but not that bad)  Mr N is the alpha male, the king of Camp N – the Australian version of Camp X-Ray.

Now to the dirt spreading.  Apparently the cute Japanese lady he keeps in his house (along with his wife) to do domestic work is actually his mistress, and she gets traded in for a new one every 12 months.  There were stories about illegitimate children of his, not to mention how he obtains his mistresses.  Says Michael to Greg (the boss), ‘Now what you don’t know Greg is that the kids at your place are actually mine.  And the kids at my place are all yours!  Now I know what you get up to when you leave the paddock!  And then there was this aboriginal fella come knocking at my door telling me I was his dad, prolly just afta he’d been to see you about it too.’  I suggested that Greg and Michael swap kids and be done with it, to which he replied, ‘Now that’s smart thinking.  Probably why you’re a scientist!’

Although he seems bogan at first sight, Michael’s not exactly unintelligent.  He is capable of reasoned thinking and objectivity, although he usually communicates his conclusions in either a whinge, or a ruff-tough manner.  This week he told me that he realises we need police (he just doesn’t like the standards held by the current force), and that he knows he sees the bad side of things more often than the good.  Some say that self awareness is a sign of intelligence.  The strange thing about Michael is that he doesn’t smoke or drink, comes from a Jehova’s Witness background, has experience in the Army (Reserve, although he doesn’t emphasise that), liked maths at school (but nothing else) and gained most of his agricultural skills from growing dope on a commercial scale, for which he served time.

I’m not sure if I mentioned in a previous post a woman named Nakibra who works in the packing shed.  I haven’t met her, but I hear that her and Michael don’t get along well because the won’t take orders from each other.  Michael complains about her every second day in the paddock, but today he says, ‘Maybe if I don’t say anything else about her for the rest of the season she’ll give me a big fat hug like she did last year.  I didn’t mind having a feel of her big fat arse last time, and I’d like to have her tits rub against me again.’  Greg replies, ‘You know what Michael, they’re definitely getting lower each year, ay?  If you want a hug from her then now’s the time to get one, I’m telling ya.’  Classic paddock talk.

Which reminds me of a phrase I overheard this week.  It’s definitely not a nice thing to say, but I will report it here nevertheless.  “Like a gin’s left tit”  A gin is a degrading term for an aboriginal person.  This line means, ‘It’s not right and it’s not fair’, and can be used in learned discussions about politicians, government or bureaucracy.

Most days I like to lie out in the paddock for morning tea because I gain the time it takes to do the return trip to the farm house and back out again – up to 10 minutes more for me!  Recently I’ve been discovering the benefits of coming in to the house for smoko – namely hot ham-cheese-tomato toasted sandwiches (thick, real ham and not the paper-thin sandwich variety), light scones warm out of the oven with jam and cream, and most recently cake.  This particular cake was the ultimate example of perfection, made by [big boss] Allan’s wife Dianne.  I had the feeling that she implemented the recipe for Orange Tea Cake (with Lemon Frosting), as documented on page 68 of All Time Favourites from the Australian Woman’s Weekly, with a precision unrivalled by even the most careful chemist.  As the cake melted on my tongue I was sure that every last ingredient was bought to specification and painstakingly measured, the oven preheated to 180 C, plus or minus no more than 0.5 C, and that even the cake tin matched the exact specifications as written in the book: round, diameter 25cm, with a 5cm hole in the middle.  Candied orange peel on top.  All for half a dozen paddock workers.  I’m back for smoko next week, I tell you.

On the truck back to the house one day, Robin and Allen (remember, he’s the boss extrodinaire) were having a half-serious debate about how to run the farm, following a spat in the paddock over how the packing shed manages itself.

R:  Look Allen, you just can’t start packing at ten in the morning cause there just isn’t any bloody fruit I’m telling you
A:  No, we’ve got enough there.  We’re back to KP so it takes longer to pack you see…
R:  What you’re doing is setting the shed up to finish early or just sit around all day waiting for us to send the fruit in
A:  No we’re not
[...continues for a couple of minutes while Ben and I sit and laugh at the two old men fighting]
A:  Alright Cosmospostman, you’ve got a rational scientific mind.  What do you think?
R:  You can’t pack mangoes before they’re picked now can you?  He’s telling us we can all bloody well go home and the mangoes’ll pick themselves!
C:  I’m not even sure mangoes exist
A:  Look Robin, you just don’t understand.  You’re a dickhead!
R:  Get fucked!!

I’d better hurry up and post this before the storm I see brewing over the mountains comes any closer and cuts out our internet connection.

