When the Days Did not Make Sense - and When They Did

The passage of time can be relative.

There are exactly six full blooming deep red roses in my garden right now, a delightful salute to life, as I move over from another another significant past twelve months.   They are especially captivating, with many elegant folds in each rose, an usually bright countenance and a magical moment about them.

The extreme dry conditions for most of the past several months, apart from a recent spate of persistent rain, have devastated the lawn.   Some individuals whom I am close to have had a variety of life's issues, but they still wake up each morning with a gusto to face the new day.   Some of them have created new opportunity for themselves despite the challenge, hassle and personal devastation.  Yet some others are in the prime of life, planting as much for the unpredictable future as much as they can and relentlessly moving forward, as if impregnable.

Just like the weather may do to us, each of us can be kept on our toes by a variety of personal experiences.    What can seem over bearing at first sight can free up our mindsets in managing the different scenarios.   A few hassles can make us fed up at the attacks on the status quo in our lives   - and then this experience can make us take flight in our inner selves and assume a different posture to over come the problem.   In so doing, the  interim problem does not become an issue anymore, but liberates us to better take care of ourselves.

Our human make up can be complex, but has better potential than most of us take credit for.   Healing can occur not by the intake of artificially made stuff alone, but by seemingly intangible influences such as shared laughter, friendship, faith, mutual conversation, someone opening his or heart to you and other natural processes of detoxification.  

Beliefs built up in us by the norms of society - especially in commercialisation, consumerism, reduction in morals, distraction and rise of various forms of addiction - are increasingly challenged by each of us, as the levels of trust in established institutional practices are eroded.   

If we reflect, do we still have as much faith as before in our medical practitioners; our religious institutions; our political leaders; our fellow vehicle drivers on the road we share with; the value of financial currency; the quality of our purchases of produce and products; the reliability of our white goods in the house; the integrity of our privatised providers, as for utilities and airports; our own ears, with the onslaught of media over load from people and parties with their own agendas; and the security of our own personal information, given the more regular corporate confession of privacy breaches?

At the same time, I remind myself of the gratitude in apparently smaller things.....  the tank fish are still alive, I have not had a vehicle tyre puncture for another year running, we are reducing the use of frivolous plastic, darling doggies still show us unconditional love, the food allocation system in our community has not broken down as in Venezuela and my neighbours still communicate with each other.   And I can still leave on-line purchased parcels at my front door, with no one stealing them.

Yet in our attempts to exercise more gratefulness, how does one handle deaths, emphatically negative people and parties that seem to communicate less with you than ever before?

Death for biological beings like us is part of the cycle of life, an all encompassing event like the shelf life expiry of supermarket items, not an option but an inevitable landmark that can indicate a significant transformation beyond a physical demise.  For me, the importance of a human being is what memory he or she retains in the rest of us, a process more meaningful to interact with when the person is alive.

When it is so much easier to communicate with each other, there is a growing impression that there is actually less meaningful communication happening.   What an irony, what a conundrum.   Persons who do not take the effort to communicate with me may have their own issues and I can only try.   It is a blessing to not have to deal with individuals who show such negativity that they do not even realise this.

In a world of increasing physical mobility, I come across more individuals travelling more often.  Increasing communicative ability in cyberspace means we can look at images created only a minute ago.  I sense the positive feelings of people finding themselves far away from their usual base and rejoice in their excitement.  Many come back from a holiday to go away again.  The network of airlines, agents, organisers, restaurants, accommodation outlets and guides is growing fast in a sector that provides for cruises, private tours, commission related incentives and more.  The holiday trade has customers who need to explore, get away and keep occupied.

Yet I get a more intense glow of comfort eating at my favourite ramen stall (Gumshara in Haymarket NSW), walking along a river (Port Macquarie) somewhere far out from an over burdened city and observing the signs of the change in the seasons in a countryside village (between Canberra and Goulburn NSW).  I have over utilised the joys of a share economy in the past year.  I continue to appreciate the detailed art of a barista made cup of coffee in my home town.  Not to forget, munching on a packet of naked corn chips laced with quinoa, chia and sorghum.   To each, his or her own pleasures,

In the past year I have come to understand better the traditional saying  of accepting what cannot be changed, changing what cannot be accepted and accepting the power of change as well.

