Interesting?

The other day I was reading a request for bloggers with interesting blogs to get in touch, it finished with the following statement "be honest, you know if you're interesting or not."

The problem is, I don't.  I find my writing interesting, but I am well aware that different people have different tastes.  An example of this is my undying love of blue brie, a taste I am well aware is not shared by a great many people.

I believe I have mentioned before that I have social phobia.  This manifests in many ways, often intermingling with my anxiety disorder, but the most common is that something as simple as "you know if you're interesting or not" makes me overanalyse everything I know about myself and how people view me.

The thought process goes something along the lines of:
Do other people know if they're interesting?
They must or they wouldn't say that.
So other people know what is interesting and what isn't?
Am I somehow defective for not instinctively knowing this?
Maybe I just shouldn't say anything.
I have absolutely nothing to contribute to this situation.
I have absolutely nothing to contribute to any situation.
And eventually:

I try to avoid feeling like that through mental and behavioural control techniques, and I try to avoid talking about it because acknowledging that I have this thing hanging over my head which could cause me to break down in tears and thoughts tending towards the macabre at any given moment.

I like to think that on the whole I tend to present myself as fairly happy and upbeat and as people are often surprised when I tell them I have social phobia I assume I do that reasonably well.  However, I am never sure how much faith to put in other people's responses because they may just be humouring me.

So I don't know if anyone other than me thinks I'm interesting, I don't know if anyone else wants to read what I put here.  But I'm going to keep doing it because I enjoy it and I'm hoping that others will as well.

An All-Female Panel

Tonight there is an all-female panel on QandA, a trend that appears to have recently started again on a number of panel shows.  Now I have no problem with an all-female panel on a show, so long as it doesn't happen too often, but it annoys me that the media doesn't seem to feel the same way about an all-male panel.  How is this equality?

I'm not for one moment suggesting that "the pendulum has swung too far" or that "the scales have tipped" or any of the other annoyingly oversimplified expressions that are often applied to this viewpoint.  Personally I think that there are many areas in which more work needs to be done to achieve equality despite equality already being reached in others.

I don't think it's right for companies to have a policy outlining the minimum number of women on staff but not the minimum number of men.  I don't think it's right for all male support groups to have to justify their exclusivity while all female groups don't.  And I especially think it wrong for issues to be labelled the exclusive territory of either women or men.

I choose not to call myself a feminist, even though I believe in the ideals of equality that feminism originally stood for, because too many feminists seem to have lost sight of those ideals.  Also too many people seem to view the empowerment of women and the disempowerment of men as the same thing and call that feminism. While the ideals are good, the term feminist has acquired too much baggage to be effective, not least of which is the fact that the term emphasises the female - useful when the inequality was at the extreme level of the early 20th century, but not so useful now.  Masculinism (which unlike feminism isn't recognised by spell checkers) follows the belief that for equality the recognition and redress of discrimination against men is just as important as the recognition and redress of discrimination against women.  Despite this, though, I have trouble with masculinism as well, again the name emphasises one gender over the other.  Perhaps a better term would be equalism.

The whole premise that equality is a single issue is still problematic for me, though.  As I stated before, the idea that a pendulum swings or scales tip may be a nice visual but it oversimplifies the broad range of issues involved in equality in the worst possible way.  As long as equality is viewed as a single issue, rather than a set of problems requiring a range of solutions then it will be forever beyond our grasp because applying a blanket solution has never, and in all probability will never, work.

I understand that this is a touchy issue, but if what I've written offends you then tough.  I am merely stating my viewpoint and if you disagree then you are welcome to let me know your viewpoint in the comments.  I am thoroughly sick of being told that I'm wrong without people having the courtesy to justify their position or that I don't understand the issue and then have no attempt made to help me understand it.

The Pretense of Adulthood

So I've decided that I should probably stop pretending that I'm a responsible adult type person and admit that for all intents and purposes I'm still roughly eight years old.

I have good reason for this conclusion, I spent most of yesterday playing board games, watching cartoons, reading comics and playing video games and eating almost every variety of food that is guaranteed to give you either diabetes or a heart attack.  Also, but I did all of this with a group of friends, all roughly my age, who also claim to be adults, some even responsible ones.

These are all things that I am regularly told are for kids and I should have grown out of it by now and, oh my absolute favourite, that I "should act more my age" which I'm starting to understand just means be more boring.  I don't, however, intend to let anyone else tell me what I should and shouldn't enjoy doing at what age - if I'm not hurting anybody and I'm not breaking the law then butt the hell out.

So I've decided not to bother pretending that I'm an adult with adult sensibilities.  I like YA fiction, I like wasting summer afternoons playing with water pistols and winter afternoons playing with nerf guns, I like my music too loud and my drinks too strong, and I enjoy awkward jokes about various bodily excretions more that I should.