On Mango farming, nature, travel and breast implants

At the end of last week, there was an influx of new workers in the mango paddock.  A guy who called himself Robbie claimed he had experience, but had recently been working on oil rigs overseas.  I think he might have been on the run, given some of the comments he made, and that he stopped work after a couple of days.  After that, you have to hand in a form for tax details, you see.

Also starting work was Jay the 30 year old father, Nolan the large 50-something man, Darren-just-back-from-schoolies (wants to do Engineering in Townsville) and a couple of other randoms who didn’t last long. Some people only work a day or two, get paid a couple of hundred dollars, quit and go down to the pub to drink it.

Most intriguing of the new workers was Julien, the 25 year old nurse from France who’s travelling the world, currently in need of money.  I adopted the unofficial role of on-paddock interpreter for him, having to rephrase instructions from Michael given in the North Queensland Bogan dialect to a more conventional form of English.  Julien’s dad is from Africa (Algeria), so he’s got olive skin that doesn’t get sunburnt.

Michael’s been in a generally good mood for the past three days, and hasn’t been a problem for me since the new guys started.  He has the occasional whinge, but his mood stays good.  Memorable paddock conversations this week have included a lively debate on Evolution and the statistical observance that 10% of men are gay, so of the dozen-or-so of us in the paddock, it’s likely that one is checking out everyone else.  Micahel and Nolan engaged in conversation about self-sufficent energy (wind/solar).  It would be nice to not depend on the electricity grid, I think.  Jay efficiently and elegantly contradicted himself when he proclaimed “I’m so fucking polite” (in good taste, not grumpiness).  By the way, here’s a contradiction of my own: “It’s wrong to generalise”.  For efficiency, a smart alecs would say “P and not P”, but really – who says stuff like that anyway?  Michael came up with a theory that the recent economic crisis is going to stunt China’s growth just as a similar crisis retarded Japan’s growth post-war.  A stroke of genius from George Bush unrecognised by the public?  A conspiracy?  Michael.  Mango paddock.  Perspective.  Michael likes to hear himself talk.

I’ve got four days off because we’ve picked all there is to pick (including two hours of limes), and we’re waiting for the rest of the fruit to ripen.  Here’s what happens in our back yard after the rain:

Clouds gently caressing the mountain tops

Did anybody see this in the sky the other night?  I saw a resemblence to the household puppy.

Spot the difference

Last night I put a mattress and blankets on the back of Dad’s truck and slept out under the stars.  The moonlight illuminated the low clouds as they hovered over the mountains.  The air was cool and scented with eucalyptus and dew on the grass, and I heard the frogs, crickets, nocturnal birds and other sounds of old as I stared out into the universe as it lay bare before me.  We always talk about space and to me such talk makes me feel like space is so far away from us on earth.  But on a nice clear night, it’s right there.

This is the best shot I could get

Check out these PhD Science students dancing their thesis: Dancing Scientists Invade YouTube

Hey Erin, just a quick reminder that reading someone’s publicly accessible blog does not constitute spying.  Dear readers, tensions have escalated since I pre-emptively blocked Erin from viewing my facebook profile and she gets frustrated when she doesn’t know how to block me in return, and can’t even research things on google herself.  Oh no.

Now to today’s news, I took Julien to Mossman Gorge for a swim.  I met him in Mt Molloy where his van broke down, and we drove down to Mossman together.  We did the usual – swim in the cool clear water, sit on the rocks in the sun, watch people.  He seemed quite adept at jumping around on rocks, I think it would be really handy to have a nurse come rock hopping with us one time.  I mean, it’s as safe as you can be should something go wrong, short of bringing an entourage of emergency trauma specialists, a complete mobile operating tent and a caravan full of supplies.

Let’s get hypothetical.  For the price of a return ticket to a place like, (let’s pick one at random) New York, I may as well buy a round-the-world ticket and go to Japan, California, the West Indies, England and Switzerland at the same time.  Sequentially, I mean.  Julien explains that while his friends expressed their envy at his pre-departure travel plans, it’s not like it’s all that hard for somebody who wants to do it.  Save some money, pack your life into a suitcase, go where you like and work when you need the money.  You’re on your own, often in a country with a different language to your prefered one, but really, it’s easy.  I’m getting my degree done first, but everyone else has no excuse.  Quit your jobs and travel the world you bunch of slackers!

