I was chatting to a friend this morning who was bemoaning the fact that his family were going to a party in the city for New Year's Eve tonight. It wasn't that he didn't like parties, he does, but rather the whole palaver of getting on and off trains, being squeezed by crowds, negotiating drunken fools and sundry idiots, and so forth and so on.

I have been through a similar process and found that, for whatever momentary joy one gets from beautiful fireworks, not to mention the frisson of communal love that comes from a glass of champagne, it is just not worth it. I was texting another friend this morning whose teenage son is grounded and who therefore can't go into the city with his mates for hours of pointless boredom. I remarked that New Years Eve in the West was really just the bastard child of Ground Hog Day and Waiting for Godot, minus the humour and insight - that is, hugely repetitive and entirely anti-climactic.

So, as platitudes roll from the tongues of media heads and a false sense of bonhomie washes across the multitudes, as folks discover yet again that the next day is pretty much like the last and that the chalice they hold is not only empty but largely illusory, I wish everyone a safe and meaningful New Year. May your resolutions be focused on making this a better world for all living things.

Tom had swimming lessons at Lawson Pool a few weeks ago. He has improved significantly under the aegis of Department of Education instructors - mostly elderly though very competent no-nonsense women. The once-a-day coaching over two weeks helps to ground the children in fundamental water and swimming skills, something entirely lacking when I was a kid.

So here is Tom about to commence one of his lessons on a day I thought it wise to turn up, if only to fly the flag.

Driving to Westmead Station yesterday, I gave up resistance and began listening to a ten-part history of tea on The China History Podcast. I had been putting this off for some time since I wasn't sure if this topic was going to be, ahem, my cup of tea.

Wrong again. Laszlo has a way of making the most arcane information interesting - maybe it's his unbridled enthusiasm - and so the first two parts of this ancient story passed the time nicely. Having attended tea ceremonies in Japan and been initiated into many of the practices in that country through friends and other immersions, I realized that I still had considerable ignorance and a deficit that needed to be made up. After all, I drink a few cups of tea a day and can't imagine waking up to anything other than a pot of tea.

I was especially taken by a famous poem by the Tang dynasty poet Lu T'ung, who, upon receiving a particularly auspicious present of tea from the Imperial estates, wrote a song of praise. Here is an extract from The Song of Tea, as it has become known. With each bowl, the poet moves closer to something like heaven on earth, an epiphany of the soul.

The first bowl moistens my lips and throat.
The second bowl banishes my loneliness and melancholy.
The third bowl penetrates my withered entrails,
finding nothing except a literary core of five thousand scrolls.
The fourth bowl raises a light perspiration,
casting life’s inequities out through my pores.
The fifth bowl purifies my flesh and bones.
The sixth bowl makes me one with the immortal, feathered spirits.
The seventh bowl I need not drink,
feeling only a pure wind rushing beneath my wings.

Anyone who loves tea will understand at least some of the heightened sentiments of Lu T'ung, who sat gently sipping in in his mountain hermitage on Mt Sung, in deep reflection, 1200 years ago.



Above. Detail from a hanging scroll from the 13th Century showing Lu T'ung brewing tea.

"Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry.
Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
Petruchio: My remedy is then, to pluck it out.
Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
Katherine: In his tongue.
Petruchio: Whose tongue?
Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.
Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.”

My acquaintance with The Taming of the Shrew (popular with Shakespeare Competition Drama students) was renewed yesterday when a wasp stung me on the upper arm. Although the above passage did not come immediately to mind, as I was reeling in mild agony from this unreasonable and unprovoked assault, it did with the passage of time.

A wasp sting is particularly nasty. I have been stung by assorted bees in the past (an insect that has the decency to expire after the offensive), but wasps can sting many times and survive to sting again. Six hours after the attack, my arm was still aching. I realize that bees and wasps have different lives and purposes - the former's being more noble in my estimation.

An upside of this affair was that the wasp's lair was discovered inside my wooden venetian blinds and that the threat has been neutralised. I too am a gentleman Petruchio, and this tale of waspish skulduggery is told.

Another Christmas has passed like so many others. This year part of my family (the NSW part) had lunch at my brother Michael's flat in Collaroy. Tom came with me this year and was indulged by his uncle's. Ancient PS1 video games played in the background while the lunch was prepared, the table was set, and a little part of England descended upon the northern beaches. Leg ham, roasted vegetables, pork and puddings were high on the list and cracker-pulling explosively rounded off the afternoon.

This has been ever so. My mother, being English, has always insisted on a traditional English Christmas dinner, no matter what the weather. And we have always been happy to eat it, regardless of the sauna-like conditions. I remember other families in our street having seafood lunches or cold salads and meats. Somehow this seemed very unChristmas-like, as if antipodean barbarians had somehow crashed a tea party. Maybe it was just common sense.

Below - my brother Peter and son Tom chat with the expanse of the Pacific in the background.

Tom and I and another family did a short walk to a nearby bush cliff-face the other day. At the base of the cliff, which was not high, the boys began crushing the soft sandstone into a pale yellow powder. The repeated gesture of rubbing the rocks into sand sent my thoughts flying to my youth.

