“Excuse me?”

I turned to the young woman sitting next to me. She was seated next to the window, on our shared seat, on the Eastern Suburbs line train. We were sitting at Edgecliff station, hesitating, the driver waiting that extra moment for somebody to scramble down the escalators and leap into the carriage. As I removed my earphones, I put on my approachable face and replied “yes?” ready to impart information about the next stop, how to get to Bondi Beach or where did I buy this cute top I was wearing.

“What kind of foods are high in fibre?”

Okay… Not what I was expecting. As I did a quick scan through the knowledge aisle marked nutrition, my brain struggled with the surprising question and offered up not answers, but some irrational motives behind it.

“Umm, well.”

The young woman was like a mystery shopper for the Nutrition Society of Australia, pouncing on unaware public transport citizens for the Australian Attitudes and Understanding of the Importance of Fibre in Everyday Diets report.

“Umm. I think fruit and vegetables are pretty high in fibre.”

She was a PhD student analysing spontaneous communication between strangers. I was a lab rat in her study entitled Quality of Information Gained from Unsuspecting Strangers. Her hypothesis was that the more surprising the question, the lesser the quality of the answer. I’d show her.

“Oh, and also breads and cereals. Yeah, grainy cereals. Especially, rough cereals. You know, the boring ones, like All Bran.”

Whilst sitting next to me since Central, she’d scanned my biometric data, found out I’d done a Bachelor of Science majoring in Anatomy and Physiology and wanted to test my memory of gastric physiology (Thursday 8am lecture, PHSI 2002, August 2002: Amylase, an enzyme found in saliva, breaks starch down to maltose in the mouth. The stomach secretes mucus to protect its epithelial walls from being digested by its own acids and enzymes. Pepsin, the digestive protease, formed by the autocatalytic cleaving of the amino acid chain pepsinogen, breaks down protein in the gut. Damn. Nothing about fibre.).

“Why?” I enquired, sure I was on the money with one of my predictions.

“Oh my doctor said I needed to have more fibre in my diet. It’s really important you know. I saw a thing about it on A Current Affair. You know, you have to start taking your health seriously when you get older. I’m twenty-one now. When I was younger I could eat anything I wanted. But I just can’t do it anymore. When I was younger my Mum used to buy those 3 large pizzas, a garlic bread and a Pepsi and we would eat it, there’s three of us, you know, siblings and I could probably eat a whole pizza to myself and then start on the next one and I would just be starving. But it’s different now. But thanks for telling me that. I was too embarrassed to ask the doctor. He would think ‘don’t you know?’ And I couldn’t ask my family, they would say ‘didn’t you go to school?’ or something like that. But so now I’ll have to have more fruit and vegies and breads and cereals. It’s important. You can’t just always eat McDonalds, but I have to say I’m thinking of having some now. A friend said the other day she was thinking of having McDonalds for breakfast and I said ‘gross’ but now I’m thinking of having some. You don’t know what’s in them though. There was another thing on A Current Affair did you see it?”

“Umm. No.” (I couldn’t bring myself to say that I wouldn’t watch that sensationalist, formulaic crap presented by that holier than thou Grimshaw princess if you paid me, but that’s another blog entry.)

“Well it was saying that lots of food don’ t have the right ingredients on the label and people don’t really know what they’re eating and it’s a big thing, you know. You could be eating anything and it’s so important. But people just don’t know. There’s all sorts of chemicals and stuff. And did you hear what happened at Bankstown station?”

“Umm. No. Today?”

“No. a couple of weeks ago. Suicide apparently. I’ve been trying to find out about it. You know, I watched World News on Foxtel but nothing came up about it. I watched you know that day and the next day but nothing. I really want to know what happened. I think it was a girl… … … …”

Etc Etc Etc Etc.

Finally we pulled into Bondi Junction and it was clear to me, she wasn’t a nutrition mystery shopper, linguistics studier, biometric data and mind-reader. She just wanted to talk.

And though it may be nice to end this with some comment on the fractured nature of modern society where a simple question of food leads to my questioning of her motives I prefer to say that it was bizarre.

Yet quite refreshing.

