Author Archives: the curtain raiser

Do Clothes Really Maketh The Man? #NaBloPoMo

I stumbled upon this time lapse video today showing the transformation of Jim Wolf, a US war homeless veteran, who struggles with alcoholism. The clip has been doing the Internet rounds and has elicited some strong reaction. It is quite an amazing three minutes of footage showing the effect that appearance can have on our self esteem. I commend it to you.

This is not to say that simply by giving a person a makeover all their problems melt way.  Homelessness is generally a symptom of wider issues other than a lack of financial resources and to tackle it requires not only accommodation but also support to treat the underlying cause.

What the video underscores is that the giving of dignity and respect is a special gift and further that giving comes from the simplest of gestures. No doubt the choice of Jim’s “after” wardrobe was designed to give maximum impact for the purposes of the video. The transformation could easily have been effected with a more casually tailored look and I venture to suggest that it probably would have had the same impact on Jim’s outlook. The magic is in the gesture of introducing a man to his own potential and in the acknowledgement of Jim’s existence as a fellow human being.

The boost to a person’s self esteem and confidence when they feel they look good is immeasurable. This is after all the cornerstone of the beauty and fashion industry and why a visit to a hairdresser can provide a rather effective form of therapy.

The clothes therefore don’t really maketh the man, but they can embody hope and the motivation to strive for a better life. Something we should all remember when we are cleaning out our closets of unwanted clothes.

You can read more from the maker of the video in this Blaze article.

 

The Service for the man I called my ‘Uncle Les’

More wonderful feedback and I’m glad it went well. You’ll look back at this fondly from your 20th and 200th services. Also good to hear your dad is doing better.

ramblingsfromamum's avatarRamblings From A Mum

Yesterday conducting the Service for the dear family friend, who I have called my ‘Uncle Les’ was a very proud day for me.

I could not write about the day (only in prose) last night as I was mentally and physically drained.

I arrived at 12:15 with mum in toe (I had to collect her) as my brother had to remain home with Pop to look after him. For those following Pop – he’s feeling much better.

The FD Assistant also a Celebrant took me under her wing – she was lovely. I told her it was only my second service and she said it takes ‘guts’ to do it for someone you know.

The entrance song was Josh Groban – To where you are – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHStYNXnOH4 – this song gets me EVERY TIME.

I read the Eulogy, the family liked two of my poems that I wrote, so I…

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Algorithm Angst in Twitterland #NaBloPoMo

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

There are days when Twitter seems like the final frontier of social media. There’s a certain lawlessness to shouting out into the Internet ether to see where it lands. By lawlessness I mean disorder and randomness.

I have been on Twitter for about 18 months and now look back on my Twitter evolution. There was no doubt that in the early days of my exposure I just didn’t get it. However, like any virtual community and platform experience teaches us the unwritten rules. Whilst there are many social media gurus out there blogging and writing about Twitterland, these are rules that you can only learn from the inside looking in.

In real life they say you are judged by the company you keep. In Twitterland they say you are judged by what you retweet.

Retweeting is somewhat of a science in itself, with the use of the acronyms RT and MT and the vexing question of when does repeating a Tweet move from the realm of the retweet to the modified tweet? And then there’s the issue of whether you simply retweet as in copy the tweet into your feed or do you quote the Tweet and say “RT @ [insert Twitter ID of the person you are retweeting] [Tweet text]”. Doing it one way or another affects the original Tweeter’s influence ranking, on some virtual index somewhere. But these are things you can’t know before you dive in.

And then there’s the Twitter algorithm. Helpfully or unhelpfully, Twitter has a “similar to” feature. This is a list which is attached to your Twitter profile which contains Twitter’s suggestion of those Twits who are similar to you. I hate my similar to list. There I said it, I feel better now.

This is nothing personal to those on my similar to list. I know nothing about these people, I’m sure they are very nice. But if this is meant to be a mirror to my Tweeting soul, I feel it is a little cracked.