Julien tells me he worked in a clinic that did boob jobs.  “Did you see that woman back there?  She had fake books.  They’re the wrong size for somebody her age.”  He knows what to look for.  I was too busy explaining to said woman that she could continue to walk the 2km walking circuit all day if she so desired, and that because of the circular nature of the loop, either direction could be regarded as ‘forwards’ and that’s why we were going one way and her the other and we were both still walking the loop in an acceptable fashion.  I asked Julien if he became a nurse just to watch breast augmentation in action (not the case), and proceeded to explain the word ‘sleazy’.  We agreed that breast implants are fine for people who loose one to cancer or in an accident, so that they don’t end up lop-sided and walk around in circles for the rest of their lives.  But surgery for aesthetics – like any kind of cosmetic surgery on a fully abled person – we don’t yet appreciate or understand.

The Michael Game

How well have computers been taught to jump out of the system?  [...]  In a computer chess tournament not long ago in Canada, one program – the weakest of the competing ones – had the unusual feature of quitting long before the game was over.  It was not a very good chess player, but it at least had the redeeming quality of being able to spot a hopeless position, and to resign then and there, instead of waiting for the other program to go through the boring ritual of checkmating. (GEB, page 37)

The important part is about knowing when to quit (not being the weakest in the pack – that’s the old man Dennis and he doesn’t know where he is let alone when to quit and go to the old people’s home).

The other day in the mango paddock, about 10 minutes back from afternoon smoko, Executive Picker Michael decided to pay me a visit and tell me of for my inefficient crate packing techniques.  He could have politely educated me about his more efficient packing technique, but instead opted to give me an earful about how slowly I was going, how far behind the rest of the team I was, how it looked like I didn’t want to be there, how I was a failure and disgrace and that government taxes were bleeding him dry.  Or something like that.

I cool headedly pointed out that unlike him, I was cleaning out the guts of a very thick tree, with long handled pickers, and had my previous trees had been much the same, thus explaining why I appeared to be behind.  Robin came to my aid telling Michael that he was full of it, but I walked off to get a new crate and that was it.

But Michael’s always right.

This morning, Executive Picker Michael decided that I needed to have a watchful eye kept on me, and that the best eye for that was one of the ones in his eye socket.  I ended up in the row of trees next to him – it was an equal setting, I kept up with everyone else and he had nothing to say.  However, towards the end of the morning he initiated communications with me.  I obliged.  At first it was something about nuclear bombs, then it was global warming and carbon emissions.  He likened aeroplanes and cars and pollution to elephants and canaries shitting in his back yard.  “If I got one big fuckin elephant in my garden shitting everywhere and one canary doing little canary shits, and then if I wanna get rid of the shit in my garden, who’s gunna go first – the elephant or the canary?”

Have you one of these in your garden?

I pointed out that planes are comparable to – if not more efficient over long distances than – the same amount of people driving to their destination in individual cars, plus cargo on top of that, and thus the choice in his garden would have been between an elephant and an extended family of hundreds of canaries.  Some quick research reveals that an Airbus A380 uses 3 litres of fuel for each passenger, per 100km travelled.  Give or take 2 litres and you get a range representative of most commercial jets.  A Subaru Forester – not the most economical model, but similar to the one my parents drive, uses 9.6 litres of fuel per 100km (1-5 passengers – competition with the plane really depends on how many people would fit inside).  But you know what they say – lies, damned lies and statistics, and it’s not like I’ve researched this in depth.  Don’t quote me.

Back to the mango picking.  Before I knew it, we were talking about politics.  I was warned previously not to go there… but it was too late by the time I realised.  Superannuation, taxes, government hoopla, bureaucracy, Telstra charging line rental when the lines are down.  The price of fish in China.  And more.  I was just getting carried away with the light mango-paddock (ie, meaningless) conversation, but before I knew it Michael was swearing and shouting.

Afterwards, according to Michael’s son Aaron, I had him really worked up and that he’d remain that way for a couple of hours, if not the rest of the day.  Oops.  I didn’t know that anyone could get so worked up over mango-paddock conversation.  It’s like yelling at someone when you ask how the weather’s been and they say it’s been rainy.  Aaron explains that Michael is only ever looking for agreement in a conversation, that nothing’s worth arguing because he’s always right, that Michael believes he’s had a hard life and he’s been the recipient of multiple injustices, and that he’s unwilling to consider the other viewpoint.  Now that, folks, is a good understanding of one’s father.

Michael losing his temper didn’t bother me, but I apologised quietly to the other workers just in case they copped anything from his bad mood.  Robin tells me there are plenty of past workers that won’t come back to the farm until Michael’s gone.

