Tyroga – A Human Equivalent

Worried that some people make relationships into something they need not be: hard work!

Here’s a tip.

If you argue with your significant other. If you ever go to bed angry. If you begrudge them having their own time to do their own things. If you feel you have to question who they were with or what they were doing while they weren’t with you. If you don’t enjoy just hanging out together and always have to have something on. If you compete for power. If you don’t support each others’ dreams no matter how crazy they may seem. If you don’t laugh together at least once a week, and I mean really laugh. You’re screwed.

Sure you’re in a relationship, but that person isn’t your partner if you believe them to me more an adversary or a burden to your existence.

Do both of you a favour and be the one to break it off. Find the person with whom you can laugh and grow… someone who complements you, not completes you.

Break it off now cause you only get one life and it should be filled with joy and love.

And that’s my rant for the day.

Today’s post was inspired by a friend’s post on Facebook. I really am sick of people who complain about their lives (and yes I’ve been guilty of doing it). There is so much wonder in the world there is little reason to be unhappy. No one is in a position they can’t get themselves out of. No one. Some may need assistance and some may need courage. But ultimately we are each responsible for our own happiness and the pursuit of happiness should be your goal.

Nice, ANZ sent me a letter saying I can design my own credit card and they’ll send it to me. Pity I can’t design it so I never have to pay it back.

I was thinking of calling them to have mine replaced as it has split, this saves me a call and makes sure I get a cool looking card while I’m at it.

Below are the images I thought about putting on my card. In the end I went with the Ferris wheel. Second choices would have been the reeds and the pelican. I did want Bungee but it might have been too sad to got spending money on her all the time.

My new card should arrive some time next week. Yay.

… until you think you’re not; but really you still are.

We have a new Prime Minister. Ms Julia Gillard. Probably one of the fastest ever no-confidence leader dumpings. Talked about one day, over the next with no contest from, now, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

After this action what are all the people on the comments of news stories bitching about? That they didn’t vote for Julia Gillard, they voted for Kevin Rudd and that if there was to be a change of leadership they should have had a say in it. And that’s where they show their ignorance. Perhaps not completely their fault.

You see in Australia we don’t vote for the person who leads our ruling party, we vote for the party. In this case when you cause your vote you’ll notice the “how to vote” forms say “How to vote for Labor”, or “How to vote Liberal” etc. They don’t say “How to vote for Kevin Rudd” because you didn’t. You voted for the Australian Labor Party to run the country (if you voted for them, else you voted for the Australian Coalition to run the country but they didn’t win). You may well have voted for the Greens, but you know what, they then gave your votes to someone else cause we’re a two-party preferred democracy.

Unlike the United States (which many Australian’s seem to think we do everything the way they do) we don’t have elections where the person who will run to contest the presidency is voted for. We just vote for the party and the party themselves determine who will run the party. At least I think that’s how the American system works, I’m allowed to be a little ignorant about their system, I’m Australian :P

In the past year it seems every major party has gone through a “spill”, the party’s leader being overthrown from within, at least two of these have taken place in ruling parties, both were Labor. The other was when Tony Abbot replaced Malcolm Turnbull as the leader of the Liberal Party. It seems to happen all the time these days.

And people get upset because they are ignorant to the way our government works, a shame in a country where voting is compulsory. In a way I guess the ignorance is fuelled by the parties. In the 2007 election Labor was present to us as “Kevin ’07″, a catch-cry that lead them to victory over the Liberal Party who had governed the country for 12 years.

The other sign of ignorance that seems to be surfacing revolves around the fact that Julia Gillard is an unwed woman living with her partner of many years, with no intention of bearing young and no intention of getting married. There are comments everywhere from people making statements that a woman like that can no possibly represent them as she is too far removed from their way of life. What a crock of crap.

I trust the Australian Labor Party, lead by Julia Gillard, will do the best job they can for our nation. I believe that our ruling party and the Prime Minister that leads should be wise enough to look at everything that comes across their desks and decide how it will impact the people they serve and to make the best judgement call based on the facts.

The best person for the job would actually be a totally impartial party, but that’s never going to happen. It would be a party that has no ties or allegiances to unions, churches, gender, groups etc, but that’s never going to happen.

So until we live in a perfect world, let’s try to understand how our system of government works and stop looking completely stupid when we talk about it in public.

