sallysetsforth

The wonderful and oh-so-talented author Diana Wynne Jones passed away earlier this year on 26 March 2011. She'll be sorely missed. Her works will live on in the hearts and on the bookshelves of her readers. I am one of those readers, and this post is my small way of thanking her for enriching my reading life.

I'm actually not a big fan of either fantasy fiction or young adult fiction. But the most notable exceptions to the rule are, strangely, where the two genres intersect. Some of my favourite books, both as a teenager and as an adult, have been fantasy fiction that's primarily aimed at younger readers. They include Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books, C.S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, and Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series. And Diana Wynne Jones.

I'm a latecomer to Diana Wynne Jones' books, having first picked one up only 4-5 years ago. I relied on my local library to discover her books, so my reading is somewhat incomplete. And unfortunately many of her works are now out of print and hard to find. Her books that are still in print don't seem to be stocked in Australian book shops, and you don't come across many of them in second hand shops - they disappear off the shelves too quickly.

I've read over a dozen of Diana Wynne Jones' books, but I haven't read everything that she's written, including what might be her most famous book - Howl's Moving Castle. I'll be making up for that shortly, having recently purchased it through the Book Depository :)

Just about every book that I've read became an instant favourite for me - The Homeward Bounders, Fire and Hemlock, Deep Secret, The Merlin Conspiracy, Dark Lord of Derkholm, The Time of the Ghost.

But my absolute favourites are the Chrestomanci Chronicles. There are six books in the series (plus short stories), and they're set in a world where magic is the norm. The stories are terrific, and the characters are, well, characters! But what really sets the books apart is their enormous sense of fun. And they appeal so beautifully to children and adults, with layers that work for both.

My other firm favourite by Diana Wynne Jones is the Tough Guide to Fantasyland. If you've ever read and enjoyed a single fantasy book, you will absolutely love this tongue-in-cheek guide to travelling through Fantasyland. I can't recommend it highly enough. Oh, and it was nominated for a Hugo award in the non-fiction category :)



I know I haven't really done justice here to the great Diana Wynne Jones - I'm not very good at describing why I like some things so much (which is why you'll never find a book or movie review on my blog!), but I wanted to try to impart some of my enthusiasm to you, and encourage you to look out for her books if you haven't tried them before. If you'd like to find out more, you can view the official Diana Wynne Jones fan website or her Wikipedia entry. I wish you happy reading!

I didn't really intend for this month's blog posts to be of the "what I did today" variety. Mostly because a mixture of the wet season, assignments, work and tiredness over the last few months have meant that I don't usually do very much that's worth reporting on. But now that the semester is over, assignments are finished, work is settling down and the weather is so much better, I'm finding that I'm getting out and about a bit more. And since the original intent of this blog was to keep my friends and family up-to-date with what I'm doing, it seems kind of appropriate to be blogging along those lines after all. Regular readers of my blog will find that my blog posts are occasionally in a completely random chronological order. Today's post, though, is simply about what I did this afternoon :)

After work today, I caught the bus to Fannie Bay to meet up with the other members of the ALIA Top End committee. I left work early so that I would have some time to stretch my legs and get a bit of fresh air before the meeting. It feels like ages since I've taken the time to do something like that. So once I arrived, I bought a lime milkshake from the Cool Spot and took it down to the nearby park overlooking Fannie Bay.

For those who don't know Darwin well, Fannie Bay is a well-to-do suburb just north of the city. It would be a very nice place to live, if you had a spare couple of million lying around. I took a couple of photos of the bay on my phone. You can see a few boats out on the water, they're 'parked' near the sailing club.

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While I was there, a couple of tourists asked me if I would recommend the Fannie Bay fish & chips shop. I couldn't tell them since I hadn't eaten there myself, but we got into quite an animated discussion of the pros and cons of Darwin's fish & chips shops. My main gripe being that the batter here is usually something awful, and completely ruins whatever they coat in it (this makes the potato cakes here almost as bad as the NSW version, potato scallops). Anyway, I assured them that the quality of the fish itself was bound to be good, and noted that the Fannie Bay fish & chips shop was the only one where I had seen a vege burger on the menu - as a vegetarian, I take this to be a sign of superior quality ;)

I saw the visitors again when I headed back to the Cool Spot for my meeting, and was happy to hear they found the fish & chips delicious, and were highly complimentary about the quality of the batter - light & crispy. It sounds like it's worth the extra travel from our place and, as you can see from the above photos, we wouldn't have any trouble finding a nice spot to enjoy a meal :)

I also took the opportunity to snap a daily image. Although I'm no longer doing it every day, I'm still trying to upload a photo a couple of times a week if I can. You can see them in my Flickr set HERE.



