The day after the rally we jumped the bus again and went to the city cen­ter to meet with a friend of mine.

Canberra is not an excit­ing place by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion. In fact, I cried the day I arrived all those years ago. I did. I sat on the floor of my hotel room and cried, won­der­ing what the hell am I doing in this god for­saken place at the end of the world. Still, the cen­ter has had this nice feel to it since then, as it is basi­cally enclosed by build­ings and free of cars and full of lit­tle shops, cafes and what­nots. Small, but friendly and mel­low like.

So we got off the bus at the inter­change and that part looked a bit more put together. It didnt have the old feel of being the night toi­let area for var­i­ous drunk indi­vid­u­als. Then we entered Garema Place (the pedes­trian area) and I thought some­thing must have hap­pened. Something wrong. The place was dead. Yes, it was Tuesday, but it was almost lunch time and peo­ple still had to eat. Where were all the peo­ple! Then I walked and I saw all the FOR LEASE signs on old favorites.

Something was not right. I walked fur­ther and a bit fur­ther, but the area was ghost town. Then at the end I entered the shop­ping mall kind of a place to try and fig­ure out where the book store was that I was meet­ing my friend. And there was my answer. The Canberra Centre had grown, grown, grown into this huge mono­lithic, never end­ing town of its own.  It had expanded from its orig­i­nal size to about 5–7 times the size, sprawled down the length of the street into what used to be park­ing areas, both indoor and out­door. Once you enter it, you dont have to show your nose out­side at all. Just walk up and down through one of its fancy floors and buy to your heart’s desire.

This is just one street over from Garema Place. From the FOR LEASE signs that sit lone­somely on dusty win­dows rem­i­nisc­ing for the times that were, the times that have passed and will never come back.

The old Sammies Kitchen we used to order from, when I would pick Mr.Blab from work and do a run in pick up from, was now a fancy restau­rant with hur­ried wait­resses that didnt want to accom­mo­date me and Caramel Popcorn.

It was not a place I knew or wanted to know.

That day my lit­tle man showed for sure that he is get­ting under the weather and started look­ing more tired and cough­ing a more vio­lent cough. He refused to sleep at all in the bed, so he was strapped on me for the whole night, while I tried to do laun­dry and eat. It was a rough night.

The next morn­ing I decided to drive to our old neigh­bor­hood and just visit. Waste a day and get out of the sick house. As the car that I was so gen­er­ously given was run­ning on gas, some­thing I have never used before, I asked the sta­tion assis­tant to fill it up for me, which she did gra­ciously. Then we were on our way. Half way on the high­way I notice that the fuel gauge has gone down one third. And it kept on going…and going…half way…Panic raises in me, I admit. I imag­ine myself stuck on the high­way with a sick lit­tle one and empty car with who knows what issue, try­ing to fig­ure it all out. Still going down..what the hell is going on…and the car is not mine…shit…STOP IT!..still going down…there are whim­pers form the back seat, fol­lowed by a cry. I look back to reas­sure him and there is my baby, with tears in his eyes, boogers flow­ing down his mouth, sad puppy dog eyes and a bloody nose. Pull to the side and run around pick him up and look for any­thing to wipe him down. Thankfully I had taken a bib for some rea­son in my bag. He relaxes a bit and the blood sub­sides. I am look­ing for a scratch or any­thing to give me a con­ve­nient expla­na­tion for the inci­dent. No, such luck. Just one of those things. I think about my predica­ment. My friend had told me some­thing about after 200km to switch the tanks to petrol. So I did that and the fuel gauge stayed the same. Looked around and decided that the stu­pid thing doesnt work, so they prob­a­bly cal­cu­late how many km they can do on a cer­tain amount of gas and then switch if needed. I knew I put gas in, so I pushed on, hop­ing my think­ing was right.

It was another cold day. Life here had changed as well. It has been just over 3 years and life has moved on so much. We walked around and grabbed a lunch and sat down. This was my area. It was a place I had spent a lot of time. It was where Mr.Blab and I met and smooched around the cor­ner many a times. And yet, its like it never was. Stories are lost in this pro­gres­sive world of devel­op­ment and change. The human aspect of the his­tory of the place is non exis­tent. There are no roots to speak of. Its because sto­ries are car­ried by peo­ple. My story is car­ried by the peo­ple I know, those that have shared theirs with me and vice versa. The area is over­run by multi­na­tional out­lets that are not con­cerned with me, or you, or that lovely per­son over there. The peo­ple that work in them change more often than any other busi­ness. Maria serves cof­fee today, Tom is on duty tomor­row and so on. No long term con­nec­tion can be made. No story to be kept, to be saved and retold later.

I was watch­ing this world around me and it all looked so cold, so empty, so…sad. So fake and wrong.

