Phone

I need a new phone, or rather more accurately, I don't. I have a phone and it works well, but it just isn't what I want any more. What I want is a camera phone with a built in mp3 player that I can watch video on and send photographs directly to the internet from (optional Light saber attachment would also be a big plus.

Why do I want such a thing? I never carry a camera with me and I always regret it when I find something good to photograph. Mercifully for my bank account this isn't possible yet as Sony Ericsson need to hurry up and release the damn thing (maybe it's developing the light saber add-on that's holding it up). This gives me time to save up and be sensible, dammit.

I can't justify spending the money on just a camera and I have a phone with me permanently anyway. See how I am rationalising spending huge amounts of money on a gadget? Other people seem to live with a camera. Chris seems to sleep with one under his pillow and Ben seems to have just about given up on the blog and now lives on flickr.

The italian bloke behind me on the bus as was scribbling this in my notebook was listening to music at ear-bleed volume and taking numerous pictures with his phone. I was tempted to get up and punch him for reading over my shoulder then nick his phone. But I didn't.

Winter

It seems winter has arrived in Sydney. Last night it rained.

The Sydneysiders have been wearing long coats, fleece tops and gloves for the past 2 weeks. The average daytime temperature has not been below 10 Cesius. I will freely admit that there has been a hint of winter about the mornings recently but it's a basic rule of thumb that if you can't see your breath, you don't need gloves. Winter here is a mindset not a season, and I'm not inclined to think it's Winter just yet.

A week?!

How can it be a week since I last posted? I need to get my act together.

The truth is I am still petty damn busy. This is a good thing because it means at least my life is pretty full, and I'm not wasting any time with pointless crap (like watching Aussie TV).

It is also bad because it means I am trying to fit having a life into my life whilst actually having a life. Which is difficult. It also means that you end up living a backlogged life where you are constantly catching up with yourself.

I have taken to carrying a notebook with me on public transport and scribbling away at top speed to try and get some writing done in the travel time between activities. These are usually filled with staring vacantly into space. My brain normally copies over these areas of memory like you'd record over a bad TV program on a video. This has the odd effect of timeshifting me to new places. I emerge from the bus blinking in the sunshine thinking: "Now how the bloody hell did I end up here?"

The notebook is obviously a laptop substitute but laptops don't have the other side-effect that I quite like, keeping the seat next to you free. Nobody wants to sit next to the lunatic scribbling away at top speed in an unintelligible scrawl. I may take to giggling as well and in extreme casses drooling. Updates as they happen.

Wagga Wagga

Yesterday I flew to Wagga Wagga for a meeting meeting. It provided one of those rare moments when I actually realise that I'm in Australia. Looking out of the plane all I could see for mile in any direction was scorched bromn earth.

Wagga Wagga is a town town of some 60,000 people which in rural Australian terms makes it a heaving metropolis. The reason for the odd name can be found on the tourism Wagga Wagga website website:

Wagga is the local Wiradjuri aboriginal word for crow and to create the plural, the Wiradjuri repeat the word. Thus Wagga Wagga translates as 'the place of many crows'.

Naturally I didn't see a single crow.

Driving back to the airport we decided to see what was around the town. We picked a direction and drove for about twenty minutes. I can confirm that Wagga Wagga is in the back end of nowhere. We turned back having found nothing and driven past only four other cars. This left us with the choice of going to the airport in the vain hope that there would at least be planes to watch.

Despite the enthusiastic tourism website there isn't much to do in Wagga Wagga and still less to do in the airport airport where we were stuck for some 3 hours before being able to board our plane home. There were no planes to watch. There was a helicopter, but it didn't fly anywhere. There was a shop which sold ginger beer. The girl behind the counter was clearly bored to tears and would start conversations with anyone and everyone.

I was treated to a pretty spectacular view of the stubble being burnt in the fields as we took off to come home, but I didn't have a camera.