P.S. I've got to stop ordering lime milkshakes whenever I see one one a menu! I'm not 5 years old anymore - total sugar overload!

You can't spend all of your time studying - sometimes you need to get out and remind yourself that there's life away from the computer. On Saturday I pined for the beautiful day outside while I was stuck in the study, but when evening approached it was time to take a break and get some fresh air. Tim and I decided to get some dinner at Cullen Bay, but first we stopped off at the boat ramp near the Darwin Ski Club in Fannie Bay. Checking out boat ramps is a regular activity for us, especially now that we have the boat up here. We're looking forward to taking it out for a spin very soon, but decided that this boat ramp was a bit tricky to access safely. I took a couple of happy snaps while we were there:





We continued on to Cullen Bay, enjoying the view of the setting sun on the way. It's a funny old place, is Cullen Bay. A gorgeous marina, expensive housing and apartments, and a lovely restaurant and shopping strip along the waterfront. But it's dead. Or close to it, considering its amazing location. The first time I visited Cullen Bay was back in 1999, and my memories tell me that it used to be an active and vibrant place. Tim and I have been there for dinner a few times since moving to Darwin, always in the wet season. We thought the closed restaurants and lack of activity was simply a seasonal thing. But now it's the dry season, and although it's certainly busier than it was a few months ago, it's not what I remember. And some of those restaurants are still closed, now with For Sale/Lease signs on them. Despite that, there were enough people around on Saturday night for Cullen Bay to feel lived in, and we'll keep going - who knows, it may pick up a bit when the dry season is a bit further along. It's also been a long time since I've been there during the day, and it will be interesting to see how it shapes up when the ferries are running and the cafes are open. We had dinner at Buzz Cafe, an institution in these parts. The food is overpriced, but the location right on the water is hard to beat :)

 



P.S. This is my 100th blog post!!

I just submitted my final assignment for the semester. Huge feeling of relief. It was almost a week late, due to an awful combination of illness and fatigue. But I finally got it done.

Illness aside, I wish I knew a way to study that didn't involve massive disruption to everything else in my life. Last minute/day/week assignment panic. All those days and nights where I think I will finish the thing, then discover (or simply decide) that there's lots more still to do - those darn perfectionist tendencies!! The accompanying grovelling emails to lecturers asking for extensions :(

I only have one more subject to go before I complete my Master of Information Studies. Just one more subject. And I'm going to defer it. This week I'll put in a request for a leave of absence next semester, and I'll do that last subject in the summer semester. Because I need a break. And a life.

I have an assignment to finish, so I'm copping out a bit tonight by posting a recipe. But hopefully you will love it so much that you'll forgive me ;)

Okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) is a regular dish at our place. It's so simple and delicious. And it's popular too :) It was the first recipe I ever added to my Recipe Box page, and in fact was the reason that I originally created the page, as it was easier than emailing the recipe to everyone that asked for it!



Okonomiyaki (Japanese Pancake)
Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 125g plain flour
• 2 good pinches sugar
• salt
• ~150ml cold water
• 1 egg
• 25g pickled ginger (optional)
• 150g white cabbage, finely shredded
• 1 carrot, grated
• vegetable oil for frying

Sauce:

• teriyaki or okonomiyaki sauce
• Japanese mayonnaise
• powdered seaweed or toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Method:

• Sift the flour into a bowl, add the sugar and a little salt, then mix in the water, egg, pickled ginger (if using), cabbage and carrot. Heat about 1 tablespoon of oil in a frying pan. Pour in the batter mixture and spread out to a circle.
• Reduce the heat to low and cover the pan.
• Fry for about 10 minutes until the base is golden brown. Then turn the pancake over and fry, uncovered, for a further 5-6 minutes. While cooking, cut the top in a few places with a knife to let steam escape.
• To serve, turn out on to a warmed plate, spread (or drizzle) about 2-3 tablespoons of teriyaki sauce over the top, then a similar amount of mayonnaise. Sprinkle with powdered seaweed or sesame seeds if desired. Cut in half and serve.