I certainly do, about two months to wait until we see them in Australia, and there will no doubt be a race as all of us iPhone 3G users’ contracts expire.

The world has been a twitter, and in a flutter over an advertisement by French McDonalds and I’m not sure why. It’s just an ad and while conservative groups say that McDonalds as a corporation should keep their noses out of the minds of the world and have no place making “political social statements”, gay groups are hands in the air cheering for McDonalds for having the “courage” to create and air such an ad.

Title “Come as you are” the ad shows a young guy at McDonalds looking at a class picture when his phone rings, he answers it and affectionately touches the photo while telling the caller “I miss you too”. Then he has to go cause his father is returning to the table.

His father asks him if that is his class picture, and says how the boy looks like him when he was younger and how he “was quite the ladies man”. He says it is a shame his class is all males because “you could get all the girls”.

The boy gives him a smile and we see the super “venez comme vous êste” or “come as you are”.

So you see the conservatives are saying that McDonalds shouldn’t be saying it’s all right to be gay (as it has been implied the boy is). And gay groups are saying, YAY McDonalds you’re showing gay people to be normal people and accepting the gays.

But I say you have to ignore the conservatives, they are going to always bitch when anyone says anything they don’t like, and they don’t like a lot of things. Also I guess I see the ad differently to a lot of other gay people because I don’t like it’s message at all.

First you have this kid who is gay (we’re going to assume because McDonalds did their best to imply this without actually doing anything concrete to enforce the idea), but the kid is not out to his father (I can’t say parents cause his mum might know, we don’t know from the context of the ad) and feels he has to hide it from his father.

We don’t know why the kid is hiding it from his dad, we get no indication of how the dad react to the news. But we know because “My dad is coming, I have to hang up” that he’s isn’t comfortable with the idea of being gay. Anyone who really is isn’t concerned about who knows, it’s just part of who we are, certainly not all of who we are.

To me the ad is saying, “You might not be able to tell your parents, but we know and we love you and you can come to see us anytime you like and we won’t judge you”. Or as McDonalds has been saying for years “We love you more than your parents do”, they are just aiming a little higher than the happy meal age bracket on this one.

In my opinion, this is McDonalds saying there is still something a little wrong with being gay, but you can come here and be yourself, just as long as you keep it to your self.

There are two ways this ad could have gone to make it better, more inclusive and more proactive.

1. Not have the kid hang up, but finishing the call as his Dad comes to the table. His dad noticing the class picture and asks the boy “Is that Steve? Tell him I say hello”.
2. A completely different ad with a bunch of kids where a couple just happen to be gay, holding hands while they eat or the like, along with the straight kids doing the same, side by side, no fuss and no attention brought to the subject. Kind of like I have been saying for years, if we want to get into the minds of the world that being gay is normal, we have to show it as normal. It doesn’t have to be an attention seeking story line. Hell doesn’t even have to be a story line. Neighbours and Home and Away can have a couple of gays in the background of their respective diner sets, or walking along the beach or something like that. That’s how we show it’s normal.

With the current version of the ad I’m reminded of when I was a kid, growing up in a household where I didn’t know what being gay was, but knowing I wasn’t like my brothers. This type of ad, as presented below, is fodder for comments from dads and brothers along the lines of “I’m glad you’re not like that”, or “if he were my kid he’d be on the street” or the like. Not that I heard much of that thankfully. There was the occasional “poofter”, “fairy” and the like.

But if the ad were shown as suggested in point 1 above I think it would stop comments coming from all quarters (except the conservatives, as we said they hate everything). Showing a dad that just accepts his son, rather than one to whom the idea of coming out is bad, other kids and dads will see it and understand that it’s just part of life.

I know I ramble and don’t always make sense, but I’m in the US at the moment and probably still a little jet lagged. But basically I say thanks Maccas for doing the ad, but next time put a little more thought into it. Let kids really know there is nothing wrong with them by not bringing attention to one small aspect of their lives.

I’m not saying McDonalds did a bad thing, but as a counsellor who’s spoken to many kids, young adults and grown men who still struggle with their world-facing identities I would like to have seen a stronger, more obvious and more affirmative message.

What a mad and very long day our first day was. Friday June 4th was almost 48 hours long for us as our flight from Australia to California, USA took us across the international date line.