You may have heard of the concept of the filter bubble and the notion that in the virtual world everything is specifically tailored to your tastes and preferences based on the data you pump out. The data includes who is on your friends and followers lists. So there you are unknowingly trapped in your little bubble reading about the things you like and what your friends like and oblivious to what is happening beyond it based on some algorithm that predetermines to what you are exposed. The likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter are at great pains to emphasize that their algorithms are entirely objective, purely based on data. However, at some point the algorithm has to be programmed by a human who inevitably has his or her own biases reflected in the output.

So Twitter tells me that my bubble consists of mommy bloggers. And I am not sure why.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

True it is that the first three descriptive words in my Twitter profile are Mother, Wife, Blogger. However, my tweets tend to focus on business, leadership, social media and life on general. Added to this is the occasional parenting post and humour tid bit. I will follow mommy bloggers who follow me first, but I certainly don’t seek them out. I don’t post about recipes, cooking, craft, fashion, coupon shopping, shopping in general, parenting tips or drinking alcohol at the end of the day. And, I am not promoting a business from my kitchen.

So Twitter, I just don’t get it. Why does my bubble not consist of business people, humorists and in fact, the occasional male? Am I therefore being judged by the company I don’t keep?

Apologies to any mommy bloggers who may be offended by this post. You guys form an amazing network and pump out great information for those who are interested. It’s just not for me. Probably because I use social media to destress and to expand my non practical horizons.

Perhaps the programmer of the Twitter algorithm is really a mommy blogger. In which case, I have some great suggestions for who she can follow on Twitter.

Have you had any strange platform algorithm experiences? What are your views on the Twitter algorithm?

Low Hanging Fruit and Horse Race Wrap Up #NaBloPoMo

Thank you for all of your wonderful tips from the Horsing Around With A Race That Stops A Nation post.

The race has now been run and the winners and losers sorted.  Champagne has been drunk and bunions have been formed. Time to put the fascinators away for another year.

After the resounding Tres Blue backing from the blogosphere, I placed a small bet on the horse. You’ll be happy to know he finished 22nd out of a field of 24. So I guess the trainer and owner are now Petit Blue.

But fear not, dear readers for that is not where the story ends.

After a more thorough analysis of the form guide and deciding that the pink stripe on the jockey’s fabric of Fiorente was more purple than pink if you squint hard enough and look at it in a tunnel, I placed a bet on the favourite.

AND SHE WON!!!

In addition to that I drew another horse which came second in the office sweep, so a somewhat profitable day all around.

low hanging fruitWhere things get a bit murky is the somewhat predictable love note I found from the local council placed under my windshield wiper when I returned to my car after my hard day at work. After running a little late for work that morning, I went through my usual routine of parking my car near the bus stop.  The bus stop happens to be near a racecourse. Parking is usually tight, but on Melbourne Cup day it is at a premium. Lucky for me I still scored a spot in the morning. The kicker is that parking in this street is two hours only for non-residents. Normally, I run the gauntlet and park there anyway as the street is seldom monitored. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Being late it only occurred to me that my parked car was really low hanging fruit for the parking police when I was half way into work. Plump, juicy and ripe for the picking on race day. And plucked it was.

The state of the ledger is therefore:

  • total family winnings on Melbourne Cup  – $152
  • total payment to NSW State Government for the privilege of going to work – $101
  • funds available for the Curtain Raiser retirement fund – $51

My family has kindly donated their winnings to the fund which will be used to increase parking restriction awareness in its members and avoid any more contribution to the low hanging fruit crop.

There was a sad postscript to the race. One of the horses, a mare, was put down immediately after for a broken leg. The decision for the horse to be euthanized was not without controversy. To get the fully story, click here.

RIP Verena.

Of Razor Blades and Memories #NaBloPoMo

It’s funny what banality can trigger memories.

