Doing our bit for the environment.

Since we have been living in Sydney we have barely used our car. We use it once a week to do the groceries and also when we pick up/ drop off our numerous visitors at the airport. Today the fuel light came on in the car on the way to do the groceries, and we both tried to remember the last time that we filled it up. My husband remembered doing so just after Christmas on our way to the New Years Bash, in country New South Wales. I remembered doing it in January, after dropping one of our mates at the airport. After discussing at length we realised that mid January was the last time we had filled up the car! No kidding!

We have done about 410 k's in two and a half months. Crazy huh! We catch public transport almost everywhere we go, and we walk... a lot.

We have become very kind to the environment since we came here. Very, very kind. We no longer have a garden, only a solitary Aloe Vera plant (Amy the Aloe), so we use a small portion of the water that we used to. We hardly use our car. We don't power heating or cooling, except for a solitary fan when the humidity becomes unbearable. In the evenings we use a singular lamp to light the living room, with its energy saving globe, and we rarely inhabit other rooms of the house at lengths that require a lot of light. We always turn off lights in rooms that we are not using, I have been guilty of turning lights off in rooms that I leave, even when my husband is still in them.

Last but not least, my husband is a recylcing nazi. He recycles everything you could possible recycle. He even rinses and leaves to dry each piece of recycling (apart from the newspaper) so that it is super sparkly and clean for the recycling company. Not that is will be like that for long after it is mixed with the rest of our building's recycling, non-rinsers the lot of them! (snorts in disgust) But you gotta give him credit for at least trying to smoothen the recycling process.

We participated last night in Earth Hour. I was so committed that I did the dishes to candle light! How good is that! I don't know how seriously a lot of people in our area took the whole Earth Hour concept, as there were people with heaps of lights on, heaps and heaps. Even the terrace house across from us that "supposedly" support the Greens. Oh, yes! I saw you people with your Greens poster out the front, and ALL OF YOUR LIGHTS ON!

I suppose the only thing that we are guilty of, is leaving our tv, dvd, sound system on standby, and my husbands computer. Also, occasionally I put my laptop to sleep, instead of turning it off and unplugging it. Not bad, though we are constantly trying to do better.

God, He/She

Yesterday, I met with my God mother in the city for a catch up, I had not seen her in about 2 years so it was nice to have a bit of a chat and catch up on what both of us had been doing. She has always taken her position as my spiritual guide and support very seriously, and always asks me how my faith is doing. Well, well, well, that is an interesting question as I recently got married in a garden by a celebrant, with no mention of religion what so ever. So obviously I have not turned out the perfect Roman Catholic that perhaps my parents originally intended. Not that my parents are ridiculously active in the Roman Catholic Church, my mother definitely isn’t and my Dad is more of a fan of the Anglicans.

She is really a lovely woman, my momentary visits from her over the years have always been enjoyable, and I know that despite the fact that we haven’t spent heaps of time together throughout my life, that she loves me. I know that she tries to reserve judgement on me not being an active Christian, and perhaps the reality that I don’t even know that I believe in organised religion. I think I do however deep down inside believe in God, or whatever he/she is, and whatever he/she is supposed to do or mean to our human existence. I don’t believe that he/she created the world though. All that creation in seven days stuff has always seemed a bit to unrealistic to me, even when I was young and impressionable. The thing is, I still celebrate Christmas and Easter, god knows why (pardon the pun) as I don’t believe in Christ/Jesus. Well maybe there was a guy who was a do-gooder who was born and dedicated his life to helping the sick and the poor, like Mother Teresa, though I have a feeling being a nun she was inspired by this guy.

See, the whole concept of faith and belief seems to be so important to us humans, like believing in ourselves, and each other is not enough. That thinking that we can be in charge of our own destiny is not good enough, and dealing with the consequences of our own actions without passing blame to a cause is not possible. This is why I have such a hard time thinking/talking about religion, because it seems to me that people heavily/partially involved in religion seem to be incapable of shaping their own destiny, making decisions on their own, or capable of reigning themselves in when they misbehave, always asking their respective God/s for forgiveness instead of asking for it from the people they have hurt or even from themselves.

I think that young people (well I suppose I can only speak for myself here) are totally terrified by organised religion. After all, what do we see all the time around us? People committing mass atrocities against other people and doing it in the name of their God and religion. Whoever God is I am sure that he/she would not be happy with people enforcing their ideals through violence onto others, unless of course he/she is a nasty b*astard, who knows? So many wars, killing sprees, cultural take-overs, deprivation of civil rights take place everyday in the name of religion, and churches wonder why people are so opposed to religion these days? Just look at the entire of human history, yesterday, today and what horrible things people will do tomorrow in the name of religion.

