Enter the Quaniverse

Bike Bashing on Media Watch

Posted on 24 September 2013 by andyq

Friends informed me that I was on Media Watch last night!

Luckily both a video and transcript are up online.

A number of weeks ago, I was incensed to read about the misinformation that the Daily Telegraph is putting up about cycling, combined with their endless vendetta against Clover Moore.

I find it unbelievable that such a mainstream and widely read newspaper blatantly lies. Their ‘facts’ on cycling are not even distorted. They are just wrong. It seems perhaps that they may not even care much about bikes anyways. They’ve just found an issue that they can exploit among their readership and use in a political way.

Is there anywhere else in the world with such an anti-bike sentiment? Cyclists are killed by drivers here on a regular basis, harassed and bullied. Most countries and people think cycling is a great thing: great for the environment, great for people’s health, great for cities and communities.

I love my adopted country of Australia… but not the shitty attitude about cycling.

Meanwhile, I’m amused that a tweet of mine made it on national TV. That’s the way the world seems to communicate these days, by tweets and public opinions. I’m not particularly active on twitter either. I just felt passionate about the issue… It’s also a bit strange as I copied most of the tweet from someone named Gerry Gaffney.

He wrote:

Nice to see #onyerbike trend today in response to the @dailytelegraph‘s hysterical, ill-researched and biased headline article.

So, I thought I’d keep the trend going by tweeting:

@dailytelegraph‘s hysterical, biased headline article creates a dangerous climate for cyclists in Sydney.
onyerbike

Just the right combination of words, obviously, to catch Media Watch’s attention!

Check out the transcript from Media Watch’s 23 Sept 13 story on the Daily Telegraph’s campaign against cycling and Clover Moore.

Posted in Stuff | Leave a comment

Romanesco Broccoli

Posted on 22 August 2013 by andyq

So, we’re down at the fish market getting supplies for the first course of a progressive dinner (as you do) and there’s a tray in the produce store, beautifully displayed of ‘baby cauliflower’. Except that there are at least three different varieties of things. We are especially fascinated by one of the varieties… It’s only $3 and boyf says that it looks like the world when you’re on acid. Conjecture of course.

Whoah. Trippy broccoli variant, sometimes called a cauliflower

It’s one of those things that make me go: I’ve made it to 44 years of age and have never seen one of these things in my life.

I post it on facebook [sidenote: I’m with a group of 6 people and they all start making negative tut-tut noises about facebook indicating without words: ‘waste of time’, ‘destructive influence’, ‘society and personality destroyer’. ‘I love facebook,’ I say, brightly] and suddenly I’m learning all sorts of things. What a fractal is. The golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers. That it is called a Romanesco Broccoli (or sometimes a Romanesco Cauliflower) and is tasty.] Friends advise to put it on display and boyf places it in a Martini glass surrounded by some odd flowers nicked off one of our succulents.

We leave it on our table for a week, bringing us fractal fluorescent lime green joy, and then I mix it in with some real cauliflower for a roasted garam masala cauliflower-romanesco broccoli recipe. It’s delicious.

Posted in Australia, Food n' Grog | 3 Comments

Restaurant Review: Chur Burger

Posted on 14 August 2013 by andyq

Step into hip. Because this is one of those hot places of the moment. It’s been much lauded in the press, and so much that I’ve been spotting those ‘this restaurant is too popular so I’m going to go against the flow and trash it’ reviews. A hugely popular, bustling and noisy burger place that seats a surprising number of people, and gets people in and out pretty quickly too, as you order at the counter and food comes up quick too. It’s not a place to linger.

The chickpea burger I ate yesterday (or one like it) – photo from their website

I had to search this morning to find out where the word ‘Chur’ comes from and it seems a bit of Kiwi slang from founder Warren Turnbull’s homeland. Cheers. Choice. Thanks. It’s an all purpose Kiwi-ism, and considering how many Kiwis live in Sydney, I’m surprised that none of my circle knew what Chur was in the first place. Perhaps it’s just too confusing that it’s pronounced the same way Australians pronounce ‘Cher’. Check out an amusing investigation into the word here.

