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TV, Timor Leste and Books

Well I am as sick as a dog with the cold that passed through our house, first Mum, then Pabbi and now me, hopefully Matthew won’t get it.

As much as I really hate been sick I am glad I am sick this week not last week or next week. This is because this week is swotvac or study week, which is the week of rest we are given between the end of teaching and the start of the two week exam block. The four exams I have this semester are on June 13, June 14, June 17 and June 19. Though the bummer is that I want to do something productive like study or make stuff but I just don’t have it in me. Dude, it has taken me two days to right this entry 🙂
I went out Saturday night even though I know I should have stayed home and rested for a friend’s 21st party/shindig at Friday’s which was quite nice as it was the first time I had been out all semester.
Had a big night with the TV last night, first up there was the final part of Peking to Paris, that has been a great show to watch, I would have loved to have been on that epic adventure. I have placed the book on hold at the library so I am waiting for that email to come through so I can discover more about their trip.

The final half of Answered by Fire was on last night as well. It was a joint ABC/Canadian Broadcasting Company production and it gave the emotions a good stir (Nadine, when it airs on CBC it is well worth watching, I searched the site but could not find a Canadian air date). The two part mini-series revolves around the 1999 referendum in Timor Leste (East Timor) and the lives of a French-Canadian policewoman, an Australian policeman and a local family. It was a microcosmic look at the event and the before and after effects of the referendum. All of which is particuarly relevant given the current events that are unfolding in Timor Leste at the present.

“The East Timorese saved our arses in World War Two against the Japanese, and then in 1975 we just stood by and let the Indonesians walk in and take this place. We owe these people, big-time.” Mark Waldman (David Wenham)

Timor Leste is probably one of the defining current events of my life so far, I was just shy of 14 when the 1999 referendum occurred and was just starting to see the events of the world in a broader context and since then I have tried to follow the events as best as I can. I will always remember the cheering that happened when at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney when the four athletes from Timor Leste who participated as Individual Olympic Athletes entered the stadium, the cheering they received was on par with the cheering that the Australian team received.
The final episode of Blue Heelers was also on last night which I taped and will watch some time this week.
Blue Heelers was the first “adult” tv show that I got seriously hooked on, this was in the period of say 1998 to 2001 or so. I was hooked: I was on email lists, I would read fanfiction, I would go to episode marathons with some of the Brisbane girls who I had met on the net, we would also go to the meet and greets when the actors came up for Queensland Day. Then as the show progressed and more and more of the characters I loved left so did I. After airing for 13 years with 510 episodes I like many other “retired fans” would have tuned in last night to get our last fix.

Go Australia! We played a friendly against the Netherlands last night in preparation for the start of the World Cup next week and we tied 1-1 🙂

I went to work this morning and then have pretty much spent the rest of the day in bed asleep or reading. I finished Prep today, it was an interesting read. Speaking of books I have finally worked out the kinks and I now have a Book List on my site of the books I have read. I currently have 18 or so novel length books out of the library to work my way through over the next two months so the list will be updated fairly regularly.

Someone want to pass me a new hankie?

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as young as we act

only as young as you actI handed in my last essay yesterday. Now I just have classes today and tomorrow, swotvac (study week) next week and then four exams in the two week exam block that follows.So between catching up on some TV (McLeod’s Daughters, ER and The Glass House) and working on a little surprise I did a page which ended up been so much simpler than I had planned. As you can probably tell it is only 1 photo, 1 piece of “paper”, a font and a little dose of Helen.

These are two of my sweet nieces, like every day I spent in Iceland I can play this day out on the TV in my head but this day something very special happened. Birta, Silja and I were waiting in the car whilst my brother went to get something, which meant we were just going crazy singing along to Icelandic Pop. Then my brother came back and said a few sentences, which left the girls in shock. They had just made the connection between me been their father’s sister and that meaning I was their aunt. It was classic.

We then met up with my sister-in-law and then spent the rest of the day at the Reykjavik Children’s Zoo and Park. This meant that big kids and little kids alike got to have fun watching animals and playing in one big and very cool adventure playground. 🙂

If someone came up to me tomorrow and said “here is a ticket to Iceland”, I would take it and run!

I have four nieces, five nephews, two sisters, four brothers and a scores and scores of aunts, uncles, cousins and the like in Iceland. Who are all in my mind each and every day.

If I was magical I would pick Iceland up and move it to just off the coast from Brisbane and then I would put a magical dome over it so it would retain all its Icelandic weather and stuff. Then Iceland would just be a short trip from Brisbane. How much would that rock?

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Holy Cripes Batman!

Holy Cripes Batman!

I got 35.5/40 for the essay on Japan and the modern day effects of their past military agressions that I really did not like doing. Can you say Happy! 😀

I was bouncing round the room like crazy.
Then I put the camera on the tripod and proceeded to take 124 photos of myself.

But can you spot my fake tooth? or my ultra cool Mountain Goats t-shirt 🙂

I  have the final exam for this subject today and unless I bomb out on the exam I will be getting a distinction.