To avoid the dreaded jet lag we stayed awake all of Thursday night, the hope we’d simply sleep on the plane when it was night US time and wake up refreshed Friday morning. It didn’t quite happen though cause while you have a tiny bit more room on the plane, and I do mean tiny, the seats go back a little further.

I’m more polite than some and for the most part refrained from putting my seat all the way back. The people in the seats in front however didn’t mind not only putting their seats back ALL THE WAY they also didn’t mind doing it at high speed, not concerned about where my legs (which are quite long) were or what the contents of my tray table may be.

I became a little less polite after this and when they had raised their seat to eat their first meal of the flight they found they couldn’t go back quite so far as my knees were firmly placed in their back should they try. They tried to force the issue by rocking back, never once looking behind, nor turning to speak with me.

So the 15 hour flight wasn’t all that fun. We did however have a great bunch of movies to watch in-flight. I watched “The Blind Side” (it was beautiful) and “The Lovely Bones” (less beautiful). Also watched a Pam Ann stand-up show which was funny as hell.

Being a vegetarian (mostly) you tend to get served before everyone else, well anyone with a special meal order does, diabetics etc. At one point I think I was served an hour before David was, the only bad bit being you don’t get your tray cleaned until everyone else does. So I’ve eaten and am left sitting with my dirty tray for quite a while. I probably could have asked them to take it away, but they all looked so busy.

At the end of this flight we arrived at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). It was really not at all what I was expecting. What I thought we’d see is a lovely airport, nice clean, shiny. What we got was a rundown dirty looking airport.

The staff at the airport were amazingly helpful, always smiling and ready to assist. Even actively approaching you to help out. The same can be said for most other Americans we’ve come across. David almost laughed out loud when an African-American employee yelled out across the foyer “Damn girl! You gonna…” it was pretty cliched but I guess one that is true.

We had our first meal on American soil, Burger King. It was massive. But my vege-burger was kind of hard around the edges, guess there aren’t many vegetarians in the US and it had sat in the tray for a while.

Our second flight of the day was from LAX to San Jose. This one was aboard a tiny little plane that was just three seats across. Coming from a massive A380 that’s a big difference. At first I was a little scared about the idea of flying in something so small, but once we were in the air it was all good. There was even cabin service during our short 1 hour flight and I managed to get a little bit of a nap in.

On arriving in San Jose we had to catch a bus to the car rental place. I’m guessing San Jose airport is considerably newer than LAX, it’s cleaner and more well put together and it’s massive. It probably took a good 20 minutes to get from the terminal we arrived at, to the car rental place on the other side of the airport.

After getting our car we decided to head to the hotel in the hope they’d let us check in earlier than their listed 3pm checkin time. David’s first time on the other side of the road was a little harrowing, more for him than me I think. To me it seemed like he was doing fine. It was still quite sureal to look at cars and see nobody in the driver seat, only to remember it was in fact the passenger seat.

We’re staying at the Hilton Garden Inn in Cupertino, home of Apple (Cupertino, not the hotel). Pretty good as far as hotels go. Our room is great, the service is great. No complaints.

As we arrived at the hotel at 2pm we probably should have had a rest before we decided to to anything. But we’re not quite like that, plus we thought it might enhance any possible jet lag if we let our bodies sleep at the wrong time.

So instead of a sleep we unpacked then jumped back in the car and headed to San Fransisco.

A massive city.

We were on the hunt for a small camera for David to take to WWDC but I’ll be buggered if we could find a camera store. Apparently in San Francisco you buy your camera from a souvenir shop. And every souvenir shop we went into had the “best price we’d find” on any camera. But we remained unimpressed and didn’t make a purchase.

We did however walk around heaps, visited the Apple store (not as big as I expected), Macys, Bloomingdales, Nordstroms, Westfield, lots of stuff. We even saw “The Cheese Cake Factory”. We wanted to go there for dinner for the kitsch value of eating at the same restaurant on “The Big Bang Theory” but when we got up there (it was on the 8th floor) it was very busy and didn’t look anything like the one on TV so we decided we’d skip it. It would have been geek cool if we could hae gotten a pic in the same sort of setting as the one we see on TV (which yes I know, is more than likely a set but still).

We were also pretty damn tired and decided to head home to the hotel. I started nodding off on the way home, thankfully David stayed awake. We hit bed a little early but slept all the way through.

On June 4 we fly out of Australia on our way to the US for two weeks.

