Revelations

Beth swimming (video)

2009-12-17T15:09:00.001-08:00

Beth swimming (video)
Originally uploaded by Tom Goodfellow

Tomorrow we head off to Europe for a white Christmas in Switzerland, followed by a whirlwind trip to Prague and, er, Brentwood. So excited!

Consequently, we've had to cram in a lot of our Christmas socialising this week with all of the expected toll of increased alcohol and decreased sleep. On the weekend we had M's work do on Friday night, Saturday breakfast with friends, Saturday lunch at a kid's birthday party, Saturday night hosting a barbie for friends, and Sunday family Christmas with M's family.

I had lots of fun despite having to hold my tongue a fair bit; acupuncture, Catholicism, horoscopes, climate change denialism and racism all featured at various stages. I sacrificed principle for social harmony and let it all serenely wash over me, then had a rant on the sofa on Sunday night.

The video is from the family Christmas. B1 was a slow starter on the swimming front, but as you can see she's really enjoying it these days. By contrast, B2 is a natural fish.

Catching Up

2009-12-08T20:50:00.001-08:00

Bs (video)
Originally uploaded by Tom Goodfellow

Ridiculously busy at the moment. The Whitlams was good, Jarvis Cocker was better, Christmas socialising is reaching fever pitch and we're off to Europe in less than 2 weeks.

As for the Bs, well, they're just gorgeous and more fun than ever as you can see from this wee video.

Noughty But Nice

2009-11-25T21:36:00.000-08:00

So the “Best of the Decade” lists have started appearing in various meeja outlets, which has got me thinking about my picks. Here are some provisional thoughts on my favourite stuff from the past 10 years, but I’m sure I’m missing out on some very obvious things. Thoughts?

Albums –

Funeral (Arcade Fire), In Rainbows (Radiohead), Let’s Get Out Of this Country (Camera Obscura), The Seldom Seen Kid (Elbow), Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Wilco), Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Flaming Lips), Franz Ferdinand (Franz Ferdinand)

Songs –

Svefn–g-Englar (Sigur Ros), Do You Realize?? (Flaming Lips), All My Friends (LCD Soundsystem), Losing My Edge (LCD Soundsystem), Shoot Speed/Kill Light (Primal Scream), Hope There’s Someone (Antony & the Johnsons)

Movies –

There Will Be Blood, 24 Hour Party People, Shaun of the Dead, Mulholland Drive, In The Mood For Love, Brokeback Mountain, Lord of the Rings

Books –

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), The Line of Beauty (Alan Hollinghurst), The Secret River (Kate Grenville), Atonement (Iain McEwan), London: The Biography (Peter Ackroyd)

Lovin’ Summer

2009-11-25T20:59:00.000-08:00

M&I are collectively taking a deep breath in anticipation of the entirely preposterous summer we have coming up. Can anyone offer babysitting in January – by which I mean ALL of January?

During the two months, we will be taking in:

The Whitlams at the Sydney Opera House
Jarvis Cocker at the Metro
2 family Christmases, prior to;
Trip to Switzerland for Christmas (journey there takes in 3 plane flights and 2 train rides)
3 days in Prague
12 days in the UK, with all the activity that implies
A.R. Rahman at Parramatta Park
The Horrors at Oxford Arts Factory
Camera Obscura at the Becks Bar
Dirty Three/Laughing Clowns at the Enmore
Zeeko at the Seymour Centre
Antony and the Johnsons at Sydney Opera House

Oh, lord. Later in the year there’s Yo La Tengo at the Basement, ACDC at the EnormoDome, Pavement at the Enmore, Franz Ferdinand at the Future Sounds Festival, Pixies at the Hordern, Wilco at the State Theatre, Wilco again at the Factory theatre…

And the winner of the "Song Most Likely To Make Tom Grin Like A Loon" award is...

2009-11-12T22:54:00.000-08:00

This one:

And the winner of the "Song Most Likely To Make Tom Cry" Award Is...

2009-11-12T22:42:00.000-08:00

This one:

Photojournalism

2009-11-10T22:02:00.000-08:00

So I had the kids on my own in M's absence, and we had a great time.

