Who gets the most?

I just came across this dress advertised on MyCatWalk.com.au. The price is $435 and it’s designed by Ginger & Smart. So what?

Ginger & Smart $435 dress

This dress is a T-shirt with some pieces of silk chiffon sewn onto it! That’s all! Why is it $435 and who gets the lion’s share? I’m sure I’ve seen similar dresses online from overseas made from the same materials with similar simple style and they are something like $30 to $40 (au). Sure our labour is more pricy but we don’t even get to buy this dress at $100 here- it’s $400+. Obviously the designer should get something and the shopkeeper needs a little to keep them in business. The transport on one dress could not be huge, particularly if it weighs only 200 grams max- silk is almost lighter than air! So, who gets the most? I’d be interested to hear from people in the know!

I can’t afford anything, really, as I have no independent income any more, but I could probably justify spending $30 on a nice fine cotton T-shirt and another $30 on some silk chiffon. If I looked for the cheapest silk chiffon and didn’t mind the print, it might be considerably cheaper, eg. at XS Fabrics, which are virtually around the corner from my place. However, they have bolt ends etc. from designers who have used all they need for a range, so there is not much choice in what’s left. However, it’s massively cheap for some things.

This butterfly wing print has beautiful colours but it’s a little pricier than I would like, although it wouldn’t bother most people: $28/metre. There are lovely plain colours for only $16, so they’re a possibility. You would need more than a metre for most sizes, but not a lot more- depends on your height, mainly. I could see this print pairing beautifully with a black, red or lemon yellow T-shirt. [Hint: If you can find a men's T-shirt in a fine, soft summer weave, you'll get more length so you won't need an underslip.]

Butterfly print silk chiffon

Any half-competent sewer could make this dress at home: The T-shirt might be shaped a little at the waist if you like that and then the chiffon cut carefully, using the T-shirt as a template [or making a paper pattern from it]. You can see how the front chiffon panel is attached upside down at a position just below the neck and then pressed down over the seam. Look on the original site and you’ll see lots of detail if you zoom in. The back has some further pieced sections, but you could achieve the same overall impression repeating the front arrangement.

As long as you finished edges and seams super-neatly and ironed carefully, this dress could be yours in one afternoon!

I’m almost tempted to have a go- I wonder what XS Fabrics have in store to whet my appetite? Maybe that soft brown palm tree on the white background…hmm.

I’m glad I’m not Matthew Newton

The local press have been full of comment and criticism about an interview of a minor Australian “star” [Matthew Newton] by a popular current affairs reporter [Tracey Grimshaw]. The main division is between people who think Matthew was brave and is doing others a favour by “coming out”, and others who think Matthew should be held responsible for and explain his “domestic violence”, committed while apparently ill. [He assaulted and injured two former girlfriends, Brooke Satchwell and Rachel Taylor and has faced court over these incidents]. Many insist that he has a bad personality disorder and is just simulating mentall illness in order to get away from assault charges, including a psychiatrist and a Mental Health Case Manager! [see the comments on the Meshel Laurie article].

Here is a link to the TV interview: http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/celebrity/8377461/matthew-newtons-tell-all-interview

Here is the article by Meshel Laurie containing some rather negative views about Matthew Newton. Matthew Newton: The day after.

Lastly, my response to the interview and article:

I thought Matthew Newton was very brave to admit his illness and shortcomings in the interview. Tracy obviously didn’t understand his type of mental illness by the way she asked her questions, but he coped admirably in the segments shown. IMHO Matthew didn’t go into the domestic violence/assaults in any detail because he simply has no memory of the details of the incidents. That what usually happens in the “brain storm” of a psychotic “frenzy”. The brain is firing off in all directions and anything that might have become a memory is totally mixed in with the feeling and actions going on at the same time. He could well be very shocked at what he did to those unlucky women because he seems a gentle and reticent soul by nature. I suggest that he may have written or recorded apologies and explanations privately or intends to do so with advice from his lawyer. I don’t think he would be the sort of person to write it all off as bad luck for Brooke & Rachel- his personality seems full of shame & guilt and depression about his lack of “perfection” and feeling he hasn’t measured up to his parents’ expectations. He is an adult, his former partners are adults and I think we should let them deal with their previous troubles privately and whenever they choose- it’s none of our business nor Tracy’s.
Matthew appearing on TV and describing his symptoms will help other young people to “come out” and/or seek help for their own mental difficulties they will identify with him and may tend to follow his example in seeking longer term help. On the other hand some aspects of the interview could have been frightening to parents and friends of people with similar diagnoses to Matthew’s. With bipolar or manic depressive illness it IS true that the sufferer will have the problem for life, it’s almost impossible to predict manic or depressive episodes and the medications can control it, but not cure it. I don’t think Tracy made it clear enough that Matthew was NOT cured and will never be cured of the psychotic condition, but could fully recover from the OCD.  I wish she had asked him about having friends and supportive people around him that he is NOT in an emotional relationship with, as these sorts of people are essential to living life with mental illness in the community.

