First, ain’t that nice?  This is a page of thumbnails of some of the pages in my latest book.  I just like looking at it. I’m gettin’ the hang of this. And the bug.

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I do a lot of web looking and I’m always bemused by the silly, stupid, idiotic, mystifying things I find.  Such as:

Gee, the York Motel (150Km east of Perth) has moved to Mounts Bay Rd in the city.

“Here is another product that might interest you.”  Huh?  That’s it. There is no  more.

This is classed as mystifying.  It’s the BOM radar.  Someone’s playing a joke I think.

Really, really informative.  No matter how many times you click the three buttons, it won’t go away.

I’ve also been looking at hotels and motels in Perth.  A Bed and Breakfast in one of the northern suburbs says “Rates are for room only. Continental Breakfast is $10 extra.”  It’s a bed and breakfast,  ffs.  Instant turn-off for me.

And a motel right on the coast advertises their rooms at $179 per night, or $199 if you want an ocean view.  Gee thanks.  I know this motel – $200 a night??!!  For what?  It’s an old 60s style, no facilities.  Not me.

Why have I been looking?  I have to be at the Mount Hospital on 2 April at 6.30am, and another hospital (edit: on another day!) at a similar time. And not drive immediately afterwards.  I’m thinking of making a night of it in a nice hotel.

Mandurah 2003 © P J Croft 2014
Which weather would you prefer, sir?
This is a scan of a 6 x 9cm film transparency.
It was from a Fuji 6x9 camera I had at the time,
a lovely camera but BIG. So is this file, 55MB
before I resized it for posting here.

Ooops, that can’t be a transparency, a slide.  Know why? See the dirt specks in the clouds on the right? They’re white.  If it was slide film they would be black.

Well, well.  A little speech box was flashing at me on the header bar and when I clicked on it to see what it meant, it told me “Congratulations, your stats are booming. Looks like your blog is attracting lots of views.”  So I’m not talking to myself after all.

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Phew, week after week of hot weather, I mean maxs of 34-37C every day.  Thank goodness this house has full ducted aircon and is beautifully cool. I came across this graph yesterday:

Credit http://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/2014/feb/21/extreme-heat-in-australia-more-longer-hotter

It’s a bit hard to read but the bars are the number of heatwave days per year from 1950 to 2010 averaged across Australia.  I emphasise the averaged bit because it pays little attention to WA, where we have our own weather.  I’m not kidding about that – WA is totally influenced by the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean, whereas the eastern states are influenced by the interior and the Pacific Ocean currents.  I would bet my boots that WA would show a more extreme trend than that.

This tallies with this graph of global temperatures over the same period:

(Sorry, I don’t know where I copied it from.)  This is not the same data – this is worldwide global mean temperatures over a similar period, but it shows the same trend to me.  Mr Abbott BA Boxing Oxon., you can tell us it’s just normal variation all you like, but tell that to the firefighters, foresters, farmers, fishermen, forecasters, flora and fauna scientists and other people who see the effects every day.  They’ll tell you to f-off.

I saw a major article the other day where an economist said we should just accept that global warming is occurring and just make efforts to adapt to it rather than wasting money on trying to stop it. Stop fighting a possibly losing battle to get industries and major polluters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and spend money instead on adapting ourselves in our housing and lifestyles. He was a northern hemisphere guy, btw.

Oh yeah?  That’s fine for we humans, but what about the rest of the flora and fauna of this earth?  What about the food chain of animal life that we depend on?  Especially bees! What about the eco-balance of the land and forests and seas?  I could go on in this vein, but how typical of an economist to see it only in money terms!

The other point is – it’s conservatives who are most likely to deny that climate change is happening, despite the clear evidence.  Vide* Mr Abbott, Mr Murdoch, Mr Howard, News Corp columnist Miranda Devine, Lord “Haw Haw” Monckton, Lord Matt Ridley and so on and on.

They don’t see any need to present their own scientific research, they just know it’s all wrong.  No scientific qualifications required.  They’ll be the death of us, quite literally. People will die of increased heat related effects, bush fires and floods in this country and rising sea levels and spreading diseases in third world countries. It’s actually, measurably happening. Nice going guys.  Sleep well.

