Smithology

I’m walking to the car with a new acquaintance the other day who as he turns to lock the door of his successful and growing business comments that he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. I would assume that someone who has “made it” as far as I can tell, who has the wife and kids and house and car and boat and successful business and friends all over town feels he still doesn’t know what to do with his life. Which makes me wonder, when can you say you’re done, that you’ve done or are doing life? Is there some point where you reach the peak and think Well it doesn’t get any better than this, I’d better head back down. I worry that for me I’ve already been to that place and didn’t know it at the time.

Still, forcing an optimistic outlook, I’m wondering what to do with my life. Self help books often ask as a decision making exercise, if money wasn’t an issue, what would you do and I say, well I wouldn’t work, I’d travel the world in my yacht and private jet throwing Gatsbyesque parties and maybe develop a cocaine habit before spiralling into a pit of despairing existential crisis and ending it all in a high speed motor accident.

Then I think I’d do exactly what I’m doing, I’d enjoy my family, not work too hard but put in a fair effort between eight and five doing some kind of programming gig. Change jobs when it got boring and enjoy a bit of music and science fiction in my spare time.

Other times I think about a fictional writing career or academic career or I think about becoming a teacher so I can have a stable job but have more time to do something really experimental in my spare time like build giant fire breathing robots that eat cars.

I do feel that I am at a junction right now, a point where I can start something new having shuffled the deck as they say and sorted out most of the logistic issues associated with that shuffling, I can use the time I have now to take a wander down some of these other paths until I can poke my head around the corner and maybe catch a glimpse of whether there is anything for me further along.

Uncategorized life

I suppose I owe my twitter and facebook friends an explanation for my random, generalised anti-Christian exclamations of late. I won’t go into it all too much as I’ve got to take responsibility for some things. I understand that churches usually have a large body of people who are comfortable and busy and just aren’t able to give the bare minimum of the time of day to newcomers – some of them are even so snowed under that all they can manage is a grunt when you’re introduced to them or try to strike up a conversation. I get that. I understand that people come to church with many different needs and can be pretty high maintenance to talk to: mental illness, intellectual disability, child protection issues – it makes sense that you should kind of ghettoise these people all together up the back with the new people who have arrived with young kids. That way you can ignore everyone at once. What really hurts is when people try to solve you like you’re a problem, when people try to “minister” to you, when people discuss you in a committee to try and decide what should be done about you. What really hurts is when people talk down to you and give you helpful advice on how to raise your kids and how to make friends. What really hurts is when those people then try to sign you up to the music and sunday school roster.

And they wonder why the pews seem to get a little emptier every year.

Uncategorized life, religion, sale

Looking back at my posts this time last year, I wonder if there’s a reason I didn’t post a New Years Eve post. Usually I spend a whole heap of time reflecting on the meaning of life, the direction I’m taking and my relationships yet this time last year I was in a very un-sentimental frame of mind. Perhaps this was due to watching too much BSG and Sarah Connor Chronicles, or it might have been a sense of fatalism about life in general. In 2008, I dropped out of a whole heap of stuff I’d been doing in order to just earn an income and have time to look after kids. In truth I felt like the particular tack I’d been taking was the wrong one so it was a relief to drop it yet I was then faced with the question of what I was going to do instead.

Sometime during this year, I started to look at things differently and developed a little bit of a framework on how I was going to move forward. My thinking was that instead of trying to change things and wasting a whole lot of energy on moving immovable objects, I should look for opportunities as they came and take advantage of them. Instead of spending all my energy focussed on the things I didn’t have, I should look at all the things I did have and see what I could do with them. In some ways it’s about taking the path of least resistance but I like to think of it as guiding my (awesome looking) space ship through the asteroid field by heading for the gaps instead of trying to push all the rocks out of the way.

Anyway, maybe this philosophy is how we ended up here in Sale. Steph had the opportunity to work pretty much anywhere in Australia, we knew we would come out in front if we sold the house and we figured that we didn’t have a lot to lose as we weren’t exactly living The Life in Forest Lake. Now we are in Sale, we’ve reconfigured the game and we’ll see what presents itself in 2010.