Three folders of handwritten notes. Complete with deliberately drawn pencil diagrams of your insides. Not sparing colour. Arrows pointing to osteoblasts, local differences in vertebrae, epithelium, cAMP, troponin, myelin. Evolution from ape to Australopithecus to modern homosapien. Flows representing intracellular signaling pathways, enzyme reactions in the gut, stages of development. A guide to cutting open a body, more or less. Assignments with cover-sheets. Most of them were a couple of days late. “Please adhere to guidelines on spacing.” “A good finish to a poor start.” “A very well written piece with excellent research. Well done.”

Three folders of handwritten notes. I can’t bear to throw them out. The complete course of Microbiology and Genetics, the majority of which I copied from Katie. The report completed with Scott after two weeks of feeling our way blind around the Children’s Medical Research Institute at Westmead. Not just knowing the names of the bones, but every tubercle, spine, groove or process. An entire STUVAC re-writing second-year physiology notes on fluoro yellow paper. The haematocrit. Obesity as cause or correlation with NIDDM. Electrophysiology of the nerve. Discussions on vitamin D resistant rickets, covered in notes for the GAMSAT exam that I was more worried about.

Three folders of handwritten notes. That doesn’t even include a thesis. But represents three and a half years of knowledge accrued. Not on a weekly basis, more often in a concentrated month block before exams. But not disliked. Actually enjoyed. Found interest in. But decided not to pursue. And will forever wonder if that was the right decision. I was happy to spout sentences I’d heard elsewhere. “Your undergrad is for learning to learn.” “Science communication is a niche market in demand.” “I might go back to it one day in the future.” I might, but it’s feeling less likely. It felt like the right desicion at the time. And really it probably still does now. Despite the three folders of handwritten notes.

Today it is pouring with rain and we’ve done not much really. Although I just finished reading ‘Paddy Clarke ha ha ha‘ by Irish author Roddy Doyle. It’s a rolling narrative perfectly poised from the perspective of a young boy. It won the Booker Prize in 2003. Mike got a bit inspired after finishing the book and now today I think I have too. It must be the rain. It has a nostalgic feel to it.

Jessi Gardner ha ha ha

Sometimes it’s really annoying when it rains. It means that sport gets called off and the steps to the classroom get slippery. The area where all the bags sit gets wet and your shoes make squeaking noises on it and it looks real muddy. You have to eat your lunch in the classroom and sometimes if your teacher doesn’t want to get wet walking to the staffroom you could probably stay in the classroom all lunchtime as well. That’s okay I suppose.

But other days it’s nice for it to rain. Especially on Sundays it feels right for it to rain. Especially in winter. You can sit in front of the heater with warm trackies and a jumper until your back gets too hot. Then you have to turn around, but your face gets hotter quicker. Or then you have to move away from the heater if Paul tells you to stop hogging the heater.

One time it rained so much in Moruya that there was a flood. We didn’t have to go to school for two days. I remember being able to watch videos next to the heater all day. Paul still had to go to work.

The other kids said the river was all the way up to the big rock in the park and you couldn’t cross the bridge because it was flooded as well. I didn’t see it, but it must have been really flooded because our bridge is high. There is a sign that says “Jumping from the bridge is Prohibited”. One day I read it out loud for the first time when we were driving in the car.

- That sign says Jumping from the bridge is Prohibited.

- Good girl, said my Dad.

I’d waited until I’d known for sure how to say prohibited, before I said the sign out loud. Way back in Kindergarten Mrs F made us come up to her desk one at a time and count for as much as we could to her. I stopped at forty-nine because I didn’t want to get fifty wrong. I thought I might’ve confused it with thirty and it was better to stop than to get it wrong.

- Is that all Jess?

-Yes, I lied.

Anyway, that was ages ago. I knew loads more now. I knew about rain. It was made of vapour in the clouds and when there was too much the clouds dropped the rain. If there was acid in the air then you had acid rain and that was bad and it was made from bad factories. We learnt that at Earthkeepers.

