This year will be different!

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In Hewsons Hollow

Craptacular!

I spent yesterday afternoon at MONA.

It's a privately owned art gallery in Tasmania. It's really great.

You wear an ipod around, which uses GPS to determine what exhibits are in your vicinity. The ipod displays information about the art, and there is often audio content to access, like a interview with the artist or something. It's very impressive. Another thing the ipod was doing is tracking your movement. Today, I got an email with the route I took through the gallery, as well as a listing of the art pieces I saw, as well as the ones I missed:

In one room, there is an exhibit called Cloaca. The Belgian artist responsible for this installation has apparently set up similar type exhibits in galleries around the world.

It's essentially a poo machine.

Food goes into it, and then goes through various containers where it is subject to acid, enzymes, bacteria etc..

Essentially, all the things that would happen to food in a human body.

As I examined the contraption, I noticed that the room was starting to fill with people. More and more people packed into the small, dark room. Finally at 2pm exactly, a small platform with a petri dish on it rose up slowly. The opening at the end of the machine then squeezed out a small greenish-brown log. The room filled with the smell of poo. People captured the magic on various hand held devices.

I wandered out of the room. Around me, I heard everyone expressing the same sentiment:

"I can do that!"

Fat Car

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Brothers and cousins

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Christmas Cricket

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Downtown Hobart

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Tasmanian sushi

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The bark on this tree sure is interesting

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Christmas cake and champagne at work

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I just met you, and this is crazy...

My housemates are very nice. This makes them popular.

This has the lamentable outcome that they have frequent houseguests. Often, these guests stay over for multiple nights.

I don't love this. Home is a sanctuary. Free of strangers, where you can do your thing and be comfortable in your skin, or boxers or whatever state of undress you choose.

I think I'm getting cranky in my middle age. I've always been kind of an anything goes kind of fellow, but I think I do need a personal cocoon to go home to.

Can we simplify things?

I'm not great with details. In my studies, and in my life, I've tried to boil things down, simplify, reduce to first principles.

I find my head just can't hold all the details.

There is a satisfaction in paring things down, in smoothing away complexities.

Unfortunately, you do lose something in simplifying it. And many things in this messy, tangled world of our resist simplification.

I think I can learn to accept that some things are complex, and need to be appreciated in their complexity. But what I need to figure out is how to handle these things. While I simplify because I like dealing with simpler things, I also think I do this because I truly am not that good with the complex.

What's the answer to this? How do I go about training my mind to absorb, hold, and process the complicated issues in our complicated world?

Tiny Spider on a Pillow

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I found this tiny spider crawling across a pillow.

He was really struggling. His legs were tiny, and he had to struggle and navigate around the individual fibres sticking up from the fabric of the pillow.

As I threw him outside, I couldn't help but think how disorienting it all would be for him. He'd have such an easier time understanding his environment, and making sense of the world if he could somehow have a larger perspective.

Olive Grove

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Christmas Desserts!

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Three minutes a week

A documentary was recently broadcast here in Australia that described how many of the benefits of exercise can be hand much more efficiently.

Essentially, you do 3 twenty second bouts of high intensity training, three times a week. And by high intensity training, they mean full throttle, full body kind of exercise.

I decided to give this a try today. I sprinted for twenty seconds. Rested for a bit. Sprinted for twenty more seconds. Rested for a bit. Sprinted for a final twenty seconds.

I have not felt this awful in a long time. I thought I was going to throw up. I'm not sure if I'll keep this experiment going.

I should read more

As a child, I almost always had my nose in a book. I just really liked reading.

I'd say this started to peter out sometime in high school. Things got busier, I got occupied with other things. In spite of this, I'd say that I identify as someone who loves to read. Which I am thinking is a bit odd, seeing as I haven't really done any prolonged reading for about fifteen years. I mean, I still do read the occasional book, but I think I probably average.. 5 books a year maybe?

I have friends who always have a book on the go. They read a chapter a night before bed. This is not how I read. I start and finish 95% of the books I read within 48 hrs. I stay up late, I read while eating, I read while walking, I read while I'm on the bus. I'm really a binge reader.

I think I'd like to cultivate some healthier reading habits. It'd allow me to read more consistently, for one thing. I also want to get back into reading. I've been noting books I 'should' read for ages and ages, and I ought to just start reading them.

Me talk funny one day

All the hand surgeons and hand therapists had a meeting today. I gave a brief talk on wrist outcome measures.

Afterwards, some people mentioned that my accent helped to keep it interesting.

It's so neat to be the one with the accent. It's impossible for me to hear Canadian-English as anything but plain and unaccented. The Australians seem to disagree.

Also at the meeting where brits and kiwis. After a lifetime of everyone speaking the same-sounding English, I'm suddenly surrounded by such variety!

Ants!

We're having an ant problem.

In the morning, they mosey out and crawl all over our kitchen countertop.

I don't know where they come from.

I'm not too, too bothered by ants, personally. They're so small. And they don't bite.

In other news, it's supposed to get up to 37 degrees here! I'll be indoors all day in a meeting, but it sounds like some serious summer weather.

On (not) Surfing

So I went to Phillip Island this past weekend. The place I stayed at had chickens in the backyard, and on Sunday morning I went and got fresh eggs for breakfast!

Anyways, I went to Phillip Island to surf.

I can't remember how old I was when I first saw the ocean. 16 or so maybe? It was the Atlantic on the east coast of Canada. It was rocky and so cold it hurt. And vast. So very vast. I remember tasting it, to make sure it was salty, like people said it would be.

I have a surfboard, and a wetsuit, and I spend time with these things in the waves of the Pacific Ocean, down here in Australia, but I wouldn't say I'm surfing. I'm not standing on my board carving a trail across the face of a wave. I'm battling, and grappling and gasping against salty walls of water that push and batter me towards shore.

And it's beautiful. I love the endless sandy beaches, and the frothy sea foam. I love the taste of the sea, and the way it roughens my hair as it dries. I love lying on my board, rocking and rising to the endless rolling waves.

I'm not surfing. Not yet. But whatever it is I'm doing out there is wonderful, all the same.

Self Fulfilling Prophecies

If you had asked me five years ago, where I hoped I would be after I had finished my residency, I would have replied:

"Hopefully in Australia, doing some sort of fellowship."


My friend Robin, once told me I should make a vision board. Essentially, it's a collage of your hopes and dreams. You let the universe know what you want.. and the universe responds.

I think the answer is simpler than that. You can only move towards a goal if you're clear about what that goal is. It's hard to hit a target you can't define. I also think that in some way, our dreams and plans help define our future. You can't very well live a reality that you can't even imagine or conceive.

In any case, the fact remains that I am living my dream. And what's it like? Is it everything I hoped and dreamed it would be?

Yes! It is! It's all that and more.

My Sweet Car at Smiths Beach

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Chooks!!

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Phillip Island

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