Tempis Fugit

It was my first day of Daylight Savings today. Well, actually technically the first day was yesterday, but as it was a Sunday, I didn't really notice. I feel robbed - one whole hour gone from my weekend without so much as a by-your-leave. Plus it meant that I got to work an hour earlier than usual today (even though it was the same time), so it was an hour colder, which I was not well pleased about. I did, however, take perverse pleasure in using "2:15, Sunday morning" as the time in all my test cases at work. (Daylight savings started one minute after 1:59am on Sunday). Plus I left the clock on the wall at non-daylight savings time and called it Brisbane time for most of the morning, and then, when the day started to drag a bit, moved it forward so it felt like I was that much closer to home time.

For those of you who have never experienced (or have forgotten) the joys of Daylight Savings, I took this photo at 7:00pm today:

The sun doesn't actually go down until about 8, and Daylight Savings only just began. Who knows where this madness will end? (Incidentally, the white car in the middle of the photo is the one we are borrowing at the moment. If you look very closely you can see its crazy Tasmanian number plates.)

Apparenlty they're also considering introducing Daylight Savings into Queensland again (which I think is a stupid idea). The current argument against it is that kids will get sunburnt more, which is kind of valid, but I'm just not sure they need a reason to not introduce it. Surely the onus is on the people who do want it? I did hear a suggestion I liked though - give the Federal government control of daylight savings (as they are in charge of weights and measures apparently) and make a North-South split, rather than dividing by states. That way places like Brisbane (and all those shopkeepers at Tweed Heads who keep complaining) can save daylight, whereas the people in the north to whom it makes no difference can carry on in blissful ingnorance. And for those people who say it will be too confusing with all those time zones, there'll be like six. Six is not a big number. You can count it on one hand, provided you have a slight genetic mutation that gives you an extra finger.

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And in a follow-up from last week's story in which I bought a bike helmet, I went for a ride today. Here is my bike, complete with snazzy red helmet to make me go faster:

The bike is actually Dale's, which means that when I sit on it with my legs fully extended (toes pointed and everything), my feet are about two inches off the ground. As a result I kind of have to get the bike moving before getting on, which I'm sure amuses any passers-by immensely.

One of the odd things I noticed about the area around my house while out riding today is that it all seems to be downhill. Even on the way home. Obviously there are some uphill bits, but they seem vastly out of proportion with the downhill bits. I'm strongly beginning to suspect that there are problems with the space-time continuum in Canberra. Some kind of secret government project, no doubt.

At any rate, it's completely dark outside, so it must be getting late (the clocks are no longer reliable - some tell daylight savings time, some tell Brisbane time and the clocks in my car tell two different times, neither of which is Brisbane time or daylight savings time). I'd best be off to find me some dinner.

Arriverderci

Oh, and yesterday I bought a pair of stockings, but when I went to put them on this morning, there was only one in the packet. How weird is that?

On ya bike

Today I ran out of excuses for not doing exercise. Some time ago I thought that a bike would be the perfect way to motivate myself to actually get out and do some physical activity. Fortunately, I didn't own one. Dale had one, but it was all the way out at Darra and (so I thought) irreparably damaged from living outside in the weather. Then some idiot had the idea of moving to Canberra, and lo, I have a bike living in my hallway now, nice and convenient, and apparently in good health, apart from suffering from flat tyres. And here's me with no bicycle pump. I tentatively suggested that I could go and buy one, but Dale assured me that it would easier (and cheaper) just to take the bike to the nearby petrol station. It quickly became apparent however that neither of us was willing to expend the effort required to walk the bike to a petrol station that neither of us was even sure existed (according to the refidex, it's about 500m away from our house, but I still have not seen it to this day).

A new plan was suggested - one of our friends owns a bike pump - we can just borrow hers! Unfortunately, she was in Melbourne during the single ten minute period when we felt motivated enough to go and borrow it (she lives on a different side of town and living in Canberra for any length of time makes you intolerant of drives longer than ten or fifteen minutes).