Fifth grade. Killarney Heights Public School. The man named Armstrong had not yet set foot on the moon. Our school playground extended beyond the bounds of the asphalt into a small ragged portion of bushland adjacent a neighbouring house. An army of small boys emerged every recess and lunchtime to dig into the clay banks of the bush (this became a game involving small plastic figurines called Crater Critters, see below). When we tired of this, a production line of short-panted proletarians began grinding down sandstone rock into a powder that would be funneled into discarded empty beer bottles. This went on for some time as I recall, at least until teachers cottoned on to the industrial nature of our play. At some time during Fifth grade, the area became out of bounds. End of an era.

I also recall this as a time when I chatted avidly to my erstwhile best friend, Michael Chapman, about pop music. He was hugely enarmoured of the Australian star Russell Morris (he of The Real Thing fame). We would clamber over rocks and wander the long stretches of concrete and grass discussing the smallest details in the life of his pop idol and flicking through Go Set magazine. It was a different time to now. Cassette players and tapes were the current biggest thing. Families had one Hi-Fi system in their house if they were lucky. In most respects, we were beholden to what was played on the radio and that was the Top 40. Or rather, a dozen or so songs played over and over all day.



A young Russell Morris as I knew him in the late sixties.

flowers in martin place

slow the forests grow,
hard grief-bed of unasked giving,
long, stem-lines of shadow.

Today, terrible news from a school in Pakistan where many children and teachers have been murdered by Taliban violence. I am not sure what god these people claim to be representing in their mad dash to a virgin-saturated heaven, but the monstrous, vengeful and blood-seeking deity that they appear to worship cannot be real.

There is no reasoning with this kind of person. They are zealously and exclusively right in their own addled psychopathic way and to stay for a chat would invite certain death. They are not the only ones to represent a dead-end in human development, but they are clearly the most visible at present.

It is sad whenever life is lost pointlessly. Sometimes this happens in the everyday run of life - the mundane trip to the shops in a car comes to mind. Other times it happens as a result of wider conflict, such as civilian fatalities in war. Things happen according to laws of nature and fallible beings, as we are, operate within these realms.

The Lindt Cafe siege and shootings in Sydney fall somewhere between these fields. Malign human agency, as happens in wartime (and finds an equivalency in political extremism) meets the sheer possibility of chance; just being at a cafe for a cup of coffee.

I missed most of the media hyperbole yesterday but the little I did hear was sufficient to show that reason had been abandoned to a hyper-reality and a sadly predictable political cant of the worst kind. If anyone with ill-intent and a desire for saturating publicity was watching, then they will know what to do.

I was pleased though at the desire of many to show solidarity with others who might otherwise have felt threatened by the turn of events. The #I'llRideWithYou phenomenon shows that it possible to rise above prejudice and step out to help with change-making behaviours. In the end, little differences and changes can make a world of difference, if only we could see the long perspectives available to us in the moment.

I was talking to a friend last night. He told me that his children enjoyed playing Minecraft but he was worried about the potential from strangers entering the Minecraft world. So as a good parent might, he gathered a supportive group of parents and set up a private Minecraft world on a designated server. There were 12 player licenses so good school-friends of his children filled these slots as players. For the first month all went well. Industrious Minecraft communities emerged and collaborated with each other. By the second month, however, trouble emerged. Worlds created by individual players found themselves subject to overnight attacks with pixelated TNT bombs. Hours of work was destroyed anonymously in seconds.

At the same time, other school friends who were not part of the private Minecraft world began picking on the select group. There were bullying and taunting incidents. By the third month, the parent closed down the server. The experiment was over. He described it as being like a re-run of "Lord of The Flies"

This experience would have made a great research thesis. It also highlights the problem of anonymity, the internet and social media. Everybody has heard of trolls - e-folks who join forums and the like with the sole purpose of offending. Faceless and nameless, they are free to indulge whatever dark fantasy or nasty inclination they like. They thrive on hurting and outraging. It is much harder to do this is the real world, for fear of social ostracism.

I could proffer any number of theories on the psychology of this kind of person, but I won't. Here is a Minecraft pixelate instead.

Summer has broken from the barrier and it is hot and steamy. Stifling days are later punctuated by often fierce electrical storms. Birds sit open-mouthed and splay their wings on the ground to get relief. There is a growing lassitude.

Having finished an online Certificate of Tesol recently, I have just begun the free add-on Certificate of Business English. I seems unlikely that any great joy can be derived from teaching course book BE ( have a look for yourself) but there is a lot to be gained from teaching a more general ESL with business characteristics, so to speak. This was my approach when Yes English landed a BE contract with a Kaibara-based engineering company (Everloy Nozzles) around 2005.

I took the class over about a year later and quickly jettisoned the awful course book that nobody in the class appeared to understand. In practical terms, these students, all engineers, did not need the grindingly dull terminology of business speak, but rather, a way to communicate in English with their Chinese peers. So this is what we did, adding little relevant asides that touched upon the kinds of technical terms that might arise from the work that they did.

I really enjoyed this class and was sad to leave them a year later. Sometimes my mind drifts to rural Kaibara and I wonder if those young engineers are still with the company, whether married or not, or if they still hang out at Panchinko Parlours, where the whirl of noise and smoke is their lot.

A couple of photos won't go astray here. In the first I am approaching the company on the way to a lesson. The second is a group shot of my final class, in the board room, no less.