Credit: Recipe adapted from Japanese Vegetarian Cooking (1996), by Patricia Richfield

This is the blog post where I gloat about the beautiful weather in Darwin :)

While you've all been enjoying spring, summer and autumn, here in Darwin we had the build-up (also known as the suicide season because the weather is *that* bad) and the wet season (along with a record-breaking 3 metres of rain!).

But now that you're all turning the heaters on for winter, it's Darwin's turn to shine. The dry season.

About a month ago, the weather in Darwin turned and the dry season arrived. The transition from wet season to dry season took about 2 or 3 weeks, but once the dry season is here there is no going back. None of this wondering whether or not to bring an umbrella with you - it is quite simply *not* going to rain for several months.

It's absolutely gorgeous. The daytime temperature reaches a maximum of about 30°C. Every day. The minimum temperatures overnight usually drop to 20°C, but sometimes below. I must have acclimatised, because I've already been known to wake up shivering when the temperature dips to 18°C :) And it's sunny. All the time.

The dramatic drop in humidity brings a renewed energy for outdoor activities. The Mindil Beach Markets are back, the restaurants at Cullen Bay are re-opening, the city is buzzing. It's perfect weather for walking, picnicking and sightseeing. And we're looking forward to taking the boat out on local waters for the first time very soon.

There's a downside of course, as the plants begin to brown off and drop foliage. But there's also a fix. There are no water restrictions in Darwin, and we've been using the sprinklers to try to keep our lawn and garden green. Yes! Sprinklers! I feel positively wicked ;)

Anyway, expect to hear more about the glorious dry season in posts to come. In the meantime, please drool over these photos of Darwin in the dry.

Glutton for punishment that I am, I have decided to participate once again in the challenge to blog every day of June.

My blog's been pretty quiet this year due to a multitude of reasons. But I have been jotting down my thoughts and activities every now and then, and my drafts folder has been growing and growing. So although I certainly won't have an excess of spare time on my hands in June, I figured this was a good push to get some of those drafts out there - and then you all might have a bit of an idea of what I've been up to this year!

Last year the blogging challenge was called #blogeverydayofjune, in reference to the hashtag that was being used on Twitter. This year it's #blogjune - partly for brevity and partly to help people remember it better! So if you want to follow along on Twitter, just follow the #blogjune hashtag, or you can check out the list of bloggers on Libraries Interact, or this Netvibes page that displays all of the participating blogs (compiled by @katejf).

So far there are already 60+ bloggers (mostly working in libraries in Australia and New Zealand, but not all) who have put their hands up to participate - almost double the number who did it last year! For me, that was also a big reason to get involved in the challenge again, as I love the sense of community that builds around an activity like this :)

So is my first contribution simply going to be talking about the fact that I'm going to blog every day of June? Yes. But I promise there'll be *actual* content in the days to come ;)

In the meantime, here's a photo of life (sometimes) in Darwin:



P.S. I'll be tweeting using this year's Twitter hashtag #blogjune, but I'll use both of the tags "blogjune" and "blogeverydayofjune" here on my blog, so that people can find blog posts from both years' events more easily. Yes, I'm such a librarian - must have the metadata right!

Edited to add: I've made some changes to my blog, and am now only using #blogjune to describe these blog posts (it's shorter!)

Alternative title: My first cyclone

Yes, I know. This blog post is ridiculously out of date (three months late!). But I couldn't just leave it languishing in my drafts folder forever, so it's time to finish it off and get it out there :)

Way back in February I wrote about the formation of what was to become Tropical Cyclone Carlos. On the 15th of February, we watched the weather graduate from lots of rain, to tropical low, to cyclone watch, to cyclone warning ...

My last blog post left off on the night of Tuesday 15 February. We finally received notification that the Uni campus where I work would be closed the next day, which was a relief as the weather was getting pretty wild. We brought all our outdoor furniture inside, closed the cyclone shutters on the bathroom windows (our safe room), gathered our torches, and filled lots of water bottles.

And it really was a wild night. The tropical low had not yet gone offshore so couldn't be classified as a cyclone yet, but we experienced strong winds over 100kph, and record-breaking levels of rain (over 400mm in 24 hours). We also lost power for a couple of hours. We stayed well indoors and away from windows. You could really hear the wind howling and the rain pelting down, but in the end I managed to sleep through much of it.

