Taronga Zoo and the stealth Kookaburra

At Taronga Zoo with the Year Two class on Friday being a helpful mummy. There we are all eating recess and watching the giraffes munch their hay and I am talking, talking, talking when all of a sudden there is a whoosh by my ear where I am holding aloft a half-eaten sausage sandwich and then it is gone. In the tree is a kookaburra eating my sandwich! The children all shriek and stand under the kookaburra in the gum tree. I have stopped talking. Awesome stealth, Mr (or Mrs) Kookaburra…awesome stealth.
Later, we are at the animal talk with one of the keepers and we are shown a shingleback lizard. It doesn’t drop its tail when attacked because it can store a year’s worth of fat for sustenance down there. Instead, it raises its tail to the scary eagle flying overhead. The tail looks like its head (how clever). When the eagle grabs the tail, its head swings around and the lizard’s jaw, which is strong and can lock like a pit-bull’s, grabs the eagle and gives it a proper send off. Aussie animals are incredible!

Annie Hall

I think my husband has modelled himself on the Woody Allen character of Alvy Singer in Annie Hall. He has even spoken some of the lines to me in the 20 years we have been together and watching the film again makes it all seem so spooky. Why would anyone do that? It is not just the occasional line, either, it is significant scenes from the film. I think that is weird, but maybe that is just me. I like films. I like watching films, but I don’t want to live one. There is that scene from Broadcast News when the network boss (and I am remembering here, so excuse me if I am not exact) asks Holly Hunter if she likes being the only one who is right in the room all the time and she says, no it’s awful. I can relate to that one…although others would say I am wrong and perhaps I am deluding myself…..oh well memories are fun, so are movies, and life just goes on whether we like it or not.

An Oil Leak Ate my Alternator

July had been an expensive month after the hot water system leaked rusty water all over the laundry and promptly stopped working. Replacement please and fast because it’s winter here and nobody wanted to have cold showers for very long.

So August began and the first Monday I drove to work only to find dashboard lights coming on on the approach to the parking lot. The car lurched up the final approach to the entrance ramp and stuttered to the ticket dispenser. The barricade rose and there was me having to take my ticket and push my car through before the arm came down again.

It just died. Two very kind guys helped me to push the car to the side which was tricky because the engine was dead, the steering wheel was locked and I was shaking like a leaf.

So I call to work to say I’m close, but not close enough, and I won’t be in for a bit. I call my roadside assistance club and they send someone straight out who tells me that my alternator has given up and won’t be working any more. For $362 they can get some one to change it for me and I just said: “Yes.”

I should have had the presence of mind to slow down and think. I could have had it towed to my regular mechanic to have it seen to, compare prices, see if that was really the trouble, but at that moment of stress I just said okay to the new part and the speedy service. Besides, I had to get to work and I needed the car after work to get my three kids from school.

But apparently oil had been leaking for months, which had gone through the alternator and gummed it up so much that it just couldn’t work properly. Far be it from me to understand how the car works beyond keeping petrol in it and turning the key when I want to go anywhere.

Maybe I should pay more attention…

Idiosyncrasies of the English Language

Learning to read and speak English can be more difficult than you think.

Walking with my youngest, she looks up at the big post office sign we are passing and asks: “What’s a post (rhyming with LOST) office?”

I say: “It’s where you post (rhyming with HOST) letters.”

So my question is WHY can’t you be certain what a particular combination of letters is going to sound like in the English language? In Japanese, ka is always ka, as far as I learnt. But in English, ost can sound like oast as in coast (or post and host) or ost as in lost. It doesn’t seem right, or fair for the English learner.

My final-year tutorial student is studying English as a second language and she wonders when would she use sad or sadness; hate or hateful. It’s pretty hard to explain.

If you grow up reading Enid Blyton then you might prefer to say that breaking the cucumber frame in Miss Plum’s garden with a stone and then blaming someone else for it was a form of hateful behavior. You can HAVE sorrow, but you must BE sorrowful. You can BE sad, but you must FEEL sadness.

What in the world does the non-native English language learner make of idiom and what does my five year old make of what appears to be the simple word of BOW, which can be pronounced in a number of ways and has several different meanings.

The English language is a minefield of misunderstandings, so choose your words carefully!

Tell me some of your favorite word challenges or mix ups in a comment.

Just Back From Camping

Here’s a view from the past week’s camping trip to the Warrumbungle National Park in NSW, Australia. Freezing cold but worth the 12km walk for sure. The kangaroos were so friendly they almost joined us around the camp fire. Emus roam the surrounding plains, too. Who would have known that the inside of an extinct volcano could be so spectacular!

Views are great while walking in the Warrumbungle National Park, NSW.

Mining and Energy Scandals of Our Time

These don’t even go back very far, but it’s fun to remember what’s been and gone.

