Miles Davis

This book was a diamond in the rough and was found in a tiny bookstore in Johannesburg where it was one of a just a handful of auto/biographies. The book provided much more than just an insight into one of the greatest Jazz musicians of all time, but told a very candid story of the Jazz scene in general as well as the habits of many of the Jazz musicians during his time, particularly ‘Bird’ (Charles Parker) and Dizzy Gillespie.

Written in a style that ‘talks’ to you, you’re guaranteed to start swearing like a trooper during and after your read. I was surprised that for an amazing Jazz musician Davis seem to possess such a small expressive vernacular that mainly consists of ‘bad motherfucker’ or ‘that shit was bad or baddest’ – I guess everything went into his music.

Although I had already known that most of the Jazz musicians dabbled in drugs, what I didn’t realise was how serious the problem was. It seems from Davis’ account that quite a number of the greatest Jazz musicians that ever existed had serious heroin and cocaine problems many of which lead to their premature death. Miles Davis himself had a very serious drug problem and it wasn’t until his own health started to fall apart that he made some real attempts to quit. The book provides quite a good historical account of some of the social issues faced by ‘black’ American’s at the time and although the music that they produced were far superior to that of the ‘whites’, they were rarely given the recognition they deserved both financially and in accolades.

If you read past the drugs, women and racial prejudices that are documented at the time, you can really feel the passion behind Davis and his determination that borders on obsession to constantly reinvent himself and come up with new ideas and concepts. Some people may say that they are marks of a true genius and I would agree. The book is an inspiring and insightful read and if at all possible I would recommend reading the book whilst listening to some of Davis’ music as it was nice to actually be able to hear the changes in the music he writes about.

The Beautiful Side of Canberra

Monet - The Water-Lily Pond

In amongst the list of hundreds of things to love about Sydney is its proximity to Canberra, most people probably don’t see this as an advantage, but it allows for an increased selection of cultural precincts only a few hours drive away.  Unlike my visit to Canberra last year the focus wasn’t on the food but on the art itself. There has been a lot of publicity surrounding the “Masterpieces from Paris” exhibition most of which except for the queuing is extremely positive and I myself was lost for words at the skill and talent on display.  I have ‘zero’ knowledge when it comes to art and art history but I’m an art lover and I could honestly say that you could be a person that couldn’t care less about art and the exhibition would have taken your breath away.

I particularly loved Monet’s 1899 – “Waterlily pond, green harmony” or …. “Le bassin aux nymphéas, harmonie verte” and was extremely impressed by Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Georges Seurat.

Aside from the paintings, I’m not sure whether many people noticed the beautiful frames they were set in, I for one think that the frame the paintings are in plays a significant role in directing your eyes and has a role in capturing the audience.  The craftsmanship in some of them were in themselves worth noting.  There’s probably been quite a lot of university study gone into analysing ‘framing’ and there are probably a lot of fancy-smanchy terms to describe what I’ve just mentioned but I think they’re cool and important! So PHD that!

The only thing left to do now is somehow getting my hands on one of these!!!

Ignorant Xenophobic Racists

Stupid College Kids Aping Black Culture

There were lots of great things about my overnight trip to the nation’s capital, but there was very one particular stand out blemish to the small road trip.

I don’t go clubbing a lot or very often but generally when I have, I thoroughly enjoy it.  I’m well aware that I dance like at total geek/dork, but there’s nothing like ‘losing yourself’ in the music.

My experience however of clubbing in our nation’s capital left me feeling extraordinary disappointed at how seemingly backwards we are in Australia.  A group of us were walking through the heart of Canberra’s ‘night life’ on the Friday night and although we had a couple of drinks we were by no means rowdy, we were simply jovial and keeping to ourselves.  At some point during the night the fact that a couple of us (2 out of 5)  were ‘Asian’ dawned on a few observant Canberrans and they simply couldn’t resist the temptation to throw a few unprovoked racist comments.

The comment that was particularly funny but at the time most enraged me, was one that was directed at ‘Dave’ – a friend of Carmen’s who is as ‘white’ as you can get. In amongst the ‘banter’ the best comeback the other guy could come up with was “look at you! you’re asian” to which I had to interject and query his intelligence and vision and although I’m not proud of calling some random guy a “blind xenophobic f*-wit” it was immensley satisfying particularly when he looked completely puzzled… ?maybe I should have said xenophobic in English for him.

Racism, especially that directed toward “Indians” has been rather topical of late in Australia and even though this was not the first time I’d experienced racial prejudice, until now I had dimissed and denied how ‘racist’ we are as a nation. Admitedly Australia is better than most countries in accepting other cultures, but we still have a long way to go…. which leads me on to something completely different which I will post about perhaps in my travels and that is how “we” as a nation seemingly strives for mediocrity (proudly) when in fact we should be striving to not lead but to set examples to the world.

40 Days to Go!

40 Days to Go!

I’m not usually the type of person that’s a big fan of countdowns, but this term and this year has been different. Ever since the beginning of the year I’ve been mentally counting down the days until I leave Australia. Although I will be returning to Australia after 6 months (a change from my plans to be away indefinitely…longish story) .

Tonight, I finally made myself sit down and try and get some of my travel stuff together. You might wonder with still so much time, why bother? Well… if I don’t I’ll leave it to the very last minute and I know I’m going to let details slip with my tardiness.  It was a good thing I actually got started too, because after 2 hours of grabbing things off my laptop, pc and USB stick, I’ve finally managed to get all my plane tickets into one folder.

I haven’t even started with tour itineraries, accomodation bookings, visa applications and other weird official documents.