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Big changes ahead in China

Today I have written something like 1300 words or so only about 200 words till I reach my target but I will reach that when I finish my editing and write my conclusion.

The funny thing is that the essay I am doing is one that I have found reasonably hard to write even though it is on a topic that interests me more than any of the other essays I have done in my life. It is on a topic that I know really well and without a doubt will be a topic that I will follow for the rest of my life irrespective of what field I end up in.

I am doing my essay on the implications that the growing disparity in birth sex ratios is starting to cause in China.

You say what? Parts of East and South Asia are seeing a massive shift away from the natural population sex ratio that is roughly 104 males to 100 females. The reasons behind this vary from country to country.

In some provinces in China this ratio is 137 males to 100 females, this was in the 1-4 years age group in the 1995 census.

Think about that in a society where traditionally 99.9999% of the population were married at some stage of their life, even if a son died before he was able to get married, a ghost marriage would occur typically with a girl who had died before marriage so that their souls would have peace. Historically in Western Europe, about 85% of the population or so would marry. In the case mentioned if there was no migration in or out of this province and 2% of the females for some reason did not marry, there could be at least 2 in 5 males who would not have the chance to marry.

In saying that though the average for the lower age groups ie the people who have not yet married is around 116:100 – which would mean that you at looking at what 1 in 6 males not marrying who are going to have to adapt to a life of bachelorhood in a society where it has not been a traditonally accepted lifestyle.

This will increase before it decreases. Big changes ahead in China.

Why are the ratios so large? In China it is due in part to a number of reasons.

  1. Cultural preference for a son, as they carry on the family line.
  2. Declining total fertility rate which was pushed rapidly along with population control introduced in 1979 aka “One Child Policy”
  3. Access to prenatal sex determination technology and abortions.
  4. Neglect or infanticide of girls.
  5. Underreporting of female births (though in the whole this is believed to a lesser problem).


That is just some of the stuff I am writing about and I really enjoy it. So there is a sneak peak into the life of a final year Asian Studies student.

Bit of a change away from what I normally write about but hey it is something that interests me.

Ohh and you may have noticed a few cosmetic changes round the place. I have changed the images in my banner and a few other little things.

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$11.60

Ever wandered what AU$11.60 looks like in a collection of 50c, 20c, 10c and 5c pieces? Well the photo below shows you.

$11.60

There is in 2x50c, 19x20c, 47x10c and 42x5c for a grand total of 110 coins.

You say, please tell Helen what does $11.60 buy you these days?

I respond by pulling out a 3 zone 10 trip concession bus ticket. The key to traveling across town and back four to five times weekly to go to uni.

For a number of reasons (impulse purchases and to keep my wallet thin), I only like to keep a couple $1, $2 and 50c coins in my wallet and maybe a $5 note. Everything else goes into a jar in my room and when the jar starts to get full I take it down to the bank and they have fun counting it all.

The other day though I needed to get a new bus ticket and you can only really pay cash for the tickets, I decided to see how much money I had in my jar, I had about$12 in coins, Bonza!!! The right amount to get a bus ticket. I bundled it all up in a piece of cloth and made my way to the shop to get a ticket. To put it simply the guy at the shop was not as enthused as I was about my pile of coins 🙂

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This is Kosovo/Iceland Calling

The title comes from a song by Aussie singer John Willamson called “This is Australia Calling”
Tuesday morning I had a nice phone call from one of my older brothers who is probably the world’s best air traffic controller (well at least he is in my book :)). He is currently in Kosovo where he has been on and off for it must be a couple of years now working at the Pristina airport initially as part of the NATO mission in Kosovo (KFOR) and now with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). It was great to have a nice long chat with him about life in Kosovo, his family, our life in Australia and all the usual chit chat we do. Out of 8 of us Toti and I are the only ones who share a similar first/middle name. His first name is Þórður and my middle name is Þura which is a short version of Þuríður. Þor (Thor) was the son of Odin.

This morning, my big brother Karl rang to thank me for his very late Christmas/early Birthday present. It was great to talk to him about all the random things we normally talk about, life in Iceland, my uni stuff, all that fun stuff. Sometime round the 1996/1997 he was given the CD – Hype! Surviving The Northwest Rock Explosion – The Motion Picture Soundtrack. Let me tell you that CD had extremely heavy rotation on the Palsson Washing Up Radio.
Some time early this year I was walking past a local music/dvd chain and starting right at me was the Hype! DVD and with no second thought I knew I had to buy it and send it to Karl. It sat on my entry table for a couple of months until I got off my backside and sent it to him earlier this month. It arrived in Iceland the other day. 😀

Both the DVD and Soundtrack are fantastic and you should check them out. Ever since we first listened to the CD, it was the two songs by The Fastbacks that have really stuck with me through the years and when I got my new phone, one of the first ringtones I made for it was a sample from The Fastbacks song – Just Say.