Clean all the things?

This was me just over a week ago:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

I was on a spring cleaning spree, determined to get our home completely clean and uncluttered.

This is me now:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

My energy levels are depleted, and I seem to have reached the point where everything I need to do is dependent on getting something else done first.  It's all intertwined.  I want to get everything done NOW but I don't know where to start.  It's very frustrating.

But I am not admitting defeat.  I've still got two months of spring to achieve my spring cleaning goal.  I will earn my trophy of adult responsibility!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

 

 And I'll never let it go!

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

 

In the meantime, here's some more motivation I just found:

http://greenpop.tumblr.com/post/5006232853

I don't like housework, but I do love that feeling of relaxing in a clean house!  The last project on my list is to clean up our balcony - sweep up all the leaves, get rid of the dead plants, clean the plastic chairs.  When that's done, I plan to sit out there on a lovely warm evening (daylight savings is starting soon, after all!), with my bird pattering around at me feet (he needs a place to wander around, and he can't fly away, since he's missing half a wing - poor birdy) and enjoy some Bulmer's cider that I've had in the fridge since last summer.  Can't wait!

Jane Eyre's Natural Theology

http://www.film-intel.com/2011/09/jane-eyre-cinema-review.html

"Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear.  We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence...  Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky Way.  Remembering what it was - what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light - I felt the might and strength of God.  Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured.  I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits."

- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 2006, pp. 324-5)

Clean all the things!

Last year there was a particularly profound post on Hyperbole and a Half to which I could relate entirely (except for the swearing and the surfing of the internet at 3:17am.  I need my sleep.)  I would love to have my life completely ordered - to keep my inbox clear (and actually reply to emails before a month or two has elapsed), to stay on top of paperwork and various errands, to be productive with my academic work and to keep my home clean and tidy.  Like Allie from Hyperbole and a Half, I write up schedules and make resolutions, but it never lasts.

When I first got married and we moved into our rented unit, I was enjoying the domesticity.  I do appreciate a clean home, and at first I didn't mind the housework.  But I still remember clearly the moment I realised that the housework was never going to end, and that every week for the rest of my life, I would have to clean the bathroom, dust and vacuum, wash the floors...  It was a little depressing, and made me feel tired just thinking about it.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

Fast forward three years: we're in our own unit.  Generally, we keep the place pretty clean and tidy, but there are many things that have been bothering me for a very long time.  These things are beyond the scope of the standard house cleaning procedure, and require extra energy and motivation.  For example:

• window frames that probably haven't been cleaned since this place was built 30 years ago and are caked with dirt that can't be removed without vigorous application of a toothbrush
• a wardrobe stuffed with clothes I don't wear but might one day
• tchotchkes cluttering bookshelves
• books that aren't arranged by genre, author and year of publication
• scuff marks on walls
• dust bunnies behind furniture
• windows so dirty you can hardly see through them (cleaning windows on the 3rd floor is not easy...)
• overflowing filing cabinet
• plastic crates full of thesis drafts and random papers

On Friday of last week, I was sitting on the lounge after lunch trying to find the motivation to give the house a basic clean, after which I was going to get out my sewing machine and have some fun.  Once I got started, however, I just couldn't stop.  I just kept finding more and more things to clean.  The mirrors in the bedroom are a bit smudgy - better give those a clean.  Since I've got these glass/mirror cleaning cloths out, I may as well clean the windows too.  And while I'm cleaning the glass, wouldn't this be a good opportunity to finally get rid of all that caked-on dirt along the bottom of the window frame?  I'm vacuuming, so I should move all the furniture and get rid of the dust that's collected behind.  But the chest of drawers is too heavy to move with the drawers still in, and if I'm taking them out, I may as well tidy those too.

It seems I've caught spring cleaning fever and I'm not going to stop until our entire home is uncluttered and cleaned thoroughly from top to bottom.  Matt didn't realise just how serious I was about the "thoroughly from top to bottom" clause until he emerged from the bedroom after sleeping in on Saturday morning to find me dusting his collection of role-playing character models with a toothbrush.

So, this is me at the moment:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

The sewing machine is still in the study, and I've only cleaned the bedroom and living room so far.  That's ok.  I'm looking forward to having a perfectly clean and ordered home.  I just hope the spring cleaning fever lasts until all the things are clean!

