aka R’acquel

My new MP3 player arrived from Hong Kong this week, purchased from Ebay for $25. It would have cost me $150 to buy something similar over here. Phew! It also came with a really handy USB extension lead, so i no longer have to bend over under the table struggling (really hard!!) to plug and unplug cameras & the sewing machine due to not having enough USB ports! It feels really good to remove one permanent form of pain out of my life like that.

It feels as good as the day i gave a permanent flick off Telstra (a telephone company). As for wether or not Telstra is much better these days, i really don’t give a shit! I’m just gald i haven’t experienced such major stress with a telephone company for over 7 long years! It’s really good when you can implement change that can permanently erase recurring stress like that. Anywayz, that’s exactly how this new USB extension cable makes me feel. It’s liberating!

I fell in love with the colour, red is my favourite - especially when it’s closer to pomegranite.

The funny thing was that i was initially looking for a “CD Walkman”, so that i could listen to music whilst walking up the mountains for exersize. I’m a music addict, so it would’ve been the perfect motivational tool for me. I couldn’t find a single CD walkman at Kmart. When i asked one of the staff if they had any in stock, she gave me a weird look and said,

“Erm… Sorry… we rarely stock those anymore.”

I then walked into Retrovision which is a general appliance store, figuring i would have more luck there. A man came up to me asking if he could help me in anyway.

“Yeah - i’m looking for a CD walkman!”

He too gave me a really odd look.

“A CD walkman hey? GEE! I think we only have one in stock! It’s all MP3 players these days.”

Like, major D’oh & er derr!! My request for a CD walkman was interpreted as having an interest in receiving high quality sound, which made me laugh. No - i just wanted a music player and an MP3 device would be just perfect, i had no idea that the world had changed so much since i last owned a walkman waaaaay back in 1999! A whole gigabyte on a fashionable looking stick.

Nice to have something so compact and easy to use, no need to worry about CD skipping from movement and then there’s the luxury of customising the songs without burning to a CD. I love it and the music has helped me a great deal with the walking. Clocked 25km of distance this week, 20km last week. I keep my goals low and feasible however, 12km was my previous minimum and i’ve raised it to 15km to achieve by next friday.

The Magpie

[image taken from the wiki encyclopedia by Fir002]

I woke up to one of my most favourite soundtracks this morning at 5am, the song of the Australian Magpie bird. New MP3 player has a handy sound recording function, although it’s poor quality mono with a sheeeeetload of noise, very convenient for me to duck out of the house with it at 5am in the bloody morning without the hassle of hunting for DAT recorder, dat tape, shotgun mike and batteries half-awake.

A sample of the music i woke up to this morning

The sound is a bit warbled because i had to run noise reduction filters but it’s the absolute best i could manage with a very poor quality recording and i’m impressed with the effort i put into it. You can hear a better quality recording over here.

As for how this magpie song became a favourite - it was during a school camp at Vision Valley a good 20 years ago. My quality of sleep was just as bad back in those days and things like school camps always meant no-sleep at all. I could never fall asleep, it was a brutal torment. It was one morning, around 5am where the song of the magpie brought so much peace and joy into my heart. Something “interesting” to pass the time. It helped me to relax by just lying there and listening to it’s music. The sunshine was pouring into the cabin and the smell of clean australian bush was devine.

I had poor sleep last night so waking up at 5am this morning to the sound of magpies calling was wonderful at triggering memories of instant peace and joy, plus i also had the cool morning smell aussie bush filling my lungs to enjoy as well. *sighs* Devine intervention.

My early morning sound recording adventure scared my husband tho…

“It’s 5am in the morning, what on earth have you been doing out there with the light on?! I thought there was a robber!”

“I’m so sorry Bear! It was the magpies! They woke me up and i just had to capture their songs this morning!”

