Tuesday 26 March 2013

Day 111: Tweet your 16yo self

Day 111 (26 Mar) Tuesday, and as I type this there is a fun/interesting twitter hashtag trending away in the background...tweet your 16yo old self. Some people are very witty. Some people, among the wit, also offer some sage and serious advice. At 16 I was in my final year of high school, determined to get to university at the end of the year and desperately wanting to play hockey for Australia. I was also dead keen to get to Japan. Well, two out of three etc... I'll turn 50 at the end of the year, sometimes I think my 16 yo self ought to write to the 50 yo me...anyway that's another hashtag. 

Tuesday, a day to head north to Sippy Downs and enjoy the last few 'free' Tuesdays. In a few weeks, a colleague goes on leave and I'll be taking over her teaching: lectures and tutes on Tues to 9pm and repeat the dose at 10am on Wednesday, for about seven weeks. Well, it's a job. 

Colvinius, at 6.12am
At 6.12am, I was reading yesterday's news today...reading about Mark Colvin, ABC journalist and presenter of PM (one of my 'must listen' programs). He's made the news because he has received a kidney transplant. It is good news for him and for many of us who have followed his circumstances for some time. He's a magnificent tweepster as well so no-one is surprised when 'his kidney' becomes a twitter account...it's clever, but I suspect you have to be with the tweepsters to get it. 

Next to that article was a stunning photo of the ocean pool at South Curl Curl, my grandmother's beach and one of three of my childhood: we learnt to love the water at Little Manly, went bodysurfing at Freshwater and swam in the pool and learnt to surf under my grandmother's watchful eye at Curlie. We also played lots of beach football and cricket down on the sand. It's a wonderful part of the world and I'm grateful that my 16yo self as well as my infant to 19yo self got to spend so much time there. 

The trek to work thereafter was uneventful. Traffic was fine, weather not too bad. An awkward week in a way. It is a four day week because we have Easter upon us along with the 'mid-semester' break (about three weeks too early). I'm not sure how many students will turn up as the weekend draws closer. I'm due to continue teaching through until 9pm on Thursday. I guess there won't be an exodus of cars from the SunCoast to Brisbane that night...all the other way. 

If my 16yo self could have known I'd be at a computer, on my desk, linking to Japan and China through a thing called the interwebs, at 6.12pm, I suspect my grandmother might have suspected I'd caught one too many waves and stayed out in the sun a bit too long. But there I was, viewing footage of protests of Japanese and Chinese nationalists over a small group of...barely islands, more islets, in the sea between the two. There's is a dispute over possible resources, and there is also much consternation over a re-emergence of another era of militarism. I hope it doesn't end that way. Perhaps, given my occupation, I just might be able to proffer a glimmer, a different approach. I never imagined that at 16...

Planning lectures, at 6.12pm

Balanced lectures, at 6.12pm

When I was 16, I wish I'd known my grandmother only had another three or four years, there'd have been much to talk about...and many more Manly premierships (and more near misses) to cheer. And I'd let her know that her condition, which I've inherited, has a much better prognosis these days...and I'd swap it all to spend on Saturday arvo with her again on the hill at Brookie Oval. Life at sixteen...wasn't so bad after all. 


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