ANZAC Day

It’s not bad this not drinking thing, really. I haven’t become a gibbering wreck, temptation hasn’t yet got the better of me and I haven’t succumbed to the truly awful nature of the world. Even despite the fact that it was ANZAC day yesterday and drinking is the favoured pastime.

ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and the day is set aside for the commemoration of Australia and New Zealand’s war dead. This primarily means remembering the horror that was the Gallipoli campaign in World War One. A grossly simplified version for those not familiar with Gallipoli:

Winston Churchill, first Lord of the Admiralty at the time, ordered the ANZACs and a British & French force to land on the Turkish coast and go about the business of ending Turkey’s involvement in the war. The day one objective for the landing party was a hill that it was believed had a view over a tactically important stretch of water named ‘the narrows’ which artillery would then be placed on to prevent Turkish use of the channel. After 8 months this objective was still not achieved. Like elsewhere in the first world war trenches and infantry were seen as the way to fight. This meant mining under or into enemy positions to blow them up. Unlike the Somme however the temperatures were scorching, the ground was hard limestone and the water ration 1 pint per day, one fiftieth of what would be provided to troops in those conditions today. Personal hygiene was impossible and dysentery killed as many as bullets and bombs (many of these being from the dread fate of falling into the latrine and not having the strength to climb out). Australia lost in the order of 26,000 men and about 20% of New Zealand’s male population was lost. The hill they were still fighting for at the end of the campaign has no view of the narrows, but it does have a particularly fine view of anyone attempting to approach the mainland from the coast.

Gallipoli caused Winston Churchill to resign from the government and has been attributed with triggering of his profound alcoholism. It is commonly thought of as one of the most disastrous campaigns of the First World War but could equally be seen as a tactical masterpiece from the Turks. The Turkish, for their part, do not distinguish between their own dead (220,000) and the Allies and ANZACs (180,000) and commemorate Gallipoli on the battlefield with Australia and New Zealand. Gallipoli is extremely important to the antipodean identity and is about the only day that kiwis and diggers don’t mercilessly take the piss out of each other. ANZAC day is for all ANZAC war dead and whilst it was particularly resonant last year as the 90th anniversary of Gallipoli it is more interesting this year as the last Australian World War One veteran to serve overseas died late last year. Kokoda is also commemorated on this day though it took place in August, as was Private Jacob Kovco, Australia’s only casualty of the Iraq conflict who, amongst the chaos of car bombs all around, rather tragically managed to shoot himself whilst cleaning his gun. He was apparently ‘an elite sniper’.

Very solemn commemorative services begin at dawn in Australia and marches take place until lunchtime when everyone goes to the pub to get pissed and plays 2up. 2up is a gambling game played with 2 coins and necessarily simple rules. You shout out your bet, "Ten dollars on heads!", and find someone who will take it. They hold the money and if you win he gives you twenty back, if it came up tails you lose it, if it comes up head and a tail you both bet again. This game must be played with as many people as possible, as loudly as possible and with as much beer as you can tolerate and still stand up. As far as I can tell it is designed to try and recreate the chaos of war in a pub setting, a good thing it is legal only on ANZAC day.

A week off...

There are moments in your life when you just wish someone would put you to bed with a shovel. Quite often on the morning after these moments I wake up feeling like someone actually did. This is becoming ever more frequent, frighteningly so, and I think it is time to take at least a week off the booze. This means no beer after work, no glass of wine with dinner, no sneaky G&T after dinner, no snifter of whiskey on the way to the bathroom, I must temporarily stop cleaning my teeth under running vodka and I absolutely have to stop drinking the mouthwash.

I am going to have to concentrate on my hobbies which may mean a flurry of inconsistent and possibly incoherently written posts on here as I attempt to come to terms with the world without the nice fuzzy haze around the edges. Essentially 95% of everything is rubbish and I tend to find that rubbish takes on a more decorative look when viewed through the bottom of a glass (half-empty naturally). The shock of actually dealing with a world without the daily dose of anaesthetic may reduce me to a shambolic wreck or it may spur me on to become the creative genius of my dreams. Probably not the last one, but it’s a nice thought.