Lastly, why would anybody [even someone with money to spare- which I doubt Matthew would have after his manic episodes] spend 7 months cooped up in a small psychiatric hospital with their daily activities continually supervised and scrutinised, if they didn’t need to? You wouldn’t get me staying there more than 2 nights with a bunch of other troubled and miserable people (no offence intended)- and I DO have a mental illness [major depression]. Think carefully, critics.

Rather annoyed

I love looking at the photographic art shared via Google Plus. In fact, I have 1396 people to select from if I browse my Photog People Circle! What annoys me is the fact that there are people on Google Plus who display wonderful photos, but the photos have been taken by a third party.

The person who annoys me most is Nasrin Mohebbian, who posts many photos per day. Sure, some of them are reposts and so have the name of the original artist on them. Other posts can only be traced to their owners via url links on the images themselves and others are very difficult to trace except by performing a Google Image search.

I have reported this behaviour, but with only temporary results. Also, I have had an exchange with Nasrin about acknowledging the true artists, but that hasn’t made her change her practice towards always naming the person.

Today Nasrin posted a lovely set of images of autumn-toned roses, without naming the original artist. I managed to trace the owner through a Google Image search, arriving at *lieveheersbeestje on deviant.art

Here is *lieveheersbeestje’s photo Autumn Morning:

Autumn Morning

Isn’t that beautiful, gentle and finely executed? If I had taken that photo, I’d want people to know I had and I’d hope a few people might like to buy a copy to display, or as a card. Nasrin hasn’t entertained this possibility as she has made it too hard for the average viewer to reach the source.

What do you think of this sort of behaviour?

My excuse

OK- I haven’t kept up with NaBloPoMo this month, in spite of my ambitions. Life threw me a bit of a curler. Two people I knew happened to die on the anniversary of my mum’s death and I got all discombobulated.

One person died peacefully in his sleep after many years of heart problems, plus having a burst blood vessel in his brain in 2009. At that time the doctors decided to let him go peacefully but his son (who is actually my good friend, not the old guy) persuaded them that he was quite functional – running his own little computer network at home, chatting on Facebook to friends all over the world and staying in touch with his former singing students. So they removed the clots over his brain surface and patched him up with metal plates. He was quite OK for an 81 year old, until he went that Friday night.

My friend of only 52 who died, had been quite close. He was the partner of my best girlfriend for about 20 years and they only split up 2 years ago. He was one of the happiest, healthiest people until he became depressed about 5 years ago. I think it was his “immovability” that broke them up as my friend was jibing at him for being “lazy”. My impression was that their business troubles (caused by old-fashioned local council regulations) were so deep that my girlfriend didn’t see the depth of her partner’s distress. Very sad all round because he then left the state and I couldn’t contact him. Apparently, shortly after he left he started having the health problems that eventually killed him. In spite of his great eating and fitness habits, he got bowel cancer which spread to his liver.

His wake (no funeral), was a tribute to his life, but was also sad for me. There were reminders of his happy life everywhere- his scuba diving gear and underwater camera, his racing bicycle, motorcycle & jet-ski. There was a continuous DVD playing of photos from all his adventures both overseas and in Australia. I thought that the most exciting thing he had done was when he was part of a BMW advertisement that was being made in the Arizona desert. He got to ride with a heap of others in a mile-wide line across the desert, with the ad being shown all over the world. It was great to visit, as he cooked wonderful food, always using the best ingredients and generally spiced up with a mixture containing chilis. Some people at the wake speculated that all the chilis might have produced his cancer, but my money is on his extensive exposure to high-octane fuels during his motorcycle racing & playing with other toys. We’ll never know- that’s cancer for you. Too sad.

Another whale stranding

Upon opening the lappy this morning, top of the news list was this: Rescue efforts continue for beached whales

Basically, a pod of sperm whales became stranded on some huge sandbars at the entrance to Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s wild west coast. You can see how narrow the harbour entrance is, plus sandbars are visible even on the Google map! The sandbars exist because this is the outlet of the mighty Franklin River- the one conservationists have fought so hard to save from the hydroelectricity schemes. Ironically, one piece of conservation is contributing to another species’ bad fortune. Nature does not choose it’s champions nor victims using logic or reason.

