A couple of friends started to write their own lists and a couple even made it up to 100. Recently Pete Hindle, returned to his list of 50 things and updated it with comments as to what had been achieved and his current thoughts on his list. Pete almost died and so has a) a really good excuse for not finishing things on his list b) his life has changed drastically which definitely changed his opinion about some of his learning items. It will be interesting to see if the life changes I’ve gone through (finally meeting a good man, getting a job, getting another job, travelling away from Berlin a lot) have affected how I feel about items on my list.

100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About… Updated!

1. Botany
   Hmmm. I haven’t yet learnt to identify plants using a taxonomy. So. No.
2. A musical instrument: guitar or cello
   Let’s just say that 360 days ago I was given a beautiful guitar and can barely play 3 chords. So this learning task is active, but moving slowly. Actually taking lessons might be the next step.
3. Haircutting
   I can cut boys’ hair if they have some curl to hide the mistakes. The mistakes aren’t as often or severe as they used to be. But I haven’t learnt any fancy techniques (yet).
4. How to make a sponge cake
   Really, why would I make a sponge when there are so many other amazing cakes to bake out there? Not Yet.
5. How to maintain my bicycle
   In general I’m better at working with bikes thanks to a couple of sessions at Regenbogen Fabrik’s bike workshop. But my bike in Berlin is not currently maintained – sadly the type of maintenance I know won’t make it better, it will just keep it existing for longer.
6. How to make bagels
   Nope. One day, when I’m making brunch for people. I do finally have a recipe I want to use.
7. Throat Singing
   Hah. I find the idea of throat singing fascinating, but I don’t want to learn it that much. Let’s just say I may have still wanted to impress my ex at this point.
8. Bookbinding
   Not yet. I don’t have anything I want to bind at the moment, and it’s pretty easy to get amazing notebooks in Berlin.
9. Basic Arabic
   Nada. But my amazing new flatmate is doing Islamic studies and she can write essays in Arabic.  I know who I’m going to ask for help.
10. How to make better Karelian pies
    I’ve not made a Karelian pie for ages. I think that visiting friends in Finland and buying Karelian pies has to be higher priority than making my own… I’m getting really good at making Spinach pancakes, one of my other Finnish food desires.
11. How to seed save from fruits like tomatoes
    I have nowhere to grow the tomato seeds that I’d save. Maybe not in 2011, but hopefully by 2012 I’ll have access to some proper garden space suitable for tomatoes.
12. Permaculture
    As above. Though I do like the idea that permaculture design principles can be applied to non-garden systems. See Fo.am: Groworld
13. Sociology basics
    This was related to the Friendship component of the DIY Masters. Sadly, the Friendship project was the most interesting, but has been the hardest lot of learning to start. I’m hoping that a related course will pop-up within P2PU one of these days.
14. Crocheting
    I need to sit down with someone who can crochet… I get the basics but get lost when I try to follow a pattern. In the world of crafts Knitting or Crochet is a question along the lines of Cats or Dogs and Tea or Coffee. I’d really like to crochet a granny rug like the one Claire from Loobylu is working on, but before I can do that I need to crochet one or two squares successfully.
15. Japanese rope work
    Ahem. Yep. I know more about this. Let’s just say that it’s a lot of fun.
16. Drums
    Guitar has to take priority. I don’t know if I was planning to start a one-girl band or something. I don’t think you can go from primary school recorder skills to multi-instrumentalist without practicing even one instrument.