Mr L tried to get us really excited about saying that he was going to make it rain inside the classroom. I knew that it wouldn’t really be able to rain inside the classroom, so it was going to be a trick, but other kids got interested. That’s what teachers needed to do though. Make tricks so kids would be interested. I liked school though. But it wasn’t very hard. Most of the stuff we learned I kind of knew anyway somehow. Most things I understood.

Mr L boiled the jug and held a baking tray over the jug. One like Mum used to make roasts. Little bits of condensation came out of the tray. I’d seen it before anyway on our cupboards above the jug at home when I was making cups of coffee. Mum showed me the best way to make coffee. You had to put the milk in with the coffee and sugar before the water. And you needed to stir it a lot until it was a bit bubbly. Then add the water. It made it more like one from a cafe then. I didn’t drink coffee. Only adults did.

I was the oldest and all of the other kids were small so sometimes it was okay for me to sit with the adults. One day I was sitting with the Mums on the front verandah. They were having coffees but I didn’t have anything. They were talking about other ladies from the town.

- I don’t know what her problem is

- Aah, she’s just a bitch, said my Mum

One of the other Mums looked over to me and to my Mum and raised her eyebrows which meant she was saying to my Mum ‘can you say that in front of Jess’.

- Oh it’s fine, said my Mum. She’s heard worse than that. She understands.

I smiled. That made me feel good. I could understand lots of adult things anyway. Like my parents smoked joints and it was fine even though it was against the law. And I couldn’t do every sport I wanted because it cost too much money. And to fill Josie’s baby bath you needed three milk bottles of hot water and two milk bottles of cold and that made it just right. And if you were cooking mashed potatoes and steamed vegies you should put the potatoes on for half an hour and start the vegies when there was fifteen minutes to go.

Somethings I didn’t understand. Sometimes there were other people at my Dad’s house when I went to stay for the weekend. And every time I came back home I had to tell Paul who else was there. I didn’t like telling Paul because it made me feel like I was telling on my Dad even though I didn’t know if he’d done something wrong or not.

But most things I understood.

She wasn’t professionally trained, but I had heard that she swept the hair at her Aunt’s salon, in her early teenage years. She had even been promoted to washing hair, taking out perm rollers and buying the magazines when she had turned 13. She lived and worked in Paris, that had to count for something right?

When I arrived at her house she’d just gotten out of the shower. It was past lunchtime! Something about really tired from work, not enough red meat, talking to her boyfriend on the phone late the night before.

We set up in the bathroom. It was a mess. There even looked like there was hair in the sink from a previous cut*.

She waltzed in wearing only a singlet and undies. Oh well, I thought, she’s the artist. To say I was nervous was an understatement, but my fears were only compounded when she began her preparations. A big gulp of coffee, followed by some erratic combing. I reminded her that it was just my fringe that I needed cut. I didn’t want to cause too much damage. Mmm hmmm she nodded.

Remembering that she didn’t have her scissors, she skipped into the other room. While she was gone I had a quick check of the colour she had done the night before. Hmm, it wasn’t too bad. The brown was deep and she had managed to keep some of the ginger as an undertone. Maybe there was a future for her as a colourist. There was a dye stain on my left cheek, nothing that wouldn’t be erased with some exfoliation though. Maybe I should have more confidence in this skatty girl. It will be fine I told myself.

I wasn’t so sure of this when she bumped back into the room with the scissors. I was sure they weren’t real hair scissors, but was too embarrassed to say anything. I just clenched my teeth and put on a forced smile.

Maybe she could sense my nerves. Each time she had finished parting and rearranging my fringe, she would put the comb down with a smack on the bathroom sink, place the scissors diagonally across the hair then hurriedly pick up the comb and rearrange again. This happened over and over. Then finally, on maybe the eighth movement, she paused and made the tiniest snip on my right side just above my eyebrow.

All of a sudden her confidence was regained. She was channeling every haircut she had ever watched in Haircraft, Video Plaza, Moruya. She wasn’t the greatest at keeping the hair from snipping straight into my eyes. After the initial diagonal fringe was made, she tried her skills at thinning it out a bit. Hmm… not as successful.