Sometime in the coming weeks, I will undertake a ritual for the very last time. A ritual that has always connected me to my father. A ritual that was ours when my father was alive.

old style rego stickerWhen I was little, I used to be dad’s 2IC when it came to replacing the annual registration sticker on the family car. This used to involve razor blades, hours of concentration, methylated spirits and cut fingers. Back in the day, the Government used to issue each vehicle with a registration sticker which showed the month of registration, the year of validity and the registration number, make and VIN details of the vehicle.  It was up to each owner to apply the sticker to the windshield of the car after removing the pervious year’s version as it was an offence to leave the old sticker visible. So dad and I would set off to laboriously scrape off the old sticker which was made of a thin plastic film and applied to the window with a coat of glue. It was a transparency sort of affair which we could only remove using methylated spirits and razor blades. And the reward for persisting? A formerly whole registration sticker now hacked to a million plastic bits all through the car.

Whatever was involved, I loved this father/daughter time. It was him and me against the world.

As I grew, Dad anointed me in charge of the great registration sticker exchange. Out would come the razor blades and the metho (Aussie vernacularnewer style rego sticker for methylated spirits) and out I’d go to the car and do the deed. By this time, adhesive technology had evolved to the point where the registration sticker was less transparency, more sticker in the traditional sense. No water was required to activate the adhesive. This made old sticker removal somewhat quicker and easier, although the razor blades still came in handy.

Every year I change my registration sticker I use the same tools, the same methodology and I think of my father.

Our Government has finally decided to come into the twenty-first century and will from this year rely on its computer records as proof of registration. There will be no more registration stickers to apply and only this last one to remove.

My kids will never experience this ritual.

I will miss it. As I miss him.

In the coming weeks, my final peel will be for you, dad.

father quote

 

 

 

Costco Capers #NaBloPoMo

This past weekend saw us set out on our biannual Costco run. The Italian Stallion and I do not engage in this sport lightly. The visit is a culmination of weeks of precision planning, pantry reconnaissance and rigorous training. The training consists of pushing dollar bills in and pulling them out of wallets and speedy mathematical value assessment. Apart from this physical and mental preparation, there is always the the issue of what to wear to resolve. I mean who wants to end up on the hypothetical Costco equivalent of People of Walmart.

Walmart e card 1To us non-Americans the Wal-Mart phenomenon is curious indeed. We have no real Australian equivalent that has spurned a whole subculture. In fact, I was so curious that I asked a friend to take me to a Wal-Mart in Tennessee last time I was in the States to pop my Wal-Mart cherry. It must have been a slow day because it was nothing like what I expected to see having regard to the Wal-Mart mythology from the Internet. People shopped whilst fully clothed and there were no sprawling cash register lines. Talk about underwhelming. I didn’t buy anything.

But back to Costco. For us Costco is a pilgrimage and something not undertaken lightly as it is a least a half day event. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly there is only one Costco servicing Sydney. Sydney has a population of about two million, so our Costco sees plenty of action. Secondly, the store is about an hour’s drive away and that’s not counting the time it takes to find a parking spot. Thirdly, given there is only one store social encounters are unavoidable even for a city of this size. You will always meet someone you know at Costco, which of course then ties into the whole fashion thing. This weekend’s excursion didn’t disappoint as we bumped into two of the Italian Stallion’s colleagues and their spouses.

And everything about Costco is BIG.

Big quantities, big deals, big checkout lines, ginormous trolleys and big bucks.  Costco have these great little dinner rolls that I have longingly wanted to try for the past year. I have picked up a pack every time I have been to Costco, but the thought of what to do with 36 of them has always led me to leave them on the shelf. This time though I bit the bullet bread and took the BIG small dinner roll plunge.

And the act of lovingly placing in my trolley the 3 kilos of chicken thighs that will grace our dinner plates for the next little while next to that piece of outdoor furniture that I had to have is worth the trip all on its own. I like an eclectic, variety filled shopping basket.

The fun continued with the post Costco run packathon. Getting the stuff in the car took the patience of the Dalai Lama and the precision of Tetris. Luckily for me the Italian Stallion is really good at Tetris which is positive news indeed because the whole Tetris thing had to be repeated in the pantry at home. As for finding the stuff three months down the track when we need to use it… yeah.. good luck with that.

