Gym junkie-esque

I've simply run out of excuses of why I cannot go to the gym and get fit.  Well I'm assuming it's still the place to get fit.  I hope it is, because if it's not I will simply have to go home and sit on the couch, safe in the knowledge that I gave it my best shot.  See how good I am with excuses?   

An array of "fit people" (they love - LOVE! - to be called that) have recently informed me that walking from one's front door to one's car does not really constitute exercise.  What?  It doesn't ??!!  Just quietly, I think it depends on your perspective really.  Exercise; I'm doing it wrong, apparently.

It's been some time since I walked through the doors of an exercise facility.  But it has recently come to my attention that I have no more tricks up my sleeve to convince myself that it is out of the question to be doing any exercise of the get-fit variety.

So this week (not Monday because it is Halloween, and not Tuesday because it is Cup Day), I am starting a 10-day free introduction at the gym near my workplace.  I'm not terribly happy about it, but I know I will probably sort of feel better when I get into the swing of things again.  The gym people better sell this fit thing to me; like providing me with a bevy of hot, young, fit personal trainers.  And cake.  I will do just about anything for a slice of chocolate cake.  I probably shouldn't get my hopes up about the cake.

It feels like yesterday when I last went to the gym; and I would be correct if yesterday was 2004.  Yep, 2004.  Long time between rowing machines, eh?  Well, don't blame me, I have an endless list full of serious and important excuses reasons of why I simply have been unable to get to the gym in, um, seven years.

This time in two months I 'm going to be a gym junkie again with great gym junkie legs.  My favourite miniskirt isn't going to look awesome all by itself (if you tell me I'm too old for miniskirts I will break you).  Alternatively, in two months I will be sitting on the couch eating chocolate.  A bit of both these worlds would be perfect.

Hospital admins and medical f***-ups

The Canberra Times has reported that the ACT Coroner is investigating the death of a Canberra Hospital patient who died after an operation was performed on the wrong body part.

What sort of monumental fuck up must have occurred at Canberra Hospital that resulted in someone being operated on the wrong side of their body? That is nuts. That is one mistake that doctors and nurses, who are human, are not allowed to make. I'm going to blame the hospital administrators, because pulling a long stream of paperwork from their arse is what public servants do, and screwing up said paperwork is, coincidentally, what public servants also do.

I think we can all agree that doctors and nurses (the medical professionals, not the "kids" game) are pretty friggin' amazing.  Pay them whatever they want, I say.  And stop bashing on them, because they do an incredible job.  They save lives.  When was the last time I saved a life?  The closest I get to a medical emergency in my workplace is when I whimper for hours from a unsutured papercut from a particularly vicious piece of A4 (ah, geez, touchwood!!). 

Doctors and nurses have to deal with the public when they are at their sickest, crankiest and most unconscious, and that alone warrants a hefty pay rise.

Surgeons are already well paid, which is probably why we don't see many living on the streets or at the Occupy protests with the dole-bludging losers.  I suspect the latter is because they work for a living.  But surgeons creep me out a little bit, given that they are basically knife-wielding maniacs who are allowed to wear masks when performing their wallet-ectomies.  We happily entrust these people to make sure we wake up on the other side.  Creepy when you think about it.  But, yes indeed, they deserve more money too, because they save lives. 

While on the subject of hospitals, how tops are their emergency rooms?  At Canberra Hospital, you are generally just grateful for any medical care you receive, because after sitting in the waiting room next to some kid coughing their contagions directly into your face for five hours, you wish you were dead anyway.  And I love how you are never far from a toxic waste bin.  Because they just scream healing to me.  

It's fascinating that the public get all persnickety when they have to wait a few hours at hospital for medical attention, yet some of the most popular televisions shows revolve around hospitals and police stations where the workers are forever involved in personal dramas rathere than doing actual work.  It's a mad, mad world.

Hear yee, hear yee

The other day I was sitting at my desk at work when the ground began to rock, as if I was on a boat in the middle of the ocean.  Some of the peaks of the swells were so high that I had to hold onto my desk until they passed.  It was like a free P&O cruise.

When the swells went away, I was simply bobbing up and down.  It was really quite exciting, but evidently not particularly healthy.  Apparently I was suffering from unsteadiness brought about my vertigo, as a complication of Eustachian Tube Dysfunction. 

By the time I went to the doc that afternoon, I had lost some of my hearing and everything sounded quite tinny.  The doc told me to expect more deafness and spinning and dizziness, which fortunately didn't eventuate.  This Eustachian Tube connects the ears to the throat and mine was stuck open when it should have been closed, or vice versa.