We went to Rouse Hill Library:

We had lunch at the RSL:

We had dinner at the local pizza & pasta place:

We went to the local school fete:

And my mo grew some more (donate now!):

Onwards and upwards!

Emotion through stick people

2009-11-07T20:29:00.000-08:00

Beautiful stuff from the web comic xkcd:

Different Worlds

2009-11-02T00:31:00.000-08:00

A thoroughly pleasant weekend but a bit of a jumble, so I'll just list what we did.

Friday: Drinks at Sydney Opera House with Lou followed by a so-so play (God of Carnage)

Saturday: Halloween! We had offered to organise the local kids to go round the close together. We ended up with 18 assorted ghosts, goblins, princesses and a SuperBarnaby trolling around the close in a big gang. Afterwards we hosted a sausage sizzle for children and grown-ups, and it was good to see everyone and meet some new neighbours.

That all felt very bourgeois, like one of those Australian films that nobody goes to see, so luckily our seldom seen mate Dale was on hand afterwards to lower the tone, work through some of the left-over beer and watch a very satisfying football match.

Sunday: To a local Posh School for their summer fete, which was very pleasant. I was amused when a couple of smiling older ladies asked whether I would sign their petition:

Me: "What are they for?"
She: "One if for banning pornography in petrol stations and the other is to stop same sex couples from adopting"
Me: "I don't agree with either of those"

Cue mutually baffled-by-warped-morality stares before I wandered off to put Beth in a teacup.

Movember starts here

2009-10-27T18:33:00.001-07:00

How would that handsome phizog look with a big bushy beard, an elaborately curled "Belgian Gentleman" moustache, or perhaps a Hitler/Chaplin mini-mo? We'll find out this November, or rather Movember.

Here's the deal. I make a public spectacle of myself for a month by growing inappropriate and itchy facial sculpture, you donate some money to prostate cancer research and depression support services. Sounds fair.

My page is at http://au.movember.com/mospace/your-donation-page/

With a bit of luck, I might even end up as cool as these guys:

Flickr, still the place to be

2009-10-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

I just uploaded a bunch of photos to the Flickr account (www.flickr.com/photos/tomgoodfellow).

It was a low-key weekend but an entirely pleasurable one, except for working on Saturday.

Auslan

2009-10-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

I don’t usually blog about work, on the basis that if somebody has to pay me to turn up somewhere it probably isn’t very interesting. However, MPOW recently set up a course for learning Auslan, aka Australian Sign Language, and it’s chuffing brilliant.

We’re 3 weeks in and I’m fascinated. It’s very intuitive, and I love the way that you set up a situation in your “signing space” and then can tell a story within that space. That is, if I establish first that my back of my right hand is “car” and the index finger on my left hand is “Jim” then I can easily go on to show that Jim is in front of the car, Jim is behind the car, Jim was hit by the car, Jim was working under the car and so on.

Similarly, you can improvise once you know a basic sign. So if you know “walk” (two fingers on your right hand walking across the palm of your left hand), then you can intuitively say stagger, tiptoe, hop, bound and so on.

There’s a horribly designed but content rich website called Signbank that I spend a lot of time on. Basically it’s an online dictionary and each word has a wee video to show you the sign. The connections between sign and meaning can be straightforward, witty or baffling, but are usually interesting.

The politics of the Deaf community are also interesting. Many Auslan users don’t consider themselves as disabled, and I can see their point – if I turned up at a party and everybody else was signing I’d be the one in trouble. On the other hand, you’d want to be covered by the same anti-discrimination legislation as, say, wheelchair users.

Next week a new teacher takes over who is himself Deaf, and the whole class will be “Voice Off”. I’m a little bit scared at the prospect, but also excited and I expect it’ll be a lot of fun.

Sarah Blasko, I think I love you

2009-10-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks to ever-generous babysitters, and the lovely Lou, M&I were able to enjoy 2 contrasting gigs on Thursday and Friday.

