Merry Christmas

I hope that you had a lovely day. Lily certainly did. She got far too many presents and loved every minute of it.

Gift inspiration

If you are still struggling with your Christmas gift purchases (despite my valiant attempts at creating an ethical gift guide), or you would just like to win something, then you might want to check out Crunchy Domestic Goddess' two holiday gift guides - one for munchkins and another for adults.
The munchkin guide gives you the chance to win a gift pack from Hazelnut Kids who stock toys from a range of organic cotton people including Under The Nile. I love their stuff. A friend gave Lily one of their little grape babies yesterday and it is just so cute.

An ethical Christmas (part two)

[continued from part one]

3. Fair trade goodness
Another option for an ethical Christmas gift is to give people something fair trade. Things like coffee, tea and chocolate are a nice option here, because they are semi-luxury foods that lots people like (or may be slightly addicted to). Another benefit is that these are some of the products that are difficult to grow in Australia and generally involve incredible bad labour conditions (essentially slavery) when purchased from large corporations. A lovely spin off may be that some of your gift recipients may choose to make the switch to fair trade on a more permanent basis.

Other fair trade items might include clothing or home wears from shops like Cambodia House or Taylor & Khoo - who produce their products through fair trade practices in Cambodia and then send all of their profits back to Cambodia to run projects like an orphanage and other project work with people with disabilities, urban poor, female land mine victims and rural youth.


4. Eco-friendly gifts
Eco-friendly gifts are also a nice option for an ethical Christmas. This opens a whole range of possibilities and there a plenty of places stocking great gift ideas in this category.One of our favourite sites is Biome where you can buy a range of eco-friendly products, like these adorable wooden animals by Anamalz (available internationally), or environmentally responsible stationary (like the "I used to be a car tyre" mousepad) or the beautiful skin (and baby) care range from Tasmania's Beauty & the Bees.

5. Homemade & Handmade
Another option is to make something yourself. So, for example, if you enjoy baking, you could make gingerbread for people or other tasty treats (using organic & fair trade ingredients, of course).

If you are skilled in the arts & crafts area then you also have a whole range of other options - you could make a patchwork quilt for someone, using recycled & vintage fabrics, or you could make them some jewelry using recycled objects.

If you lack these kinds of skills (as I do, alas), then you might want to check out all the glorious items available on etsy. Everything on etsy is handmade and the money goes straight to the producer. Continuing with our ethical theme you could focus particularly on items that are made with recycled or eco-friendly materials or you could use the geolocator tool to locate sellers that are close to you (or to your intended recipient) so that you items do not have to travel too far and use up unnecessary fossil fuels.
6. Experiences
Finally, you could give someone an experience rather than an object. For kids this might include a gift of dance or gymnastic lessons, or a trail ride. For adults it might be something that they have always wanted to do - like the Bridge Climb (Sydney Harbour Bridge) or hang gliding.

P's sent me hang gliding for my birthday a few years ago and it was the best birthday that I have ever had.

An Ethical Christmas

It is coming around to that time of year when I start stressing about Christmas - what to buy people and what to answer in response to all those people who ask me what I would like them to buy me. This got me thinking about some of the options of making all this present buying a little more ethical (or 'ecotarian' if you will). So here are some of my ideas:

1. Buy a toilet
Odd, yes, but this is an idea that has recently really taken off - you purchase something that is needed for someone in the global south through an NGO like Oxfam or Baptist World Aid and 'give' it to someone for Christmas. This is the perfect way of entering into the spirit of Christmas without adding to the problem of overconsumption in the West.

If that doesn't make a lot of sense, here is Oxfam's description:

Oxfam Unwrapped is a collection of life-changing gifts - giving you the chance to give someone who has everything something special and something special to people who haven't got much at all.

P and I did this last year and it worked really well. It is even possible to tailor this kind of giving to the recipient. So, for example, we bought educational supplies for children in Thailand for my Grandfather and his wife who work in educational policy for UNESCO. We bought a 'start a business' pack for P's father who was a banker and for my father who worked in this area for the World Bank. For my brother I bought 'sex education' because, well because it was funny really. And the toilet? Well that I bought for my Mum because she has always said that she wanted to join the World Toilet Organisation and because, well you would just have to know her to truly understand...

2. Ethical Toys

Obviously young children are not likely to be quite as impressed with a gift that they personally do not receive, but it is still possible to buy gifts for children that are ethical.

There are lots of places that now stock fair trade children's toys and games, and most are made from sustainable wood or textile products that are gentle on the earth and on children.






