Hans Cathcart’s Homepage

Sydney is a tourist trap, but in a really nice way.  Having spent a full week in Australia’s largest city I’m still unsure how to classify this town.  Sitting here at Pancakes on The Rocks I’m hopeful this place will live up to my expectations — I’m wishing for better than IHOP — surely that’s achievable.

There’s so much to do in this city, the people are really friendly, even the bums.  You get exactly what you’re promised here, but rarely surprisingly more.

Some exceptions: the backstage tour at the Opera House was great; and our tour guide Alannah, a former Qantas flight attendant, was sincerely interested in everyone having a great time.  The swing dancers at Swing Patrol, who I met on Friday and with whom I swung out to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at the Sydney Festival, and who then invited me back to a rooftop office party, where my iPod jazz collection was exercised, were awesome and friendly.  And wrapping up the week with an excellent day trip into the Blue Mountains really made me like the Aussies.

Jen, our bus driver and tour guide, was super social and characteristically friendly.  The Oz Trails trip took us into the Blue Mountains, where we tool a ride on the the world’s steepest railway, visited a rain forest, saw fantastic scenery reminiscent of the Grand Canyon, and watched a family of Kangaroos hopping across a meadow.

Australia lived up to its expectations, unfortunately so did the foreign tourists, who tried scratching their names in the limestone cliffs, after being repeatedly told not to, and tried feeding the Kangaroos, after being asked not to.  People sometimes have no common sense or courtesy.

Graeme, my Kiwi-Aussie colleague, introduced me to Roo pie and was really fun to hang out with.  Clay, my flight instructor, helped me realize my dream of flying over Sydney and along the Australian coastline.  Pictures from the flight over Sydney on Facebook (log-in required).

So the final verdict, the pancakes were a little dry but good, the strawberries tasty and the bangers excellent.  The locals like using the term “no worries” which, come to think of it, is actually a perfect way to sum-up Sydney.

More than 25 years ago my father stood on this Opera stage.  The set I’m standing on is now for Tosca, a modernized design with 20th century props, but this room is the same — the famous Sydney Opera House.

Having parents who were both opera singers has always been a curiosity, a fun conversation on dates, and an aspect defining my life as slightly different.  The trade-off to moving around the world, switching schools, needing to make new friends and never quite knowing any place as home, is here on this stage.  It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to hear a dramatic tenor singing full volume on an opera stage, and doubly so what it’s like to have that man be your father.  And it isn’t about silly things like seeing your father die on stage, but rather the overwhelming voice.

Here in Sydney, home to the most beautiful and unique opera house, an architectural masterwork, one that was supposed to cost $6 million dollars and take 3 years to build, but instead took over 13 years and $103 million, my father sang as a guest tenor.

Halfway around the world I’ve traveled to see this, and to walk around the dressing rooms on the behind the scenes tour.  We visited what was recently Liza Minnelli’s dressing room and I played chopsticks on the Steinway that has been used by so many famous musicians — probably not to play chopsticks.  The dressing room has quite a view, out onto the Sydney harbour no less.  But all that pales in comparison with imagining my father dying on this stage.  ;-)  Doesn’t the hero always die in operas?

It’s hard to describe what this part of the world looks like from the air, but beautiful isolation would fit the bill.  Here at 36,000 feet I am comfortably typing away on my iPhone after having had breakfast courtesy China Air.  We’ve just crossed into the 2nd decade of the 21st century, a moment in my life I’ll have to reflect on in a later post, but I still find it fascinating to be flying in an American-built Boeing 747, owned by the Chinese communist government, over the former USSR.  Although I am traveling to Australia on my German passport, the American in me wonders what it was like for Gary Powers to be so high over this remarkable part of the world in his U-2 spy plane.

We’re two hours from Beijing now and the sun is finally shining on the snow-covered expanse of the Chinese mainland.  We’ve been flying along the trans-Siberian railway ever since we flew over Moscow, another city I would have loved to visit on this trip, and from up here it’s pretty clear how this place works, either you’re near the railroad or you’re a polar bear — I jest, but once we crossed the Ural mountain range into Asia, it was remarkable to still see signs of human life — apparently able to cling everywhere on this blue marble of ours.  This ‘fly-over country’ isn’t so different from the way parts of the US look in the winter, but just to the south of us are the Himalayas — oh why did we have to fly so far north.  No worries, surely I’ll get an opportunity to pilot an airplane around the peak of Everest one day.

In a few moments we’ll be touching down at Beijing’s new Olympics-inspired airport, unfortunately there’s cloud cover so I won’t get a chance to catch a glimpse of the Great Wall — that too will have to wait for another trip.  For now I’ll have to be content with the history-making nature of this brief stay.  Just yesterday my 98-year old grandfather told me that ever since my great-great-great-grandfather served as a German missionary in China, no one from my family has been in China since the 19th Century!  I’m not planning to preach to anyone, in case you’re wondering.  What incredible mountains so close to the city.

Looking down on the city now, I realize where I’ve seen this place before.  I designed this exact city-grid  in SimCity 2000 — everything is so symmetric and even the little cars move just like in the game.

