DAY 24 The Writing Inquisition - Hawaii is everything.

Repost from 2011. Just in time for my 5th vacay to Hawaii. I am somewhat partial to the place.

Last year I flew to heaven, via economy class. I imagine first class to heaven is reserved for Mother Teresa types and that wonderful man who saved the lives of 12 horses in the Queensland Floods.

I had just permanently borrowed products from my Las Vegas hotel room, including pens, paper, slippers, handcream, shampoo, conditioner and other unidentified items in pretty aqua bottles, so that's probably why I got a seat in air steerage.

Heaven was just as I had imagined, but perhaps the stereotype was a little too cliched. Descending through puffy white clouds, I saw crystal clear waters, sandy white beaches and swaying palm trees. It was either going to be heaven or one of those trashy, indoor beaches they have in Japan.

I've always wanted to get off a plane and receive a colourful Hawaiian lei. My lei made of vibrant purple and blue frangipani was beautiful, but the flowers were wet and the climate was humid, so I popped it into my hotel room fridge and admired it from its new location, away from my neck.

The hotel was very decent, non extravagant and about a block from the all important Pacific Ocean. From the balcony I could see Diamond Head Mountain/Volcano, Waikiki Beach, and some of the Honolulu cityscape, where you could watch the morning and afternoon showers come through like clockwork.

Honolulu is very laid back, and the Hawaiians are extremely lovely. This is likely because they live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world.

Much of my time in Honolulu was spent getting sunburnt in the amazingly warm water of this tropical part of the Pacific. You just never want to get out, even when your suncream is due for a reapply. I swam, waded and floated in the water for hours, and leant on the ocean rock wall watching sail boats drift, and naval ships head in and out of Pearl Harbour in the distance.

The visit to Pearl Harbour was quite moving, and it's understandable that the U.S. decided to enter the war after this attack. I toured Mighty Mo - the U.S.S. Missouri - which wasn't stationed in the harbour in 1941, but is a magnificant floating museum near the naval base, just across from the warships that remain in their watery graves.

I stood on Mo's deck where the Japanese surrendered, and I saw the spot where a kamakazee pilot "dented" the starboard fenders on a suicide mission during the war.

The marines recovered the pilot's body, and the U.S. Government insisted he have an honourable and respectful funeral. He got his funeral, but legend has it they then unceremoniously dumped his body into the ocean.

We also visited Kilauea Volcanic Reserve on the Big Island, Hawaii. Our guide told us the island experiences all of the climates of the world, which may have been a sales pitch.

Although, I think we had about five types of weather that day. The rain drizzled as we walked down to and through the eerie Thurston Lava Tube (underground conduit in which lava has previously travelled), and the sun shone as we watched the cranky volcano plume smoke and ash, before the rain bucketed down again. It was like Melbourne on ice.

At nightfall, we fought with about 100 other tourists to stand on a rock not much bigger than your average sedan to get the best view of glowing red lava on its slow drip towards the Pacific. It was incredible and quite formidable watching raw, violent mother nature in the distance, and well worth the day trip.

Although, I learnt an important lesson on my U.S. vacay. I was given pre-trip advice which I failed to heed, which is that everything is better from the air. Helicopters all the way next time.

Miss you already, Hawaii - see you again soon.

DAY 22 The Writing Inquistion - Hawaii Lilo

Repost from August 2012, during my 2nd trip to Hawaii. I'm about to make my 5th, but no-one's counting.

It's the heat of the day in Hawaii, and I'm trying to stay out of the sun a bit, to avoid adding to my collection of freckles. It's hard work getting myself banana boated for the beach every day. 

Gratutitous waterfall shot.

In other beach related news, yesterday I bought an orange donut lilo from one of the ABC convenience stores that are dotted throughout the Islands. You can't go five metres without tripping into the doorway of an ABC.

I bought the donut to enhance my aquatic pleasure, because it can often get quite tedious just lolling away the afternoon in the beautiful, temperate waters. Yes, you should feel some empathy for us poor unfortunates trapped inside the hideous ring of Hawaiian Islands.

My donut has proven to be quite handy out of the water as well. I don’t have the finest depth perception, due to my long slash short sightedness difficulties, which means I walk into things a fair bit. My donut has been used on more than one occasion as a buffer for life’s obstacles on the way to the beach, which is just across the road, but w’ever.