So how about you lot out there? Any thoughts on where 2010 might be taking you? I’m off to buy the beer and wine for a small gathering that seems to have eventuated at our place so I’ll bid you a happy new year, be safe and I’ll see you on the other side.

UPDATE: I did write a new years post last year, don’t know how I missed it the first time I looked for it. It’s a bit more up-beat than I remember feeling at the time. I stand by those comments on parenthood. It can be a drag but it’s worth it.

Uncategorized life, new years eve

So … how’ve you been? I’ve been … busy. You know how it is, you’re sitting at the dinner table late one night talking about how life hasn’t been going to plan, how you never meant to buy a house in an outer suburb of a big city but you still have to both work and even then you seem to be getting further into debt with each passing day. Then you start talking about how your jobs are ok but maybe you’d like to try doing something else but really you can’t change anything because to start something new would be a pay-cut. And then you get on to the topic of schools and how the only nearby private school is ramping the fees up but the state schools nearby are ginormous and you keep reading in the paper about parents having fist fights in the carpark. And then you start talking about how you’d always said you would travel and maybe grow a vege garden and spend more time with the kids. And after a couple of more wines, your wife’s logged on to seek and found jobs advertised in Katherine, Mildura, Gippsland and central NSW.

Then in the wink of an eye, there’s a job offer and a date set, you’re handing in your resignation, trying to sell a car (unsuccessfully – 2003 Ford Focus, Manual, gc but needs a small but very expensive repair if you’re interested), talking to real estate agents, breaking the news to family and friends and organising airplane tickets (which end up being put on hold because you decide to make it a road trip).

Then there’s the move, several weeks of packing and trying to cut the payload down, roping in some loyal friends to help you clean, some tearful goodbyes to friends, handing the keys to the agent and rolling out of your suburb and town for the last time (at least until you come back to visit).

On the road you get to judge each town from the highway as you coast through trying not to break the speed limit (but we got a ticket anyway – watch out for the 50 zone and speed camera in Woodburn). With kids there are several strategies but we decided to take it slow and just do two to three hour stints and then break for an hour or so to play at a park and stretch our legs. The days become blurred recollections of scenery and hotels and then you cruise into town, the new town where you are going to live and check into a hotel.

But your work hasn’t finished yet. While your wife starts a new job, you’re busy keeping the kids occupied and looking for some place to live and then it’s all boxes and unpacking until the next thing you know it’s almost two months later and after a bit of a job hunt and more settling in, now, only now you can sit still and look back and go “Holy shit, what have I done!”

Uncategorized life, travel

A friend of mine recently had a a whinge about the Australian health system on his blog so I thought I’d add two cents now that the bills have come in for my aforementioned surgery.

These are all out of pocket expenses AKA the gap fees:

• Anaesthetist: $360
• Surgeon: $700
• Emergency Ward: $160
• Insurer Excess: $200

So much for the gap fee, I’d call it a gaping chasm fee.

In hindsight I should definitely have walked into a public hospital where I might have had to wait an extra couple of hours but would have paid nothing and still recovered in a shared ward (at the private hospital I ticked the box for a shared ward as the form indicated I would pay extra for a private room).

Moral of the story? Private health insurance is a joke.

Uncategorized life

Steph received a very unfair traffic infringement notice in the mail the other day for an incident back in February where a freaking huge construction truck clipped the back of her car and sent her fishtailing almost into oncoming traffic and then smashed half the side of the car in. The notice states that she is to be fined for driving out of her lane.

While we were reiterating how this is just jaw droppingly unfair and depressing, I was reminded of this one time when I was in grade five and I forgot my swimming togs on swimming day at school, so in order to avoid a scene, I went to the detention room without telling the phys-ed teacher. But the dumb teacher in charge of the detention room didn’t have my name on the list so she thought I was trying to get out of detention and after everyone got back from swimming, she told my teacher that I had tried to dodge detention and then my teacher yelled at me in front of the whole class and called me a liar. How unfair is that?

Authority sucks

Uncategorized life

Monday morning is not just difficult because of going to work after having a blissful weekend. It’s also because there is a disconnect between public and private life, almost as if we’re living two lives. It is not natural for us to sustain this split personality. One of the consequences of men becoming more involved in the private sphere of life or women working in the public sphere is this increased burden of living a double life. Sometimes it is refreshing to have a wider world to go about in but other times the crossing of the boundary on a Monday morning is emotionally wrenching.