I’ve digressed a little… whilst doing all my planning I’ve had to create a mini ‘to-do’ list with a few dates and seeing as I did it in excel… the rows on the side conveniently indicated to me that there were only 40 days left.  Things have started to dawn on me and in a big way. I received (finally) from work my letter of approval for 6months leave. Even better it also came with a letter indicating a small pay rise according to my years of experience.

Out of Ideas

We’re halfway through the term and life is definitely going by fairly quickly and my trip planning is well underway.  I’m pretty tired and the three vaccinations that I had recently put on a toll on my body I didn’t expect. Nonetheless life goes on.  I’ve been really flat lately and I’ve lost a lot of my motivation and a long with a few dents in my own self-belief I’ve developed a new woeful sense of apathy.  Hopefully my apathy won’t last long as I’m generally too passionate a person to allow things to past me by.  I’ve actually been writing a lot of prose and poetry again which shall I feel the need will post them. Most need some form of editing.

Lemon Squash

Lemon Squash

It looks like my plans to make lemon squash has paid off, figuratively anyway. Earlier this week, I received a call from our HR Manager at Head Office to say that they had approved my request for 6months leave to travel.

I’ve pretty much decided what I want to do, but it’s still nice to have the security blanket.  I’m also glad that I did screw up and that things have panned out the way they have the last few weeks, because it has actually meant that I have had to  seriously consider what I want to do.

So, officially from Sunday there will be 2months or 8 weeks left.

Now’s The Time to Say Bye-bye!

I’m going to preface this by saying that, this is NOT going to be an ‘EMO’ post, so Amanda you don’t need to worry too much.

The title is actually in reference to a song that we sing with the children at the end of each group and is very fitting for this particular post.

The words are sung to ‘Here we go ’round the Mulberry Bush’

Now’s the time to say bye-bye, say bye-bye, say bye-bye.

Now’s the time to say bye-bye, ’cause that’s the end of <enter the name of the organisation I work for>.

With all the things that happened during the middle of last week, I’ve had to spend some time on the weekend to dissect my feelings.  The events were not as severe in magnitude as a few years back, plus I’ve learnt a lot about myself since then. I’ve surprised myself this time as I’ve coped pretty well with the break-up.

Moving on to the point of this post, in parallel to events a few years back I’ve also decided to resign from my job.

As many of you may know, I absolutely LOVE my job, I find immense joy, satisfaction and I dare say happiness in what I do.  Although, I love what I do I’ve also in recent times started to feel the monotony of work.  There could be a number of factors for this, including the fact that since the middle of last year I’ve only worked for the one organisation Monday to Fridays. Where as for the previous 2.5 years I had been working part-time across two jobs.  Whatever the reason maybe the fact remains that I’m yearning for a change.

As a result of a pretty big stuff-up on my part, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands and I have made a decision to resign.  Trawling through my ‘My Documents’ folders I’d started to realise that I’ve resigned from various places of employment 4 times in the last three years and by the end of all of this it will be a veteran number of 6 resignations.

You would have thought that by the time you’ve reached 4 resignations in such a short-time, that quitting would be ‘water-off a duck’s back‘ but given that I’m an overly sensitive soul, resigning has been incredibly difficult. In many parallels to the break-ups that have hurt the most, I’ve resigned from each work place, still really enjoying, liking and even loving my job. (Woolworths being the only exception).

It seems that I’m in quite an enviable position in terms of my love for the work that I do. Many people have asked, why? I can write a long list of reasons as to why, but…

…on Friday afternoon when I realised I needed to resign and when I finalised my letter on Sunday night, I felt a sense of relief, sure I’m extraordinarily sad about it, but I also felt excitement and for some reason it just felt like the right thing to do.

So in the next few weeks, I’ll be tweaking, editing and finalising this chapter of my life whilst at the same time, drafting and plotting the next.

Let’s hope the next chapter is as great as this last one has been!

Disorganised

Its happened again

I asked for too much

She was there and drew me away

She commanded a place in my heart

I was confused but let her in

Now as it ends the space is not empty

But filled with happiness

This isn’t too painful.

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(No need to worry about me, I just thought I’d channel my feelings into some crappy prose, I haven’t written a lot of poetry at all in the last few years plus I needed an emotional outlet.)

Finding a Host

Okay… so life hasn’t gone exactly to plan the last week, but I’ve had no choice but to focus my attention on ‘mini-projects’ that I’ve needed to finish for a very long time.  (Time to rebuild that self-esteem of mine.)

I’ve finally got this blog hosted properly and the transition has been relatively pain free… and has me brimming with confidence. The process has involved learning about ‘name servers‘,  ’Domain Name Systems (DNS)‘ and learning how best to transfer files over from one ‘host’ to another.  I’ve heard lots of horror stories about disappearing posts, lost customised designs, etc that for it all to have worked almost first go for me is actually very exciting!

I’m  now looking at options for ways to share my photographs and now that I’ve got a relatively reliable host, I’ve got some ideas but many are totally beyond my own hobbyist-IT skills.

So, welcome officially to Polysyllabic Nerd! Though there are no real layout differences, there are lots of functional changes that makes me very happy.

Thirsty Merc

Thirsty Merc

I probably shouldn’t listen to music that only exacerbates my feelings of grief, but there’s something about Thirsty Merc’s music that is rather comforting. None of their hits have ever made it to number one, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t think the music is fantastic.  Quite the contrary in fact their lyrics are easy to relate to and there are some very local Sydney and Australian references which again can be rather soothing to the soul.

Life has thrown me some lemons and it’s now time to make some lemon squash. yum yum.