I have heard many people tell me that Christianity in particular teaches people morals and values, but I don’t know whether that is necessarily true, I think that you learn these things from the people that surround you, and the people who love you, like parents, grandparents, extended family, friends, sisters, brothers, and partners. I have learnt more about life, love, care and support from my family than any church could have taught me. So I suppose I do believe in a sort of religion…the religion of family and friends, and the richness of love and humour that these special people bring to my life.

After my coffee date with my godmother I went to the Art gallery and then wandered back through a park towards home. Some gothy teenage boys were hanging under a huge fig tree in the park, and they yelled at me “Merry Christmas” then following that “I hate Christ”. I didn’t really feel anything after I heard that, no need to defend this Christ, whoever he was. How do we know he even existed anyway, but through stories that were written in a book by a collection of human beings. This is all we know of any God, through collections of historical material, all created by men and women. So how do we know it was true at all? Can science tell us? Can the believers convince us? Maybe it’s all to do with the human need to have faith in something, anything, a being that oversees and protects, and an institution that delivers the so called message from that being to the lowly parishioner. I wonder what would happen if we stopped believing in churches, religion, in a god, and started believing in ourselves, and our fellow man?

Well, for what it’s worth, Merry Christmas. Even if your not a believer, like me, perhaps we can just set this time of year aside for quality time with the ones we love.

A Hug

When I watched this I got tingles all over. If only we would all open ourselves up to this idea a little more. In this crazy, uptight, scary world we all tend to walk past each other as if the other doesn't exist, or the other person is going to molest us. How did we all get so terrified of each other? I am a prime example of this, I walk down the street clutching my purse, glancing suspiciously at every passerby like they are all out to get me. I am sure they all stare back at me with the same suspicion, especially when I am wearing one of my crazy outfits.

I think that this was filmed in Sydney, so next time I go into the city I will have to look out for this guy, and give him a hug.

Check it out here.

Reflective

I have been feeling very reflective in the last few of days, to allow my brain to catch up with our new life, and all of its new challenges. My poor old brain and heart have taken a beating over the last year really, not necessarily a beating in a bad way, perhaps a description would be ‘a workout’. Yes, ‘a workout’ is definitely what I have experience in the heart and the head department in the past year.

This time a year ago I was working for a design studio, and since then I have:

• Left my job
• Dealt with various family crisis (sad face)
• Started my own business from scratch
• Got married (happy face)
• Moved into a shared office, where I learnt heaps and had heaps of fun.
• Moved out of a shared office (sad face)
• Moved across country, which resulted in losing all physical contact with my best friends, family and newly discovered design guru’s.
• Realised that perhaps I wasn’t as profitable in my business as I wished (fair go though, it’s only been 9 months since I started it)
• Realised that without work face-to-face contact and separation from loved ones, I have in fact become…a loner…oh yes.

Mmm, yes. I know what you are thinking, “poor little brain, poor little heart”. I know that I have my husband here with me in this new town, and believe me he really is my best friend in the whole world. But…each of us need other things/people in our lives other than each other. Unfortunately we have long ago left behind that completely amateur idea/reality of a relationship where all you want to do, is spend time with your partner 24/7. I know, and he knows that this is not healthy for a person’s brain, and heart. We can support and look after each other without being permanently attached at the hip.

So…do I have a plan. Oh yes! I have a plan! I am setting the wheels in motion…perhaps when the time is right I will share the details.

Natural and Not so Natural Disasters

It is interesting, I don't know if I wasn't paying attention to the news about 2-3 years back, because I never remembered the world being such a scary place. The past few years we have all been exposed to terrorism, earthquakes, bombings, wars, tsunami's and now a land slide in Indonesia. Maybe I didn't see it at first, because terrorism was never covered by western media. I suppose they though that it didn't effect us and that's why we needed to know about it. In a way I am glad that more and more of these un-natural disasters are brought to the world's attention. However what bothers me is the way the the media goes crazy when something bad happens in a western country, but doesn't place much (if any) emphasis on horrible things happening in less fortunate and/or eastern countries. Even here in Australia, when we are so close the Asia, our media seems only to be concerned with America, Britain and mainland Europe (and even Europe doesn't get much of a shoe in).

I must apologise to media groups like the ABC and SBS, who seem to be the only unbiased media groups in the country! Are we becoming like America? Where the media is so restrictive in the information it gives to the population, that many people there don't seem to realise what happens outside their border? I don't know if this bothers anyone else, but censorship is a big issue these days, and I think it is becoming a big issue for Australia and it's media.

Narrow reporting...does it control your life?