I was going to stop at the mar­ket to visit a shop that was run by a lovely fam­ily back than and see if I can reclaim some of my past, but my poor lit­tle bug fell asleep as we got in the car, so I just drove by. The shop was there, so maybe next time. If there is one.

The evening and night were hard. Popcorn was lumpy and clingy and my heart was break­ing for him. There truly is noth­ing like hav­ing a sick child. The quiet whim­per­ing, the con­tent look of the lit­tle moist eyes, even though he has every right to be pan­ick­ing and ask­ing me for answers as to whats going on. So again, I ate my din­ner on the floor of the kitchen, so he can be next to me while I scoffed the food and the car­pet in the liv­ing room was a lovely light color that would not have appre­ci­ated my tomato sauce, I am sure. Sleep at night was not hap­pen­ing and we spent it up and down and down and up.

The day we were leav­ing was sunny. Not just sunny, but with­out a cloud, not even one, in the sky. Was that cel­e­bra­tory acknowl­edg­ment for our depar­ture? It sure felt like it in my sleep deprived, exhausted brain. The rest is his­tory — flight one with sick child and numer­ous boogers wiped on my black top, scarf used for the rest as my tis­sues were too out of reach, bought a cof­fee at Melbourne and a beau­ti­ful look­ing crois­sant, which turned out to be over microwaved and I choked on the pow­dered sugar, while Popcorn spilled my cof­fee on the air­port floor. Then a flight to here, which took for­ever and I had to spend most of it on my feet, as the lit­tle one was not happy on the seat and the amount of boogers on my top had started to make some inter­est­ing pat­terns glis­ten­ing under the dim light­ing, cough­ing was hor­ren­dous and he was not eat­ing much, not even breast­feeds, which just raised my worry level even higher. As a cherry on the top, the weather back home was yuck, so we had some good mea­sure of tur­bu­lence and this really doesnt make me happy, as I am not the best of plane trav­el­ers. But drop­ping through hole after hole in the sky, sharp turns that whiz through dark gray clouds while hold­ing an exhausted sad look­ing almost one year old is as fun as I can take before ask­ing for a freakin break. I could have cried croc­o­dile tears at this point, I was feel­ing so sorry for myself.

And then we landed and I saw the top of Mr.Blab’s head through the crowd and then the girls with huge grins on their faces and the happy moist eyes of Miss Fab and life was good again in an instant, no longer than that. And the rain didnt mat­ter and the angry clouds could not cast a shadow on me. I was home, where I belonged. And it felt so good.

Mr.Blab for­warded to me a message:

„Dear Prime Minister Rudd,
Last year my first grand­son was born in Australia with the help of a mid­wife.  It was a sweet and poignant moment and all the more pre­cious because it was a  pri­vate, safe affair at home. All fam­i­lies deserve the right to make the  choice for home birth. Why are you not all out in sup­port for this free­dom?  Make sure mid­wives are included in the insur­ance risk pool. No excuses  what­ever!
Sincerely,
Mr.Blab’s Mom
Grandmother of an Australian baby boy hap­pily born at home.”

.

My lit­tle activist part­ner has decided to come down with a cold of some sort, so we have been busy cud­dling most of today. I man­aged to get to the city though and meet with a dear friend of mine for lunch and cof­fee. That bright­ened up my post rally high crash and fall.

So, here are a few videos, which give a dif­fer­ent view of the event, dimen­sion that no pic­ture can show.

The speech from Senator Rachel Siewert, who has been a great sup­port for the cause and seems to get the issue, not just regur­gi­tate the infor­ma­tion to rile the masses. You should read the tran­script form the Senate inquiry on the pro­posed laws. Too bad it didnt actu­ally get us any­where and it still rec­om­mended for them to be passed.

Singing at the end. Not my type of tune, but song does mesh peo­ple together, somehow.

Post rally chanting:

I havent been able to find much, but around Australia in the Capital cities were run some ‘sis­ter’ ral­lies by women who could not make it to Canberra. Here is the Adelaide gath­er­ing, its in a few parts so if you want the rest, go to You Tube and enjoy:

We made the front page of the Canberra news­pa­per! I asked my friend to buy it for me yes­ter­day, as I was bound in house with a crook lit­tle one. And, late last night (cause its already morn­ing and I didnt fin­ish the post yes­ter­day, as some­one was need­ing my atten­tion) I watched the House of Representatives and they were talk­ing about us, the women in the rally. „They came and stood in the rain..”, „Tiny minor­ity, you thought, they wont make much of a prob­lem for us? They proved that no mat­ter how small, peo­ple have power” Or some­thing of the sort. I will have to see if I can find the transcript.

I bet­ter post this before it takes 3 days to fin­ish it.

A cold, rainy, mis­er­able day wakes us up. Caramel Popcorn is not quite ready to be up, but I scoop him up and we cud­dle for a bit while I make the cof­fee and do a quick men­tal plan of what needs to hap­pen so we are out in time to catch the bus. We have 3 buses to jug­gle, so free spir­ited move­ment is not going to cut it.