Some examples include the Oxfam Shop (online and in capital cities around Australia - and other countries), Lark (online and stocked in many retailers around Australia), Generation Wonder (online), and Under the Nile (online and in retailers around Australia).

To be continued...

Stuff

Have you ever noticed that when you decide that you really must budget (and generally just stop consuming so much) you are overwhelmed with stuff that you wish that you could buy?

Well, I have.

Here are just a few examples:



I just love these earrings and necklace from Nephilim Designs - an etsy shop of a jewelry artist right here in Canberra.




I also desperately want to get Isa's new vegan cookbook, Veganomicon and would really like to try out Dreena Burton's new cookbook, Eat, Drink and Be Vegan (great name, isn't it?).

But want I want more than anything is a Digital SLR. We are currently debating whether to get the Canon 400D or the Nikon D40x... and waiting until after Christmas until we can justify the purchase.




And... actually everything else that I want is for Lily (fancy new cloth nappies, a paddle pool, a sandpit, etc...) so maybe I am not all that bad.

Mou gaan dou

C and I were idly watching the Oscars last night. A short portion of them anyway. Things were going along quite well. An Inconvenient Truth won best documentary feature, which, while predictable, was still heartening. The Oscars were also announced as being "green", though just what this means isn't clear. Still, if Al Gore said it and it's about the environment, I'm guessing it's probably right.

And then the award for best adapted screen play was announced and the writer of The Departed's name was called.

All night an annoying voice had been voice overing inane details about winners and/or their films during the long walk from seat to podium.

This had bugged me right from the start, but when they also got their facts wrong I was inordinately annoyed.

Annoying voiceover: "The Departed is based on Infernal Affairs, a Japanese movie".

Me: "Can't any of you stupid people get this right!


This outburst might be contextualised somewhat by a similar incident at the Golden Globes the other week when [insert name of cookie cutter movie star here] was giving The Departed an award of some description and happily announced it was based on Internal Affairs.

Seriously, how hard can it be?

Just for the record:

Infernal Affairs or Mou gaan dou (which, I believe, translates to The Non-Stop Way) is a Chinese film, which, by the way, is rather brilliant. It was written by a couple of Chinese screen writers and is full of Chinese actors,

including the beautiful Tony Leung


and the smooth Andy Lau



(and a few Thai guys).

It's also set in Hong Kong and almost entirely in Cantonese (with a spattering of English and a few scenes in Thai).

Not sure where the Japanese comes in?

Coetzee: is this truly the best that humans are capable of?

J.M. Coetzee gave a speech last night that I wish I'd heard. Speaking at the opening of an exhibition at the Sherman Galleries in Sydney (an exhibition called Voiceless: I feel therefore I am) Coetzee spoke up for those that truly have no voice of their own - non-human animals.

Right from the opening, Coetzee lets his calm outrage be known:

To any thinking person, it must be obvious there is something terribly wrong with relations between human beings and the animals they rely on for food.

He goes on to describe both the implicit horrors of modern factory farming (but pre-industrial animal husbandry gets a serve too) and the modern human's response - ambivalence:

The vast majority of the public has an equivocal attitude to the industrial use of animals: they make use of the products of that industry, but are nevertheless a little sickened, a little queasy, when they think of what happens on factory farms and abattoirs. Therefore they arrange their lives in such a way that they need be reminded of farms and abattoirs as little as possible, and they do their best to ensure their children are kept in the dark too, because children have tender hearts and are easily moved.

The second half of the speech (or the edited version published in today's SMH) proposes some alternatives and neatly summarises, in one short paragraph, a position I've been trying to articulate for as long as I can remember - the alternative to ambivalence is not remotely difficult or trying:

These alternatives need not involve any sacrifice in health or nutrition, and there is no reason why these alternatives need be costly. Furthermore, what are commonly called sacrifices are not sacrifices at all. The only sacrifices in the whole picture, in fact, are being made by non-human animals.

What is trying, however, is having to answer that question (and others like it - where do you get protein? What about calcium? Iron?)

"I know exactly where mine comes from", l always want to say, "and I'm fairly sure you have no idea". I never do though, just answer the question and try not to sound patronising.

Coetzee's speech ended on a powerful note. That, this, of all struggles, is truly worth it and that most closely approaching selflessness, as we can expect no thanks for our grace. More than this, we cannot even expect the comprehension of those whose lives are affecting by eliminating our consumption of the products that cause them such suffering and indignity:

The campaign of human beings for animal rights is curious in one respect: the creatures on whose behalf human beings are acting are unaware of what their benefactors are up to and, if they succeed, are unlikely to thank them. There is even a sense in which animals do not know what is wrong - they do certainly not know what is wrong in the same way that humans do.

