Tikkun Olam

Adventures of An Urban Nomad - A Dog With Eclectic Tastes

Laurence Harrould - Friday, August 05, 2011

The ability to forget is a powerful tool in the survival of the human species. I suspect that if not for our ability to forget most people would be celibate after the first child. Not only as a result of the birth but what comes after. Bringing up children offers many opportunities where homicide may feel like a viable option.

I was reminded about it this week. The dog who "owns" the house we're currently sitting (Molly) is a 14 month puppy. However, due to her size it's easy to forget she's still a pup. When Sancho (our dog) was her age he was into chewing things which had been left around. He tended to have a bit of a shoe fetish and seemed to limit himself to footwear.

Molly however, is much more eclectic in her tastes. So far, as well as demolishing soft & hard toys, she's gone through shoes, a phone car charger, a bluetooth phone headset and a Tarot pack. The last one was quite an achievement as she managed to chew the cards without damaging the velvet bag in which they were sealed.

While this has been annoying, upsettng and expensive we can't blame her. Sancho grew out of this phase and I expect Molly will too. However, in the meantime, we need to keep the house "puppy-proof". Locking doors (unless you're in the room with her), having her outside as much as possible (even when we're home) and keeping important items above dog height are all techniques we're having to implement - just like making the house child-proof. Someone once pointed out that "a dog is simply a child who eats off the floor". I'm getting to understand that in a whole new way.

BTW, just like a child, Molly has lots of lovable attributes as well.

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Adventures Of An Urban Nomad - The Aliens Have Landed

Laurence Harrould - Sunday, July 31, 2011

I once heard about a management course in which the participants had to train a chicken to perform a particular task. Clearly, raising your voice and pointing out "If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times how to do it" is not going to achieve the desired objective. This week I needed to put this understanding into practice.

We moved into a new house last Friday currently "owned" by a young - about 18months old - Schnauzer named Molly. We know she goes for a run at a local park every evening about 4pm and so, being very diligent and responsible, we prepared to take her for her daily run. Attempting to put on her harness and lead turned into a rather complicated exercise. She kept running away from us and when we eventually managed to get a hold on her to put it on she nipped at my face. She was clearly distressed and so I sat with her for a while patting and calming her down. Once she settled down she was very happy to get into the car and go for a drive to the park.

I, on the other hand, was dripping blood from the bite on my nose and being concerned I was going to end up with a bruise across my face which would make me look like I'd "walked into a door" I spent the rest of the evening wearing an ice pack.

What we hadn't taken into account was, from Molly's perspective, a bunch of aliens had taken over her house. What she experienced was: very early that morning (they had to be at the airport by 6am) her owners had left her. A few hours later some strangers arrived with lots of boxes and took over the house. Fortunately, there was a four legged member of the new inhabitants who Molly did get on with very well but these two legged ones were a real challenge. They didn't know how to talk to her, what her signals were etc. We worked out the way to get Molly to come and get her harness on was to stand by the front door ready to leave but on our first night we hadn't got that message.

Now, a few days into our new residency we're getting on quite well - it just took a while for her to train us :-)

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Adventures of An Urban Nomad - It's Magic

Laurence Harrould - Sunday, July 24, 2011

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

Last week I gave a talk at the Manly Warringah radio society entitled "Your Life As A Radio". It was about how our thoughts and feelings generate energy which affects our thoughts and feelings. This in turn creates our life experiences which affects our thoughts and feelings - but I digress!

I had prepared a lovely PowerPoint presentation with great images to illustrate my main points. I was quite proud of what I'd put together. When I arrived at the club room (with 15 minutes to prepare - plenty of time) I started to set up my equipment and very quickly realised a couple of things:
1. I hadn't brought the power cord for the laptop - not too much of an issue as there was still enough battery for the time I needed (at least I hoped so).
2. My wonderful PowerPoint presentation was at home and not with me. Now that could be a challenge. My immediate response was "Ohhh Kaaayyy - this is going to be an interesting talk. I'm going to have to improvise VERY QUICKLY". Fortunately, my friend Ben Ramsden was there and started to ask about ways to get the file. Clearly, there wasn't time to go home (half an hour each way) so we needed to get creative.

