Archive for June, 2010

Apple fans shit me and here’s why.

by tealou on June 26, 2010 in Politics, The Internet with 3 Comments

It is currently 1 degree celsius outside, which, by Australian standards, is about 5 degrees higher than the coldest night Perth has ever had. It’s cold. I am wearing layers and have a heater. It’s cold.

And what are some people doing tonight? Why, they are camping outside the new Apple Store that opens tomorrow, that’s what. As you do.

There is no new product. The iPad came out last month and it is available at several other stores. The iPhone 4 is out, I guess, but it’s a phone and most likely going to be available at every mobile phone kiosk at the same time.

Now, maybe I am just old, but WHY THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE SLEEPING OUT FOR A NEW STORE? It’s not like they are going to get anything, right? Is Steve Jobs going to come down from Heaven and jizz iTunes vouchers all over everyone? Hardly. Maybe a couple of people might get an umbrella but shit, you can buy one on eBay if you’re particularly desperate.

Now, look, we are an Apple family. To date, we own:

  • 1 iMac
  • 2 Macbook pros
  • 2 iPhones
  • 1 iPod touch
  • 1 iPod shuffle
  • 1 LED screen
  • 1 x Mac Mini
  • 2 x iPads

And an Apple lamp in my office. Shut up, it’s got nice light.

We really like Apple.

However, I need to officially distance myself from the Apple fanbois from now on because you know what? Apple fanbois give me the absolute shits. I know that people like to have a laugh at Apple’s expense and say that it’s all just hype, and blind oohing, aahing and eventually purchasing of everything Jobs shits out at the keynote, and it is this claim that frustrates me to no end.

And you know why? Because the fanbois make a company that actually makes very good quality products seem like nothing but a shiny gadget for the mindless, designer-label-consuming middle class. Instead of being seen with credibility and quality, as both Apple hardware AND customer service deserve, it ends up being aligned with latte-sipping, cargo-pant-wearing snotty nosed brats.

My computer is a workhorse. I switched to Mac for purely business reasons, and it is now my preference… but HOLY FUCK you idiots who are sleeping outside the Apple store? You make me look like a fucking idiot whenever I try to present a serious case for why Macs are more than just “hip”. They are excellent computers that are still running years after the best-config PC has died. I can ring Apple Care and get brilliant customer service. I can order a computer and it will arrive within 24 hours, and there will very rarely be a problem.

And yet, somehow, I am now aligned with the idiots who will go out in the freezing cold, for GOD KNOWS WHY and for GOD KNOWS WHAT, and yet again, I have to sit there, with my Apple lamp, thinking that somehow these people have managed to turn a computer into a religion. And Karl Marx always did say that religion was the opiate of the masses and I start to think “man, that guy was right”. And then I think that Karl Marx may have used a Mac and I get pissy again.

Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians Conference

by tealou on June 25, 2010 in Uncategorized with No comments

I will be presenting at the Women Parliamentarians Conference in Sydney this week on online campaigning and the management of social media. Something that is not unique to politicians, but typical, is that they need to balance it with the 1001 other commitments of a public figure. My presentation will talk about some of these issues, and make some suggestions on ways to improve your online presence. It’s about working smarter, not harder with social media. And also, importantly, retaining some privacy and leisure space on the web.

It applies to so many other industries as well – where the social media evangelists have been singing the praises for so long… and yes, we are all convinced, but it all comes unstuck when you are busy, need training, or don’t use your website. There will also be some talk on making yourself *too* available (which often has detrimental effects in other areas of your life).

It is my first “proper” Conference speaking gig – hopefully the first of many! I am humbled by the fact that I ave been asked to speak alongside people like Lisa Baker, Jenny Lindell and Laurel Papworth. With such a high calibre audience of people who speak for a living… I am nervous but honoured and hopefully can provide people with some practical tips to manage their online presence in a more efficient, targeted and beneficial way.

I am also planning on having some meetings in Sydney for some very exciting projects I am working on and I hope to tell you about them very soon :)

Haiku of the Day

by tealou on June 23, 2010 in Haiku with No comments

Oh, Rudd and Gillard

What the hell is going on?

Ranga PM? Ha!

On Vindication

by tealou on June 23, 2010 in Parenting with No comments

It’s funny how half an hour with someone who gets it can suddenly boost your confidence as a parent.

It’s not something I thought consciously about, but it has been a long time since I was praised for how I parent. Most people are indifferent at best, but I’ll admit that the great majority of feedback I get about my parenting is either from condescending people who think they parent better (just because they parent differently), or from the internet (which is full of freaks), or from the school.

Mina had what started as mild asthma earlier this year, and has extended into what we thought was a heart problem, and is now just plain old anxiety. We think it’s a combination of the school reinforcing it and the stressors of the last few months, and she’s just not sure how to process it all.