I’m not sure if it’s possible but I think it would be better for our communities and individual mental health if our society could shift towards a more local view of life where we can work and live closer together. One way this can happen is through local co-working combined with greater online integration with work. A Co-working environment is one where a conveniently located office space can be rented by an individual either casually or on a lease basis. The other workers in the office are working for different companies. In the lunch room, you can mix with people who live in your suburb. Obviously this would be more natural for professionals who deal mostly with information. For tradesmen or unskilled workers, there are more opportunities to stay local depending on how the city has planned their industrial zones.

Possibly the disconnect I’m talking about is also about a mismatch between family life and office culture or even the culture of an industry. I’d be interested to know if others find that certain industries or workplaces have a kind of emotional incompatibility with family life. In my experience being a programmer, the workplace can often have a sterile feel to it with a seriousness and intensity, a lack of playfulness that can grind you down over time. This is the thing I miss most about UQ Library – our manager didn’t mind us having a bit of fun during the day but this is also about the personalities that either self select in or are selected for this kind of environment.

Uncategorized life, society, work

When we were house hunting a few years back, it was the height of the property boom in Queensland. Prices had been stable for about six months and we had saved up a deposit but then we noticed the market seemed to be moving again so we rushed to buy before it all went up by another 100k. I was not too keen on Forest Lake but it was the only affordable suburb for us that suited the commute to both of our workplaces and I found a house that had a big overgrown yard (the way I like it) so we ended up out here.

I knew there was a bit of stigma around Forest Lake, I had thought it would be a bunch of tiny alottments with identical houses packed together like the opening scenes of Edward Scissorhands. Driving out here, we found the place to be green and, well, “foresty”.

But nothing prepared me for the reaction we would get from so many friends and strangers when we say we live in Forest Lake. It’s not the kind of suburb that people have no opinion on. I often get “way out there?” or “why did you buy there?” (with that downward emphasis on the “there”) and other times people express that the fences are too high or that it’s full of MacMansions. Forest Lake has it’s share of grandiose housing but the majority of houses here are single story and three bedrooms. I agree that every house has a six foot fence around it but then I hear people complain about their neighbours or never talk to their neighbours in other suburbs so why is it considered such a big deal here? Also Forest Lake is not as far out of town as some suburbs on the North side or The Gap. So it takes twenty minutes (forty in peak hour) to get home from the city – a relatively long drive for Brisbane but considered a good time for other cities.

The most annoying slur is that Forest Lake is a dormitory suburb: “everyone leaves for work during the day”. WTF? Can you tell me a suburb where most of the people are sitting at home all day? We know for a fact that there are a lot of retirees and stay-at-home mums in Forest Lake, just go to the shopping centre during the day, it’s full of people. Likewise there are always people going for a stroll on the paths between houses and taking their kids to the park.

Forest Lake does have a high crime rate due to it’s proximity to Inala. Is this the thing that everyone’s trying to talk around but not wanting to directly say?

Maybe it is the values of Forest Lake. People here are obsessed with getting ahead and having the good life. What? None of this makes sense – why is Forest Lake singled out as the suburb that represents these values?

I think the stigma lies in all of the things I mentioned but also in something I’ve been reading about on some friends’ blog The Memes of Production which is the idea of authenticity.

I think authenticity is what most people are trying to get at when they have a go at me about Forest Lake. Forest Lake was created by Delfin ex-nihilo as the theologians would say: from nothing. The lake was carved out of a little creek, the land divided up according to Delfin’s plan. The streets, the lights, the gardens on the round-abouts, the landcaping, the shopping centre, the schools, the sports centre, all were orchestrated by Delfin. This has meant that people view the suburb as artificial and owned by Delfin. When you go to live there, you lose your identity and live the life that Delfin planned for you to live there. I think this is what’s at the heart of the Forest Lake stigma.

Delfin has almost finished developing it’s next big “artificial” suburb out at Springfield Lakes. It seems like they’ve managed to avoid the stigma that Forest Lake has, I’m not sure what they did differently but I suspect it’s they way they’ve marketed without using their name as much.

