Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Sue, mother of two cats, sent me this link to a great YouTube video (7 mins). I particularly liked the ‘tuna is cocaine for cats’ reference! Thanks for sharing, Sue.

Last year I linked to the YouTube video of the mobile phone salesman who had the most amazing voice. This year, “Britain’s Got Talent” has discovered another one—13 year old Andrew Johnston, a schoolboy bullied at school for his singing. My biggest concern is that this amazing voice will change dramatically when it breaks. Awesome.

I had an interesting conversation with Greg (my butcher) this afternoon and learned something I didn’t know. I popped in to pick up some chicken carcasses (it’s nearly making-chicken-stock-for-winter-soup time), and he said he was out of them at the moment as one of his regulars had come in on Saturday and bought up the last of his supply for the dogs.

I commented that I thought you couldn’t feed a dog chicken bones as there’s a risk of them splintering in the dog’s throat. Greg said that ‘myth’ that only applies to cooked chicken and lamb bones. If the chicken or lamb bone is uncooked, it seems it’s OK for dogs.

I don’t have a dog, and I’m not sure I’d be willing to experiment on it if I did, but I thought I’d share this little snippet of “stuff I didn’t know before”.

The bus trip in from the airport last night showed that the weather was cloudy and the roads were wet. I woke this morning to very heavy grey skies. The expected temperature is 23C with 100% humidity! That is, rain all day. I just looked out the window (8:30am), and the cloud cover is really low.

So I’ll wander in to the Harbour City shopping mall which adjoins the hotel, and take a look at some of the 700 stores here. I doubt I’ll buy anything, but I *might* indulge in a good massage in one of the day spas as my body is pretty wrecked from all the driving and the sitting in aircraft. And a foot massage/reflexology wouldn’t go astray either!

If the shopping mall all gets too much (lights, noise, people, stuff I have no intention of buying), and it’s still raining, I’ll probably come back to the room and upload photos etc. It’s definitely not a good day for walking around or touring. I’m really close to the ferry terminals to Hong Kong Island, but I doubt I could see much across the water either.

Update: Two plus hours of walking mall hallways = sore feet! I spent $1 on some tea filter papers, and $3 on two cans of Diet Coke, plus $7 on a Beef Laksa for brunch. And that was it. I’m just not in to label brands and this shopping mall is FULL of stores like Yves St Laurent, Burberry, Cartier, Nike, Sony, Bose, etc., all 700 of them… I was able to get glimpses of the harbour from some of the windows, but as I expected, the weather, the day, and the views were very ordinary. So it was back to the hotel room to write this, do some computer ‘chores’, and take a jet lag nap!

Update 2: One of the things on my ‘to do’ list for when I got home was to edit and convert the digital recording I did of my conference presentation into an MP3 and make it available on my website. So that’s what I did this afternoon and evening – downloaded Audacity and taught myself how to do this. It’s not available on the website yet – I’ll upload all my conference presentation material at once after I get back. Because I didn’t finish until after 9pm (yes, this process took some 8+ hours), I decided not to bother with dinner. I know I’ll get at least one, possibly two, great meals on the flight tomorrow. And the Cathay Pacific lounge will have lots of snacks, so I may even skip breakfast too.

The Marco Polo Gateway in Kowloon, where I’m staying, is a little worn around the edges. But, like many hotels on this trip, the bed was heavenly and the shower had great pressure and temperature. You can’t ask for better than that.

So what’s made the beds on this trip so good? Well, I reckon it’s a combination of:

• down pillows
• high thread count sheets and covers, resulting in a sikly feel to the cotton
• down doonas that are as light as a feather, yet very snuggly and warm (not hot)
• ‘pillow’ layer on mattresses (US only)

…very little! But I’ve just been quite moved by the speech made by Presidential candidate Barack Obama a few days ago. My good friend Dave said it was one of the best speeches he’s ever heard and he put it on a par with those by Dr Martin Luther King and President John F Kennedy.

You can view the entire 37 minute speech here:

After drifting into semi-consicousness early in the monring, I finally woke at 9am! That’s REALLY late for me, so maybe there was still some residual jet lag effect. Suzie had left for work; John had gone to his cardiologist appointment, so I had a shower and a cup of tea. When John returned, we talked geography and maps and history for a while, then we went to Atascadero to the fabric store there (“Sew Fun”).

