Saturday 27th May (Day 87)
The opinion of others
(This took me
a few days to write but it is probably my favourite post to date, please read
it all and enjoy!)
When I go for
a run I always do the same route which involves running to Hyde Park, round the
war memorial and back home again. My
plan was to stay with this route until I could do it without needing to walk
some of the distance and then start making the route longer by running further
into the park.
Today though
Marten was going for a run and asked me if I wanted to come with him. He suggested we run through the Botanic
Gardens, the gardens were way beyond Hyde Park and far out of my comfort zone
but I didn’t want to be outdone by my Dutch housemate so I agreed and went with
him.
The Botanic
Gardens are an amazing amazing place and I will talk about them soon. However today I want to talk about (or write
about rather) some very interesting people I met.
Marten and I
were running along a path that runs up to the Art Gallery of NSW near the
Botanic Gardens when we saw some random guys stood on boxes alongside the path. There were 5 or 6 of them all spaced out
along both sides of the path and they were all stood on something (wooden box,
ladder etc) and they all had several boards in front of them with signs and
printouts.
Penny for your thoughts
They were
there because they had an opinion on something that they wanted to share with
people who were walking through the park.
I guess you could say they were street preachers but in a none religious
way.
I will just
give you a quick list of the preachers and what they were preaching about.
- One guy was dressed normal and was preaching about anger.
- One guy was dressed in a suit with a top hat and sunglasses, he was preaching about politics amongst other things.
- One guy was dressed like a tourist and he was preaching about public nudity.
- One guy was dressed like a weird old science teacher and was preaching about science.
- One guy was dress like a weird conspiracy theorists and was preaching about a new language he had devised. He also had a t-shirt on that said something about UFOs and how they were everywhere.
What makes you angry?
We stopped by
quickly to have a look at what was going on and to read some of the boards. The first guy who spoke to us was the guy
preaching about Anger. He looked at
Marten and I and asked us “What makes you angry?” We paused for a second to think, I was in a
good mood so thinking about stuff that made me angry was difficult. After a few seconds of internal debate I
replied “my landlord, my landlord makes me angry”.
He corrected
me by saying “no, your landlord doesn’t make you angry, you get angry because
of your landlord!”
He then explained
what he meant by this, basically in changing the statement from “someone making
you angry” to “you becoming angry because of someone” empowers you. Rather than someone else being in control of
your anger, you by taking responsibility for your anger become in control of
your anger.
He did of
course acknowledge that my landlord might have been a deeply unpleasant person
(which he is) and gives me good reason to become angry (which he does). He wasn’t trying to say “you should never get
angry”, he was just explaining a different way of perceiving anger which gives
you more control.
I liked this
guy and I thought his idea was a very good one which is why I am writing about
it in this level of detail. Really you
can extend his idea beyond anger to just about anything in life. Rather than blame other people and let other
people pull your strings you can take responsibility and in taking
responsibility you also take control!
Mad as a hatter's tea party
With the words
of wisdom from the angry man we moved onto the next guy on the same side of the
path. He was the one who I described as
looking like a weird conspiracy theorists.
He had badges on his jacket about aliens and UFO and that shit.
I am sure he
had a lot of interesting and wacky opinions he wanted to share but today he was
pushing forward the idea of his new language.
Something he probably devised during his second lobotomy.
His first big
statement was that dyslexia doesn’t exist and that it is the fault of the
English language and the way it is taught.
I found this statement annoying because I have dyslexia and I believe it
exists. If you want proof that dyslexia
exists, just ask me to read you a paragraph out loud.
After making
this statement he then showed us an example alphabet and sentences using his
“new language”. It just looked like English
with a few letters missing; to be honest it looked stupid and kind of reminded
me of Welsh.
Marten could
read the sentences but I couldn’t, I just thought the whole think looked stupid
and it would look better if he wrote his language using a crayon.
The mad guy said
quite boastfully “you could take this to Japan and they would be able to
understand it” Marten immediately replied saying “no you couldn’t because in
Japan they speak Japanese”.
Marten has a
great ability of giving very quick and blunt responses and I had to stop myself
from laughing.
This guy was getting
very impatient because we were disagreeing with him and not taking his idea
seriously. But he was the one wearing
the badges and hats with UFO and alien symbols on them. How could we take him seriously?
After talking
to the anally probed nutcase we continued the run going around Mrs Macquarie’s
Point and then I headed home whilst Marten continued to the Opera House. When I got back I decided to go back to the
garden to hear more from the mad preachers.
Plus I didn’t take my camera with me on the run and I wanted to take
some photos for this post.
The origin of the Earth!
I arrived
back to where the mad preachers were and listened to the mad scientist and the
guy in the suit and sunglasses. I didn’t
get round to the public nudity guy, sorry.
The mad
scientist wasn’t really attracting much of a crowd but I stopped off to listen
in to what he was saying. He was having
a discussion with some random guy who had the patience to sit down to listen
and discuss his ideas.
At one point
during the conversation the mad scientist made a quick statement, he said quite
calmly “I believe the Earth is a burnt out sun”. After that the conversation went quiet. I am not going to pretend I know the facts
but I believe if you asked most scientists they would disagree with his idea
and brand him as a bit of a nutter.
The system is broken
The final guy
was the dude in the suit and sunglasses.
He had various views about politics and corporate corruption but none I
remember well enough to give you an example of.
He had a strong opinion on various issues but he rambled on too much so
his ideas were not clear. He did start
talking to me and asked me where I was from, when I replied that I was from
England he said “welcome to Australia”.
I think that is actually the first time anyone has said that to me.
Overall I
really enjoyed listening to the interesting and sometimes strange ideas from
these quirky individuals. The anger guy
to me made a lot of sense but the others I thought were a bit wacko jacko,
though entertaining none the less.
I also took
some videos of these guys so check out my video here:
Additional note
Through
additional research after I finished writing this post I found out that I
actually stumbled upon an event called Speaker’s Corner. You can check out the website here at: http://speakerscorner.org.au/
Also you will
find that Speaker’s Corner is not exclusive to Sydney but is held in many
cities in Australia and the UK. So if
you live near one check it out!
 |
| Mr Bashful gives me a smile |
 |
| The answer is no |
 |
| Not sure what his point was but he was a very interesting man |
 |
| Weird |