Mina’s teacher emailed me with concerns and recommended she see a “play therapist”. I initially took this as an attack on my parenting and was actually very upset that they would see the fact that Mina was thriving on the “attention” of going to the office with “asthma” as a welfare issue. Because I have never received praise. I parent differently to most people – I believe in letting kids be kids. Letting them roam around but still very much monitored. She walks to school. I let her decide what she buys for lunch. Helicopter parents see this as neglect, of course, because I am not driving her to a million extracurricular activities, not hovering, letting her go to the park FOUR DOORS DOWN on her own.

If you could name my parenting philosophy (which is what wankers do), it would probably fit into “free range parenting” and the Montessori method of teaching kids. I regret not sending my kids to Montessori.

And I must admit, that because of that lack of positive feedback (not having a mother and having in-laws that make no secret of thinking I am a bad mother and wife), I seriously started to doubt myself.

But, we went to the play therapist and I was blown away because… well… I don’t really like psychologists. Especially child psychologists. But we went through what has been happening, all the stress we have been under the last 2 years, and rather than JUDGE me, she actually said we were not just good parents, but excellent parents.

That was a shock, because I have never heard it. My whole schtick has been about how I failed as a mother – couldn’t breastfeed, put them in a cot, worked or studied and put them in daycare, let them watch TV, tell them the truth about life… all those things… I have always felt somewhat ostracised by the world for the way I view it and the way I bring up my kids.

And then, I have a child psychologist, who reaffirmed that we have been through so much stress in the last 2 years that it is only natural for Mina to be worried. She’s eight. The world has opened up to her and become scary. She’s lost friends that were important to her, she’s been exposed to the truth of life, through us, and that’s hard to express because she lacks the cognitive development to intellectualise it. But it’s not because we have failed as parents, it’s because we are GOOD parents, that we didn’t try to sugarcoat anything, and we sought help early on and are open to strategies to help deal with her personality and creativity. The therapist even suggested that honesty is the best policy and we were on the right track with our parenting.

So what I initially took as judgement of our parenting style has turned into something really positive – being equipped with strategies to help our child, who is really just a very smart, very creative, very emotional person, to process everything that has gone on.

It’s bizarre how I had never actually realised that I had never been praised before. I mean, I have had old ladies take me aside and say they are well behaved children, and you know, comments from various places… but no one in authority has actually said we are doing an OK job. It’s OK to have a sense of humour about them. It’s OK to be annoyed and frustrated with them. And no, I don’t have to buy wipe warmers or sew ballet costumes to be a good mother.

The Eulogy I couldn’t read.

by tealou on June 21, 2010 in Cancer, Death with 5 Comments

Well, it’s all over. Grandma was cremated this afternoon. Today was really, really hard and it has now hit me that I will never see her again. Walking into the funeral home for her final service, and seeing the coffin, was just a little too much, and the last 2 months hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t able to read out the eulogy, but here it is.

Grandma was born in 1931, in Catholic Ireland, to a single mother. She had 2 older brothers and a little sister, Josephine, who died when Grandma was 7. Her mother died around the same time, and grandma grew up in a convent. She never really spoke much about her childhood, and the memories she did share with me were always positive. They almost always involved her getting in trouble for being cheeky, or being chased by a nun.

Grandma never really dwelled on the loss of her mother. Her father was not interested either, and, knowing her like I do, even though she never really said much, I could tell it affected her view of the world.

To come up here and say she was a saint wouldn’t only be a lie, it would be an insult to her legacy. Because Grandma was a survivor. She didn’t always get it right and quite often got the wrong end of the stick, but her heart was good.

All she ever wanted was respect. Respect from the people who brought her into this world, respect from the family she worked so hard to maintain. She needed to know that nothing she did, all the hard work, all the late hours, all the cooked meals, all the cups of tea, and all the arguments were not in vain.

Although Grandma would not self-identify as a feminist, and in fact would go so far as to strongly deny it – there are so many ways that her influence alone informs how I see the world. Forced to go it alone, and never dependent on a man or any other person, we had a kinship and an understanding that, sometimes, we are forced to make our own luck. She never, ever let her beginnings or her disappointments affect her life, and even though the end of her life is a quiet one… That’s all she ever wanted. To be cared for, to be allowed to be vulnerable and yet still retain her dignity.

Which of course is ironic, because whenever I needed rescuing – there she was. She cleaned hotel rooms to help my dad keep me in school uniforms. She cooked me meals, she helped me to get my first flat. She wasn’t always the softest place to land, but given the circumstances, I understand why now. It was about keeping it together, and I often wonder what was going on in her head… And how she was when we weren’t around to see.

Because, with the suddenness of the cancer that killed her, I saw a different side to her. She didn’t fight it, and part of me thinks she knew for some time. But I knew her, and I like to think that I knew her better than anyone else and that she shared a special, softer side with me.

She was and always will be the main female influence in my life. I hope that the fighting spirit, the work ethic, and the strong sense of what is right, on some level, lives on in us all. And although this gathering is humble, she can rest knowing that she lives on, having lived a life with courage, conviction and dignity.

On a personal level, I hope that the last 2 months of her life spent with me and Jason, needing a lot of help, were as easy as they could have been. We’ll never stop missing her and I hope she’s proud of us.

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