17. Punctuation
    I don’t suck at using punctuation, but I’m not sure if I’m using it correctly all the time.
18. English grammar and editing
    Slowly working on improving my knowledge of this.
19. Basic electronics
    I don’t have anything I need or want to make at the moment. And electronics is a fairly empty skill to have if you’re not actively using it. I can make a light flash on an Arduino. I’m not sure if that’s even basic electronics though.
20. More screenprinting skills (especially light sensitive emulsion)\
    Nope. No time. But I have made some cool stencils for Time’s Up Boating Association.
21. Multi-coloured linocuts
    I finally bought myself some linocutting equipment and used it once to make a stamp for a gift. I did do multi-colour stencils. Does that count?
22. How to layout designs for laser cutting
    Not yet. As with electronics you need to have a project to work towards for this kind of stuff. I do finally have an idea of something that would actually be useful to make using a laser cutter…
23. Basic woodworking and carpentry
    I helped build a goddamn boat. Yes.
24. How to change a washer on a tap (relearn)
    I haven’t needed to change a washer lately. But when I do I will learn how to do it.
25. Pattern drafting, better skirts, shirts and trousers
    I made a skirt. I can’t imagine when I’m going to have the time to sew anything for at least a year. Yikes. But I am better at knitting socks now.
26. Typographic theory
    Nope.
27. Better CSS skills
    Slowly slowly. Not that you’d see evidence of this on my personal site.
28. Another CMS apart from WordPress, Drupal and perhaps Moodle
    I learnt how to use Silverstripe for my last job. It was great. I’m not convinced of the ease of use of Drupal and I’ve been on the student-end of Moodle. It sucks.
29. More knowledge about OS educational packages
    I’ll be helping out at the P2PU techsprint and have been doing a bit of work on a Personal Learning Environment (PLE). I’m really excited to see how Big Blue Button works.
30. Basic Esperanto
    Ne.
31. How to cut dogs’ toenails / claws without feeling icky.
    I don’t have a dog (yet).
32. Fishing: how to catch and clean a fish
    Yes! At least the head bopping kill bit and the cleaning up part.
33. Butchery: how to kill & dress a chicken
    Nope.
34. Basic charcuterie
    I’m good at eating bacon, but haven’t made any yet.
35. How to do a headstand / handstand in yoga
    No. But yesterday I downloaded a podcast which will apparently help me to master inversions.
36. Unicycle
    I wrote this when I was 29. Maybe I felt that street performance skills and the risks of broken bones were still a valid life choice.
37. Better knife skills for cooking
    I bought a sharper knife. This made the cutting easier and meant that I had to keep my fingers out of the blade’s way.
38. How to make the ex-beau’s chilli.
    I can spell A.S.S.H.O.L.E. now. And I can read recipes. Let me amend that to How to make good chilli.
39. How to make Mum’s tomato pie
    I have the recipe! Now to make it.
40. How to make baklava
    I live in Kreuzberg and am surrounded by Turkish stores. Learning how to make baklava right now would be a waste of baklava eating time.
41. How to write grant applications
    I figure this road to hell will enter my life soon. I also think that we might be developing a learning resource as part of the Free Culture Incubator workshop series.
42. How to write residency applications
    Not an artist. Maybe one day.
43. How to train a dog
    Still needing a dog to do this. One day. Apparently after our first child is born.
44. More Linux / Terminal commands
    sudo makemeasandwich -cupoftea
    no seriously, i can use VI now without even thinking about it.
    