Which leads me to divulge Fascinating Costco Fact No. 352: After buying cling wrap in bulk at Costco last year, we have figured out we use 300m of the stuff in a year. Costco therefore not only assists with inventory control but also gives good trivia.

So now we are back in training for next year’s biannual Costco run. Should be just in time for Easter.

Dinner roll anyone?Bread Rolls

 Do you ever shop in bulk? Do you have a special shopping experience you could like to share?

Horsing Around With A Race That Stops A Nation: #NaBloPoMo

The first Tuesday in November is only days away and dear readers I need your help. I am desperately hoping your wisdom and good horse sense will see me through this important day.

fuggedaboudittNext Tuesday is Melbourne Cup day here in Australia. The Melbourne Cup is a $6million horse race which literally stops the nation. So good in fact that all of the lucky sods living in Melbourne receive a public holiday to head out to Flemington Race Course. The rest of us schlep to work and watch the event on television amist an eerie phone and keyboard silence. Which means that I have to issue this public service announcement to my international readers – if you are trying to phone Australia next Tuesday afternoon, local time between 2.45pm and 3.15pm, you might as well just stay in Brooklyn and Fuhgeddaboudit.

It is traditional for this one-day-a year punter to place a bet on the Melbourne Cup. Nothing huge, let’s just say if my horse won, the winnings would just be sufficient to purchase an upsized fast food take away meal or a taxi ride home. So fear not, I am staking the farm on your feedback.

Being a one-day-a year-punter, I’d like to say I study the form guide intently in the days leading up to the race, along with the weather conditions and race commentary. I’d like to say that, but neigh, that would be like saying that Phar Lap was just a horse. Instead I rely on a highly secret and scientific formula to choose my horses. This formula involves the intricacies of design, onomatopoeia and poetry, along with some mathematics as length and weight are taken into account. It is of course vitally important that the name of the horse one backs rolls effortlessly off the tongue and that the jockey’s stripes are beautifully colour co-ordinated. Surely, there are no other factors that determine the winner of a 3200 metre horse race?

It therefore must be patently obvious by now that I have no horse sense when it comes to picking a winner.

My general criteria for choosing the worthy candidate for my once a year flutter is a name that resonates in conjunction with a pleasing colour combination both on horse and rider and absolutely no:

PINK

 

So here is a link to the form guide for the race, dear readers and I need your help in choosing which horse is worthy of my once a year flutter.

My thoughts so far:

  • Simeon (19) and Red Cadeaux (3) are definitely out – too much pink
  • Super Cool (13), Masked Marvel (14) and Hawkspur (18) have great names – although is 13 an ominous sign?
  • I like the fact that Green Moon (2) and Sea Moon (4) might be related on the ethereal plane, given the commonalty of last name
  • Fiorente (6) and Tres Blue (23) are contenders because they are trained by one of the few female trainers in this country. Fiorente also happens to be the favourite, but has the disadvantage of carrying a pink stripe. (You see my dilemma?).
  • The best jockey stripe award goes to Dunaden (1). Love the whole polka dot effect and yellow is my favourite colour.

I therefore place my confidence in the blogosphere to assist with resolving this quandary. Please help a once-a-year punter out and place your suggestions in a comment below. All feedback will be gratefully considered and acknowledged and taken back to the stable without any expectation of those kind enough to contributed of having studied the form guide or having any horsey expertise.

And here’s a little something to get you all in the mood for the important task ahead.

champaignfascinator

 

 

November is Here So Let’s #NaBloPoMo

Nano NanoWoke up this morning to social media buzzing with the sounds of NaNo NaNo. This is not be confused with the traditional Orkian greeting of Nanoo Nannoo, although as the month progresses, we will see writers increasingly engage each other in monosyllabic tones.

If you have never heard of NaNoWriMo, it is the chant of writers everywhere as they gear up to participate in National Novel Writing Month. The aim of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel of 50,000 words from start to finish in November. If you are interested you can sign up here. To all of you are attempting NaNoWriMo you have my complete admiration. Please remember to eat, move and breathe whilst you coax your characters to life, they are counting on you.

