Week 09/2025: The comfort zone

Posted On 9 March 2025

Week of 24 February 2025

This week I did a couple of things that I’m really proud of doing because they were a little (or a lot) outside my comfort zone.

Heading out of the comfort zone . . .

Pier+Review

On Sunday evening I went along to Andy Hatton’s PIER+REVIEW session at the Pier Gallery. The gallery has recently hosted Andy’s The Temporality of Being exhibition featuring the Dorney House, which closed a couple of weeks ago.

These sessions, which Andy is running monthly, are an opportunity for photographers and other lens-based artists to come together and share their work, discuss their ideas, and get feedback and inspiration.

It sounded really interesting, and I told Andy I’d come along . . . but became slightly more terrified as the time drew closer. I don’t print my work very often, and I have never shared anything in physical form with other artists.

I had no idea who else would be there, and had set them all up in my mind as experienced professional photographers who were way more advanced than me and knew a lot more about photography than I did, and that I’d feel completely out of place.

Of course, that was all in MY head, and Andy was very reassuring, telling me the sessions are for projects and people at any stage, with no pressure all. And I didn’t even have to bring an photos if I didn’t want to, I could just come along, listen and contribute in whatever way worked for me.

I knew it was going to be a safe supportive space, and was excited about going but at the same time, tiny-mind me was trying to keep me safe from rejection and failure and make me stay home.

I didn’t listen to it.

Printing

Tiny-mind also tried delaying tactics by not deciding which photos to take along. However, in the end, my window for printing was small, so I made a decision and sent around 20 photos to the printer before I could change my mind. I picked them up on Saturday morning.

Now I had no excuse.

And of course, I didn’t need one.

Sunday evening session

It was a lovely evening, with Andy and two other photographers, who all had projects and ideas very different from mine. We flicked through some of Andy’s beautiful work and he talked about his thinking behind making the images, how they connect, and where they might fit.

I’d chosen some of my agapanthus photos, which is a body of work I’ve been working with since, well 2020 was the first time I noticed them, but the actual project of documenting the started in 2021.

It was really cool seeing them printed and being able to pick them up and handle them. I noticed a lot more detail and variations in the prints than what I can see on the screen. I also pointed out some ‘flaws’ in a couple of them that ordinarily I might clone out, and we discussed whether they added interest and story to the piece rather than being a distraction that needed to be erased.

We had a great discussion about how these images might fit within the broader themes of the work that I do.

Moving along, it was great to see work from the other participants, and hear about their inspirations and ideas for progressing their projects.

What’s next

I came away from the evening with a head bursting with fragments of ideas, snatches of colour and light, and feeling really inspired. (It was a total downer to have to go into the grey office the next day . . . )

Thank you so much, Andy, for making the time and the space available. It was a wonderful evening and I’m looking forward to exploring some of the ideas that came up for me. I’m also excited about Andy’s ideas for community building in this space and can’t wait to see how that unfolds and what opportunities there are.

How to live track a bus

A couple of weeks ago, I was very excited by the news that live tracking of Hobart’s Metro buses was, well, live. (It doesn’t take much to excite me. I get excited by yellow bollards in car parks.)

Based on the information I found, I assumed I could do this in Metro’s app. So one day this week, when I found myself going to catch a bus and not knowing how many bus stops I could walk before the bus came, I figured this would be a great time to try out this new feature.

Buses leaving on time, especially in the late afternoon, is by no means a sure thing in Hobart. Every time I’ve been stuck waiting at a bus stop, my biggest complaint is not knowing how long I’ll have to wait. If I knew how late the bus was going to be, I could walk to another bus stop further along the route rather than standing around getting frustrated.

I do this all the time if I’m early for a bus. My massage therapist calls it Bus Stop Roulette, the challenge being to walk as many bus stops as you can before the bus gets there, without pushing it one stop too far and having the bus overtake you before you get to the next stop.

(You especially don’t want to do that at night, because the next bus is an hour away.)

Even so, my judgement of when to stop is based on the bus’s scheduled departure time. I generally take the conservative approach and stop just before the bus is scheduled to arrive. If it’s late, I wait. And complain.

I thought I’d be able to go onto the Metro app and there would be a live tracking option there.

Nooooo.

There’s a news page telling me this feature is here, but nothing in the app that tells me where to find it.

‘Plan my trip’ seemed like the obvious place but that just gave me the timetable.

‘Search’ gave me a map of nearby bus stops but that told me what buses were scheduled to arrive at those stops. ‘Timetables’ gave me, well, timetables

I was still looking when the bus arrived, at which point live bus tracking ceased to be something I needed.