[* I was a bit unsure of my use of this Latin word, but from Wiktionary:

Verb vide (singular imperative verb; plural videte)

See; consult; refer to! A remark directing the reader to look to the specified place for epexegesis.]

Here’s another great graphic – deniers’ arguments vs the facts:

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Yesterday I was feeling a bit out of sorts and for a few hours I convinced myself that I wasn’t going to have the gastric sleeve operation after all.  I’d have the band removed, but no, the sleeve is too extreme and I’d rather enjoy the rest of my life eating and drinking normally. The $5,000 for the operation is too much and I could spend that on travel or something.

Then I snapped out of it.  Enjoy the rest of my life?!  I’m already getting a taste of how bad diabetic effects can be, and my left leg is giving me trouble and a bit of pain again.  If I don’t do anything, I’ll be on increasing doses of insulin and possibly lose a leg.  So much for enjoying the rest of my life. Shortening it, more likely.

It’s interesting that the medical articles call gastric sleeve/bypass a “Cure for diabetes” first, and a method of losing weight second.  They say it should be the first line of treatment rather than wasting time on a losing battle with medication alone.

I have no choice. It has to be done if I don’t want to die a painful, messy, lonely and premature death.

I’ve just been sent an email containing sentiments like this:

When I hear that a prisoner – who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and ‘fed special food’ that is paid for by my taxes – is complaining that his holy book is being ‘mishandled,’ you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts:

I don’t care.

I’ve replied to the sender saying, Take me off your copy-to list!  I do not want hate stuff like this!  I do not want to be told things like “F–k off, we’re full.”  If these people want to push these ideas, let them start their own blog or web site where I have the choice of looking at it or not.

Unfortunately, since sending out all those emails about our school reunion, some people have started sending me all their “you must see this” stuff.  Some of it I don’t mind, like the jokes.  But others are these hate mails and masses of cute animal photos or weird Photoshopped pictures, or links to You Tube videos that I haven’t got time to waste seeing.   Grrr.

6.40pm:  What did I tell you?  Another one of these time wasters just came in from one of my Northam addressees.  It’s not offensive but it goes straight into the bin.  I’ll have to ask him to stop.

You think you have neighbourhood problems?  A housing development in China.

This is from the web but I can't remember where.

Yesterday I expressed my opinion that conservative governments tend to push simplistic solutions to complex problems.

in my inbox today is this from Choice:

Last Friday the Attorney-General announced that the government
was looking at introducing a so-called three-strikes policy in
an attempt to fight online piracy. These policies give warnings
for alleged copyright infringement before eventually issuing
fines or even banning consumers from the internet. 
 
These policies have failed almost everywhere they have been
introduced. They are costly, ineffective, and lack due process
which can put innocent consumers at risk. 

Another simplistic idea which is bound to fail, but will be costly in time and money.

This is the same attorney-general who sent ASIO into a lawyer’s office in Canberra to confiscate evidence in an International Court of Justice in the Hague case over East Timor’s right to oil revenues.  ASIO!  In a lawyer’s office!  Client confidentiality!  Privilege!  This is an outrage.  Our attorney-general is a simpleton suburban solicitor, out of his depth.

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This is interesting.  You will be interested, OK?

This is a drawing I downloaded a couple of years ago from the UK Ordnance Survey web site.

Familiar shape.  Next is a zoom in.

And another zoom in.

Another zoom.

Final zoom.

This is a vector drawing which is capable of any amount of enlargement without pixellation. It has 205 layers!  I’ve used layers in drawings, but never as many as that.  Unfortunately the layers are not named, so you can’t see what they mean except by turning them all off (a laborious process, one by one), then turning each one on in turn.  Not me.

By the way, it’s a .dxf file if you know AutoCAD.

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Speaking of food (the radio is), I cooked last night!  This was the first time since I moved here on 4 April last year that I used the gas cooktop and a pan (I use the microwave all the time with its grilling, steaming and oven functions).  Delicious chicken rendang, but 30 mins work for 5 mins eating?  And having to eat the same thing for the next two nights from the leftover.  Could freeze it of course.

