Tuesday - Saturday, October 11 - 15 2011 (diary)

This is Kamila my new sponsor child from Brazil. She replaces José, also from Brazil, who completed school and now has a job. My other sponsor child is Maria who lives in Peru.

I watched an interview of the accomplished scientist and prolific novelist Alexander McCall Smith ("The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency") on TV this week. He touched on two subjects which particularly were of interest.
Firstly he is an effortless writer of fiction (easily writing 1,000 words per hour) and compares his writing mode to playing music. He sits down, waits for a steady beat to enter his conscience, then starts fitting the words, sentences and paragraphs into the rhythm.
The very same thing happens in Jazz improvisation. Whereas the musician uses the background knowledge of a song to guide his creation, McCall Smith relies on the established personalities of his characters that keeps him on the right track. Most interesting!

Secondly McCall Smith broached on the subject of good manners. "Manners (politeness)" McCall Smith maintains, "are the small building blocks on which tolerance in the world is based." By acting politely towards an other person we show our respect for that person and acknowledge his/her existence as a fellow human being. This is an essential ingredient for human society to flourish and to function in harmony and without violence.
All small acts of politeness are beneficial :

• Helping someone to retrieve his/her luggage from an overhead locker on a aeroplane or a train.

• Wait until everyone at the table has received their meal before starting to eat yourself.

• Offering your seat in a bus to an elderly person or a lady.

• Let someone else pass through a door before you. etc., etc., etc.

Every day of our lives opportunities occur (while interacting with others) when we can choose to act politely or with kindness towards someone else. And every time we do just that we experience ourselves a sense of satisfaction, even happiness for having done the right thing.

Sadly in our modern materialistic society, where everything evolves around me,  me,   me,   my rights,   my happiness,   what do I get !! there appears to be less and less consideration for anyone else.

A major reason for this decline is thought to be the breakdown of the family as a unit (in much of the Developed world !), where education and implementation of manners and respect for others traditionally took place.
Can we turn this tide of selfishness and aggression around ? Schools appear to take over where families no longer have control. And what can the rest of us do ?? Lead by example !

Sunday & Monday, October 16 & 17 2011 (diary)

Yes, the mangos on our farm are ripe. Some are picked early while still somewhat green outside, then wrapped in a page of newspaper for a few days which will ripen them fully (such as the 3 on the left on adjacent plate).
Once they start to yellow they are fully ripened and very sweet to eat. I have one for breakfast every morning.
It is a bit of an art to cut and prepare mangos as they have quite a large pit inside. But I have been instructed by Gordon (the mango master!) and am getting quite good at it now.

Gordon and his wife Iris have left this morning (Monday) for home in Victoria. It will take them about 10 days to drive the 3,500km or so with their caravan, stopping off in Alice Springs for a couple of days to see their son there. Health permitting, they will be back in April or May next year.

I watched an interview of Peter Gundall, the exuberant former TV presenter of Gardening Australia, on TV last night. He is now 84 (10 years my senior), and still as enthusiastic as ever. When asked whether he was religious he explained : "If religion is on the right, and atheism on the left, I am farther to the left of atheism." In other words belief or non-belief was simply not an issue for him.
The Christian priest, who conducted the interview, did not do much better when he asked what Gundall considered to be the purpose of life. Gundall replied that this was a nonsense question, as "life is a purpose itself."
Peter Gundall's views, I suspect, are very much the same as many (if not most) Caucasians in Australia these days (including myself). Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I feel at home here in this country.

When I hear statements being made (usually by politicians) like "God bless America" or "God bless the Queen" I become very suspicious of the society in which these sentences still reverberate and are considered meaningful, as to me, they reveal either ignorance or a gross denial of the reality of life and our understanding of it in this 21st Century.

Tuesday October 18 2011 (diary, science)

The physics theories of the large and very large (Einstein's theory of General Relativity) and the very small (Quantum Mechanics) are not compatible and despite all efforts so far have not been reconciled. But are recent experiments giving us a new lead into this problem ?

According to Einstein's theory, nothing can travel faster than light. The faster we travel the more time slows down until, at the speed of light (300,000 km per second) time stands still. Therefore traveling faster than light would mean going backwards in time.
Perhaps you too have heard on the news however that at CSERN (Europe's main particle-physics laboratory) they have completed an experiment (called OPERA) where neutrino particles traveling underground through rock over a distance of 730km were found to travel slightly faster than light (60 nanoseconds).

Although the researchers did a lot of double checking of the accuracy of their equipment (and found nothing wrong) you still might put this down to an error of inaccuracy. Except for one thing (as I read in The Economist of Oct.1, 2011 page 77) : the same thing happened with an experiment (called MINOS) in 2007 at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory ("Fermilab") near Chicago USA.
At that time they put the "discrepancy" down to an error in accuracy of their equipment. But in view of the recent OPERA experiment that is becoming increasingly unlikely.   Encouraged by the recent results Fermilab is now proposing (Government finance permitting) more neutrino tests (in 2013) trying to replicate the results.

If neutrinos are definitely found to be traveling faster than light, what does this mean and how could they possibly do that ?   It is thought that neutrinos (which can travel unhindered through virtually anything) perhaps take a short cut by traveling through one of the additional 7 dimensions (discovered theoretically) besides space and time, but which we have never entered through experiments before.   This would put the study of physics at the start of a whole new era.

Wednesday & Thursday October 19 & 20 2011 (diary)

I am busy working out the itinerary for my trip to Europe next year.
My initial idea was to visit several places in the Provence (on my way from Germany to Spain), but I have changed my mind and am now focusing in on what I really want to see. I always enjoy more staying at one place for several days, than moving every 1-2 days from one place to the next.
So I will go directly from Germany to the Camargue and stay at the small seaside port of Les Saintes-Maries de la Mer, from where I can explore the area with walks, cycling and boat trips.
I will stay there for 5 or 6 nights, then move to Arles for one night in order to catch the early train next morning west to Bayonne (just North of the Spanish border). According to the Lonely Planet Guide (LPG) Bayonne is one of the nicest small towns in SW France.

The marshes of the Camargue are full of bird life, including of course the famous pink flamingoes, and there are lots of walking and cycling tracks through the National park to explore and lovely waterways to travel by boat.
I will book a small hotel only a stone throw away from Saintes-Maries' harbour where you can eat a dozen oysters for just €6 (says the LPG)!