On Wednesday morning the wind and rain died down, and we spent most of the morning in the eye of the storm. I ventured out to take a couple of photos in our local park, where there were lots of branches down, and even a whole tree! I was soon to discover that many trees went down in Darwin over those couple of days - but this was an amazing sight for me.



The tropical low officially became Tropical Cyclone Carlos (Category 1) around noon on Wednesday when it went briefly offshore before turning back inland again. The rain really picked up again in the afternoon, and we had water lapping at our doors. Luckily for us the water drained away fairly quickly and didn't enter the house - pretty amazing considering the quantity of water that was landing on us. I took some photos and a short video of the wading pool that formed in our backyard that day (that's Tim getting the once-over halfway through the clip!).







The wind and rain hit us again hard later in the afternoon, and it got very rough out there. By Wednesday night we again received notification that the Uni would be closed for another day, and we battened down in anticipation of a second rough night. Sure enough there was plenty of wind and rain overnight, and we lost power again. We got power back on for half the house in a couple of hours, but it was several days before we had full power restored.

On Thursday morning Tropical Cyclone Carlos broke up into a tropical low, much to our relief. We spent most of Thursday in the eye of the low, and it was very quiet. We discovered that the major retailers had re-opened, so we  did some grocery shopping (mostly for fresh fruit and veg), and went for a short drive around the northern suburbs. We saw crews working on fallen trees, and I took the opportunity to snap a few photos and take another short video of trees down at Nightcliff foreshore.













The rain did get fairly heavy again on Thursday afternoon, as the outer arms of the tropical low started to hit Darwin, but the worst was definitely over. On Friday I went back to work, and shared cyclone stories with my colleagues :)

These photos at CDU oval were taken a few days later - there were scenes like this all over Darwin.







If you'd like to see the rest of the pics I took of some of the damage wrought by Tropical Cyclone Carlos, I have added them to a set on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sallysetsforth/sets/72157625948054889/

We had something like 700mm of rain in Darwin during the week that Tropical Cyclone Carlos was in town, including more than 400mm in a 24 hour period on Tuesday-Wednesday (to put it in perspective, in only a few days we experienced more rain than Melbourne usually does in a whole year!). It was pretty wild and woolly, but I consider myself lucky to have a relatively mild first cyclone experience.

[Please note: In the context of the many terrible natural disasters and resulting losses of life and property that have befallen people around Australia and the world in 2011, I know that my little cyclone is just a blip. But it happened to me, and it was pretty all-encompassing at the time. So I wanted to write about it before the memory fades away.]

I really need to write the sequel to my last post about the tropical low that became Tropical Cyclone Carlos on 15-17 February, but I felt like writing this post today instead.

It's kind of a gratitude post I guess, but really I just wanted to write about some of the things that were good about today. It hasn't been a perfect day by any means. I started the day dog-tired, I'm finishing it dog-tired, and it was crazy-busy in between. But it was good too.

Good things about today:

• Rain. We got a thorough soaking this morning. It rains just about every day in Darwin in the wet season. And I'm getting kind of used to it. It's hard to imagine that soon it will stop and not rain again for many months. But I think I will like that too :)
• Positive feedback. From lecturers about a hands-on training session my team ran with first years this morning, and for the information I provided about library activities and services that they will publicise in their online subjects. From students who wandered into my office throughout the day and sought help locating books and journal articles for their first assignments.
• Leftover macaroni cheese. Real macaroni cheese. Made from real macaroni. And real cheese.
• Crazy cat time. That time of day when the cat runs up and down the corridor as fast as possible and for no apparent reason. It always make me smile. Of course, there *was* a reason - she was running away from the poo she had just done in the litter tray. Or rather, that she had *not* done in the litter tray. But that scrambling around the house like a mad thing still makes me smile.
• Magnum P.I. reruns on TV. Even though they're programmed in a completely random fashion, with complete disregard for what season each episode is in, I'm still glad they're showing. The silly storylines, the shorts, the hammy fight scenes, the red Ferrari, the moustache, the Hawaiian scenery, and did I mention the shorts?
• My netbook. So I can blog on the couch in the lounge room instead of the desk in the study. And its grainy webcam, because I had to take my daily pic and I am not even vaguely photogenic today. BeFunky's photo effects helped out with that too ;)
• Tim. For coming up and giving me a cuddle while I typed this blog post.

