Someone hit play

The United Kingdom skipped a month. We collectively drew in a breath at the beginning of March, ready to exhale when warm returned and we could throw open windows, park jackets in cupboards and do all the things we hadn’t been doing since September.

And then it got colder. At first it was ‘bracing’, then it was news, then it was just cold. It wasn’t the bitter weather per se that was the problem, it’s that people expected it to disappear quickly. And so, in the mysterious dark space between expectation and reality, sixty million people paused for a month.

But now, a warm breeze blows. The days are longer and the street cafes are pushing bustling life into the outdoors, just as the trees are erupting with new leaves and blossoms. The release is palpable. Someone hit the play button. And I’m excited.

This picture’s not relevant. It’s a grab from a time lapse I took last year, and come to think of it, never did anything with… move along!

For the first time, I am facing a summer in the UK with a stable job, a big friendship network, and a long list of great things to do. Let’s start with work. This week, my role consisted of discussing cyborg brain tissue with an eminent researcher, seeking permission to fly an unmanned ‘drone’ helicopter, and on Friday, I’m getting presentation training at the National Theatre. Oh, and I’m planning an event about the end of the world. Not a bad way to spend my 9-5.

But then there’s extracurriculars. I’ve got trips to Italy and Germany pipelined, with question marks over Greece and Portugal. Add in the prospect of weekend trips to peaks for rock climbing, an intensive Kung Fu training weekend getaway, and another round of sustainability training with Green Steps, and I think I have all the ingredients for a memorable few months.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s warm? It’s warm.

Finally, something to share; today, New Zealand passed a marriage equality act. That’s cool, but not something I would routinely comment on. However, the video below captures what I think might be the most stirring moment I’ve seen in a house of parliament:

The future is a little bit broken

“The future is not what we expected it to be.” Mark Shayler, opening the RSA’s Redesigning the Future event, didn’t pull punches. “We’ve become lazy – we define ourselves by the ownership of products.”

I’m typing this on a 2009 MacBook Pro. The machine is almost indistinguishable from thousands of others, a metallic clone whose glowing white apple marks me as a ‘Mac person’ when I take it out in public. But there’s subtle evidence on its hard shell that this machine has shared some of the most important moments of my life.

See here, near the bottom right corner of the touch screen – chipped metal where I dropped the laptop onto the bitumen of a 24-hour McDonald’s carpark after a night of red-eye driving in remote North Queensland. Try the useless eject button, the dead DVD drive rarely an inconvenience but often a reminder of how technology is moving on – is there still a DVD in there? I’m not sure.

Mac vs PC, from 1996. Image: Flickr/Adam Crowe

And just now, while inspecting my companion of the past three years, I’ve noticed that two of the ‘feet’ are missing, opening small holes into the black-boxed interior, one revealing a sticker in a language I can’t read.

Could I cast this laptop aside in favour of a new one? Send it to join what Rich Gilbert labelled an “end of life centre,” where “a mountain of dead products wait to be collectively reprocessed”? Or, as Jonathan Chapman put it, a landfill that “is more of an orphanage than a graveyard, a place where most things could still work – a home for unwanted things.”

A landfill fire at Greensburg, US. Image: Flickr/Jon Person

At some point, this computer will stop working, or I’ll replace it. But what do I do with it then? Staggering percentages of the products we buy end up either gathering dust or in landfill. These objects are the manifestation of raw resources clawed from our environment, shipped, moulded, refined, designed and sold. The part of the object’s life that we see – the part it shares with us – is a fraction of the time from its inception to eventual disposal or, in some cases, recycling or repurposing.

I’m attached to this machine. It’s stamped indelibly with marks that are meaningful to me, and I’d be sad to see it go, even though I can resurrect its software perfectly on new hardware with Time Machine. But we are increasingly educated to value newness, the latest and largest and highest resolution. How is it possible for this consumer ethos to survive in a world where resource scarcity looms, the price of materials is rising, the world’s population and spending power is booming, and our ability to capture value from our immense waste stream is still so limited?

Jonathan Chapman summarised it succinctly. “The sustainability crisis is a crisis of perception, as much to do with the human condition as it is about plastic, metals and carbon dioxide.” I think a good place to start is to look at our own relationship with stuff. What do you buy? What do you value? What do you keep? What do you get rid of, and how? And what would you do if the cornucopia of goods available in the world today, available at the click of a button, dried up?

