Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)

Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)
Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)

Monday, April 12, 2010

The Quiz


1. Happy or sad that daylight savings is finished?
2. How many months until your birthday?
3. I like people calling me..
4. A smell that makes you nostalgic
5. Describe the picture that the smell brings to mind

34 comments:

Ben McLaughlin said...

1. Happy or sad that daylight savings is finished?
2. How many months until your birthday?
3. I like people calling me..
4. A smell that makes you nostalgic
5. Describe the picture that the smell brings to mind

Sarah said...

1. Sad
2. 5 months - spring baby!
3. Sarah/Sah/Wifey (only if you're my husband!)
4. Gardenias
5. My Mum's garden when it's lush and looking its best...not drought stricken

Pedro said...

1. Happy!
2. 3
3. Pedro
4. Motor oil
5. Back in the workshop, early mornings (start work at 7), wheeling bikes out of the shop, kettle boiling, cold steel and morning banter....

RodeoClown said...

1. Happy for two reasons:
a) Daylight Savings is stupid.
b) I get to see daylight before I leave the house.

2. Two. (June 6)

3. Yes.

4. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I remember smelling several over the weekend...

5. see above.

Simone R. said...

1. Sad. Southern bloggers will have their posts up an hour later each morning.
2. 6.5
3. Simone
4. Amniotic fluid.
5. In hospital with a newborn. All the emotion - ecstatic elation, achievement, fear, pain, tiredness... (You know the set.)

maso said...

1. In Queensland daylight saving finished in 1991. Was happy at the time.
2. ten
3. maso
4. sugar mill smell as you drive past
5. weekend family car trips as a kid

Ben McLaughlin said...

1. Sad. Going to work in the dark made me feel ahead of the 8 ball and on top of things. And getting home when it's getting dark makes me feel like my whole day is taken by work.
2. 4
3. Benny
4. Plane fuel
5. Stepping out of a plane as a kid, with my family around me. I think it was Mascot airport, and we were down in Sydney for a holiday from Darwin, circa 1986-7. I was very excited.

Amy said...

1. I wish Qld had daylight saving.
2. >1. Far too soon.
3. Smart! Don't think that's what you meant though. Millie if you're my Dad, Amelie/Mia if you're my husband, anyone else can call me anything except Aims.
4. Fake Strawberry lipbalm smell.
5. Helping out in my Grandparents shop as a child.

Ben McLaughlin said...

Let the over-familiarity begin:

Sah- I was just a few hours off being a Spring baby.

Pedro- Do you ever wish you were back at the workshop rather than drawing?

Yes- It's nice to finally have a pet name for you. I shall now use it without discretion.

Simone- Oh yeah, that smell. That is a full-on memory. It reminds me of the time just before dawn, and the sensation that nothing will ever be the same again..

Maso- Why did QLD give it up? I don't get why it wouldn't be welcomed. I love it.

Amy- You've not given me a safe option, really. I'm neither your dad or spouse, so it looks like Amy it is. Can I do Aimo's?

Amy said...

Hmm. Aimos sounds like an acronym to me. Amy isn't the easiest thing to shorten.
You could do AJ if you wanted. That's copable.

Amy said...

Qld gave it up because apparently it bleaches the curtains and confuses the cows...
(Don't laugh, I have heard both these reasons).

It was quite odd to move to Qld and find out how political the daylight savings issue is. But it really is (a betrayal of your country cousins you know).

Having timezones along state lines seems pretty silly anyway. Better of going by latitude(longditude? Whichever is the horizontal one)

maso said...

Benny ... are you sure you want to go there? ... the Qld daylight savings debate? ... anyhow, it doesn't work in north Qld. It's too hot ... and the later the sun is up, the later it stays hot!

Also, we had a referendum and more people said 'no' than 'yes'.

soph said...

1. Devastated
2. 10 months
3. Soph
4. mum's moisturizer and make up
5. It reminds me of saying goodnight to her before she'd go off to work at the hospital overnight each weekend when we were kids

Laetitia :-) said...

1. Happy or sad that daylight savings is finished? - doesn't worry me - I live in Queensland. :-)
2. How many months until your birthday? 10
3. I like people calling me.. to have a chat.
4. A smell that makes you nostalgic - rice pudding.
5. Describe the picture that the smell brings to mind - my grandmother used to make a mean rice pudding. She'd make it in a big, deep dish then stick in a slow oven for about 4 hours so you'd definitely be salivating by the time dinner came around. (Unfortunately, my husband doesn't like rice pudding so I have no-one to share it with. That means that there's no point in making it as it doesn't work in small batches.)