#23 - Go bike riding

In 2006, as part of one of my conference trips to Europe (the best thing about doing a PhD!) I spent about a week in Paris with my lovely friend Katrina.  One of the highlights was visiting Monet's house and garden at Giverny.  Giverny is a little way out of Paris - we caught the train and then had the option of taking a bus or riding bikes to Monet's house.  We deliberated long enough to miss the bus, and so the decision was made for us.  And then I discovered that it is possible to forget how to ride a bike!  At first, I could hardly stay upright.  We walked our bikes through the centre of town, but once we were out on the road, I was completely freaked out.  I just tried to ride in a straight line as close as possible to the edge of the road and hoped that cars and trucks would just go around me.  It was such a relief to get off the road onto a bike track, although I was still holding onto the handlebars so tightly that my hands barely worked for several days afterwards.

Here, Katrina was taking photos of me as I rode the bike towards her.  You can see my complete inability to ride in a straight line!

This is a recreation of my crash.  I was riding towards this gate, and somehow could not avoid hitting the post, at which point I completely lost control and the bike fell over.  Not to worry - I wasn't hurt, so I got back on the bike and we kept going towards Monet's house (which was just beautiful!).

Despite my crash, and the bruises on the back of my legs from when my feet kept slipping off the pedals, I enjoyed bike riding in Giverny, and so I'd been wanting to try it again.  I convinced my lovely friend Danielle to come with me to Centennial Park, where we hired bikes and set off to ride around the bike track.  About 50m from where we hired the bikes, I managed to lose control.  The front wheel of the bike hit a step, stopped abruptly, and I went flying over the handlebars, gaining some pretty spectacular bruises in the process.  But we kept going, and made it around the park 3 times before we decided it was time for chocolate at Max Brenner's!  Next time I'm thinking of trying Bicentennial Park - the route around Centennial Park is just too short!

#15 - Go paragliding

This is a bit of a cheat, since I added this one to my list after the event, and before I actually turned 30.  Although it was a spur of the moment thing, it was my 30th birthday present from Matt, so it seems appropriate to include it here.

As part of our conference/family visit/holiday around New Zealand earlier this year, Matt and I spent a couple of nights in Queenstown.  The main thing we were planning to do there was the gondola and luge.  We'd seen lots of people paragliding, since our accommodation was not far from the base of the mountain.

When we were up on the mountain, I commented to Matt that it looked fun, and I was tempted to have a go.  Matt said I should, and it could be my 30th birthday present.  I deliberated for quite awhile - should I do it?  Will I be too scared?  Am I too heavy?  Is it too expensive?  Aw, but it would be fun!  But I'm scared!  This went on for quite awhile, but Matt is very good and knows me very well, and knew just how much encouragement was appropriate without pushing me into something I didn't really want to do.  So I did it.  And it was awesome!

While we were waiting for my turn, I was going to SMS my parents to tell them I was about to go paragliding, but I thought I'd better wait until I was down safely!  It turned out they didn't think it was too bad (although when we were in NZ for a family holiday years earlier Mum wasn't keen for my brother to go parasailing) - Mum was apparently jealous!

One of my PhD friends had gone skydiving while we were both still working on our theses, and she said it was a great boost to her confidence - if she could jump out of a plane, she could do anything!  Paragliding is not quite jumping out of a plane - not even jumping off a mountain as much as just getting blown off the mountain!

#9 - Have lunch at the Balmoral Bathers' Pavilion

When I finally submitted my PhD thesis for examination, after five and a half long years, my parents offered to take Matt and I somewhere special to celebrate.  After perusing the menus of several fancy restaurants, I decided on the Bathers' Pavilion, Balmoral.  My parents had been there before, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  And we were not disappointed when we went there together in August 2009.  I thought it was the best food I'd ever had at a fancy restaurant (except, perhaps, for Restaurant Balzac).  Even Matt enjoyed it, and he doesn't normally enjoy such fancy food.

My parents, being the incredibly lovely and generous people that they are, took Matt and I back to Balmoral to celebrate my 30th birthday earlier this year.  We had lunch on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and once again, the food, service and the view were amazing!

Entree

Main Course

Dessert

Petit Fours

Petit Fours boxed up to take home, since we were full!

#7 - Have cocktails at a bar I haven't been to before

As part of my extended 30th birthday celebrations, some lovely ladies joined me for cocktails and tapas at the Orbit Bar.  Foolishly, I did not take many photos - just one, of my first cocktail for the night, a Tom Collins.

I also had a gin martini with a twist.  Must be an acquired taste, given that some of my friends said it tasted like perfume.

