it has to be said, bringing your own shopping bag to stores and markets is a very continental thing for you are often charged for every plastic or paper bag you take from the store. i had to learn the hard way but it was a quick nearly one-shot learning... for i never really see the point in paying for plastic bags at a big store! and the very idea of re-using and cutting down on the plastic-bag clutter is very appealing to me! i even go to the point of bringing my own bags to the local supermarket whenever i visit my family in Singapore! the cashiers are often surprised but more often than not, they have been positive about my occasional 'being-green' quirk. with all the hype on branded goods in asia... the idea of bringing your own grocery bag is still a very new concept; although asians do like their shopping trolleys/baskets! i'm quite optimistic though, as i think with more new campaigns like the ones IKEA promote... I am sure it won't be long before everyone is on the same page re. green-ology =)
i love my large IKEA tote bag(s) which i use for laundry, grocery shopping, and almost anything to do with carrying things... road-trips... hauling paper and cardboard to the recycling bins... and possibly even as a sleigh on a sleigh-ride! but i was deliriously chuffed when i found its little version last week on my trip there to pick up a few things! i LOVE the little blue bag. it's about the same size as my small messenger bag and i love the fact that it's got a pair of short and another pair of longer handles... just like its bigger half! it's perfect for the few bits and bobs e.g. lunch or rain-jacket you want to take along outdside... =)
best of all, such lovely blue bliss comes only at a cost of 30 US cents (plus state-tax)! i am so tempted to get another just because it is much more functional than all the existing grocery bags i own!
oh how lovely & green these blue plastic things are!
i was trying to figure out if Yukawa Hideki whom i quoted in the entry below was also the Nobel Prize winner for Physics in 1949 for his postulation of the existence of mesons in the nucleus of the atom, whose forces of attraction keep protons and neutrons of the nucleus together... i still don't know for sure if it is him, but my silly search led me to something else...
Prof. Steven Weinberg's Four Golden Lessons... this couldn't have been more encouraging! =c)
Fopp Records at the windy cobbled-stone Cockburn street in Edinburgh is a great place to go when you know what you want to get... they do CD/DVD/book titles at much cheaper prices... but if you are like me, who's usually not sure what she wants... it would require quite a lot of luck to pick out something you'd like especially when they do not have the prior-purchase listening service... thankfully there's a return option...
Ana is an album of jazzy guitar pieces by Ralph Towner that i picked up sometime last year, not quite knowing if i'd like it even though i did have a hunch... when i got home and listened to it, i was rather chuffed with my pick... it's rather good... well, i like it... the atmospheric themes are rather soothing... hmm guess i might pick up another of his albums next time i am near the store!
sunday... i decided not to do any work for a change... and instead i went to visit ruth who's just returned from Bangladesh and Nepal... it's been nearly 2 months since we last bade each other farewell in a frenzy... i love going down to Portobello to visit ruth! it reminds me of going to Adelaide to visit Auntie Helena and Uncle Albert... the beach... and the artsy and peaceful environment where ruth and her current flatmate emily, live... i love their earthern and colourful stoneware crockery among other interesting things... and even the spread of food for lunch is typical of how Uncle Albert would have offered in Aldinga... terribly uncanny... i took along a packet of Cypriot Haloumi cheese i got the other day and some of what is left of mummy's incredible cake (more on that another day!) to share...
hummus, avocados, cheese galore, tomatoes, and nice bread and some amazing carrot-parsnip-apple-chilli soup prepared by emily gave us sufficient warmth before we headed out to the seafront...
[fundst?cke of the day]
2 beachcombers were busying themselves... i wonder what they were looking for... doggies pranced and skidded on the sand while their owners tried to call them back... we walked near the edge where the dissipating waves lose their momentum and gently caress the moist sand... sometimes looking out to the sea... sometimes listening to what each other had to say...
there are lots to fossick on the beach... seashells, cockles... pebbles... thoughts... calmness... fresh crispy air... skyscapes... the sea...
On Looking at the Sea
Walking down to the sea, with the hills behind me, with the miles inside me, what lies before me is immense, a glittering and shining expanse, both limit and release.
