THE ROSIE PROJECT | BY GRAEME SIMSION

 

THE OFFICIAL BLURB:

Don Tillman is getting married. He just doesn’t know who to yet.

But he has designed the Wife Project, using a sixteen-page questionnaire to help him find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also fiery and intelligent and beautiful. And on a quest of her own to find her biological father – a search that Don, a professor of genetics, might just be able to help her with.

The Wife Project teaches Don some unexpected things. Why earlobe length is an inadequate predictor of sexual attraction. Why quick-dry clothes aren’t appropriate attire in New York. Why he’s never been on a second date. And why, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love: love finds you.

 

MY GLIMPSE:

The Rosie Project was fun! I thought I was reading the private journal of Sheldon Cooper the entire duration, which for me was both enjoyable and witty from start to finish.

I recommend The Rosie Project be read by people who tend to use ‘labels’ – especially to label people!

Don is not a conformist and he is most definitely on the Aspergus Syndrome Spectrum somewhere. This is most obvious to his friends and to the reader, but not to Don himself. He is aware of ‘the label’ itself, but not that it may apply to him – so he lives a life of less limitations because of it. He lives a life that plays to his strengths not his weaknesses. He lives a life bound by his own ideals and goals, not society’s. Most importantly, he lives a life – his.

Don finds a life full of worth and life full of Love finds Don.

IT’S ALL ABOUT PERSPECTIVE….

I think I may be having my scheduled ‘mid-life crisis’.  Not that I mind – because it’s not what I was expecting!  I mean, I didn’t go out and buy a Harley and join a Motorcycle Gang or anything crazy like that!

Instead, I’ve been thinking…..and thinking…..and thinking.  I’ve thought about my past, my grudges, my mistakes, my family, my future, my joys, my sorrows.  I’ve thought about so many things lately.  I feel like I’m healing and growing and embracing myself and my thoughts and most importantly, the ‘authentic me’.

With this in mind, a little idea I’ve had brewing for a while took some sort of shape recently.  In hindsight, it may have manifested from my aforesaid ‘mid-life crisis’ of which I seem to be in the depths of….that and of course, Pinterest!

To get started, I needed a muse to direct. The children x 3 were uninterested and DS was not particularly cooperative at just 10 months old.

Mr Glimpses must really love me because he is always my go-to backup person and he never complains as much as I probably would in the same situations!

The trick was to find a suitable location, which was limited for me, but the light was beautiful on this particular day so I had to photograph SOMETHING!

 

Isn’t he a Good Sport?!  Ideally a bridge or overpass (with no traffic to run me over) would have been kinda cool.

When I was editing these shots, I included The Little People in the process to show them what I was trying to achieve. They were most impressed – with Daddy!?  For being so clever and ‘hanging’ off the verandah like that!! Even after I rotated the edits back and forth a few times to prove that I was in fact the ‘clever one’ (albeit only a little bit), it was still Daddy who received the accolades!

The next morning, a request was made. DD #1, #2 & #3 wanted to ‘hang’ like Daddy. We decided to change it up a bit.

DH and I have a small personal challenge going on at the moment.  Handstands – We both want to be the first to nail one and so are both practicing and building strength to serve this purpose.  I trumped the head stand in good time but I’m afraid he is way ahead in the handstand stakes – Mine are just embarrassing!

However, as of today even the 2yo has beaten us to the finish line – or so it would seem!!  So much fun and more memories made this weekend.

Life is all about perspective so flip and rotate to your heart’s content, until you find what makes you happy :)

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 BEHIND THE SCENES:

THINGS TO CONSIDER:

1.  Choose a suitable wall surface – something that is seamless and looks like it could be a floor.

2.  If you can’t find the perfect surface/location, use what you have.  It’s still fun!

3.  Choose clothing without logos or pictures.  When you ‘flip’ in post production, they can give the ‘game’ away!

4.  Pay attention to other details like ‘falling’ hair and or jacket hoodies etc when upside down.

5.  Notice your background – green grass where the blue sky should be?  Whoops!

Rubber Ducks | QUACK!

Today I logged into my computer and opened LR.  I was searching for a specific image for a specific purpose.  Fortunately my image library is fairly well organised – catalogued, stacked etc  LR takes care of most of that automatically.

Unfortunately I’m not so crash hot at ‘tagging’ my images with meaningful keywords or going BACK to images to add tags after I’ve used them for specific things so I can identify exactly which edit I used if I need the same image again….

So, I’ve been trawling through 10 311 LR edits today.  YES! 10 311!

It sounds like a bore but I’m a bit of a geek and it was fun to come across these  fun shots I took a while back for a Photography Challenge Group on Redbubble….I forgot I had ever taken them.

It reminds me that I need to do some more to add to my ‘collection’ but for now, these are my favourites –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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BUILDINGS | SNAPPED

“Buildings can provide much more than shelter. They are meeting places, work spaces and where we go to relax. Through hard angles of glass and steel or through a close up of crumbling brick share images that capture the personalities of our sturdy, silent friends.  Buildings can’t talk but they can still tell stories”  – ABC OPEN SNAPPED:  BUILDINGS

This month I participated in an ABC Open Project for the first time via Instagram. This also meant participating in my first #instameet. It was a simple and quick way to still enjoy the fun when time poor and also be ‘virtually present’ from 85km away.

Granted my ‘buildings’ were few and lacked a little character but after being disappointed with my creative block and failure to submit any images for last months ‘Off to Market’ Snapped Project, I was pleased to at least participate.

Participation is as simple as uploading your images to Instagram and hashtagging with the current project hashtag. In this case, #abcopenbuildings.