Some books remain not read,  what had been de-cluttered are replaced with more clutter and then it finally dawns on me that human beings are creatures of habit.  It can be crucially the habits in our mind that we have to purposefully change to better ourselves and our experience of life.

I realise instinctively the pace and nature of our cycles on Earth.   The roses are at the top of their game right now, but the only certainty in life is constant change.    And as sure as they will fade, new buds will grow on the very same stem.

And so be it, as one can embrace life fully, making it happen, responding wisely and being always grateful for the journey.

Ten Differences Between Wollongong and Sydney NSW

Ten Differences Between Wollongong and Sydney

1. Going to the Beach.

On the Illawarra Coast, it does not involve a major pre-planned exercise just to get to the sand to soak in your toes, have a surf and get back home in under 15 minutes.
In Sydney, you over plan your route and time yourself to find vehicle parking. Then you sit on the sand to watch over your belongings, pay top prices for snacks and get stressed just trying to get home.

2. Utilising Public Transport.

No prizes awarded to guessing which place has more regular trains or buses.
You have to know your time table well to make the most taking the Illawarra line of the railway network. You overwork your smart phone or watch at least two down loaded movies while sitting on your bum to get home. Even worse, you may have to stand all the way on trains fron Martin Place or Central in Sydney CBD to Sutherland, Thirroul, North Gong or Wollongong stations.

3. The Intensity of Road Traffic, if you are driving.

The Illawarra Coast is abuzz with over eager and self obsessed drivers only at certain hours of the day. Saturday mornings at Fairy Meadow, rush to work along the Lawrence Hargrave Drive, when school bells ring at the end of the student day along Memorial Drive and when tradies with barista coffee cups compete driving on the highway to southern Sydney before dawn on weekdays.

In greater Sydney, everyone expects traffic congestion.

4. Late Evening Shopping and Eating Out.

We know which region leads in these parameters. Sunday evenings are particularly disquieting for the Wollongong CBD.

One can have a satisfying dinner out in Wollongong and come home in as short as 5 minutes.

One can have an elegant dinner Sydney side and only come home 90 minutes after leaving the restaurant.

5. Choice of Cinema Complexes and Shopping Centres.

Everything that greater Sydney has, Wollongong may not have.
Everything that Wollongong has, greater Sydney has more.

6. Income Levels and Purchasing Power.

The ultimate dream for a Wollongong based family is to earn in Sydney, spend in the Illawarra Coast and view the moonlight over the beach on a week night. (Refer to No.1) 

7. Pockets of Fresh Air and Privacy.

Nothing beats the experience of having the ocean breeze over whelm you and your body at a look out point. Refer again to No. 1.

8. Diversity in Culinary Adventures.

The Illawarra coast stands out in barista made coffee, Italian restaurants and Aussie seafood.
Greater Sydney offers you so much variety in foodie journeys. Melbourne may not agree......

9. Liberating physical opportunities for health, exercise and fitness.

Wollongong is a university town, with a fair proportion of demographics in the twenty something age group, lots of coastal trails for cycling, a penchant for the performing arts and has escarpment hiking trails.

Greater Sydney has a larger population, where distance and traffic can discourage a greater appreciation of the outdoors. The down side of a higher density of residential living is offset by the benefits of a better transport network. Greater Sydney provides activity opportunities beside a few major rivers, has more reserves and charges for parking at its beaches or bays.

10. Access to fly away.

The lllawarra coast is around 50 to 65 km to Kingsford-Smith Airport, but getting there mainly involves transversing a highway or taking the public train.

Most residents of western and northern greater Sydney face more challenges in time and traffic to reach Kingsford-Smith.

Both regions have secondary airports but the Illawarra Airport at Albion Park is under utilised.

#yongkevthoughts

De-cluttering

Clearing clutter makes us reflect, forces us to drop persistent habits and frees up capacity for change.

Society makes us develop a regime and it is embedded in educational approaches, cultural norms and economic reward systems. So it is not surprising that change requires purpose, a determined effort and a re-questioning of our past rationale.

There was a logical reason why we purchased that shirt, that can of produce and the gadget that lies around. Was it on an act of impulse, a gesture of self reward, a true need that so many years ago or an echo of sentimentality? Whatever the reason it was, it does not matter now that I realise I have not used it in the past 3 months.

There can be that work office momento.
It can be that sensational cooking aid. There can be an accumulation of household stuff that once was utilised happily by more occupants. The reckoning comes with a limitation of storage space, less users and experiencing a different stage of life.

