Miriam Parkinson

Yesterday Colin connected up the VCR. This wouldn’t be very significant if it weren’t for two videos which are fairly important to me. I have two videos of performances (and performance exams) from year 12.

For my entire pre-Melbourne existence, music was my life. I had lessons in four instruments, I took part in 5 (at one point 6) extra-curricular music groups. I was preparing for my Amus (advanced diploma of music) in voice, 6th grade AMEB piano and had an organ scholarship. Now, I play guitar when the fancy takes me, cello rarely, and I no longer have a piano (something which is driving me crazy).

At school I practically was my voice. Everyone knew me because of it, I was a fucking celebrity to the prep kids after my role in Dido and Aeneas. It seems weird that no one in Melbourne thinks of me as a musician None of them have heard me sing. Not even Colin has seen me perform.

I no longer have the effortless control of my voice. I don’t remember developing it but in those days if I could think it I could sing it. I never considered a piece to be difficult to sing, I never encountered a piece I couldn’t master in days. Now, I attempt to sing the same music and my voice falters, I don’t have the high notes, the diaphragm control, the vocal stamina.

I want to start singing again. I want to work towards the Amus I never completed; get back into performing.

Everyone thought I would be a professional singer. It would be a shame to throw away the one thing I was the best at.

I headed over to Bourke St Mall this morning to check out Buy Nothing Day. It was a bit of a non-event. Two people handing out fliers at a table and a bunch of bored passers-by throwing them into the bin.

I did spot Cam though. He’s quick for an old bloke. I spotted him on my way back from Dick Smith (researching not buying) chatting to the people at the Buy Nothing Day table and was heading over to say hi. Turned my head away for a second and he’d buggered off! Couldn’t see him anywhere. Strange, strange man!

So other than an excuse for not unpacking boxes at home it was pretty much a waste of time. Nothing exciting happening at all! Except that apparently the Myers Christmas window display is already up. Something to do with wombats… Christmas wombats…

One thing I’m trying to figure out is why Cam hasn’t made mention of the G’day World birthday bash yet. Its like a week away… Some people actually need notice of these things… Also booking a table would be advisable given there’s probably a reasonable number of us attending.

Anyways I guess I’ll go back to unpacking boxes… Fun fun!

Btw Cam looks somewhat less sophistimicated in a black tshirt and baggy jeans rather than a suit.

Tags: Cameron+Reilly, Bourke+St, Melbourne, Buy+Nothing+Day

Inspired by Cam’s enthusiastic review of the moleskine I have been itching to get my hands on one. I’m a stationary geek – to the extent that I will make a trip to a stationary shop with no intention of buying anything just to fondle the nice paper and pens – so the moleskine appeals to me on several levels.

So I’ve been nagging Colin to buy me one for a month now and finally after dragging him into borders under false pretenses and parking him in front of them he caved in and bought me one all the time grumbling that “it doesn’t even have a soft cover” “you mean the only point of these is that they have an expandable pocket and they lie open flat” and “its pretty expensive for a notebook”.

I am of course pleased as punch with it and I’ve spent rather too much time stroking the pages going “oooh smooth….” but the real concern is the best way to implement gtd using it.

I was thinking that I’d use it for capture and stick to electronic methods for processing and next actions etc. Similar to Patrick’s method. Once I’ve been playing, sorry, working with it for a couple of weeks I’ll let you know how its going.

But now I’m curious…

How to you use your moleskine???

Tags: GTD, Moleskine, Stationary, Productivity, Study

As seems to be tradition for my exam periods I have managed to develop a nasty addiction to caffeine. So now if I don’t get a caffeinated beverage by 12pm I have a pounding headache. Fortunately I’m used to this so I’m pretty good a kicking it. There are two options

1. Go cold turkey: 48 hours is enough to rid yourself of the addiction. Unfortunately you tend to feel like shit for 40 of those hours so its not exactly a fun way to kill the addiction.
2. Gently, gently: the approach for those of us who aren’t masochists. Step down the intake of caffeine daily until you don’t have any at all.

Given I’m not in a particularly masochistic mood (well not when it comes to headaches anyway) I think I’ll go for the second approach.

Now where did I put my coffee…

Tags: Caffeine, Addiction, Coffee

Gold!

Finally I can relax, get on with some of my projects and get the house sorted.

Three months on my own schedule… Bliss!

Given I’ve just finished setting up my desk in the new place and I haven’t messed anything up yet I decided to give you, the lovely readers, a little tour of my desk.
Note the contrast between this and the last photo I put up of my desk.

1. A small notepad for jotting things down
2. A photo of my grandmother when she was at school. It was given to me when I was 11 because I looked a lot like her.
3. A photo of me and my (late) grandfather at Christmas last year. Given to me by my mother a couple of months ago after his death.
4. My notebook which I carry around with me everywhere (well theoretically anyway) I intend to replace it with a Moleskine because I like pretty stationary.
5. Coffee, pens, pencils, post-it notes and other paraphernalia.
6. My GTD flowchart adapted from the one linked in a previous post to suit my particular contexts etc.
7. Calculator and PDA
8. My notebook – full of study notes. Look! only one project on the desk at a time! How good am I??
9. My Fender Strat. For those who are interested its a Mexican Fender which I have been reliably informed sits between American and Jap Japanese in quality/value.
10. A sub woofer.
11. (Not pictured but between the chest of drawers and the desk) A Marshall Amp.

Edited: I received a rather colourful comment which I won’t publish here from someone decided to be offended by my use of ‘Jap’ in reference to a guitar. It went on to imply that only [insert racial slur against Jewish people] would use the word ‘Jap’ and asked me if I was a [insert racial slur]. Firstly I’m not Jewish so if you’re going to try to offend me you’ll have to try a little harder. Secondly the last time I heard ‘Jap’ used as a racial slur rather than an abbreviation along the lines of ‘Aussie’ was so long ago that I forgot that in some overly PC countries it is still considered one. So I’m sorry if I offended anyone

Naomi’s HSC Design and Technology major work blog will soon be up and running. Actually its already up and running but its rather bare at the moment because I am waiting for her internet to be back up so she can send me her design proposal so that I can fill in some details.

As soon as its up we will be frequently blogging about the project and where we’re up to.

A while ago Cam and Des came up with a Productivity Buddy System for GTDers who frequently fall off the wagon (or who simply think they could benefit from a nagging voice every now and then). The idea was that you would call/email your productivity buddy once a week and remind each other to do weekly reviews etc

The only problem I have found with this is that it is quite easy for two people to choose the same week to fall off the wagon. This means that neither person gets a reminder.
What the system really needs is a safety net to reduce the chance of this happening. So just say each person has two productivity buddies and those two buddies are not in turn each others productivity buddy. What you end up with is a double linked chain thingy of productivity buddies. So that by helping either one of your productivity buddies you are indirectly helping everyone else.

Or maybe I’m just over-complicating things…

Anyways back to study.

One day until my second last exam three days until my last exam and then freedom…

Followed by boredom I expect but then I have a whole lot of work to do with Nays project so perhaps I will be able to keep myself busy.