This week in Sunday Life I smile

Recently reader Richard wrote to say he didn’t like that in the photos of me as a kid (I believe he’d been Facebook-stalking my family albums) I’m always scowling. Well, thank you Dick for noticing such a detail. And, heck, you’re right! I’ve always hated having my picture taken. I’m sure, Dick, you know what I mean when I say, it just feels so dumb smiling at a camera.

you'd frown too...

But then, lo, smiling at cameras became an occupational hazard (see below). Which was how I learned something quite interesting about smiling.

This week in Sunday Life I try “infinite altruism”

There’s something special about His Holiness the Dalai Lama, if I can be permitted such an obviousism. Something disarming. It’s the way he answers questions like, Is being gay OK? His response to a journalist once makes me smile: “I will ask ‘What is your companion’s opinion?’. If you both agree…then it is okay’”.  It’s the way he quietly takes off his shoes while presenting to 3000 people and sits with his brown fluffy-socked feet tucked under him, as he did during his recent visit.

On Friday I met His Holiness for the third time. Each visit I’ve expected it to be a bit like Christmas – all build-up, then more of the same.

But he gets me every time.

This visit I asked if it’s better to pursue happiness or altruism. He wagged a finger at me: “Altruism! Because altruism is the easiest, fastest way to be happy.” Infinite altruism, he said was his life goal. Every morning after waking at 3.30am he consciously offers his “body and mind to the purpose of others”.

“This is what brings me my joyfulness,” he said rather significantly.

This week in Sunday Life I’m strategically incompetent

by Kyle Alexander

Confession: I get off on productivity porn.

I’m only a recreational voyeur, mind.  Late at night, in the lonely privacy of my bedroom, I like to peruse sites like 43Folders and Getting Things Done (GTD) e-courses, you know, to see how other people “File Tax Receipts in 5 Easy Steps” or “Focus like Steve Jobs, Now!”. But, I’m not a full subscriber. I mean, I’m no productivity pervert. Some of that Extreme Colour-Coding Your To-Do List stuff can get pretty gonzo!

Anyway, as a “productivity connoisseur”, I’ve noticed the biggest issue in this murky neck of the interweb right now is “waiting for” items. If you’re a productive list-making type you’ll know the list system comes unstuck once a task requires follow-up from a second party. For example, to get your report completed you need a statistic from a colleague. You email them requesting the data and delete this task off your to-do list. Done! Because you trust the item is now headed for the other person’s to-do list. BUT – oh dear – if said colleague isn’t a list person and doesn’t follow up, then the task disappears into the unproductive ether, un-accounted for Un-ticked!

“Waiting for” items drive me to distraction. They leave me in a permanent state of “there’s something I’ve forgotten”-ness. Only to interrupt me in the middle of a shower (and I have to bolt out, dripping wet, to my to-do list: “chase bloody Roger about that invoicing issue”). It’s frustrating. Doubly so because the fact the other party feels completely entitled to let a task slip so easily, while we remain vigilant, is …unfair.

So this week I set out to find a salve to such a quandary. I scrolled my favourite sites and found two ways out.

In Sunday Life this week I confront my racism

If you’re not born of a racial minority, are comfortably middle-class and you catch taxis then you might identify with this scenario. On Monday I climbed into a Melbourne taxi. “Airport please.” The Sudanese driver was playing Middle Eastern music and spoke basic English. He grunted in reply.

Now, you might class me a small-L liberal (latte-sipping, bike-lane hogging, broadsheet-toting) multiculturalist. Which means I probably wouldn’t admit to having a particular “take” on this gentleman. Or his culture. Of course not.

Which is why at the lights when he unwinds his window and yells excitedly in Arabic with his African mate in the next taxi I’m only mildly put out. I ask him what they were discussing. “Football!” he says with a massive grin. “I’m Western Bulldogs, my little sons Western Bulldogs fans. He’s Hawthorn.” He punches the air and cackles happily.

Immediately my heart swelled. And I was flooded with all kinds of sappy jingoism – isn’t Australia incredible! He can barely speak English, but he’s adopted one of our passions. How wonderful! A reaction that served to blatantly expose the – ughhh! – prejudiced, threatened “take” I’d had when I first jumped in his taxi.

This week in Sunday Life I make peace with annoyances

by Neil Stewart

I’m a very annoy-able person.  A lot of things annoy me. Here’s a small sample: sniffing, loud chewing (the type Americans do in sitcoms when in heated discussions at diners), mid-90s ozonic perfumes, when the person sitting next to me on the plane keeps brushing my elbow, people who don’t reuse their paper cup at water fountains and slow walkers on narrow paths.

And that’s just the scab on the wound. I have a deep gash worth of stuff that gives me the irits.

Actually, the word “irits” gives me the irits. In the same way “I’ll do it in a mini” does.

But the most annoying thing of all is that I’m so annoy-able. Such things really shouldn’t annoy me. And this annoys me further. And so down the spiral we tumble.

During the week I chatted with Flora Lichtman, coauthor of the new book Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us. Her pet annoyance is people clipping their nails on the subway (who knew!?). Indeed, having a guy next to her do so one morning prompted the book.

Lichtman identifies three factors that make something annoying. It’s unpleasant. It’s also unpredictable.

This week in Sunday Life: I try the “wilderness effect”

On Thursday I woke up antsy. Sometimes we just do, don’t we. It’s the wind, the moon….the half bottle of wine we drank the night before. Whatever.

by RJ Shaughnessy

I’d had a cold for days and I felt as stale as a pair of pyjamas that have been slept in too long.  And just to add to the blah-ness I had to go buy eggs. So I fired myself up, tied on my hiking shoes, grabbed $5 and headed bush. I decided to travel the 5km into town (for the eggs) cross-country – through two farms and a national park, which Google Maps indicated has no walking trails or roads.

Which sounds quaintly Famous Five in theory. But things wound up with me stuck in a quagmire. Literally. The trail-less park turned out to be a swamp and about 2km in I was up to my knees in it, lost and stuck. I sunk back on a mangrove tree in a little sunny patch, picked off a few leeches and thought, Sarah, what are you doing?

I can only say I was trying to de-blah.