All external sounds are a bit muffled and internal sounds are sort of amplified. But when I hear a loud noise it bounces between my ear drums and is amplified 10 fold. It is so very strange.  The first night I could hear my heartbeat when I was trying to go to sleep which was very disconcerting.

You can imagine all the jokes at work - evidently there are many many songs related to sailing and shipping and oceans.  It feels like the sensation that you get just before your ears pop on a plane - except it is constant.  And there seems to be a droning air conditioner in my head.  Apparently my condition is caused by flying on a plane, which I did last week, on a five-hour flight.  My ears didn't pop when I landed on Sunday so that might be related too.  This build of pressure in my ears is a new probem and might explain my new claustrophobia on flights. 

Anyway, my 'earing is mostly good as new now, but I guess I'll be wearing ear plugs for future flying adventures.

Royal barges and brighter than bright new colours

The Queen is here, the Queen is there, the Queen is bloody everywhere. I don't know about you, but I have seen Her Majesty the Queen and Mr Queen everywhere in the past few days. I'm actually starting to suspect that they have been following me around Canberra since their arrival at Fairnbairn Airbase last week, or the ranga hangar as it seems to be known courtesy of our current redheaded PM. I have an extensive trail of evidence of this unbridled tailing, you know.

It all began last Wednesday afternoon, when I was minding my own business on the side of the road just near the Fairbairn Avenue turnoff. Me and a few hundred of my friends were just hanging out near the traffic lights, as one does, when the regal entourage zoomed out of the airbase and headed toward town.

OMG, it’s the Queen!, I said.  And then I saw her AGAIN because some idiot in her welcoming posse decided that she would really, really benefit somehow from a viewing of Canberra’s stupid arboretum, that place with plants on the Tuggeranong Parkway, which took her kilometres out of her way, and back into my path. I can’t think of another reason to take the Monarch of a tour of the Parkway...

The next day I was standing casually on the “sands” of a “beach” at Weston Park, right at the end point. Sure enough, the Queen came sailing past on a barge, which surprised me, because I didn't think she would touch one with a friggin' barge pole.  The Admiral's Barge had white leather seats and teak decks with splashes of royal blue and looked nothing like barges I have seen before, given that it wasn't transporting shipping containers, wasn't hemorrhaging oil and it didn't have a name like Exxon Valdez.

I was a little disappointed that HM didn’t commission a couple of doughnuts out on the lake. Or perhaps one would refer to them as sticky buns. As predicted, HM’s ride caused quite a bit of right royal backwash, which resulted in the people who don’t think things through (or stupid people, as I like to refer to them) getting doused in swamp water.

So I had seen HM three times at this point, which begged the question – is the Monarch following me, or is it all just a big coincidence that we turn up at the same places?

The last straw was on Saturday when I went to the Royal Military College (RMC) at Duntroon, and guess who turned up, in blue, which was the same colour I was wearing? I know, it’s spooky, right? HM was there to present the new royal colours to the RMC in its 100th anniversary year. When I got over the whole coincidence aspect I got into the spirit of things.

This is the fourth time HM has had to present the RMC with new colours. The cadets must spend so much time keeping their jackets whiter than white that they have accidently thrown the colours in with the whites one too many times. This must be why they keep needing new colours.


Yawn - it WAS  a long ceremony

I am always amazed by the cadet's dedication, patience and stamina in standing through a two hour parade. Most of the 400 or so cadets get to prance  parade around the ground, but others, positioned around the edge of the parade ground, must stand still for the whole time, occasionally getting to salute, reposition their gun, flip their cap, stand to attention, stand at ease and so on. You wouldn’t really be much of an asset to the defence forces if you had low blood sugar levels. I wonder how they are chosen for this role. Perhaps they are ones who can stand still for the longest without wobbling or collapsing.  Regardless, their commitment (and training) is admirable.

What is not so admirable is the stupid parents who let their babies continue to scream because they don’t want to miss the moment when the Queen arrives. I empathise with the parents, but then I just resent the fact that they are ruining it for everyone else. A beautiful rendition of God Save the Queen remixed with whingy children and screaming babies is not tedious at all.

 

The Queen struck again when I was on my way home from a morning of pomp and ceremony and whiter whites at Duntroon, when I was unexpectedly roadblocked by a bevy (two can be a bevy) of police officers near Parliament House. The copper wouldn’t confirm or deny if it was the Queen blocking the main arterials but I badgered him until he spilled. Not annoying for him at all.