Speaking of eating — pickled walnuts.  Ever tried ’em?  I was given a big jar of home made ones and I’ve tried to like them, but it’s hard.  They don’t look like walnuts, more like big olives, but the saltiness!  It’s such an intense salty flavour that I can hardly get through one. I won’t throw them out, but … lucky they’ll keep.

The olives are great, though.  Thanks Al.

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Sixth day on insulin.  Increase the dose says the doc, but only by 2 units a day until I reach BSL 4-6.  And use 2 units after dinner because my BSL is too high 2hrs after my main meal. OK.  No ill effects.

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Volume III of my VVV photobook arrived this morning.  Uploaded last Sunday evening, delivered from KL 5 days later.  Not bad.  Very nice printing job – neutral colour balance and brighter pictures now that I’ve adjusted my monitor.

I think I’ve got a volume IV in me.  But other things come first, like the DVD re-edit.

Rottnest Island from Cottesloe beach 1989  © P J Croft 2014
Barque Endeavour in foreground.
This was shot with a cheap 400mm lens, i.e. a Vivitar, low cost
T-mount adapted, stop-down, manual aperture lens. This was on
the advice of Modern Photography magazine who said these
relatively simple long telephoto lens designs
are actually quite good for their low price.
I agreed. Just look at the sharpness of the rigging in this shot.
Unfortunately, so did my burglar in 1991.
I had two, one bought new, then a better one (judging by
its greater much weight and better build quality) found second hand.
Btw, now I have a Panasonic FZ70 which has an
image stabilised 1200mm lens! Any lens defects
are automatically corrected by software in the camera.
This is real progress. I must do a comparative test
after this 25 year interval. Digital vs film too.
I have one friend who will never
admit that digital is any good. Hah!

What a delicious irony.  For those who don’t know, the WA government’s solution to an increase in shark attacks in the last few years is to place baited “drum lines”, huge floating, dangling meat baited hooks, about 1Km off our beaches with the idea of catching, and therefore stopping, the sharks.  There is huge controversy and protest about this and I count myself among the dissenters.  I believe it will actually attract sharks, and when small sharks are caught, that will attract the bigger sharks which feed on them. That has proven to be the case so far.

This weekend is the Perth to Rottnest swim and the government has decided to remove the drum lines in the area where the swimmers will be.

Therefore, they must either think that the drum lines attract sharks and are a danger to the swimmers, which is what we think, or it is actually safe to take them away, that this protection from sharks is not needed, which is also what we think.

In fact, the figures are showing conclusively that the vast majority of sharks being caught are Tiger sharks which are not considered a serious danger to humans in areas where they have plenty of food.  When caught on these drum line hooks, they have to be released and the evidence is that bigger sharks are actually attacking and eating the hooked sharks.

If you check Wikipedia and Shark Facts you’ll find that culling of over 4,500 of these sharks in Hawaii over about eight years made no difference to the very low risk of attack.   So how is this making the beaches safer?  They are also an endangered species.

Conservative governments:  always finding simplistic answers to complex problems, pandering to the blue singlet brigade.

“For every difficult problem, there are a hundred simple solutions, all of them wrong.”

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Second day at 20 units of insulin.  No ill effects, but no dramatic improvements either.  I’m seeing the doc this afternoon.  Meanwhile I’ve been told that one of the meds I’m on is a significant weight gainer. OK, I don’t need that one (it’s mainly to help sleep), so I’ve dropped it.  I need all the guns I can muster to lose weight!

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I’ve ordered a robot vacuum cleaner.  I have vast areas of white tiling in this house which show loose dirt, plus the carpeting in the three bedrooms and “computer room”.  I consider vacuuming a waste of my time, so this is what I need, a robotic helper.  It got a good review so I decided to make the jump.  Should be here tomorrow week.

And with this marvellous dishwasher, the waste of my time washing and drying dishes and cutlery is also saved.  Hooray!  If only I’d had this years ago, I would have saved years of my time.  Now, if only I could invent an automatic clothes hanger-outer.  What a fiddly waste of time that is.  (No, I don’t like dryers – too much damage to clothes and too much power wasted.)