Perhaps when I come back to Australia I will tie three of them around me so I never get hurt again. The ultimate bandaid. I’ll get the paperwork for the patent underway on my return.

We have these new fancy high tech elevators at the hotel, where you type your floor into the keypad which is stationed outside the lift, rather than once in the lift. I am in cahoots with these machines, because I have them in my workplace, but I remember what happened when we first moved into the building a few years ago.

It was bedlam as everyone tried to cram into one lift without pressing a button, which allows the computer mainframe or something to sort you into an elevator queue. Sort of like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter, but mostly not like that at all.

Thus, every day the tourists shove themselves in because most tourists evidently don’t know how to read the big signs in multiple languages posted everywhere. Try cramming yourself into a small lift with ten other people and 6 blown-up lilos. Must go - it's beach time again.

DAY 16 The Writing Inquisition - Mickey Mouse Land

This is a repost from 2011, following my first trip to Disneyland. I'm allowed to repost in my blogging challenge. It's my blog and my challenge. Long live me: 

Last year I paid a visit to a little mouse in his little house in his humble little town called Disneyland. By day it was a land of fairy princesses, friendliness, happiness, children screaming with delight, and grown men dressed in painfully bright cartoon costumes, presumably to entertain their infant children. 

But nightfall gives rise to Disney’s underbelly. While it prides itself on being the happiest place on earth, after 7pm it's the crankiest place in the universe. 

The kids scream, fuelled by sugar and tiredness, and an influx of psycho ushers with a preference for the Stalinist approach to crowd control enter the game. They taught me everything I need to know about getting myself thrown out of a theme park. 

I first met Mickey on the sidewalk of Main Street USA, which is akin to the Las Vegas strip, but without creepy men handing out stripper cards. 

I queued to get a photo with the manmouse, pushing aside his shorter, weaker groupies to get to the front of the line. I learnt this tactic from observing the Usher Jedi – from the school of “may the force of the sidewalk break your face”. 

Mickey was awesome and I was a little bit starstruck, hence the demented look on my face during our photo opportunity (that's Mickey's hand/foot/paw on my shoulder). This mouse is one of the biggest stars in the world, which says quite a bit about the world. 

S T A R P O W E R

I also met Mickey’s defacto wife Minnie; I don’t know, are they married? They seem very happy together, but they live in separate houses in Toontown so maybe it’s a tax thing. It’s none of my business.

Minnie admired my Minnie tshirt when we met, so I chose not to tell her that I bought it from an unofficial merchandise store near my hotel that doesn’t mark up the price threefold. 

Minnie is the only mouse in the world who can get away with wearing canary yellow shoes and black opaque tights. I also saw her in her aviator outfit circa whenever that was in fashion, ready to fly off in her spitfire or whatever the hell it was.

Her partner, Mickey, has a vast array of human life skills. For example, apart from being CEO of Mickey Inc, he is also the leader of the Disney Band, the cheeriest band you’ve ever seen in your life.

It’s amazing how much Mickey gets done throughout the day by flapping his arms, clapping his hands excitedly and jumping up and down holding his head.

The force of the Usher Jedi came to my attention on the first night, when they strided into Main Street en masse to keep the marauding crowds from trampling each other during the evening parades and fireworks. 

I came to admire their unique management style; it truly is astounding how much power you can wield when you have a glow wand and know how to wave it.

But there are always some that go rogue, who have watched more than their fair share of Star Wars, and these are the ones who kept you entertained while sitting in the gutter waiting for the evening fireworks show.

DAY 12 The Writing Inquisition - Vegetable onesies, Vegemitisation, and mixing your blues and maroons

Today's cinematic drama on the blog is just a couple of quick snips of things that unfortunately made their way into my brain today, where they were tossed around like the spin cycle of a washing machine and then spat out; completely unrecognisable, and now cleverly disguised as meaningless drivel.

For example, speaking of washing machines, after work I saw a lady in a green onesie in a food court. She looked like a stick of celery. I don't know why she did it either; there really is no good reason for getting about looking like a stringy vegetable.

And then I thought how fun it would be to break into someone's house and put food dye in their washing machine because it's good times when people wear only green clothes.