Macquarie Harbour showing narrow entrance

If you look on Google Maps, you’ll see that the Franklin River is huge and deep, ending in the monstrous Macquarie Harbourwhich has various deep, navigable channels. I imagine that the current pod of sperm whales was planning on steering themselves up a nice channel and investigating the nooks in the deep harbour.

The mighty Franklin River

Other whale pods had probably taken some great excursions here and reported to the whale-folk back home. This time, not so lucky and some of the family became beached. The reporter said the whales were in good condition and will probably be refloated in 24 hours. I’m not so sure, looking at their mouths, but we’ll see.

The strandings on adjacent Ocean Beach (north of entrance) are quite frequent. It is a huge long, straight beach, continually facing the Roaring Forties, blowing in unfettered by any land after Madagascar.

Ocean Beach & the Roaring Forties

It is pretty much continuous and I imagine that whales could easily be pulled out of their intended route and into the mass of waves running towards shore. I’ve notice the torrent of waves building up more than a kilometre from shore.

When I visited Ocean Beach in 2009, the wind was blowing hard as usual, there was a certain stench of rotting mutton birds and fish, but no whales or their carcasses. However, people who live in surrounding towns and villages are used to strandings so I think they probably happened long before humans arrived.

Why do whales strand? Zoologists and other scientists concerned with currents and climate change have many theories, none of which are easy to prove in the short term. Some say that whales’ navigation system is disturbed by an illness, pollution or the earth’s changeable magnetic field, causing them to go off course or miscalculate the position of a dimly remembered shoreline.

Tasmania, pimple in the Southern Ocean

Others say that Ocean Beach, on the “tiny” island of Tasmania within a vast Southern Ocean, is only a blip iin a big space, so sometimes the whales hit the island merely by chance. I don’t know what is believable about any theory on this , but as a soft-hearted human and conservationist, I find it worrying when these wonderful, lumbering animals meet their end during the prime of life.

A ScoopIt show integrates this blog post with other news about whales and conservation:
http://www.scoop.it/t/whale-wonder/js?format=square&numberOfPosts=3&title=Whale%20wonder&speed=3&mode=normal&width=300

Cutting the rave short to post!

Today some of my Twitter friends seemed to be getting very concerned about what has happened and what may be happening soon, to the Australian health system. I am a little worried about progress on mental health care, but not convinced that the government can force much privatisation on the populace.

First, several Tweeps were convinced that the article by Mark Metherell in The Age newspaper http://m.theage.com.au/national/health-group-lures-private-patients-from-public-system-20111104-1n04h.html
Health group lures private patients from public system, meant that the government was quietly divesting itself of publicly-funded healthcare and “forcing” people to buy into the private system. The article also implies that the private hospitals will “lure away” people who need particular types of care by demonstrating a better record on several health measures, eg. rates of hospital-acquired infections, higher recovery rates from some surgery etc. As I read it, there ARE some advantages to private hospital care for some conditions, but ONLY for younger, less complex cases. Public hospitals take the sickest people and are often willing to risk complications in the hope of saving a life that others might not see as worth the extra investment of time and effort.

On the other hand, hospitals already co-operate in the use of resources and specialists. For instance, when my partner needed an emergency operation to have his gall bladder removed, the health system did lots of juggling between different surgeons and hospitals so that he could be operated as soon as possible.The public hospital that gave him 24 hours of doctors, nurses, drugs & accommodation didn’t charge him a cent for this care! Meanwhile they rushed him by ambulance to a private hospital where the surgeon got theatre time, operated swiftly, and only had one extra day there.
If he had been able to stay in the public hospital and have the same surgeon operate under his “public hat”, then he wouldn’t have paid a cent for anything.

This sort of cooperation is the norm.

At a public training hospital...

NONE OF THIS WILL CHANGE for publicly funded patients under the health reform arrangements in Australia. If you need care, you will get it as quickly as possible and necessary. For people who HAVE PRIVATE EXTRA INSURANCE [only NECESSARY if your income is over $140 000 for a family, or you pay an extra 0.5% tax], the government will require them to USE it if hospitalised in the public system. Previously you only had to claim on it if you used extra private services while in the public hospital. Soon people will have to draw on it when it’s available. That’s all.

Overpopulation blasts the landscape

Nestle, give baby orangutangs a break!

Although there was no such thing as a “greenie” when I was a kid, I think I’ve had a touch of green all my life.

I first became upset about deforestation when I heard that local farmers/ranchers were chopping down the Amazon rainforests and clearing them to graze cattle. I can remember reading about it in Readers’ Digest when I was six- although I mispronounced the river as “A-may-zon”, until I heard the word again at school about 3 years later!