I think about it a lot but it always involves a big hole through the laundry wall from the washing machine to the outside.  I don’t think that would go down very well.  It needs a lateral thinking solution.  Maybe like a heated indoor dryer? Hmmmm.

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Wow, I’m using video stabilising software to batch stabilise a whole folder (21 HD video clips) at the moment. This is using all eight cores of my Core i7 processor at near 100%.  I started it nearly four hours ago and it’s only done 12 of the 21 so far.  Looks like it’ll be an all day job.  This is just one of seven folders, each with an average of 25 clips to be done.

Why?  I made a DVD of Scotland five years ago but it was marred by excessive camera shake in the driving shots and other camera movements, despite the Canon HF10’s own lens stabilisation.  I used special software at the time, but it wasn’t really enough.

Since then a new version of the software, Mercalli, was released in 2012 and I’ve got it. It’s a vast improvement and makes the driving shots very watchable, so I’ve decided to re-edit the DVD, especially considering I’ve got new editing software as well (Grass Valley Canopus Edius Pro).  I made the original in standard definition too, even though all my material is HD.  So it’s time to remake it as a BluRay.  BluRay players are now down to $68-$85 – c’mon.  The quality, the depth, the sparkle of HD is amazing.

Besides, I’ve learnt a lot in five years and this time I’ll make a much better stab at it.  Add some scripted dialogue, rather than relying on my voice comments at the time.  Better than vacuuming, doing the dishes or hanging washing!

Thailand, Milky Way, Comet and Meteor
Image Credit + Copyright © Matipon Tangmatitham

What an amazing photo this is.  First for the long exposure technique to get the foreground lights and the stars together.  Then to catch a comet in the shot, and a meteor!  This came from http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/, Astronomy Picture of the Day.  They say there’s an ESA space rocket launch in there too, but I can’t find it.  No matter, this is a great picture, and all down to digital photography with its extremely sensitive sensors and the huge amount of control we have now compared to film.  Oh, and of course, getting out and being there!

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Second day on insulin and it’s working well. I was worried about hypos, but I don’t feel any different, yet the effect on my BSL readings is good – from big swings, from 14 to 18, down to pretty constant readings of 12 mmol/ml at the recommended measuring times.

On Wednesday I increase the dose to 20 units and see what the readings are. Then wait three days and try 30 units if I need to. And so on to get the readings down to below 7, or more correctly my HbA1c to 7 or below.  My last one was 7.6 and here in Perth they want 6 or below.

This should all become unnecessary, along with most of my other medications, after the gastric sleeve operation. Meds for BP, BSL, cholesterol – all no longer needed. Let’s hope so. But I’m also taking a med which gives me better BSL control and will continue for the foreseeable future, because it makes me feel so much better in both body and mind.

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The exercise physiologist came this morning and put me to the test:  hard walking (outside) for 15 secs, then 30 secs of slowish walking, then 15 secs as hard as I can, and repeat for 10 mins. It’s called interval training and I can handle it, but not for long – 5 mins at the moment.  She wants me to reach the stage of 30 mins of hard(ish) walking by about three months time.  Well, it’s OK if you’ve got someone pushing you, checking on you, but there’s only one more visit scheduled.  This is being paid for by HBF, so after three visits, I have to pay.  Pay what, I have no idea.  Treadmill buying time, I think.

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I finished Veni Vidi Pici Vol. III on Sunday evening and sent it off to the printers.

And a few sample pages:

This one was pre-paid too, using one of Photobook’s offers, only costing $46 each for two copies.  They should be here (from the printers in Kuala Lumpur) early next week.

How incredibly satisfying it is to be able to assemble and print my images like this, with the extra information, rather than rely on slide shows which nobody liked and no-one would watch.  Mind you, as I said before, the editing and proof reading is interminable.  Right up to the last I was finding minor typos and rewriting sentences to convey the meaning more clearly.  Good fun, though.  I have vouchers for three more pairs of books, so Japan, Bali and Malaysia are next.  Come to think of it, I may have enough for a Veni Vidi Vol. IV from my USA, Europe and local shots.

The criterion for selection from the thousands I’ve got is that they have to be able to stand alone, as interesting enough, without relying on others from the same trip.  That narrows it down pretty well.