The second one was the amazing Sarah Blasko at the Enmore Theatre, and it was a stunning show. She has an incredible voice, is as poised as Audrey Hepburn, wore amazing clothes and the hometown crowd couldn't get enough of it. It was the kind of gig where even the lighting was good enough to deserve comment. A drum solo and a rendition of Xanadu were the icing on the cake.

Blasko's support was El Perro Del Mar, whose sideshow at the Oxford Art Factory constituted our entertainment on Thursday. We really like her records but we weren't sure that the lush arrangements would translate well to the stage. Unfortunately she was obviously financially constrained, because the show was simply her amazing singing, a laptop, and an odd bearded character with a 2-fretboard guitar. It wasn't really conducive to the otherworldy vibe of her albums. Luckily there was a small posse of us there and we had a good time anyway.

Cool dudes

2009-10-06T20:41:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Avoca Beach for the long weekend was affected by cold weather and continuous drizzle. The beach was out so we had to go for wet walks, or stay in to read, watch DVDs and play canasta. Suited me just fine.

Yesterday it got weird. It's spring in Australia but for some reason we had a severe but localised hailstorm in Castle Hill that left ice all over the garden. The kids loved it.

Catch up

2009-10-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

Right, a quick update before I fall off the blogosphere and float out into cyberspace.

Friday: M graduated! A very exciting day given a twist by the fact that The Wiggles were receiving honorary doctorates at the same ceremony. Afterwards we broke our month of boozelessness with some rather good champagne.

Saturday: We had a big party to celebrate the graduation at Karen and Steve's house, involving lots of cocktails. Heaps of fun.

Sunday: Hung over.

This week: I was off work sick from Tuesday-Thursday with a Mystery Illness, but I feel fine now. Basically I felt a bit nauseous and weary with occasional dizziness. I took advantage by upping my score in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die to 880.

Coming up: It's a long weekend, so we're up to Avoca for the first time in an age. Rain and cold forecast. I'm off to check the cinema listings. Cheery bye!

Fruit based drink for the lady

2009-09-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow sees the culmination of a five and a half year project when M attends her graduation ceremony as a Master of Clinical Psychology at Macquarie University. The most impressive thing is that she achieved this whilst having 2 children, holding down multiple jobs, keeping me in the style to which I have become accustomed and just being generally fabulous. An awesome job.

We're having a cocktail party to celebrate on Saturday, so lucky it's the end of our self-imposed booze ban ends today. I'm off to my film course tonight, but I think there may be a dram or two drunk in the following days.

Meanwhile, the kids have a new cubbie house which is being enjoyed already despite the lack of interior decorating:

Don't tell me I'm still on this feckin island

2009-09-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

M&I have been off the booze for the last 4 weeks, in an effort to break out of some bad habits. We're back on the grog as of Friday, which happily coincides with M's graduation ceremony and all champagne-quaffing associated therewith. We then plan to develop entirely new bad habits over the next few weeks.

This has been happening only rarely:

Those who have seen it will understand my grief

2009-09-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

Much of myeekend was spent watching Very Significant French Cinema, but the highlight was inevitably my first ever trip with B1 to go see a movie. She's a devotee of her Toy Story videos, so I figured Pixar's latest, Up, would be a good bet. B1 enjoyed all the hoopla of the trip, buying popcorn and suchlike, and she could tell I was pretty excited and joined in accordingly.

Unfortunately the film itself turned out to be a bit too "old" for her probably. It involves themes of grief and childlessness which would have been totally lost on her, and she thought that the hero was a "bad man" rather than the crotchety but kind-hearted soul he actually was. She also got bored of the 3D glasses and found the whole thing rather too loud. The worst feature was probably the really scary pack of dogs that the good guys are chased by for much of the film, an effect exacerbated by the fact that they were in 3D.

Still, she said she enjoyed it and would like to go again. Something more gentle next time, I think.

Incidentally, I spent a fair chunk of the movie crying at the sad love story aspect, and trying to conceal the fact from both B1 and the other adults seated nearby. Honestly, I can't remember sobbing so embarassingly at a movie since Brokeback and at least that wasn't a kid's movie.