I think I’m most interested in how it represents the changes in Sydney’s food scene. I loved the two or three times I went to Turnbull’s old restaurant Assiette in the same location. Quiet, classy and pricey, it was an inventive restaurant with a degustation menu and white tablecloths and perfect formal table service. But Sydney’s moved towards upmarket pub food and sharing plates and… modern American (burgers and sliders and rock music) and Latin American food (tacos and grilled meats and ceviche). How times have changed, and how appropriate that a literal fire allowed Chur Burger to rise from the ashes of Assiette in an act of reinvention and transformation.

Anyways… the food. Having been there about three times in the last few weeks, I think I’m qualified to say that I think the burgers are just fine. The pulled pork does have a wow factor, and the brioche bun is beautiful and soft and slightly sweet. But I didn’t find the regular burger or the chick pea burger anything special. I’ve tried both versions of the fries, plain and sweet potato, and these aren’t too my taste, in a style not particularly crispy. When at lunch, the choices are burger and fries, and I don’t like the fries, this isn’t ‘must’ eating.

Dinner was more successful. At that time, they add 7 snacks, $10 each – we tried the pickled prawns – as well as a few bigger dishes and desserts which all look to be examples of fast, fun and inexpensive food, designed and cooked by a top team of chefs. I think I’ll take a break for a while, and then head back for dinner some time, skip the burgers and fries and graze the rest of the menu.

But for the atmosphere and vibe, and see what Sydney is excited by, I would recommend a visit. Bloggers, Asians and Asian bloggers taking photos of food and selfies, Surry Hills hipsters and young foodies: it’s really a scene. And if you like it enough, you can try to work chur into your vocabulary.

48 Albion Street

Surry Hills NSW 2010, Australia

+61 2 9212 3602

churburger.com.au‎

Posted in Food n' Grog | Leave a comment

Concerts I went to 2010–2012

Posted on 26 May 2013 by andyq

At an Eros Ramazotti concert in Oct 08, I was musing at the amazing artists I’ve seen from around the world, and while around the world. I thought I’d indulge myself with a list of concerts of famous, obscure, alternative, and mainstream folks that I’ve seen through the years. (Pre-2010, 2013 and current in separate posts)

2012 – Australia

Beth Orton, State Theatre (January) – I love her music, but was surprised how nervous she was. It took a long time for her to warm up into her own songs.
Sam Amidon, Spiegeltent (January) – I kind of liked the dead-pan American humour from the Deep South but my friends thought it was weird. Still, his version of R. Kelly’s ‘Relief’ was amazing.
Hans Zinner’s 41 Strings and Bharoocha’s IIII, Sydney Opera House (January) – This piece of music and performance was one of the most exciting events I’ve been to. Amazing orchestral pop performed by dozens and dozens of musicians onstage in a concert venue. Wow.
The King’s Singers, Sydney Opera House (February)
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Opera House (March) – I love their reinterpretations of new and old popular songs, i.e. Teenage Dirtbag, and they’re great performers… But what an unusual crowd. It was like being at a ukulele convention.
Bon Iver, Opera House (March) – Hard-fought tickets, a sold-out house and the audience ADORED them. An interesting phenomenon to have such original music create such fandom. It was great, though I wish they hadn’t torn apart their old songs so much.
Jane Birkin, Angel Place (March) – see my posted review
Angélique Kidjo, Sydney Opera House (April)
Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly & Sufjan Stevens (May) – String Quartets and ‘Planetarium’. This music was beautiful!
Prince (June) – holy crap, what a concert. One of the best I’ve ever seen.
Lady Gaga (June) – great performer, I’m glad we went.
Radiohead (November)
Emmylou Harris (November) – State Theatre. Perhaps more country and bluegrass than I like.
Morrissey (December) – what a crazy great concert this was and I didn’t expect him to sing so many Smiths songs. Was ecstatic.

