Sensitive, New Age Guise

It's one of my boyfriend's favourite sayings:  "I'm a SNAG you know"... 


The first time he dropped the acronym he was met with a blank look.  "A what?" 
"You know, a Sensitive New-Age Guy"
"Ohhh...Sorry, I hadn't realised"


What I do realise now is that he's right on the money.  Modern Western society is getting more new-age by the day.  We're softer and more vulnerable, and one of the areas I feel has been most affected by this transition is the health and wellbeing industry.


In medieval times, medicine was very simple.  Get an infection in your leg and you'd be likely to lose it.  Amputation for what is now a minor complaint was commonplace, and the tools used to carry out the surgery would be more suited to engineering a tank.  Diets consisted of whatever could be found, grown or slaughtered, diets and supplements were unheard of, and plenty of people were killed by the common cold.  Diagnosis was also a touch more primitive than nowadays; a person was diagnosed with diabetes if their urine tasted sugary.  That's right, TASTED (as someone employed in the pathology industry, I'm relieved that this is no longer the test method used).


 Now the only limitation on the level of medical intervention is the contents of ones wallet.  Hundreds of dollars are easily spent on vitamins, minerals, beauty therapies, kinesiology, psychology, cosmetology, you name it and it's available.  The clinical benefit of many of these is unproven, yet plenty of people are queueing to throw their hard-earned cash into the registers of health food stores and 21st century witch-doctors.


Lifestyle activities have become very new-age also.  Sports requiring thousands of dollars of specialist equipment have become the rage.  Mountain-biking, kite-surfing, off-roading and golf are all examples of how modern society try to leave the 9-to-5 mentality behind on the weekends. 


I am extremely guilty of jumping on the new-age bandwagon.  Most recently, I have made apologies to my bum and joined the hordes of Sunday cyclists, winding their way through the suburbs and countryside.  I cemented this past-time by registering for a 200 km charity ride in October this year.  Over two days I will ride through the rolling hills of Victoria's wine country, the Yarra Valley.  This is a far cry from the side of myself that swears at cyclists who take up the road while I attempt to weave around them on four wheels, and the side of myself that would exclaim with amazement whenever I see a cyclist battling a strong headwind up an enormous hill on the open road.  


Commercialism has caused the male gender to change phenomenally, and so-called 'SNAGS' are now the norm.  Gone are the days of the chauvinist pig who dragged a woman around by her hair; enter the clean-shaven, cocktail-drinking, suit-wearing metrosexual who routinely wears fragrance, skinny jeans and pointy shoes.  Like so many of my female counterparts, I swoon at the sight of my fella in a collared shirt, and I would be the first to admit that Dan Carter's Jockeys are the finest of eye candy:

Undies...

So what is happening to our lifestyle and dress-sense?  In some ways it has been refined, yet in others it seems like such a facade.  Put a potty-mouth alcoholic in a collared shirt and he is allowed into the casino; irony at its best perhaps?  I don't know, however I do know that I'm a sucker for a Sensitive New-Age Guy, a Sunday afternoon bike ride and an echinacea smoothie.  Give me a few more years and I might even turn into a vegetarian...




Blue skies,


-E  

Kia Kaha Christchurch

I remember where I was on 22nd February 2011 at 10.51am in Melbourne.  Sitting at my desk in the office, chewing on the top of a pen and trying to think of ways to procrastinate and avoid a mountain of paperwork.  


My cellphone vibrated; a message from my Mum in Dunedin.  It read "Whoa!  That was a hell of a shake, hope it's not another big one in Christchurch".  


Within minutes, it was clear that it was indeed another big one in Christchurch.  A shallow 6.3 magnitude earthquake shook the city at 12.51 pm, collapsing buildings, damaging infrastructure and killing 185 people.  I can't pretend to know how the earthquake felt, or how hard it has been to deal with the aftermath, but I do know how it has affected some people I am close to, and my heart goes out to the capital of the South.

The image of the crippled Christchurch Cathedral has become somewhat of a symbol of the February 22 earthquake.  Previously an icon of the centre of the city, the fate of the site is now unknown (as for much of the rest of the CBD).