30 Things To Do When I’m 30 - final list

Crafty

1. Sew a quilt
2. Sew a skirt
3. Sew a dress
4. Crochet slipper socks
5. Knit a scarf

Food

6. Eat at a restaurant I haven’t been to before
7. Have cocktails at bar I haven’t been to before
8. Have fish & chips on the beach at Manly
9. Have lunch at The Bather's Pavilion, Balmoral Beach
10. Go to a winery

Travel/Fun

11. Go to a craft market and/or craft fair
12. Go to the zoo
13. Go to Melbourne for a weekend
14. Travel some place I haven’t been before
15. Go paragliding

Organisation

16. Have all completed cross-stitches framed
17. Choose photos for wedding album
18. Print honeymoon photos and put in album (or make photo book)
19. Unclutter my life
20. Have my PhD degree framed

Health/Active

21. Reach goal weight
22. Go bushwalking
23. Go bike riding
24. Complete C25k
25. Complete Sutherland to Surf and City to Surf (walking counts)

Work/Intellectual

26. Submit an article to a journal
27. Submit a book proposal
28. Implement “Getting Things Done”
29. Read Wolfhart Pannenberg's Systematic Theology (at least vol. 1)
30. Read entire Bible in King James Version

Science and Religion: Letters to the SMH

On Friday I wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, anticipating narky responses if the letter was published (like those I received when I wrote that people in the medieval period believed the earth was round). The letter wasn't published, so I'll post it here, in case anyone is interested:

Why is it so hard to accept that someone can “believe” in science as well as in a creator God? The foundations of modern science were laid by people, such as Johannes Kepler and Robert Boyle, who not only believed in God but saw their scientific work as an act of worship and priesthood. Whereas church priests explained the book of God’s word (the Bible) to their parishioners, scientists interpreted the book of God’s works (nature). The existence of God, by definition, is beyond the scope of natural science, but science is not the only form of knowledge. It is quite easy for a religious person to believe that God created the universe, but to look to science to find out how he did so.

Here's the original letter that started this thread of correspondence:

Gerard Henderson's article, "Jews know acceptance still has its exceptions" accuses me personally, and the left in general, of waging a sectarian war on Tony Abbott.
Mr Abbott's obstructionist approach and dog whistle politics are ample material to criticise his contribution to public policy debate without stooping to involve his religious beliefs - which as a Catholic myself, I happen to share.
Our current television campaign, ''Great Deniers'', uses humour to point out the absurdity of those remaining few who still deny the scientific consensus on climate change.
By using examples from the past of ridiculous denial (notably the idea the world is round, not flat), the campaign aims to point out that climate change sceptics will be judged as fools by history.
The point here is climate change, not religion. Denial, not belief. It highlights the absurdity of Mr Abbott's position on this topic and on no other aspect of him.
As a Catholic, I'm fed up with the conservative right claiming a monopoly on Christian beliefs and carrying them heavily on their sleeve.
The carbon price is an incredibly important issue. At stake is the future of our great nation.
Mr Abbott and Mr Henderson should have the courage to engage in this debate rather than trying to detract from the issue with irrelevant shadows.
-Tony Maher National president, CFMEU

And the particular letter to which I was responding:

If you believe in science you can't cherry pick to suit your own convenience. Tony Maher (Letters, July 14) professes to be a believing Catholic while at the same time embracing the scientific consensus on climate change.
At the core of Catholicism - and almost all other religions - is the hypothesis of a creator god. Why, Tony, do you not also accept the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence against creationism? Are those early years of indoctrination too hard to shake off?
- Mike Phillips Wollstonecraft

Here's the letter that was published instead of mine (it is a better letter):

Mike Phillips (Letters, July 15) suggests that Tony Maher has engaged in cherry picking of his beliefs and that there is an inconsistency between accepting climate change science on the one hand and belief in a creator god on the other.
As many theistic scientists will attest, it's a false dichotomy to pit God against science. Scientific inquiry looks at the world and how it works, while theology looks behind the curtain and wonders why it all exists to begin with.
One might look at how the world began, the other at why and by whom the world began. The two disciplines ask and answer completely different questions about life.
Cherry picking? I don't think so. But Mike Phillips might be comparing apples with oranges.
- Andrew Miers Bardwell Valley

And finally one more that was published today:

Your correspondent Mike Phillips (Letters, July 15) would do well to check his facts before rushing into print. Some Catholics do not believe in ''creationism'' - presumably the belief in a literal six days of creation, given this is the usual meaning of the term.
In the first decade of the 20th century the then authoritative Catholic Encyclopedia concluded that Catholics should have no difficulty with Darwin's theory of the evolution of species. More recently Pope John Paul II declared evolution ''more than a hypothesis''.
On the cosmological front the theory of the Big Bang, that the universe originated in a massive ''explosion'' some 15 billion years ago, was first proposed by the Jesuit physicist Georges Lemaitre. Many of his colleagues rejected the idea, despite the evidence, because it seemed too irreligious (sic?) a notion for them. So Catholics have no concern at all about the ''overwhelming weight of scientific evidence against creationism'' and would in fact agree with the science on this matter.
And on global warming, both Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI have warned of impending environmental catastrophe and the Vatican state is committed to being carbon neutral.
- Professor Neil Ormerod Faculty of theology and philosophy, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield

I'm wondering if "irreligious" in the third paragraph is a typo - I was under the impression that Lemaitre's physicist colleagues initially rejected the idea of the Big Bang because it seemed too religious, rather than too irreligious. Demonstrating that the universe had a definite beginning, after all, may leave open the question of what/who caused that beginning.