Thus, however close the well-meaning benefactor may feel to animals, the animal rights campaign remains a human project from beginning to end.

I've never read any of his work and have always wanted to. I think I might have just found the prompting I need.

The exhibition that prompted him to write such a powerful speech is in Paddington till 10 March. If anyone gets the chance to see it, let me know what you think - I'm somewhat otherwise engaged at present.

The Exhibition's organisers and Voiceless are also calling for a Commitment to Animals Day today and asking people to sign this pledge to spend one day cruelty free. It's meant to be today, but there's no good reason why you can't do it tomorrow instead.

It's not at all difficult, in fact, it's a sheer pleasure.

*t-shirt from Peta.

It’s official, 3rd Pea will be a pig

I’ve no idea what it all means really, but Wikipedia tells me that:

the Boar type is usually an honest, straightforward and patient person. They are a modest, shy character who prefers to work quietly behind the scenes. When others despair, they are often there to offer support. This type of person is reserved with those they do not know too well, but as time passes and they gain confidence, those around them may discover a lively and warm-hearted person behind that mask of aloofness. Despite those born in the year of pig having a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, they have few close friends who understand them and share their inner thoughts and feelings. It is easy to put trust in pig type; they won't let you down and will never even attempt to do so. Such people simply want to do everything right according to social norms.

It is important to remember that these people are not vengeful creatures. If someone tries to take advantage of them, the pig type tend to withdraw to reflect on the problem and protect themselves. All they need in such situations is a little time to find a constructive way to respond. The people of the pig type are conservative creatures of habit. They dislike being made to travel too far from familiar surroundings, unless it is a trip to the countryside. They love nature and are never happier than when they are out somewhere, far from the city.

There is a tolerant and peaceful side to their character. Such people are never afraid to allow others their freedom of expression; they do not want to cause arguments and if there is any way to avoid arguing, they will probably take this option. They are not weak, however, and if the situation forces them to fight these people will rise to the occasion, whether it is to defend themselves or those close to them. People of the Boar type are the most admired by others.

The downside is:

Selfish, very spoiled, unhealthy, ignorant, pushy, pity "lazy", and rude

Hmm, let’s hope not.

Even worse, though is the suggested diet:

all kinds of meats

Umm, that might be somewhat problematic...

In a nice synchronicity 3rd Pea will be a Fire Pig – something that comes along once every 60 years (and is considered rather special, apparently) – and I, having been born in 1976, am a Fire Dragon. Isn’t that nice. C, on the other hand, is an Earth Horse. Still, fire and earth mix much more conducively than fire and water, for example.

We’re going to be a nice happy zodiac unit – when 3rd decides to come out and play, that is.

Keating!

Keating! The Musical is already sold out in Canberra. (Well you can still purchase single tickets with restricted views, but that is basically the same thing to me.)

Why?

Why didn't we book earlier? We should have known that Canberra is packed full of political tragics like us who would want to see this.

They are doing another season at the Seymour Centre between 9 and 22 March, but that is simply not realistic for us. You, on the other hand, may wish to book now to avoid disappointment.

Maybe we could go along just days after the birth. I'm sure a trip to Sydney on the bus would be no problem...

Well, this sucks

The ABC announced yesterday that it's axing The Glasshouse.

The bastards.

The show will see out its season (four more episodes) and then be relagted to the history books.

Will Anderson has been quoted as saying the show will "go out with all guns a'blazing".

John Howard has said he didn't ask the ABC to axe the show, but made no pretense of thinking that freedom of speech was a good thing in this particular case.

*Photo from the SMH

The Banquet

Last night, after a day of pure indulgence (I had a massage, drank a decaf latte, got my hair cut, went to the mall and bought shoes and a novel, and then went to the cinema - ah, what you can afford to do when your currency is strong in the country you are visiting...), I went to see The Banquet.

I must admit that one of the main reasons that I chose to see the movie is because it stars Zhang Ziyi and I like her; she is just so watchable. However, there was more to this movie than just a good actor.