What we did was:
1. Set my phone (an HTC Legend) as a WiFi hotspot.
2. Link the WiFi setting on the laptop to register on the phone.
3. Ring Danita and ask her to copy the file into my Dropbox account*
4. Wait for my Dropbox folder on the laptop to syncronise with the web version
5. Say the magic words and ...
hey presto! the PowerPoint file appeared on my laptop. All in under 10 minutes. Now that's magic!

From a nomadic perspective - the fact that we can relocate - pack up and re-set up our office with phone, internet etc all within a few hours is also magic.

* If you want to know about Dropbox you can email me and I'll send you an invitation** to join Dropbox or go to dropbox.com and sign up.

** I must declare my pecuniary interest here - by signing up through me I get more space on my account.

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Adventures Of An Urban Nomad - Wake In Fright

Laurence Harrould - Thursday, July 14, 2011

This morning I woke up in a state of fear that almost had me panicking. I've been worried about the big hole we've currently got in our house-sitting bookings as well as a number of other things going on. Added to that an experience/dream from some time ago recurred. In it I wake up completely unable to move, open my eyes, speak or anything. I can hear people talking but have no idea what language and hence what they're saying. This is what I imagine being in a coma (but internally conscious) would be like.

Fortunately, I have a wonderful, supportive partner Danita and friend Michael who I could talk to about how I felt and what was happening. It was important to talk it through and recognise that these are scary thoughts and situations. While not ignoring this the thing I needed to do was focus on the present - the sound of the birds, the dogs barking, the colour of the sky and so on. Rescue Remedy also helped.

While the above are real and possible scenarios they're not NOW. They're possibilities of what MIGHT happen. Other possibilities may occur which could be really exciting and happy. The difficulty with fear is that it takes you further into fear. Lorna Patten recently posted a talk about how fear breeds fear. http://tinyurl.com/6g545mf

To break this cycle I found the answer for me is to "be present to the present". Focussing on WHAT IS, rather than "what might, could, should" etc has made a great difference.

Sometimes adventures can be scary but that's part of the journey. Today was one of those.

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Adventures of an Urban Nomad - Camping In The Great Indoors

Laurence Harrould - Monday, July 11, 2011

The house we're looking after at the moment belongs to a lady whose main residence is a lovely farm outside Sydney. This house is her city "camp". Consequently, it's not set up for full-time living and a lot of things are not present - like some basic cooking utensils.

On Monday night we decided we needed some comfort food and spaghetti was a good option. Another thing we hadn't realised was that cooking with an electric stove was quite different to a gas one. I won't bore you with the details but the result was that the spaghetti literally dissolved - we use a gluten free one which doesn't work well in water which is hot but not boiling. So once we decided that 15 strands of spaghetti somehow wouldn't constitute a decent meal for two, rice suddenly became very appealing. Also, the sauce had major lumps as a result of not being able to manage an electric element. We then decided a glass of wine would help but didn't have a cold one. It went into the freezer for a while but not long enough to get a chill (unlike the night temperature at the time). Our Masterchef attempt ended up as an episode of Gordon Ramsay.

On the other hand we discovered we were a few minutes walk from a lovely group of shops and cafes located in a very cute little corner which we've often driven past but not stopped at. They're wonderful, with excellent food, nice coffee and very pleasant and helpful staff. We sat in the sun, had lunch and discussed and planned our business & personal future. Pretty good for a day at work.

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Adventures of an Urban Nomad - It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Laurence Harrould - Sunday, July 10, 2011

Got a bit of a musical theme going here - in my previous post it was channeling Joni Mitchell and now it's REM (It's The End Of The World As We Know It - and I Feel Fine).

Last week the contracts were exchanged on the sale of the house and yesterday we moved into our next house-sitting gig. Danita & I have both been feeling somewhat overwhelmed, what with multitasking, fragmented attention, information overload, diverse obligations and commitments and the list goes on. What I'm hearing from others, reading, seeing on TV, hearing on the radio is that we are not unique. This is the way a lot of people seem to be feeling right now.

