Battery Recharge

Because Managers above me think I’ve nothing better to do than look after my 20 traffic signals maintenance staff they’ve ‘awarded’ me another project to run.  No pressure but please deliver a $25M speed camera batch project by the end of June.  “We’ve promised the Minister”. Oh, and while you’re at it please also run an accelerated program to install another 100 sites by the end of June as well.  An additional team of two supervisors, 8 techs and three assorted external contracting companies is what they’ve allotted and they’re already working double shifts to cope.  Sometimes I wonder if anyone with project delivery experience work upstairs.  Beyond my limited comprehension how these people got there.

I think I need some time back at the farm to recharge batteries.  Because I can, I’ll leave work my usual 1pm and head back over to Balmain to pick up the dogs, drive over to pick up Klara from her work, then we’ll both head up the freeway before schools kick out and traffic becomes a problem.  It’s going to be another physically demanding chain-gang weekend of planting.  The remaining 25 macadamias need sticking in the ground before autumn gets too far.   Fingers crossed if our absence (due to work) means they’ll survive without irrigation.

Autumn also means the back-breaking task of garlic planting.  Probably one of the worst things you can purchase from Woolies or Coles is garlic grown overseas.  AQIS is Australia’s quarantine body.  Even with the remotest chance of introducing overseas bugs, viruses or other assorted nasties means imported foodstuffs receive the full poison treatment to kill nasties off.  Garlic receives a healthy dose of meythyl bromide: an organophosphate poison that’s been phased out in the more civilised Countries in case consumers have long-term side effects.  I’ve even heard it said Libya and North Korea are considering banning its use.  This wasn’t the original reason we stated growing garlic but it’s now up there quite high.  The original reason is Chinese garlic tastes like shit.

So we grow our own.  Heaps of it.  If the harvest had been good to us back in December then we’d have enough to plant half an acre but, as it stands, the harvest gods didn’t smile and we’ve enough for about half that amount.  Or one week’s back-breaking labour.  And we’ve two days (excluding the macca planting).  Ho humm.

So, tomorrow I’ll raid Bunnings, collect three or four 25kg bags of chook shit, enough wooden stakes to make even Vlad the Impaler look tame, and about 100 litres of diesel to keep the tractor happy. 

A weekend of exquisite slave labour awaits. 

This is what actually recharges our batteries.  Generates 1.24Kw of power but only when the sun is on the array.  No sun = flat batteries within four days.  The nearest Country Energy grid supply is over a kilometre (way beyond the hill seen in the background) and $100K away.  And that’s the way we like it. 

Perfection

I do look forward to Andy Watson’s blog.  His is an unflinchingly honest approach in his journey of self analysis and the hunt for the perfection necessary to be graded a 6^th Dan.  He also writes exceedingly well and expresses matters far beyond my abilities.

Anyway, he wrote yesterday of an almost endorphin-induced satisfaction regarding his Iaido training the other night.  As an ex-runner (and now budoka) I wholly agree.  Casting my mind back to the running days there was almost always the “runner’s high” after any sort of distance.  The medical quacks might explain it away as a purely psychological response to a physiological imbalance but it doesn’t detract from the importance of the feeling in making you come back, time and time again to punish yourself on the hills, trails, track, etc.  But it wasn’t just the endorphins.  Not by any stretch.

There was a series of races called the Tour of Epping back in the early to mid 1990’s.  Five races spread over 5 consecutive days.  One of the races was called the Forest Run (or something like that) and wound its way in and around part of the Epping Forest.  Very hilly and almost like your worst nightmare Cross Country race.  A week after that run I drove miles back to the course just to try it alone in the relative heat of an English summer’s night before it got dark.  While trying to get the old legs pumping to climb one of the steep, dusty, dry muddy hills there was an immense thunderstorm and downpour.  Rivulets of water were pouring down off the hill past me as I slogged my way up and I could barely see for the sheets of rain or hear for the thunderclaps.  For some, to this day unfathomable reason, I was both in tears and laughter at the same time.  It was a crazy, profound and yet life affirmingly perfect moment.  As well as stupid in a thunderstorm of that severity, I guess, but yet the memory of that night will remain with me forever.

These days the crazy, profound and life affirming feelings are maybe not so endorphin induced as before but they’re still here.  There still here in the perfection of the moment.  The perfect sword cut (as opposed to the many of mine that aren’t).  They’re in the lesson finally learned after weeks of trying and a frustrating technique is finally mastered.  They’re here when I have to instruct and I see the penny drop in a student’s understanding as something is explained.  They’re here when the tasks of a work project finally come together.  They are also in that one or two fleeting moments of a duet where there is a tantalisingly perfect harmony before the singers depart off in an almost different melody.  They're always in some places I can predict and yet others sneak up on me, unbidden.

