0704041800. What colour is nine?

The Australians have a saying “what you miss out on at the swings you will pick up again on the roundabout”. The Koreans call this “Ying and Yang”. The French say “Some good, some bad”. The Chinese say “You bad boy – you go to jail”
I have 900 hours of sick leave at work and I quit in about 60 days. These seemingly independent facts will soon become relevant.

I arranged to work three day weeks with the aid of a powerful letter by a doctor. When questioned about this by a supervisor, I replied that it is personal. Within weeks of taking two days off every week I received a letter from the pay department saying they had audited my superannuation and I have been overpaid since signing an AWA in June 2000. They want the money back. Swings and roundabouts. Ying and Yang.

Easter holidays.
My long awaited life-long dream of riding a motorbike on a grand adventure will come true over Easter. The last time that I decided to ride a motorbike to visit relatives across an entire state and half way into the next one was called off due to bad weather. That was about 20 years ago. Back then, I was riding across the Moonby Ranges and it was freezing. The summer-weight and ventilated motocross gloves I was wearing were doing a great job of making me look good, but that’s all. I stopped on the side of the road and warmed my hands on the exhaust pipe of my Yamaha XT 600 and decided that I would have to do this on another day. A few weeks later my mum gave me, as a Christmas present, a great pair of leather touring gloves. They are gorgeous genuine leather with sheepskin lining. 20 years ago. The gloves have been kept in my sock drawer in 14 different houses since then. My secret plan was that “one day” I will wear them on my BMW touring bike and ride off for a fabulous adventure. It will happen on Friday.

Speaking Cantonese.
I don’t know how little kids can learn a language so fast. Kids can speak their native language better when they are three months old than I can speak Cantonese after six months. I can almost count to ten in real time.
Try this experiment at home – get some coloured pencils and write the word “Blue” in red, write the word “Red” in Yellow, write the word “Green” in blue - you get the idea. Now ask someone what colour it is. There will be a tiny delay while their brain processed the fact that the color is not the word. That is what it is like to learn another language – everything has to be processed twice. We did phone numbers in class on Tuesday. I kept thinking in Russian. My brain knew that I had to translate from English, but there was a half-a-second delay while my brain sorted it all out. The stressful part of the class is when we have to write our answers on the board. My approach is jump up with an answer that I know is correct and then appoligise for being out-of-turn. We had to introduce ourselves in Cantonese – I don’t speak to people that much in English. The next trick will be write the numbers in Cantonese and in a different color.