Pursuing the Whale

I was just out torturing myself - aka jogging - around Princes Park on a beautiful day in Melbourne and I was listening to a podcast of the TVO show Big Ideas. The American psychologist and author Howard Gardner was discussing his theories about the five minds of human beings - fascinating stuff and quite applicable to some of the things I have been reading about how people learn. One of the "minds" he talks about is the synthesizing mind. This is a mind that is capable of putting things together - in essence, recognizing the important stuff from the white noise and then creating new and original conclusions from that. Gardner argues that the synthesizing mind is a very important "mind" for the future because if you are not able to separate the important from the unimportant in an ever-expanding information age then you get left behind by those who can or by machines who are programmed to do so. He then references the example of Charles Darwin and the fact that he sailed the world's oceans for five years collecting data before he returned home to "synthesize" all that he had learned. Thus inventing, arguably one of the most revolutionary theories of the modern era.

This particular example struck a chord with me as I have also been reading about the exploits of Ishmael and Ahab as they too sail the world for years on end in pursuit of the elusive white whale. It ocurred to me, some time around the start of my second lap of torture, that there was a time in history, perhaps by choice or economics or whatever, that humans ventured forth into unknown seas out toward unknown lands in pursuit of prosperity, adventure, or in the case of Ahab - something that had become as mythical as it was rooted in fact.

Connecting that idea to our adventures abroad so far, I think we too are in our own way pursuing the whale. The whole family is experiencing our voyage somewhat like Darwin did or Ahab might have - adjusting our sails for whichever way the wind blows and enjoying the experience of going wherever the mood or sea might take us. The kids are perhaps like Ahab's crew, unwittingly along for the ride, and yet Linton and I are up in the masthead looking for all that our "whale" might signify: the perspective that comes from new places, the renewed energy that comes from study, the joy of new friends and experiences - the list is long. I think there is also something else that we are looking for, somewhere just over the horizon, something that we may not discover until we return home and put safely back into port.

And speaking of pursuing the whale...Colin and I spent a fantastic two hours on the golf course yesterday. We ran over to the course and got a quick nine holes in after school. Not much of a course but fun to play a real nine with Colin and see him hit the ball well. In some ways I see the pursuit of a better drive, a straighter putt, or that elusive birdie as an appropriate comparison to our year's adventure. Venturing onto the course or sailing out onto the ocean we do so empowered by the knowledge that in some way we will be changed, maybe even "synthesized" by the experience.

On newspapers, technology, and the return of the meat pie!

Though we don't have the paper arriving at our doorstep every morning, occasionally we will buy a newspaper to catch up with what's going on locally. The internet is obviously keeping us up to date with all things Canadian. In fact, I feel a bit of an addiction coming on with resprct to podcasts. I've recently been downloading the radio show Ideas from CBC. I absolutely love the show and one episode is enough air time to get me to the uni and back home again. However, it is also nice to pick up a paper, physically flip through the news of the day, and as Linton suggested to me the other day "eavesdrop" on another city, its people, and their way of life. And in many cases, it's an interesting life they lead, at least as portrayed by the city's dailies.

Australian newspapers, or rather, Melburnian newspapers are a bit odd for their size and the relative lack of news. The major papers seem to be The Age, The Australian, and the Herald Sun. The first two are rather thin and a really weird shape that make them hard to hold up for very long without your arms getting tired and would be very awkward to wrestle on the tram. The Herald Sun is similar to the Toronto Sun in shape and format and relative to the two others, has more news, more local entertainment info, and tonnes of sports coverage (which was particularly useful with the Olympics).

A stroll through today's headlines reveals a broad range of news as well as a sizable number things that are perhaps not quite so newsworthy. Here are several examples: Despite the medal haul in Beijing it seems in many ways the Aussie's are upset there weren't more medals or at least that the "Poms" (the Brits) beat them out. Even so, there is also a good deal of debate about whether they are spending too much on sport, so in that way they are having the reverse debate as in Canada. Equally important in all of this seems to be whether or not the star of the swim team, Stephanie Rice, might be romantically linked to Michael Phelps.