Today's entry is not the jovial writing that I normally try to stick to, and nor should it be.  I shed tears for Christchurch a year ago and I paused my work day today to shed a few more for the people whose lives have been torn apart by a natural disaster of the magnitude that my generation had never previously seen on home soil.


In an attempt to return to some kind of normality, Christchurch residents have displayed amazing resilience and courage.  Many have had to deal with the loss of family, friends, neighbours and colleagues.  They have had to clean and repair their properties time and time again through the many thousands of aftershocks, some of significant magnitude.  They have had to work through the exhausting layers of governmental and insurance bureaucracy in an attempt to rebuild, relocate and begin the next chapter.  They have had to put up with wonky roads, portaloos and power cuts.  And they have had to maintain strength for the sake of themselves and their families.  For the way in which they have managed this, the people of Christchurch should be commended.  They are smiling against the odds and the sense of community spirit in the city has been incredible.


I recently came across a heartwarming sight on the Lonely Planet website, with Christchurch labelled as one of New Zealand's most exciting cities:


http://www.lonelyplanet.com/new-zealand/christchurch-and-canterbury/christchurch/travel-tips-and-articles/76957


The article outlines the many activities that can still be experienced in Christchurch, with attractions such as the shipping container shopping centre that has been erected in the Cashel Mall.  Vibrant and colourful, it outlines the resourcefulness of the local businesses wonderfully:

       The most unique shopping centre in the world...




Visiting this wonderful city is an excellent way to help the rebuild, with tourist dollars much needed by the weary economy.  If you are considering a jaunt to the land of the long white cloud, spend a few days getting to know Christchurch and the people who live there.  It will be worth your while.


Blue skies and steady ground,


-E

Yes thank you, my high horse is very comfortable

Reality television feeds off it, cosmetic clinics would be closing their doors without it and girly coffee dates rely on it to complete the fix.  That's right, the judgement of others.   A phenomenon that I'm sure we would all vigorously deny but that gives many of us so much joy.  


Television cements the judgement of every stereotype imaginable.  Overweight and perpetually single folk are paraded in front of the camera with the carrot of money and potential happiness dangled in front of their tear-filled eyes.  Dating shows like the Bachelor abound in catfights while the antics of the vacuous Kardashians still somehow manage to grab the attention of enough viewers to remain on the screen.

Lets face it, nobody would watch Jerry Springer if there wasn't the chance of a chair-throwing bitch fight...


My favourite way to view the judgemental human nature is to read online newspaper comments sections.  Here we have every kind of bias.  Contained within the pages we find racism, sexism, class distinction, one-upmanship and finally my favourite, the Grammar Nazi.  A lot of people writing in the comments sections have very valid arguments, but the second they confuse 'you're' with 'your' or 'their' with 'there', they have signed the death warrant of the respect for their opinions.  Within seconds, the Grammar Nazi will jump on the inaccuracy, highlighting it with a precisely placed asterisk: "You don't know what *you're* talking about"...


I have been known to add my two cents' worth to the comments of news articles.  As an emotive soul, I find myself unable to leave the ignorance of a minority of the commenters unchecked.  Looking at the posts closely, I have found that 50% of them are generally the outbursts of no more than five individuals.  The demographic of the commenters is also very interesting.  An abundance of tech-savvy new-retirees, a scattering of single or stay-at-home mothers, a handful of current university students (or graduated arts students), and the remainder are nosey tossers who will be wholly unaffected by whatever the article describes, but cannot resist having a dig at a lowly minority.  Oh, and occasionally me...


Despite the undignified nature of the media judgement of every stereotype imaginable, significant numbers of people still subscribe to, listen and read the kind of unintellectual material that we would also tell our peers that we would only ever utilise at a time when we were out of bog roll.  For instance, I love watching people get frisked and questioned at airports on border protection television programmes, but would I freely admit it?  Well yes, because I just did.  But if I was trying to impress it would be the last facet of my character I'd reveal.