He laughs. It’s “OK” but i still feel guilty for scaring him and waking him up so early. Husband’s mobile phone alarm rings shortly after, so this rude awakening wasn’t THAT rude as he had to get up early to head off to another festival on business this weekend anyway, which helped me feel much less guilty.

The Eastern Whipbird

My ABSOLUT favourite sound in the depths of the Australian bush is the Whipbird.

[photo from wiki again]. I only found out the name of this bird today when i asked my husband,

“Do you know the name of that bird which makes that whipping sound in the bush? It goes coooooooo, WHIP~P~P!! with that really piercing kind of reverby echo to it…”

“Yeah, that’s the whip bird!”

“Seriously? It’s called a whip bird?”

“Yeah, it’s a whipbird!”

So much for thinking that i would have had such a hard time trying to discover this bird’s name. I’m so glad i learnt this today. It sounds exactly like it’s name. I did hear the call of the whipbird once this morning. Buckley’s chance of my MP3 player capturing it but there’s a great recording over at
Dan Mennill - Bird Songs of the Atherton Tablelands where you can hear it’s piercing whipping noise. It’s has such a strong physically alerting effect on me and on the ears with that incredible cooooo-WHIP{{{P}}}! it does right at the end. It’s almost like a melodic version of a whip cracking with such a stricking WHACK about it, a real smack on the ears. Looks like it’s the male bird which sings it from what i’ve read on it so far.

The sound of this bird always connects me to the first time i fell in love with it during a bushwalk around the Jenolan Caves as a child. I usually associate hearing this sound during bushtracks where there is the sound of water, it’s often like a signal that there’s some kind of really beautiful and peaceful water-feature i can anticipate just around the corner of a track. There’s often the sensation of damp cool humidity against my skin when i hear it cooooo-WHIP{{{P}}}! (pssst… bushman - there’s water somewhere nearby dude!).

I’m getting very addicted to bird sounds in the mornings now.

Soundbite of a group of laughing kookabarra birds, aussie kingfisher species. I often think of them as pissed drunkards in the woods.

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Coastal wind, fire, severe weather & thunderstorm weather forecast for NSW today. Heard news of sailboats getting capzied in Cremorne.

We haven’t been affected much over here. Experienced strong intermittent wind gusts in the morning, coming from the usual N/NW directions but they died back as the day progressed. The morning had a distintive early summer feeling about it with faint scent of bushfire smoke in the air. There was a notably less birds singing in the bush this morning.

Temperature started off at around 16C - steadily rising to 24C by about 3pm. Very sunny during this time but a sudden cloud cover passed by around this time, generating dramatic on/off/on changes to the quality of light.

North view of the clouds from the house and the view of clouds facing west below when this super light rain was experienced.

Headed out into town with Aidan around this time to visit his dad doing Oz Whistles over at the Leura Mall festival going on this weekend. It began to sun-shower with very light rain that would last about 30 seconds and then stop. The intermittent light rain was more prominent in town from reports.

Sounds of helicopters flying overhead has been fairly prominent this week. Caught one flying past that was headed east towards Wentworth Falls. Amazing how much they remind me of dragonflies.

Views of the clouds facing west as we headed into town. I’m not highly into reading cloud formations as weather signs, but it’s a new branch of learning that i’m allowing myself to be open to.

A highly unusual sighting of the pink galah/cockatoo on the way into town - it’s the first time I’ve seen this kind here. The most common I’ve seen in the streets is the yellow-crested one, and then the occasional black cockatoo (always flying in the air though, never on the ground). I remember one conversation of people commenting about how many more cockatoos there seems to be in this area now - making claims it’s because the weather is getting warmer.

Any tulip lover like myself is bound to get a rise whenever they walk past something like this.

One of the main roads very close to town. Pity i didn’t quite capture the same angle during autumn, but you can find one picture of it over here.

If there wasn’t a festival happening in the middle of town, i don’t think my son would have been inspired to climb so much today.

The last snapshot of clouds today, facing north at the house again at about 5pm.