We make our way to the City Center, where one can see a sus­pi­cious amount of women with lit­tle chil­dren won­der­ing around. Its not a nice day for a walk in the morn­ing. I look around for some place to buy a big­ger umbrella, as the one I have can just about cover the back of my hair and my by now sleep­ing child strapped to my back. No luck. My bus arrives and I jump in and sit close to the dri­ver, for easy access to the doors.

And then they came. The women with babies and signs and t-shirts. I was watch­ing the dri­ver as his eyes kept on pop­ping in bewil­der­ment at all these peo­ple with kids. It was awhile before he could get the bus going — I believe he said we were 8 min late. He exclaimed „What a way to start the week!” as he wran­gled the big wheel.

He was going to drop us right at Old Parliament House, but since there were so many of us, he didnt risk it. We were off and headed to the gath­er­ing at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. The rain was wispy and I could feel the chill in my arms, for some reason.

The offi­cial rally starts in about 45 min­utes, but a Welcome to Country cer­e­mony is hap­pen­ing here with the abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple. This involves them wel­com­ing us on their land and bless­ing the event we are hold­ing on it. I wouldnt have missed, as for we are fight­ing for rights, respect­ing oth­ers should be an inte­gral part of our ideology.

Then as a ges­ture of good will (I missed the exact words, but it was about our striv­ing for equal­ity for all and things of that spirit. Dont judge, I was drunk with excite­ment at all these wet fired up peo­ple around me)
we threw a branch of euca­lyp­tus in the Sacred Fire.

The smell was so spir­i­tual like, drift­ing with the smoke around us.

Then we left, what was one of my favorite parts of the day.

We set off to the main event.

(more…)

We are off to Parliament House. It looks to be a rainy grumpy day, so I bet­ter bring an umbrella.

I hope they have mowed the grass there, cause there will be noth­ing worst than sit­ting there with wet feet.

.

Good morn­ing, Canberra.

Since we are run­ning a few hours behind, we actu­ally got up close to 11am, like the leisurely peo­ple we are. Then got ready for some time wast­ing and just explor­ing.
Well, I got ready. The lit­tle one per­formed some kind of magic and got dressed while he was play­ing with my mouse. I want that magic.

Then we were off to check out the life in the nation’s cap­i­tal. Since this is not my end of town, I needed some mappege (map usage) to fig­ure out where is the Woden Plaza, a good enough mall area to explore.

When we got there we caught the tail end of a mar­ket. So we had to have a quick look and poke our noses at a few things.

This place is in spring fever. There are trees blos­som­ing all over the place. If one closes their eyes and then opens them, just…just enough to see the blooms, one could imag­ine one is in Japan amongst all those cherry blos­soms. Maybe I should send Mr.Blab here with a face mask next time he com­plains that he doesn’t go any­where. It sure is cheaper than going all the way to Japan.

Inside, the place is just your usual mall.

This got my atten­tion though. Healthy life and there are only plas­tic con­tain­ers to be seen.

That doesnt look very healthy to me. More like a pharmacy.

But I love those lit­tle Italian gourmet out­lets. They always get me hungry

So we got some stuff.

Yes, on the left we have sashimi, aka raw fish chunks. Mmmm.. you must say that. No kid­ding. If you dont say Mmmm every time you see sashimi, a sumo dude pops out of the ground jumps around in his cloth jammed bum dance and then tack­les you to the ground and sits on your fore­head until you say it. So really, no point in play­ing with your luck, just say it and you will be safe. I mixed the lit­tle con­tainer of wasabi with some soy sauce and then dunked the babies in it and ate them. Mmmmm

The spec­i­men on the right is a selec­tion of three sal­ads. Caramel pop­corn enjoyed a few cucum­bers, chick peas and some pump­kin. The rest went into my belleeeey.

We browsed around. I got a top and the lit­tle one scored a comfy suit. I also grabbed some paint for my sign mak­ing plans.

Then we went back to base.

While the man stretched his legs and played with his new suit and snacked on some cracker..

I unloaded the supplies.

Here, if you are curi­ous, like me, and want to know what was in the bag.

Yes, wine. Yes, cof­fee, cause oth­er­wise my head explodes and I need it for tomor­row. The greens on the right is rocket. The herbs — parsley.

Later on this turned mag­i­cally into a salad with accompaniment.

But before that we went on a walk.

See! Blooming goodness.

Tralala…la…la

Yeah, well, that was it. Not a whole lot of excite­ment, but we did wake up halfway through the day.

And now that it is almost mid­night, I am start­ing to think that my rally sign was just not meant to be. Popcorn didnt fall asleep until just recently and I had to strap him on my back.

Which is pretty much where he spent the rest of the day.

Signed off,

Me and Him