Our first week will be split, David will be travelling from our hotel to San Francisco each day to attend Apple’s WWDC while I will stay in Cupertino and attend a training course. During this first week we also hope to see some of San Francisco by night, though this will largely depend on how full on our days.

The mid weekend we’ll take a quick jaunt up to Seattle to visit Craig and Mark, see their home and catch up cause it seems like ages since we saw them last. On Monday morning we’ll jet to Los Angeles to see the city and over the subsequent couple of days visit Disneyland and other attractions we might find.

I would have been happy to spend the entire time in San Francisco but I’m sure we’ll have a great time in LA.

Of course we’ll do all of the obligatory touristy things like visit the Golden Gate Park (and the afore mentioned Disneyland). We’re open to suggestions on what else we may do.

I’m also hoping to get one shoot in with a model while over there, that way I can claim to be an “international photographer” :P I put a notice on a model site advising that I would be travelling to Cupertino and have already received a notification from a model and a make-up artist. Could be exciting.

We’re probably also going to have to try things like coke, the cola, not the drug… to see how different it tastes, visit a McDonalds and any other fast food place we hear so much about but have no comparisons for, like In and Out. Go see a shopping mall, an Apple store and oh hell whatever else we can find.

I’m pretty excited for this trip and already kicking myself that we’ve not done it before.

I’ll be taking plenty of pictures on the way and trying to update the blog where possible. Thankfully our hotel in Cupertino has high-speed data included so at least the first week should be well documented.

I’m thinking this time around we won’t get a chance to do all the geeky things I wanted, like visit CNET and TWiT Cottage but I’m sure as hell going to try and get a pic of us both at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino!

The weirdest thing is still how we leave on Friday the 4th at 11:30 am and arrive in San Jose, California on Friday the 4th at 7:30 am. Coming home we fly out on Friday and arrive on Sunday, we lose our Saturday.

This trip follows up our trip to Fiji in a week to attend my sister and Pete’s wedding. I’ll be wedding photographer and will also be taking massive amounts of photos there. My poor little camera won’t know what to do with itself.

I’ll be going from someone who has never travelled to a twice international traveller in the space of a few weeks.

Can’t wait.

Today we did the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do, we said goodbye to Eve in what was a whirlwind insane few days.

On Wednesday night Eve jumped up on our bed to assume her usual “cuddles” position and while I was patting her she yelp, swirled around and took a little warning nip. Upon investigation it became obvious her right hind leg was quite swollen, the area was incredibly hard.

Eve had also been a little listless and wasn’t eating much that day.

I was so concerned I worked from home the next day and ran Eve to the vet to have it checked out.

The vet, Sarah, was concerned that the mass was a growth. And she was going to draw blood and do a fine needle aspiration of the zone to determine what it was. The blood work was going to take 24 to 48 hours to come back.

On Friday David called Sarah to see if she had heard back from the blood work and she said she was just reading through it when he called. She then went on to say that it revealed that Eve had cancer and that we’d have to bring Eve back in to determine what type of cancer it was and what the best course of treatment would be. There was some concern based on the blood work returned that the cancer could be an extremely aggressive type, from the rudimentary tests the labs determination was that Eve probably had about 4 months to live, with Chemotherapy to assist. There was also a slim chance that the Chemo could reduced the cancer on her leg to the point it may have been cut out.

We booked her in for Monday (today) to have more tests. Today’s test were further blood work to check it out further, to make sure she would survive sedation, x-rays and biopsies.  Turns out we only got up to the blood work and x-rays under mild sedation.

Sarah’s diagnosis was that while not the aggressive cancer Eve’s leg and right hind area were over run with a mass. Were she to attempt surgery to remove the growth we’d be losing a quarter of Eve’s mass and as she went on to say it would be to no avail.

She showed us Eve’s chest x-rays and showed how her heart had become malformed and her trachea was pushed out of shape from a mass growing around her heart and in her chest cavity. It was at this point I started to cry.

On Friday when Sarah advised she’d want to do x-rays to determine if the cancer was anywhere else in her body David and I had discussed that if, as Sarah believed , other organs were compromised then we’d make the hard decision to let her go. So we spent the weekend with her, cancelling plans and rearranging friends so we can maximise our time with her.

There were lots of cuddles, lots of love and no tears this weekend. We just spent a lot of time with the best dog in the world.