At the end of the day, Michael’s whole off-and-on, happy-angry business is just a game.  The Michael Game.  I’ll play by the rules and try to keep the peace as long as I can.  Some can live with him, but if I have had enough of Michael, I’ll quit.  The attitude’s called, ‘Take No Shit’.  If that means that he ‘wins’ when I leave, then so be it – I’ll just get another job, hopefully without stressful idiots like him.

On my first day, Michael told me he is often hard to get along with, but really he’s a good bloke.  I’m sorry Michael, but it’s not really up to you to decide if you’re a good bloke or not.  Maybe all he needs is a good triangle.

Now dear readers, I’m sorry if you think you’ve navigated by accident to Bitch and Whine Centeral, but in all honesty this is the most interesting news I can give you for the time being.  I told you life on the mango farm wouldn’t be very insightful, and here’s the supporting evidence.

We have slight drizzle, thunder and lightning.  I want a bit more action here, but it’s not bad for November.

My sister’s just signed herself up to facebook.  I pre-emptively blocked her (for the time being) so that she doesn’t take things from my wall and blow them out of proportion to tease me.  I also spied on her with VNC, and in the process witnessed a girl with potential for intellignece writing like an idiot with ‘lol’ and what have you mercilessly scattered throughout.  As if she doesn’t waste enough time in front of the mirror already.

Lies, deception and general injustice

One of the best ways to pass time in the mango paddoc is to whinge.  Michael, Executive Picker Extrodinare, usually leads us in our discussions.  He doesn’t look like he would, but sometimes he brings up some interesting points (often from his time in the army and the connections he made).

Today, we winged about about police, politicians, government, bureaucracy, aboriginals benefits, hormones, chemicals, city folk, cancer, religion, taxes, The Youth Of Today, corrupt police, the economy, greedy rich bastards screwing us over backwards, money, market agents, Kevin Rudd, bludgers, John Howard, George Bush, KFC, Macdonalds, Monsanto, oil companies, Kids Theese Days, catholics.

We talked about oil companies and how they are preventing widespread adoption of sustainable energy.  That reminded me about an idea I hadto meet environmental issues associated with wind turbines (avian fatalities)… I mean, today it’s all about carbon neutral energy, but I think in the future we’re going to need bird-neutral wind power, where the electricity companies fund breeding programs to compensate for the birds their turbines kill.  I kid; it’s not like wind turbines are really about to wipe birds of the face of the earth.

After that it was observed that cancer – especially in children – is so much more common now than it was 40 years ago, even in a town like Mareeba whose population has halved in that same time period.  Diet was suggested as a possible factor, due to the amount of ‘bastardisation’ that happens to food these days.  Chickens that go from 0 to 100 in six weeks, while the chicken company supplies feed to the farmer in secure silos, and requires that nobody be able to access it (presumably to prevent third party testing).

Me:  But surely you’re responsible for what you eat, right?
Mic:  Well… I ‘spose.
Me:  You could make a point, y’know, of buying decent food – or even growing it yourself.
Mic:  Yeah, but who’s got the time to do that?

Everyone loves a conspiracy, and everyone loves to complain about something.  It’s never yourself to blame.  Come on people, take control of your life in the areas you can, while you’re still able!  It’s not like we’re being force fed steroid-filled chicken or anything, is it?  It’s one thing to whinge, but doing something about it is what you need to be doing.  I’ve put making a vegie garden at home on my list of things to do, when it’s going to happen is another question entirely.

I think Michael’s son Aaron has been duped.  Some girl forced herself on him, declared she was pregnant a few weeks later, had the kid and has now moved out.  It sounds to me like she was after a guy to leech child support payments for a child to a father she doesn’t remember, and Aaron was the lucky one.  Couldn’t he see it coming?  I mean, could he really be that gullible?  Maybe it was the power of (delusional) love.

There was an old man who started work today.  I think he should be in a nursing home, not on a farm.  He can’t hear things, takes forever to fill a crate, continues work because he doesn’t realise it’s smoko time and seems to have a general lack of understanding in regard to his immediate surroundings.  I hope a man his age is doing this for fun, not out of necessity.

I’m so tired, but I’ve got to try and match my associate’s daily posting streak.  You’re getting this after a very long day.

It’s raining. Go home.

I know I’m supposed to be working for money, but I still like it when I get to go home early.  It’s like being flooded out of school and all of a sudden having a day to yourself.  At Camp Nasties (my previous farm), it was my job to hand out raincoats and what have you in the event of heavenly leakage.  Everyone would continue picking in the rain until it got really heavy or rising rivers threatened to flood us out.  But these days, once we get soaked through after a couple of minutes, we’re usually good to go home for the day.  Today, I started at 6 and knocked off at 9.