2011 – Australia

The National, Enmore Theatre (January)
The Magnets, The Basement (June)

2010 – Australia

Andrew Bird, January, Sydney Opera House
Grizzly Bear, January, State Theatre, Sydney
Carole King and James Taylor, April, Hope Estate Winery, Hunter Valley
Rickie Lee Jones, Opera House (Vivid), May
Jonsi, Enmore Theatre
Kurt Elling, November, Sydney Opera House

Posted in Theatre/Concert Review | Leave a comment

Book Review: Galeano’s Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone

Posted on 13 April 2013 by andyq

Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Hughes Galeano

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy when I was in my late teens. I wore it with pride, as it seemed to represent a lot of what I wanted to be. As a young lefty, that someone had rewritten the history of the world from the view of the oppressed, had uncovered alternative narratives, and infused them with a passion for social justice, was a lovely gift. And politics aside, the amazing myth-telling from the first of trilogy, with the origins of the earth and peoples and languages, was poetic and magnificent.

Years later, I stumble upon ‘Mirrors’ in a used bookstore, and buy it, mostly through sentimentality! In a strange way, it seems a retelling of the original trilogy: it begins with origins of the world and ends somewhere in our modern day. Twenty-five years later and he is writing in a similar style about similar injustices. Because of this, I didn’t feel particularly engaged by the book, I’d dip in and out of it, enjoy the vignettes and poetry of it, but somehow in the last third, I was captured into the way he had grouped the vignettes into loose themes, how he would dance across continents before moving into another exploration.

It really is a depressing telling though, this history of the world. I think it’s encapsulated for me in his vignette entitled ‘Only Human’ that occurs just after the halfway point of the book. ‘We puny humans:’ he begins, and then lists some of our traits, ‘exterminators of everything…ones who poison the water they drink… the only ones who kill for fun… who rape’. And then his list of positive characteristics is about half as long as those that were negative: ‘also/the only ones who laugh…daydream…find beauty in rubbish’.

And I’d think that this is what a reader will end up with in general: one-third inspired by his beautiful writing and impressed with his passion for uncovering the voices and histories of the oppressed; two-thirds depressed by the terrible machinations of the world.

View all my reviews

Posted in Book, Books, Review | Leave a comment

That old ‘ise’ vs. ‘ize’ chestnut

Posted on 13 April 2013 by andyq

I love my new career as an editor and copywriter.

Looking at the ins and outs of language and how it changes with time and geography fascinates me.

Raised in Canada, of course we knew that there was a difference between the way we said ‘zed’ and Americans said ‘zee’. Ah yes, and ‘colour’ and ‘color’.

But I was unaware of other regional differences. After arriving in London to work, after two years in Brussels, I remember sitting down in my new managerial position, and correcting the spelling on a document written by one of my project workers.

He sat in silence while I corrected ‘organisation’ to ‘organization’ and it was only a week or two later that I discovered, to my horror, that I had been completely ignorant of the difference between ‘ise’ and ‘ize’ in the United Kingdom. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ I asked but he just shrugged. He’d treated me (and continued to treat me) with passive aggression, and it was just another proof of my foreign ignorance and ill suitability for the job.

Here in Australia, it was a slow process, but I finally got used to using ‘ise’ instead of ‘ize’ for everything. It’s much easier here to just decide that there are no exceptions and to stick with that construction, whether to spell a word like ‘authorise’ or ‘realise’, even though a number of z’s have snuck into writing here.

Recently, I got a job editing a report for an international agency that uses the Oxford English Dictionary as their guide on spelling.

This should be easy enough, I thought, as Oxford implies (to me at least) spelling from the United Kingdom.

But I was surprised to find out they spell nearly ALL variants with a ‘z’?

