Perfection

'It is my hope that you may consider this matter, that you may search out your own imperfections and not think of the imperfections of anybody else. Strive with all your power to be free from imperfections. Heedless souls are always seeking faults in others. What can the hypocrite know of others’ faults when he is blind to his own?'
~The Promulgation of Universal Peace, Page 244: gr4

It seems so natural and easy to look at the imperfections of others... oh well, you know what they say: "we're only human..."

Is that really an excuse?

'Man... has the animal side as well as the angelic side, and the aim of an educator is to so train human souls that their angelic aspect may overcome their animal side. Then if the divine power in man, which is his essential perfection, overcomes the satanic power, which is absolute imperfection, he becomes the most excellent among the creatures; but if the satanic power overcomes the divine power, he becomes the lowest of the creatures. That is why he is the end of imperfection and the beginning of perfection.'
~Some Answered Questions, Pages 235-237: gr2

We should always be striving for perfection, but can we ever attain true perfection??

'As long as a man does not find his own faults, he can never become perfect. Nothing is more fruitful for man than the knowledge of his own shortcomings. The Blessed Perfection says, “I wonder at the man who does not find his own imperfections.”'
~The Promulgation of Universal Peace, Page 244: gr4

Balderdash revealed...

I was waiting for 2 more comments on Our Nations Capital before I revealed the definition for Haptodysphoria, but if there are no more then I'll just have to spill the beans!

I'll give 24 hours for those comments to find their way to Our Nations Capital. That is, I'll update this post with the answer in 24 hours...

I know this is the moment you have all been waiting for (sorry its more than 24 hours- dont forget the time difference!!)... drum roll please... (and thanks to "the winner" for adding another comment- much appreciated!)...

Haptodysphoria [Hap·to·dys·pho·ri·a]

1. [Balderdash's definition] The odd feeling felt by certain people when handling fuzzy surfaces.

2. [in CancerWEB's On-line Medical Dictionary] An unpleasant sensation derived from touching certain objects.
Origin: G. Hapto, to touch, + dysphoria

Meanwhile we could actually get a real game of online balderdash happening where we all enter our definitions as anonymous (including me with the real definition) and then after there's a few definitions up we can vote for them not-anonymously... I think its a GREAT idea, but then again I am a bit monica-esque.

We're going to the Zoo Zoo Zoo

how about you you you?
we're going to the zoo zoo zoo
you can come too too too...

My rellos and I at the zoo

I LOVE my Dip Ed!

On Tuesday in My Science Curriculum unit we had an actor come in and take the class for 2 hours and we did all sorts of fun exercises to increase our confidence as performers (coz teaching is sort of like performing) and getting us outside our comfort zones (made me think of Sanavasli). Today we went for an excursion to the zoo so that next year when we are all teaching our own science classes we will know what kind of stuff they offer at the zoo... So much fun! And clearly I'm always looking for "blogable" moments so I had my camera with me (to tell you the truth my camera was with me all the time before I even had a blog but now there's added reason)!

Speaking of Performing- the Orangutans were SUCH performers, they really would show off whenever people came past. Very human-like (Orangutan comes from the Indonesian Orang hutan which translates to "Forest person") they really are people of the forest...

Oh and the zoo didn't have any zebras for the African Savannah exhibit so they just got horses and painted stripes on them! The Rhinos make me think of that scene in Ace Ventura... they really look soo fake- like they are just wearing a rhino suit!

I was sharing with the rest of my class my knowledge of these animals (all gained from animated movies) as well as making up a bit of "balderdash" along the way, I'm gonna be such a GREAT teacher! I should write a book "the world according to C a r m e l C r o f t" so that I can reference my claims...

Melbourne

Melbourne was GREAT- very stylish city. Too many people had dogs with designer label clothes on (the dogs, not just the people) so I cant see myself living there... LOVED visiting though!

Thanks Riaz for picking me up from the Airport! Sweet guy that Riaz... We went and hung for a bit in Bobbie (from Canberra)'s super duper hotel room on the 40th floor of the Sofitel tower, then Riaz took me to Leila's house. Sweet sweet Leila, kick her in the face for me please.

The view from Bobbie's hotel room window- yes that is the Eiffel tower.

We went to this very exciting Korean restaurant where you cook your food on this hotplate in the middle of your table. Shamim decided to whip out Korean and Ash learnt how to flirt with the waitress in Korean. Twas lots of fun.

Shamim and Ash on a Glove seat in Central.

Dorns and I on our glove seat

Bobbie works with a guy who knows all the secret places to go in Melbourne, so Bobbie took us to this place called "The C r o f t Institute"! You actually have to walk down a dirty alleyway filled with graffiti and dumpsters and broken bottles and homeless people and then you get to a dead end and see:

The C r o f t Institute

Us in the Alley after our adventure to The C r o f t Institute.