So when we say the state of her body and how far the cancer had progressed we couldn’t do anything other than let her go. Sarah’s diagnosis of up to 4 months on Friday became a week today after seeing Eve’s further blood work and the x-rays. And it was to be a week of pain killers for her more so we could spend the week saying goodbye. Really we weren’t even guaranteed a week, it was to be day by day and for us to determine when Eve had had enough. So we stuck by our discussion from Friday and agreed to say good bye today.

And it was fucking hard being there with her for that. The vet explained everything up front, what to expect, what else could happen and that it as basically like Eve being anaesthetised and then pushed a little further to stop the heart.

It was gut wrenching, watching how quickly her body went limp. Sarah left us to be with her for a few minutes during which time I cried more than I think I ever have. I can confirm that massive amounts of tears won’t flood your contacts from your eyes.

We said our final good byes and left Eve there to be taken care of. We’re assured she will be cremated and her ashes spread at an animal cemetery. We couldn’t bear to bring her home and we certainly didn’t want her ashes returned.

Eve was a brilliant dog, she never gave us any trouble, well except for being an escape artist at times. She was well tempered and beautiful in both body and soul.

We’ll miss her with all our hearts. With any luck, universe willing there is an afterlife of sorts, she’s with Adam now and they’re having a great time. She gave us 11 wonderful years of cuddles, wet noses and the occasional quick tongue kiss when you weren’t expecting it.

This weekend mum has come to visit to check out how her little dog Stacky and Eve would get along as Stacky might be coming to stay while the family treks off over to Fiji in May.

Stacky is a funny dog some might say not quite right, but that wouldn’t be fair. She’s just different. Sure she walks into walls and only seems to see out of one eye but she’s still adorable and for 14 years old she’s doing quite well. In fact earlier I said she looks a little like a mogwai that hasn’t quite decided it wants to transition into a gremlin, but has started the process.

This weekend is also my brother’s first visit to Melbourne and rounds out my family visiting our house, it’s only been five years.

Saturday David took Mum and Greg around Melbourne while I was in class. I’m still not too sure what they were up to, I know they went to Laurent for some afternoon tea and did a lot of walking. Mum’s dogs were barking (Aussie for her feet were sore, I don’t get it either) when I finally caught up with them.

Saturday we went to Werribee Open Range Zoo to show Greg around. We skipped the first couple of tour buses and opted to walk around the zoo first. Worked out great cause on our tour the rhinos were so close to the track and even passed in front of our bus. It was awesome.

I still have to get there and spend a while trying to get some better pics of the hippos they can be hard to get, though my friend Kathryn has shown it can be done. Thankfully our Friends of the Zoos membership lets us go in and out at will so I’ll eventually get the shots I’d like to see.

On Monday we went to the city for breakfast and a bit of shopping, mum decided she wanted to buy a camera. After a very short hop from shop to shop she decided on the Canon 550D. The same camera my sister recently bought. We should all have a great time in Fiji with our cameras.

After a quick trip home and a charge of mum’s new battery Mum, Greg and I went to Serendip Sanctuary to try out mum’s new camera, Greg took the 400D and we all snapped away. We arrived at Serendip at 3:30 and it closes at 4 so our time there was quite short. And for the next couple of hours we drove around looking for things to shoot. We found some birds in a field, a train track, some dilapidated houses and we even had some fun at a couple of places where people had dumped stuff, throwing objects in the air and trying to capture them.

It was great, but in the end I was so tired I was in bed by 8pm.

We woke up super early this morning and saw mum on her way. Stacky is still with us and will be now for about 6 or 7 weeks until we get back from Fiji and the US.

Well not quite a world tour but in two months time I will have been overseas twice. Not bad for someone who’s never been overseas before, never even had a passport until two days ago.

In May we’ll go overseas to my sister’s wedding, a week in Fiji is going to be awesome. Not sure what we’re doing other than the wedding but I’m certain we’ll find a lot of things to do. I’ll have to take at least one extra hard drive before we go so I can fit all the photos I’ll be taking.

A couple of weeks later I’ll be jet setting off alone, heading to the US for a 7-day training course. And on the 8th day David will fly in and we’ll hopefully spend the next 5 or so days in San Francisco. It will be our first big trip together.

The first week will also be the longest well have been apart from each other in the just-celebrated 13 years we’ve been together. That’s going to be one weird week. It’ll also be the first time we’ll be in different time-zones.

Gonna be weird, scary and fun.