Six Months of YouTube

Ok so this is a bit of a self-indulgent one. I have noticed, for some time now, that my consumption of news, media and entertainment has gone markedly online, particularly in the last five years. So much so that if it wasn't for the fact that the kids play their video games on our Nintendo Switch, we would not even need a TV at all. The only show we watch ever is Masterchef, and yep, that can be enjoyed online these days too. Frankly, I like to pick and choose my shows, even binge them sometimes, and I love to be able to customise my news feed - the iPad News app is awesome for that!

So a few weeks ago I decided to have a look at my YouTube account, which is where I consume most of my entertainment, research stuff, and just enjoy. It turns out that over the last six months, pretty much since we arrived in Oz, but including most of the last month in KL, I watched 1,040 videos on YouTube, which is about 3 or so per day on average. The 1,000 stat sounds like a lot, but the 3 per day one doesn't. Especially considering that I rarely will commit to watch a video of more than 15 minutes long. On average they are probably close to 10 minutes. The table below summarises the various categories of my viewing:

Sheesh, for some strange reason the old copy-paste with tables has abandoned me and we're back to this shitty old problem with really crappy rendering of the image. No idea why that happens, but seeing as this is a personal blog and not a professional one, I guess it doesn't matter much.

Anyway, so no surprises really, although I didn't expect movies and TV to be at the top. I reckon if I repeat this in another six months then travel and food will push up the list. I do like to watch movie trailers though, as well as clips from my favourite series such as Star Trek TNG and the new Battlestar Galactica. For those not in the know, when I say "metal" I don't mean music, I literally mean metal - be it metal detecting, investing in bullion, noodling, coin collecting, whatever.

So I do surf the recommended section an awful lot, but I have a number of subs too. This next list shows which ones I binged the most over this same period. Kind of surprised Greg is at the top of the list. He is very camp, and a bit lame, but lots of fun, and I do enjoy watching him. Simon Wilson has gone quiet since covid, which is a pity but totally understandable. A lot of history in there, and Planet Weird isn't bad, although they better damn well find something in their next season!

Anyway, if you enjoy any of the things I do, perhaps consider checking out one of these channels. They are all good, in their own unique way. 

Books I Have Read In 2020

So I'll kick this off...

My goal is to read a book per month, I think that's reasonable and achievable - IF I put the effort in. Much like anything really.

I have 31 books on my shelves that I have not yet read, and that's after culling about 50 more when we moved to Echuca. My wife and I are not minimalists, but we have experienced hoarding first-hand, and have moved internationally numerous times. Put those together, along with my age-old collection of books, sporting memorabilia, Lego, rocks, and various other crap, and it becomes rather tedious - not to mention damn expensive - to shift this stuff around all the time. Plus I had to consider which books I had been keeping that were just "trophy" books, or was I really going to potentially read them again? That's what prompted the mass cull. Frankly about half or more of those 31 unread tomes are destined for the donation bin at some stage too, but not until I have consumed them...

Anyway, so this is going to be a bit of a funny post. This bit is actually being written in late 2019, with a view to the new year in a few days (hey I am NOT a NY resolution kind of person, but sometimes it's valuable to measure things in terms of what can be done in the period of one year). So anything beyond this point will reference specific books, possibly with a footnote at the end of it all.

Yes, quite correct Dave. In fact this latest paragraph (plus the second half of the top one) is being written in late July. Having been more than halfway through this covid-infested year, I can safely say that I am well behind in my reading. A decent Clive Cussler pulp, an enjoyable-but-not-legendary Stephen King para-psychological thriller, finishing off a seedy report on Jakarta's underbelly, and a fairly forgettable Star Wars novel (not around the canon story arcs, one of the frequently enjoyable sidelines) make up four of the five books I have read thus far. The fifth is the one standout - Gweilo by Martin Booth, which is a hugely nostalgic memoir about a Hong Kong childhood, albeit one that occurred 40 years before mine. Amazingly enough though, that fellow lived much of his at number 80 Waterloo Road, whereas my years in HK were spent at number 90. What a coincidence! Anyway, I loved the book and have since lent it to a friend of mine who also spent a number of years living in the ex-British colony.