Gems took us to Max Brenner for coffee- well for chocolate- they only sell chocolate here. It was lovely to catch up with another ex-perthie (Leila and Ash being the other ex-perthies). We all had these great drinks where you make the drink yourself by adding those chocolate drops to a little container of milk which is being warmed over a candle. Its name (sukakao or something like that) is because you suck the chocolate drink up through that metal straw (which is also a spoon)...great little invention!

Sukakao... or something.

Dorns and I hung out at Leila's Coles on the last night and bought goodies for the plane etc. We found the "Kosher Foods" aisle- that was very exciting!

Me with a bottle of "C A R M E L Grape Juice" in the Kosher aisle at Coles.

LOVE Camden! Sweet Camden...

ACT vs NSW

Have your say: Does the ACT deserve to be the capital of Australia, or was there just not enough space in Sydney to build Parliament House?

Battle of the States (and territory)

I was far too excited by Jafs' poll so I decided to do my own- clearly inspired by my own east coast tour as well as Mazza Rey's border post...

I'm sorry it has to come to this...

Our Nations Capital

I recently journeyed to our nations capital (Canberra, ACT [Australian Capital Territory], for those COTA). Interesting to view (and sometimes somewhat disturbing) is the variety of statues that are scattered through this city. The statue above [censored by myself] was a gift by Alexander Downer to his father... I bags never asking him for gift ideas!

Meanwhile do not ask me what is going on here- what is the sheep on the chair doing and why is the other sheep watching him?!

woopknacker [woop·nack·er]

n.
1. An aggresive loudmouthed person

Sweet Canberra crew, LOVE them! Good times were had by (nearly) all, playing Absolute Balderdash! I'm slightly obsessed with games, I brought this one all the way from Perth... Sometimes I remind me of Monica: "rules help CONTROL the fun!!"

Here's one for you folks out there (now dont cheat by asking google or dictionary.com, I want real creative answers!!) What is the definition of Haptodysphoria? I will post the real (Balderdash) definition in a few days.

More Procrastination

I just did this IQ test that I found on tickle and it was kinda fun... but I am a dork (seeing as though I have a blog!) so maybe thats why I liked it!

Meanwhile I also accidently spammed a whole bunch of people in my address book- oops!

So this is what I scored:

Carmel, your IQ score is 133

Your overall intelligence quotient is the result of a scientifically-tested formula based on how many questions you answered correctly. But it's only part of what we learned about you from your answers on the test. We also determined the way you process information.

The way you think about things makes you a Creative Theorist. This means you are a highly intelligent, complex person. You are able to process information of nearly every kind with ease, using both creativity and analysis to make sense of the world. Compared to others you also have a very rich imagination.

How did we determine that your thinking style is that of a Creative Theorist? When we examined your test results further, we analyzed how you scored on 8 dimensions of intelligence: spatial, organizational, abstract reasoning, logical, mechanical, verbal, visual and numerical. The 3 dimensions you scored highest on combine to make you a Creative Theorist. Only 6 out of 1,000 people have this rare combination of abilities.

It sounds pretty alright, but what are IQs normally around? Its not like they are gonna say "Carmel, your IQ is 133, that means that you are pretty stupid but 68% of the population is dumber than you..."

I really want to know where I got things wrong but they want me to pay for a full report and I'm not THAT dumb! OK fine, maybe I'm just tight but who pays for online IQ results!?

Click here to find out how dumb you are...

Underwater photos

I promised underwater pictures of the reef fish, so here they are:

Look at the cute little blue one hiding in the coral at the bottom, sweet guy...

Like I said, the fish were amazing, so many colours!

This one is known as "the Alchemist"

Umm...

OK fine... they are not my underwater photos... did I have anyone fooled??? I would like to thank Faz for letting me post these photos- sweet guy, that Faz. disclaimer: Farzad loves his fish and would never actually attack them with such a look on his face :P

So the actual photos from our underwater camera didnt turn out quite so vibrant (infact one whole role of film didnt turn out at all)! But here are a few to prove that I wasnt making things up (Don't mind the flash that you see in each photo; I couldnt be bothered scanning them in so I just took photos with my digi of the hard copy photos we got from the underwater camera):

See I was actually there!

That black thing next to my left hand is a fish, it was sooooo cute! It would swim back and forth around my arms like a cat walks around your feet rubbing its face on you. I think it knew that I was a tourist and was putting a show on for me, dad thinks that it was being territorial and telling me to get lost.

Go against the flow

This one was taken in quite shallow water, I think I was actually standing. I love how they are all swimming in the same direction except for one fish! These are called "dart fish", I think because they "dart" around.

Ref

Sweet Ref, love him! Aptly named by Sanavasli, seconded by myself, approved by Farzad. These were one of my favourite kind of fish at Ningaloo.