Whilst writing a novel was briefly on my bucket list when I was ten, that’s way too ambitious for me at this point. The only chapters I am able to write at the moment are called ” How to Survive Parenting in The Teenage Years With Your Hair Intact” and “Existence for Dummies”. Certainly not enough on which to base a whole novel, although there are enough dilemmas and plot twists to keep readers engaged.

My plan to write the next great Aussie novel therefore remains dormant for now. Despite this, I have decided to get in on some of the NaNo action by participating in NaBloPoMo. Despite what it sounds like, it has nothing to with blowing one’s nose. It is in fact the bloggy cousin of NaNoWriMo. National Blog Posting Month means thirty blog posts in 30 days during November. It is run by BlogHer and you can sign up here until 5 November 2013. Whether you run with a theme or post 30 unrelated posts is entirely up to you. The BlogHer site provides daily prompts which you are free to follow or you can write about whatever floats your fancy. At the time of posting, there are about 1200 blog participating. By contrast, there are about 245,000 writers participating in NaNoWriMo. That’s some serious verbage and means that we are in for some fantastic reading in December.

NaBloPoMo_November_small

Please come and join me for my NaBloPoMo ride. This will be the allsorts of blogging challenges with a bit of this and a bit of that. There is nothing like spontaneity to keep a blogger on her toes. Blogging challenges are great for getting into the blogging groove and really test blogging boundaries and for this one I’m leaving my little black dress at home and going themeless.

So lets NaBloPoMo… it’s just a jump to the left and then a step to the ri, ri, ri, ri, right. With your hands on your hips, you bring your knees in tight. Ok, you can even thrust your pelvis if you really want to.

CEO Is Not An Acronym For Character Entirely Optional

I read a wonderful post today by my fellow blogger, BTG, about an American football coach who suspended his entire high school football team for demonstrating poor behaviour to others and showing a lack of accountability. You can read the post here.

It started me thinking about the great character paradox. As parents we all want our children to grow up being men and women of character and our messaging of the importance of character starts at an early age. Toddlers are taught not to hit, push or scream and to share and play nice with others. Later, we teach our children to be sociable, inclusive and respectful. As their journey through life continues we reinforce the “treat others as you would be treated” rule and the value of compassion, caring and helpfulness.

And then something happens. Some where along the way, the messaging that reaches our children’s ears seems to change, at least for those children that are destined for the corporate/business world. Whether it’s from peers, educators or society the volume control on the following increases:

  • nice guys finish last
  • the squeaky wheel gets the most oil
  • who you know is more important than who you are
  • you eat what you kill
  • it’s all about the results and not the journey.

So, we teach our children to be adults of character and society and business rewards them for being anything but.

What if our business leaders were prepared to do exactly what this coach did to his team? What if our CEOs and senior managers were spilled for showing lack of character and had to earn their way back into the bonus pool?

Sadly, this Nirvana will never be reached in my life time, at least not in my industry. In business we continually confuse confidence with competence and build reward structures to promote narcissistic behaviour and traits. And what’s more, our company’s mission statements and internal policies do nothing more than add to the we value character rhetoric. Our children inevitably learn what is really rewarded and set out to play the game.

Show me a CEO who reprimands his top salesman for treating the office staff with disrespect and I will show you a man of character. Show me a managing partner who rewards and encourages team contribution over individual billings and I will show you a woman of character. I will also show you a more engaged and productive workforce.

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

The best managers I have worked for have all been people of character. These are the few who show us that we can still achieve by treating superiors and subordinates respectfully, by valuing human beings and by being accountable for our decisions and actions. They share and play nice with others, lessons learned in kindergarten. They don’t toot their own horn or spend their time brown-nosing.

It’s not complicated. Even a toddler can understand it.

Coincidentally, I received a flyer from my old high school today advertising an alumni lunch event around the topic “What Defines Success”. The speakers are all high profile individuals either alumni or parents of present students. By assembling these speakers they have already presumed a certain defintion of success. To me its just more of the same old.