A slow curve of shell sand, sand of white silica, Torridonian sand or sand of grey basalt; these are the margins, tracts of delay and preparation.
If fate is the fruit of character, what does it mean to come down to the sea?
As bladder wrack will float a stone, contemplation of the horizon brings a perceptible lifting of the centre of gravity.
A stretch of sea can lie between hills like an acre of bluebells in sunshine.
No amount of looking will ever exhaust that which can be taken in at a glance.
Looking is an acknowledgement before any recognition.
A contour in the hills may contain the sea, as the body may be full of loneliness.
The complacent to looking is listening, to lie back in the marram grass with eyes closed, while oystercatcher, redshank and whimbrel call the distances.
Barnacles sing, tangle rots, the summer days are long and inconsequential.
For a brief season, a bewilderment of butterfiles, a broadcast of colours, ragwort, clover, tufted vetch, self-heal, eyebright, wild thyme, is steadied by the blue of the sea and sky.
Within the idiom of the tide, ripples in sand, or the edges of receding waves have the clarity of a statement.
Sand, shells, pebbles, boulders are graded in an order that is always open to revision.
After a gale, a snow or ash of sea-spume, a froth of spent rage, covers everything, a wounded guillemot drags itself over a litter of boulders, in the massive calm before a new front approaches.
There is a darkness in excess of light, a lull in the crash of thought, on a walk beside the flowering blackthorn of the wave.
Above the tideline, an old blue rope is entangled in a bramble bush.
What was looked for in the hills and in the recesses of the forest is found at least in the sea; the transformation of qualities into quantity.
Time lost looking at the sea is precisely lost of time.
On looking at the sea, it is not the sea but the looking that is redemptive.
On some mornings it will take all the blue of the sea to wash the sleep from your eyes.
Where waves were driven as spray over the dunes, a clear water stands in weed-held pools.
Whimbrel, redshank, oystercatcher; all the distances awake echoes.
Every inscription is erased, every direction countered, that it might be the sea, not current, tide or wave, that rests in the gaze that rests upon it.
Every distance has an internal duplicate which can be measured and sustained.
When we are far from the sea, within closed horizons, we can look again and again at its absence.
--- Thomas A. Clark ---
taken from Distance and Proximity
you've been visiting this wee space of random muse and whimsical ponderings... you might have chance upon this silly blog via search engines or extended links
you might stay for a second... or a few days...
sometimes you leave a wee comment and sometimes you must think i am full of nonsensical crap...
this wee spiffy thingamajig tells me where you'd come from... and let me derive some pleasure of knowing you've been passing by.... :C)
this is one of my favourite stationery products when i was wee and still is! Suzy's Zoo is a zoo of lovable creatures created by Suzy Spafford. i still recall that my first ever purchase of one of her wonderful stationery merchandise was a christmas-tree-card-set with fun christmassy stickers to decorate the x'mas-tree-shaped-cards, which i found by chance one x'mas season.... i sent one of them to auntie helena and auncle albert that same christmas season some (oh golly gosh!) 14 years ago?! wow. that was my very first correspondence to them, and my first airmail post to aussie-land! Suzy's Zoo is just lovely-lovely... her creations simply make you smile (check out her fun website by clicking the underlined link!)... i have a few favourites among her many endearing characters: Willie Bear, Emily and Ollie -- the marmot twins, Witzy and his rag-bear Boof.... oh they are all so 'cuddly'... the Wags and Whiskers too... all of them!
..Suzy & friends..
i presume.... the creators had the pun in mind.... i finally got a new whisk to replace the old one that became rusty and flimsy.... introducing
whiskie, the egg whisk by MSC International Inc., a Canadian cook/homeware company.... this wee little whisk, is now a new member of my very very tiny collection of kitchen gadgets! i dream of having a few spiffy things if i ever get to have a kitchen to call my own.... it will be a really fun place, i promise! :C)
i have a tendency to discover great gems when i least expect to... e.g. at the bookstore, a wee shop with odds and ends etc. (yes i am really quite random!) i have almost forgotten about this special gem of an inspiration i happen to chance upon in the summer of 1999.... thanks to DimSumDolly's recent blog entry i am happily reminded of this fossicking joy!
