Star Struck
19/11/2021 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaSaturday 13th was the date when the usually annual Astrorest was held at the local university.
It is strange that I have barely darkened the door of the place since I bought my ill fated plane ticket for my long ago cancelled Amsterdam Adventure at a travel agent there back in March 2020. That was just days before the whole Covid thing blew up around the world and did not blow over but like a juggernaut just got bigger and bigger.
From an absence of almost 18 months, I turned up there 2 days in a row.
The first was on Friday for the annual markets officially known as Pasar Malam which I think is either the Malaysian or Indonesian words for Night Markets.
The event is always crowded and there are usually long queues at the various vans and stalls selling fast food.
Even if you don’t buy anything, it is usually a nice atmosphere.
I was lucky that I had made some sandwiches and brought along some bananas. Just in case.
Just as well because the queues for anything worth eating contained at least 20 people.
There were also squealing kids running around everywhere.
These days I prefer to light a candle than to curse the darkness so I just took out a little box made for just these sort of occasions and pulled out a pair of earplugs.
I knew that I would also need them the very next day for the Astrofest. Because from years of past experience, the event is a veritable rug rat magnet.
The event started small. I am not likely to forget since it was on Saturday 28th November 2009 the same year that I did Nanowrimo for the first time. Needless to say, the main character also paid a visit to a similar event simply as a random way of clocking up the word count.
In those days I was using Google Docs which would sometimes eat words as fast as I wrote them.
Back then the event was much smaller and quieter. There were still the same number of telescopes but not the queues of wannabee viewers.
I got to gawk through all of them including the 3 big guns. I had no idea then that it would be the last time I would be so lucky.
Every year since then as word got around, the visitor numbers in general grew hugely but the queues for the biggest and brashest telescopes grew exponentially. A 30 minute wait on most of them. Sod that I thought. So I stopped bothering and just attended the assorted events inside the stadium. Guest demonstrations from Scitech usually involving a lot of bright lights, bling and big bangs. Assorted stalls selling science toys, telescopes, memberships of Perth Observatory and various other organisations devoted to astronomy or science in general, the university promoting its various geekish causes, the SKA array and of course the amazing displays of rockets, spaceships and assorted Star Wars scenes and characters produced by various Lego clubs.
There were pictures from astronomy photography competitions and the usual army of wandering Storm Troopers guarding Darth Vader - two Darth Vaders in fact from the legions of rug rat fans too enthusiastic in their desire for selfies with the darkest Star of the show.
While I still had to make some effort to avoid being run into by hordes of rug rats, at least I did not have to endure much of their squealing thanks to those handy little green ear plugs.
Like the previous years, I had decided to stay away from the telescopes due to the usual long queues. But since I had missed the hourly night sky tours and I had 40 minutes left before heading off to the bus station conveniently right next to the stadium where the event was held, and feeling a lot greener than usual, I figured that I would at least take a walk around the perimeter of the telescope area just for a peek and to look up in the sky anyway which has a lot less light pollution than the lair since the pesky street light was installed some 10 years ago totally trashing the best view on the western side.
I could see the long conga lines at the big guns but was pretty surprised to find that many of the baby telescopes had only 4 or 5 people waiting for a view.
So I got to see 2 views of Jupiter with its long string of moons, another 2 of Saturn with its moons which were ridiculously small and one of the tarantula nebula. That being a slightly bigger telescope, the queue was 8 people instead of 4 or 5.
So while I got to see 5 different things, the Go Big or Go Home sort were still slowly shuffling in their queues.
It also got me thinking that there are many reasons why I love what used to be my annual ritual of a visit to Eden Vale for the Spring Festival of Country Gardens.
Not just the beautiful and quirky gardens, the narrow little streets, the spooky witchy almost Lovecrafitan vibe of the main street and the sounds of the frogs croaking at night.
But also the pitch black night sky strewn with stars. So cluttered with them that it is a struggle to make out most of the well known constellations. Orion or Scorpio were always easily seen just because they are so big but of course you get one or the other. Never the two at the same time
Here in the city, they are the most easily visible simply because they are the only ones big enough and bright enough not to be blotted out by all the light pollution.
I once had a 101 things in 1001 days bucket list. Observing each of the constellations of the zodiac at least once was one of the items.
I did manage to tick off 10 of the boxes. I never did get to see Aquarius or Pisces and since my sight has deteriorates significantly since then, it is most unlikely I will ever see those two except for on star charts or Youtube.
I certainly won’t be adding the 13th constellation - Ophiuchus- any time soon.
But once again I have definitely confirmed that star gazing and other geekish stuff are one of the Portkeys to the Green Zone.
I am treating the whole thing as an unofficial scientific experiment in the hope that when the green magic loses its twinkle and the Dursleyish days of doom and gloom return, then I will have finally worked out how to switch back of my own free will rather than waiting for the serpent fairies to return and sprinkle me with magical sparkly green fairy dust.
