(by , again! -- It's a good thing I like her.)

-1. You must post these rules.
-2. Each person must post 5 things about themselves in their journal.
-3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and create ten new questions for the people you tag to answer.
-4. You have to choose 11 people to tag and post their icons on your journal.
-5. Go to their page and tell them you have tagged him/her.
-6. No tag backs.
-7. No stuff in the tagging section about "you are tagged if you are reading this". You legitimately have to tag 11 people.
-8 They ain't so much rules as loose guidelines. I intend to mostly loosely ignore them.

Five things about me:
1/. I'm so old fashioned and primitive I'm typing this on a text editor, and will do the formatting separately after copying and pasting it to DA's latest extravaganza.

2/. I prefer Vim to Emacs, KDE to GNOME 2.x, GNOME 2.x to Windows, Windows to GNOME 3.x, Canon's better colour to Nikon's better tonal depth, and root canal work to having to use iTunes.

3/. Currently there is a koala in my backyard. It's (intermittently) very noisy.

4/. I used to play competitive interclub chess. I fear there is little hope for me.

5/. I lived in Malaysia for two and a quarter years when I was young.

10 Questions from the Tagger
1. Are you happy with your current profession/ your current school studies?
Currently I am supposedly convalescing. I also look after my kids, ignore the housework a little too much, and when well enough bumble around trying to make artistic shots of native plants and insects and the like. There's a certain appeal to most of it, except the housework and being sick all the time. And I really like spending time with the kids. But it's certainly not how I would have chosen to spend my life.

2. What do you want to be when you grow up?
I wanted to be a molecular biologist when I grew up. Frustratingly enough both the Biochem and Microbiology department at one of the local Universities were competing for my affections when I became too ill to continue studying. So I've made the sensible decision: If I can't be what I want when I grow up, I'm just not going to grow up at all-- so there!

3. Boots or sneakers?



On other people, or on me? I've got the height for the boots in the first image, but I don't think my scrawny hairy legs would do them much justice. I'm afraid my boots look like those in the second image, but I only wear them 2 or 3 percent of the time. I've also got some black riding boots, but they rarely see the light of day as they are awful to walk in. The rest of the time its strictly sneakers.

4. Do you keep a to-do list or do you just have a really good memory?
My memory used to be infamous and nearly photographic. I could do awful things to people, like reproduce entire conversations verbatim weeks later. Fortunately I soon learnt this was a bad idea(TM), and stopped doing it.  Unfortunately my memory is no longer anywhere near as good as it was. But I still have a naive faith in it from decades of being able to rely on it absolutely. Sadly this means I'm too dumb to make to-do lists, even though I need them.

5. How many food recipes can you cook?
Hundreds. I also invent recipes from scratch. Over the years I've cooked a lot of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Asian inspired meals. Just recently the meals on high rotation include:
- A pasta with chilli, mettwurst, onions, capsicums, celery, tomatoes, and Kalamata olives.
- An unthickened beef stew with red wine, soy sauce, tomatoes, and vegetables.
- A fake Moroccan dish of either chicken, pork or lamb with spiced vegetables and fruit -- served with couscous and pinenuts.
- Stir fried barbecued chicken with vegetables, a sauce made from chicken stock, soy sauce, black bean sauce, chilli, and either spiced mead or liqueur Muscat. Served with rice or noodles.

I better stop this, I'm making myself hungry.

6. If your computer/printer/etc breaks down, do you try and fix it yourself, or do you seek help first?
I have the misfortune of having a certificate in PC maintenance and repair. I built the stupid thing, and if the computer breaks I'm the poor bunny who gets to fix it. Unfortunately printers aren't really designed to be repairable anymore. If it actually physically breaks (as opposed to say running out of ink, needing a good head clean, or trashing its driver) it's usually more cost effective to just dump it and get a new one. This built in waste offends me, but it's the way of the world now.

7. Have you ever visited an important museum, like Louvre?
This is Australia. We don't have Important Museums here.

8. If you have a sudden inspiration in the middle of the night, do you wake up and sketch/write down those ideas or do you wait until morning?
I find inspiration is a dime a dozen. There are no where near enough hours in the day to catch up with them, as the inspiration may take mere seconds, but to realise the work may take hours or days. I rarely write them down these days.

9. And talking about inspirations, when you have an artistic-block, what do you do to get out of it?
These days take my camera for a long walk, look at lots of stuff, and try to make interesting compositions in my head before putting the viewfinder to my eye. Repeat until thoroughly immersed in the process.

Back when I could still paint and draw: go to a figure study group and spend the whole session either doing fast studies, or alternately long detailed studies of something horrible (hands, feet, noses, or very elongated poses, or extreme foreshortening). Once again, repeat until immersed in the process.

10. Do you drink coffee in the morning?
Far too much of it. I live on the stuff.

I tag:
Nobody. Last time I did one of these I tagged George W Bush, Vladimir Putin, Rupert Murdock, Kevin Rudd, and Bill Gates. And you know what? Not one of them bothered to do it. So now I'm sulking...

Some recent favourites, so people have something to look at.



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