Imagine if we could spill the corporate team and only rebuild it with those who demonstrate real character?

Imagine if character was not entirely optional for our CEOs and senior managers?

Kudos to the coach for spilling his team and taking the time to teach his young charges an important lesson. It’s a huge step in the right direction.

 

Being Accosted Never Smelt So Sweet

Where does time go? I’ve turned around and its been a whole month since I last blogged.

In all fairness I have been thinking about blogs to write, flirting with poignant topics relevant to all of us battling a life crisis sandwich. For the uninitiated (and that would be most of you because I just made

picture from vaboomer.com

picture from vaboomer.com

this up), a life crisis sandwich is the meal that comes from that special place where mid-life crisis meets teenage angst. And this past month has been spent dealing with that special place.  I am not sure whether in this house, the adults have regressed or the teens have progressed, but whatever the case we are all dealing with change and questions. I think God must truly have a wicked sense of humour to coincide my offspring’s teenage years when they are questioning the meaning of life and their own existence with the very point at which their parents are doing the same. Two thumbs up there. May we all survive this test to reach what comes after the life crisis sandwich, namely the post apocalyptic fudge brownie.

At this stage, the fudge brownie remains just off into the distance. I can see it, sort of, if I squint long and hard enough and can almost smell it. Only a few more bites of the life crisis sandwich to go. My commiseration to all of you also experiencing the joys of the life crisis sandwich. I hope you now know you are not alone.

This gives you an idea of what I have been up to in the last month and why I haven’t blogged. Also good manners, because I would never blog with my mouth full, even if it’s just a no calorie life crisis sandwich.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying I really wanted my first post back to be poignant, but instead, dear readers, you are going to get this.

Over the past few months I have been accosted in my own home on several occasions. Not only me, but other members of my family have been similarly accosted. Every time it happens we reinforce that we need to be wary, keep our guard up and not let it take us by surprise. And we fail every time.

I see it perched up high on the picture rail or sometimes, just to keep us guessing, sitting on the side board. Watching, waiting, ready to pounce. Light blinking, nozzle pointed, waiting to expel its deadly gas. The minute a body comes into view, nay even before that, the minute the air pressure changes to indicate a moving being, it aims, shoots and scores. A menace to all unsuspecting wanderers, its activities are not confined to nocturnal maneuvers. Night or day, it is on high alert waiting for its next victim. With a pfft and a click you know you have been hit even before the odour reaches you. Its stated aim is to release air freshener, but this is just propaganda. Its real objective is to startle the living daylights out of you, especially at night.

This little device is the SWAT team of odour prevention. There is no shield thick enough, no night vision strong enough to defeat it. You would think it would be a fair fight, six feet of human vs one foot of motion sensor air freshener, but this fight is neither fair nor foul. In fact it takes place in a haze of Lilly of the Valley and with an innocent demeanor. Flying below the radar, it infiltrated my home without my permission, having snuck into the Itallian Stallion’s bag.

Lilly of the valleyBut I’m now onto this trespasser. After being accosted at 3.30am the other night, I have decided to deactivate the little bastard. Indeed, at 3.30am with a stuffy nose and a throbbing head to have a useless invention for the “genteel” accost me on a headache tablet mercy dash is entirely beyond the pale.  Clearly, there is much use for a fine spray of Lilly of the Valley with a head cold (not).

And lest you think my stealth skills are substandard, my strapping sons have also been accosted from on high. Like a swooping magpie protecting its nest in Spring, the air freshener rains on their heads at the first hint of movement. Perhaps this is not a bad thing with teenage boys, but I’d hate to have them invite their friends over only to be sprayed. That would make them feel real welcome.

So the time has come to reclaim my corridors. No more Lilly of the Valley, not more pfft that goes bump in the night. I’m reclaiming my right of peaceful passage without a treaty of surrender.

One last pfft for man, one giant leap for mankind (at least those in this house).

Have you ever been accosted by a device in your own home? Is there any device that you would really like to banish?

air freshener

Deactivated!