So this reading challenge is one I partake in, care of the Goodreads app. It sends out an email each year, asking its members to set themselves a goal in terms of number of books to get through in the coming 12 months. In previous years I had set ridiculous goals (in the 20's), and either fallen drastically short, or simply forgotten to record my progress at all. This year however, I am more keen on keeping up with it, as I find that the busyness of life makes reading easy to slip by the wayside, and given what an amazing form of exercise for the brain it is, I don't want to continue to let that happen.

Interestingly though, my next reading goals are not part of the 31. In fact they go waaaayyyy back, back to 1991, back to a second-hand bookshop in Melbourne, and back to the second oldest book in my collection - the first being the complete works of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, gifted to me by my father back sometime in the early 80's. I should read that one again sometime too, but for now my sights are set on two books - my first ever Steven Brust Vlad Taltos novel - Jhereg, and the first of his crazy trilogy called the Khaavren Romances, titled The Phoenix Guards. It was the former that I picked up in that dusty shop back in my first year of university, and has stayed with me since. An omnibus of his first three Taltos books, published, in my opinion, in an incorrect order! 1-3-2 in terms of time instead of 1-2-3. Anyway, I digress. The thing is, it has been so long since I read that omnibus that I can't remember it at all, but seeing as I now own everything Brust has ever written, and greedily consume anything new that comes into print, as well as stalking him on his blog, I think it would be a wonderful experience to go back to where it all began and start anew.

That's the first one. The second one, and frankly if I see this all the way through will take me past my goal of 12 books this year, is to reread the Khaavren trilogy. Or trilogy within a trilogy, because Book 3 is itself split into three more books, so it's a five book trilogy if that makes sense. Anyway, it was recently announced that a new book - The Baron of Magister Valley - is soon to be published, and this is a sequel to the original trilogy. Very exciting! But the thing is, much like with Taltos, it was so long ago that I read books 1 and 2, and I never finished the Book 3 trilogy, that I need to go back and start over. That's going to be quite a task, but I feel it is one I need to do.

So there you go, how's that for self-indulgent? I have no idea if I'll even come close to accomplishing these reading goals, but I hope I give it a fair crack. I know enjoying Brust's works all over again is going to be fun.

See Who Win, See Who Lose

Haha, this makes me laugh.

Eeny meeny miny moe,
Catch a tiger by his toe.
If he hollers let him go,
Eeny meeny miny moe.

Everyone knows it right? Of course there's the older version with a less PC version of the word "tiger" but we'll stick with the newer one. It's a children's counting rhyme from the early 1800's and appears to be a staple in almost every part of the world, in many different languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe

My wife's family is Malaysian Chinese, with a fairly strong connection to the pre-independence British colonial history of the country, and the associated influences. My father in-law is both proud of this part of his heritage, and the place Malaysia was in those days, as well as being a staunch advocate for Chinese culture. It's actually a pretty decent middle ground as long as you don't dig too deeply. And hey, we're all allowed to have our opinions, especially those that perhaps are not always consistent with each other. I, for one, am a prime example of such hypocrisy from time to time. I think we all can be. Anyway, I digress. One of the wonderful and admirable things about my in-laws is their amazing grasp of language. Of course most Malaysians - especially the non-Malays - can speak multiple languages, but these guys take the cake. My wife for instance, can speak English (self-taught), Malay, Cantonese, workable Mandarin and Hakka, and get by in Tamil. That's pretty darn impressive. Plus she also spends some of her spare time learning Japanese and Dutch. Her family are all the same, whereas whilst I am proud of my grasp of English, struggle with much else. It's true I can get by in Malay and Cantonese, at least enough to order beer and food and direct a taxi, as well as Indonesian, but anything more than a quick food ordering or "how's it going" and I'm screwed.

Far out, I like to wander away from the main topic sometimes. Anyway, so when we were staying in Sungai Pelek in the in-laws house, we heard one of them reciting the above rhyme to one of our kids, likely Babs. Except the local version went something like this;

Eeny meeny miny moe,
Catch a tiger by his toe.
See who win, see who lose,
Eeny meeny miny moe.

