Two Pushups and a Deep Breath

As with any military arm the Royal New Zealand Air Force requires her air-men and -women (A&A) to be operationally fit at all times.  This fitness is tested on a regular basis and failing the test has a few consequences that get steadily more serious the longer you take to pass until you're finally kicked out and have to find another job.

When I first joined it was called the Two-mile Run Test. It was pretty straight forward - run for two miles in under a given time.  For a woman of seventeen to twenty nine years we had to complete it in under 17:30mins just to pass (an F2), or under 16:00 minutes for a superior (F1).  Earning an F1 meant the test remained current for a year and the person wouldn't have to re-sit for a full twelve months.  Those of us who could never quite make that sub-sixteen time were relegated to the ranks of the six-month re-tests.  Frustratingly, at my most fit (in my life) I managed sixteen minutes and eleven seconds.

As time went by people began to question the run test.  They believed it wasn't an accurate representation of a person's ability to perform 'in the field,' as it were.  Someone who could run two miles in under twelve minutes wasn't necessarily capable of  lugging a pack, a rifle and a whole lot of water around Afghanistan.  So the test was changed to the Operational Fitness Test.  F1 and F2 still have twelve- and six-month recurrences respectively, but the requirements for achieving each are a little different now.
Just to pass I need to pump out sixteen push ups followed immediately by a 5km walk with 20kg (10kg vest + 10kg belt) in under 46:30mins.  A superior is 22 push ups and the walk in under 44:30 mins.

The push ups aren't just any old push ups either.  They are ruthlessly enforced, they have to go low enough, they have to go high enough, they have to be continuous and the body can't be allowed to drop or rise out of alignment.  Check out the Operational Fitness Test video on this page to see what they look like.

Now let me put it all into perspective for you:
Hi, my name is Sez.  I like sitting in the sun, reading books, watching movies, kicking around on the internet and generally doing f-all.  I enjoy food, especially ice cream and other desserts. I play cricket in the summer, but I'm not a strong batter so I don't really need to run around a lot.  In fact I very much play a game of standing outside in the sunshine day dreaming for four hours.  I hate running, and avoid it at all costs.  When I was still playing hockey, I was the Goal Keeper.  I only go to the gym when it's compulsory.  Given a choice between going for a walk on the beach and playing a game of Guitar Hero, I will always choose the latter.

BUT!  (and it's a big but!)  As much as I hate exercise.  As often as I feel sick and nervous when I remember on the way home that when I get there I have to "do my push ups" and as little cardio exercise as I do, yesterday I did 23 push ups and walked the 5km in 39:26.

Hi, my name is Sez.  I have been in the Air Force for ten and a half years and yesterday I achieved my very first F1.

That is why every muscle in my body hurts like hell today.

Avid Reader, or "100 Books"

Found on someones profile page:
According to the BBC if you've read 7 of these, you are above the average!

The cynic in me is disinclined to believe that without further research. A fact isn't a fact until it's properly sourced (and by that I mean reliably sourced, if you know what I mean). Anyhoo, it looked like something I was able to brag about since reading is something I can actually do. Perhaps I should add a 'currently reading' column down the right hand side of the blog. What do you think about that?

Here they are, 100 books the BBC seems to think I haven't read. Bold are the books I've completed, and the ones I've read some of are in italics:

oo1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

oo2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
oo3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
oo4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling  [honestly, how old is this list?]

oo5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

oo6. The Bible
oo7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

oo8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

oo9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

o1o. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

o11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

o12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
o13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
o14. Complete Works of William Shakespeare
o15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
o16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien [Bam! there's me at the so-called 'average.'  I think this is set up to make me feel good.]
o17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

o18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

o19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

o2o. Middlemarch - George Eliot
o21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
o22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
o23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
o24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

o25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

o26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
o27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
o28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
o29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
o3o. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
o31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
o32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

o33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

o34. Emma - Jane Austen

o35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

o36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis  [Actually, this book is one of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia, so the list is doubling up on itself there.  I guess only people who have read all books in the series would know that though.]
o37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
o38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

o39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

o4o. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

o41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

o42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

o43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
o44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
o45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
o46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
o47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
o48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

o49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

o5o. Atonement - Ian McEwan
o51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

o52. Dune - Frank Herbert

o53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

o54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

o55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
o56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
o57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
o58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

o59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon

o6o. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
o61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
o62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
o63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
o64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
o65.  Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
o66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
o67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
o68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
o69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
o7o. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
o71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
o72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
o73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

o74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

o75. Ulysses - James Joyce
o76. The Inferno – Dante
o77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
o78. Germinal - Emile Zola
o79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray  [I would have finished this but it wasn't mine and I wasn't fast enough.]
o8o. Possession - AS Byatt
o81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
o82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
o83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
o84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
o85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
o86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

o87. Charlotte's Web - EB White

o88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

o89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
o9o. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
o91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
o92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
o93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

o94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

o95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
o96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

o97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

o98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

o99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

1oo. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total: 27/100.  And I totally did not count LW&W, not even once, even though The Chronicles of Narnia is composed of seven books and all together they only counted for one.


But anyway, none of you really cared what I've read.  You all went through that list ticking off the ones you've read.  So... how many?  [And do you still believe 7 is the average?]

Suspending the Suspension

For most movies - especially fantasy movies - we put logic and reasoning on hold and forget that magic doesn't exist and that Bruce Willis probably isn't bulletproof.  That's suspension of disbelief.

But have you ever stopped suspending your disbelief and thought - if only this happened, the whole movie would be completely different?  I think we all have at some point, haven't we?

Will you suspend your suspension with me now and watch a clever little video about the Lord of the Rings which will leave you asking ... "Yeah - why didn't it happen that way?"

.

Photos from the Street

Here are some things I've seen around in the last couple of months:

This one was written by a friend of Nick's.

  These are the chillies being grown by the 'Skin Bay' at work.

A beautiful desk in one of the displays at MoTaT in Western Springs, Auckland.  

One day I will make one of my own!

This was the statue on top of the desk.  I just loved the shadow it cast on the wall behind.

Also at MoTaT.  Just because the Allies were on the winning side doesn't mean they didn't cause injustice. NZ sent their 'enemy aliens' to an island off the coast.  God forbid they send the countries secrets back to Europe.  Wait... what secrets?

That is all.

Ten

My Favourite Outfit.

...  my favourite outfit???

                                               are. you. serious?


I have one word for you:

No.