Bon Voyage, Oliver, Adieu!
Manufactured in Taiwan in Feburary of 1995, perhaps on some stuffy and temperamental-weathered day, Oliver the iBook G4 was born. Silicon, solder, mercury, cadium, arsenic, plastic polymers and liquid crystals fused and brought life into the inanimate form. An apogee in technical and architectural mastership, a jewel of computer science and an ace card for Apple Computer, the new notebook for the market was released. Fresh off the assembly line, still piping hot with the aroma of newness and potential and cradled by polystyrene and cardboard, it reached Sydney’s sandy shores sometime in early July and slugged an arduous life ever since its very first boot sequence.
One of the biggest problems we’re facing at the moment is the consumer-culture attitude brought to a gratuitous excess – the belief that old technology products are useless to us, and shouldn’t even be considered for recycling or reuse. And even with the current technologies for recycling available, the big companies and corporations are in it for the money – pulling apart logic boards and solder, to salvage copper and other scrap metal parts for resale. This is an attitude that must be changed if we are truly caring and conscious of our environmental footprint.
Nevertheless, one of the central problems here is that most people are ignorant of the fact that technology products contain a balance of highly recyclable ingredients, highly toxic ingredients and are, in most cases, very easily repairable for re-use. Earlier this year, I managed to donate over fifty old Macs to charities and it is a great sensation to know they will be put to full utilisation. I’m a big believer and practicer of recycling and re-using technology products, and it almost brings tears to my eyes in the joy in seeing this old rig given a new lease of life.
In his admirable off-white shell, Oliver rested many hands, sheltered the internals from the elements of the world. Glue peeled from his joints, metal expanded from his pouts, the close-catch never engaged when you wanted to put the monitor down and head to sleep. Without a complaint and ne’er a system crash, it played DVDs, it did word processing, it surfed the Internet and was so darn hot on your lap, it probably would have fried a couple of eggs for you, while waiting impatiently for it to load the simplest of applications.
Oliver had a special purpose in my heart. Taken from the boy of the same name from the Dickens novel, I rescued him from a decrepit, dusty, dirty home where he was not looked after and seldom used. Ready for disposal, I brought him to life with a jumpstart of technique, patience and expertise, prying together whatever resources I could scavenge and afford. Ruddy-cheeked and devilishly opinionated, we had many quarrels with Microsoft Word — (yes Oliver dear, I realise that my sentence is a ‘fragment’.)
And in October of 2009, he found a new home in the Pyrénées-Orientales, Catalan, Sahorre, a province of Southern France bordering Spain. Soon he will be absorbing the sights and smells of saffron from his farmer-family caretakers and possibly mailing me soppy love-letters that I will need a translator to interpret. Thesis, rent, rantings and more, you had a good run.
Bon Voyage, Oliver, Adieu!
- P.S. I hope you get first-class seats in International AirMail! Cattle-class is just so passè.
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Coltrane’s Musical Mastership: ‘On Green Dolphin Street’
Although there’s no official phrase that I am aware of, ‘taking a walk on Green Dolphin Street’ has become a saying in my mind that is synonymous with being prosperous and awfully proud of it.As it turns out, ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ began as (a rather obscure) Hollywood film, the brainchild music of Bronislaw Kaper and Ned Washington as music accompanying the historic drama film. There’s something about the title and the lyrics, in my mind at least, make me think of glamour and city chic, guided by one’s own sense of personal confidence and musical talent. I heard this song for the very first time on a passing, and determined to track down the face behind the music by keeping the melody in my mind for the better part of two years. We’re talking two years ago – we didn’t have Shazam or the iTunes Store to identify and even provide a link to a downloadable copy of the content.
What makes the song so appealing rests in more than just the melody. Who wouldn’t want to get hitched on Green Dolphin Street, or perform a glamorous gig, go on a successful first date or a shopping spree? When I think of green dolphins, I think of something out of the ordinary, something sophisticated and suave. If this is a first time listening to this wonderful song, you’re in for a treat and a paradigm shift, compliments of one of the greatest jazz musicians of our time.
Come As You Are
In our century, convenience comes with the push of a button, the addition of water, the automation of a robotic call centre. While clearing the clutter and cobwebs from the crevices and corners from your place, you might be stuck wondering where you fit into all of it.
DSM-IV Categorisation for Facebook Social Anxiety Syndrome (pretend, of course.)
Status changes at least five times a day. Games and applications to the excess that the PHP script is broken. Copious wall postings, usually of inane conversation. Affiliation with numerous groups, syndicates and fan pages. Trolling, flaming and blasting are your favourite hobbies. Your photo gallery is immensely populated, to the extent that you have been asked politely to reduce its content. Disastrous sense of social isolation, segregation and/or perpetual self-comparison against invisible metric of what your friends are doing, who they are purporting to be and what you’re missing out on.
6,834,052,227 billion people are now present in our world. 4,057,913+ hectares of forest is felled every year. 16,228,904 tonnes of CO2 have already been released into the atmosphere. 9,716,799,700 kWh of electricity used this year so far.
With numbers this large, you can’t help but feel a little insignificant in the grand scheme of things. As a subordinate at your job, a number in a sprawling society and a struggling soldier of your own ambitions, it’s hard not to feel a bit squashed. But isolated from the whole? That’s where we’re wrong. We are global citizens, and through globalisation, we’ve achieved the means to branch out and embrace a kind of human reconiliation that we’ve never known before.
An academic member of the University who has presided for some 20 years, returned from overseas recently with the widest and cheekiest grin I’ve seen on anybody for a long time. She looked around and laughed and said to me, “You’ve got to see the bigger picture. Here, you’ll only see things through the tiniest lens.” I didn’t know whether I should feel offended or overjoyed at her sentiment.
Then I thought about how nice it would be to travel and be immersed in an experience outside of the comfort zone. That is, until I found myself helping some backpackers, some tourists and interstate travellers find their way around the Sydney metropolis. You come to realise that where you are can be perceived as just as exotic as where they hail from.
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- Coltrane: On Green Dolphin Street
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