Then her confidence got a bit too much. She started playing with the side bits of hair that frame my face. I put a stop to it there, but not before she had made some layers in the left side that more resembled steps up to my ears. Oh well… she has to learn some way.

I don’t know if I’d go back to her. She wasn’t bad. Just not the hairdressing experience that I adore. No head massage, no good coffee, no witty chatter. Not even a ditzy young assistant to wash my hair. It is hard to find good hairdressers though.

]]> http://musingpractice.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/self-service/feed/ 1 just jessi http://musingpractice.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/dear-pigeons-et-al/ http://musingpractice.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/dear-pigeons-et-al/#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:02:10 +0000 just jessi http://musingpractice.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/dear-pigeons-et-al/ ]]> Dear Pigeons, male backpackers, weird old French men and people scoping for charity

From now on, could you please just leave me alone? Just because I’m sitting by myself, in a public sphere, doesn’t mean I’m screaming out for company, or conversation, or distraction. Furthermore, if I am sitting talking to somebody else already, this should be enough of a sign that I don’t need further interaction. Apparently not.

Look, it’s not that I’m anti-social. I’ll talk to randoms at the best of times. I’m just perplexed at why you cannot understand that that time is not now!

I’m reading a book. I’m typing on a computer. I’m eating my lunch. I’m sleeping. The last time I checked none of these things were international signs for come and annoy me!

Do I look lonely? I don’t feel lonely. I feel quite happy to be sitting here by myself doing my own thing. In fact, I would go in so far as to say I am loving sitting here by myself. Look at my surrounds. I’m in a beautiful park. I’m in Paris.

Is it just because you don’t ever sit by yourself? Is it because when you do just have your own company you aren’t happy and you’re worried that I am feeling the same inadequacy? Well I’m not! Maybe you should try it. Find a spot. Sit down. Avoid that little voice inside you that is urging you to go and talk to that solitary girl over there and just think your own thoughts. Leave that girl alone!

“Right.”

“Right. Well why don’t you write?”

“Well I’m don’t know how.”

“What do you mean you don’t know how? It’s easy. Just transfer the thought words into words on paper or on screen.”

“Yeah right. Well, I mean I know how to physically write.”

“Right. So if you know how, why don’t you write?”

“Umm… I’m scared?”

“Scared of words?”

“No.. not scared of words.”

“Scared of what then.”

“Umm… of not being any good at it.”

“Well, you’ll won’t know unless you try.”

“So I should write?”

“Right.”

A winding parisienne street flanked by off-white buildings and lead by cobblestones. North of the Notre Dame end of the River Seine; East of the architectural anomaly that is Centre Georges Pompidou (inside out is the best description). Our hero is filled with quaint dress shops, coiffeurs and orderly queues outside “best falafel in the world” shops (try Chez Marienne… yum!).

Queues which this author can only guess have been rustled up by over-enthusiastic, well-meaning and probably unethically financed travel journalists. First on our list is the “ideal place for a never-ending Sunday brunch. Relax in comfy sofas amongst Paris’ most stylish and arty” – Le Loir dans la Theiere. It must be true because Lonely Planet ‘Paris Encounters’ told us so. It also promised free wireless internet.

Once inside the opening of a laptop brought intense glares from the well-manicured gentlemen in the pink polo shirt carrying raspberry tarts. This was quickly followed up by sign language from his pursed lips and shaking head colleague closely translated to: “close your laptops you mooching backpackers. Can’t you read this fucking sign?” The sign, obviously a symptom of too many mooching backpackers, read “ C’est ne sont pas portable PC dans cet etablissement,”… or something like that.

No matter, lunch was still to be served. Unlike the all day “Paris’ best brunch” promised by Lonely Planet we were greeted with responses of ‘C’est finit’ to quite a few items on the menu. The coffee was sufficient (I’ve found this to be a compliment in Paris…) and the food was an uninspiring omelette and an overpriced, but delicious tapas plate filled with quality cheese, meats and fresh artichoke hearts.

So yeah… just because Lonely Planet say it’s so… doesn’t mean it’s true!

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… you know when you start writing something and it is going to be the beginning of something big, but then you just write the first part and that’s all there really is? Yes.