There is a large focus on the environment especially because of the decade long drought and the fact that freshwater reservoirs are at 33% of their capacity. Today some protesters attacked the state's minister for water in his car. Fish stocks and wind farms and orphaned baby whales are all making the news with great frequency. I think the water crisis in particular has thrust the environment into a higher profile than it currently is in Canada. I noticed that there are several members of the Green Party who hold elected office here. We also find the air quality to be noticeably worse with many more cars burning diesel. The price of gas is significantly higher than in Canada and car prices are also 10-20% higher. It was very interesting to note recently that abortions, as they are currently being provided in Canada, are not legal in Australia - though there is currently much debate on the issue.

On a significantly lighter note, page seven of today's Herald Sun has a couple of winning stories. In the first, the opening line states, "Downtrodden blokes are biting back and sending meat pie sales soaring." They love their pies and pasties (pronounced pahstee) here in Oz - which is okay by me! The second story is reporting on a survey that said a majority of men and women picked Kylie Minogue as the star they would most want to sit beside on a tram! So while there are important stories, there are actually many more stories that...are not. Like the very next page which has a story about a town of 600 people north of Melbourne that has no single women and the men who are desperate for some. The story includes a picture of 10 men from the town down at the local pub, staring eagerly into the camera with a beer in their hand. Ladies - who's interested? Perhaps today was a slow news day.

I must also report on the sports section in this sport crazy country. In today's paper the sports section was 12 pages long. One page for the returning Olympic athletes, one for rugby, one for soccer and NINE for Aussie rules!! From retirements, to scandals, to fines, to injuries, to playoffs, to firings, to trades, to scoring races - there is absolutely no footy ball left unturned. If you're not a footy fan in this city then I'm not sure what you do or watch on the weekend, with only five channels and at least four games on the telly!

All of this talk of news and media makes me curious about how we might have survived this trip even 20 short years ago. Little or no news from home, a periodic phone call, a random post card uttering "Wish you were here", might have been all we had to offer or receive. Would we have gone without the lifeline of the internet? Could we have survived without the ability to Skype our families in real time and for free? Indeed, would we have been as willing to chronicle all of these various blogged observations into a handwritten journal and then gathered friends and family around the fire to read select passages? I think, or at least hope that we would have and could have. After all, we didn't come all this way to read the news or download iTunes...And yet, the fact that I can eat my Vegemite sandwich watching the wild Kangaroos while listening to a podcast from the CBC is either complete and total sacrilege for the travel purists or a very cool example of how modern technology can allow us all to launch ourselves confidently out into strange and wondrous worlds safe in the knowledge that there can always be a little bit of home plugged into our left ear.

New Australian Terms this week:

stack = wipe out Example; I had a wicked stack on my skateboard and cut my knee.
whingeing - whining - same definition, vastly different pronunciation

An Award Winning Weekend with New Friends!

This was a wonderful and busy weekend of play dates and visits with new friends from school and Canada! On Saturday, while James was at school, Linton did the tennis and gymnastics thing with the boys and then entertained some friends from school with back-to-back play dates. Some memorable and tasty chocolate chip cookies, Pokemon trading, and a game of "tiggy" in the park were highlights. Very nice boys and families we would like to get to know better.

On Sunday, James and Colin wandered over - a 10 minute walk!!! - to the local public golf course, to look into the green fees and lessons for Colin. Unfortunately, it will cost $20 for James and Colin to play 9 holes of golf!!!! I think I'm in heaven. When will we ever live within a ten minute walk of $20 golf again? Needless to say, we do not have a line item for golf in our budget, but I am quickly trying to rearrange things.

After the golf course we went "next door" to the zoo to meet up with Linton and Alex and a couple from Canada - Vanessa, Andrew and Brandon and Brandon' s friend Xavier. Very nice people and great to talk "Canada" in Melbourne. We wandered through the zoo, visiting all of our favourite haunts, sharing stories about living in Australia and commiserating about the price of food and booze and learning where to get cheap food, great restaurants, and amazing coffee.

Sunday night we had our first official Caveman dinner - where cutlery, shirts, and manners were optional and we ate with our fingers, burped when we wanted to, and generally had a fun and rude time as we prepared for the closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. As I write this it is 9:10 pm and we are somewhat patiently, a little bit sleepily, and very much happily waiting for things to start. Definitely a gold medal weekend!

On Bashful Bears and Timid Warrior Whalemen

Two very recent and relatively minor things have occurred in the last few days that have once again got me thinking (and blogging) about the luxury of time. One, took place as I was listening to Alex talk about some of the things he wants to do "when he gets home" - meaning back to Canada. The other occured in my "Creating a Learning Organisation" class just last Wednesday night.