OK, so what's this got to do with being an urban nomad? We're hoping that getting rid of debt and opening ourselves to new experiences, opportunities, ways of thinking etc will give us a chance to get clarity and a new beginning to the rest of our lives. Changing your thinking creates a change in your behaviour which changes the results you're experiencing.

So the big insight for this week is the power of checklists and questionnaires. We were able to move house within a few hours and be set up with our office, clothes and food all organised. Because we didn't have to "remember" everything we needed to take with us (it was on checklists) the move was smooth and straightforward. Also, this afternoon we got together with the owners of the next property and their four legged child (alternatively known as "the child who eats off the floor") and having a questionnaire really made sure we were able to find out the important things like how to work the equipment around the house, who the vet is and how they want it handled in the event of a disaster.

BTW if you (or someone you know) are going way between 23rd August and 23rd September and would like to have your house and furry children cared for like you would, give us a call as we have some vacancies. But hurry, because spots are filling fast :-)

Till next week...

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Adventures of an Urban Nomad - Channeling Joni Mitchell

Laurence Harrould - Sunday, July 03, 2011

This week the house was sold - YAYYY!!! Well, at least we think so. There was an offer and an acceptance and then the lawyers got involved :-( A clause in the contract which the buyer's lawyer was not happy about. Very minor and easily sorted but has put the process back a bit.

But that's not what I wanted to share with you. What the sale of the house has done has made me realise that very shortly we will be gone from there permanently. I'm finding that I'm noticing things around the place which I hadn't before. Having lived in the one place for 11 years we've made quite significant changes. There's the rosemary plant which we brought home as a single stem and has now turned into a thick hedge nearly 6 feet tall (that's about 2 metres for you youngsters). Also, the lemon tree which came in a small pot and is now producing beautiful lemons at an incredible rate (after a year where we wondered if it was going to do anything at all). And the 20 foot tall olive tree given to us by some friends, the water tank where we get our wonderful-tasting drinking water (filtered using a ceramic filter), solar panels producing electricity - our power bills have been a steadily increasing CREDIT for some time, a vegie garden where we decide what to eat based on what we've got in the garden and lots more.

All these are things which we won't have once we move out. While the move is the best thing for us at the moment, it has created a bit of nostalgia and brought to mind the words of Joni Mitchell - "you don't know what you've got till it's gone".

Are there things in your life which are worth acknowledging and enjoying?

Till next time...

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Adventures of an Urban Nomad - Disaster Strikes

Laurence Harrould - Sunday, June 26, 2011

Now that the owners are back I can tell you about the disaster which befell us a few weeks ago.

When looking after someone else's house and pets what do you image would be the worst thing that can happen? For us it was the death of one of the cats. We were responsible for a dog and two cats. One night, not long after the owners had left the house and animals (their "babies") in our care, we went to bed with one of the cats asleep on the arm of the lounge suite. Next morning Danita went in to discover the cat lying on the floor NEXT TO the lounge suite. After getting me out of bed with an ominous "I think we've got a problem" we found that the cat was rather rigid - recalling the parrot sketch from Monte Python.

There were a couple of dilemmas - how to tell the owners and what to do about the body? Since there was nothing they could do, as well as fearing the bad news would probably spoil their holiday, we decided that it was not a suitable time to tell them.

Next, what to do about the body? Our feeling was that if we were in a similar situation (having left our dog, Sancho, in the care of someone else and gone away) if something like this happened we would want to be able to at least see his body. Otherwise it would leave an emptiness and lack of closure - a bit of a sense that he'd gone missing and could somehow turn up again. So we decided until we told them and had instructions as to how they wanted the situation handled we had to keep the cat's body. Fortunately, they had a couple of fridges in the garage and one had some spare room in the freezer. So we wrapped the cat's body in a few layers of material and a heavy plastic bag and kept it "on ice" having already spoken to their vet about what the options were so we could canvass those with the owners.