Cooking is always a good way to relax. I will create some recipes and post them on here. Maybe I just need to freshen up and de-toxify my life in general. I hereby resolve to eat more fruit and veg, less red meat, fewer chips and no sugary soda. I will attempt to do more exercise and try to be more healthy and generally nicer to people. I shall be known for my sunny disposition, my charm and warmth. I shall be nice to children and small animals. Oh God it’s going to be awful. Rehab is for quitters.

NZ Summary

So now I’m back, from outer space (or New Zealand anyway, which is almost as densely populated with people as outer space, more sheep though).
Got in to find me here with a fat look upon my face (I need to get some bloody exercise, look at the photo in the sidebar: I’ve got saggy nipples!),
I would have changed my eating habits, should have gone for a run or three, if I’d thought for just one second I’d start to get flabby…

Enough with the Gloria Gaynor pastiche.

New Zealand was as beautiful as ever, but it was quite definitely Autumn there. Australia is baking hot by comparison.

It will surprise no-one to learn that on holiday, as in life in general I have spent my time in and out of hot water and engaged in activities that involve jumping into cold water. The brief version of the holiday goes like this:

• Friday 7 April – Sprint from work to airport. Arrive Aukland in the middle of the night. Taxi to friend’s house. Knock on wrong door, shit!


• Saturday 8 April – Ferry to Waiheke Island. Bus to accommodation. Walk on beach, admire Rod Stewart’s house from afar. Wedding – good! Drunk.


• Sunday 9 April – Hangover. Bad. Pie for breakfast, good! Wedding barbeque – good. Drunk, can’t remember much after that, other than throwing up when I got home.


• Monday 10 April – Not much of a hangover really. Walk on clifftops. Wine tasting tour. Buy wine. Buy some more wine! Taste olive oil. Mmm olive oil & bread. Fabulous lunch at winery. Walk on beach.


• Tuesday 11 April – Ferry to Aukland. Taxi to collect campervan. Diesel, bugger. Point campervan to middle of nowhere & drive. Arrive at hot springs in the middle of nowhere. Hot springs smell of eggs! Drive to campsite in Thames. Walk on Beach. Aaargh bed in campervan is like a Tetris puzzle to put together!


• Wednesday 12 April – Walk in bush. Trapped possum aaargh! Splattered rat, yuk. Set off all traps, hah! Abandoned goldmines. Shopping. Drive to Coromandel, stunning scenery. Shuffle schedule. Mmmm muscle chowder. Shelley beach campsite.


• Thursday 13 April – Drive to Whangamata. Note odd pronunciation. Breakfast in car park. Cave cruise with odd kiwi in ex-military boat. Amusing kiwi accent! Play instruments in cave. Drive to hot water beach. No hot water to be found. Not impressed. Walk on beach. Drive to Hahei and stay at holiday park. Walk on beach.


• Friday 14 April – Em goes diving, I make a thing out of bone. Lunch on beach. Drive to walks in woods. Drive toward Rotorua. What is that smell? Arrive Rotorua. Smell is Rotorua (lots of hot springs)! Thai dinner. Beer, wine. Polynesian Spa. Police are parked next to our van breathalysing everyone who drives past. ARSE! Talk to friendly bouncer have (soft) drink and go back to van. Police have gone. Get to campsite at half past midnight.


• Saturday 15 April – River rafting, over a 7meter waterfall, aaaarrrgggh! Hell’s gate spa, weird place, mudbath. Curry!


• Sunday 16 April – Walk round Rotorua. Hot springs & mud pools everywhere. Drive to walk along old railway tracks. Long dark tunnel. Weird. Drive to Waitomo Caves. Go down caves & underground river with the aid of a rubber ring. Glow worms, pretty. Walk from campsite through woods. Possum (untrapped), gloworms, pretty.