Source is probably somewhere on Tumblr

I'm going to try and be more confident about it and not try and hide that I have the maturity of a squirrel with ADHD.  Except in job interviews.

American Travel Story: Part 4

Previously:  A highlight of my final day in Hawai'i was seeing the place World War II ended, a lowlight was being abused by the English.

This was a day mostly filled with not knowing what time it was.  I boarded a plane out of Honolulu at 9:30pm and flew to Seattle.  After six hours on the plane I arrived at 5:15 in the morning and having adjusted to Hawai'ian time my body was trying to tell me it was far too early to be waking up yet.  I don't know whether my stomach thought it was breakfast, dinner or something else entirely but I had a smoked salmon bagel with Washington Salmon at the airport.

   

My experience of Washington State: an airport with a surprising amount of fish artwork

Two and a half hours later I boarded another flight during which I tried desperately not to sleep because I knew that I would be arriving in the other Washington at the end of the day local time and the very last thing I needed before the first day of actually needing to be in a university work frame of mind was having my time zones completely muddled.

This was harder than it may seem as my body was still insisting that it was sometime before six in the morning and that I hadn't had a proper sleep in over 24 hours.  Being completely out of whack with sleep also makes waiting at airports less than serene, a fact which I discovered when the flight got in early but the luggage made it to the carousel late and again when the hotel shuttle company told me to wait in their competitor's bay.  In any event it took me over two hours from exiting the plane to leaving the airport.

Taken a little before midday, meanwhile my brain insisted it was closer to midnight.

I eventually got to the hotel and met up with Roomie, whose name has been changed to protect the innocent.  I felt that we'd get along pretty well from the start and he never complained about my snoring so that was a bonus.  A group of us got together and went to the Applebee's next door to swap stories about our trips so far and start bond as a group of displaced Aussies, specifically the horror stories of our plane trips, a topic that I was thankfully unable to contribute much to.

After dinner it was back to the room for a discussion about alarms, showers and all the fun stuff related to cohabiting.  All in all a fairly short day, I could probably work it out and I'm guessing it would come to, at most, two thirds of a standard day and most of that spent on aeroplanes.

I guarantee tomorrow will be more interesting.

Culture shock for the day:  I got talking to a fellow Australian on the trip from Seattle to Washington and he asked me what team I supported.  Now I was assuming that he was talking about AFL, seeing as he came from Adelaide, so I answered Hawks.  Strangely this made approximately half the plane adore me and the other half loathe me.  Turns out I was on a plane full of NFL supporters heading to DC to see the Seattle Seahawks play the Washington Redskins.  Turns out just because someone is an Australian doesn't mean they follow Aussie Rules, Rugby or even Soccer.

Next Time: All the monuments of ever and a train station food court.

American Travel Story: Part 3

Previously:  A beach, a volcano and a traditional dinner.

To start my final day in Hawai'i I awoke at 5:30 - a time I firmly believe is intended to be stayed up til, not got up by.  It's even harder when some part of your body is still desperately trying to tell you that it was a little after midnight.

The reason I got up so early was because I was told to get out to Pearl Harbor early because the USS Arizona Memorial books out by mid morning.  It was lucky I did get there early as I made it onto the first trip out and the second trip was the final for the day because of high winds.

The Arizona memorial can only be reached by shuttle ferry, hence the closure due to strong winds, and this was an enjoyable ride, both out and back, with the seaspray helping to make you feel alive and vibrant again after the sombre reflections on the memorial.  The memorial itself was incredibly beautiful and moving, I could barely believe how emotional it was making me even though I have no connection with this place or the people involved in its history.

The entire experience was amazing and awe inspiring

It had also started raining so I didn't spend much time looking at the various other memorials around the monument park.  Instead I looked at the USS Arizona Memorial Museum, accompanied by another audio tour (this time narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis) which I thought was surprisingly free of bias for the situation and provided lots of information about the intentions and motivations of the Japanese without making them out to be evil villains.  This didn't necessarily continue through to the other people in the museum as overheard a woman answer her daughter's question of “why did they attack us?” with “Because they were evil communists who didn't love Jesus and their empreror-king hates freedom.” - I worry for that kid.

Also at Pearl Harbor are the USS Missouri, USS Bowfin and Pacific Aviation Museum.  I decided to check out the Missouri an Aviation Museum first because I needed to head out to Ford Island to see them and I didn't want to get stuck there too late, especially as Ford Island is an active naval base.