As it happened, that afternoon we received an SMS from the owners asking "how the furry children were". A rather vague but reassuring reply (letting them know a non specific 'they' were fine) seemed to cover things for then.

A few days before their expected return, we phoned the owners quickly noting that the dog is fine however there had been an issue with one of the cats. Dreading a very upset reaction we were a bit taken aback with their response "oh yes we kind of expected it and sorry you had to deal with it". While they were upset by the passing of one of their pets, it was certainly not the reaction we had feared - much to our relief. As it would have been good to know this was a possibility we've added it to our list of questions to ask when taking on the caring of someone's house and pets for the future.

Until next time...

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Adventures of an Urban Nomad - Settled In

Laurence Harrould - Sunday, June 19, 2011

We've finally settled in to our current residence - it ONLY took us 3 weeks. We've sorted out the household technology (oven, microwave, cappuccino machine, DVD player, TV, washing machine, clothes drier.....), our business technology (more on that below), nearest shops, travel routes, best walks etc. It's amazing how much there is to learn when you move into a new house. And we've managed to get it all sorted just in time for the return of the owners (I wonder if they'd consider extending their trip - probably not).

They return next Saturday. At this stage we're fortunate (from one perspective) that our house hasn't yet been sold. That way we can move back to it until the next gig which starts in a few weeks. However, once that's happened (house sold) we won't be able to do that. We've been investigating caravan parks and other things but they generally don't allow pets. Well that's a bridge we may need to cross at some point.

Returning to my technology theme, this week we finally got our IT set up the way we wanted. We have a Telstra wifi box to give us our internet connection. Mac from PC Powertech was very helpful getting that done.

Also, I got a QNAP NAS (Network Attached Storage) box which does amazing things - shared folders, automated backup to an external drive and HEAPS more functionality that I will never use - all for well under $500. Check it out at http://qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=181. If you have a household (or business) with more than one computer you really need to have a look at this. To get one have a talk to Angus at OzSmart Corporate Computers and tell him "Laurence sent you" :-)

The other thing this week was a perspective on the housing market. Just before we put ours on the market, properties in our area were going gang-busters. Places were selling within 1-2 weeks at near record prices. As soon as ours was put on the market it all died - NOTHING is selling. Is the universe picking on us or what? While we could get into a state of major paranoia we're learning to be adaptable and take things as they come. If you know someone who'd like to buy a lovely house in North Ryde send them to www.raywhitenorthryde.com.au/property/NRD3498053.

Stay tuned and have a wonderful week :-)

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Adventures of an Urban Nomad - Hidden Treasure

Laurence Harrould - Sunday, June 12, 2011

This week I discovered a hidden treasure. You know your friends - well at least you think you do.

When we started on our nomadic wanderings - a whole 2 weeks ago :-) - a question occurred to us about maintaining our library subscription. We've really been enjoying our local library and have read hundreds of books from there. As we will no longer be residents in the area our connection to the library will eventually lapse. I'd also kept books out of our packing thinking I'd have a chance to read them expecting there'd be less distraction from household tasks.

This week I was checking out the bookshelves of the house we're staying in. A lot of the books were of the type I expected - as I said, you think you know your friends. In this exploration I found books which really surprised me. Firstly, there were a number by authors Danita & I enjoy when we want to veg out. And then I found some which really surprised me.

As many of you will know, I'm into astrology and a lot of New Age subjects. I'd never had conversations with these friends - whose house we're minding - on these subjects. However, they have some fascinating books on exactly this. Also, the timing on finding them is interesting.

I was recently was sent some discs of a talk by Santos Bonacci called The Key. It's about the precession of the equinox, how this gives the astrological ages (remember the Age of Aquarius?) and the meaning of this. I found his talks very informative.

Just after watching his presentation, while exploring upstairs looking for something to read, I found the book "Keeper of Genesis" which is about the Sphinx, the Pyramids and their relationship to the precession of the equinoxes. Now I personally think there's no such thing as coincidence and so the talk and the book appearing at the same time was intriguing. I've also found some other books on similar topics in the upstairs room.

I think we might need to stay longer :-)

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