• Monday 17 April – Battle of wills with kitchen cleaner over epic sized omelette. Drive to Aukland. Holiday over, boo rubbish!

All this will be recounted in greater detail as I get the photos uploaded.

One thing I have noticed is that I was wound up really tight before the holiday and I have to try really hard not to fall back into the old habits of stressing out about, well everything really. I’m sure I never used to be like this, it must stop. I honestly have very little to worry about but I don’t know how Em has been putting up with me. Never mind, I will beat it.

Off to play tennis and be a pom at the top of my lungs – great fun.

That'll be me away...

In New Zealand for 10 days.

Posted from Kingsford Smith Airport in Sydney. Off for some blackwater rafting (!), some whitewater rafting, and we might manage to go to a frieds wedding at some point. More later.

Busy

There has been a brief silence on here, partly because our internet conection has been on the fritz but mostly because I'm busy. Rest assured that I am thinking up something typically witty and observant for my next post, possibly involving monkeys, but probably not.

There will also be a brief hiatus next week as I am going to New Zealand for a friend's wedding and then a holiday. I doubt that I will be near a computer during that week. In the meantime enjoy some of the new features in the sidebar that involve clever stuff called XML. Some of them do things when you write blog posts, some of them do things when I read blog posts or bookmark things I find noteworthy. More about XML later.

Weightlifting

Wandering into the pub with little to do but wait I found my eyes inexorably drawn to the television. When the revolution comes television will be banned from pubs outside of Sundays, international games of (assosciation) football and rugby (football) and made mandatory during the world cup.

Because the commonwealth games are currently being held in Melbourne anything that happens to be happening at the games is televised in every pub nationwide. This includes 'minority sports'. No, not the Mornington Crescent semi-finals or even the Octopush grand finals but sports that are either a waste of human effort or a simple passtime that, through the usual idiotic human tendancy of taking a good thing too far, has been elevated to the level of an international event (Synchronised swimming and table tennis respectively).

Because the concept of sport is as old as humanity itself and because not everyone is particularly good at actual games the Commonwealth Games actually contain very few games. Physical games, according to anthropologists, are a hunting and warfare substitute and so anyone who wants to play physical games should be encouraged to do so as the might otherwise try to kill something or someone.

But what about the people who are only good at one aspect of games? What if you can only throw things a really long way but not accurately enough for this to be any use? What if you can only run very quickly but only in a 400m oval? Well then for you we have athletics. Athletics are sport reduced to a single component and because the concept of 'I can do anything better than you' is somewhat older than humanity athletics have been around a similarly large amount of time.

Unfortunately the reduction of sport to it's most basic competetive element seems to invalidate the endeavour for the casual observer - "He can only throw things a really, really long way, but I bet he couldn't hit a target, especially a moving one". To combat this the proponents of athletics insist that there is actually a technique to what they are doing. Sadly the value of this too is hidden to the casual and uninformed observer. Some athletic disciplines recombine the disciplines into a single event to try inject a little versatility back into the equation; triathlon, heptathlon and decathlon for example. Even these are these are only combined reductions but at least the participants are capable of more than one thing. Other 'sports' don't even harbour the hope of this - such a one is weightlifting (yes, I know it doesn't fall into the athletics category but it's just a stupid idea).

Even if you recombined other athletic disciplines to create generic areas of sporting activity like running almost does to make say, Throwing (javlin, discuss, shot-put, frisbee) or Jumping (long jump, high jump, triple jump, pole vault and hopscotch) weightlifting is limited to lifting things in different ways and increasing mass. To stop the biggest person winning every time there are weight categories in weightlifting. The lowest men's category is 56Kg and less. I weight nearly 70Kg and I'm a scrawny and out of shape 5'9". The lowest women's category is 48Kg. Watching the light category lifters is a totally shameless freakshow for dwarf fixated perverts that should not be allowed on TV before 9pm, if at all. Most of the other weightlifters don't exactly have the appearance assosciated with being an athlete. In fact most of them have the physical carriage I assosciate with too much beer, chocolate and sitting on your arse watching TV.