So:

customize
patronize
sensitize
finalize
authorize
mobilize
marginalization
organization
humanize
recognize
civilization
utilize

But: it’s not possible to go all the way with ‘ize’ as I found a handful of exceptions:

analyse
advertise
exercise
supervise
catalyse
disenfranchise

It kind of wanted to make my head explode! But at the same time, I find it kind of amusing. When people find out I’m an editor, they picture me with a tight bun, pulling my hair back from my face, and lecturing them on language rules. But because there are so many rules and different kinds of rules, the aim is consistency, not perfection (though perfection is nice to strive for), and I think a good editor needs to be as flexible and adaptable as they are strict.

Posted in Editing | Leave a comment

A client describes her reiki treatment

Posted on 23 March 2013 by andyq

Natasha came for a treatment with Reiki Surry Hills in March 2013, and had a particularly powerful experience, which she’s allowed me to share with you here.

‘During reiki, it felt very powerful. I felt very relaxed and it felt like I was sleeping sometimes, because I could hear myself snoring. At times, I saw colours, like a kaleidoscope and I had lots of visions.

When you were at my feet, I could feel energy coursing through me. I had some small pains, in my left ear and at the front of my right shoulder. Afterwards, it felt as if I was made of a completely different material.

One of the things that I was hoping that reiki would address is that I’ve lost some sensation in my feet lately. I can knock my foot and it will take time to feel anything. After the session, I could feel sensation coming back to the area of my feet. The first day after the session I could occasionally feel a light pain in the certain spots on my body – one spot in the middle of the left knee, and another in the middle of right foot.

The treatment was very successful and beneficial at so many levels. I noticed that afterwards, I was more energised but also more serene and grounded since the treatment. It was very obvious because over the last two days, I have been in intensive professional training, a situation that usually triggers my anxiety and social phobia. I have noticed that my response has been much better than usual – I was focused, relaxed, receptive and very sociable, which is, I am sure, a result of the session.

My main goal is to learn how to be at peace and balance with myself, and my intuition tells me that reiki is good way of achieving it. You’ve definitely got a follower and admirer in me.

One more thing – I was in some special state of mind after the treatment, as if I had just woken up or come out of meditation. So, I was not quite “on earth” yet. I didn’t notice the glass door at the exit from the building and hit my head against it. It was painful and awakening!’

As a note from me, sometimes reiki can bring up sensations (or small pains) that are uncomfortable during or after the session, but I believe this is something in the end healthy, as the negative sensation arises and works its way out of the body.

Thank you Natasha for letting me share your experience!

Posted in Reiki | Leave a comment

Welcome Maneki-Neko.

Posted on 17 March 2013 by andyq

You know, I always wanted a Maneki-Neko, a Japanese fortune cat, or money cat, or lucky cat, he goes by many names. I find him endearingly tacky, and he reminds me of Japan (which I love), or even little shops in Chinatown where we Chinese have culturallly appropriated a cat with the aim of ~~greed and economic dominance~~ prosperity. Also, Dad had one in his office.

However, I’ve never really found one that has called out to me. When I’ve seen them in shops, they seem equally tacky and charming in their varieties and I was unable to decide between them. Yesterday, riding home on the Bourke Street Cycleway, there was a ~~garage~~, ~~yard~~, sidewalk sale (is that what they’re reduced to for people who have neither garages nor yards?). They were packing up, and one of the only items still out on the street was this little Maneki-Neko. Two dollars, no holler. How appropriate to get a bargain fortune cat.

On the other hand, when I put the battery in, I discover that Fortune Cat’s beckoning arm (Westerns often think the cat is waving, but no, the cat is beckoning fortune) moves so quickly that it is looks much less lucky than an arm about to be wrenched out of its socket. It makes a tack-tack-tacking sound with the arm swinging back and forth and hitting its maximum trajectory. Not particularly conducive to my concentration… at work… where I make my (financial) fortune.

Poor Maneki-Neko. I’ll just have to leave you hobbled and battery-less, and I’ll try to bring my salary without your extra beckoning gesture. You’re still a lovely shiny colour of gold.

Posted in Stuff | Leave a comment

It’s not me, it’s you: Office: Mac 2011 = Crazymaking

Posted on 15 March 2013 by andyq

4 Feb 2013

As an editor, and a mac user, the main tool of my trade is Office: Mac 2011.