Essentially it was a Chinese version of Hamlet - set in the 10th century and skewed somewhat so that a female instead of a man was the central character. Zhang Ziyi plays Little Wan who at the time of the film is the Empress. She had a love affair with the Crown Prince, Wu Luan, but his father chose to marry her and so she is now his step-mother. However, the Emperor is murdered by his brother, Li, who then usurps the thrown and so Wan marries him to protect herself and Prince Wu Luan. In a sense she plays the role of the Queen, Hamlet's mother, in the film. However, she is also Prince Wu Luan's (former) lover, and she is plotting to kill Emperor Li, so she is kind of Ophelia and Hamlet too.

I must say that Hamlet is much easier to relate to when there is a female lead, particularly one as compelling as Zhang Ziyi. The main weakness, in my opinion, is that because the Empress manages to embody the most interesting characteristics of the Queen, Hamlet and Ophelia, she leaves the real Hamlet and Ophelia (Prince Wu Luan and his betrothed, Qing Nu) without much character. To me, they were both fairly weak and ultimately boring characters who were really difficult to care about.

However, despite the weaknesses of these two characters, there is a real complexity to the script and the remaining characters. Empress Wan (Ziyi Zhang) is not wholly good or evil - she is ambitious, arrogant, strong, vulnerable, calculating, emotional and devoted all at once. To me that makes her more human than Ophelia and more sympathetic than Queen Gertrude. Emperor Li is also quite complex; being both the usurper who murdered his brother (and who is trying to murder his nephew) and a man who is utterly besotted with Wan - and thus clearly very vulnerable at the same time.

The Polonius character (Qing Nu's father, the Grand Marshall) is also interesting and, mercifully, nowhere near as annoying as Polonius. Rather than being utterly devoted to the Emperor, he has his own interests at heart - and, particularly, those of his children. And, finally, the Laertes character (Qing Nu's brother, the Marshall's son) manages to bring the same level of devotion to his sister, without the pathetic undertones that I always saw in Laertes. (There is no Horatio equivalent, underscoring the loneliness of all of the main characters).

Added to this complex script is stunning cinematography, spectacular martial arts (House of Hidden Daggers style), Kabuki-style dance, beautiful costumes, and a gorgeous sound track - so all up is was a pretty great film.

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead

Haven't gotten around to fixing the photos for C's post yet, so the suspense will have to build just a little longer.

We went to the theatre last night and saw an Athol Fugard play from the 1970s, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead. The director had brought the original cast back together and both actors were incredible.

The play is a powerful statement against the then apartheid laws and oppression of blacks in South Africa.

While the crowd found much to laugh about, C and I couldn't help but see distinct parallels between the lives of blacks under apartheid and the lives of blacks in parts of Johannesburg like Orange Farm and Phiri and White City in Soweto.

Today is Diwali, one of the biggest South Asian festivals of the year and, due to a considerable diaspora, there's a huge festival happening in town all day.

Hopefully we won't get too covered in coloured chalk water...

We're off to Lesotho tomorrow morning early, so there might be a communications blackout for a while.

We'll update as we can.

A weekend of wildlife and music

We hired a car for the last couple of days in order to see some of Africa's famous wildlife. On Saturday we drove out to an area just outside of Jo'burg called Krugersdorph, which has a game park with tons of amazing animals - lions, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, and gazelles but not elephants).

We drove slowly around the park never getting terribly close to any of the animals, other than the lions (probably the ones we least wanted to get cosy with). Lots of great photos on the SLR, so will have to wait till they're developed to post them.

The highlight of the park was its smallest inhabitants, some kind of squirrel-like thing that surrounded the car when we pulled over in one area to stare at the bizarre oddity that is the zebra. The little fox-like creatures came out of the grass and started begging at the car doors (obviously looking to be fed junk food tidbits by idiotic patrons). I can almost see how they entice people to part with their crisps; they are unbelievably cute and amazingly engaging.



Later that evening we headed to Jo'berg's "cultural" precinct, Newtown, for dinner and a show. Dinner was at Gramadoelas Restaurant, a Jo'burg institution whose business card claims it has hosted the following unlikely list of famous faces:

Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen of Denmark, Nelson Mandela, King of Zululand, Hilary Clinton, Elton John, John Major's wife (no name necessary apparently), Winston Churchill's daughter, Denzel Washington, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Harry Belafonte, and Nadine Gordimer.

Interesting collection. Oddly enough they didn't ask for our names... The food was decent, but not spectacular. What came afterwards, however, was.

We headed over to a temporary performance space that's been set up for the last few weeks in which a local festival has been running. Once there we paid sum total of $28 to enter. Three bands were slated to play during the course of the evening. The first, a local Jo'burg outfit had just released their debut album. They were really amazing, so full of energy and life. One of the singers was also heavily pregnant, which was interesting indeed.

