Melbourne Cup

from w
A lot of people get excited about a horse race but I like horses to be in the countryside and the whole shamozzle of the racing season is rather gormless I think. It's on the TV at present but I don't really care who wins.
----Later: actually it was a French horse that won, who had won the Geelong Cup last week. Only won by less than a nose.

To Footscray

from w
Yesterday our Port Phillip West Presbytery had a function at Footscray Uniting Church as a celebration of being a church of many cultures. So there was singing by groups of migrants who had come to Australia from South Sudan, Indonesia, Philippines, Tonga, Korea and other places. The Sudanese sang accompanied by two loud drums and the Korean singers were great, with a keyboard and guitar. We met old friends and made new friends. We were surprised to meet a couple who we'd known thirty years ago! Bernie and Marion Dunn. Bernie was once the resident policeman of Hopetoun who played a very cool trumpet those days! It was a very interesting church service and was followed by a delicious feast with food from many cultures. Peceli and I represented the Fiji community but our Fiji folk didn't bring along a choir. Maybe next time.

Symbols and mandorlas

from w,
When I was looking for pictures of mandalas for a church powerpoint project for next Sunday, I came across some down-loaded images of my mandorla paintings. A mandala is based on circles and a mandorla is based on two circles that overlap and this is a medieval symbol they say of the liminal space between opposites such as 'heaven' and 'earth'. A shape like an almond. Other use of symbols I used were an opal - a gem that is very Australian, and then I used different colours to represent earth, water, fire. However I don't think the folk in my home church would be much interested in these pictures. I've added a few other mandorla images found on google. One explanation of the mandorla as a Christian symbol is that Jesus is the man and Christ is the savior; the Mandorla is the point of Christ--the integration of Divinity (God the Father) and Jesus the man. I think this is an interesting concept. Also I am convinced that there are moments in life that are very special and where there is grace that is in such contrast to the mundane ordinariness of life i.e. between 'heaven' and 'earth'.

The launch of the Diversitat Hub

from w
Yesterday hundreds of people gathered at the site in North Geelong where once new migrants stayed in Nissun huts. Peceli and I went to the opening of the Hub which will be the focus for welcoming and training migrants and refugees to Geelong. A politician Simon Creen did the honours with a fine speech, a jazz band played - (students of one of Diversitat's music courses at the Pulse community radio station), and we were given a delicious lunch of barbecue and a variety of ethnic foods. We've been involved in the Geelong Migrant Resource Centre/now called Diversitat for many years and there are now 47 ethnic groups affiliated with this organisation which promotes multiculturalism in Australia. One of the photos shows the dignitories at the event: Pictured above at the Community Hub opening, from left to right: Mr Michael Martinez, CEO Diversitat, Darren Cheeseman MP, Member for Corangamite, Mr Chin Tan, Chairperson, Victorian Multicultural Commission, Dr Linda Sydor Petkovic, former Victorian Multicultural Commission, John Mitchell, Mayor, City of Greater Geelong, Simon Crean, Commonwealth Minister for Regional Australian Development and Local Government, John Eren MP, Member for Lara, Bridgette Carey, Project/Sponsorship Manager, Diversitat.

The Queen and her handbag

from w
We rarely see elderly women wearing block colour coat-dresses with buttons that never do up, hats that are not for warmth or to keep off the glaring sun, gloves, and carrying a shiny handbag these days. Our Australian women have a bit more informality. So what's in the Queen's handbag when she doesn't seem to need extra cash or a credit card? I am sorry that her 'look' is so old-fashioned because she could spruce up a treat with interesting skirts and tops and a mirror-work bag from India. And gloves are only for the deepest cold of winter surely! Also, she's hardly 'Commonwealth' in look. Okay, that's my whinge for today. She's in Australia and there are trips here and there for the Queen as well as the Chogm meet in Perth.

I found this article on-line which explains a few things.

Secrets of the Queen's handbag revealed in new book
10 OCTOBER 2007

She's rarely seen without an elegant handbag on her arm, but the question of what the Queen keeps inside it has long remained a mystery. Now a new book claims to shed light on the contents of the royal matriarch's main accessory. It also gives a fascinating insight into the routines and habits of her everyday life, including what she has for breakfast and the care arrangements for her beloved corgis.

What's In The Queen's Handbag: And Other Royal Secrets reveals that though the 81-year-old monarch doesn't carry cash, keys or a passport - since she doesn't own one - her bag is far from empty. Inside are a collection of good luck charms given to her by her children, including miniature dogs, horses and saddles, plus family snaps. The most treasured of which is a photo of Prince Andrew on his safe return from the Falklands in 1982.

Also inside the tote is a make-up case, given to her by Prince Philip as a wedding gift 60 years ago. It also houses an s-shaped metal meat hook which she places on the edge of the dinner table, from which to suspends her handbag, keeping it off the floor.

Other secrets shared in the book include the canny sign language she uses to communicate with her staff. If she places her handbag on the table at a dinner it signifies she wishes the event to finish in the next five minutes, whereas its presence on the floor indicates she feels the conversation leaves a little to be desired and she wants to be rescued by a lady-in-waiting.
--------
Now the Queen did look nice in bright pink for her day in Melbourne - a lovely colour and a good way to catch attention. I wonder though about the tram ride. She is an elderly lady, so what if she had slipped in climbing up and down. Buses have ramps for elderly people, but do trams?

trying out Gimp

from w
Gimp is a difficult kind of image program and I forget to save in jpeg images so I'm not getting far. Picasa is much more comfortable. Here are a few images I made - jungle kind of scenes which started off as a few photos of a palm tree in a friend's backyard - far away from a real jungle.

Parties all the weekend

from w
Yesterday our Fiji Friendship Club families had a barbecue and kava at lunchtime, then another party in the evening was at our home with guests from Melbourne, then today we hired a minibus for the nine of us and drove to a very beautiful area of Victoria called Greendale (where they made that film about the pig and the spider 'Charlotte's Web'). Tonight the gang are watching All Blacks playing France and the kava is flowing again. The party at Greendale was particularly lovely with a kind of family reunion - several generations of my side of the family, good food and conversation and fun in the dam for kids and some adults - boats and a flying fox.

Leunig says it all

from w
Today's cartoon in the Age supplement is by Michael Leunig who often provides a whimsical look on life, at other times is harder hitting. This one is rather good - as we all get annoyed by the spam mail offering us millions etc. etc. Click on picture to see large enough to read the words.

Fractals

from w
The other day I walked down Myers Street taking photos of fences, roof-tops, flowering shrubs and so on. From the images I played around with 'fractal' using Gimp, a program I am not very comfortable with but my son said it's very good and he had installed it. My photo-edit program got deleted one time and photo-shop was only for four weeks. So here are some results by overlapping images but using some images that have been fractalled - if there's such a word! The results are more surreal that ordinary!

Art Nouveau

from w
Perhaps I really belong in a past century as the kind of art I really like is Art Nouveau - from about 1890 to 1910 - the flat shapes, the romanticism, the shifts from nature to people, the curved lines, Klimp, Beardsley, book-plates of that time, stained glass. They seemed to be influenced by Japanese art as well as a kind of looking back to Camelot. Mostly they drew women, not men. Last week I picked up a book on Art Nouveau that was being recycled and perhaps I'll give it back again but not to the dumpster. Even the architect Gaudi is classified as 'art nouveau'.