Which feels better, the appearance of a silver lining from a dark cloud or the bright sunshine in a cloudless sky?
We have now crossed the halfway
point of the year in several respects. The winter solstice was a couple of weeks ago and the days are finally starting to get longer. The calendar also supports of the notion; the seventh month has begun. In about two more weeks I will have completed three of the scheduled six two-month rotations of this fellowship. But it looks now that I will only be completing five of them, owed to the gestation of kid three (as opposed to kid Three, the beloved Trey), and owed to the increasing probability that there will be a job out there ready for me before January (Yeah, put your hands up in the aiyurr!). If it winds up that I only do five rotations, then the midpoint of this fellowship passed me by a couple of weeks ago!
So that puts us in the mindset of looking forward. Hmmm, the next six months: warmer weather, longer days, dining out on the patios of restaurants; and because it is on my mind due to planning vacation time, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and hopefully being back stateside for both. I excited by the prospect, but it looks like I will only have a week, maybe two, then a couple of long weekends free to see this huge country. If I don’t get to see much more than that, then the benefit of being here becomes only the hand fellowship. As a result, my dedication to get the most education out of each day is increased. Part of the reason the frequency of blogs has dropped off, for which I apologize… or take praise, however you see it.
Both days this weekend I got the chance to see parts of the city I had not gotten to before. Yesterday there was a workshop on dealing with fractures held at the University of New South Wales, located on the south side of the city. I decided to take the bicycle so that I could see more of the suburbs in between and to get some exercise, being that it has been a rather sedentary week. When you add in the time getting lost, it was about a 50 minute ride out, a little shorter coming back.
Thankfully, it has remained a beautiful weekend, despite what the weather reports had said earlier in the week, so the prospect of staying inside all day today was appalling. I got out for a run in the afternoon, heading out to the south toward the harbor. I headed down to an area west of the bridge that I have tended to overlook since it is separated from major routes by the railway, and it is out of the way for getting to any point B from point A. That and the fact that it is called Balls Head. But in its favor the nearby neighborhood looked pretty attractive through the glimpses from the train (on said railway), and the recent observation from a friend that it is probably the ideal location to take in the harbor, since the lookouts are directed east-southeast toward the Opera House, visible beneath the bridge. The sun is also more or less behind you in the evening, as it was when I was there, casting a fantastic golden light on the view.
I got down there and intended to hang out long enough to catch my breath and take in the view. It turned out that those two times weren’t compatible. I recuperated well before I had seen all that I wanted to see. The view was from about thirty feet above the shore and was quite serene, since much of the entire peninsula was free of construction. As sections of it still are, I suspect that it was used for government purposes even before a park was there. Additionally, both sides have coves consumed by marinas rather than residences. The result is solace, with heaps of greenery and a limited selection of sounds from the harbor—little waves lapping the shore; boats, but only those closeby; a few birds. And there were multiple levels in the rock for lookouts, picnic tables on the grassy flat spots, or just ledges for sitting.
For a while I watched all of the cheerful business on the water, thinking about Sydney from the perspective that it wouldn’t be long until I had moved back, but that all of this quotidian activity would continue, the sea planes giving tourists views of the harbors, the ferries quietly shuttling people from one pier to another, the jet boat giving thrill rides in the more open waters, water taxis taking those unwilling to take ferries to more specific destinations, the private yachts—with
or without sails—intermingling, the cruise ships sitting at dock in Circular Quay or in Darling Harbor, like the one there today. All of this activity that of course I could have hypothesized going on, and in fact you might have felt something amiss had those things not been going on, but it is a more real event when you have witnessed it. I thought about Will Mason and his family, as he completed his fellowship just this week. While he is still in the country, seeing the sights here and there for about a month, he no longer lives in Sydney. This must have been what he was talking about when he started to miss the city even a couple of days before he was done.
Before I had a chance to consider heading back, or wanted to take advantage of it, I noticed that the behemoth of a cruise ship had begun to move away from the dock. Now I sat at a coffee shop at the dock in England and watched, I think, this very ship depart from Auckland back in January (when I was there picking up the work visa from the Australian embassy), and it is neither a speedy nor easy task to set that ship in motion
I am sure there is a reason for each time they blare their horn on this ship, much like there is a pattern and timing to those on a train, but I have never heard what it is for a ship, so from my ignorant perspective, it is entertaining to imagine what impulse this patient captain of the ship has to reach for the handle. I can understand giving it a blast 30 and maybe 10 minutes before departure: y’all best get your butts on board, lest I leave’em here! Not too different from the indications used by soccer moms. But as he had been pulled/pushed away from the dock (I couldn’t see what was going on at sea level due to the intervening little Berry Island.), he gave another long blast, an impressive sound that was not harsh on the ears, but suddenly made the entire city seem much smaller, as they all must have heard it. In fact, I have never heard an echo last so long, perhaps twice as long as the blast itself, as if the sound waves had been stacking up on each other and just took that much longer to settle back down. It could have been fair warning to all those little or even moderately-sized boats in his blind spots that he had completed his twenty-minute u-turn and was now moving forward. Or it could have been sheer exhilaration that he had beaten Christmas!