Nice, huh? More on this image below.

First, as it was my birthday two days ago, I bought myself my present today.  I’ve always liked watches but I very rarely see one I want to buy.  Today I finally did.

It’s all titanium and carbon fibre so it’s very light.  Also very thin of course, being Skagen brand.  I like the spare design and shades of grey colour, with a bright orange second hand. The band, although hard titanium metal, feels like silky cloth.

This is the first watch I’ve bought since 2008.  It joins my collection of five, two of which are badly scratched and worn.

I paid full rrp at a jeweller!  I started to walk away, intending to check the web price, but I thought, blow it, just do it, so I went back.  Of course, I couldn’t resist looking on-line later and kerrumbs, I paid $295 but I could have bought it on-line from a UK dealer for A$178, plus A$21 delivery from the UK!  We pay a high price for local shopping.

And bloody Amazon.  They sell it too, for US$84 !!  But they won’t sell it to Australia.  I’m finding Amazon pretty hopeless now.  Just about everything I choose says Sorry, this product is not available in your area.  Or else the shipping costs exceed the cost of the item.  Amazon, you’ve lost me.  Yes, I do know about getting it through a US based Aussie firm that provides a US shipping address and then forwards it to Australia.  I must follow this through.  In looking at watches today, there’s another one I want to buy,  a Pulsar, much cheaper than the Skagen but of similar sparse design in dark grey steel.  A$118 from the UK shop.

It’s not just Amazon.  I need a new strap for my CPAP mask.  Price here $65 at SJOG in Subiaco.  Price in USA US$31.  This is a Resmed Australian product and they charge us double the US price!!  Anyway, I thought I’d order two from the US firm.  They’ll supply me OK.

But for a cost of US$62 for the two, they want US$67 for the shipping!  How can this be? – they weigh about 100g each.  I couldn’t find any way to reduce this price, so I just had to back away.  Grrrr.

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The title refers to having to start injecting insulin tonight.  My BSL readings are consistently too high and it’s dangerous to be this way.  Not to mention that I feel terrible.  So weary!  The sugar in my blood can’t enter the muscles due to lack of insulin, so the muscles don’t want to work.  I’m told the injections will make me feel much better.  I’m seeing the diabetes educator tomorrow morning to learn how to do it all.

I’d hoped to avoid this by having the sleeve operation, but that’s not going to happen before June, so I can’t afford to delay.

The gastric surgeon put me onto a major study called STAMPEDE, one of those wonderful acronyms, which gives me heaps of reading material about curing diabetes through surgery over a purely medical/drug approach.  The results are dramatically in favour of having the surgery.

The crazy thing is that it’s the resultant weight loss that fixes the diabetes, not the surgery itself.  If only we could lose the same amount of weight and keep it off, we wouldn’t need to lose 90% of our stomach.  Surely there’s got to be a better way than the surgery, but although we, I, can lose all that weight as I proved in 2008, I can’t keep it off.  The body finds its own ways to get back up there.  Sigh.

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These two images are part of a series I took at a tailoring shop at Joondalup today.  I took nine in all, right across the colour spectrum, but unfortunately every shot was spoilt by camera shake.  There was too little light in the shop and I didn’t have the flash with me.  No problem, I’ll just go back and reshoot with my Olympus OM-D E-M1, which has superior image stabilisation, maybe the best in the game.

The staff were quite happy for me to take the shots and I plan to combine them into a very wide panorama and give them a copy.

Crumbs, concrete bus seats that move by thought power, and now this —

This is one of my photos:

I can’t specifically remember taking this but I’m sure it was the South Bank of the Thames in London in 2008.

Now, just 20 mins ago, I was browsing a review of a camera  (you can’t have too many cameras…) and I saw this as one of the sample images:

Aaaaaarrrrgh, I thought. Have I accidentally included a reviewer’s image as my own?  It’s in my book about to be sent off for printing.  That would be very bad.

But no, mine is distinct.  It is just a coincidence. This is obviously a popular place on the river bank.  Here’s another pair  — here’s mine:

And here’s the reviewer’s:

Mine are much better of course.  That’s why I’ve included them in my new book.