It’s a smaller farm (smaller picking troupe), but there are a couple of characters starting to make themselves apparent.  Firstly there’s Michael, foreman/Executive Picker.  He’s probably only in his fourties, but he looks older, skinnier and greyer from the cigarettes he smokes (and whatever else he’s done).  Dislikes police, government, slackers and lots of other things.  From what I gather, he’s been in prison, got teenage kids, a wife and perhaps another woman who’s sucking his money away.  That’s not so uncommon on the farms.  Yesterday, on inspecting one of my first full crates of mangoes, “It’s not bad.  You could prolly make a brothel out of it.”  A brothel?  From a crate of mangoes? “Yeah, just put a red light over it and she be right”.  I didn’t really get that.  Today, every clap of thunder was a bus rolling over and killing a dozen pretty ladies inside.  “That’s alright though coz they’re prolly young virgins.  No good to me – I like ‘em a little older meself”

Then there’s Ben.  He’s my age, thinking about going to uni sometime soon to do agriculture science.  He claims he can see it being big business soon; I have a hunch that he thinks so because his religous beliefs predict an imminent apocolypse followed by times of happines, sunshine and smiling families with full stomachs everywhere.  Ben’s pretty good – having work ethic and half a mind go quite a way.

Anyway, what did I do for the rest of the day?

Loaded up the communal computer with the latest Ubuntu release, works like a charm as far as I’m concerned.  The household idiots are still clueless though.  De-clucked some chickens.  It’s a problem when there are delusional chickens who act like they’re sitting on eggs when really they’re not.  The lucky ladies were sent to the Cairns Regional Declucking Facility, conveniently located in our backyard.  How does it work?  It’s a bare cage in which the birds stay for a couple of days until they gain a sense of reality.  It’s like a mental institution for birds.

This specimen wasn't pleased to be moved on

The new puppy went off to the vet and the rest of him came back to spend the evening limping around instead of jumping, licking and running.  “Oh Rocco, there’s nothing there!”  Erin (sister) and I reviewed videos of last night’s efforts to stop our father from being grumpy by introducing triangles into his meal.  We chopped and arranged everything in a triangular fashion, based on the notion that triangles make people happy.  We think it worked, but we had to wait 12 hours for the desired result.  Then we got down to some improvisational old time dance.  Here are some video stills:

Symptoms of grumpiness include abrupt departures

Let's try some triangles

...like this one?

Triangulated mango, salad, cucumber and rice for father

Dancing the night away

We broke a sweat dancing after a couple of minutes because it was so hot and sticky.  Not because we were unfit.

I should go to bed.  I might be getting called in for mango duty tomorrow morning if the weather’s good.

Getting you up to speed

It’s been pretty close to a year since the last post on the old blog.  Since then:

I Moved back to Australia for a brief stint at home.  Moved to Melbourne.  Been underwhelmed with regards to first impressions at Monash uni.  Evil eye got me in trouble.  Slowly picked out a couple of good people in my course from the attention seeking/immature/study obsessed/self absorbed general first year population.  Took chemistry.  Made fragile initial friendships with people from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran – countries that through their media coverage have been come to be associated with “warfare”, “terrorism”, “extremists” and “intolerance”.  There are nice people everywhere, especially in countries that yours go to war with.

Worked my arse of Chemistry and then worried for three weeks that I’d failed Physics.  Went rogaining.  For those of you not in the know, it’s a sport similar to orienteering but of larger scope with regard to both space and time.  Witnessed the comic genius of Andrew Prentice, three times a week.

Of course I’ve done more than that, but there’s a brief summary for you.

Second semester exams have just finished and I’m home for summer.  My late night flight was delayed, so by the time I got in to Cairns it was 1AM.  My employment agency “Mother” has found me a job on a mango farm – let’s wait and see what kind of interesting characters I’ll meet this time around.  It was my first day on the job yesterday.  Last week it was PHL1140: Introduction to Logic (2 hour paper) and MTH2010: Multivariable Calculus (3 hour paper).  This week it’s pick mangoes and place them in a basket.  Just as bears go into hibernation, my intellect is pulling its tenticles back into its shell for the mango season.

While I was at uni, I had an interesting conversation with Matt the engineer about how he changes his speech for the bogans from his country home town, and for the rest of the population (normal people).

aww yeh m8 fuckin sounds like ya avin a gud 1. hope ya scor sum chickz m8 n git sm fuckin aktion! waz downat tha pub m8 las nite n’ere were haaawt chikz like everywere i tellya.

I could go on, but you get the picture.