The next day I had a bit of a whinge on Instagram, and someone said you have to click the actual bus stop, but I couldn’t figure that out either. And someone else said whatever you have to do takes you out of the app to somewhere else.

So I did what any old person who can’t use technology would do and asked for help. Specifically I went into the Metro Shopfront and asked a staff member.

Apparently, I’m not the only person to who doesn’t know how to find this feature, so at least there’s that . . .

Anyway, there’s a realtime tracker on the Transport website called Tasmania Real Time interactive map, and here you actually can track the buses.

The interactive bus map

You tell it which bus stops you’re interested in, either by enabling your location or by clicking into the map.

So let’s say I’m at St David’s Park. That’s the green dot.

 

Now I have a list of the nearby bus stops, which also show up on the map.

I’ve selected Stop D3, which is on the Elizabeth St side of Franklin Square.

Clicking on the stop on the map or in the list shows me the next buses that will be at that stop, and what time they’re scheduled to depart (“departs”). If the bus has satellite tracking (not all of them do) it shows me the actual time the bus will leave, as shown in purple text.

It also shows the following bus on that same route (“next”).

Here, I should be able to see the satellite tracked bus 501 on the map, since it’s departing in 0 minutes . . . but for some reason it’s not showing. (If it were at the stop, it would say “At Stop”, like this one does.)

The “show all vehicles” option lets me see other buses that are on the road as well.

Cool.

So the person who said you have to leave the app was correct.

But what about the Metro app itself?

Turns out it does have live tracking too but not as fancy as the website.

The lovely Metro staff member showed me that as well.

You have to go to ‘search’, then zoom in on the map until you see the bus stop you’re at.

Clicking on that will bring up a list of the next buses due at that stop and their scheduled departure times. (Exactly like the other person on Instagram said.)

And again, if the buses don’t have satellite tracking, it won’t tell you if they’re running on time, it will just show you the scheduled departure times.

From my very quick look around this system, it doesn’t seem like many buses currently have live tracking so it’s only useful if the bus you want does.

The verdict

I’m not sure what their timeframe is for the full rollout but once it’s done, it will be great, especially when the buses are late. Being able to walk two, three or even more stops, knowing how much time I have and where to stop, which isn’t possible with the current guessing game, will be fantastic.

Although . . . I don’t have to walk. I could wait at the bus stop and practise being present, breathing, my stretches or my balances. I’m sure the people in the cars driving past when I do that get a good laugh.

But it’s the little things . . . and I like walking.

And I’m proud of myself for going in there to ask for help.

Me of a couple of years ago would have been so embarrassed about not knowing something I thought I ‘should’ know that there’s no way I would have asked. I certainly wouldn’t have gone into the shopfront and admitted my ignorance in person. I most likely would have struggled on, gotten frustrated, given up and said I didn’t need real-time bus tracking anyway. Or thought I was unintelligent for not knowing how to do something that I didn’t know how to do.

You know what I mean.

Summary of the week

Habit tracker

• Go outside & exercise first thing (7 days): 7/7
• 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 7/7
• Hip exercises (5 days): 6/5
• 2 walks or bike rides or a combination (6 days): 6/6
• Long walk (1 day): 0/1
• Walk 8,000 steps (7 days): 7/7
• 9.00 shutdown & dim lights (5 days): 1/5
• Evening routine (7 days): 5/7

What did I learn this week?

Boiling eggs is tricky because the white needs to be cooked at 85ºC for ‘optimum consistency’ but that temperature makes the yolk go hard, as it only needs to be heated at 65ºC.

So some scientists at the University of Naples worked out that because of the way energy spreads from the shell to the centre over time, if you switch it between boiling water and 30ºC water every two minutes for 32 minutes, the two parts will cook separately.

Here’s someone who tried it.

What did I notice this week?

A predatory cloud.

Also, I was relieved to see I’m not the only person who’s tried to tap onto the bus using a card that’s green but isn’t a Metro Greencard.

What was the best thing this week?

As well as attending the photo review session, this week it was fabulous to catch up with an old school friend who I don’t think I’ve seen for about 30 years.

What am I reading this week?

• The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott
• Minds Went Walking: Paul Kelly’s Songs Reimagined, edited by Mark Smith, Neil A. White & Jock Serong

What am I watching this week?

• Survivor
• Doctor Who ‘State of Decay’

What am I listening to this week?

• Dead Men Tell No Tales by Mikelangelo and the Dead Sea Gentlemen
• Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (some random playlist)