OMG I am chortling quietly to myself as I write this. I am not sure if it's something lost in translation, but frankly it's a pisser, and just one of many examples of where language inter-relations can have comical and endearing results.

It's now a common catch-cry in our house, when responding to something: "see who win, see who lose!". Love it!

Bourdain

Another one. Ok so I'm a couple of years late on this. In fact the last post where I referenced the suicide of someone influential to me was a year later than this one (in terms of when the event occurred). That seems strange, but those are the facts. Anthony Bourdain. A lover of life, food, pushing the limits and making the most of things. He seemed to have a better understanding of the world than most, and even his own mother commented that she thought he'd be the last person on Earth to kill themselves.

Suicide seems to be almost an epidemic. I wonder why. Certainly there is the copy-cat syndrome, particularly among the young. And of course those that are truly afflicted by the terrible curse that is (are) mental health problems. But when you read about Bourdain, Robin Williams and even Keith Flint from The Prodigy, I wonder if perhaps there is another, insidious and largely unseen contributor to all of this. That is, prescription drugs. In each of their cases, while it was well known, at least within their inner circles, that they struggled with depression, it was a surprise when they ultimately took their own lives. In Hutchene's case (INXS), it was a toxic cocktail of prescription, recreational and alcoholic influences that likely led to the tragic outcome, but in the other cases, it's not as such. In fact, almost clearly only prescription drugs.

Hey I am with the believe-nothing-those-media-fuckers-say crowd in just about all aspects, that is for sure. So when the media tries to stoke the fires of drama and conspiracy, inhale a deep lung-full of skepticism before reading any further, that's for sure. But I am very wary about the culture we have in the West these days. Just look at kids with so-called autism. Hey, hey, hey, calm down fuckers, I am not saying it's all a myth. I AM saying however, that GP's are far too ready to diagnose any kind of behaviour problem as being "on the spectrum" and prescribe behavioural drugs to deal with it. What happened to good old fashioned parenting? What happened to spending the time to manage these kids behaviours? Equal opportunity, both parents working, no time, rights for kids, blah fucking blah. Anyway, I believe it is the same for mental health. Take time to work through an issue and try to encourage development of mental strength, self-reliance and God-fucking-forbid, taking responsibility for one's own life? Nah fuck that. Modern life doesn't have the time. Let's just prescription drug our way the fuck out of Dodge and be done with it.

I am no expert and probably should not be espousing my mis-informed musings on the world at large. However that, is how I see it. Big pharma has a whole lot to fucking answer for.

Lowgrade 1,2,3

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Frank Blanchfield [mailto:Frank@pacmin.com.au]
Sent:   Sunday, 22 October 2000 6:10 PM
To:     Brown, David
Subject:        lowgrade 1,2,3,

If you are putting values here  you can chooses what is what as perer says thatthe sunmmary and oreby type sheets are not being used!

Good Morning.
Frank

This one does the rounds every few years. Initially it was often, and as time has passed, the period between sharing has grown. In fact the last time I believe was the email I copied this from - one Gully shared back in 2009, 11 years ago. Look at the date, this October marks the 20th anniversary of Lowgrade 1,2,3.

Frank was my boss then, back in my earlier years, when I was a production and planning engineer at Tarmoola, doing mine schedules, blast designs, that sort of thing. Judging by the email, both Peter and Frank were around then, which confuses me as I thought one replaced the other. But I suspect Peter was the boss for a period, and Frank the senior engineer. We were doing scheduling - a spreadsheet that Peter had created - and I had asked a few questions about what I could and could not do with it. Lowgrade 1,2,3 was Frank's response, and an absolutely typical Frank communique! The man has a lot of character, and I have had a number of meals with him over the years, particularly in my JMS days of 2006-2008.

But Frank had a tendency to become tongue-tied, both verbally and in the written form, and he would frequently give us a large dose of mirth by innocently trying to communicate something mundane, but doing so in an almost unintelligible manner! Plus the "Good Morning. Frank" sign-off just put the cream on the cake for this one. Of all the emails, on all the sites, across all the years, this is the only one that survives to this day, at least between Gully, Adam and myself. I shall rattle their cages on October 22 this year to celebrate the day!