It is strange that I have barely darkened the door of the place since I bought my ill fated plane ticket for my long ago cancelled Amsterdam Adventure at a travel agent there back in March 2020. That was just days before the whole Covid thing blew up around the world and did not blow over but like a juggernaut just got bigger and bigger.
From an absence of almost 18 months, I turned up there 2 days in a row.
The first was on Friday for the annual markets officially known as Pasar Malam which I think is either the Malaysian or Indonesian words for Night Markets.
The event is always crowded and there are usually long queues at the various vans and stalls selling fast food.
Even if you don’t buy anything, it is usually a nice atmosphere.
I was lucky that I had made some sandwiches and brought along some bananas. Just in case.
Just as well because the queues for anything worth eating contained at least 20 people.
There were also squealing kids running around everywhere.
These days I prefer to light a candle than to curse the darkness so I just took out a little box made for just these sort of occasions and pulled out a pair of earplugs.
I knew that I would also need them the very next day for the Astrofest. Because from years of past experience, the event is a veritable rug rat magnet.
The event started small. I am not likely to forget since it was on Saturday 28th November 2009 the same year that I did Nanowrimo for the first time. Needless to say, the main character also paid a visit to a similar event simply as a random way of clocking up the word count.
In those days I was using Google Docs which would sometimes eat words as fast as I wrote them.
Back then the event was much smaller and quieter. There were still the same number of telescopes but not the queues of wannabee viewers.
I got to gawk through all of them including the 3 big guns. I had no idea then that it would be the last time I would be so lucky.
Every year since then as word got around, the visitor numbers in general grew hugely but the queues for the biggest and brashest telescopes grew exponentially. A 30 minute wait on most of them. Sod that I thought. So I stopped bothering and just attended the assorted events inside the stadium. Guest demonstrations from Scitech usually involving a lot of bright lights, bling and big bangs. Assorted stalls selling science toys, telescopes, memberships of Perth Observatory and various other organisations devoted to astronomy or science in general, the university promoting its various geekish causes, the SKA array and of course the amazing displays of rockets, spaceships and assorted Star Wars scenes and characters produced by various Lego clubs.
There were pictures from astronomy photography competitions and the usual army of wandering Storm Troopers guarding Darth Vader - two Darth Vaders in fact from the legions of rug rat fans too enthusiastic in their desire for selfies with the darkest Star of the show.
While I still had to make some effort to avoid being run into by hordes of rug rats, at least I did not have to endure much of their squealing thanks to those handy little green ear plugs.
Like the previous years, I had decided to stay away from the telescopes due to the usual long queues. But since I had missed the hourly night sky tours and I had 40 minutes left before heading off to the bus station conveniently right next to the stadium where the event was held, and feeling a lot greener than usual, I figured that I would at least take a walk around the perimeter of the telescope area just for a peek and to look up in the sky anyway which has a lot less light pollution than the lair since the pesky street light was installed some 10 years ago totally trashing the best view on the western side.
I could see the long conga lines at the big guns but was pretty surprised to find that many of the baby telescopes had only 4 or 5 people waiting for a view.
So I got to see 2 views of Jupiter with its long string of moons, another 2 of Saturn with its moons which were ridiculously small and one of the tarantula nebula. That being a slightly bigger telescope, the queue was 8 people instead of 4 or 5.
So while I got to see 5 different things, the Go Big or Go Home sort were still slowly shuffling in their queues.
It also got me thinking that there are many reasons why I love what used to be my annual ritual of a visit to Eden Vale for the Spring Festival of Country Gardens.
Not just the beautiful and quirky gardens, the narrow little streets, the spooky witchy almost Lovecrafitan vibe of the main street and the sounds of the frogs croaking at night.
But also the pitch black night sky strewn with stars. So cluttered with them that it is a struggle to make out most of the well known constellations. Orion or Scorpio were always easily seen just because they are so big but of course you get one or the other. Never the two at the same time
Here in the city, they are the most easily visible simply because they are the only ones big enough and bright enough not to be blotted out by all the light pollution.
I once had a 101 things in 1001 days bucket list. Observing each of the constellations of the zodiac at least once was one of the items.
I did manage to tick off 10 of the boxes. I never did get to see Aquarius or Pisces and since my sight has deteriorates significantly since then, it is most unlikely I will ever see those two except for on star charts or Youtube.
I certainly won’t be adding the 13th constellation - Ophiuchus- any time soon.
But once again I have definitely confirmed that star gazing and other geekish stuff are one of the Portkeys to the Green Zone.
I am treating the whole thing as an unofficial scientific experiment in the hope that when the green magic loses its twinkle and the Dursleyish days of doom and gloom return, then I will have finally worked out how to switch back of my own free will rather than waiting for the serpent fairies to return and sprinkle me with magical sparkly green fairy dust.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-19 01:35 am (UTC)The Serpent's Gardens
Date: 2021-11-20 02:00 pm (UTC)I did not find that out until I got back to Perth and found the calling card from the cops left in the fly screen door.