I could understand that the native people of South America slashed and burned a small patch every year or two so they could grow a few crops, but I was quite frightened of the idea that the forests were just being laid waste to graze cattle and replanting rough grasses.

Obviously, this trend has accelerated and spread to the rainforests of other countries, eg. Indonesia, where they are plundering the rainforest to plant disgusting palm oil for consumption and export. It’s certainly not the cheap product it is touted to be, as we are paying invisible millions of dollars for the loss of the forest habitat. Rare animals have been pushed near to extinction by the mindless land-clearance, eg. orang-u-tangs.

Michael McCarthy tells a sorry tale in The Independent [Friday 04 November 2011]. He visited the African country Burkina Faso, which was formerly a French colony named Upper Volta. There the inhabitants have used ALL the rainforest to fuel their primitive cooking fires, making the country into a barren, dry wilderness with little potential to support plants or animals. Yet their population is increasing rapidly. If only someone would help Burkina Faso to leap into the 21st century with sustainable energy generation, plus educate the people to look after the country they have, which is roughly the size of Britain. In the blog “Music Cycles” there is some really engaging information and photos of the dry landscape, eg. one of the group rides a bicycle across a bridge where there was once a river;

What once was a river

Landlocked Burkina Faso

We are destroying the planet to feed the current humans but leaving nothing in reserve for the next generations. I shudder to think of millions dying from starvation or disease because they cannot obtain proper nutrition.

Rethink you multinationals who finance local companies or towns to clear their land for your mass-produced but nutritionally harmful foods, such as palm oil. Rethink, you bankers and investors who are buying into this madness. Rethink, ordinary consumers who eat all the prepared foods containing ingredients like palm oil. You will all live longer and help save the planet by preparing your meals from fresh ingredients, obtained from nearby farmland.

Let’s have some change! If I can pretty much avoid packaged, supermarket food [like biscuits, pre-mixed sauces and packs of flavoured noodles], so can anyone else. It doesn’t hurt and everything I eat is full of flavour!

Save the planet and lengthen your life, all in one go. Go green.

The US State Department has some basic information and statistics on Burkina Faso. Take a look and educate yourself. It could be quite sobering.

Touch of the Henries

[This post is also Day1 for NaBloPoMo]
No this is not about unwanted sexual touching in the workplace. Nor is it about the Annual Henry Mancini Musical Theatre Awards; nor the greeting card industry’s awards; nor even the standard unit of electrical inductance! It’s about motivation.

Large dose of the Henries

*”A touch of the Henries” = ennui. Haven’t you ever heard that feeling described this way?

IRL this means I can think of millions of things I could be doing but I can’t be f**ked. It’s not to be confused with procrastination, as I know why I do that! This is an awkward feeling of being motivated in one part of the brain and disinclined in another. I guess it relates to procrastination, but it’s a feeling of general hopelessness rather than some fear of failure that stops the action from happening.

Surrounding me here on the sofa are stacks of little projects I could attack, and others that need completing, but somehow none really appeals most of the time.

Pile of crafty stuff

My stickability at really simple routines and habits makes me take my pills every morning; my hatred of pinging sensations in my head soon reminds me if I miss! Guilt about putting off various tasks because I can’t commit my whole head to them makes me think about re-starting. But then I remember that half a head’s commitment will not get those tasks finished with any sort of quality, so I put those aside fairly legitimately.

The boring, routine things like housework are the most easily put aside as rarely does anyone die from my neglect of this! I’ve seen houses where there WAS a risk of the owner dying (like the one with the blind 83 year-old who had to negotiate a backyard obstructed with huge vines and tree-roots to go to the toilet), but I manage to wash the basic utensils and kitchen bench so we don’t get food poisoning! Vacuuming, mopping, tidying, changing quilt covers and window-cleaning are the things I let slide.

I Tweeted a minor victory today because I put Spotrick’s black T-shirts through the wash for the week, he mopped the [yesterday flooded] laundry & I followed up with the bathroom floor. This is a good day!

Righto- I wonder what I’ll attack tomorrow; any bets? I could sew a skirt, plant out some seedlings, de-pot tulip bulbs or a dozen other things. I’ll see what I feel like tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

For the psychologically and/or philosophically inclined [which I am when not suffering an attack of the Henries], here is a diagram by Csikszentmihalyi showing how ennui (which, to me, is halfway between Apathy and Boredom), fits into the spectrum of emotions:

Diagram of the Henries plus other emotions

Try Wikipedia for starters, or go to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s separate entry to track down his writings.

*For the unenlightened, my own use of the term “henries” is derived from the works of one John Clarke, a local writer/philosopher/comedian.