A dimension of mostly sight and sound

[stephbg]

* Last night at about 11pm after I'd finally put the laptop to bed I wheeled out the bin (it was a 1 dalek night) and found not a breath of wind. There was a thin layer of cloud and despite no visible moon it seemed very bright. And red. The sky was red, or I was hallucinating. Either I also imagined the birdsong, or the birds were hallucinating along with me. Perhaps Perth had a touch of the aurora last night. I believe you can get a cream for that.

* After a delay of weeks or quite possibly months I now have a replacement fluro tube in my office. It's now disturbingly bright and bluish, but I like it.

* At street level in town this afternoon I could hear the sound of the trains coming from the Wrong Direction. I found it curious how the new environmental sounds immediately registered as Different. My little brain said to me "Alert! Something's different! You're not supposed to hear that sound until two blocks over and one block down!" Talk about a creature of habit.

* The underground station was disturbingly crowded when I arrived to catch my train home. People clustered around the bottom of the escalator, simply piling up into each other on the same small part of the platform. I took a counter-intuitive route and nipped around the back via the wrong platform. Good call, for I got a seat near the back of train while the front was a crush-o-rama. And that wasn't even peak hour! It will be interesting (for me if no-one else) to watch the human traffic flow develop as people figure out how the new station works. If it ever will...

* Far more exciting than the squish of people was the sight of water seeping under the walls of the tunnel near the tracks. In lots of places. Lots and lots of places. There are drainage channels on either side of the rails, and it looks like they're destined to become underground canals of the Swan River. Maybe we'll get rail-replacement gondalas one day.

* The sounds in the station were different today, dominated by ominously echoing angry muttering from the mob. The train sounded different pulling out of the station probably because it was travelling much faster than last time.

* When the signs say that the next train is due in 1 minute, one should take that about as seriously as a dodgy dialup download display that promises less than a minute of remaining time to download 1 GB.

Comments

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

That all sounds rather disturbing. I thank you for your writing, my odd mood has been amplified.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of service. Odd amplification I can do. Is something crawling out of your ear? Do you hear the invisible rats? Can you smell colours and taste time? Do your shoes need a lawyer?

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Tasting time - what an fundulous¹ concept. I should work on that. Perhaps while the mome raths outgrabe.

Did I mention rabbit1080 and I have taken up croquet?

¹by which I do not refer to the family of killifish.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Nevertheless.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

My in-laws are deeply involved in the slow game. Take care, it's a deadly serious thing that can capture your heart and mind, leaving you a zombie with nothing but strategy.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Ooh, a move. To roquet or not to roquet...

Actually, I think we must be doing it wrong. We currently nip around the course in about twice the time it took us to lay it out in the first place. Possibly because we've yet to progress from using one ball each..

[krjalk.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Perth had a touch of the aurora last night.

Actually, solar activity, which causes aurorae, is at a baffling all time low, with an almost unheard of total lack of sunspots at the moment. Boffins are scratching their heads, as this solar minimum is now longer and quieter than any on record, I think. They had been forecasting that the ramp up to the next solar maximum in a few years was going to be an absolute doozy, with fried communications satellites raining down on our heads. Now some are saying that this will in fact be one of the quietest solar maxima since records began, while others are just hugging themselves and rocking back and forth.

Now you've got thoughts of the Sun going out to keep you awake at night. You're welcome.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Given how much I dislike daylight saving the idea of no sun at night sounds just fine to me :-)

As the child of a radio ham (a radio piglet?) one of the first bits of science I remember learning was that the sunspot cycle was 11 years long. Ah, Life Lessons.

Looks like I was simply off my nut for a while last night. Oh well, you get that.