First off, Alex. He does not quite have his months, seasons, hours, etc. all figured out. Hours can seem like minutes. Days can seem like months. Sometimes when you say he has two minutes before he needs to stop playing a game he is relieved and says "Okay. That's still a lot of time." Just the other day he said, "Next February, when we go back to Toronto..." He meant June but said February becuase that is also a month that seems to be a long way off. I am still waiting for him to realize that 12 months is actually a really long time - at least in kid and maybe dog years. And yet, what I remarked at the time is, he doesn't know about time until now and hopefully doesn't care, because he does not need to know. The only time I have really watched him care about with any great degree is bed time and usually that's because he has to stop playing. Recently, I have enjoyed an impending bed time because it meant I could stop working! Hmmm.

The other "time" incident may not be quite as clear or connected, but it smacks with some of the same perspective. There are 13 adult students in one of my classes and they are a broad mix of ages, gender, experience, and careers. Presumably they have made sacrifices, plans, etc. to get themselves into the masters program and they are going to be required to do a bit of work in order to get the piece of paper they came for. And yet, from this student's perspective, my classmates are the quietest, most reserved bunch of teachers, I have ever met! Here are motivated, bright, hard working people who completely lack any sort of fire or desire to be in the class or to tackle the issues we are presented with! Now I know they do not all have the luxury of my situation, and had I stayed in Toronto, and completed my Masters at night part time, I may have also been slightly stunned at the end of a tiring day. That is why I am again feeling fortunate to have made the decision to do this full time at a pace with which I can really get into the material. However, despite their decision to re-enter the halls of acdemia and to further their education and careers, for the majority of these people, the class appears to be a burden rather than experience or an education.

I am reading Moby Dick right now and I am loving it for all its grand language and Melville's endless and at times overdone hyperbole. He creates a huge world where eating a bowl of chowder or simply going to bed can become a life-altering moment. In the early part of the book, Ishmael wonders at a room full of hearty sailors thinking that he should be deafened and entertained by the sound of these rough men exchanging their stories and yet, the room is oddly silent. Ishmael then says"A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!"

And its with that lovely, poetic phrase that I will try to make my point. My son, Alex, lives in the moment. Seizes the day, as all kids do, safe in the innocence that a lack of knowledge about time, among other things, provides. As a result, he is more bear than bashful. On other hand, my class of adult masters students, seeming slaves to time and all of its needs, are wasting their opportunity to live, to learn, like any good six year-old. These people are experts, wise in the ways of time and rich with this new opportunity and yet they sit as "timid warrior whalemen".

What is it that turns us quiet with age and responsibilty, with a sudden need for decorum or an overpaid duty to respect? As I watch Alex actively learn his world and my fellow classmates quietly study theirs, I am certain that in this case the younger is the wiser.

A little Olympics of our own...

On Tuesday Linton and I volunteered to do the timing at the annual sports festival for the level 3-6 at the kids' school. After dropping Alex off at school we caught a ride with another mom who was helping to organize the day and off we went to the Collingwood Harriers Athletic Club and a part of Melbourne we never would have discovered on our own.

Fun to be there with Colin and to watch him compete with his friends in events like the 800m, 200m, 100m, shotput, discus, triple jump and long jump. This is yet another bonus of this year away from work - being able to help out at school. Colin managed to finish first in a few of his events and may or not qualify for the district finals - he was very proud. Oh, and so were his parents!

The day was quite cool but we managed to survive with numerous coffees and some friendly banter. We even managed to survive a potential timing scandal when a few moms thought we were short a lap in our timing of the 1500m. Being the "new" Canadians we decided to bite our tongues and keep on timing - thankfully it all worked out and our reputations remained in tact. A subsequent heat showed our thinking to be correct. Phew!

This was an excellent day and a great chance to meet many more of the families at Lee Street School. Tomorrow - back to the books! And speaking of such things, Brideshead Revisited is finally back on the book shelf - next up, Moby Dick!

Go Hawthorn!

Sunday was an incredible day as we ventured down to the Melbourne Cricket Ground - the official home of Aussie Rules Football - to watch the Hawthorn Hawks with our newfound hero "Buddy" Franklin - battle the Richmond Tigers. Hawthorn is comfortably in the playoffs while Richmond is fighting for a spot in the final eight. We thought we were going to see Hawthorn have an easy time of it but - unfortunately today was not going to be the Hawks day.