This scene was FAR more colourful in real-life

The coral in the bottom left was an orangy-brown colour with glowing blue tips and there were heaps of little blue fish (like the one in Faz's tank) swimming in and around it. That big fish was actually multicoloured and very shiny and bright, he would hang out with the little blue ones often, he was about 45cm long. Also swimming amongst the little blue ones were lots of little Refs.

The Alchemist

Well, he's not quite the Alchemist, but he's a bit similar. Very inquisitive little guy. That is my leg- he got so close to us. The coral next to him looks like a big brain.

Sell it 4 U

I'm in the Gong now, staying with Arash and Veronica- very sweet people! Their apartment is above Arash's shop; it's called "Sell it 4 U". It's centrally located in Wollongong, so what happens is people come into the shop with stuff that they want to sell (their old phone, clothes, books, whatever) and these guys sell it for them on ebay... I felt very useful; I packaged things, sent things, helped out at reception, made sandwhiches... :D

Sell it 4 U (the window upstairs is their apartment)

Its nice being back in the gong, I haven't been here for a while. I managed to go to a JY meeting (prep. not an actual JY session), they are getting ready for an end-of-book celebration/games night thingo. It's kinda cool to see that these guys over here are doing the same thing that we're doing back in WA. We're all connected... isn't it lovely... :)

Tonight I'm going to Sydney to hang with the crew there, that'll be great. Then I'll stay at Sandy's (sweet girl that Sandy), have breakfast with 2 of the greatest people ever invented (Shane, Jon, yes that's you!) then I'll be off to the Australian Capital Territory for the weekend!

Our (including Sandy's sweet roomie Adeline, who we hijacked on her way to uni) amazing Breakfast c/o Jono (Shane, I won't tell anyone how you thought that the dentist was more important)

This has got to be my fastest/shortest East Coast tour yet; I came on Tuesday, go to Sydney today (Thursday), Canberra Friday, Melbourne on Sunday, then back to Perth to start uni again! It'll be great- short, but great...

Sorry to all those who don't care what I do with my holidays- but you didn't HAVE to read this :P

Sana Vasli is my Superhero!

Life's a beach and then you dive...

I've just returned from a family holiday up north to Ningaloo Reef, Exmouth. According to RAC travel, it takes 15 hours, 10 minutes to get there- I guess thats if you go the speed limit- it took us 14 hours (and thats with about 5 loo breaks)! We passed the Tropic of Capricorn- very exciting!
These 3 images (Australia, Western Australia, North West Cape) are thanks to Google Maps.

The view from our cabin (sorry about the cut-and-paste, I just stuck 3 photos together using paint- didnt think to use the panorama feature on my camera)

We stayed in a cabin on a hill at the Lighthouse Caravan Park, namely because of the lighthouse just further up the hill a bit. We had an amazing panoramic view from our deck (balcony for those COTA). Due to the fact that we were on North West Cape, we could actually see the sun rise over the Indian ocean (since the Indian Ocean is on the west coast of Australia, normally we only get to see the sun set over the Ocean). Ningaloo reef spans quite a lot of the north west coast, we only snorkelled the reef around exmouth. There were heaps of BEAUTIFUL beaches surrounding us. Since we were on the peninsula (North West Cape) we could drive south in both directions... it makes sense, really... We went to a different beach everyday!

Turquoise Bay

We had to walk along this stretch of beach to get to the Drift Loop

The snorkelling was AMAZING!! So many fish, superbly colourful! There were huge schools of little blue shiny fish in amonst other huge rainbow fish and cute little black & white fish (that look like nemo) and then there were yellow fish and red fish.... I saw 2 octopuses... (octopi?) an eel, turtles, star fish... We got a disposable underwater camera so after the film gets processed I'll post some photos we took of the fish and coral. The Drift Loop is one ofhte snorkelling sites, where you get in at one end of the beach and let the current take you across all the coral.

Lakeside Beach -not the best view of the beach but I think my footsteps look cool!

We went fishing on this deep sea fishing boat charter, turns out it wasnt such a great day for the fish to bite but we still caught a few... There were 12 people on our fishing boat (from all round Australia [and the world]) we all had a line in at different points around the deck. It was so exciting feeling the fish tug on the line, less so when you think you've got a fish and then it turns out to just be the line of someone on the other side of the boat!

Dad holding up one of the fish he caught

We had 3 near catches of sharks (one was on my brother's line) but they always ended up just breaking the fishing line!

One of the Americans on our boat playing tug-of-war with a shark (the shark did come closer to the surface at 1 point but I didnt manage to get a photo)

Sunset over Janzs Beach on our last day

Now I'm off jet-setting again but will post the underwater pictures, as well as other posts, in a couple of weeks (or perhaps tomorrow before flying out if I feel inspired)...