OK, so I have finally made my decision to leave Facebook. Which means I need to be more regular in keeping this personal blog up to date should any of my Facebook friends want to keep up with me (as well as email, letter, Skype, text, etc. etc.). I’ve been uncomfortable with Facebook for quite a while now. I joined when it was in its infancy and was almost exclusively made up of University students networking online. I was working in a University at the time and a I received the ubiquitous ‘friend invitation’. It seemed like a good way to communicate with the students. Later it proved useful in keeping up with family and friends. Since then it has exploded and has a population the size of a small country (maybe even a medium sized one!).

I have also grown tired of the trivial nature of Facebook. I’m not saying I haven’t been trivial myself – I have – and that is why I am pulling back. We live in a fast world – a soundbite world – and a quick ‘whats on your mind?’ text message world. I’m slowing down and backing away from the trivialisation of communication. That means I’ll have to be better at making sure I write to my kids, email my friends and keep up my blog.

I could say a lot more about the underbelly of Facebook which causes me concern. It is a huge machine ripe for social profiling and control. It is difficult to moderate and driven by advertising revenue. It is voyeuristic and virtual and very possibly delusional too – it has a pernicious hold on many of us and keeps us at the surface level of communication and interaction having no room or time for anything even slightly deeper than “cottage pie tonight – yummy!”

So, in answer to the now obligatary question of the day, “What’s on your mind?” the answer is – “I’m leaving Facebook – and it feels good . . . . .”

Loggerhead Turtle

During a few days break on the sunshine coast we had the most amazing good fortune to encounter a real live Loggerhead Turtle emerging from the sea looking for a place to lay. This is the sort of stuff I have seen on TV with David Attenborough giving the commentary. I couldn’t have imagined that I’d get the opportunity to experience it first hand. The photo shows the old girl as we discovered her on the beach. Joan and I had decided that we would take one last stroll on the moonlit beach before returning to the city the next day. As we stepped through the clearing in the trees and onto the sands I could see something strange at the waters edge – a turtle! A huge turtle! So we ran to investigate and sure enough, large as life shuffling its way awkwardly out of the water and onto the beach there she was. I ran back to the house to get my son and his girlfriend to come see. After standing back and letting her do her thing we realised that she had become snared up in some brambles and vines on the sand dune. We did what we thought was the best thing and freed her from her snares which allowed for her to turn around and head back for the sea. What followed was most unexpected – suddenly from nowhere three women appeared and jumped on the turtle. Before I had chance to ask what they were doing it became apparent that they were wildlife wardens on a mission to tag and take records of the turtle so they could track its well-being. My son and I were then asked to help out by holding the turtle down as they took measurements and tagged both of her front flippers. To be so close up and handling the animal was quite something and an adventure we will all remember for the rest of our lives. She was so old and had eyes which seemed to be sad and wise at the same time. I followed her back to the waters edged and bid her farewell in the moonlight. We returned home feeling tired and exhilarated all at the same time knowing we had shared in a unique experience.

Happy New Year!

I’m determined to keep this blog updated – and to make that even more tricky for myself I have begun a new blogging project for the new year. I call it the 365 Project. Here in Oz there is a stationary store called Kiki.K and I picked up a journal that has 365 numbered pages in it. I determined that I would sit on my meditation bench (over 200 years old from India – a treasured possession) and write whatever came to mind for that day. I then decided that I would post all or some of what I write in the journal on my blog to see if others would like to join me. So, if you are still around I promise I’ll be more regular in news, thoughts and random stuff her on iaskedforwonder – and over on 365 I’ll do my best to post daily.

Whilst taking some time out to relax and think through a few fairly life changing experiences going on at the moment – I was listening to my iPod on shuffle and was taken by surprised by this beautiful song – The Book Of Love. The version I was listening to is a cover by Peter Gabriel which was used in the film Shall We Dance. The original was done by The Magnetic Fields and is quite different (but still has a certain appeal). However, it is this version that will forever be of special significance for me. It evokes deep and powerful emotions from one of my proudest moments – walking my daughter Helen Hazel down the aisle of the Church before conducting the ceremony which sealed her relationship with Andrew – her boyfriend since sixth form in school. It is doubly significant that this track should pop up on random play because one of the life changing events I was pondering is the imminent arrival of her first child and our first grandchild. It’s a beautiful song for a beautiful young lady – I dedicate this to you Helen Hazel. I’m so glad your Mum is there with you and I look forward so much to joining you soon. I am very proud of Helen – she has always been someone that lights up a room and that has only magnified since she began to blossom in her pregnancy. I’m not sure I have managed to do much more than shed a few emotional tears as a result of my pondering – I cannot imagine what it will be like to see my own child cradling her own child. I feel good about being a grandparent and I look forward to taking that next generation in my arms and blessing it – another page in our very own