I began to think that this horn was the captains toy, his one-note musical instrument when he let it resound about five minutes later. Earlier, as he had been making his turns, I realized that that boat might reach halfway up to the bottom of the Harbour Bridge. As he slowly—and I mean slowly—gained momentum, working his way out of Darling Harbour into the main body and toward the bridge, the margins began to disappear, to the point that, as the nose was likely going under the bridge, a handful of us gathered on the shaded lookout were held in suspense. You knew that the thing had to make it under; the captain must know these things everywhere he goes, and, heck, he had gotten in there so he must be able to get out. But it just didn’t look like he was going to make it, like the rotating antenna might smack it, or like the chimney stacks might collect some dents as they scraped underneath. What if they had let off a bunch of obese folks and taken on some skinnier ones? I couldn’t help but interrupt our collective silence with, “Donk!”
Now I don’t know if the captain was signaling to a water taxi that had moved into his blind spot, or if he was just announcing his presence to all of those who hadn’t realized that he had been
hiding on the other side of the Central Business District, but I heard the mariners’ equivalent of a trumpeting elephant that traipsed off into the jungle, out of sight. I could also picture the captain reaching impulsively for the handle of that horn, sounding the triumph in cruiseship limbo.
I headed back up toward St. Leonards, wondering if they would have changed the name of Balls Head had people been allowed to live there. But as for the first question, I think that the answer is the silver lining rather than the sunshine. Everything feels better, and that is better than when things feel good but you don’t realize it. It’s just that it takes you to the ugly conclusion that you need the clouds now and again.
We have now crossed the halfway
point of the year in several respects. The winter solstice was a couple of weeks ago and the days are finally starting to get longer. The calendar also supports of the notion; the seventh month has begun. In about two more weeks I will have completed three of the scheduled six two-month rotations of this fellowship. But it looks now that I will only be completing five of them, owed to the gestation of kid three (as opposed to kid Three, the beloved Trey), and owed to the increasing probability that there will be a job out there ready for me before January (Yeah, put your hands up in the aiyurr!). If it winds up that I only do five rotations, then the midpoint of this fellowship passed me by a couple of weeks ago!So that puts us in the mindset of looking forward. Hmmm, the next six months: warmer weather, longer days, dining out on the patios of restaurants; and because it is on my mind due to planning vacation time, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and hopefully being back stateside for both. I excited by the prospect, but it looks like I will only have a week, maybe two, then a couple of long weekends free to see this huge country. If I don’t get to see much more than that, then the benefit of being here becomes only the hand fellowship. As a result, my dedication to get the most education out of each day is increased. Part of the reason the frequency of blogs has dropped off, for which I apologize… or take praise, however you see it.
Both days this weekend I got the chance to see parts of the city I had not gotten to before. Yesterday there was a workshop on dealing with fractures held at the University of New South Wales, located on the south side of the city. I decided to take the bicycle so that I could see more of the suburbs in between and to get some exercise, being that it has been a rather sedentary week. When you add in the time getting lost, it was about a 50 minute ride out, a little shorter coming back.
Thankfully, it has remained a beautiful weekend, despite what the weather reports had said earlier in the week, so the prospect of staying inside all day today was appalling. I got out for a run in the afternoon, heading out to the south toward the harbor. I headed down to an area west of the bridge that I have tended to overlook since it is separated from major routes by the railway, and it is out of the way for getting to any point B from point A. That and the fact that it is called Balls Head. But in its favor the nearby neighborhood looked pretty attractive through the glimpses from the train (on said railway), and the recent observation from a friend that it is probably the ideal location to take in the harbor, since the lookouts are directed east-southeast toward the Opera House, visible beneath the bridge. The sun is also more or less behind you in the evening, as it was when I was there, casting a fantastic golden light on the view.