I’ve always wanted to be at the front of a roadblock when someone regal goes past!, I excitedly told my new police friends, who laughed with (at) me. The guy in the car next to me didn’t care for my anecdote.  As Robert Menzies said decades ago, quoting a poet from the 16th century who most assuredly was not speaking of a monarch; "I did but see her passing by".

And evidently, she crosses your path when you aren't looking for her!

We are the Windsors - my friends

HM the Queen (oh, and Prince Phillip) has been in Canberra for a few days now, enjoying our beautiful spring weather on her 16th visit, and enduring the unrelenting attention of the mainstream media, local convicts and various bothersome politicians, who have suddenly become completely engrossed in pandering to our Monarch. I’m talking to you Julia Gillard and meddling Labour Ministers and Shane Rattenbury and Bob Brown.  I'm sure they will continue to call for a republic next week.

Her Maj in 1953 

Apart from her often breakneck schedule, the constant, intense fascination with one’s duty would drive me quite batty. I’ve always imagined HM kept the poker face because it saves her the energy of smiling or frowning, but perhaps the real intention behind the pursed lips is to avoid saying or doing something rather uncouth when interrupted mid-conversation by dodgy, rude politicians that look a lot like Bob Brown.

There is no question that HM has stamina, and a real sense of duty - she has been in her role for nearly sixty years; so she has been reigning for about 2/3 of the time since our Federation. 

The Queen gets a lot of stick from a lot of people in Australia, which I put down to the fact that some people are fairly ignorant of the role of a Monarch. I always find it ironic when Canberra’s public servants whinge about other people not doing anything for a crust. The pot calling the kettle and all that. In reality, HM works harder, at 85 years of age, than any of these people ever will.

HM performs many different public duties, like ceremonies, visits and receptions, but she does a lot of stuff away from the cameras as well. She gets hundreds of letters from the public every day, she meets with ambassadors and political heads, meets with her Private Secretaries and spends a lot of time reading official papers and briefings.

HM likes to keep abreast of matters within her realms, so each day one of HM’s minions brings her a red box, a slightly battered small suitcase-type container full of state papers.  Important (which is not to be confused with interesting) government correspondence that someone has decided that she needs to read / know about.  And the British PM has a meeting with HM every Tuesday evening at the Palace to advise her which of his Ministry hasn’t broken parliamentary rules this week and so forth.

West Coast sojourn

I've just returned from a work junket trip to Perth to attend a conference.  It's hard to believe that you travel for five hours (or six if you fly via Sydney for some unfathomable reason) and are still in Australia, albeit right at the end of it.  The flight over was okay.  Just the usual stuff; flight attendants constantly interrupting my reading of my London Walks book by speaking unintelligibly into a distorted PA system between opening cans of diet coke.  Did you know that the Thames is one of the cleanest urban waterways?  It's true; because it's tidal. 

My taxi driver from the airport gave me an entire rundown of everything I needed to know, including things I have never cared to know, about Western Australia.  Topics covered on the 20 or so minute drive to the city included miners, the mining boom, shark attacks, tourist attractions, town planning, housing, etc etc.  As a result, I began a lot of sentences that week with, "My taxi driver said...."

Perth is nice. And clean.  But I suspect the reason they sweep the streets several times a day has less to do with community spirit and more to do with the fact that Her Majesty the Queen is making her way out west very shortly to open the exceedingly boring and generally pointless CHOGM conference, where Commonwealth leaders take tea with each other and discuss light and fluffy topics rather than things that actually matter.

I'm sure the HM has an ADF person with her at all times during her Australian visits who points out things of interest to nobody her that will distract her looking down a certain street, for example, that could do with a bit of a spruce up.


I walked around Perth city on my second night there with a work colleague and commented that it seemed like a 'fake city', because there weren't any homeless people or irritating out-of-control youth prowling the city streets.  Perhaps they were shipped to a shittier part of town prior to the arrival of world leaders in the next few weeks.

Apart from the days spent at my work conference, which amounted to the most thrilling days of my life, I visited Kings Park - an area overlooking the city, and went out on a speedboat in Fremantle Harbour, where I got doused with sea water over and over again, but it was terrific fun.  A trip to Fremantle Prison - which closed in 1991 - highlighted the need to continue my current pattern of not breaking the law in my everyday activities.

