Category: Blogging Challenges

Posts inspired by Word Press blog challenges eg. Daily Prompt, Share Your World etc.

Share Your World 2018: 22 October

Sharing My World This Week

Name two books that have influenced you and share how.  (Credit for this question goes to Teresa of The Haunted Wordsmith.   She asked for TEN books, in her challenge, so the SYW folks got off a bit easy..) 

Travel books in general, I love reading them and they have made me curious about other parts of the world.

“The Great Railway Bazaar” by Paul Theroux was one of the first I ever read.

I also really liked “84 Charing Cross Road”, by Helene Hanff. I enjoyed reading about the relationship that grew between Helene and the staff at the bookshop and also her love of learning and good books.

Non-Fiction books at the Op Shop

In your opinion, where is the line between art and not art? 

Art can be many things to many people. Some people say photography is not art. I think it is. I think it is art if there is beauty in it, and that is subjective too. I don’t understand a lot of the ways that people choose to be creative though.

Graffiti is known as street art, some of it is very clever and when done in the right places I enjoy it. When it was done on the side of a train and I had to clean it off with nasty chemicals it was not art, tagging is not art either.

At a recent arts festival, a man buried himself in a hole in one of Hobart’s main streets for three days. How is that art?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-26/tas-artist-to-be-buried-under-city-street-for-dark-mofo/9801788

At a previous festival, another so-called artist planned to kill a bull to use in a performance. Not art.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-19/controversy-over-hermann-nitsch-dark-mofo-bloody-art-show/8452202

At MONA in Hobart, there is a strange installation that uses bodily fluids. It stinks. Also not art IMHO.

Trivia for Halloween:   What item is banned only during Halloween from 12am October 31st to 12pm November 1st in Hollywood California?   (I know the answer, but I do not have any idea WHY)..c’mon…hazard a guess!  

Halloween is not such a thing here so I had to Google the answer. There was an accompanying article about crowd behaviour. I will say that when I worked for the railways the main time we saw a lot of Silly String was during the Royal Adelaide Show and cleaning it up after it had been sprayed around a train was a pain in the neck so I reckon the expense of cleaning up afterwards is probably the real reason.

What is something that really annoys you but doesn’t bother most people? 

My first answer would be most modern music. It’s really annoying to listen to but I would have to agree about GIF’s too. I don’t mind the odd GIF, I made one of my own recently just to see if I could but some bloggers load their posts with them and it is distracting to have all that winking and blinking going on when you are trying to read.

Instead of our usual gratitude question, I’m posing this one for this week:

What or who in your life brings you the most joy?

These two.

Cindy and Polly

and

Naomi 1985

and

The doll room in 2018, just some of the dolls.

 

    

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Steps: Indoors or Outdoors

Upstairs Downstairs

Stairs in Hobart

stairs inside the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart.
Staircase outside an old building in Salamanca Place.
Stairway up to the Bandstand in St David’s Park Hobart.

Stairs on a ship

Stairs in the Royal Esplanade Ovation of the Seas.
Stairs in the theatre onboard Ovation of the Seas.

Famous Stairs in Sydney

Famous Stairs.

RDP: Object

A Hard Working Word

I nearly wrote another ranty post about all the things that I object to eg. right-wing political figures, petty political correctness, destruction of beautiful old buildings, war, poverty, reality TV. However, I’d just get cross writing it and probably end up annoying at least a few people who didn’t agree with me.

Instead, I thought I’d look at the word from another angle. Grammar. It is one of those words that is used as both a noun and a verb.

When I use “object” as a verb, an action word, as my teachers used to say it’s something I am doing. As in “I object to the government’s policies.”

Protest
Not In Our Name

As a noun”Object” can be used to refer to a material thing, that’s pretty straightforward. An unidentified flying object could be a flying saucer or a tomato being chucked at one of the previously mentioned politicians.

However, it can also be used to mean purpose; as in “The object of the Ragtag Daily Prompt is to use a particular word in a post.”

But it can be used to pinpoint something or someone who has caused a reaction of some kind too. For example “The man was an object of ridicule in his red budgie smugglers.”

Object is a very hard-working word. As a native English speaker, I didn’t really learn the rules to this. Well, I probably did in Primary School but I just knew how to use the word from reading and listening. Trying to explain it in my own words was a lot harder and I used the definitions from the Collins online dictionary to help me get my thoughts in order.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/object

*Budgie Smugglers

 

RDP: Sport

Confessions of a Lazy Person

My initial response to this post was a polite “no thank you”. I don’t do sport. I have never enjoyed it even as a child. I remember a school sports day when I was five or six. I was in a running race where I came last or maybe second last. I didn’t care about that. What I did care about was that some teachers laughed at the way I was pumping my arms, something I had probably seen athletes do on television. Perhaps mum should not have told me that but anyway I had no further interest in running. When our class was taken to the pool to learn to swim I disliked that they made us put our heads under water.  My school years were a blur of being afraid balls would hit me, being afraid of falling off balance beams and constantly trying to get on the back of the line to do anything physical if I could not avoid going altogether. The only school sports activity I truly enjoyed was once whacking a ball with a hockey stick. Unfortunately, that was the only part of the game that I did like.

