Whooops there goes a thousand kilowatt dam …

I have enjoyed James May's Toy Stories over the last few weeks on TV3. I found it strangely refreshing and psychologically uplifting.

I tried to think why. I think it was because it was all about building or constructing things slowly and meticulously. It was about creativity and getting lots of people involved in the creative enterprize.

It made a sweet change to the usual diet of humans and objects being shot and blow up in every direction.

But sadly the programme has finished.

And what will replace it on Mondays evenings and 7:30?

The programme is called Destroyed in Seconds! How ironic. It brings viewers "clip after clip of the most shocking destructions ever captured on film."

Think I'll go out and buy some leggo.

Down and down I go, round and round I go, caught in a spin ...

Sunday morning training. Racewalking. Feeling good. Feeling fast. Flying along Kilarney at a good 6 minute km pace. Passed some cars illegally parked on footpath.

Along past the firestation. Really flying now. Foot clips something on the ground.

There is that knowing moment. I am going down and there ain't nothing I can do but land well and break no bones.

Grazed knee, grazed hands, grazed elbow ... grazed shoulder  ... no broken bones.


Girl-with-water-bottle offers water for inital cleanup - so those bottles have some use afterall. Thanks Girl-with-water-bottle.

Limp a couple of km to A & E clinic. Arrived with bloody leg, bloody hands, bloody elbow, bloody shoulder. Get patched up and  tetanus shot. Limp home.

Flying high in April ... shot down in May.

When I find myself lying flat on my face ... I pick myself up and get back in the race .... that's life ...

Don't you know that you're my hero ...

Most Nu Zulundus have never heard of Jose Rizal.

To Filipinos, he is the quintesssential Filipino - "the pride of the Malay race".

The problem with the word "hero" is that it is thrown around with gay abandon these days. The result – any old celebrity can be referred to as a hero. So a football star becomes a sports hero. You get my drift.

Joseph Campbell, the great researcher into the place of myth in human culture and consciousness was a lot tougher with his conception of hero.

One writer suggests that according to Campbell, “a hero is any male or female who leaves the world of his or her everyday life to undergo a journey to a special world where challenges and fears are overcome in order to secure a reward (special knowledge, healing potion, etc.) which is then shared with other members of the hero’s community”.

Rizal fulfills this conception almost perfectly.

Born in 1863, Rizal recieved an excellent education in the Philippine captial, Manila. Reading Rizal's dairies, you get the sense of an intense, passionate and very emotional human being.

Apparently as a young kid he was inspired by the sight of a moth circling a candle flame and slowly and inexorably being drawn into its light and the death that awaited. It was a metaphor that remained with him through till his brief 35 years.

As a young man, Rizal, like many educated Filipinos, left Manila for further study in Spain.

He earned degrees and a doctorate in medicine - opthamology. He was a polyglot learning over ten languages including English. However, he was best known for his writing - and his two novels Noli me Tangere (the English version was originally called The Social Cancer) and El Filibusterismo. It is these novels that fundamentally make him a hero. In them, he took on the Spanish regime and in particular the corruption, despotism and vice that was rife among the Spanish frairs, priests and hierarchy in the Philippines.

And thus, when he eventually returned to the Philippines for second time, he knew what awaited him. A furious Spanish establishment had him first exiled, then jailed and finally executed by a firing squad on December 30, 1896.

But his books ignited in the Filipinos the desire for freedom and self goverment. The night before he died he wrote a poem dedicated to his beloved Philippines: Mi Ultimo Adios or my last farewell.

The opening lines begin:
Farewell, my adored Land, region of the sun caressed,
Pearl of the Orient Sea, our Eden lost,
With gladness I give you my Life, sad and repressed;
And were it more brilliant, more fresh and at its best,
I would still give it to you for your welfare at most.


A good website with resources on Jose Rizal

JRJRJRJRJRJRJRKRKRKJRJRJRJRJRJR

You've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative and don't mess with Mr in-between

Negative numbers folks! Now for some that was a bit if a mathematical turn-off in days of yore back in the old school yard.

But of course we do need them when it is particularly cold. Put on a bathing costume (alright - togs in Nu Zulun) and test out the difference between 27 degrees (centigrade) and   -27 degrees.

Your account's in the red - again negative territory. "Heh Frankie boy you owe me $35". I like to rephrase that "No, you owe me $-35" sounds better eh?

Read a summary of a class I was about to teach yesterday.

Places taken                              38
Place available                         -13
Maximum Number                    25

Fascinating I thought as I searched for a bigger room, because -13 meant that I had 13 students too many for a 25 seat room.

25 -38 = -13
25 seats taken by 38 students leaves 13 students with no seat.

Remember musical chairs worked on this mathematical principle.

One less chair than the number of people prancing around to the tune!

X-1 chairs and X people

 X-1 - X = -1 (one person has got no chair!!!!)

And of course Mr In-Between is zero, nada, zilch, zip, naught, nil, nullity, nothing and very close to diddly squat and nearby to stuff all.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mr In-Between +++++++++++++++++++