45. How to talk about what I want and need with a partner without ending up crying all the time
    I am so good at this that I’m now engaged to be married.
46. Better German
    
    Yes it is better, but I’m not confident about it and still need to find time to attend more classes.
47. How to look after my heart better (emotionally, but physically too)
    See 45. Also I do exercise a lot more regularly.
48. How to start a project and stick with it
    I built a boat and knitted socks amongst other things. I think part of the trick here is choosing a project you actually are interested in working on.
49. Better money confidence – eg. how to invoice and get paid what I’m worth.
    Slowly, slowly. I still feel sick when I think about writing invoices, but at least I do it now.
50. How to make really good coffee / latte art – even if I can’t drink it.
    Not only does my flatmate know Arabic she is also an amazing barista. I know who I’ll get to teach me.
51. How to home brew beer.
    I realised that beer makes me depressed. My fiance doesn’t drink it either. I do like to help other people do homebrew, but I no longer see the need in learning to make it.
52. How to sail
    Yes! And I love it!
53. Falconry
    Really? I wanted to learn falconry?
54. How to make a great Manhattan
    I’m hoping to never work in a cocktail bar again. So this is very low priority.
55. How to make a whiskey sour
    Despite 54. I still like to drink whiskey sours. May still learn how to make this.
56. How to make the amazing soup dumplings from Shanghai
    I want a recipe, but have not yet found one that seems right.
57. How to pack light and look great with only a few clothes
    Slowly getting better at this. I really need to update my wardrobe. The only new clothes I seem to get are free Mozilla and P2PU tshirts.
58. Basic car maintenance
    I haven’t driven for almost two years now! But once I get back to driving more frequently this will have to be learnt.
59. How to prune roses
    Did I mention that I really want a garden?
60. How to prune fruit trees
    No really. One with fruit trees and roses. Crazy huh?
61. How to tune a guitar
    Yes! An electric tuner makes this so much easier. Electric tuners do not make it easier to get motivated to practice though.
62. Origami page fastening – no staples or paper clips
    Using a computer requires no paper fasteners. I actually pick up paper clips from the ground when I see them and then reuse them. And when I have readings from Uni I end up having to staple or bind them as there are so many pages.
63. Audio recording and editing to the level required for good podcasting
    Not yet.
64. Video recording and editing to the level required for good vodcasting
    I did actually do some vodcasts. So yes.
    Yep… I do need to make more videos…
65. What key I can sing in naturally / most easily
    How can I learn this? It would make transposing guitar tab a more directed exercise.
66. The value of my time
    It is valuable, but now I need to manage that valuable time a lot more effectively.
67. Better massage skills
    This doesn’t guarantee that other people can massage you any better. Sad but true.
68. Yoga exercises for my back
    Yep. Also, a laptop stand and a keyboard can make your life much more comfortable.
69. How to make an Iyengar style yoga bolster
    €55 at the Iyengar shop. Problem solved. Buying materials to make a heavy enough bolster would have cost just as much.
70. Meditation
    Since I don’t have a garden (yet) and have nothing to mindlessly weed I really do need to work on the meditation thing. Are there any non-sucky guided meditation podcasts out there?
71. Better public speaking
    I seem to engage my audience. I’m looking forward to more opportunities to improve on this.
72. Better Kitchener bind offs while knitting
    My socks have beautifully finished toes.
73. Better Illustrator / Inkscape / vector drawing skills
    Low priority.
74. Manual SLR Photography
    I just need to take more photos full stop, regardless of my manual skills.
75. How to say No to things I don’t really want to do.
    I’m getting way better at this.
76. Curry pastes from scratch
    Not yet, but what a good idea.
77. Plant grafting
    This comes under the heading of “Requires a garden space”. I’m getting pretty good at propagating pot plants but it’s not really equivalent to grafting an apple tree.
78. How to make Kway Teow
    I’m not sure that I even like Kway Teow anymore. Will have to research and eat some when I’m back in Adelaide.
79. How to make good laksa
    My urge to make Malaysian food is reduced to due to fairly lousy inspiration and supplies in Berlin. Making rocking Laksa would be awesome though.
80. Pasta making
    Just haven’t had the time.
81. Whittling
    This would be fun, but I’d rather knit.
82. How to be happy even when the sun isn’t shining
    Friends, drinking enough water, exercise, candles and fleeing to Australia over winter are all good remedies for this.
83. Belly dancing
    Not yet. Getting back into poledancing would be more interesting, but Berlin doesn’t seem to have classes in the same way Australia did.
84. Tai chi
    Nope.
85. Time management / project management software
    This would be really useful, but I have an aversion to Microsoft Project on moral grounds. Not sure what I should look at learning instead. Ideas?
86. A martial art
    Nope. I reckon tai chi would count though.
87. The rules of cricket
    I’m fleeing to an Australian summer. I’m going to make a lazy Boxing Day’s attempt at this.
88. The rules of football / soccer
    The World Cup and another season of Australian Rules have passed me by. Let’s just say I’m not interested at all.
89. How to be more self-reliant in a relationship
    A year and a half of a long-distance relationship mean that this is not an option. Yes.
90. Basic letterpress printing

Would be nice, but I don’t have a press.