Actually, they are not the same phone boxes, but … the two images have similarities.

So how about that?  Another coincidence, and just at the right time.

     Peace, man.    Yudhie's restaurant, Bali  December 2010  © Peter Croft 2014

Wow, what an interesting, action packed day. It was a lot better day than Monday.

First, a heartfelt thanks to all the people who’ve wished me happy birthday.  It’s nice to be remembered.

Today was the day for my MRI and meeting with the gastric surgeon, and it all happened.  I was up at 3am for a widdle and couldn’t go back to sleep, when I suddenly realised I hadn’t updated or printed my weight graph for the surgeon.  Up I got and one thing led to another and I didn’t go back to bed.

I got to the bus stop at five to six am and a guy I’d briefly spoken to on Monday was there again (of course).  But amazingly, the concrete bench seat that had been 50m away from the bus stop on Monday, and that I’d joked about to him as being a bit useless, was right there at the stop!  It had been moved where we wanted it since Monday!  What is this, thought power?

We chatted a bit and he said he works as a financial investigator, a financial fraud accountant. Wow. I wish we’d had a chance to talk more — I’m intrigued.

This time the bus/train/bus to the Mount Medical Centre was smooth as silk.  I got there dead on 7:15am, but they kept me waiting until 7:40am anyway.  Sigh.

The MRI of my upper spine and shoulders was uneventful.  It took about 20 mins and wasn’t as enjoyable as the one in West Perth last year, not as musical.  The WP one was full of rhythms, syncopations, beats …  it was like a Steve Reich performance.  This one was just lots of loud hums and clunks.  Nothing to report – it’s only precautionary. If the orthopaedic surgeon finds any problem when looking at the scan, he’ll contact me but I don’t have any appointment.

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Then I had time for a quick toasted sandwich and coffee for breakfast in the building next door, and off to the surgeon’s rooms.  He was late.  Coming from his home in Waikiki, he was stuck in traffic.  I hope he appreciates that it happens to us all next time I’m late.

While I waited, we all (two other couples) started talking, and it turned out that one from both couples had just had the sleeve operation done, a couple of weeks ago.  How is it?  Fine, no problems they said.  In on Monday, out on Wednesday, no pain, no difficulties.  You just have to get used to a strictly controlled liquid diet for the first 6 – 8 weeks.  Anything you consume must fit through a straw – thin soup, custard, yoghurt, egg nogs, pureed veges (baby food packs), V8 vegetable juice and so on.  Nothing fizzy or carbonated.  Definitely no beer.

After that 6-8 week period, as long as there are no problems, you can eat anything you feel like, within reason.  No big steaks or Hungry Jacks – the food has to be capable of being put in a blender and reduced. You don’t have to do that — it’s just a measure of the food’s … toughness?  Bulk, actually.

He arrived then and I was first in. We had a good discussion about sleeve or Roux en Y procedure – look up Gastric Bypass on Wikipedia.  One fixes type II diabetes within days but is a slightly more difficult procedure with slightly increased long term risks of bleeds and leaks.  The sleeve still fixes diabetes, but it takes longer, up to a year. It depends more on the weight loss.  But it’s a less risky operation and has better long term results.  OK, sleeve it is, then.

However, he has to take my gastric band out first, as it’s too difficult to combine the two operations. The band will have caused scar tissue around the top of the stomach and that has to settle down for a while.  I’m having a colonoscopy on 24 March, so the band removal is scheduled for Wed 2 April.  Nett cost to me after rebates – $1,500.  $3,000 to put it in, $1500 to remove it. Oh well  🙂

That pushes the sleeve operation back to mid year.  Bugger.  I want to start seriously losing weight before our high school 50th reunion in October.  Looks like I’ll have to take the Optifast much more seriously.

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Then it was out onto the street at about 10:30am and I walked back to the Esplanade train station. Google Earth tells me it’s 1.1Km.  I did it OK, a bit weary but not too bad, much better than Monday.

I debated walking up to Hay Street but didn’t feel up to it and decided to do what I’ve always been meaning to do  —  I took the train south instead of north.  To Mandurah.

