Bushfires

Blury fire-damaged areas on the Huma highway

Blurry fire-damaged areas on the Huma highway

The other weekend we drove from Melbourne to Canberra. Along the way we went through the areas affected by the recent bushfires that have been burning for weeks. It was really amazing to see.

The area we saw seemed massive, and we only saw the damage on the sides of the highway. It went on for kilometres. As you can see from the blurry picture taken from the car window. the trees still have leaves but the ground is black and nothing is growing below the tree canopy. You could see houses that had survived, with blackened groud all around, right beside spaces that had one been a house but now there was nothing left.

I have never seen anything like it. You could tell just how hot and fast the fire burned. I couldn’t imagine being one of the people who stayed to protect their home or the people trying to escape seeing the fire front chasing after their vehicle.

Australia is not taking climate change well. Twelve years into this drought, bushfires and water shortages happen all the time. There’s flooding in the north. I didn’t really realize how bad it was when I was living in Canada. Why hasn’t Australia become the poster nation for climate change? Why aren’t Australia’s, who should be some of the most aware of the danagers of climate change, taking more steps to slow it down? They’re great about saving water, but they should be banging down the door of the rest of the world shouting “Hello! A little help here?” They should have solar panels on every roof! They should have pulled out all the stops years ago. I did see an ad on TV the other day saying a vegetarian diet will help reduce GHGs. Now that would never be allowed to air in Canada…would it Stephen Harper?

Ignoramus is a fun word, use it in a sentence today!

My friend Deirdre sent me this article from the BBC by George Meyer. Loved it!

Too lazy to click on the link? *sigh*DO IT!

Some people see ‘environmentalists’ as looking down their noses at you as you pass with your disposable coffee cup or idling your engine while you wait for someone (please, please, please just turn it off! it’s like nails down a chalkboard). Which some of them are. I’ve done it too. But we need everyone to jump on to the ‘save the planet’ wagon. We need to extend the olive branch to hummer drivers everywhere.

So if you consider yourself an ‘environmentalist’, stop preaching and instead lovingly plant the thought of organic vegetables into the minds of your friends. Hummer drivers, chat to your hippie friends about small changes you can make without having to move to a commune in Vermont. Bridge the gaps!

Basically that’s what this article is about, you have to read it, it’s hilarious. I love the ending:

“If you are not currently choking a panda, welcome aboard!”

If we end up with giant spiders I will never forgive you

And by “you” I mean humans. Me included.

I’m sure many of you saw that amazing movie with the star-studded cast; John Voight, J-Lo, Ice Cube and Owen Wilson. That’s right, I’m talking about Anaconda. Why am I bringing up this mid 90s gem you ask?

Because of this. Or this if you don’t get a Nature subscription.

Eep! The world’s largest snake….13m long. 13! This snake lived when the average temperature of the tropics was around 33C, about 3 or 4 degrees hotter than today. This hot temperature allowed the snake’s body size to reach these giant proportions. In a cooler climate it just doesn’t work as well when you’re a giant ectotherm. Phew.

Phew? Phew nothing! Remember global warming? We’re setting the stage for more giant snakes! And, as the title suggests, giant insects and spiders. Oh humans. What have we done???

Joking aside, this discovery shows that the climate of the tropics was once warmer than previously thought. This means the tropics may survive global warming. However, I’m still skeptical, as these changes in the past are over loooong periods of time. Climate change is happening so fast that snakes may go extinct before they get massive. And all the other animals and plants might go a long with them.

We may not even have to worry about the heat, humans are chopping down the tropics at a rate that is just not sustainable. Boo.

So the message? Nature is awesome because you find things like giant snakes. This is the stuff of sci-fi movies in real life! So make that little extra effort to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions today by carpooling it to the movies tonight. Buy a second hand table or recycled TP to save a few tropical trees. Maybe you can help slow warming a little bit and we can live to see giant snakes again (well, maybe a few generations down the road…by then we’ll have learned to teach them to be vegetarians I’m sure. “Nice snake, no biting”).

Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi!

Biking on French Island

The hottest week in a hundred years. At least that’s what 7 News said. But they kinda seem like Fox News. Nonetheless, it was freakin’ hot last week. Over 40 for 4 days in a row I think. When you walked outside it felt like you were in a slow cooker.

So here I am in Melbourne. Got a flat off Flatmate Finders. Got a mattress and two desks off Gumtree (like Craigslist or Kijiji) and Ebay. These are good resources if you’re moving here on a budget or temporarily, both of which I am. If you try to get your own apartment you have to go through a real estate agent. Things aren’t done directly through landlords. And you need resumes and references…the market is tough here. So if you don’t have any Australia credit history…well it just seemed a bit much for us. We’re sharing with a lovely roomie (I mean flatmate) and I never had to talk to a real estate agent once. It was the first place we looked at, in an awesome neighbourhood just outside the downtown (or CBD – central business district), and it has a dishwasher. I guess we stuck in our thumb and pulled out a plum (I’m pretty sure that was a really lame thing to say, but I like it so it stays).

An interesting note on Australia…no pennies. Everything is rounded up or down to the nearest 5 cents. It’s lovely. Paper money is actually plastic money with a little see-through window, just like the money in Romania I was so impressed with two years ago. They don’t rip, you can wash them in your jeans pockets til the cows come home (what is with me and lame sayings today!), and you can peek through the see-through window. It’s also lovely.

I know there’s been some discussion in Canada about axing the penny. It’s been said that it costs more than a cent to make one penny. Aren’t we looking for ways to cut corners in this economic downturn? Hmm…it seems so logical. But what about the sentiment…find a penny pick it up and all that jazz. Well I think sentiment needs to take a back seat to practicality. *BTW Happy late birthday penny. It turned 100 last year.*

Have fun in the snow/slush/rain Canada. I’ll make sure to keep updating you on the sun and warm in Melbourne.

My Favourite Place in China!

If you’re tried of the bright lights of Shanghai or Suzhou, you should definitely head to Tongli. It’s one the region’s ‘canal towns’. Just a short bus ride from either city. Make sure you don’t pay a cab to drive you from the bus station to the old town…just turn right. We, on the other hand, got off the bus looking very confused about which way to go, there was no map or sign! The cabbies noticed our look of distress and offered us a ride to the old town for 10 Yuan, which wasn’t so bad since we shared with a Spanish traveler we met at the Suzhou station. All was fine until we left the old town and tired to get a cab back to the bus station, because the ride on the first cab seemed pretty long and we were tired, not wanting to walk. This cabbie looked confused, pointed behind us, but the language barrier caused him to pull a u-turn, and boom, we’re at the bus station! It was right there! The first cabbie just drove us all around the city before dropping us off at the old town. The second cabbie was nice enough to shoo us out of the cab without paying the 8 Yuan start of trip fee. It was really just something to laugh about, since this was the only scam we got in China, and only 5 yuan the worse, it wasn’t so bad!

But back to why you should visit Tongli.

A local on the not-so-pristine canals

People actually live here! They all looked a little worse for wear. Little shack houses, canal-washed laundry hanging out right beside the meat hung to dry. Plus it’s full of historic homes, gardens and art. I really enjoy the old residences of government officials or army personnel. They’re full of open buildings, winding hallways and random gardens. Lots of rooms for receiving company and meditating by the pools. I can only imagine how their lives must have been. Very full of ceremony (and cold, due to the lack of walls/doors!).

Historic residence