I wish I had a better tool.

Regularly, my documents will suddenly show me a blank dialogue box. Then the dropdown menu is blank.

Then, as I can’t save my document, I’ll have to force quit word and hope that my file will be recovered.

I thought that the problem was the my Macbook was getting old, as it’s over the ripe old age (for laptops) of 5 years. I wondered whether it was because of the large files (it usually happens with larger files) and whether it had something to do with incompatability with PC versions of Word.

I did discover one bug, which had to do with my particular setup where I plugged in my laptop to a large screen (a 50 cm ASUS MW221) and used both screens at the same time (the larger one being the main one). If I happened to move a word document from the large screen to the smaller screen that was larger than the smaller screen, then Word crashed. It required me to be mindful of this and shrink the document window down to a smaller size on the larger screen before I moved it over to the smaller screen.

But that still didn’t solve all the crashes. When I bought a MacBook Air and had the same crashes without the computer being hooked up to any other screen, I knew it wasn’t just that.

Until then, I also couldn’t figure out the right google search. But I finally did. Peter Marx on his website noted the same problem and that Microsoft Office Mac 2011 is ‘too buggy‘.

There are also similar discussions on Mac Forums which note a variety of frustrations and proposed solutions. Sad to say that I don’t think any of them work: neither reinstalling the program, nor doing a verify and repair disk, works. I’ve had this problem going on for about two years, and the only conclusion I have is that it’s crazymaking.

15 Mar 2013

After another long round of frustrating edits and crashes, I decided to do another round of searching for help. Sometimes it seems I have to wait til the net catches up with me, or whether I figure out something that I should have been able to figure out before. While an acquaintance recommended switching to another word processing program (anyone tried Scrivener?). Macheads recommend Pages.

But I edit documents that come to me in Word. It’s not realistic to try to convert them to another program to edit them, and then convert them back again to send to a client.

So, I found a new string of emails on the ‘Microsoft Office Community’. It seems like one fellow was having exactly the same problems as I’ve been having and for months. The gist of the conversation was one learned fellow explaining that it’s probably crashing because there are too many ‘track changes’. This makes sense to me. I have these problems because, as an editor, I am tracking dozens of changes and adding comments on complex documents with tables, figures, graphics and various fonts and styles.

The conclusion of this… until today was one fellow recommending basically to not track changes (which is part of my job as an editor) and the other fellow saying, ‘This is ridiculous. It’s a word processing program.’ I posted up my own lament and received a response today which is promising:

There have been several updates, including a new update this week that specifically addresses crashes with tracked changes.

Oh my god, excitement. However, I try to update my copy of Office, and get a message that my Product Key is invalid (it so isn’t). So, I’ve just spent half an hour going through online help who told me to call their helpline, and then registering all my details with the helpline who then assigned me a case # and transferred me to the technical department (huh?) who then asked me for my name and case # and told me that no one is available to help me with Office for Mac. But they’ll call me in about an hour… (when he gets back from coffee?) Stay tuned…

17 Mar 2013

Oh the moment when you realise that even though you think you are competent at I.T., you are so NOT. I was clicking on ‘upgrade’ office, which then gave me a prompt to enter in the product code, I suppose for Office 2013, or whatever they’ve come up with. Instead, I should have been clicking simply on ‘check for updates’ (upgrade vs. update, shouldn’t I know the difference as an editor?).

I discover this by finally getting through to the IT helpdesk at Microsoft, and run a little program that gives them remote control of my computer. I tell you: that was totally frightening to be in front of my screen, while the helpdesk guy controlled my cursor – and then simply did a software update, which, ahem, I could have done myself.

His name was JC, which I wanted to ask if it was short for Jesus Christ, which later would have made even more sense since in closing the conversation, he kept saying ‘God Bless You’. Seriously. I think their helpdesk must be in the USA somewhere.