To be honest, it’s dead boring.  There’s nothing to see except dry bushland and the backs of  businesses.  It took about 30 mins and when we got there, I just bought a sandwich, iced coffee and the paper and sat waiting for the 20 mins for the reverse journey.  The very nice station staff tried to persuade me to take the bus into Mandurah but I was too tired today — another time.

So we set off at midday back to Clarkson, one end of the line to the other.  This is all on one fare, btw.  If you don’t clock your card off at Mandurah, it doesn’t know you went all the way south before going north again to Clarkson.  The total cost was about $3 I think, at Seniors’ Card discount.  Parking fees alone would have been much more than that.

The return journey was also dead boring.  It was relieved by a phone call from a good mate wishing me Happy Birthday on the train! The seat got very hard, I was falling asleep … it took 85 mins all up, getting to Clarkson at 1:25pm.  This time I got the right bus, to drop me nearly opposite my place on Marmion Ave.  I’ve had a 90 min snooze and now I’m OK again.

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This morning I had a much better look at the freeway congestion. The choke points are definitely where the side entry roads join the main flow – people can’t merge without braking. It’s Joondalup, Whitfords, Hepburn Ave and so on.  Once you get past those, the flow into the city opens up and everyone can keep moving. Near Karrinyup, Leederville and the Polly Pipe, it’s clear and open.

How to fix it?  Merging is like a zipper – each link must make way for the next at the exact spacing.  So if we could work out a way to space the cars on the freeway with gaps to allow the equally spaced cars on the entry ramps, they’d be able to merge easily.

How to do it?  Difficult.  If we had cars controlled by electronic sensors in the road, then each car could be spaced in a controlled way and two streams merged together like a zip.  It might come, but not for some time.  I don’t have an answer —  I’m thinking about it.  Steel barriers occur to me …

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PhotoBook number six (Veni Vidi Pici Vol III) is ready to send off to the printers now.  Bloody hell, talk about proof reading.  I have been over and over that book and still I found errors this morning — small spelling slip ups, mistakes in the information I’d written, slight changes in wording needed even at this late stage.  I think I’ll have to go over it one more time before I send it off.  Luckily this one is pre-paid so no price shocks this time.  The discounted cost was $46 per 40 page copy, and I order two copies.

So that’s three of those done, and I’ve pre-paid two more so I’ve got two more projects started.  I need to get back to my Memoirs.  There’s a long way to go with that. I’m only up to early Bruce Rock so far.  This will be published as a pdf as it will be quite a long book.  It’s been an eventful life and I have many, many photos and a long, deep memory.

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Sirens, helicopters …  there must be a fire nearby.  I can’t see it but the chopper is right over me.  Can’t smell any smoke.

Trigg Island, December 2010  Pentax K-5  ISO200

Woo hoo.  I came as near to exhaustion as I think I’ve ever come yesterday, near to collapse.

I have to have an MRI scan (just routine) tomorrow, Wednesday, at 7:20am at the Mount Medical Centre in Mount’s Bay Rd in Perth.  Knowing how difficult freeway traffic might be and how hard it is to park there, I decided to take bus and train.

So yesterday I did a trial run, just to see that the timing would be OK but also to get into the city this way without the car for a nice day’s city browsing.

Up at 4:45am (I woke before the 5am alarm) for a quick shower and small brekky, then walk 250m to the bus stop on Marmion Ave for the 6:02am bus to Clarkson.  No problems.  Immediate train from Clarkson station, which is the northern end of the line, so plenty of seating.  Very nice, smooth, quiet ride to the city.  The train arrived at the Esplanade station at 6:58am as promised.

Then the walking started. It took 5 mins just to reach the bus port, looking for the 350 bus I’d been told about by Transperth on the phone.  The Blue CAT used to go along Mount’s Bay Rd but no more.  I was assured this bus would be easy.

But I couldn’t find any 350 service or any other suitable one.  The info office is closed at that hour, so I thought I’d walk to the Med Centre, about 500m, I thought.

It was twice that, 1Km.  But it was quite nice at that hour and I made it just on 7:20am.  I found the radiology clinic just to make sure I don’t get lost tomorrow.  There was plenty of vacant parking at that hour, by the way.

