The article on parental leave in Wikipedia gives the leave entitlement for new mothers (and often fathers) in different countries.
I never knew how generous other countries were! I scanned through the column, gobsmacked. I’m so ashamed that Australia is only one of three countries with ‘zero’ in its column for number of weeks of paid maternity leave. The other two offenders are USA and Papua New Guinea.
Shame, Australia, shame!
After the party last week, we accumulated twice as much rubbish and recycling as normal. Tomorrow is bin day so Alex, Di and I pitched in to move all the bins and boxes to the front of the house for tomorrow’s early morning pick-up. It was a bit of an operation and we congratulated ourselves once it was done.
Ten minutes later, I heard Di cry, ‘There are bugs in my room!’
Alex and I popped our heads into Di’s room.
‘Bugs?’ I said. ‘You mean ants? Spiders?’
‘Look!’ she said, pointing to her window. Zipping around in front of her sheer white curtains were dozens of tiny black flies.
‘They came from the bin,’ Alex identified. ‘I saw them come out when we opened the lid… What are you doing?’
Di was leaning over her desk to open her window. ‘I don’t know how they got in, since the window was shut. I’m opening the window. Maybe the flies will go outside.’
‘Maybe more will come in,’ I said, worried.
‘No, they came from the black bin and that’s on the footpath now,’ said Alex.
We watched a short while. The flies made no visible move towards the open window.
‘I’ll leave it open for a while,’ Di decided.
I had an idea. ‘I know! Why don’t we put a cake or something on the window sill outside so that they will be attracted to it and leave?’
Di and Alex stared at me. I thought about what I had said.
‘Oh…’ I realised. ‘I guess a cake might attract more flies inside.’
As they shook their heads sadly at me, I protested, ‘I am smart! Really I am!’
This evening, I went for a walk through Midsummer Common. I walked through the warm summer air and light breeze, and felt peaceful and comfortable. The old Victorian buildings seemed hyperreal against the blue sky. The cloud streaks were white when I left home and soon, were tinged with the orange of sunset. I took a photo of all this with my mind.
Midsummer Common is dotted with oak trees. There is an especially expansive one near the river. As I walked towards it on the path to the river, something shimmered at me from its branches. I didn’t have my glasses on so for the half minute it took for me to get near it, it was a shimmering, shiny red globe. Finally, when I was five metres away, I saw that someone had hung a red tinsel wreath from a slim looping branch.
It looked so pretty.
I took another mental photo.
Then it was time to go home.
I was hungry today! I finally got over my recent unhungriness.
At least, I think I was hungry. My tummy didn’t feel funny like last time but I kept thinking about food and wanting to eat. This was at about 7 PM so it coincided nicely with dinner.
When I reached the pedestrian crossing, the ‘WALK’ signal had just started flashing. I stepped off the curb on to the black and white stripes. An old lady and a man cradling a baby were already in front of me.
‘WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING?’ the man with the baby yelled.
My heart was pounding. A red car had decided to reverse back into the zebra crossing. It had only stopped when the man yelled.
I could have been run over.
At least the old lady and the man with the baby would have cushioned the impact.
What is this? Do you know?
It’s my Friend Wheel!
Yes, indeed. Someone has come up with a nifty way to visually depict the relationships between my friends on Facebook. Every dot on the circumference of the wheel represents a friend. I’ve erased friends’ names, as well as mine in the middle.
You can see some interesting patterns. Recently, the network effect worked its magic amongst my high school friends from Melbourne. Consequently, that isolated patch of purple at 11 to 12 o’clock is the high school arc.
The pink arc at one o’clock is the beginnings of my university dancesport crowd. Facebook has only just started to ripple through them. I don’t think that blob will get any bigger, though. I didn’t have that many friends at uni 🙂
At 2 to 3 o’clock, the Friend Wheel application decided to place my un-networked friends. There are a couple of people from my university course, work, other courses, and truly random acquaintances.
Which leaves the mass of lines from 3 to 10 o’clock. This is, of course, the Cambridge arc of people who sucked me into Facebook in the first place. Now, as far as I’m concerned, there should be four main groups: my coursemates, my scholarship friends, dancing people, and college people.
However, it’s a mess. The Friend Wheel app has revealed how interlinked everyone in Cambridge is. I really shouldn’t be surprised that scholarship people dance, and that coursemates are in college with scholarship people.
Oh, there is also an interesting blue blob at around half past nine. That’s the Oxford dancesport people. Even though I don’t know them, many of them ‘friended’ me after I released photos from the Varsity Match in May. It’s very easy to make friends on Facebook. Currently, I have 212.