So, now I’m upgraded, and the upgrade said that it fixes an issues of crashing when ‘scrolling’ when there are multiple track changes. Will this fix my long-standing problem? Who knows? Stay tuned…

13 April 2013

Wow. I did have to provide an update. It’s been a month now, and I’ve been doing a lot of editing… and no crashes. Woohoo. After two years of Office for Mac: PAIN, it seems (knock wood) that they fixed the problem.

Posted in Advice, Consumer, Getting Things Done, Stuff | Leave a comment

Concert Review: Rickie Lee Jones at the Factory Theatre

Posted on 12 March 2013 by andyq

I’ve always found it interesting how we’re drawn to what type of music. It doesn’t matter whether we’ve shared life experience with the singer, or can even understand their language to be drawn in and then either like, or even love, someone’s music. I’m not sure why I have always loved Rickie Lee Jones’s music, her completely unusual voice, and her folk tales of bar hounds and outlaw kids, but she was one of those women I worshipped in university. Funny, it’s a stereotype of gay men being drawn to women singers: Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, and Kylie Minogue. But gay fans of folksingers were a little less common; I loved Jane Siberry, Ani Difranco, Nanci Griffith and Joni Mitchell just the same.

Two years ago, I saw Rickie Lee Jones in Sydney as part of the Vivid Festival, playing to a packed house at the Opera House. Our seats weren’t particularly good, I recall, but I was thrilled to hear her play her old songs. She was whackier than I imagined, a musician’s life, well lived. My partner, however ,thought she sounded a little worn out with a lack-lustre performance.

On Sunday night, my friend David posted on facebook, ‘Does anyone want to see Rickie Lee with me?” I had no idea she was in town, and I subscribe to a number of music and concert e-mail newsletter so I won’t miss my favourite artists when they pass through. I’d seen nothing of it advertised, heard not a peep.

But of course I’d go. And neither would David find anyone else interested, the majority of Australian friends knowing Ricki-Lee Coulter, a former Australian idol contestant, but not Rickie-Lee Jones.

The venue, in Marrickville, is out of the way. There is a nice enough bar a seven-minute walk away, and a pizza place across from that, but it’s pretty dead out there. I’d been to the Factory Theatre ages ago, and I couldn’t quite picture her there. It’s small, and not very pretty. The size of a small high school gymnasium, a big boxy long room.

We arrived early, had a drink and headed in. There was no opening act. We kept on looking at these rows of stackable chairs lined up and joined together, no more than 200 people, and the back rows empty. What happened? How does a world-famous artist end up playing in a dive like this? The lights dimmed, she came on stage with two musicians, a cellist and an electric guitarist.

From her opening notes, I was astonished that even near the back of the room, we were sitting so close to her. The sound was crystal clear, as if she were singing in one’s living room, and her voice, unchanged after so many years. And while the tour is purportedly in support of her new album (which I hear is very good), it was mostly old favourites, her on guitar mainly, though she switched to piano, significantly for Satellites, an amazing jazzy improvisational version. We Belong Together was stripped down, the percussion of the original tracks recreated by tapping and clacking on the top of the piano, or the musicians tapping their instruments. These songs were the most intimate and stripped-down versions I’d heard. Coolsville was quiet, quiet and absolutely cool. ‘It must be love’ was sweet and quiet.

In the meantime, Miss Ricki Lee was low-key with an easy banter with the audience, not very talkative, but cool, of course. Instead of the feeling that she was tired of playing these songs for decades, she completely inhabited them as being able to sing them like no one else could ever do. She would smile and laugh during singing, relishing her own poetry and the joy of her delivery.

Someone’s posted up the setlist already (from setlist.fm)

So many of my favourite songs… Really, I felt I had died and gone to heaven and was brought to tears a number of times. I missed her singing ‘Company’ but then might have gone into an epileptic fit if she’s sung that, which would have not been a good look. Someone screwed up in keeping it secret that she was in Sydneytown, but for us, it felt like this amazing gift, the Dutchess of Coolsville so close and intimate, singing her crazy beautiful songs.

Posted in Concert, Music, Review | 8 Comments