Dirty Laundry
I don't know, there's not much that can tempt me away from laundry. The joy of separating whites and colors, the sweet lullaby of the water and clothes spinning around and around, the sound of the machine beeping once its done, that fresh 'just washed' smell, the overpowering happiness you have once you see the stains are gone, and then the ecstasy of hanging them up to dry...*sigh* even just thinking about it make me happy :)
The above are words (not mine) from a back-and-forth e-mail conversation in which we got to talking about laundry. The subject matter was originally about meeting-up for a walk after work, but after saying something like 'sure I'll come along since the only thing waiting for me back home is the laundry', the sarcasm level in the conversation rose and the other person chose to respond with the above; effectively saying that she would've picked doing the laundry over any other activity any day.
Her words gave me an idea, and I responded in kind:
Old school
In a previous blog post about a certain donut from my childhood, I made the following observation:
Everything is a lot larger back then compared to now (that's what she said?)
Last weekend, I managed to do something else that proved this claim: I walked through my old primary school.
My family moved around New Zealand a bunch when I was younger, so this primary school / grade school / whatever-the-hell-you-call-the-educational-institute-you've-been-enrolled-in-at-the-age-of-9, was the second-to-last primary school of mine before I moved on up to intermediate. Anyway, when I was there, I really liked the place: I made a lot of friends, the teachers were nice, and there was a lot more tree-climbing variety here than my previous school (which only had really tall trees and a policy of cutting-off the lower branches so that adventurous children like myself would be discouraged from trying to scale them). The neighbourhood and life in general around that time was really good too, so a lot of stuff from then, including the school, really stuck in my mind.
I also injured myself a lot on the school grounds that year (a remark from one of my teachers at the time in a student evaluation form: Emanuel needs to learn to control his movements more) and so made several trips to the sick/medical bay from wherever it was I happened to get injured. So I became very familiar with the distances that needed to be travelled from all corners of the school. Sometimes, a blood trail would be involved, and once I got patched-up, I would follow the the blood trail back to where it was I got hurt, familiarising myself with the distance I walked (or more likely rushed in a mild panic).
So, on the way to a BBQ which was very close to my old school, I decided to take a small detour and visit the playgrounds, buildings, and trees that composed much of my life at 9 years of age.
The first hurdle was trying to actually get into the school as the entrance that I had used all those years before was now blocked-off by recent (whereby 'recent' I mean 'anywhere in the last 16 years') housing developments. After following the perimeter of the school fence some way while trying to not look like a dodgy guy who stalks schools, I found a new entrance into the main field, and from there started my exploration of memory lane.
Ah, there's the tree I fell out of, and there's where I got a bleeding nose... And after getting from the field to the netball/tennis courts: And there's where I grazed my elbow really badly. That left a good mark for several months.
It wasn't all reminiscing about injuries: I walked passed my old rooms, remembering how much bigger I thought they were when I was 9. One memory in particular was when we put a rain gauge on the outer wall of our class, having it secured to the building by means I couldn't remember. I remember placing it at what was then shoulder height and seeing how close it was to the ground. Now I stood there looking at the same spot, my mind creating a phantom of my younger self in-front of me, my shoulders now much further above the ground.
All the old buildings seemed smaller, and the distances between points were much shorter too as my longer stride let me cross what I used to believe were large concrete/grass expanses. I was a giant in a small person's memory; several sizes too small for me to fit in, yet I felt oddly at home.
I finally walked out of my old school through the teachers car park where my classmates and I once left thumb tacks behind the tyres of an unknown car on April Fool's Day, feeling like for the first time in years that I had really come a long way.
I got a webcam the other day - the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000! Now I can more-proudly consider myself a citizen of the digital age and join things that everyday technology-enabled people are a part of, like Skype!
I've been having a bit of fun with the webcam actually - taking photos, testing the face-tracking capability (I can happily report that Logitech webcams are not racist) and making a video or 2 - and I guess like most people out there, I'm really enjoying having this new piece of technology in my life.
Much like when I got myself a new cellphone, particularly one with a camera that, unlike my last phone, takes pictures at sizes measured in megapixels, I think I might enjoy the video capabilities that are now at my disposal.
When I got my new cellphone, I picked it because of: a) the flip-top design, and b) having a camera that doesn't suck. I had the latter in my purchasing decision because I wanted to take photos that I could upload and use on my blog. Lo and behold, I've been using many of my own photos in my blog instead of trawling the internet for something that resembles the image I'm trying to portray. I've even used the cellphone camera to take pictures of inane things, like Windows XP error messages on supermarket monitors, or billboards I come across in my walks around the city.
So far I've only called my family on Skype with the webcam enabled. They don't have a webcam themselves, so while I couldn't see them, they were able to report that the video and sound feed of me weren't too bad, even when Skype was reporting to them that their internet connection was "slow".
I've started adding a few others who I know have Skype, but there's one overseas friend in particular with whom I can't wait to tell them that I'm not such a useless IT guy anymore :)
Maybe next I can start uploading to YouTube... lol, let's not get carried away here.