I had actually booked to go back in April 2020 for the Autumn Garden Festival. Since I had plans to go to Amsterdam for September - October that year.
How the Gods laugh when serpents make plans.
Needless to say, the April visit fell foul of the lockdown rules when the Wild West was divided into 9 zones and travel between them required tons of forms in triplicate. Going on a holiday was certainly NOT going to pass the necessity test.
This year was filled with an assortment of doctors' appointments, tests and all that time in Limbo on the waiting list.
Now that dark cloud is gone and I can think straight again, I intend to try again next April. Now that I no longer have Petunia to drop by and water the weeds in November, it is simply too risky as just a couple days over 35 degrees could nuke a whole bunch of my precious leaf babies.
I guess you are slowly getting back to plotting and planning more overseas adventures. Even though just when you thought it was safe to visit Europe, they get hit by a fourth wave and each wave seems even worse than the one that came before which is not at all the normal pattern for most viruses.
No sign of Covid becoming as mundane as the common cold any time soon.
In the meantime, my grand plans to do a museum tour today got trashed by a flash protest. The same sort of mob as in Melbourne. There were traffic jams everywhere and all the buses were running late and had to do ridiculous detours.
Strange that Radio National mentioned the protests in Melbourne, Sydney and even Rotterdam but dear old Dullsville didn't even rate a mention.
I have now left one of my voluntary jobs on account of the Covid Con conspiracy nonsense of the manager who works there on Mondays.
I dropped by last week to say hello and that I would be officially back on Monday 6th December. She kept carrying on about the lying press and government, sheeple, the plandemic etc etc. I still haven't posted about it yet but her rage that I refuse to drink her Kool aid got so nasty that I refuse to have anything to do with her anymore.
I got rid of one Grinch and I certainly don't need another one in my life.
When going to work means walking on eggshells then it's time to get the hell out.
All these people concerned about teenagers being radicalized online. It's happening to 65 year olds too! People who you would expect to have had enough life experience to know better
Re: The Serpent's Gardens
Date: 2021-11-20 09:23 pm (UTC)Yes I've rearranged the planned trip. I'll really only be flying into London and then flying straight on to Milan. It will be Italy only. It seems like too much to go to more than one country with the paperwork and testing you have to complete. Italy seems to have learnt from the horrors of the initial outbreak while the complacency in Germany and Austria and Eastern European countries about being vaccinated is coming back to haunt them with skyrocketing rates of infections and subsequent lockdowns.
Re: The Serpent's Gardens
Date: 2021-11-25 04:19 am (UTC)The creep hiding behind Craig Kelly. Useless loser was claiming that 500,000 people turned up to the Melbourne march last Saturday.
When Fran Kelly asked Palmer if he denounced the calls to violence, the gallows, nooses and all that, he did so heartily before adding the usual BUT....
He is such a slimy not so little sQomo. Or maybe it is the other way around since CP is much better at public displays of narcissism and sQomo a poor imitation.
Fran Kelly did not even call him out on his claim of 500,000 marchers in Melbourne which he repeated several times so he most certainly did not 'mispeak'
Hell. In USA with a current population of some 320 million, they still talk of the Civil Rights march of the 1960s where one MILLION people turned up at the Capitol. None of them wearing horns or Nordic tattoos.
As much as most Aussies like to DO Europe or Asia when they go overseas because it is still a big deal to get both time and money together to travel abroad, I find it much preferable to visit 2 or 3 places and spend a lot of time in each one and have a good look around rather than trying for 10 and flying through most of them.
Now all the pandemic paperwork has made the slow and steady option the only viable one unless you actually like lots of drama.
I still find it astonishing that the situation in Austria and now Germany, is becoming so bad that several times it was the leading story on ABC RN news headlines.
Now sQomo and his ridiculous bills and pandering to Pauline have once again taken centre stage.
Often I think that I should get a bit more adventurous and try Dongara, Pemberton, Albany or even the Barossa Valley instead of my usual lurking grounds.
But all the other destinations in WA are at least 8 hours away by bus which seriously sucks. Albany is beautiful with both amazing natural scenery and gorgeous old buildings. I was last there in August 1997 but the effort of actually getting there and back unless stopping for a night in Bridgetown on the way down and back, just makes it too unattractive as a destination. Esperance is even worse.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-25 04:53 am (UTC)I was pleasantly surprised by Jacqui Lambie's broadsides at Pauline Hanson and her group of idiots and other assorted loons like Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly about their anti-vaccination support. But then I'm probably being unkind to loons as Ms Hanson, Palmer and Kelly are all cynical shills using the deluded to boost their political prospects, taking their actions straight from the Trump playbook. Scummo has been less than successful in his attempts to walk both sides of the street by condemning those issuing death threats and violence and in the next breath saying they had point and it was the State Premiers fault as they were the ones restricting their 'freedumb' and forcing them to be vaccinated.