Eventually I succumbed and went to a sports store to buy a pump. It turns out that the kind of bike pump I remember having when I was younger is no longer an option. These days bike pumps are lightweight and snazzy and aerodynamic, with folding parts and clip on bits and things. I fled the store in confusion.

Two weeks ago I managed to overcome my fear and ventured into a specialist bike store (with Dale holding my hand). I won through the confusion by simply choosing the cheapest pump on display. I took it home and (eventually) managed to master using it well enough to pump both bike tyres and my football. I was keen to go riding but, alas, I soon discovered that our house was completely lacking in a bicycle helmet.

So my next mission was to buy a helmet. I spent minutes and minutes wandering the hyperdome and Westfield alike searching for suitable headgear. Surprisingly, Big W at Woden didn't have any bikes or bike equipment and the hyperdome doesn't have a Big W (it does have a bike shop, but I chose not to go there for a very good reason which I'm sure I'll think of soon).

Today though, I did it. After two weeks of occaisional thoughts that I should get a bike helmet, today I went to some sports store and bought one. It's red, so it should go really fast. I no longer have any excuse not to go out and do some exercise - except that I've spent enough time writing this blog that it's dark outside now so I can't go today. And Thursday is poker night, so I can't go tomorrow. And then it's the weekend, and nobody exercises on the weekend... ;)

Show & Tell II

Previously, on the Little Girl with the Curl: We visited the War Memorial, New Parliament House and Old Parliament House. For details of our adventures, see below.

Following Old Parliament House, we attempted to visit the Art Gallery (or the Film and Sound Archives, or something). Unfortunately, we took the wrong turn off and ended up at Floriade (Canberra's garden festival) where we battled traffic for twenty minutes just so we could turn around and leave again. In the end, we did find an Art Gallery - not the National Gallery, but a Gallery nevertheless. There were paintings and sculptures and ladies singing a song about frozen peas. Most entertaining.

As it was five of the evening clock by this stage, we made no further attempts to visit indoor tourist attractions, instead opting to go home. On the way home, however, I was distracted by the dam at the end of Lake Burley-Griffin, so we took a detour, which proved quite interesting. After much searching (and driving in a circular fashion) we found a road that goes over the top of the dam, then passes the National Zoo and Aquarium (which we declined to visit) and vanishes off in the distance. Driving over the top of a dam is quite an odd experience. Although the photos don't fully do it justice, I've decided that, in the spirit of boring everyone with What I Did On My Holidays, I'll show them to you anyway.

Here is Lake Burley-Griffin (complete with cyclist - it wouldn't be Canberra without a cyclist):
And here's the view from the other side of the dam:
Notice how small and far away the water is (you can't actually see it at all when you're driving). It's much cooler in real life.

While investigating the dam, we also found the Governer's House Lookout, which, as it turns out, is a lookout aimed at the Governer-General's very own house, allowing you to fulfill all of those Governer-General watching fantasies you've always had. I know you're dying of curiousity, so here's a photo:


And so ended our tourist adventures for Sunday.

But the story doesn't end there! On Monday it was Labour Day in Canberra (yes, I got two Labour Days in one year, aren't I lucky?), so we had a whole other day to tourist. For our last excursion we decided on Questacon and the Museum.

Questacon is much like the Science Centre in Brisbane. Not only is it full of cool things to do, you learn stuff at the same time (apparently). I learnt that I can't balance on a balance beam or shoot an air cannon accurately. There's all sorts of cool stuff, like a zero gravity slide, real life holograms, an earthquake room and a lightning generator. Unfortunately it was the beginning of the school holidays, so the whole place was infested with small children. I did try to chop Dale's head off though:

Following Questacon, we visited the museum, which contained much amusing and informative Australiana - from pickled platypus specimens to recordings of Australian story-telling, complete with fair dinkum Aussie lingo and everything. Unfortunately we were a bit too footsore and weary to fully appreciate the exhibits, but I did make sure to visit The Future, where Dale and I designed a futuristic house in four minutes or less, then viewed it in 3D, along with a whole city full of the creations of our co-inventors (who were, almost without exception, aged 12 or younger).