7.00pm

This blog post has been updated a few times since I started writing it this morning. It's changed from a "boy it's wet" post to a "OMG cyclone!" post *lol* - you can see my earlier scribblings below :)

The wind is really picking up now and the lights are flickering, so I'm going to turn the computer off when I've uploaded this blog post (although I'll try to keep up with the news via my laptop and wireless connection). I'm sure we'll be absolutely fine - our house is built to code, and this is just a baby of a storm really. But it's my first cyclone, so I've been a bit excitable today (have you noticed? *lol*).

We've just heard that all the schools are going to be closed tomorrow, so it's possible that the University where I work will be closed too. I think it's standard procedure when a cyclone warning is issued? There's nothing on the website to say what's happening though, so I guess I'll find out in the morning ...

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6.00pm

I'm home now. Everything was fine in my litle office cocoon, but I was a bit worried about getting home safely. Now we're here, and I'm not going anywhere for the time being. It will be interesting to see what the weather's like tomorrow morning when the tropical low is closest.

The cyclone watch has been upgraded to a cyclone warning, which is mostly related to how close it is. The tropical low will pass by us overnight before heading to sea (and Bathurst Island), by which time it will be a Category 1 cyclone. Hopefully it will keep on going and not turn around!

We've had a couple of severe thunderstorm warnings this afternoon. I'm not sure if they were related to or separate from the tropical low, which will pass Darwin later tonight. They came from the other direction, but I don't know enough about weather patterns to know if they could have been part of the low. The thunderstorm warnings were for destructive / damaging winds. We saw a few trees down on the way home, and heaps of leaves and branches on the ground. I also heard of power outages and road closures. A really wild and woolly day.

I took another video when I got home to demonstrate the effects of the wind and rain on the trees in our backyard. It's like an amplified version of this morning's video - more rain, more wind and more frogs :)



And of course I found time to do a little photoshoot in the rain for Daily Image 2011!



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12:00pm

A cyclone watch has now been declared for the tropical low that is currently just south of Darwin. I rang Tim to let him know to secure the backyard and prepare our emergency kit as part of the cyclone watch procedures. He reminded me that it was a couple of days ago that I first noticed the spiral movement on the radar.

A forecast track map has now been published by the Bureau of Meteorology. The tropical low is expected to pass close by Darwin overnight, before developing into a Category 1 cyclone over water. It will then be heading for Bathurst Island. Here's a link to the Bureau's Tropical Cyclone warning website. The website is dynamic, so the information will be different depending on when you view it.

Honestly, a tropical low / Category 1 cyclone is more exciting than it is scary at this point. A bit of wild weather drama without the run-for-your-lives factor. We'll see if I still feel that way later tonight ;)

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10.00am

I started writing this blog post in the morning before coming to work. I didn't upload it at the time, because I wanted to include a couple of videos (see below). Since then, the tropical low has become official, and we have a severe weather warning in place. We've been advised to secure loose outside objects, with winds of up to 90km/hr forecast. It's not our first bout of severe weather this season, but it's the first time we've seen a tropical low develop over land. As I mentioned in the blog post below, it's the high winds that make me nervous. And looking at the weather radar, the tropical low is moving in a slightly alarming spiral fashion ...

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8.00am

At the time of writing, it has been raining pretty solidly in Darwin for over 24 hours. There's a monsoonal trough or tropical low or something, and it's dumping a bunch of rain on us! The Bureau of Meteorology predicts squally storms for the next few days. There's a flood threat warning and coastal wind warning in place. On the plus side, all this rain sure keeps the temperature down! We're looking at maximums of 27°C for the next couple of days (the minimums are 24°C in case you're kidding yourself that it's cold up here!).

Here's a short video that I took this morning of the rain in our backyard. It's not pelting down hard, it's just constant. I must admit that I get a little nervous when the wind picks up - it's still cyclone season here.



In the video, you can hear the croaking of a single frog. We called him "the frog that was left behind", a lonely bachelor still looking for love after all the other frogs had paired up. Here's another video I took this morning, where you can see the little fellow who's making such a racket!



I suffer for my art - I got absolutely drenched from the chest down while taking this video! I have a big birdcage-style umbrella, but it can only do so much when the rain seems to hit you from all sides. It's kind of funny actually, everyone in Darwin seems to have big golf-style umbrellas, as anything less (such as a folding umbrella) just won't cut it. In Melbourne, I remember that golf umbrellas were few and far between - especially in the CBD, as there just wasn't room on the footpaths for everyone to have such a big umbrella :)