Uncategorized authenticity, forest lake, life

I really like the new Mazda3 we bought the other day despite advice that buying a new car is like buying $2k of depreciation as soon as you drive it out the dealership door. Sometimes, however, you realise that you only live once and maybe you just want to experience rolling down the street in your own brand spanking new shining silver rocket with cylon interior. Yeah the car has pulsing cylon lights on the stereo when you turn it on and all red backlighting with a bit of blue so that you feel like you’re in an episode of BSG when driving it.

Of course there is also the fear that you might be driving along Sir Fred Schonell Drive when suddenly out of the blue the back of the car is struck by a large object – say a truck – which causes a bit of fishtailing and crazed braking as you try not to go into the oncoming traffic moments before the the truck slams into the driver side door and rolls you half up on it’s bumper bar. Actually I’m surprised that Steph is driving so well after that really did happen to her (which is why we needed a new car in the first place)

On surveying the accident scene I was pretty amazed (and relieved) that Steph got out of the car without a scratch and actually reports that her neck and back feel looser than they ever have (maybe the accident was chiropractic somehow) and the doctor gave her a clean bill of health too (after a little joy ride in the ambulance).

Having a car accident launches you on a little journey – a bit like a quest where you meet some strange characters and find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings. After telling our story to some slightly disinterested police officers we embarked on our mission to get a new car. Steph trolled some car selling sites on the internetz for a night or two whilst I went to see the dragon, er, I mean bank who were doing their best to put the ‘W’ into banker.

You gotta hand it to our bank. I ring up to ask about a car loan and they tell me my home loan is in the red. So I get through to their debt collection people who tell me I missed a payment. So I get off the phone and go through all my statements looking for the payment. Ring them back and put the challenge to them. Actually it turns out I didn’t miss a payment, they just pressed the wrong button and turned my loan into a different type and then tried to tell me that I didn’t know what my own loan was supposed to be about. A quick consultation with the actual loan contract set things back on track but they still couldn’t give me a car loan because the computer wouldn’t let them. I had another loan approved over the phone in about five minutes flat so I guess it’s their loss.

We were also less than impressed with the lady at the car yard who’s job was to sell us the paint/rust/fabric protection and window tinting etc… She put the hard sell on us and I got confused and accidentally bought something off her. She told us that the paint on our car was going to turn into a pile of crap if we didn’t get this protection put on. I was pretty sceptical but hadn’t come prepared for this kind of assault and I should have just told her that I didn’t want to be pushed into buying anything. Instead we got suckered with the paint protection which is probably not terrible but I truly doubt that new car paint is so cheap and nasty that it needs this special magic coating.

For future reference: the best way to get a pushy salesperson off your back is to critique their sales technique: tell them you feel like they are pushing you into it, or you can also say that you don’t feel you can trust them because you feel manipulated. They are then either forced to defend themselves and deny that they are pushing you into it (thus backing off) or admit that they are being pushy in which case you can tell them that you don’t appreciate it.

Anyway, that’s most of the story of the new car (which is silver and has cylon lights on the stereo). I’ll leave it there as my new version of Wordpress is hassling me with a real-time word count and 760 words is probably a bit long for a blog post.

Uncategorized banks, cars, life, salespeople

Things have been a bit slow at work today and as I turned to my RSS, I came across this somewhat disturbing post on Graphics Engine which discusses a currently popular YouTube clip depicting Earth’s encounter with an asteroid and the fun results set to the music of Pink Floyd. The clip is as mesmerising as it is terrifying and I felt compelled to watch it right to the end despite its horror.

Then turning back to my RSS, I clicked to an old favourite, Astronomy Picture of the Day, with a small amount of trepidation but their post today had no nihilist doom and gloom, in fact it was a homage to the joy and wonder of the art of looking up. Today’s picture was actually a video clip featuring beautiful time lapse photography of sunsets and moon rises. The stuff that fills us with a sense of awe and makes us wonder at our place in the universe. In the context of the previous clip, it came also as a reminder of how lucky we are to be here: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, feeling, experiencing and living life.

[tags]astronomy, life[/tags]

Uncategorized astronomy, life