This and That, but Nothing in Particular

It's been a while since I last wrote something, so I thought it was about time to add to the blog, even though nothing spectacular has happened. It's 9.30 p.m. on a summer night, and although we've had a few days of horrible heat and humidity, tonight is cool and gentle after a big thunderstorm. I took Monty the dog for an evening walk a few minutes ago, and because we live in such a safe part of Sydney, it is quite normal to see other people wandering about the streets at night. When we went out tonight, we bumped into a father running with his two young sons, then a troop of Scouts playing an outdoor seeking game. Up at the park, there was a bunch of teenagers playing on the flying fox in the playground, and then a group of young men walked across the park carrying rucksacks, as though they were starting out on a night-time bushwalk. On my way home, there were two other young boys sitting under the trees, and all this activity was happening in the dark, with light rain falling continuously. No-one had an umbrella or raincoat; the drizzle didn't bother any of us; and although we didn't know each other, we all chatted as we passed each other by. It was cool and pleasant and peaceful, and in a city of over four million people, it was perfectly safe! We are very lucky to live in this beautiful part of the world.
Benn, my eldest, now lives in England, and he has been working and saving hard to buy his own professional movie camera, so that he can start making some of his own films. Seven thousand pounds later, he has the most complicated looking machine I've ever seen. Check out the pictures next to this blog, to see what his fantastic machine looks like.
Adam, my middle boy, is doing a Master's degree in politics and international relations. He is studying by distance education, after work, at night. I think it's fantastic that he has chosen to do this course as a hobby, purely for his own interest, and also because he thinks that watching television is a complete waste of time. Who wants to relax in front of the television after work, when you can be writing a really difficult essay instead!! The funny thing is that when Adam was at school, he hated studying, hated schoolwork, and only went to school to socialise with his friends. School was just the meeting place where you planned what you were going to do with your frineds in the weekend. Adam was very popular at school, the leanest, coolest boy in the crowd. He was so cool that shopkeepers of trendy clothes stores would come up to him and offer him a job just to have him in their shop. He accepted one of these jobs at Chatswood, working in a fashionable, expensive young men's shop. When a particular item of clothing wasn't selling very well, the boss would ask Adam to wear it, and then the sales would go up!! He made every piece of clothing look cool with his tall, slim figure and blonde hair. But study?? Not for Adam. Not until he decided that he could do something better with his time after a long, hard day at work. It's a funny, old world, isn't it!
Jack, my youngest, has just finished what to normal teenagers would have been the Year 12 final school exams. But Jack hasn't done schooling the normal way. He has had a mixture of public primary school, private secondary school, homeschool for Years 5, 6, 9 & 10, and technical college. At technical college (TAFE), he has just finished studying a Certificate IV in Tertiary Preparation. The certificate is one level up from the final school exams (HSC) which are ranked as a Certificate III course. The course was difficult, and has prepared him well for university. He studied calculus, statistics, chemistry, biology and English. He got good enough marks to get into every choice he put down for university admission - marine science, chemical science and general science, and he has just enrolled today at Macquarie University to do a BSc. He will study geology, chemistry, maths, physics and biology in his first year, and then choose which direction he wants to go in. Australia is short of scientists, so I hope he studies hard, does well and gets a good job at the end of it all. Fingers crossed.
I've just finished teaching science to a class of primary school children, aged 7 to 11, during the Christmas holidays. We did the human body in the first week, the earth, sky and sea in the second week, and the sun, stars and planets in the third. They were a fantastic class of children, they worked hard and enjoyed learning lots of factual knowledge, a practice no longer considered fashionable in the modern school system. But with minds like blotting paper, they absorbed it all, and thrived on it. They particularly enjoyed the astronomy week, especially when they learnt about exploding supernovae that blast high-speed diamonds into space, not to mention the evil black holes and the cannabalistic red giant sun that will eventually eat up planet Earth!! By the end of the course, the children could point to their clavicle, scapula, sacrum, lumbar vertebrae, aorta, pancreas and kidneys, to name a few. They could also draw a horst sandwiched between two grabens, and explain the difference between a dyke and a sill, a metamorphic rock and an igneous rock, and the stratosphere and the thermosphere. We had revision every day, a test every week and prizes for best results and hard work at the end of the course. The children loved the classes so much, that we have decided to do a general knowledge fortnight when the next holidays come round. When children develop a love of learning, you know you're on the right track.
Oki has just retired as the boss of the Medical Illustration Unit at the Prince of Wales Hospital, where he has worked for a very long time. He is now busy trying to buy a little house for himself in the country. It will be the first place he's ever owned, having rented a flat all his life. He plans to build an observatory in the back garden and buy an expensive telescope. Then he will stay up late at night taking photos of astronomical objects, and if they are good enough, he will enter them into astro-photography competitions. Not a bad way to spend your retirement.
Well, that's enough about this and that and nothing in particular.