Yet why do we watch programmes in which overweight, slightly desperate or extremely stupid people are paraded for no good reason?  Because it makes our own lives feel better.  We can watch someone with a BMI of 60 try and carry a couple of 10 kg sandbags up a hill and smugly note that we could have done it in a quarter of the time.  Being able to spectate the embarrassment of a pretty girl getting rejected by a farmer is the stuff our entertainment is made of.  I'm guilty of enjoying these scenarios, but television ratings tell me I'm not alone.  For this reason, my television has been switched off.  The only time it will alight my lounge is for Top Gear, David Attenborough or the Olympics.  Because I don't want to become what modern entertainment has the ability to turn me into. 




Blue skies,


-E  

Old-fashioned romance

You know, like chivalry and stuff.  Like when you buy her a kebab before you go back to hers for a one-night stand.  Like the 6 hours of Pride and Prejudice you have to watch to see ONE KISS!  And like Sir Walter Raleigh laying his coat over a puddle to keep Queen Elizabeth I's shoes clean:

Romance of the 21st century is beginning to look a little like human behaviour has done a full circle back to prehistoric days, when cavemen dragged their women around by the hair.  With the normalisation of hard-core pornography, a lowered expectation of self morality and a binge-drinking culture, chivalry doesn't stand a chance.  Of course, I realise that this is an enormous generalisation, and that many relationships are still very dignified and well-meaning (I would like to think my own included).  I would also dare to suggest that the more modern times are far less repressed, particularly with regard to women's rights.  Feel free to disagree with this.

Living in Australia has given me great insight to the absence of class and true romance.  While courtship in 1912 may have taken months of planning, supervised interaction and a marriage before spending any time to get to know each other physically, courtship in Melbourne a hundred years later consists of plying the targeted significant other with beer, before approaching with the incredibly creative line: "how bout it, luv?".  If successful, this may result in the immediate and clumsy consummation in the back of a 1997 Holden Commodore.  Of course, there is every chance the girl may have more self-respect.  This requires MORE BEER (the final result is likely to be identical).

My boyfriend is currently (and has been for some time) working in areas of high concentrations of TRUE AUSSIE BLOKES, otherwise known as the mines in rural Western Australia.  While living with me in Melbourne, he is a collared shirt-wearing, tasteful music-loving, very metrosexual guy who will say the words "I love you" over the phone on a busy tram.  This is a hard persona to keep while surrounded with potty-mouthed alcoholics who spend their weekends smoking crack and shouting abuse at their girlfriends.  Any deviation from the stereotypically patriotic Australian with a V8 and a widescreen to watch the footy, the offender is immediately thought to be gay and therefore in need of a punch in the face.  Not a lot of room for old-fashioned romance when you live with 3,000 homophobic and well-built tradesmen!

But in amongst the doom and gloom of new-age promiscuity, I feel like there is still a ray of hope.  I'm inclined to thing that in moving with the times, chivalry now has a new manifestation.  For example, I now wear shoes that can cope well with stepping in puddles, and nothing makes me happier than coming home to the smell of dinner being served.  It has become widely accepted in many circles that marriage is no longer a prerequisite for bedding your fair maiden (it is my own opinion that this is a good thing, allowing couples to get to know each other in the mental, emotional and physical sense before making lifelong commitments). 

The vast majority of men and women treat each other well, and small acts of kindness are noticed more in an age where they are not necessarily expected (I recall after a long day of work last year my boyfriend presented me with the gift of a pineapple - my favourite food - which had more meaning to me than a bouquet of roses or walking on the outside of the pavement) .  Relationships are far more equal, and conversations are far less restricted without the pressure of class distinction or fear of ostracism.  In saying that, I feel that old-fashioned romance certainly had it's place, and I'm not sure the cinematic experience would have been the same had Mr. Darcy asked Miss Bennett for a quick hand-job behind the drawing-room door...

On that note, I'll end before I have to try and swallow the other foot as Jane Austin turns in her grave (please note also that I am an enormous fan of her work!).  I'd like to think that in this busy day and age, human beings can allocate a small amount of time to contributing to the good in this world and show each other some kindness.  This is new-fashioned romance, the way it should be.

Blue skies,

-Ez