Not enough thought has gone into weighlifting, they don't even try to lift different shapes. Surely lifting a spherical weight requires an entirely different technique to lifting the classic dumbell configuration? Even this slight variation doesn't happen in the competetive sport. Instead weightlifters create bizarre arbitrary and painful methods for lifting. Two of them. With silly names. Weightlifting is composed of 'the clean and jerk' and 'the snatch':

• The Clean and Jerk
  
  1. With back breaking effort and a pelvic thrust far from sexual in intent lift the dumbells vertically and bounce it off your pubic bone (it's always fun to watch the audience wince at this point)
  2. Crunch your body underneath the bar so that it rests accross your collarbone and use the strength of your thighs to stand up - try not to follow through
  3. Drop your body weight and straighten your arms above your head whilst thrusting one leg out backwards
  4. Stand up - try not to follow through
• The Snatch
  
  1. Grab the weight from the floor and hoist it upward whilst crunching your body underneath it straightening your arms and squating underneath it - all in one movement (it's always fun to watch the audience wince at this point) - try not to follow through
  2. Stand up - try not to follow through

See, easy when you know how. I was watching two sizeable Indian women lift heavier and heavier weights, they were great at the clean and jerk but probably lost sight of the snatch some years ago. It wasn't the fact that this activity had been elevated to the status of a sport that fascinated me but the fact that people seemed perfectly happy to sacrifice rectal integrity to do it competetively. It seemed certain that one of them would prolapse at any moment. I can't be good for the chalfonts. I want to see the application put back in to weightlifting. I need it demonstrated to me that this is a worthwhile endeavour. I want to see actual feats of strength not peculiar contorsions. Next time out weightlifters will have to lift up a car whilst someone changes each tyre in turn. They can start with a Smart car and move up to Landrovers and then on to trucks. The little guys should be pretty good at this, not being much taller than a jack at full extension anyway. Other useful weights lifted could include...er...well I don't know actually. I can generally lift everything I need to. I can say with a fair level of security that, barring being kidnapped by aliens and being put in some bizarre intergalactic circus, nothing would ever persuade me to put on a leotard and lift things so heavy as to threaten high speed anal leakage. Since I am having real trouble thinking of things that I need to be able to lift that I can't perhaps weightlifting should just be remoed from competition altogether. The fatties will just have to go back to wrestling.

Cinema

Even given the way Sydney likes to do things a little differently I hadn't quite expected to find the simple act of going to the cinema as good as it is at Govinda's

Going to the cinema and dinner are combined in a fantastic quiet night out. For a mere $21 you get an all you can eat Indian buffet with some of the most authentic flavours I've tasted. Admittedly the food is vegetarian - authentic see? - and there is no alchohol on site but if it's a school night it doesn't mattter so much.

It isn't just the food that's good though. The cinema is furnished with long bed like constructions that you lie on to watch the movie. This is absolute bliss and also means that if you've gone to watch a stinker of a film you can just go to sleep! Govindas, as you might suppose, is also an Indian wellness centre offering yoga and vegetarian cooking classes, but this just means the staff are a bit weird and wonderful to look at and if anything adds to the experience.

My business model is clear; copy Govindas but serve meat and alchohol and the world shall be mine (oh, and charge a bit more than $21)!

Dead arm

I awake with uneasy feeling, not unlike I've forgotten something. Have I left the oven on? Did I leave something important at work? No that's not it, something's missing. What could it be? Slowly I sit up getting more and more concerned for an apparently groundless psychological malaise. My left arm slides from my chest and falls into my lap lifeless and inert. That would be it then.

I have, for the second time that night fallen asleep in such a way that I have cut of the blood flow to my arm. It has been deprived of oxygen long enough for my unconscious mind to become worried and wake me, again. It sits there, warm and useless resisting every instruction from my brain. It might at least twitch or something, demonstrate that there's a bit of life left in it.