The weather experienced a sudden drop from 24C down to 15C over about 2 hours till 7pm. A cool humid thrust of energy in the air with that ionic/electric kind of smell about it - but i don’t think it’s very likely to crack into a big storm.

8pm now. Temperature has cooled down to 12C outside (which could continue to cool further), but the indoor temperature has dropped from 24C down to 22C across 3 hours, which explains why i’m still comfortable with just wearing a t-shirt.

I’ve been really worried about how this house will cope in the summer. If this is how the season is to pan out, then this design of the house with west-facing windows may not seem so bad. We could easily open all the windows for a quick chill-down of the house if winds continue this recurring N/NW direction (and are cool!). With bedrooms located in the east quadrants, these rooms are noticeably cooler too so this will help with adding a little more comfort during sleep.

I have noticed that as we’re on a very steep slope here, there’s only been a period of about 3-4hours of afternoon sunlight that pours completely into the heart of the house during this winter and the sun is rapidly obscured by the mountain. It’s been very benefitial for winter heating, raising the indoor temp by about 6C. Curious to see how this goes during the summer.

This experience of living in another location in this town has influenced my “house hunting” a great deal. I would like to buy a place in a few years, but it’s obvious that i have to choose very carefully about which side of a mountains I will want to settle with. The slopes make as much as an impact as a dense forest of trees would when they shelter benefitial light entering into a house. The quality of sunlight is really important to me. I couldn’t tolerate living in a very dark house. I like them bright, dry and insulated with good ventilation.

It will be interesting to see how the satelite images across the 24hours of today will compare to what I’ve seen today, so i look forward to catching up with that animation from the BOM (bereau of metoerology) in the morning with my coffee. It’s a new challenge I’ve decided to take on as a ritual, but i’m not sure if i can do it every single day. Will see how it goes.

UPDATE

10pm - indoor temperature 21C, outdoor 12C

The night air is now laden with fog. So - is it the rapid cooling of temperature which results in fog? I will need to check it out on google

Too hard to capture fog at this late hour and i can’t be bothered pulling out the tripod. Very light sprinkle of moisture from the fog which is not-quite rain, and precisely at the rate which makes using the windscreen wipers on the car to be really annoying because you have to switch it on and off for a single wipe manually.

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Lots of hardcore pattern engineering of late with my first formalwear piece. It’s been quite an adventure to generate a piece/pattern that tapers closely to all the curves. Ergonomics to the max - i love designing for comfort of the human body.

This endeavour is primarily for the sake of artistic expression alone. My end-goal is to make people scream (like a girl) when they see it. I have a knack for doing this to people with my work ever since i was a child, so that’s the goal. To make people scream as soon as they see it, and then when they read my reason for making this garment is to make people scream - the desired effect is that this it’s going to make them laugh - because they just screamed a lot, so therefore - the garment has done it’s job well.

For now - i have to continue tweaking the first fabric mock-up a little bit more and will be heading out to purchase the fabric on Monday. I’m very determined to make a strong impact and look forward to scouting the ideal place for a bit of photography up in the mountains somewhere.

Enough talk-it! Must continue to walk-it!

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Mrs.Lifecruiser’s Cinnamon Buns baked in my home again tonight. This time the filling was what my dad would called the Turkish equivalent of Nutella.

This is Pekmez - a concentrated grape molasses and all you have to do is mix this sweet stuff with tahini.

I tossed some extra sultanas into the mix this round and they panned out delicious again.

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Weather has been exceptionally windy and warm in the last 3 days. I wish i had the experience or tools to measure wind speed, but i associate wind like this as gale-force. Numerous strong wind gusts placing enough pressure against the body which can making you take a pause during a walk to steady yourself in order to not fall over.

Not as strong as the former winds i reported a while back that were making our house roof squeak, but the twigs from the trees have been striking at the windows with loud thwacks every now an then. The lawn is overdue for a good mow, so it’s going to be quite a task to remove all the big twigs that have rained onto our front yard since we moved it about 2 months ago.