The second band performed a fusion of jazz standards (with an African twist), tribal music, and Tuvan throat singing. The combination was quite powerful, though they might have played a touch too long as the crowd was hanging out to see the evening's star attractions - all the way from Havana, the Afro-Cuban All Stars.

I've been wanting to see these guys for years, ever since Wim Wenders made them (and Cuban music) famous in Buena Vista Social Club. They were totally amazing and well worth the long wait between acts.

Yesterday we drove out to the Sterkfontein caves - the so-called Cradle of Humankind. It was really interesting to see the site where part of the "missing link" was uncovered (or is still in the process of being uncovered - apparently the rock around the skeleton of "little foot", as the remains are called, is so dense and hard that the team of paleoanthropologists working on the site are only able to removed 2cm a year from around the skeleton).

Wandering thorough the caves was enlightening and also provided a handy break from the blasting sun outside.

After our stroll through history in the making we decided to get up close and personal with some more wildlife and headed to a lion park. Lion park was a bit of a misnomer as the place also had cheetahs, leopards, hyenas, and lots of other animals. But it was the lions (and one hyena) that were the most fascinating.

Before driving around the park we were able to go into an enclosure with 5 baby lions and a baby hyena. The little suckers were just stirring from their post lunch nap and so were lazing around, but quite awake. It was incredible to be able to pat them and give them a rub behind the ears. They are so much like the kind of cats we're used to at that age, very playful and inquisitive.





The hyena stole the show however. For some reason he took a liking to me and decided I was his personal teething ring. He nibbled on my arm, my bag, my leg, my jeans, my flip flops, and just about anything else he could get his teeth around, and completely ignored everyone else.



Very cute indeed.



We then drove around the park and into the lion enclosure. There must have been 30 lions in the 4 interconnected enclosures and for much of the time there was nothing more than 5 metres and our car door between us and them. We were steadfastly ignored though, which was comforting in the extreme, I must say.

Below are a few more lion pictures. We mostly used the SLR so developing and printing will have to take place before we know how they turn out, and the ones on the digital camera aren't as interesting, but they still give you a sense of how close we were.

Google launches book search, publishers sweat

As part of its bid to “organise the world’s information” Google has launched its latest tailored search engine, this one for books. Google Book Search does just that, it searches the entire text of books Google has scanned and stored online. You can download entire books and print to your heart’s content, but, according to a London Times article, you’d be a bit stupid if you did.

It seems Google is being very careful to steer clear of picking a large fight with major publishers by only making out of copyright publications available on the website. They’ve been scouring the shelves of several libraries in the US and UK, scanning the text and sticking them online. They haven’t scanned anything more recent than the mid-19th century to avoid violating any copyright laws, anywhere.

This sounds great, but there is a bit of a hitch. You might think that downloading and printing out, say, the complete works of Shakespeare might be a fun way to spend an evening and a cheap way to get hold the master’s words, but, according to the Times:

At present home download and printer speeds, it could end up being more expensive to get hold of a free copy of a classic work.

An 1825 complete works of Shakespeare, found by the Google book search, runs to 908 pages and takes 56.6 megabytes of data.

Downloading the tome would take up to five minutes on a broadband fast internet link, and could take approaching an hour on a traditional dial-up connection. But the determined reader would have to endure reading the plays on a backlit screen.

Printing out, though, adds to the complexity. Using a cheap home printer working at 12 pages a minute, it would take 75 minutes to produce the entire book for bedtime reading.

The exercise could easily consume an entire ink cartridge, which costs between £35 and £40.

On Amazon it is possible to buy a paperback Complete Works of Shakespeare for £4.79.

Well, that puts a hole smack bang in the middle of that theory...

Even though only crazy people (or those seeking to really abuse work stationery) are going to bother printing out entire books, publishers are up in arms, talking about the death of their field. Not quite yet, I’d venture.

I think it’s great. I could really have done with digital copies of some novels during my undergrad degree. Cutting and pasting quotes into essays rather than re-typing them would really have cut down needless typing in my honours thesis, and having the ability to perform word searches (looking for that half-remembered line) would have cut out tons of flicking and needless re-reading.

Now, if only digital readers would become more readable…

Fast Food Nation

I am really looking forward to seeing this film when it comes out. It is a fictional version of Erik Schlosser's brilliant book: Fast Food Nation.

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it.

Walmart: the high cost of low price preview.