Unfortunately, it all came to an end on Tuesday when Daniel returned home, after a frantic game of car trading in which Daniel and I drove Dale to work, Daniel dropped me off at work then went to visit a friend at ANU. Following this, Daniel picked Dale up from work, Dale drove Daniel to the airport and then drove himself to a job interview. A friend from work then drove me to Woden, where I quickly swapped cars back to my car and drove home with Dale.

A good time was had by all.

Show & Tell

Last weekend Daniel came to visit and we Did Canberra. As a result, this post is going to be quite long and full of pictures of no interest except to the people involved. You have been warned.
Extra warning for Dad: Note, very few of these photos contain people.

D arrived last Friday, which provided an excellent excuse for me to use some of my flex and come into work late (after I picked him up at the airport). On Friday we partook in the traditional activities of impulse purchases of expensive things (but expensive things that I need, like a microwave and super fantastico ginormous electric frypan that you can cook cakes in!) and sitting around the lounge room playing with our laptops. Just like old times.

Saturday saw the beginning of the real tourist action. We went to Mt Ainslie and looked at Canberra. All of Canberra. I won't include the photo though as I've put a similar one in an earlier entry (see below). After Mt Ainslie, we visited the War Memorial, which is bigger on the inside, and really, really cool. They have a minature Japanese sub there with a big hole in it and everything. Unfortunately, after hours of wandering around the Memorial, we were too tired to do any further real touristing, so we drove to Tuggeranong (aka Tuggers) to show Daniel where I worked and how much it looked like Forest Lake. I'm afraid I don't have a photo to confirm this similarity, but I shall endevour to get one for the non-believers.

Sunday saw Daniel and I going alone (Dale opted to stay at home sleeping - although he complained when we got back that we'd left without him, he was quickly subdued when we told him where we'd been).

The day began at New Parliament House:



We opted to take a free tour, which began in the Great Hall (or something like that). There is a big tapestry on the wall of some significance (although I can't remember what). The tapestry is
based on a painting, but, in order to date the tapestry, the tapesters added a white blur which represents Halley's comet (which presumably passed by in the same year that the tapestry was made). I didn't get a picture of the tapestry, but here is a picture of the original painting. Note the absence of Halley's comet in the upper left corner.

I learnt a lot of interesting and (Daniel assures me) not entirely accurate things about Australian government while on the tour. I won't regale you with them here, but here is a picture of the House of Representatives (green) and the Senate (red) where the politicians do all their voting for stuff. Apparently the colours (red and green) are based on the colours used in their British counterparts, but we were a bit rebellious and used different shades of green and red, opting for colours which occur in the Australian bush. Aren't we wild?




Following the tour, we took a trip up to the roof to check out the view. If you really want, I can show you the pictures, but they're not that great. Really. Don't get me wrong, the view is great, the pictures just didn't turn out all that fantastic. I also found some chairs that I think I would like to have in my dining room (when I get a dining room).

(Dad, note the inclusion of Daniel in this photo to satisfy your urge to have people in photos.)

I also took the obligatory photo of the flagpole from directly below:

Following our tour of New Parliament House we walked (yes! with our feet and everything!) down to Old Parliament House, which is very, very different to New Parliament House. Where New Parliament House is all shiny marble and polished wood and expensive artwork, Old Parliament House is all corridors and offices and eighties decor. New Parliament House is a lovely building which the tour operators show to the public while the politicians work away behind the scenes. At Old Parliament House you can actually see where it all happened. New Parliament House is nice, but old Parliament House has atmosphere. To give you an idea of the difference, here's a photo of the Senate at Old Parliament House:

As you can see, it's a fair bit more crowded (which pretty much sums up all of Old Parliament House)

Ok, Blogger is starting to play up now (I don't think it likes me having all these photos in the one entry) so, if it's alright with you I might just continue this in a new entry.