Bre-X a mystery of salting and suicide: In 1993, Bre-X chairman David Walsh went to Indonesia and met geologist John Felderhof, who had co-discovered the Ok Tedi copper-gold mine in Papua New Guinea.

Many larger mining companies had looked at Busang and said no but by the end of the year, Bre-X had started to report some favourable results from its drill samples.

Canadian Bre-X gained the following of some top producers including Barrick Gold, Placer Dome and Freeport-McMoRan, which tentatively agreed to help develop Busang.

Indonesia’s Suharto regime managed to grab 40 per cent of the deposit for Indonesian interests. Bankers from Lehman Brothers, and JPMorgan were recommending it to clients on the back of statements from the company that the site might contain 200 million ounces of gold, worth more than $US240 billion at today’s prices.

Placer Dome and Barrick Gold were never allowed to do their own drilling and by April 1994, Freeport reported the first independent results, albeit preliminary, saying it had found insignificant amounts of gold.

This brought accusations that the original Bre-X core samples had been salted – sprinkled with gold from other sources.

Freeport was about to take control of the project as doubt began to increase about the validity of the original claims when a fire destroyed a cabin at Busang. It had contained all the geologists records.

Several months later on March 19, the exploration manager, Michael de Guzman, was in a helicopter flying to meet with Freeport’s due diligence team.

But he never arrived, allegedly plunging 600 feet into the jungle. His death was ruled by police to be a suicide and a decomposed body was found in the jungle and supposed to be his.

However, some still believe that de Guzman faked his death to live happily ever after somewhere on the funds made from earlier cashing in his shares at the dizzying heights the Bre-X stock reached when the company’s value peaked at more than $US5billion.

Copper king Hamanaka loses his crown: Yasuo Hamanaka was jailed for eight years for fraud and forgery in 1997. The Sumitomo Corp copper trader from Japan lost his company more than $US2.6billion as he made unauthorised trades for more than 10 years

At the height of his deceit between 1985 and 1996, Hamanaka apparently controlled 5 per cent of the global copper market, earning him the nickname Mr Five Per Cent.

Off-the-book trades forced up prices and made his company large profits for years. A year after his conviction, Sumitomo paid about $US150million to settle claims from British and US regulators although it did not admit or deny allegations that it knew Hamanaka was using bogus trades to drive the copper price higher for several years.

Chinese copper trader missing after massive losses: Liu Qibing may or may not have been a metals trader for the Chinese government in 2005, his identity and work engagement remain a state secret.

Allegedly, while he was working for the Chinese state, the government took a huge bet of around 200,000 tonnes that copper prices would fall.

But they didn’t, and as the price of copper rose substantially over the life of the trade while demand for copper increased, massive losses were incurred.

The paper trail apparently led back to the Chinese State Reserve Bureau and other traders knew China would have to fill the amount shorted.

Copper prices rocketed, and while the Chinese government tried to depress prices by claiming copper reserves were greater than previously estimated, it also denied that Liu Qibing ever existed.

Bunker Hunts attempt to corner silver market: With wealth made from oil, former billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt’s fortune collapsed after he and his brother, William Herbert Hunt, attempted to corner the world market in silver.

They accumulated large amounts of silver in the early 1970s and by 1979 had almost cornered the global market.

With an estimated holding of 100 million ounces of the precious metal, they apparently earned between $US2billion and $4billion by speculating in silver.

Silver rose from $US11 an ounce in September 1979 to around $US50 an ounce by January 1980.

But the price collapsed and Nelson Bunker Hunt filed for bankruptcy in September 1988, mainly because of lawsuits brought against him regarding the speculation.

Nelson Bunker Hunt was fined $US10million in 1989 and banned from trading in commodity markets.

Enron implodes as accounting loopholes discovered: Enron imploded in October 2001 as it emerged that the American energy company from Houston, Texas, had been using accounting loopholes and poor financial reporting to hide billion in debt from failed deals and projects.

At the time it was the biggest bankruptcy reorganization in US history and it brought down audit and accountancy partnership Arthur Andersen as a result.

Under the direction of  Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, staff including chief financial officer Andrew Fastow misled Enron’s board and audit committee.

Once the scandal was uncovered, the stock price that pierced $US90 in mid-2000 sunk to less than $US1 by November 2001. Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, with assets of $US63.4 billion.

Hedge fund Amaranth collapses after trader gambles on natural gas futures

Hedge fund Amaranth Advisors, with more than $US9 billion in assets, collapsed in 2006 after natural gas trader Brian Hunter lost a big gamble on natural gas futures.

Hunter had made large profits by speculation on natural gas prices, but he lost $US6.6 billion in 2006 after betting that the price of gas would rise.

Prices went the opposite way, however, after a heatwave, and Hunter took a fall as well.