It has been absolutely ages since I updated the blog. It took a while to get the new phone and internet established. We have had many, many things happening lately, and with my 58 years now really feeling heavy on my shoulders, I should quickly let you in on a bit of this and that at Chez Hamson....
The move was on a wet Wednesday. The removal company was excellent, with five loaders at the Coast and two continuing on to Brisbane. Rene placed most things with the removalists by the time I arrived from cleaning the apartment back at Kawana. The boxes were all unpacked within a few days.
We've had some fun and games getting the technicians to fine tune our air conditioning. Apparently it's a very sophisticated system and is still sounding far too loud, but they'll be back for the third time this week. I still have a final 10% to pay, and it will be done when we are happy. I must say it heats beautifully. We've had a very unusually long cold period, with quite cold nights and lovely sunny warm days.
I have been swamped with emails and several lovely cards since we moved. We have lovely friends. Thanks!
Rene's gallery is about to open at the end of the month. He has been flat out preparing for this event. The invitations look terrific. The space is taking shape, and friends have been offering their wonderful assistance, much appreciated by us both. It's lovely that Rene is so busy that he is no longer bored as he was at the Coast. If anything he has a trifle too much on his head, but he has broad shoulders and can take it.
I have returned to five days a week teaching ESL. I said I'd do a little bit more when I returned to Brisbane, and they ended up offering me full time, with a third school where I had been 18 months ago. I like this school a lot. The three girls I see there are interesting, with two sisters from Sri Lanka (refugees) and a Brisbane born girl who at the age of 2 went to live in Sechuan. She has come back after 6 years following the disastrous earthquake. She looks Aussie but feels Chinese; being fluent in writing and reading, let alone speaking, Mandarin.
Tomorrow, at another one of my schools, I meet for the first time a 6 year old Sri Lankan refugee girl who speaks no English at all. My work life is never dull or predictable. I like that!
The house still is lacking blinds and curtains. We are going to decide on these things after the gallery opening. The gardens are a disaster with the beds like concrete (in some cases it really IS concrete). I've made almost daily trips to the gardening centre buying this and that for the beds, but I fear it is going to be a long process. I really like the chance to do it myself, but I think I'll hire a rotary hoe next weekend and turn over every sod in every bed.
Rene and I watched the ABC this afternoon and saw a short item on an exhibition of Emily Kame Kngwarreye at the National Museum in Canberra. It was filmed in Tokyo. Her paintings and batik are spectacular. Now deceased, she began painting at 70 and without ever seeing a gallery or museum, created art that is stunning in both scale and emotion. I was motivated enough to get up and go to the computer and book flights to Canberra next month for a weekend in order to see this spectacular collection in person. I'll give you links later in another update. This contemporary Aboriginal art is phenomenal. I'm so pleased Rene is connected to this aspect of Australian art.
This will have to be enough for now. I'm feeling distinctly weary since I got to bed at 4am this morning, up at 9:30, back in bed by 12:30. We had our first dinner party (Rene cooked Indian - delicious) followed by a night out at a pub in the city, then I sat around and chatted with a remaining guest after we got home - Rene immediately hit the hay - these young blokes just don't have the staying power these days, haha. Anyway, I'm overdue for my bed.
I only have a couple of recent pictures; we haven't even got ones where pictures are up on walls, but you get an idea of the open plan living room. Till next time...
PS Oh, I nearly forgot - The Olympics! Well, to say the least, I'm underwhelmed by them yet again. The swimming finals were in the morning when I was at work, there appears no atmosphere around the sites, the IOC's pussyfooting about basic freedoms of coverage at media conferences and the eventual cancellation of them altogether just shows what a sham all this is, and as Rene says, what about the hundreds of thousands of Chinese evicted from their homes and not adequately compensated for building projects etc etc. It is spectacular, I love many of the bits I've seen, the personal best performances from the athletes are inspirational, but.... I just don't know, I think they need to go back to basics. Scale back the opening ceremony (if I see two athletes marching in with seven officials again I'll scream - just no more than 50 athletes and officials), bring the scale of things back to something approaching human. Never give it to a regime, ever! I admire the facilities and arrangements, but where are the festivals and excitement in the streets?
I found this piece on Amsterdam in 1928 - worth a read (from Trouw, a Dutch daily).
Amsterdam Games of 1928
Trouw (Olympic coverage) opts for an Olympic flashback to the Amsterdam Games of 1928, which it proudly proclaims became "a model for the rest". However, the paper reveals that it's a miracle the games were held in the Netherlands at all. In Queen Wilhelmina, the country had "a monarch with no sympathy whatsoever for sport in general and the Games in particular". More to the point, the Christian majority in parliament were up in arms against the event. A spokesman for the Protestant ARP party decried "the heathen character" of the Games and warned that they would "stir youthful passions in a most unseemly manner". A fellow party member noted that sport had become "an expression of brute force, a fairground of the vanities".Particular objections were raised to the participation of women in sport "with short skirts, light clothing and bobbed hair". One politician observed disapprovingly that "a woman in the throes of sports-mania loses all sense of decency".The MPs put their money where their mouths were and voted down a bill to subsidise the Games. However, an appeal to the population at large paid off and the Amsterdam Olympics eventually went down in the history books as a success - not least for being the first Olympics where women took part in the gymnastics and athletics events.
PS The Olympics in Amsterdam were the first to have a flame, but funnily enough this was not lit by an athlete but by an employee of the gas company - you needed a professional on the job.
No comments:
Post a Comment