Listen to the Cash version of Personal Jesus

Since I am home alone I decided I would watch a film I knew my wife Jo would have no interest in watching whatsoever (she’s more discerning than me) – Knowing, with Nicolas Cage. Now I can almost hear the deep groan coming from all three of you who are reading this but give me a chance. Yes, he has been in a fair few turkeys but he has also been in a couple of reasonable films too. The write up looked interesting so I thought, heck why not, it’s free on Foxtell so I may as well. Wrong move! I’m telling you from the outset – this movie is one of the biggest piles of poo I have ever had to watch (not that I actually watch piles of poo you understand – it’s a metaphor). Let me warn you now I will be giving the ending of this film away so if you really must watch it then read no further – on the other hand read on and save yourself a wasted two hours of your life.

The film is described as a heart pounding sci-fi thriller (it uses the phrase heart pounding twice in the blurb on the official website). Remember, I was watching this film on my own and I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to scary movies – the best this gets is a bit creepy at times but it is never heart pounding. Cage plays a professor of astrophysics, a single parent of a little deaf kid having lost his wife in a disastrous fire shortly before the film begins (the clue is in the word disastrous). So, he employs his gift of facial acting to make it clear that he is tortured and racked with angst – he also drinks way too much scotch. The film begins with a flashback to 50 years earlier as the local school has a ceremony to bury a time capsule that will be opened in – you guessed it – 50 years time. One class is invited to draw pictures of what they think the future will look like and one little girl – the creepy one who keeps staring at the sun and hears whispering voices – fills her piece of paper with a random list of numbers. 50 years on the deaf kid gets the envelope with the numbers, Cage spills some whisky on the page and goes into a frenzy of number crunching to discover that the numbers correspond to dates. All the dates are associated with natural and man made disasters – the numbers predict the longitude and latitude, day, month and year and number of those killed. There are three dates outstanding which just happen to be the following three days. This begins the not particularly heart pounding race to try and do something about it. Of course he can’t and even as he tries he finds himself at the scene of a plane crash and a tube disaster. Now, I’m not even going to try to imagine what the writer was attempting to say with this pitiful plot but it is a poor attempt at saying something about predestination and the inevitable end of the world. In the midst of this his deaf son has a number of encounters with creepy guys who look like extras from Men In Black and he finds a friend – the grandaughter of the original creepy little girl who wrote out the numbers.

It turns out that Cage’s characters father is a church minister and they have been estranged for some time (obviously we find out that it was his dead wife’s wish that they be reconciled but up to this point he has had no contact with his dad). So, to cut a long story (and it is way to long for such a pile of poo) it turns out that the final disaster is the big one – the end of the world. Cage phones his father who tells him everything will be ok because they will all go to heaven together. The mother of the grandaughter is killed (just as her mother, the creepy girl 50 years earlier had predicted) while Cage, the deaf son and the grandaughter all end up in a creepy dark forest with the creepy men in black who turn out to be creepy angels. A space craft (which I think is meant to look like Ezekiel’s vision of the wheels within wheels) lands – Cage can’t go, only the kids – they do, to a scene which is a cross between ET and Close Encounters. Cage makes it back to his fathers house just in time for the whole family to have a group hug as a massive solar flare burns New York (and the rest of the world) to a crisp. The film ends with the two kids running through a field reminiscent of something out of What Dreams May Come towards a tree (shades of Adam and Eve). So, we’re left thinking that the whole story will begin again just as soon as the kids reach puberty and become sexually active – and if the girl should eat an apple from that tree then there will no doubt be a sequel. Give it a miss – it is atrocious.
The best thing about it was the use of Beethoven’s Allegretto from his seventh symphony – enjoy (starts off very quiet).

	Dresden Philharmonic – Symphony No. 7: Allegretto
	Found at bee mp3 search engine