Then I started walking back to the city.  I’d noticed a bus earlier, but didn’t see one this time so I just kept walking. Increasingly tired, though.  I stopped and sat for a while, but it didn’t help much.  I walked on, up Mill Street, a moderate slope, and had to stop there too. The feelings of fatigue just didn’t go away.

It rained!  Such a fine morning, yet here were these big drops, enough to seek shelter, and to wet the seats I wanted to sit on.

So I reached Hay St near Boffins, just about dropping.  Bought paper and had a Subway breakfast sitting out on the pavement, very nice.  I thought that might help recovery, but no. I was feeling woozy and my vision was being affected.  I wanted to go on, to browse the shops, but I just couldn’t, so I set off back to the Esplanade bus/train station.

Phew!  By this time I was dragging my feet with fatigue, needing to stop every 100m or so.  Going through my mind was the phrase, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on” that I’d read a few days ago. Keep going, keep going, you’ll get there. Shuffling, almost.

But I got to the Transperth office and found it’s a 950 bus, so that’s sorted for tomorrow.  Then another 5 min walk, with a rest stop, to the train station.  Drooping, I had to sit down.  The train was fine and I reached Clarkson and got a bus straight away.  But it was a 483 which stops 800m away from my house.

That 800m was a big task.  I was shuffling by now, so tired I just wanted to lie down in the street. I finally reached my house but knew I wouldn’t be able to get up the front steps, so had to go through the garage and back door.

After some water and dropping everything, I hit the bed and slept for 3 1/2 hours!  I have never been so exhausted before. It’s a combination of a BMI of 41, blood sugars averaging 14 and not enough walking recently.  I measured it out last night using Google Earth.  I walked a total of about 4Km!  You’d think I would have lost some weight?  No, I’ve bloody well gained 0.4Kg this morning.  Dammit.

At least I know tomorrow will be easier as I’ll catch the 950 bus from the bus port to the Mount, so won’t have that 2Km walk there and back.  I expected to feel incredibly sore this morning, but not so.  Phew.

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The MRI scan is just to make sure there’s no narrowing of the spinal openings at the top of my spine after the shoulder trouble I had late last year.

At 9am in the same Medical Centre, I have my preliminary consultation with the gastric surgeon to talk gastric sleeve or whatever.  I need more info on which type to have and what the restrictions will be afterwards.  I’m sure he’s going to tell me I will need to lose 5-10Kg before he’ll operate, so I’ve started the 5:2 diet, using Optifast for the two “fasting” days each week.  It’s quite hard to stick to it and yesterday was a bad day to be doing it, so I didn’t try.

But first I have to have a colonoscopy, as there would be no point having 90% of my stomach removed if I had a bowel problem.  The earliest for that is 24 March, so I wait.  The proctologist is quite concerned about my blood thinning and anti coagulation medications, so I’ll have to stop them a week before and rely on aspirin.  That’s OK with me.

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Sitting on the train yesterday, I could see the traffic on the freeway and even at 6:15am it was pretty congested, a sea of brake lights and stopped cars.  But it seemed congested for no reason.  There was no crash or road work, so why was the flow actually stopped in places?!

I think it’s the inability of drivers to merge properly as traffic enters the freeway.  I read years ago that in fluid dynamics, if two fluid streams (cf streams of cars) are merged, either the velocity must increase, or the pipe diameter must increase to maintain the same flow rate.  Since neither can happen in dense freeway traffic, congestion is inevitable but some drivers slow and brake too much. This has a multiplier effect. It only takes one driver to brake too hard and soon all the cars are bunched up and slowing to the point of stopping.  Yet a kilometre down the road, the traffic has opened up and is free flowing again.

What’s the answer?  Longer merging lanes?  Merging lane redesign?

No, I think it’s driver training, to leave greater gaps between cars so that side traffic can merge into those gaps and there’s far less need to brake.  I make it a rule to leave at least 30-50m in front of me for that reason, and not to brake unless absolutely necessary, but I constantly find cars want to fill that gap and reduce my spacing.  Sigh.  Making Perth drivers see sense will never happen.