Knowing how to wash clothes, without ruining them, is a basic life skill. Before you load up the machine, do some prep work, such as separating the blues and the maroons, preferably into separate washing machines in separate States. Put them in a machine together, with all the different textures and added 'detergent', at your own peril.

I also thought about Vegemite, and how iconically and stereotypically Australian I must be, because I wasn't a happy little V at all when I discovered I didn't have any for my toast this morning.

And then, as I rode home on my kangaroo like the Man from Snowy River with bushranger swag to my corrugated-iron roof homestead in The Bush with a verandah, windmill, watertank and flies, I thought about whether I posess any other iconally Australian behaviours. And I couldn't think of any.

DAY 11 The Writing Inquisition - Eating: Socially acceptable fruits

Certain things, like turkey legs and tinned tuna, are just not meant to be consumed in public. Certain fruits also fall into this category.

I think we’ve all been in that situation where you’re at a Royal state dinner and, just as Her Majesty the Queen enters the room, you decide at that point to rip a big chunk off a whole pineapple with your teeth and it’s dripping off your chin like a caveman devouring the raw leg of a wildebeest. It happens; it’s just one of life’s many social situations you have to negotiate.

Fortunately, there are various types of fruit options you can eat in public.

BANANAS

In terms of feel and functionality, bananas are one of the best fruits fit for public consumption. 

They are drip free, non-stick and are born with a handy skin to hold onto to get the job done. Their one downfall is their phallic nature - which is grossly dramatised in nearly every type of social situation - including in the previous sentence.

MANGOES

They are totally delicious and nutritious and their happy, summery hue ensures they are endlessly fussed over by browsing shoppers who pick them up to touch them, squeeze them and smell them and do other creepy and gross things with them. Up there with avocados and the banana, they are the most inappropriately touched fruit on the market.

Mangoes have clothing companies named after them, songs written about them - none are coming to mind, but I'm sure there are some - and are delicious enough that their reputation survives being a key component of mango pickles. However, while blessed with a juicy flesh, they are a public relations disaster to eat in social situations, unless you chop them into tiny pieces and put them in a bowl. Seems like a lot of effort.

ORANGES

They are also indeed highly pleasant on the tastebuds, but you need to bring in a team of paratroopers to clean up the mess you made. They’ll parachute in, hit their strategic target, arm any innocent civilians with citrus masks, and swoop out again, with only a couple of bridges and roads around you as collateral damage. You decide if the citrus hit is worth it.

APPLES
Red apples freaking freak me out. Did life work out well for Snow White after Applegate?

Apples are, literally, the ripened ovaries of a seed plant. Oh that's just lovely. No wonder I don't eat as many as I should.

STRAWBERRIES

Here we go. Cue pretty, cute little strawberries, marked by daintiness and charm in colour, pattern and perfect proportions. Strawberries have truly branded themselves as the socially acceptable fruit ambassador. 

They are right there whenever fancypants food is called for, and provide a dainty accoutrement to champagne. Adding strawberries to your big night out ensures you will remain respectable even when you can no longer stand on your own two feet.

DAY 9 The Writing Inquisition - A shoe tale as old as time

Today a bright, independent young woman ventured out of her faraway tree and was fairly immediately taken prisoner by a local shoe retail outlet. It was a truely traumatic event. Witnesses report that the hostage takers were trying to heel her sole. 

Despite her fears of overly enthusiastic sales assistants and of spending more than five minutes browsing the foot attire shelves, she was drawn to a pair of black suede stiletto boots in a behavioural manner witnesses could only describe as Stockholm Syndrome.

In a tale as old as time, she pissed around for what felt like days and months and seasons even, because she has clinical 'choice anxiety' and can't cope with varieties of colours and styles or her brain explodes.

So after all that, she calmed her damn farm and felt like she might be able to look beyond their suede appearance, which will allow her to see their kind heart and sole, and also to enjoy their comfy interior.

And, in the spirit of the most beautiful love story ever told since Disney's Beauty and the Beast, she bought them, yes she did, and they fitted her just like a slipper. Because no-one leaves Cinderella out of the story.