In our throw away contemporary society, there is a decreasing reward for the not unenviable attitude of taking good care of our possessions. Manufactured stuff are made obsolete in even shorter time cycles. The faster advent of technology attracts us to change to newer models that are more responsive. 

On the other hand, it can be argued that the construction of mass produced items, be they be housing, communications enablers or transport vehicles, may not have the same crafted quality of items made in the past with lesser numbers and more passion.

The emphasis on acquisition, especially of trivial items in a consumerist society, encourages the constant flow cycle of household stuff. When landfills, recycling and resale allow the clutter of a household to be reduced, on line purchases, physical shopping malls and children ensure the arrival of potentially more clutter through another door. Is it a fruitless and unwinnable process? It is up to each person to want to declutter, in goods, nutrition or in society's demands.

Millennials who value mobility more than possessions are an encouraging example of decluttering. They do not want to be tied down with a vehicle, furniture and pets when they know they have an adventurous life with only portable items and still be connected with the bigger world out there.

This all works out so well until the arrival of the baby.

In the end, each individual is best placed to first declutter the mind of unnecessary things and perspectives. Then only go to throw out the unhealthy food, the out of fashion trousers or skirt, the souvenir and the Facebook posting.

#yongkevthoughts

Landline, Mobile and Video Telephony

Landline is on the way out.

I am told the NBN infrastructure in Australia does not optimally support fixed line telephones as well as the previous arrangements we have had since the invention and installation of the house phone.

Retro phones are sold in decreasing prices and are destined to go the way of the compact disc, television set and analogue media. At least, however, to replace them involves paying less than buying a new smart mobile phone.

The old fashioned phone does not need to be recharged regularly in order to function. It even has a back up battery until the day the NBN contractors arrived at your abode - now you have to cough up replacing with a new battery as the NBN has disenabled the previous back up battery that was working fine.

Both landline and mobile phones are subject to nuisance calls, hacking, fraud and pesty commercial sales. Every human communication opportunity is utilised by the so called slick oily sales person, the threatener, the deranged, the opportunist and the tricky mind. They can turn up at your door, infiltrate through your electronic and digital transactions or place a pesky virus to destroy or manipulate your data. So in the perspective and attitude of such parties, the phone is only a mechanism to possibly deprive your comfort of privacy, sense of integrity and steal your money.

Everyone would recall those irritating landline telephone calls around dinner time,  after you reckon you deserve a rest and quiet time after a long day at work or business. Millennials may not feel the obligation to answer every phone call, but baby boomers on the other hand grew up in an age when one was supposed to be civillised when speaking on the phone.

Fraudsters, trouble makers and the not so pyschologically stable can take advantage of this presumption of civility on the part of people who pick up their ringing phone. However, the negative experience of being on the unpleasant end of nonsense, prank, spam and fraudster calls has made telephone owners more cautious.

Would you pick up calls with unknown or unshown or private numbers? What do you think of pre-recorded messages blaring at your ear when you answer a call? How would you react trying to listen and understand foreign accents on the phone when you did not initiate the call?

With smart phones, you can report, block and prevent the hassling caller from calling again. You may not be able to do that with the landline telephone. In the latter scenario, you most likely do not even know the phone number of the person who has dialled you, unless your fixed base phone supports a number identification ability.   Underlying this experience, a primary matter remains not satisfactorily answered by the Government and the telcos  - who the heck gave access to my phone number?   Even registering one's telephone number in a Government initiative of "don't call me" does not mean a prankster cannot call through.

And then there are Skype, Facetime and other easily accessible video interaction calls. They can be more intimate, revealing and effective, as one can evaluate non verbal behaviours of the participants, apart from the use of the tone of voice. People tend to be on a better countenace profile using such a combined video and voice communication channel.

The average cost of making an international phone call is often higher from a landline. There is also the reduced accessibiliry of phoning from a landline if you are not near this phone.  On the orher hand, voice over the internet protocol calls have significantly reduced call costs.

Concurrently, it is also interesting to note the relative combinations of text versus voice messages. That is why the mobile phone provides a plethora of apps other than just serving as a voice conduit and exchange. In the process, our privacy has been more invaded, compromised and degraded more than when we just held a landline telephone.

#yongkevthoughts

The Search in Cyberspace

On the Internet, we type in the key words and click on a search engine before finding their top suggestions.   

