Colourful capers, forthcoming trip

[Tabouli]

I didn't join in the Polyjuice colour capers before, but as colour is one of my favorite subjects I thought I'd try to ravel another rainbow thread...

As a certified chromaphile, these days I'm struggling to name a single favorite colour.  In clothing I tend to prefer colours with slightly bluish tinges, because they suit me better... rich bluish greens, blue-toned reds, lavender purples, purplish navies, bluish pinks rather than salmons.  However, given the right saturation and hue, just about *any* colour can be great.  Yellow sheets are a wonderfully cheerful thing to wake to.  My parents have a stunning mahogany piano, which is a beautiful rich deep reddish brown.  My flat is currently decorated in silver, and shades of pearly silvery blues and greens (=purifying).  Lovely tangerine orange is warming and reminds me of tropical fruit and pumpkin soup.  Hot pink is marvellously whimsical.  Yep, colour is a truly glorious thing.  I daily bless those cones in my eyes for the joy they bring me.

You see, I think my chromaphilia actually has an indirect genetic origin.  My father is colour blind.  Not completely, of course, not the monochrome horror, but his green cones are faulty, and he therefore mixes up brown and green and used to drag me in to assess the colours in his stamp collection.  Alas, this means that I carry the gene for colour blindness, and will pass it on to 50% of my children, if I have any.  It also meant that from a very early age I treasured my colour vision devotedly and vowed to enjoy every wavelength of it.

At five, I'd ranked my favorite three colours: pink (ahhh, the joys of being a little girl), yellow and then orange.  By seven, I had inverted the medals to orange, yellow and then pink.  Then, as I grew older, I warmed towards the cooler end of the spectrum.  In my teens I was heavily into green, and even wrote an essay entitled "Why You Should Wear Green" (and I swear my English teacher wore green for weeks after marking it!).  I also grew very fond of purple, and blue.  These days, as I said, I can't pick a favorite, but I certainly wallow in the stuff, wake up craving particular colours, always notice the colour of people's eyes (which lots of people don't seem to), and so on.

What fascinated me was when I read a book on colour preferences (Faber Birren, IIRC) which said that this pattern of liking the longer wavelength (warm) colours as a child and then increasing shifting towards the shorter wavelength colours is in fact widespread.  Apparently into old age, it could even be that the eye is craving blue because the lens is yellowing with age and screening it out (explanation for blue rinsed old ladies?).  I once plotted an actual study of this, getting samples of people to pick their favorite three from a range of papers at different ages, and so on, but never carried it out.

How about everyone here?  What are your favorite colours, and have you shifted your preferences from the red end to the blue end of the spectrum as you've grown older?

For those of you who like green, I did include scientific arguments in my essay.  Green is apparently the most relaxing colour for the eye to see, as it's right in the middle of the spectrum (all three types of cones can pick up at least some of it), and focuses directly on the retina.  Red focuses slightly behind the retina (so the eye has to "bring it forward", hence red seems to stand out and jump forward at you), and blue slightly in front of it (and hence appears to recede).

On a less colourful but more adventuresome note, a travel agent recently shocked me into realising that I'd better get booking for that trip if I want flights.  As I recently learned a good friend of mine is getting married in Europe, my plans are beginning to look like a Kontiki whirlwind tour of the world by plane, but anyway.  There are still all too many things up in the air at this stage, and I'm starting to get alarmed, BUT... here are my current plans, for what they're worth:

Fly Melbourne to London on the 11-12 of June (just after my birthday)(arrg, the big 3-0), spend a week in southern England, then fly to Switzerland (probably Geneva, though I'd love to meet the mighty Goat if possible!) to help my famed Swiss-Chinese friend get organised and then fly with her and her French fiance to Paris for her wedding on about the 23rd (not yet definite, arrrggh).  Then Paris-Montreal, where I'll be staying with my American mentor and her Canadian husband and organised our presentation with her, then Montreal-St. Louis (alas, the wedding has made eastern US pretty much impossible to fit in).

The conference goes from the 29th to the 2nd of July, after which I might hang around another day or two in St Louis (American listmembers... any thoughts about the 4th of July?  What happens?  Where's the Place To Be?) then head over to the west coast.  I have vague visions of flying to Portland and then making my way via various destinations down the coast to LA over the period of 10 days or so... does anyone know how much this would cost, and whether it's feasible?

Then, on about the 12th of July, I'll fly LA to Bangkok, spend a week in Thailand, and then fly home via Adelaide, where I have yet another Working with Asian Names program to run.  Then a Life in Australia (introduction to Australian culture for new international postgraduate students) in Melbourne the following morning.

Madness, but seeing I want to spend my birthday in Melbourne and have to be back in Australia for those programs and to run my business, it's the only way I'm going to fit everything in.

Off to get some more wallet-savaging quotes...

Tabouli.


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