DAY 8 The Writing Inquisition - BBC at Namadji

Just a short, little blogget today. I'm a bit of  hiker. Dictionary.com defines 'hiking' as 'to move up or rise, as out of place or position (often followed by up), and that pretty sums up my life when I go hiking in Namadgi National Park, my favourite national park in the Australian Capital Territory region. My favourite trek doers a lot of up, up for seven kilometres and then you have to come back down again.

On one of my recent treks, I popped into the Namadji Visitor Centre om the way back down, because I wanted to ask the ranger on duty about a big black cat that I had seen a few months ago.  The visitor's centre is home to Spencer the python. I hadn't seen him for a while, so I said G'day to him as he was basking in the late afternoon winter sun and then noticed a film crew in the corner. It turned out to be the BBC filming, about Australian wildlife presumably.

The ranger said they were doing a story on the black and white dingoes in Namadji. I did not know that black and white dingoes were a thing, so I might watch their special when in comes on the teev!

Bit of a boring, vamilla post today but, oh well, that's lyf.

DAY 7 The Writing Inquisition - Koala Bae

A L O H A

Meet Koala Gary (KG). He has decided to move into my life and has been following me around all week. He was recently diskoalafied from climbing gum trees because of a little speeding fine, so I’ve decided to adopt him.

We have been spending some koalaty time together and he has been leafing an impression on my life. We have been going through some ground rules though.

The basic principles: I do what he wants – and I’ll tree my hardest to follow that rule - and his ground rule is that he doesn’t ever want to be on the ground, so that was easy.

Don't tree this at home.

KG was born on the wrong side of the tracks. Raised in a trashy souvenir store, he spent his days in a plastic bag, forced to be man-handled by excitable tourists hellbent on stroking his ears as if he was a real f**king koala bear.

Since escaping the shackles of souvenir lyf, KG shed his coat, literally, his I love Australia jacket, and has resolved to only put the stupid thing back on if he ever goes somewhere ridiculous like Bali, or represents Australia at the Koala Games.

KG ‘s hobbies include swimming in a glass of Coca-Koala©, getting caught in the gum leaves, he hates the rain, and he is a koalafied climbing instructor, although he has been diskoalafied for six months. I have been doing some koalatative research to get an understanding of his likes, dislikes, motivations and the simple bear necessities.

I’ve just sent off his passport application because we will soon be spending some koalaty time together in Hawaii. That’s right, KG is going abroad!

DAY 6 The Writing Inquisition - Operation Lash Extension

Given the nature of my July Writing Inquisition, I feel like I need to submit to the challenge and actually write something a bit challenging - push beyond the comfort zone -  because great things can happen when you step outside your zone.

This is someone.
But it's not me. Or my lashes. 

Unless you're in the military, where it's best to stay inside the green zone if you're not fortified with an armoured tank. So today I'm battle ready, safely ensconced in my steel-plated fighting vehicle, and will tackle a beauty post about my acquisition of some eyelash extensions.

The other day I went to the staging area called Brazillian Beauty on my lunchbreak. It's just outside the Green Zone, but still in the equally secure APS Zone. I was tactically and strategically well prepared, given my new predilection to FUBAR (f**ked up beyond all recognition) my appointment time.

The staff member on active duty  - call sign 'amazing lash arranger' - was ready for the assault, and greeted me with heavy friendly fire as I walked in the door. Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Its okay. I wasn't injured.

I was quickly and quietly shuffled off into a backroom where I was briefed on the mission ahead and then the tactical action commenced.

I was impressed with the logistics, particularly the actions of transporting individual lashes to the customer, using cutting edge tweezer technology. Reliable countermeasures were enabled to ensure that no lash be left behind.

The auxiliary division responsible for heating and assorted music systems were also highly commendable.

I have been advised that, with respect to Operation Lash Extension, acquiescence is the wisest course of action, so I'll go back for another appointment in about a month.

Status of lashes: On active duty.

DAY 5 The Writing Inquisition - 40% off S W A G

High fashion. Why. Other than people in the industry, I sometimes feel like it's one of those things that a total of 10 people have time to follow. 

Which is probably the reason why we keep seeing runway models wearing some of the weirdest crap in the world. Today's blog is brought to you by a guest blogger, who off loaded their views to me on this Dotti mesh dress thing (pictured). Thankyou, guest blogger:

Why is she wearing John Denver sunglasses???