How might ‘you’ change if the stuff in your life was suddenly gone?

Two distinct people

I’m transfixed by the images of my past life. Stars, waves and open spaces adorn my walls, reminding me that the world of 2010 was one that had a profound impact on my life. I was on an ‘endless quest for new‘, which has continued unabated for the 30 months since I wrote that post, my past self brimming with inspiration and freshness and self-confidence and, well, bragging.

The moon sets orange over the water, stars streaking across the clear night sky…

The job I’m in now is close to a dream. I’m working with a team of people I really like, surrounded by stunning historical science stories and tasked with finding and drawing attention to new ones. But when I get home I am mentally battered by huge issues of the world. They make me question whether what I am doing now is what I want to be able to reflect back on. Issues I have a burning passion for – environmental ones, mainly, but not exclusively – seem impossibly distant and difficult, but also pressing and existential. And when I look at what I am spending dozens of hours per week on – really look at where the time goes, not what emerges – I feel doubt.

And then I go and read this:

So you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and realize that you are now two distinct people. As much as your countries represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places, as much as you feel truly at home in either one, so you are divided in two. For the rest of your life, or at least it feels this way, you will spend your time in one naggingly longing for the other, and waiting until you can get back for at least a few weeks and dive back into the person you were back there. -Chelsea Fagan

The whole article hit me pretty hard. London has held me for longer than I anticipated, and it is continuing to plant hooks into me. I’ve made more new and diverse friends in the past 4 months than I have in any time since I first settled into Clayponds. Throwing myself into climbing and joining a Chinese martial arts class has connected me with people who share very little with me but are willing to share a lot.

Katie leading some of the JASMA demo team in a Tai Chi demonstration at Leicester Square for Chinese New Year

And the stories of other people’s lives in the two places keep me guessing about my own. What’s left of me from 2010 is shouting for me to go back to Australia, to the culture and places and activities that let me live so much more in the moment than London does, equipped with new skills and experiences and a mind a little broader than it was before. 2013 me wonders what the hell I might actually do, if and when I return. London’s shown me tantalising glimpses of interesting futures, but the raw experience of a dark winter makes me shudder at the thought of another year here.

The exhortation I gave myself at the end of my road trip was, in the words of the Temper Trap song I chose, to “Go, don’t stop now, go.” But last week, while being interviewed about my experience with ZombieLab, I was asked if I had a ‘personal motto’, and found myself at a dead loss (it was a little awkward). How do I know where to “go”?

I realise that what I feel is, simultaneously, unique to me and shared by thousands, or millions, of people, present and past. It’s the classic ‘what should I do with my life’ conundrum. I’m under no illusions that there are answers, or that this is even of passing interest to people reading this post. But I’m curious to know: how do you choose your life? Have you faced the ex-pat dilemma? Have you found yourself in a role that just didn’t seem to fit, even though it was a good one? And how did you react?

ZombieLab: it’s over!

12,000 people came to ZombieLab over three days. It was quite a big thing.

Anyway, I’m back to a semblance of a normal life now. Which means filming a Chinese Kung Fu demo (or 3) in Chinese New Year celebrations in Central London (in 0C sleet – expect to see pictures/videos soon!), lots of bouldering, games of coup, and planning a ski holiday to the Alps for March (which I am absurdly excited about). Oh, and there’s still some science and stuff happening.

It was quite odd to get so absolutely used to emails with Re: Zombies in their subject.

The world is a novelty cocktail

Do you think the world arranges itself into horizontal layers because of gravity, or because God is obsessed with novelty cocktails?

I don’t actually know where I took this. I think it was near Ulladulla. It’s the only photo from the morning as well, which is unusual. A mystery…

Wollongong on a hazy early morning. The heavy industry of this city was in stark contrast to much of the surrounding natural beauty.

I shot this while waiting for a friend to finish work. I think I had the better evening. Except I don’t remember where this is either. Perhaps the area between Wollongong, Eden and Canberra is some kind of Bermuda Triangle.

I’m going with the novelty cocktails hypothesis. In your face, Newton, you egotistical sod.