Strange blog, this one.

The Chain Gang

Cast your mind to the epic Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke where the antihero and his fellow chain gang crims toil in sweltering, unremitting heat.  That was yesterday and Saturday for us.

Back in October we wanted to buy another 50 Macadamia trees to plant in our orchard.  They weren’t ready then due to some probs with mineral deficiency in our supplier nursery’s orchard stock.  Well, he couldn't fix the deficiency so he would let us have about 70 plants for free.  All we had to do is roll up, collect them and plant them.  We would have spent about $800 normally but, as long as we knew the trees were not 100%, they were free (and would have been destroyed by him if we didn't collect them).

This weekend just gone we were on a planting mission.  Leaving work early on Friday afternoon we drove the five hours home to our ‘farm’ to arrive about 7pm.  Grass was up past our knees from not being there for 6 weeks so it was straight onto the ride-on (nicknamed ‘hardup’ because our farm keeps breaking it) to allow us to move around the outside.  This was the opening salvo in the battle for the weekend.

Saturday morning saw a battle joined proper in the far paddock.  Me on the tractor with slasher attached versus the grass around the existing macadamias.  I won, but only just.  At lunchtime Klara disappeared on a four-hour round trip to collect the new plants from our friendly nursery up in Nambucca-shire, leaving me to swelter.  It was like breathing soup with all that humidity.  That and the sun burned my office wallah legs under the tractor’s canopy.  Up down up down.  Dig that hole and move on.

Even driving to the far paddock is….interesting

Klara returned about 3pm and then we really got stuck into planting.  We managed 15 before the day ended or, to be more precise, we were beaten back by heat, thirst, humidity and fatigue.  Retiring to the shed we demolished some cold, cold VBs in consolation.

Yesterday we only managed another 30 plants before the clock said 3pm and the long drive back to Sydney beckoned.  For us the weekend war was over, we'd nothing left in the effort tank and the remaining trees would have to wait until early March.  The drive back to Sydney was a droopy eyed, stiff necked five hour slog.

Today, at my desk and staring down the barrel of yet another meeting, I’m in a different world.  Home, where my heart is, is on the chain gang.  Planting macadamias and working in conditions that triggered the Geneva Conventions.  Given a choice between Chain Gang and Traffic Signals and Speed Cameras, forced labour wins every time.    

Zanshin

With thanks to Richard Ward of Seishin Dojo, Melbourne, for sending me this picture taken during the National Seminar.

The engagement is almost over.  I ask myself if this is truly defeat.  Beaten by the jo’s counterattacks, is there one last technique I can use to salvage the situation?  The end of his weapon is threateningly close to my face and he’s watching me intently.  Unblinking.  If I attempt to cut him he’ll finish me off.

 I have no other course of action other than resign.

 Zanshin  

As with quite a few Japanese words there is no neat and single-word translation of the concept.  It more relates to an attitude of mind that boils down to “leftover spirit/continuing state of awareness/relaxed attention” once a combat (or kata) is over.  On an actual battlefield the person who relaxes his guard is the one who’s nominated himself as the next victim.  I find this frame of mind (and maintaining the mind-set) is the “icing on the combat cake”.  Utterly fascinating and compelling.

By the way, in his email, the abovementioned Richard Ward described me as the “fearsome looking Stuart”.  He’s wrong.  The moustache is fearsome and clearly the source of my zanshin….plus a few litres of dried beer, yesterday’s breakfast egg, a homeless family from Bangladesh……..

Things Europe and Sydney should be thankful for

France is a pretty big Country to drive through during a vacation.  But take the area of France, add to it the areas of Spain, the UK, Italy, Holland and Belgium and you’d still come up over 65,000 km² shy of the land occupied by the State of Queensland.

It’s a big State.  Few people live there and most of those that do live near the coast.  However, if you were to spread Queenslanders evenly throughout the State it equates to about 2.6 people for every square kilometre.  Shout cooee at the top of your voice and there’s a slim chance someone might hear you – but only slim.  Do the same thing in those Countries mentioned above, where the average density for every square kilometre is over 236 and at the very least you’d be slapped with a noise abatement order.  Or French lorry drivers might probably strike.