And apparently, the tulle thing is to give you a cool, off-duty style. I’d describe it more as a weirdo, fashion-victim off-duty style, but whatevs.

My off-duty style involves ugg boots and polar fleece but I live in non-cool Canberra, aka the Daggy Capital, so if I wore a black tulle mesh midi dress, I might stand out a bit in the Horror Dome.

Also, I don’t own any ripped denim or a band tee, because they were cool in the 80s and the 70s. Now, they’re just “fashion” and it’s pretentious.  If you don’t know who the Ramones were, or why their music was “important”, and aren’t old enough to have gone to their live concerts, then you shouldn’t be allowed to wear a rip-off Ramones t-shirt. 

Also I don’t like the Ramones. Their music sucked in the 70s when they wrote it.  It sucked in the 80s when I first heard it. And it still sucks now.  I hate punk.

Why am I talking about the Ramones? I think she might be wearing an Aerosmith tshirt? It’s hard to tell.

I don’t like Aerosmith’s music much either.

DAY 4 The Writing Inquisition - We all have a Roswell

Earlier today, as I was walking home from work, minding my own business, as much as I ever mind my own business, I encountered a field of strange markings on the ground made from materials that glowed eerily on their own. It was Scooby-Doo spooky. The photographic evidence I compiled is below. It might be wise to delete all evidence of your eyes after viewing.

I'm not much of a fangirl of conspiracy theories, but this was probably not unlike how the first responders felt at Roswell. Roswell is one of my favourite conspiracies. It's just so great.

The theory holds that, in 1947, a UFO crashed at Roswell in New Mexico. Technology and alien bodies were recovered, and the U.S. military has been covering it up ever since, preferring to study alien technology and biology in secret squirrel mode. Some authorities reported the field of debris contained metals unknown to science.

The official line is that a balloon from a top secret research programme crashed.

It's a good yarn anyway.

So back to my Roswell.

I dont want to jump to conclusions, but in the absence of a really solid conspiracy theory that may dawn on me at 2am, I can only assume that the materisls I saw were obtained from Officeworks. Someone in the ACT Government has raided all of Canberra's Officeworks stores and stocked up on a ramge of markers and highlighters to suit all projects and budgets.

What if I wanted to buy a highlighter? I guess no-one in Canberra gets to make anything glow all by itself until more stock arrives from Stabilo. Lock up your highlighters!

DAY 3 The Writing Inquisition - Man-made snowy snowcaps

I've long held the view that weather is a natural phenomenon created to give boring people something to talk about. Obviously I am excluding myself from that socio group.

My very own Canberra, home of Australia's cold hearted alpine fairies, is regularly hitting -10 celsius at night. The bowl of H2O I leave out for the magpies freezes by a few centimetres every night. Science says water freezes at zero. Science says Canberra is cold. I'm not feeling like this is the way I want to spend my life.

I whinge about the cold fairly regularly. I think it's an unofficial hobby now. And like any self-respecting hobby or thing you love to do, it doesn't pay crap.

One of my top 50 complaints about the weather here relates to the fact there is no snow to show for all the suffering endured. I walk to work through a glacial cloud, through air that has literally frozen in time, and there is no snow. The urban myth is that it's too cold to snow here. There might be some so-called science in that too, but I reserve my judgement until Kim Kardashian tweets about it.

But I have a solution to this.  Hard research shows that tourists flock like seagulls on a chippy to places that have snow-capped mountains. I get it. There are pretty. It's like living in the Disney movie Frozen, or Lord of the Rings, or when the cast of Home and Away go on a school trip to Thredbo.

So why don't we create our own snow-capped mountains? All of the alpine regions make their own snow when mother nature isn't playing ball. Little itsy bitsy Corin Forest have three snowmaking machines.

According to the interweb machine, there are two important components to snowmaking and Canberra has them in abundance; water and cold air. And we're talking below 0 type of cold air. And it gets better. The colder the air, the better the quality and higher the quantity of snow. Which means it'll hang around for months and pay for itself through the tourist dollars.

It's easy to get carried away when
you start with the snowmaking.