My family

2009-09-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

The latest with the family is as follows:

B1 - Has now learned how to print from the computer, which she loves. Mainly watching Toy Story 2, gleefully anticipating seeing Up next weekend. Favourite word "boooring", often followed by a world-weary sigh.

B2 - Gets excited by cricket/tennis/golf balls as only a two year old can. Loves his new train set.

M&I - Today we got tickets for the new Yasmina Reza play at the Opera House, and - yes! - The Pixies at the Hordern. Cool.

Tiger Goodfellow

2009-09-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

(Technical Note: I recently changed my Facebook settings so that this blog appears in my FB updates. I'm still not sure whether this is a good idea. Will think on it.)

Last week I had the rare treat of playing a round of golf. I used to play a fair bit with my dad when I was a teenager so I have a swing of sorts, but I needed the impetus of a brand new second hand set of clubs to get me going. Windsor is a nice course and of course M's dad Max is a good playing partner.

It's a daft game, I spent most of the round with steam coming out of my ears due to my own shortcomings, but despite appearances I was thoroughly enjoying myself. My worst score on a hole was in single figures, and I scored a 6 on a par 5 which I have to be quite happy with.

I also look good in a glove:

Her father's daughter

2009-09-15T02:59:00.000-07:00

The following exchange occurred just now as I was reading B1 a bedtime story, Bear About Town:

Me: And where is Bear today?
Beth: He's gone to see a movie.
Me: Right, and what's the name of the place that you go to see a movie?
Beth: Um...a film festival!

Sometimes the sequel is better than the original

2009-09-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I was amused by Beth's skill on a skateboard, which led me to create this exciting movie theatre experience:

Now, in true Hollywood sequel style, we have reprised the original idea but upped the ante in exciting new ways. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: 1 skateboard, 2 children!

I'll never have to mow the lawn again

2009-08-31T19:26:00.000-07:00

A trip to the GP for blood test results is never fun, but a reduction in cholesterol levels was a nice reward for a sustained change in diet. I miss cheese.

Turns out, to my incredulity and flabbergastation, that I am a bit overweight too.

Here's the odd one, though. I also had an allergy test which scored High Positive for dust and animal allergies. Anything over 17.49 counts as a very high positive, and my score for grass allergy was...66.8! Dr Ilona said she's never seen anything like it. I must say I was surprised because I've never felt much more than bog standard hay fever. Perhaps I am just the uncomplaining type?

Nobody's baby now

2009-08-31T02:10:00.000-07:00

To my lingering disbelief, yesterday was Barnaby's second birthday. That means that he is now officially a toddler rather than a baby. I liked having a baby. I'm going to miss having a baby around the place, although not so much that I actually want to have another one. The very thought fatigues me.

We had a low-key celebration with family at the marvellous Fagan Park. I've posted a bunch of photos over at Flickr, but here's a wee video as a taster:

Kind of coincidentally, we also chose yesterday to move him from his cot to the Big Bed. No more baby, no more cot. Sigh.

In other weekend activities, I watched 8 movies, tore my hair out at Arsenal's self-destructive capacities, bought some furniture and...oh, some other stuff.

The end of an aura

2009-08-24T22:44:00.000-07:00

It’s a peculiar pleasure to be a pom in Sydney while England is beating Australia in the Ashes. Sporting banter is one of the mainstays of conversation at MPOW, and it has generated quite a lot of email chatter with various friends too. I confess that I rubbed it in a bit yesterday, skipping around the library workroom and singing Jerusalem as I went about my business, but fans of English cricket have to take their pleasure where they can find it.

It wasn’t a classic series in terms of quality, but it was exciting and competitive. Both captains emerged with credit, and I think Andrew Strauss summed up the series nicely when he said "When we were bad we were very bad and when we were good we managed to be good enough."

Obviously the time difference meant that coverage here started at 8pm each night and went on until about 3.30am, which was a drag. At least it was on free-to-air, unlike in the UK, which is a scandal.

Dozens of late nights haven’t done my sleep patterns any good, or my alcohol intake for that matter. With splendid timing, M&I have both committed ourselves to having an entirely booze-free month, effective from yesterday until her graduation party on 26th September. I’ll be enjoying my beer that night, I can tell you now.