I got down there and intended to hang out long enough to catch my breath and take in the view. It turned out that those two times weren’t compatible. I recuperated well before I had seen all that I wanted to see. The view was from about thirty feet above the shore and was quite serene, since much of the entire peninsula was free of construction. As sections of it still are, I suspect that it was used for government purposes even before a park was there. Additionally, both sides have coves consumed by marinas rather than residences. The result is solace, with heaps of greenery and a limited selection of sounds from the harbor—little waves lapping the shore; boats, but only those closeby; a few birds. And there were multiple levels in the rock for lookouts, picnic tables on the grassy flat spots, or just ledges for sitting.
For a while I watched all of the cheerful business on the water, thinking about Sydney from the perspective that it wouldn’t be long until I had moved back, but that all of this quotidian activity would continue, the sea planes giving tourists views of the harbors, the ferries quietly shuttling people from one pier to another, the jet boat giving thrill rides in the more open waters, water taxis taking those unwilling to take ferries to more specific destinations, the private yachts—with
or without sails—intermingling, the cruise ships sitting at dock in Circular Quay or in Darling Harbor, like the one there today. All of this activity that of course I could have hypothesized going on, and in fact you might have felt something amiss had those things not been going on, but it is a more real event when you have witnessed it. I thought about Will Mason and his family, as he completed his fellowship just this week. While he is still in the country, seeing the sights here and there for about a month, he no longer lives in Sydney. This must have been what he was talking about when he started to miss the city even a couple of days before he was done.Before I had a chance to consider heading back, or wanted to take advantage of it, I noticed that the behemoth of a cruise ship had begun to move away from the dock. Now I sat at a coffee shop at the dock in England and watched, I think, this very ship depart from Auckland back in January (when I was there picking up the work visa from the Australian embassy), and it is neither a speedy nor easy task to set that ship in motion
I am sure there is a reason for each time they blare their horn on this ship, much like there is a pattern and timing to those on a train, but I have never heard what it is for a ship, so from my ignorant perspective, it is entertaining to imagine what impulse this patient captain of the ship has to reach for the handle. I can understand giving it a blast 30 and maybe 10 minutes before departure: y’all best get your butts on board, lest I leave’em here! Not too different from the indications used by soccer moms. But as he had been pulled/pushed away from the dock (I couldn’t see what was going on at sea level due to the intervening little Berry Island.), he gave another long blast, an impressive sound that was not harsh on the ears, but suddenly made the entire city seem much smaller, as they all must have heard it. In fact, I have never heard an echo last so long, perhaps twice as long as the blast itself, as if the sound waves had been stacking up on each other and just took that much longer to settle back down. It could have been fair warning to all those little or even moderately-sized boats in his blind spots that he had completed his twenty-minute u-turn and was now moving forward. Or it could have been sheer exhilaration that he had beaten Christmas!
I began to think that this horn was the captains toy, his one-note musical instrument when he let it resound about five minutes later. Earlier, as he had been making his turns, I realized that that boat might reach halfway up to the bottom of the Harbour Bridge. As he slowly—and I mean slowly—gained momentum, working his way out of Darling Harbour into the main body and toward the bridge, the margins began to disappear, to the point that, as the nose was likely going under the bridge, a handful of us gathered on the shaded lookout were held in suspense. You knew that the thing had to make it under; the captain must know these things everywhere he goes, and, heck, he had gotten in there so he must be able to get out. But it just didn’t look like he was going to make it, like the rotating antenna might smack it, or like the chimney stacks might collect some dents as they scraped underneath. What if they had let off a bunch of obese folks and taken on some skinnier ones? I couldn’t help but interrupt our collective silence with, “Donk!”
Now I don’t know if the captain was signaling to a water taxi that had moved into his blind spot, or if he was just announcing his presence to all of those who hadn’t realized that he had been
hiding on the other side of the Central Business District, but I heard the mariners’ equivalent of a trumpeting elephant that traipsed off into the jungle, out of sight. I could also picture the captain reaching impulsively for the handle of that horn, sounding the triumph in cruiseship limbo.I headed back up toward St. Leonards, wondering if they would have changed the name of Balls Head had people been allowed to live there. But as for the first question, I think that the answer is the silver lining rather than the sunshine. Everything feels better, and that is better than when things feel good but you don’t realize it. It’s just that it takes you to the ugly conclusion that you need the clouds now and again.
As for the photos, I included these from a flight back to NZ in November, showing the harbor from above at about the right angle, just set back a few dozen kilometers; and the last demonstrating how much worse the view of the bridge and opera house is from the east.