It's not that far fetched an idea. Governments regularly control and influence natural resources. Water management of dams, rivers and lakes, windmills, biodiversity conservation, agriculture, fisheries. The while point of managing natural resources is to manage the way in which we interact with natural landscapes. And I want my eyes to interact with some snowcaps on my walk to work. It's really just repurposing water. Sort of.

My local Government loves to commission public art that is dangerously ugly and endlessly disappointing. And I'm fairly sure there isn't a tourist in the universe who would come here to see our bright orange bogong moth behemoth in Tuggeranong. And what do we pay for these public art pieces?

$421,000 - Moth ascending the Capital
$400,000 - Owl
$125,000 - Dinomis Maximus (the orange rotating sculpture in Woden that is moved by the wind)

Since 2006, the Perisher ski resort in the New South Wales alpine region has spent about $22 million improving and expanding their snowmaking system.

It figures that recreating a natural phenomenon don't come cheap. Maybe I'll just have to do it myself. Act locally and all that. Online companies advertise their wares, boasting machines that produce a blizzard of snow just like the snowmakers at ski resorts. I think I've found a new winter hobby.

DAY 2 The Writing Inquisition - S C R A M B L E

Today is Day Two of my new Writing Inquisition. Day Two went like Day Two does in any type of challenge. It's a battle of wills. I was pitted against myself in a fight to the death, with the one willing to work the hardest, sacrifice the most, rising to be the winner and be rendered with a rewarding, stimulating blog post. I guess I didn't win. Thoughts I had tonight when I remembered the writing needed to happen:

Why am I doing this again?
I want a return ticket.
Yeah, I'm done with this.
I didn't do anything nearly vaguely interesting today.
I haven't tried something new like I said I would.

Oh the burden of blog responsibility.

Come to think of it, I did go to visit White Stuff today. There is a place in a national park, about half an hour's drive from where I live, that houses snow! I don't like the cold one tiny bit, as documented about 1,253 times throughout my blog, but I love the pretty white snow, particularly but not limited to the icing features it provides on mountain rooftops.

So without further ado, today's blog is called SCRAMBLE, because scrambling words together, while wading through heavy snow to provide immediate air support, is what I've done here.

DAY 1 The Writing Inquisition - Starting the life hack

Once you've waded through all the 'I can haz cheeseburger' cat youtubes one can possibly stand, there's all the advice in the world on the world wide web about how to get the best out of life.

How to get more hours in the day, how to worry more about all the things you worry you're not worried enough about, how to think big by starting small, how to live richly but minimally, how to roar and avoid being taken like a poor little gazelle in a ponzi scheme, how to do the crime and avoid the time, how to run wild and walk cautiously, how to shoot for the stars, and the importance of watching out for life's bindies.

19th century life hack. 
Now I can shortcut 
the time I spend on 
drawing ducks.

For international readers unfamiliar with the ways of Australiana, bindis are a prickly lawn weed found here during the summer months. Step on them and you'll pay for it. It's not whacking your thumb with a hammer type pain; they  sting, bite, and then rip your foot off like a shark (just kidding, Tourism Australia), but we step on them all the time, in lawns throughout the land, millions of us, every year. 

Someone needs to invent a rubber type shoe in a variety of colours and styles we can just slip on easily and quickly. Fine, I'll do it. I'll call them thongos. Tell your friends. They'll be available Summer 2020.

I'm not here to tell you how to avoid bindi type situations in your life garden, however, listen up, and listen up carefully or you'll miss the complexities. The world wide web doesn't just hand out bindi advice everyday. 

Have you noticed that life is full of bindies? It is commonly known that you really need to take a long term approach to rid your life of them. They colonise your garden, your space, and you have to tackle that infestation situation before the plant develops. 

You can manually remove each one or you can spray the suckers with weed killer. And make sure you do regular bindi patrols so they don't take over your life. This is great life advice. What a great life hack.

I've noted the new, hip, fashionably jargonistic term called life hacks. At first I thought they sounded very Jack the Ripperesque, but then I found our life hacks refer to "any trick, shortcut, skill or novelty method that increase productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life". And I think we're all going to put our hands up for that. 

So my life hack - for the month of July - is to write more. On here. Every day. About anything. All the things. To encourage me to write more. Life hack month. I'm going to try and do something different, or something a little differently, every day, to get some inspiration, motivation. Let the life hack commence forthwith.