Wonka 'Pinstripes' dream

I’m not one to analyse my dreams, given they are just a stream of my subconscious trying to process whatever is that is in my head at that time. This dream, however, was very real, and occurred sometime between 11:30pm Saturday 24 September and 8:00am Sunday 25 September 2011.

It began with me standing in the middle on an air strip with a cluster of people.  I don’t know who they were as I never saw their little faces; they had their backs to me at all times.  Pfft.  And I imagine there was a compelling reason that caused me to stand in the heart of an busy airfield.  I just stood there as old World War II-type aircrafts took off and landed just feet away from me.  There was a plane with three wings on one side and two on the other side.  I felt the wind rush through my hair as they swept past.  My hair annoys me even in my dreams.

It eventually occurred to me that this was not the best place to stand. You know, in the middle of a busy airfield. It’s good to see that my subconscious has a fraction of common sense when the rest of my brain was asleep. I like analysing all the stuff that I should have cared about in dreams; like the fact that I was perfectly comfortable, initially, standing in the middle of an airfield.  So I picked up my old fashioned grey suitcase and ran across the tarmac, somehow managing to avoid being decapitated by engine propellers.

And then, abruptly, I was aboard some manner of ocean-faring transport, a mishmash of a P & O party cruise liner and a war ship.  Why wouldn't I dream about these; they are everywhere. One could walk about the deck and find a mix of drunk teenage hooligans and, err, injured sailors.  One sailor was sitting below deck, leaning against a wall and blocking the walkway. 

He had a bullet hole in his leg and I just stepped over him.  This ship / party liner was in the middle of the ocean.  It didn't seem to occur to me at the time the curiousness of how Mr Sailor sustained such injuries without a hole being blown into the side of the ship.  That's what I love about dreams; nothing makes a whole lot of sense.  

At the far left of one of the decks were the ‘staff quarters’, called Pinstripes for some inexplicable reason. I was able to look down the Pinstripes means of access, and saw that it went all the way to the bottom of the ship, like a fireman’s escape without the pole ,or as if looking down a rabbit hole. The typeface for this area was comical and candy striped, and instantly reminded me of the Wonka factory.

And then I was awake.

Duchess of Frockmania

The British tabloid press, commonly known as Fleet Street, are completely obsessed with the commoner-turned-Duchess of Cambridge's style choices.  I know this because I occasionally scan London's uber-trashbag tabloid, the Daily Mail online. When I say occasionally, I mean probably once or twice a day.  Yes, I know it's wrong, so no need to look at me with your judgy highbrow eyes. 

So last week Kate meandered up to Kensington's Topshop, a British high street retailer with reasonably priced clothing and fashion accessories.  It ain't no Supre, but it definitely ain't no Chanel.  Kate made some fairly nondescript purchases, which made front page news nevertheless.  No, I don't know why that happens either.  I can only imagine that it drives Kate completely batty, like it did Diana.

However, the ground breaking news was when Kate decided, at the last minute, to not to buy a pair of gold earrings worth £8.50. The Daily Mail went slightly bonkers over this insignificant yet valid decision to dump a pair of butt-ugly earrings. Seriously, they seem to think Kate should conduct herself like Marie Antoinette.

The earrings Kate rejected.  Why am I blogging about this? 

Apparently Royalmania means displaying hare-brained behaviour whenever you are in the vague vincinity of even the aura of a member of the British royal youth contingent, that being Wills or Kate.

Following the Royal Wedding extravaganza in April this year, many Poms remain ensnared in the grip of Royalmania. Mere glimpses of the Duchess shopping in well-to-do retail outlets triggers a flurry of posh sales girls to denigrate themselves by snitching to the trashy tabloids with tales of the royal bargain hunter's chic purchases. They excitedly blab about the credit card Kate used, temporarily disregarding the first rule of posh shop girls; to act like a pretentious git at all times.

And when Kate pops on her new frock for one of the many soirees that she attends, fashion websites crash under the sheer burden of hundreds of unremarkable British girls making a futile attempt to emulate their future Queen, completely indifferent to the miniscule likelihood of them ever nabbing a prince.

As a monarchist, I have given my approval to the merger of WillKat, which is, I have no doubt, of little interest to our Queen Lizzy.  While Kate really has only one legitimate function, which is to produce an heir, I reckon she is an invaluable addition to the royal family in their ongoing endeavour to modernise the 'firm', and to try and get the British populace, and indeed all of their realms, onside in accepting that the monarchy are a still valid and necessary institution.  I just don't care to know what she wears everyday.