Maximum heat hovered around 26-28C but this is a guess as my digital thermometer, which also functions as an alarm clock, has been resting on my toilet’s window sill all day, because i didn’t want to be woken up today by an alarm that is too hard to program it “off”.

This morning, i woke up to the sound of amazing birds that i have never heard singing before at 5am. I wanted to head out with my video camera to capture the amazing music they were making, but I was so sleeeeeepy that i couldn’t do it. There was something distinctively different about the sounds i was hearing this morning. It felt like new birds had arrived in the valley. I heard about 3-5 different kinds of sounds to the usual choir. My body reacted strongly to it,

“Hey Ayça - something really significant is happening down there! This is different! You really have to capture this right now!”

…but my sleepy side saying,

“Baaaaagh… video camera… no - the firewire is fritzed, digital DAT recorder, NO - problem with the DAT tapes, too hard to collect the microphone, cassette walkman - poor quality sound. BLAH too much work and it’s depressing me that my video rig has been defunct for far too long! I have to sleep!”

…but i couldn’t get back to sleep. Got out of bed at 5:30am. I wanted to head out for an early morning walk but so much administrative work took over. Then i started to hear the alarm clock in the toilet ringing at 7:15am, which made me laugh. So much for putting the alarm in the toilet in order to shelter myself from its sound.

A great shame that i didn’t head out with the boys into town during the afternoon. They spotted some neighbours who found a stray echidna on the end of our street on their way back. I missed a great and exceptionally RARE photo opportunity to capture a wild echidna that doesn’t live trapped in a zoo. Dang!

I’ve never seen an echidna in the bushwalks here - they’re usually nocturnal creatures so they don’t normally get out during the day. Extreme hot/cold weather is something that would make them burrow and hide for shelter under rocks, so seeing one end up on a road today during a fairly warm day - makes me all the more curious as to what the story of this creature was. Not enough ants and termites in the bush? Why did he climb up all the way to the road? What was it that happened in the valley with the animals today?!

For those unfamiliar with this Australian native ant-eating creature, here’s a picture of what one looks like from Giftlog.

2007 is distinctively feeling a lot more windier compared to 2006. Hard to tell if our relocation to another house has influenced this perception because this region is very prone to micro-climates depending on where you live. North Leura can be very dry and hot, while it’s tends to feel cooler in the south. There are pockets which are prone to very cold spots within it all and this seems to occur in areas that get thicker and more frequent levels of fog.

Record spring heat and winds today. Nasty bushfire kind of weather and this is one component that does worry me a lot more this year due to living right on the edge of the Blue Mountains National Park, when we were somewhat “sheltered” by living more in the middle of the town before.

For now - i’m placing my faith in the constant direction of the wind to be on our side. It is often coming from a W/NW direction, blowing towards the national park. If a fire were to strike in the valley next door, the wind would be blowing a fire away from the house rather than towards it so I’d be a lot more worried if i was living in the houses located on the ridge facing west over at Wentwork Falls on the other side of the valley.

My brother in law was unable to travel to our house tonight because the trains from gosford (a little over an hours drive north of sydney) were cancelled due to bushfires.

Just reviewed the NSW Rurual Fire Service for fire reports a moment ago. “Wilson Fire” in neighbouring Wentworth Falls today - 3 hectares and it’s been, contained. Hey - no smell of bushfire smoke here so i wouldn’t have even known! N/NWesterly winds obviously not pushing the smoke up this way. Who knows if this may be why the echidna found itself on the road today and maybe it could explain why the sound of the bush was really odd and different this morning? Perhaps it a wild imaginative leap of my own even though my intuition did sense that “something was up over that way”, but how useful would different sounds like this be as a warning sign of something happening in the bush nearby in future?

Heard Kookaburra birds laughing today. You can hear them every now and then, but it was again strange to hear a large flock of them today.

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