In the news, Queensland is slowly recovering from the worst flooding in recorded history.  Over ¾ of the State was declared a National Disaster Area with much of that region affected by short and long term flash flooding.  This equates to more than France, Spain, Holland and Belgium being under water.  And all their populations displaced.  That would be a lot of Europeans with nowhere to go. 

Flash flooding in Toowooba with woman on the bonnet of a car

Now, Northern Queensland is going to have to recover from huge category 5 Cyclone Yasi.    The sheer magnitude of the area affected by Yasi dwarfs even 2006’s Cyclone Larry where Larry, amongst other things, destroyed 80 – 90% of Australia’s banana plantations causing massive price hikes for foodstuffs grown in tropical Queensland.  When the dust settles after Yasi there is already the expectation prices will ramp up again.

Cyclone Yasi, off Northeastern Queensland

Here in Sydney we’ve only a heat wave to whinge about.  Come tomorrow we’ll have lived through a record continuous 6 days where the temperature in the CBD during daylight is way over 30 degrees.  At night, there’s an uncomfortable 25 + degrees to fitfully sleep through.  Another record.

In Sydney we have it almost as easy as Europe.

Damning evidence, Lot 1

Just before Christmas my local Koryu Jodo group had our usual last session before the break. Everyone had to perform a little "party piece" and, last minute, I was asked to exhibit some Iaido with someone else's sword.  It wasn't my intention to be great and technically perfect but the troops told me they were entertained with something different and that was good enough for me.

Well, a copy of the video footage from that demo didn't reach my grubby little mitts until yesterday but, after watching it this morning, I was absolutely horrified!  There are several major flaws in my display which I am sure cost me dearly last weekend.  From memory, they are the same ones which I viewed on our video camera after the semi-finals and which led me to a major rethink/redesign.

Life isn't better viewed through the benefit of a rearview mirror.  It's annoying!

Good and Bad Statistics

OK, I didn’t win in Melbourne!  Let’s get that out of the way right now.  Also, this is an analytical blog, not intended to entertain – boorrrrring.

Iaido

In my Shodan Iaido category we had an amazing number of sharp operators split between the two pools and each of the three judges must have had a hard time deciding which flag (red or white) to raise at the end of each bout.  Simple mathematics – you need two flags your colour to win the bout. Three would be a whitewash.

Steve Giffen of Victoria was in my half of the pool: he only lost one flag in the Shodan category and that was to me in the semi finals.  He cruised the Final by whitewashing the semi final winner of the other pool, 3-0.  I think Steve thoroughly deserved his 2-1 win against me and, true to form, I’ve already begun analysing footage to see what I could have performed better and where improvements are needed.  Call it Starting Early for 2012….. 

Statistics.  Of the three years I’ve been swinging a Japanese sword I’ve managed two semi finals and one final.  In all the years I’ve only ever lost to the eventual winner.  Small consolation and certainly not good enough to sit back in smug satisfaction.

Jodo

In the Shodan Jodo individuals I lost to Tom in the finals.  I like Tom.  He’s sincere, friendly, enthusiastic and also from Queensland (but I try not to hold that against him).  I’m not going to say much about the finals as they were held right at the end of a very hot, sticky day and it was very much a case of who could hold unwavering concentration when everyone was dog-tired.  After the Final Tom and I had a good laugh about how sloppy we both were.

New South Wales

As a State we did better than normal.  Three finalists (Bob Brown, Bosko Erak and myself), one semi finalist and one Encouragement/Fighting Spirt Award (which went to Klara!).

But, as a State, we’re not that strong in the National Jodo/Iaido scheme of things.  We just don't have the numbers and that critical-mass where good performers can feed off other good performers to achieve greater things.  Victoria (where people like Steve Giffen, Ben Sawers and Jarrod Sibbison hail from) and West Australia (Julia Chay, Pete Burge, to name just two) have strength in depth and this makes a tremendous impact. 

Unfortunately, for the quality of NSW jodoka/iaidoka, it boils down to a syllogism:

• If winning your comp equates to Charles Darwin’s “The Survival of the Fittest”

+

• And surviving the lower competition rounds can be likened to “That which does not kill you makes you stronger” (Freidrich Nietche)

• Then, inescapably, NSW needs stronger peer pressure to literally force you to improve – to win.

…..plus a goodly portion of Obsessive Compulsivity doesn’t go amiss…… ;-)

I’ll see if I can rob some photos from other people to post next time (and NOT harp on about sticks and swords).  Sermon over.