i remember being in london that summer in 1999, visiting some old friends and found my way towards Foyles -- possibly one of the largest and well-stocked bookstores in the UK.... having then got more interested in poetry... i wandered into the section which shelved a selection of works from poets i vaguely knew and never-before heard of.... there... whilst pulling a few titles out and prying into their contents, then returning them to their safe hideouts, i caught a glimpse of a hard-back book's cover. it read "Wisława Szymborska Poems New and Collected 1957-1997". i had no idea who this person might be... her name simply cajoled a "pull me out!"... quite unsure of what i was to discover, i gently pulled it out of its location and was to later appreciate that what i was holding in my hands was a treasure.... i recalled pondering and enjoying THE THREE ODDEST WORDS, CLOUDS, PARTING WITH A VIEW, and CLASSIFIEDS; poems that have since become a few of my favourites.
but most precious of all, at least to little nobody me, ... is her thoughts expressed in her Nobel Lecture, translated to English from Polish, which i read with gratitude. and i am glad to be drawn back to it again. while 'Future', 'Silence', and 'Nothing' may be 'The Three Oddest Words', "i don't know" might plausibly be the most potent phrase when those little words are strung together... quoting Szymborska, "[This little phrase]'s small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended. " (1996:xiv)....because "The World - .... is astonishing." (xvi) and Wisława offers her views further: "But "astonishing" is an epithet concealing a logical trap. We're astonished, after all, by things that deviate from some well-known and universally acknowledged norm, from an obviousness to which we've grown accustomed. But the point is, there is no such obvious world. Our astonishment exists per se, and it isn't based on a comparison with something else." (ibid)
i am glad to be acquainted with some of Szymborska's works, poems and thoughts.... because a lot of it is provocative, enlightening and a joy to grasp. last summer i discovered her "non-required reading" whilst fossicking for Vanny's Wedding gift with Joan, Des and Van. ... and while i am still slowly crawling my way through it as i usually am with anything readable (i have often wondered if i might actually be dyslexic!), it is indeed another fundst?ck i am happy to share.
i love my blueberries.... they make me smile on a blue day.... if you haven't already discovered CHOCCA MOCCA, it's not too late... their 'Real Blueberries covered in blueberry chocolate and dusted with cream'... are simply devine... *smiles*
the last Neurocolloquium (24th July) of this summer semester was about magnetic orientation in birds and other animals. some animals just have it all! Homing Pigeons seem to be endowed with the ability to use both sources of geomagnetic information i.e. magnetic inclination and polarity which provide them with positional and directional information respectively. moreover, they are also bestowed with both types of magneto-reception (which are highly hypothetical & controversial): 1) the use of magnetite-like structures, which have apparently been found within the neurofilaments in the skin of their upper beaks that allow ambient magnetic field to be picked up and 2) the light-dependent photo-pigment process that involves the conversion of singlet electrons to their triplet stage when the alignment of the pigment molecules are not perpendicular to the magnetic field.
(if you didn't quite get the above?don't worry! it's only theory and jargon i jotted down during the seminar.)
it is known that many species of birds rely on such magnetic orientation for their migration, however some insects, reptiles, and mammals also adopt the use of a magnetic compass. interestingly, primates don't seem to belong to such a group of magneto-sensing creatures, but it's probably a blessing, for imagine we might get physically repelled by those to whom we might be "phermonongically" attracted or we will never be able to get to places where the magnetic field is not appropriate to attract our presence! and the world might contain spinning humans, desperately trying to get a grip on their bearings!
Janosch Tigertee is one of my favourite teas! ...Tiger (pronounced 'tee-ger') is a much loved German children's book character created by the author Janosch (NB: link's in German), and is often found with Bär (bear) and Tiger's pet duck (Tigerente)...either occupying themselves with new discoveries or on an adventure......
[greetings from faraway!]
i recently discovered the existence of this gem at a 'Reformhaus' (health store). this lovely subtle mixture of red bush, lemongrass, lemon zest, peppermint, apple and orange peels, is advertised to "macht ruckzuck putzmunter" ...ie rekindle ones sparky sprightliness .... quite apt for this hour of the day!