My nephew - Isaac Samuel

Isn't he just beautiful?!  Unfortunately for his family, he is not always this content.  My brother Tim has blogged about their experiences with Isaac here.  You can even see a video of what Isaac is like most of the time.

Methodological Naturalism

If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism – the philosophical position that restricts all explanations in science to naturalistic explanations -  it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic. More and more evidence could come in suggesting that a supernatural being exists, but scientific theories wouldn’t be allowed to acknowledge that possibility.
- Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (quote found here)

I'm more inclined to think that the reason scientific theories don't acknowledge God's existence is that God is not part of the natural world.  Science studies the creation; theology studies the Creator.  I'm discovering that I lean more and more towards an instrumentalist (not sure if I'm quite a social constructivist) view of science.  The purpose of science is to understand and explain the world in particular kinds of terms - "natural" ones - so that we can do our best to control nature, or at least to improve our experience in this world.  I do still believe in truth - ultimately, there is one true understanding/explanation of nature - I just doubt humanity's ability to find it, and to know that we've found it.

NZ, Part 5: Oreti Beach

We were privileged to experience the hospitality of many members of Matt's family in New Zealand: home cooked dinners, accommodation, and great company.  We stayed with Matt's uncle and aunt on their farm near Invercargill, enjoying a dinner of home grown lamb, vegetables and salad; home made blackcurrant syrup with home made soda water; home made meringues and lemon curd for dessert.  After dinner, they drove us onto Oreti Beach - not just to the beach, but on to the sand.  We went for a walk despite the cold, watching a kite surfer and taking photos of the sunset and other random things, like seaweed, driftwood and Millie's paw prints.

Sunset from Matt's iPhone

Sunset from my camera

Fascinating seaweed

NZ, Part 4: Slope Point

After leaving Dunedin, we headed down to Invercargill, taking a scenic route through the Catlins.  Unfortunately the weather was not great, and we were trying to avoid taking the rental car on gravel roads, but we did take a detour to Slope Point, the southernmost point of the South Island of New Zealand.  The path to the lookout runs through a sheep paddock (closed during lambing) and it was a very windy and very cold walk.

 

NZ, Part 3: Around Dunedin

Our time in Dunedin was quite busy.  I was at the conference and a subsequent workshop for 6 days in total, and we had a lot of family to see.  On my one completely free day (except for a family dinner), we toured the Cadbury factory, had an early lunch, and then I wandered off to occupy myself for the afternoon with things that Matt wasn't particular interested in.

Firstly I went to the Otago Museum to see butterflies in the rainforest exhibit:

Then I wandered towards Baldwin Street, reputedly the steepest street in the world.

The oldest Anglican church in Dunedin

And I walked all the way to the top of Baldwin Street - some beautiful views!

At the top of Baldwin Street

NZ, Part 2: University of Otago

This was the second conference I had attended at the University of Otago in Dunedin.  A very pretty campus, and very different from universities in Sydney - no real boundary between the campus and the rest of the city.  Here are a couple of photos I took in December 2005, and a couple of the same place in February 2011.

2005

2011

2005

2011

NZ, Part 1: Larnach Castle

Matt and I recently returned from a holiday in New Zealand.  The initial impetus for the trip was a conference I wanted to attend at the University of Otago in Dunedin, but it was also a good opportunity to see some of Matt's family and to do some sight-seeing together.

As part of the conference, we had the option to participate in an excursion to Larnarch Castle (or "the camp", as it was known by its original owner.)  It was almost worth it just for the bus trip up to the castle - some really lovely views of Dunedin and entertaining commentary from the bus driver.  The tour of the castle was fascinating, though a little sad - the story of the family who originally built the castle was rather tragic.  The castle was purchased in 1967 by a couple called the Barkers.  It was in a state of complete disrepair, but Margaret Barker lovingly and painstakingly restored the house and the grounds.

After a tour of the house and climbing the tower, we had tea, scones and shortbread in the ballroom, and then wandered through the beautiful gardens.

View from the tower - a hazy shade of Dunedin

"The Camp"

Thistle