91. How to run a small business
    I guess I’m trying to do this as I’m now contracting my work as a freelancer. It is so hard learning this in a non-English context.
92. Basic upholstery
    I keep on finding neat chairs that would be better recovered but am not finding any fabric in Berlin that I’d like to use. Still quite a practical skill but low prioirity.
93. Repeating fabric designs
    I think I wanted to learn the vector skills (73) and screenprinting stuff (20) in order to achieve this. It’s still interesting and I did a little of it working with Sprout Design back in 2007. Now I think I’d rather just buy someone else’s nice fabric and sew with that.
94. CPR refresher course
    No. Please don’t hurt yourself near me as my First Aid Certificate is well out of date.
95. Forest / countryside gleaning
    Getting better at this in Austrian contexts. Berlin’s offerings are often dog and human pee laden.
96. Food canning / preserving
    I made jam last year! I’d love to do some more canning. This summer I was far too busy and barely at home.
97. That martial arts type thing where someone kinda rolls their body up to standing.
    Why? It would be cool, but I can’t imagine when I’d use this skill. Obviously I wanted to do this for a cool recovery when I’d fallen off a unicycle.
98. How to be content with what I’ve got
    I am so happy with my life. I guess I’ve learnt how to do this, but I’ve also learnt to look for opportunity too.
99. How to write at an academic level
    I got an HD for my last assignment, but I just want to be able to articulate ideas clearly.
100. Better research skills: databases, academic journals and articles, Google scholar etc.
     Slowly slowly. I must work on my boolean search skills.

Phew. I reckon updating this list took more time than writing it the first time around!

Luckily I can recognise these thoughts for what they are, thoughts. But they are thoughts clever enough to swoop in when I’m tired, under the weather or hormonal. The thoughts, once they’ve invaded, perch along the edge of my outlook crowlike and squawking.

“Hah! We’re better than you, you’ve never done anything worthwhile and you never will!”

Crows on Wall – B&W, originally uploaded by Rajiv Ashrafi. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In some ways it’s a little bit like being back in high school.

So exhausted by those thoughts I stay tired and the thoughts hang around for a long day longer.

In those situations, if I ignore my Mindapples, my mental health 5-A-Day I’m even more vulnerable. I’ve recently started running the C25K program which is helping. If nothing else I can say to the thoughts “Writing? Designing? Sure I kinda believe you when you tell me I haven’t got a chance, but running… I haven’t given that up AND I love it.”

And who knew that drinking large amounts of water helped to keep you sane? Well, I do, now. So even though I feel guilty about BUYING water, I figure that the ethical vice of one 1.5 L bottle of sparkling mineral water per day is a minimal vice compared to an over reliance on chocolate, shopping or booze.

So yeah. Thanks to water, exercise and going outside I still fill sane. And primarily happy. But there are these heavy boots that make it harder for me to take steps to improve my life, particularly along the borders of creativity and career. Forget about the odd hints that I could write professionally, for the last month I’ve been quaking about writing for myself and the nebulous audience of this blog.

It took days for me to sit down and write this. And honestly I didn’t want to share too much of this motivational challenge. As is the way with words, they do come out eventually as if with a life of their own.

I wanted instead to talk about the small things that gathered together to fascinate me today:

Everything that I’ve read by Barbara Kingsolver has entranced me, so when I saw Prodigal Summer on a friend’s bookshelf I had to borrow it.  Based on what I knew of her previous books I knew that family, food and nature would be part of the experience.

“Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning of an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.”

And oh! Prodigal Summer was amazing. It was about nature and food and sex and love and evolution and family. I could practically smell the crumbling wood humus of the Appalachian forest and felt the ponderous, ent-like movement of life and change. However I was reading the novel so quickly that I had to take a break and go running, just so I could prolong the ending of the story.