After tramming down to Federation Square we walked along the Yarra river toward the MCG. It's a great route that takes you past Rod Laver arena and the grounds for the Australian Open and over the train tracks that take you east out of the city. Melbourne is immensely walkable with lots to see and do along the way - in this case we spotted a cool kids playground that we would make use of on the way home.

We were meeting our friend Simon and his eldest daughter Jess at the game and he would be our official guide to all things "footy". Finding our seats that we had booked online - Simon informed us that we seemed to have secured some of the best seats in the house and right in the heart of the Hawks members club! We were in one of the end zones, to use a North American football term, and the view was amazing! Snacks of beer, chips (fries) and the ubiquitous Aussie meat pie helped ward off a bit of chill and the fact that the Hawks were playing terribly.

It may be a bit obvious to mention, but ARF seems to be a bit non-sensical at first. But as you begin to understand the point, the rules, the athleticism and then you see a game live - you really can become quite addicted. It flows wonderfully with very few stops in play. The skill involved to kick the ball is quite impressive. There is a good deal of strategy to the play and the athletes are in really, really good shape. To top it off there is no shortage of scandal on a weekly basis and thus it has everything you need to qualify as a bonafide professional sport!

Alas, the Hawks were not up to their best on this day and they lost by about 30 points. A disappointing result but definitely an awesome experience that we will want to experience again soon. If only to wear all of the cool Hawthorn Hawk swag we picked up at the merchandise kiosk before the game!

Talking with Australians - Part III

Part of the fun of this adventure has been learning, adopting, adapting and at times simply scratching our heads with respect to the "new" culture that surrounds us. In many ways, everything seems the same. By that I mean the language - the great connector - presents no speakable barrier in terms of getting on the tram, learning math, or ordering a skinny latte.

And yet there are terms and names and things that are different enough to keep us on our toes, teach us, and at times simply make us giggle.

Take names for example. There are by all accounts some oddly named people in Oz. No doubt Apple or Rain are indeed strange, but we have come across a Nector, a newborn named Herbert, a girl named Fabreas, and the best by far - a boy in Colin's class named, Ya Ya. Place names are also taking some time to get used to though they are greatly influenced by the indigenous peoples and the aboriginal language so in a sense they are no more different or strange in this land as Toronto, Mississauga, or Ottawa might be at home. Still, Warrnambool and Maribynong remain a mouthful.

I have tried to track a few of the new terms we are also learning in past blogs and yet the list continues to grow. The other day we had a silly giggle with the kids about "fair dinkum" - you can only imagine. In the Australian Olympic coverage the commentators kept saying that it was an athlete's Olympic debut (pronounced duhboo) which was also new for us. I recently learned that an Aussie equivalent to a pint of beer was a "pot" - though I wasn't leaning over the bar ordering when I learned it - honest! And on the same subject, I also learned that if you "shout drinks" you are buying a round - I wasn't at the pub for that one either.

Food is another area that has provided us with a whole new world of language and learning. We now buy rashers of bacon, biscuits not cookies, and now know that a long black is almost too much caffeine! The area of sweets is a complete revelation as the number of cake and sweet stores is 10 times the number of Tim Hortons! Lamingtons and Yo Yos are now the language of conversation with our local baristas and there is a constant negotiation with the kids about whether not they will be departing with a fairy bun or not. Most recently, I was informed of the Tim Tam. These little chocolate concoctions are in a word - evil. They may singlehandedly bankrupt any attempt to lose weight, ever.

Linton has an interesting theory that Australians place more emphasis on the action or verbs versus the thing or nouns. A few examples of this are a hamburger restaurant named Grill'd and the fact that they call insurance - cover. That also seems to translate into some of the things the athletes are saying about the Olympics, often making comments more about the process of training and competing versus the achievement of winning a medal. Could that be a state secret we might smuggle back to our Canuck squad?

It will undoubtedly be some time before we rhyme off a sentence like, "No worries dear, I've put the torches and the boys' jumpers in the boot but before we go up the lift we should probably buy a few frothies for the barbie." However, there is a simple pleasure in the daily intake and exploration of this new-to-us lingo and I think it may be a sad day when it all seems rather normal or familiar.