Does this mean that I'm nostalgic for a good rice pudding or for my childhood when Ma was more capable and more willing to make rice pudding than she is now?

Laetitia :-) said...

Amy - those reasons are straw men arguments made up by the pro-DS camp; the anti-DS camp don't actually believe that.

Maso is right - it doesn't work in Queensland - our shops already open at 8am, they don't need to open at what would effectively be 7am unless they're a 24 hour shop anyway. In comparison, when I was in NSW, the shops didn't open until 9am; I'm not sure if this is still the case.

If you want to make use of the 'extra' summer daylight, get up early (and this is coming from a night person) and do a load of laundry / sweep your floors / read a good book / (if your Council and neighbours allow it) mow the lawn before you get ready for work. You get daylight in the cool of the day (when it's useful) instead of coming home when it's too hot to do anything but collapse in a chair.

I never 'got' DS until I went to Europe where, with the latitude and consequent light changes, it actually made sense.

Amy said...

I've read both those comments in the letters to the editor in the Australian and on Radio National - fakers you reckon?

See now I'll bite (avoiding work) for why (for the SE of Qld at least) daylight saving would work:

- it's pretty damn miserable for it to be 30 degrees by 6.30 in the morning in summer, especially when you've been woken at at 4am because it is already too hot and light.

- A lot of people's work hours aren't that flexible. My hours combined with our council restrictions wouldn't allow lawn mowing before work. Those hours also mean I'll spend 90% of the year getting home in the dark which is really depressing.

- For those business who do do a lot of work with offices in Sydney and Melbourne it makes it really difficult to get stuff done, not to mention all banking working on Sydney time.

- Having grown up with daylight saving I also have a great deal of fond memories as a child of Dad being home while it was still light enough for us to do stuff outside together. Going to the park at 8pm and so on. It was great.

But again, I think timezones should be along latitudes, not states (why is SA different again, for no apparent reason?).

Amy said...

See Ben - political!

Laetitia :-) said...

Hmm, I was wondering if the way I worded the bit about doing stuff before work would make sense - maybe it didn't. :-)

Ok, in summer the sun is up say 4 - 4:30. You're up anyway and you don't need to leave the house for work until say 7:30 so you've got 3 hours to get yourself organised for work and do whatever else. That 'whatever else' could be reading for an hour or throwing a load of laundry in the machine (and reading while it cycles) or sweeping the floor or...any activity that's a right pain to do at 6:30pm when you've got to get dinner done and it's too hot to do anything anyway.

However, with DS, you're getting up at 5:30, you still have to leave the house at 7:30 but you no longer have an 'extra' hour of daylight in the cool of the day to play with. Instead you're getting home at 5:30pm standard / 6:30pm DS when it's even more of a pain to think about dinner.

Before we had the referendum in Feb 1992 (I remember it because I didn't get to vote because I was flooded in on a country property) we had a summer or two of DS to give us all a 'taste' of it to see if we wanted it or not. It was a right pain for my dad because it meant that he was going to work in the dark 100% of the year.

I deal with an office in Sydney on a semi-regular basis and have sisters in NSW & Vic. I don't mind that they go on DS, I just call them in the morning instead of the evening and I get news from the office earlier so I'm not hanging out so long waiting for the website to update. :-)

But I'll bite too - people in WA manage to deal with the difference in time-zone year round and I don't hear cries for them to be on the same time as the eastern states. Maybe we should all use UTC, then we can be in tune with pilots. :-)

As for SA, by longitude, they 'should' be an hour behind us in Brisbane as they are 15 degrees west of us. But for some reason they've gone for a half hour - go figure.

Georgina said...

1. Both. Happy for the extra hour's sleep in. Sad for the loss of the late balmy evening light.
2. Just under 6.
3. Georgeous
4. Gum leaves and still air
5. My grandparents had a bunkhouse where we used to sleep as kids away from the parents. Now they're both dead :(

Tim said...

1. Don't really care- not really applicable in NQ
2. 8
3. a friend
4. coral reef at low tide/ salt water fishy smell
5. Growing up on a small tropical island in PNG with not many worries

Ruth said...

1. Happy, but not particularly fussed either way.

2. It was my birthday last Saturday

3. Ruth - I like my name.

4. freesias

5. pot plants my grandmother gave me as wedding presents, filled with bulbs...but sadly, now all dead and gone. Freesias remind me of my grandmother's love.

Amy said...

Laetitia: Nah, I read it wrong I think, not that you weren't clear.