As I walked my cool down along the canal, I noticed that even though it’s halfway through November, there were still beetles living on tree trunks. There were harlequin beetles which totally give me the heebie jeebies when they swarm, but there were also the fattest glossiest ladybirds (Marienkäfer) that I’ve ever seen.

Prodigal Summer had put me in an even more noticing mood than usual, so I payed particular attention to the varieties of ladybirds, red with black (9?) spots, a yellow version of the same and then most excitingly a variety I’d never noticed before, the Twice Stabbed Ladybird which is black with a large red spot on either wing.

Oh. They were beautiful.

On the topic of beauty, while I was reading a line from a song kept on going through my head, “the beauty in everything, the beauty in everything”. It took me a while to recall that the song “Woman’s Touch” is by No Through Road, a band from my hometown, Adelaide.  Their latest album, Winner. has been one of my favourite records over the last year.  When I actually relistened to the song I realised that the refrain is preceeded by “I can no longer find the beauty in everything.”  Despite having felt low for weeks, I was reminded that while I might feel terrible, I can always see beauty in the world and that counts for so much.

Maybe it’s just because there was a bunch of smoke, but I actually enjoyed tonight’s interpretation of John Cage’s Variations VII.  Apart from the smell of some really hideous perfume on a woman standing nearby, the room smelt like melting plastic and burnt out motors.  It was a bit like guitar strings breaking, but still not quite rock and roll.

I’m probably still suffering the negative associations of a past relationship, but my back gets incredibly tense at the thought of much noise related art practice.  Then again, don’t even get me started on the terrible things that can be done with visualisations.

It would be easier to say that I just don’t get some types of media art , but something must fascinate me about it, because I keep on thinking about it and what I want to do as a practice within the greater new media field.   Nothing elaborate, but damn it, if I am to do anything I at least want to do it well.

Maybe one day I’ll actually work on one of my ideas.

Being a geek I had an idea for a website about why Adelaide is so rad, so I bought a rather fun and cheap german domain about 6 months ago*. But I needed more content for this website than I could just write myself. So ultimately the plan kind of stalled…

Until this morning when I decided to finally design a very simple logo, and to actually get the radelai.de domain to work properly… [still waiting on this - my apologies, but i'd appreciate positive problem solving vibes to be sent this way...] … And now I’m all inspired again and hungry for content to put onto the web.

radelai.de : got balls? by Fighting Tiger.

Which is why I’m emailing you. I want you to help me with content for radelai.de.

What are your favourite things about Adelaide? Why do you choose to stay here or come back even though you’ve moved? When you’re entertaining visitors to Adelaide, what do you show them? Which deli makes the best bacon sandwich? Is there really a secret vat which makes the best tasting Farmers Union Iced Coffee? What are your favourite places in the hills and further afield?

So, are you interested? Have you and your friends got [metaphorical] balls?^

Let me know your ideas!

Articles should be between 100-500 words in length. If you can supply images to accompany written content that would be lovely. Over the longer term, video / podcasting content would also be sweet…

At this point of the project, payment is unlikely but notoriety and my everlasting gratitude is assured.

Yours,

Pippa xo

If you happen to be DIYing or Zineing* for the Adelaide Fringe / Ministry of Zines Zine Fair this Saturday there’s going to be a last minute Collation Collation at my house this Friday evening from 6.30pm.

Not only is this an opportunity to celebrate in this year’s best ever piece of word play, but we can all share food and stories of paper cuts and freak stapling accidents. Also, as this is the last weekend of summer time, we should revel in the balmy evening.

If it isn’t too cold we’ll brave mosquitoes on the lawn, otherwise we’ll sit in the drawing room and glory at my late grandmother’s well chosen furniture.

Bring something to eat and drink, things to collate and paper cutters and long armed staplers.

If you don’t know where I live, send me an email (p i p s t a r [dot] b a t t l e c a t [at] g m a i l [dot] c o m) and i’ll give you the address.

* Maybe you’re just a huge fan of zine culture or remarkably well prepared attendee who doesn’t need to collate at the last minute. You can just help someone collate their works and worship at the feet of people such as me, or Ianto Ware.