My good friend Chris is a seahorse expert. Somebody made a minidoco about his work in the waters of Sydney. It’s pretty cool.
Seahorses in Sydney Harbor from Maiara Da Rocha Skarheim on Vimeo.
Tag: friends
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I’m home. Or am I?
I’m sitting at mum and dad’s house, which hasn’t actually been my home for about 3 years, trying to figure out where home is. I’ve used my time in Brisbane so far to catch up with people who I hadn’t realised I missed as much as I think I might realise when I go back to Townsville.
Unfortunately some of these people (hello Mel and Sara) said my blog was too wordy and complex for them to understand… so for the rest of this post I’ll try to use words with one bit part (syllable for the uninitiated or ignorant, I figure I can write longer words in brackets and maintain consistency).
My small girl tribe mate (sister) plays her valved horn (trumpet) now (syntax is going out the window with this one syllable thing). She is quite good.
My flight on the day before the day that was (yesterday) was late by four hours. They had to send a new plane from this place to the place I came from due to bad stuff in the first plane. I had to sit at the plane place for what seemed like a long time (it was a long time) so I bought a thing made from trees with words in it (a book – that’s a tough concept for the ignorant reader to get their head around I guess). I think the plane group should give me my cash back for the book – they did give me six bucks to buy food. That is a rate of one and a half bucks per hour. I’d be paid more for my time if I worked in a sweat shop (technically one word I think).
I went to the pub last night and then to a shop that sells flat bread things with meat (pizza), I was with Nat and the guy whose name is like the nut group (Knobby). Those boys make me laugh more than any one else. It made me think of the game I want to bring in to the world. For the purposes of describing this game I’m going to use some two and three syllable words. I think people should play restaurant taboo – where you have to order without using the name of the thing you want or any words they use in the description – funny how stylisticly this would tie in with some of the sentences above, eg the pizza sentence. So you have to walk into maccas and order the thing with three bits of bread (big mac) or the bird burger (McChicken), or the tiny pieces of rabbit (chicken McNuggets), or the frozen pig fat with brown sauce (chocolate sundae).
The challenge is now out there. Sorry about all those big words.
I went back through some old posts to see if there were any comments I’d missed – Leah has made some interesting comments to some posts. Particularly her stance on chequebook journalism which I’ll address in my next “journalistic theories” type post. She also bagged out my headlines for my press releases. That wasn’t very nice Leah. I cried.
The power of business cards
I’ve finally figured out how to get people to take me seriously. My father is constantly worried that the “Smiley” nom-de-plume (I’ve gone all French and cultured, two French references in three posts oh ho ho [that is an attempt at the traditional French grunting sound{I don’t really like the French anyway, they’re a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys who should take their freedom fries and go home}]) is not counting in my favour as far as people taking me seriously goes. The key to opening all sorts of professional doors is the humble business card. Seriously. I go to these functions and meetings and people look at me all funny until I pull out a little cardboard rectangle with my name and impressive position description on it – and POW, instant credibility.
I’ve also realised that confidence is the key to sounding impressive in meetings. Confidence and unexplained acronymns. You throw an acronymn out there and just keep powering on. No one questions anything if they’re too far behind. I’ve been able to thoroughly convince our local tourism operators that I know what I’m doing. Now I need to ensure my competence matches my competence. I was trying to work out the relationship between confidence and arrogance the other day – I think the third factor in the equation is competence – provided you’re actually as good as you think you are you’re confident not arrogant. When confidence outweighs competence that’s arrogance. I should be a motivational speaker – people would listen to me if I had convincing business cards.
In other news… I had two great phone conversations last night – the first one involved a couple of people coming clean, and thanking me for all my hard work getting them to become a couple – they know who they are, most of the people reading this also know who they are. I’d like to say on the record – When I told the guy in question that my matchmaking days were over – I only meant they were over for him. The second conversation was with my very good friend Paul. It’s always nice talking to old friends – they’re like a worn in pair of shoes, or your favourite t-shirt – instant comfort.