The Missouri was first, it is famous for being the place where World War II ended. The ship was pretty impressive and a group offered free tours of the main deck with really interesting insight into the history of the ship including a devastating kamikaze attack as well as a detailed description of the power of the guns, which can hit targets obscured from those on board by the curvature of the Earth.

The USS Missouri 

 The view from her navigation bridge

                 

  One of the very first naval internet precursors                            The ship's library, both relaxing and educational

The very place the war ended

The Pacific Aviation Museum is only a short bus ride away from the Missouri and is housed in a pair of aircraft hangers.  As well as the aeroplanes on display there were films about Amelia Earhart's flights and about the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942.  The museum also housed a large restoration workshop and even though I had missed the last tour of this section, the volunteer at the door pointed out some of the more interesting things inside.

Japanese Zero

Cobra Helicopter                                                                                                                                         Antiaircraft Gun

Although allowed, sitting on the seats inside a museum exhibit feels somehow wrong

By now I was both out of time and out of camera charge so I caught a bus back to the hotel.  This lead to one of the most interesting conversations I had all trip because the driver was interested in travelling to Australia and discussing all things similar and different between Australia, Hawai'i and the rest of America.  It certainly made me decide to chat to more bus drivers during the trip, made me want to chat to them back here as well but that is prime reading time.

Finally I headed out to the airport and boarded my next flight.

Culture shock for the day:  A British culture shock today, as I met some pommies on the bus.  The one thing they could think of about Australia was that I should be ashamed of myself about the situation with the Indian nurse who committed suicide because of the stupid Australian radio hosts who called her up pretending to be the queen.  They were quite rude to me because of this, even though I'm fairly sure I had absolutely nothing to do with that situation.  All in all not such a nice way for Australia to be viewed by other countries just at the moment.

Next time: Changing flights, states and times.

Singing in Public

I'm one of those people who gets songs stuck in their heads really easily, usually this isn't a problem because it's almost as though my life has a backing track like in the movies.  Sometimes, though, it can be fairly annoying like yesterday when I had "We Are Never Getting Back Together" which although I am ashamed to admit that I even know that it's by Taylor Swift, I am pleased to say I have never, I repeat NEVER EVER EVER EVER, heard all the way through - so why the hell did I have it stuck in my head?

At least it wasn't anything by Justin Bieber

Today I had a similar experience when I suddenly realised that I'd been singing on the bus, not particularly loudly or anything but still.  To make matters worse when I looked up there were a couple of gentlemen in yarmulkes and that was when it struck me that "Springtime for Hitler" is much less funny when it is out of the context of the Mel Brooks musical The Producers. Other songs that aren't so good to sing in public include "Map of Tasmania" by Amanda Palmer, "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" from Avenue Q, and of course "The Song That Never End" because then everyone else has it in their heads for the rest of the week too.

You're welcome.

Anyway, having suddenly realised I'd been singing the lyrics "Look out, here comes the master race" to a some rather unimpressed Jews I may or may not have started to freak out a little.  Right up until one of them said "Personally I preferred Men in Tights" and we got into a discussion of Mel Brooks films.  The moral of that story is not to judge too early.

The problem I had today was not particularly common, though.  Much more common is that people decide that because I am happy to hum, whistle and (obviously) sing in public, that gives them the right to pass judgement on my taste in music.  I'm happy to discuss comparative taste with you, but not when your entire side of the discussion is that my taste in music is crap, especially if you like anything by Taylor Swift.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that I'll sing on public transport if I want to and if you don't like it that's fine, but please understand that it's a public space and I am well and truly allowed to sing if I want to.  I don't like it when people talk at the top of their lungs on public transport but I manage to put up with it and not complain.

Posting and Postponing

I feel bad because I haven't updated this blog in a while - not because I pretend I have any loyal following that will be even remotely upset by my not posting but because I enjoy writing these posts and the fact that I haven't been posting indicates that I haven't been putting enough effort into doing things that give me enjoyment recently.

That said, the assignment I've recently been doing has been really interesting and fun.  I guess, in contrast to the previous paragraph, what I've been doing hasn't been neglecting to enjoy myself but neglecting to balance the aspects of my life.  Essentially, everything I have done lately has been geared towards university work but be confident that is going to change now that I've finished the summer semester work and can get back into a  more normal routine.

The other problem I've been having is that even though I've had many ideas for blog posts, I keep forgetting them by the time I'm set up to write a post.  I suppose that at some point I'll have to admit that my memory isn't all that great and start writing down prompts for myself but I've been putting that off as well.

The moral of the story is, I suppose, that I need to stop focusing on my uni work to the exclusion of everything else - apart from anything else, it leaves me feeling drained and I'm not feeling like getting out of bed in the morning.  Expect more posts again from me soon.  Hopefully I'll remember my inspiration so there will be more to them than there was to this one.