Numerous search platforms have risen in as many previous years.  Is the process for individual users as direct and simple as going through manual directories, conversational checks with mates or walking around a suburban shopping strip?

Contemporary society may seem to enable things on a faster and more accessible basis, but what is the hidden price for users?  A key feature of daily life as we approach the iconic year of 2020 is the less need to physically be at the source of your products and services, whilst surrendering much privacy to the electronic channels that enable such convenient transactions.    Cyberspace increasingly dominates as the delivery channel, all as part of the overall picture of so called automated script and other artificial intelligence coming to every one of us in daily life experiences.   The information comes to us without us never having to get out of our seated position in front of a screen -  but that only operates if you have access to your wi-fi or phone coverage.

The dominating feature in cyberspace is the trail each of us leaves on every finger tap we make, let us call them "clicks" as a broad term of reference.   These clicks make it ridiculously easy to take us to images, data and knowledge we require or seek.  The trail of clicks, like any human idea or invention, can be misused.   The profile such clicks build of us, whether by waving a smart payment card, tap on web links or in exchange of messages, can be huge and yet most of us do not question the risks, implied and real, in developing such a trail of clicks.  

When we chat face to face in person with someone else  - and not utilising any smart machine  - the chances of the memory of such an encounter remains most likely only with the participants  - unless there is a roving drone or satellite over head taking photographs of our encounter.   

If you carry your smart phone with you whilst having a conversation, some party somewhere in the proverbial internet Cloud has noted where this conversation has taken place.    You may not fully realise that by having your smart phone beside you always, you have voluntarily enabled the most powerful tracking device to monitor your movement. Yet being easily located is useful when one is lost on a hiking trail, need a shared ride service or when individuals really wants to be known where they are.

Commerce finds accessibility to such personal profiles  of actual and potential customers a mine full of golden opportunity.   What irritates me is the commercial presumption that each of us will continue to behave the same in the future.   You would most likely have had the experience of being hassled through cyberspace communication channels to buy more of recent purchase.    We may also be offered unsolicited recommendations to acquire similar and comparable products or from different brands.   These so called artificial "intelligence" channels interact with us as if we do not a right to change our mind or want to explore new products or experiences.

My other pet dislike is the quick arrival of surveys questioning about my experience of a recent transaction or goods receipt.   This may be for relatively minor commercial transactions.   Even questions are asked by the courier company, apart from the party that sells the product.   This hard push of incessant request for feedback turns me off.   The feedback asked is generated by faceless software.

How are the rankings in search engines arranged when we look for answers through them?  Do the top web links that jump up at our face for attention really that good and popular?  Be cautious and beware that most things in search engines are not what they appear to be.   Those suggested web links at the top of the page can range from advertisement supported matters to dodgy information in relation to what you want.   The key words you choose to write and click are important for the search logic utilised by different search engines can vary.   At times, there is an over load of suggested web links.    Some web links that come up front at the top  do so due to the number of hits, but again be wary of such a measure.    Do be cautious to only click on valid websites that answer your query, especially in internet banking,  for search engines are one source of also leading us to fictitious and dubious links.    When in doubt, let it go and ignore such web links that send you vibes of fraud and low quality.   Look at the wording of the web link, the words chosen, whether they are from a foreign country and its over all feel.

Not under our personal control when using cyberspace is a trail and life of what is created, stored and deleted by us.   In real life, we draw our window blinds, shred our paper records and are discrete in what we tell strangers and casual friends.   On the internet, hackers and unauthorised parties are determined enough to uncover such trails about ourselves even if you had consciously deleted your log of search matters.   Each of us have to come to terms as to what the implications are what we have in cyberspace.    

Intrusive adverts or website invites pop up in unexpected moments when we use the internet.  Often, we should not surprised,  for the nature of such pop ups relate to something we have used before or searched in the past.   One of the more irritating things is that the operators out there know in which physical part of the Earth you are located.   Providers recommended to you seem to be localised in where they are. It is not amazing that there are providers which have invested huge sums in location enabled software or applications. 


Gone are the days when you bask in your own private glory when searching for knowledge - unless you still visit the local library and search for information amongst the book shelves.    There can be personal benefits in being able to go back to a recorded trail in cyberspace of what you have searched in the past ten  years.   The question you have to answer your self is whether the dangers and pitfalls are worth the convenience.