You would think that the lines that cross from one side of the circle to the other would represent the most unexpected relationships. They do to some extent. However, the application has chopped my scholarship group in half and the internal links there represent much of the crossover. Hmm, now that I look at the names, I don’t know why the application has done that. There’s an island of scholarship people at 10 o’clock. Also, for some reason, the Oxford group has bisected my coursemates (divide and conquer?).
Hehe. Kevin Rudd is at 4 o’clock, surrounded by Aussie mates. That’s right. I’m officially friends with Kevin Rudd. I looked, but John Howard‘s not on Facebook. Maybe he has a MySpace (read Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace).
Damjan suggested someone could make a Venn diagram application for friends. That’s the mental model I’ve always had for my friendship groups. I have Venn brain. However, now that I’ve seen what a mess that lines make, I think circles would be an impossible ask.
Hahaha… hahaha… haha…
And major nostalgia here for those who ever played Street Fighter.
Our house celebrated Independence Day with a BBQ today. I stuffed myself silly with cookies, brownies, strawberries, pie, watermelon, zucchini bread and a concoction of orange, cottage cheese and whipped cream. Then, when dessert was done, I had a homemade hamburger and hot dogs, hot off the grill, plus a Southern pasta salad and American chilli. I am so sad that I am too full to eat any more food.
Vegetarian kebabs
Blueberry pie, which was declared, ‘America in food form’.
Sangría.
What Independence Day party would be complete without an American flag cake?
Janice let the couple progress through the hallway, the study and the living room. Soon enough, they had reached the kitchen, the heart of every house. The woman glided her hand over the granite bench top, nodding approvingly. The man gazed up the skylight, then pulled open the German-engineered oven.
‘Good morning,’ Janice said. ‘My name’s Janice. How do you like the house?’
‘It’s nice,’ the man noncommittally. ‘A new paint job in the hallway, I see.’
‘Yes,’ Janice replied. She was glad he had noticed. She had told the Cranfields it was an easy way to add £1500 to the asking price so they had it done three weeks ago. The paint smell was gone in time for house inspections. The Cranfields had also taken their agent’s advice and removed personal photos so that prospective buyers could more easily imagine themselves living here. There were fresh flowers in the house, too. Janice was a good agent. She knew what the punters wanted.
‘I like the natural light,’ the woman buyer said.
‘The skylight really does open up the space, doesn’t it?’ Janice enthused. ‘The owners also installed dimmable halogens. This really is a great lifestyle house. There’s a heated conservatory, and the media room, of course. And it’s close to shops.’ Janice recited this all with the perfect illusion of spontaneity.
‘I’m not sure about the halogens, Dean,’ the woman said, turning to the man. ‘Or the other lights. Halogens use up a lot of energy.’
Dean nodded. ‘Janice, are the lights the energy efficient types? What’s the SAP rating on the house?’
‘SAP rating…’ Janice felt her control of the situation begin to fray at the edges.
‘Yes, the energy rating of the house? The insulation are in the walls? What are the owners spending on energy? Is there a heat recovery system?’
‘Erm.’ Janice started shuffling through the promotional material, scanning for something about the ‘SAP rating’ or heat recovery.
‘Dean, can you ask about the heating controls too? We’ll want to keep the kids’ rooms warmer at night but turn down the temp in the study and guest room.’
Janice was rifling through the brochures a second time. ‘Ah, I’m sorry sir, madam. I don’t seem to have the information here but I’ll call the office now and see if I can get it. Could you hold on?’
The agent darted into the study to use her mobile phone.
‘Troy, what on earth is a SAP rating?… Build regs? You mean people care about that? … Sheesh, I can’t believe it. I’m sure Cass and Jim got asked the same thing last weekend… No, the lifestyle angle isn’t working, you’ll have to send the energy info… That’s three days away! …Oh, fine! Nothing we can do about it now. Bloody marketing. Gotta sell houses like cars these days.’
When Janice returned to the kitchen, the couple had opened up the boiler.
‘Forty kilowatts is a bit excessive for this size house but at least it’s a condensing boiler. More efficient than the electrics. I know this manufacturer, had some warranty issues five years ago but they seem to have sorted it out…’
‘Sorry for making you wait,’ said Janice. ‘We do have the energy information at head office. It’ll be here on Friday. Ah, if you leave me your details, I can post it to you or you could come back…’
The couple exchanged looks. ‘All right. Maybe we come back in a bit. We’ll look around a bit more, see a couple of houses.’
In the face of failure, Janice put on her most genuine smile. ‘Of course! And here’s my card. Give me a call if you think of anything.’