I am not a well-coordinated person. I can’t hit tennis balls, I can’t bowl although I do actually enjoy tenpin bowling. I can’t play table tennis although I will give it a go. I still can’t swim. Mini golf is fine, I can hold my own in that although I am not sure if you can call it a sport.

The only sports I’ve ever watched are yacht racing, Motorsports, and cricket. I sat up all night to see Australia win the “America’s Cup” for the first time and I love to see the start of the Sydney Hobart race on TV although that is just as much about the spectacle really.

image yachts
Sydney Hobart Race yachts at Constitution Dock.

I started to watch Motorsports with David. He enjoyed watching it and I became interested myself. We went to a lot of Formula 1 Grand Prix in Adelaide and every other sort of event we could get to for several years. Naomi and I often went to the Speedway too where we enjoyed cheering for our favourite cars and drivers.

Formula one car chassis’ circa 1988-89
Peter Brock at an F1 support race in Adelaide.

I didn’t seriously take an interest in cricket until we moved to Tasmania although I’d sometimes watch it on TV with David. I first went to a cricket match in Hobart to see if I’d enjoy it. I did and went to many more over the next few years.

I especially enjoyed going to live sports events because it’s fun to cheer for your team, it adds to the excitement when you are barracking for a particular racing driver, or a particular team especially if it is someone from your home that you can identify with.

The crowd on the hill at Blundstone Arena

I also really enjoy the photography aspect. I’ve taken a lot of pictures at motor racing events and cricket matches.

One of the few occasions I’ve captured the ball leaving the bat.

 

 

 

 

 

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Places People Visit

Let’s Go Singapore

Here are a few pictures taken in various places in Singapore earlier this year. Sentosa Island, Gardens By The Bay, Little India and Chinatown are all popular tourist destinations and great places to take colourful photos.

Sentosa Island, Singapore
Sentosa Island Singapore
Supertrees at night, Gardens By The Bay, Singapore
The Light Show at Gardens By The Bay Singapore.
These elephant statues are near the MRT station you use to get to the Little India neighbourhood.
Shops in Chinatown , Singapore.
Clarke Quay on the Singapore River.

 

 

 

Share Your World 2018: 15 October

Sharing My World This Week

What’s the biggest screw up in the kitchen that you were responsible for?

Well, occasionally I forget to turn things off and once I burned our dessert to a crisp because I forgot to turn the oven off when we sat down to dinner.

The other night I did the same thing with a leftover pork chop under the grill but at least it was only me that suffered for that mistake.

What, in your opinion, makes people believe absurd conspiracy theories?

Ignorance and not bothering to check the facts.

In 40 years what will people be nostalgic for?

I was interrupted while copy pasting this question and did not realise I had not answered it until now.

Nothing. I don’t believe that Millenials will be nostalgic for anything because they have such short attention spans that they always go on to the next fad and don’t value anything from the past. People of my generation will all be dead.

Is a hot dog a sandwich? 

I guess that as it is meat between two pieces of bread it is technically part of the sandwich family but I had never thought to consider a hot dog as a sandwich. A hot dog is a hot dog.

What wonderful thing happened to you this week that you’d like to share?  It can be a gratitude moment or something that just made you feel very happy at the time or made you laugh.

Saturday afternoon, it was sunny and warm outside and for once the neighbours were not making a racket so I was able to enjoy an hour or so sitting in the garden. I saw a Superb Fairy Wren hopping about. Not a rare occurrence in spring. I saw one out the window this morning but always a pleasure to see such a pretty little bird.

nature bird australia wren
Photo by mark broadhurst on Pexels.com

 

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Things Made of Plastic

Plastic

Barbie is known as the plastic princess so we’ll start with her. Some new ones on sale in Target. I sometimes photograph them for the doll blog. Their clothing is often molded plastic now which makes no sense for a fashion doll. The second photo is a bunch of dolls, Barbie and some Bratz at my house after getting washed and having their hair untangled.

Barbie dolls on sale in Target.
Barbie and Bratz dolls being cleaned up.

These Triang Hornby railway station buildings are similar the one I had as a child. They are made of a hard plastic.

Triang Hornby station buildings.

A much older type of plastic these Nally canisters are made of bakelite.

Nally Harlequin canisters
This old pen has a hard plastic or bakelite case.