I guess I would say that being awake at 4.30 doesn't mean functional for me, the total night owl that I am. And I much prefer to have daylight in the cool of evening than the daylight in the cool of the morning (morning is not really a relaxing time I find because you still have work ahead of you...)

And yes while you can learn to cope with the difference in business hours it does seem to end up with Bris offices having to work to cover normal hours plus the time difference as well.

I suspect with the influx of us terrible Southerners (does 23 out of my 26 years mean I count as a Qlder yet?) into Qld whether a referendum now would be quite a different kettle of fish. '92 was (depressingly) a long time ago.

Laetitia :-) said...

Amy, I don't discriminate on where you were born but on who you barrack for in the State of Origin. If you barrack for Qld then you're a Queenslander. :-)

I'm a night owl too and also prefer evening coolness to morning coolness but I find that it either doesn't cool down of an evening or if it does I need to be in bed anyway to get up for work the next day. This is then made worse with DS.

Plus, DS makes me more tired because I don't tend to think about sleep according to the clock but according to the light or lack thereof. When I worked in NSW, the clock was telling me I had to go to bed but I'd put it off for at least another hour because it hadn't been dark for long enough.

Interestingly, sleep studies show that lack of light does encourage sleep (pituitary gland?) - maybe I should try working by candlelight more often. :-)

As for state lines determining time zones (Broken Hill notwithstanding), it may be fairly arbitrary but at least it's easily definable. It's easier to look at the area code to see that a person lives/works in a DS state before you call them than to work out whether someone is which side of the border between say Lockyer Valley (outside SEQ before amalgamations; not sure now) and Ipswich (Inside SEQ).

onlinesoph said...

1. thought I'd be sad, but happy.
2. eight
3. Soph
4. Noodles frying
5. Dad frying up a big batch of char kway teow (Malaysian style fried noodles with a charcoal-like flavour) on a saturday morning with the whole family at home.

Amy said...

What if you don't like footy at all? Does that mean I'm not even a true Aussie?

Beth said...

1. Happy!! The days are so much longer! Pretty soon my semester will be done and I'll really be able to enjoy it!

2. Four
3. Libby
4. Cut grass
5. Quiet, languid summer days

Laetitia :-) said...

Amy - any interest in any sport for which you'd barrack for Qld? What about muttering darkly about Mexicans (NSW'men) and other southerners? More interest in Qld politics than any other state? Did a little happy dance that Rudd and Swan got in just because they're Qlders (and therefore funding might reach somewhere other than NSW and Vic), regardless of what you think about their policies?

Amy said...

Ha ha. I think I fail miserably at being a Qlder then... You'll all have to evict me.

Wendy said...

1. I'm a Qlder who has more important things to think about.
2.11.8
3. Wendy
4. Campfire smoke
5. Reminds me of camping with youth groups as a teen/young adult.

Nathan said...

1. Happy. I like being in the same timezone as those to the south.
2. 8.
3. Nathan, Nath (by family, and it's probably the most affectionate name I'm comfortable with getting from strangers), sometimes Nate, I am ambivalent about my "nickname" - Smiley.
4. Freshly ground coffee.
5. My last cup of coffee.

You know why I hate daylight savings - we don't get sport live. We get it delayed by an hour. We also get our morning television programs delayed by an hour. And our Triple J. And everything good. I don't like living an hour and ten years in the past. I'd prefer just being ten years in the past thank you very much.

Ben McLaughlin said...

Well, I don't think I'll get involved in the Amy/Laetitia Daylight Savings debate. You two might hammer me with your facts and knowledgable tidbits. But deep down, I know I'm right to love D.S.

Sophg- Yeah, whenever I smell Oil of Olay (or Ulan as it used to be called), I immediately think of my mum.

Georgeous- Yeah the 'late balmy evening light' is what I miss the most..

A Friend- Oh yeah, that sounds like a cool nostalgic memory. I have similar ones of growing up on Groote Eylandt.

Soph- Sounds yum. I loved those lunch times as a kid, when all the fam would be together.

Libby- So do you have Daylight Savings in the States?? I thought it was an Aussie thing.

Wendy- Oh yeah, campfire smoke is one of the best smells going. I love that smell sooo much. Reminds me so much of childhood.

Smiley- I sense a case of State envy..

Ruth- Thats a nice memory.. I hope you had a wonderful b'day!

Ben McLaughlin said...

ps, don't worry everyone, I won't call you those lovey-dovey names ALL the time. Maybe just on special occasions.

Tim said...

hehehe I just want to see how long you can remember for

Beth said...

Yep...we have daylight savings time here....