Finally, on what seemed like the longest straight-in approach in history, with the Jumbo Jet’s slats deployed, must have been 15 minutes, flying at a mere 255 mph, is that normal?, we are sitting at the gate.  The air is oh so smoggy, giving the text on the catering van pulling up to my aircraft “Beijing Air Catering” an ironic - yet promising - meaning.

Here I am for four hours and then it’s off to Sydney!

I don’t typically find myself listening to Bon Jovi, let alone watching his videos at the Burger King in the Munich train station.  Nor does his new song remind me of Mozart, but I like the title to his new song “We weren’t born to follow”.

Face it, we all ask ourselves from time to time what road we’re on, trying to figure out where we’re going and deciding whether it’s worth going there.  In our cars or airplanes we glance at the GPS — in life there’s no such gizmo to guide us.  Sometimes we wing it, sometimes we take other people’s advice, and sometimes we listen to aging rock stars.  I think Bon Jovi asks an interesting question though — are we happy following?

Certainly we must follow certain rules in society, and learning often starts by following in the footsteps of others.  When we’re growing up our parents tell us what we can and cannot do, but often we’re unsettled by those rules and rebel by not following.  Why do we feel that way, and why do we have such a strong urge to chart our own course?

An outside observer would be truly baffled by our world, everywhere you look there are signs telling us what we should and shouldn’t do, lines are painted on the road, keeping us in our lanes, and we build fences where we want others not to go.  (Perhaps that’s why I like flying in the open sky so much.)  Then when we talk to each other we can’t help telling others what to do.  Sure we may have had experiences that taught us not to stick our hands in the fire, and sharing that wisdom is key to being human.

One of my favorite memories of my cousin was when he let his son play with the candles on the Christmas tree.  He was over him like a hawk, but he let his son stick his finger in the flame, because that’s what the little boy wanted to do.  The requisite “trösten” followed and made everything OK, but I admired my cousin for giving his son freedom to make mistakes.

So if following is good, if getting others to do what we think is right, if we constantly come up with ever cleverer ways to trick others into doing what we want… why don’t we like following?  In fact, we don’t even honor followers, we look down on them.  Think of who we look up to?  The men and women who defy following, the ones who do things others think are crazy, those are the ones we build statues to, honor with holidays, emboss on our coins, or for whom we display their record-setting airplanes in our museums.

If following is bad, shouldn’t we teach that to our kids?  Shouldn’t we encourage utter independence in our schools, governments and companies?

Of course anarchy doesn’t sound so great either.  Cultures have different approaches to this kind of thing.  Germany, where I am now, is a country that is even made fun of for following rules, but things like the unrestricted speed sections of the autobahn would be a catastrophe without rule-following.

In the U.S. on the other hand, we seem to be constantly breaking rules.  Remember the last time you drove under the speed limit on a U.S. freeway… yeah, me neither.

Sadly, I doubt I have any great wisdom to impart here, but perhaps that’s good.  Picasso once said: “a painting is never finished, it is only abandoned.”

I’ll cross-post to facebook for comments, in case you have anything to add.  And I’ll leave you with the thoughts of another famous philosopher, Douglas Adams who wrote: “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

Physicist David Deutsch presents a fascinating view of the problems we face in the world, how to think about solving them, and then much more in these three talks at TED.

• Our place in the cosmos
• A new way to explain explanation
• Parallel universes and you

In anticipation for my trip, one that is sure to be epic, I have finally given in and setup a twitter account.  Feel free to follow me here, follow me there, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.  And yes, I’ll be cross-posting to facebook as well.

A really well produced 3D simulation of the ditching of US Airways 1549 into the Hudson River.  The air traffic control tapes are playing in the background and you can see what Sully and Skiles say to each other during their descent towards the Hudson.

2010 Update:
I just finished reading Captain Sullenberger’s book Highest Duty.  What a fantastic and inspiring book.  My favorite line is a quote from his wife: “Sully, life is not a checklist.”

After seven grueling months of training — actually it was really fun and educational, I am now officially a Docent at the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum.  Lee Boyd was an exceptional mentor, and Larisa Epatko really helped me out as I was polishing up my tours.  I’m now qualified to give tours at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport and to “commemorate [the artifacts], educate and inspire [the visitors]”.  The museum is really fantastic, and I’m quite proud to be associated with such a prestigious institution, and a great team of volunteers.

In the past decade, Web design has evolved significantly. This article “70 New, Useful AJAX And JavaScript Techniques” goes on to discuss some of the new functions that have been developed. It’s boring, but the improved calendar pop-up date selectors are my favorite useful feature improvement. Unfortunately, while Web design has evolved the ‘proper use’ of URL/URIs has not. Sir Tim wrote an article over a decade ago suggesting how to build good URIs.  It’s still a good read.

David Bergman took this 1,474-Megapixel Pic of Obama’s Inauguration. You can zoom in and out. Particularly interesting is the seating order on stage. Check out the expressions of Bush and Cheney, Bill and Hillary, and Al Gore.

The pictures uses technology from Gigapan which stitches together many different photos. CNN also uses Photosynth to generate this “picture” of the Inauguration. It’s a collection of hundreds of pictures from people who took their own pictures during the event and uploaded them to the Net.