An Instameet works in the same way – participate with a common predetermined hashtag and everyone can see your Instagram images at the same time as they are uploading their own. Give it a go!!

 

#abcopenbuildings #ccscbuildings #minibuilding

 

#abcopenbuildings #ccscbuildings #abandonedchookhouse

 

#abcopenbuildings #ccscbuildings #vicenzaworksheds

 

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#DearLittlePeople

Dear Little People

I think I will start writing down all the crazy little things that you do. I say ‘crazy’ because each of you are unique with your own quirks and personalities. Sure, some of those things may be inherited from your gene pool but you have made them your own already.

The Brumby is organised to the point of disorganised and poor time management. We over think things, you and I.

Nin Nin is complicated. Everything has a logical explanation and so you are difficult to persuade when you are wrong. You get that from Daddy. The most annoying part, is you are both often right!

Cee Jay, you are independent & stubborn. You got a good mix of us both. Yay for GIRL POWER!!

Little Dude is, so far, Cee Jay’s protegé. You are a happy little guy and I can’t wait to see what tricks you and your sister have in store for us! EEEEK!!

You are capable, you are loved and you are important.

Love Me
xo

GLIMPSES OF ACTION!

I feel like ‘Glimpses’ has just entered a new era – The era of the Sports Camera. That’s right,  I’ve moved to videography…..but only temporarily!!

We acquired a Sports Camera some time ago and have not had a lot of time to really play with it.  In the early days we were impressed by its small size and post-production image quality, and still are.  It comes with a ‘million’ accessories including chest and/or head straps and brackets for almost any conceivable moving or stationary object imaginable.  It’s a fun little gadget and we are suitably impressed.

At first though, we had absolutely NO IDEA what we were doing!

ABC Open visited (ages ago!)  and a group of us collaborated to create this video postcard….

 

Read more about The Video Postcards  Project here.

I should probably ‘fess up  now (before rumours start) that this clip is not completely accurate.  Mostly because I have not secretly hidden a 12-year-old son called JJ from every person I know until now :)

More recently, I finally took the plunge – very literally.  It took me 12 months or more to finally make use of the waterproof casing that came with our GoPro Hero3 and did a fun shoot in the swimming pool.  For me, this was not an easy thing to do.  It goes against every belief and rule I have about taking particular care of my things, especially my expensive, cherished, technical gadget things relating to my photography kit.  Why would one voluntarily throw that stuff in a pool full of water? I was nervous.  But thankfully, the casing did its job and I now have these memories of my Wild Brumby Girl come Mermaid who loves the water.

 

I’m not much of a videographer, no really, I’m not!  I had a 1min 30sec clip recorded with the camera attached to the front of a quad bike while being ridden and I couldn’t edit it, save it, shorten it or make it conform in any way so that it would upload to this post.  My apologies.

So given my lack of expertise, I did the next best thing – I cheated.  This time  I took photos in burst mode.  I edited them.  I created a slide show in LR (another first for me!) with a high-speed change over between slides.  And…..a bunch of stills that look like a video……wallaah!

 

I love this kid!  Swimming is one of her strengths and so creating this for her, albeit only 3secs AND the whole world now knows I don’t keep my pool very clean, was a valuable treat for both of us :)

Like I said, I’m not much of a videographer – REALLY.  But I will definitely being using the Sports Camera more often, now that I’m not scared of it anymore!

Obvious things to keep in mind –

1.  Complete the recommended waterproof case testing before submersion.

2.  Complete the recommended waterproof case testing before submersion again.

3.  It has that wide-angle/fish eye lens thing going on.

4. Composition – you basically have to wing it!

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THE LUMINARIES | BY ELEANOR CATTON

THE OFFICIAL BLURB:

Winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, a breathtaking feat of storytelling where everything is connected, but nothing is as it seems…. It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried to end her life, and an enormous fortune has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery: a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky. Eleanor Catton was only 22 when she wrote The Rehearsal, which Adam Ross in the New York Times Book Review praised as “a wildly brilliant and precocious first novel” and Joshua Ferris called “a mesmerizing, labyrinthine, intricately patterned and astonishingly original novel.” The Luminaries amply confirms that early promise, and secures Catton’s reputation as one of the most dazzling and inventive young writers at work today.

MY GLIMPSE:

I love to hate a compelling novel.  I love the fact that I can’t put it down but hate that I can’t put it down at the same time!  These kind of reads usually end in sleep deprivation, neglect of household chores, an increase in height of unfolded washing piles,  lack of groceries in the pantry and long unexplained absences from my family and friends.   My sincere apologies to all affected!

The Luminaries goes round and round in circles like a game of Chinese Whispers of mammoth proportions.  But each whisper exposes an additional element to the unraveling story – a specific character, an event or an assumption made or previously eluded to.

Among the key players who are unknowingly and almost secretively drawn together like Freemasons called to a Masonic Lodge are an Ex-Lawyer, a Magistrates Assistant, a Chaplin, a Newspaper Editor and Jew, a Banker, a 17th Century Pimp, a Chinaman or two, an Alchemist and a Maori.  Most start out as complete strangers but each one’s  experience to hand, and collaboration of knowledge, sets free the cogs of truth and justice.

The setting and era – The New Zealand Goldrush, 1866 – lends itself to the theatrics of sea voyages, Bonanzas, Indigenous Culture, Multiculturalism, The Opium Wars, vengeance, fraud, homicide, discovery, blackmail, truth & lies.  All of which are told by Eleanor Catton with connectivity, interconnectivity, intra-connectivity and an inventiveness that earned her The Man Booker Prize of 2013.  CONGRATULATIONS!