It was heaven! They had a HUGE range of fabrics and notions, and everything was SO CHEAP. For example, all their quilting fabrics were around the $8-10 a yard mark; in Australia, similar fabrics (and some were the same) start at $20 a metre. Fat quarters were all $2.50; in Australia, the really cheap one start at $3.50, and good ones are up to $7. Even sewing machine needles were cheap – Schmetz Universal were $2.99 (Australia about $6-8); Schmetz Metallic about $6 ($12 in Australia). The quilting books that we pay over $50 for were less than $25.

I could’ve gone crazy if I didn’t have to worry about lugging it back home! Maybe I’ll ship some stuff back…

While I was in the fabric store, John was in the book store in the same strip mall. They were closing down and didn’t have a lot left, but I wandered over to take a look and found two of those $25 quilting books for $5 each. Well, I couldn’t let them stay on the shelf, could I?? More stuff to bring home… And I’m only 3 days in the 3 weeks in the US/Canada.

This afternoon I spent some time trying to figure out what was wrong with Suzie’s computer. I think she has a rash of spyware on it as it basically siezes up when you try and open Control Panel. I could access the internet (she said she couldn’t), but as she’s on dial-up, it was excruciatingly slow. You forget how slow dial-up is when you’ve been using broadband for a while!

Tonight, Suzie’s cooking one of her fabulous meals – I think it’s a Chinese BBQ style pork dish – and she’s having the across-the-road neighbours over too. Some other friends, John and Mary, may pop in late this afternoon as well – they’ve been in San Luis Obispo all day, so we didn’t go out to see them at their property as we’d kinda/sorta planned.

Tomorrow I head out for Monterey. If the weather is as fabulous as today (the fruit tress – plums, apples, etc. – are in FULL bloom), I’ll cut back to the coast and take Highway 1 up to Monterey via Big Sur etc. I’ll stay at David’s tomorrow night, and see Lee in the afternoon, either in Carmel where she works or in Pacific Grove.

Update: Jon and Mary called in, but could only stay long enough for us to knock off a bottle of white. They had icecream in the car that was rapidly melting. Not long after they left, Suzie came home from work, then the neighbours over the road (Susanna and Larry) came over for dinner. Lovely couple. Susanna was born and bred in Tasmania but has been in the US with Larry since 1978. She’s a quilter too! Much red wine was consumed… I think I’ve had more wine the past 2 days than I’ve had in the past 6 months!!

Oh, and Suzie’s meal was as fabulous as ever. She grilled the HUGE pork chops on the BBQ, we had them with some green beans and steamed rice, and LOTS of wine. No-one over indulged – it was just a steady supply from about 5pm on. Of course, it helped that no-one was driving either!

I expect Monterey will be much the same – great food, great wine, and of course, great company.

I just got an email from the conference organiser. He’s putting me in a large room as more than 100 people (out of around 500 attendees who can choose between 5 concurrent sessions) have indicated that they intend going to it.

Seeing as though many (me included!) may not have sent back a response, that’s a pretty big number.

Previously, my conference presentations have been delivered to between 30 and about 70 people. In the conference organiser’s words “This says a lot of good things about you and your topic.”

I hope I can live up to the audience’s expectations…

My  work day started reasonably early, then I had a meeting at 9am with my immediate boss and the new graphic designer. At 11am it was show time! I did a dry run of the presentation I’m doing at the conference in Portland, OR, in two weeks.

There were 20+ in the room, almost all of whom were software developers. Only four were women, including me, and, as far as I know, only one of them was a developer. Software development is still very much a man’s game, at least when it’s associated with the mining industry…

My presentation went over well, which was good seeing as though I’d written it for quite a different audience. I got some insightful questions from the audience, and there were quite a few heads nodding in agreement at what I had to say during the presentation – even a few “See? I told you so” glances across the table. A few people came up to me afterwards or sent me an email saying how much they’d enjoyed it and how they’d got a lot out of it.

And I didn’t run over time, so that was good.

The rest of the day was work – the graphics designer and I spent some time discussing how we could help each other out, and I spent some time with one of the subject matter experts getting details for the Help I’m writing for one of their clients.

Very late in the day, a colleague popped by. She’s one of the top 20 road cyclists in the world and she’s just got back from NZ, and is off again in a few days to compete in Europe. Her goal is to get selected in the Australian team for the Beijing Olympics. Pretty cool!

Tomorrow is my last day in the Brisbane office – I leave on Friday for the US. It’s been good catching up with people whose voices I know and whose faces I rarely see, as well as meeting the new team members who’ve started since I was last here six months ago. And I think the new ones have appreciated putting the face to the name and voice too. I even had a short chat with the CEO, who used to be the big boss of the area I work in and who was responsible for my contract negotiations when I first started.

But I tell you what, I’m glad I work from home. Having to dress for the office every day is a pain!