I try and massage some life back, reaching under my armpit to get the artery working again. I soon realise the stupidity of this as the blood rushes back into my arm bringing with it the return of sensation. Hundreds of blood vessels pop back into shape and capillaries slowly uncoil in the most excruciating way. Why is this sensation called 'Pins and Needles'? It is an entirely inadequate phrase to describe the pain, it feels like someone has let a thousand biting earwigs loose inside my arm. I get up and start flailing my arm against the doorframe. That'll teach it. Feeling returns to my wrist just as I whip it round and catch it on the doorknob. Ouch, a lot.

I wonder whether the bizarre dream I had about a limb gaining a life of its' own and wandering off without me is really such an unrealistic proposition. My left arm is certainly doing its' level best. Perhaps it will go off in a state of fugue and have an ever more elaborate set of adventures. It might get bored and return to me one night and I will wake up with some of its' memories. Maybe that's already happened and it goes off on its' own every night...

...maybe not.

Milosevic dead

My initial raction to this provided one of those moments when your first instinct is entirely the wrong one. I though 'good, one less murdering bastard'.

The important thing about Milosevic's trial was that he was on trial. Had a guilty verdict been secured he (and those that assisted him) in turning neighbours against each-other, turning whole countries into the site of the bloodiest and most foul outrages seen for a generation, the world, through judicial strength of character, might have been able to look itself in the eye again over the entire Yugoslav afair.

The wars in what used to be Yugoslavia weren't territory wars, they weren't even what you might call a civil war. It was war carried out as vendetta. Rape was used as a weapon. Mass murders weren't just common they were organised and carried out with the intention of removing entire ethnic groups. Because of the way this war was propogated there were no civilians, no possibility of non-involvement for anyone.

The world failed to step in to Yugoslavia to mediate. In fact it deliberately and in a considered manner decided to do nothing until it was too late to be able to do anything effective. There are various reasons excuses for this. Firstly that for a while at the beginning it looked like a war might not happen, that there would be a skirmish and that Yugoslavia as a nation would cease to be and democratic states would emerge.

Second that interfering in the sovereign affars of another nation without invitation is in itself an act of war. The debate over this at the United Nations prevented any quick action and certainly any police action with a 'robust mandate'. This is often the excuse given by people that find the third possibility a little tough to stomache.

The third and most contentious excuse was that NATO had no purpose now that global communism was effectively beaten. Its' member states saw the opportunity for it to become a global policing body leading them to delay any military commitment from/to the UN. The delay allowed a full blown war to develop which the UN was prevented from doing anything about by the debate in excuse number 2. NATO rolled in the tanks, giving the appearance of impatience with the UN and allowing a lot of talk about the UN being a paper tiger. NATO acted too late and with not enough understanding, it was by then a guerilla war and tanks were inneffective to stop the pogroms taking place in the woods and hills.

Excuse four is that this was a european problem and that the European Union should have taken more of an active role in solving it. Particularly as the intended aim of the EU is to prevent European conflicts by enabling closer political and economic ties. Yugoslavia was not in the EU as it saw it as a partisan organisation in the cold war and Yugoslavia was still in name communist. Prior to the Maastricht Treaty being signed the EU was essentially an economic body. Whilst there was a European Parliament and some European laws all the member states were extremely cautious about any action that implied the sovereignty of the European body over that of the member states. Post Maastricht the Sovereignty of Europe over its individual states is implicit, but very very slow.

Excuse five is more of a flat statement: there was no oil. The conflicts in Yugoslavia began in 1991, the same year that George Bush senior invaded Iraq over Kuwait. A fairly minor infraction compared to the cross border horrors taking place in eastern Europe. Had Yugoslavia been an oil state and of greater economc significance then the world would have acted to protect its' economic interests. Yugoslavia's main industry was tourism and instead of action the world decided it would rather just not go there.

These five pitiful excuses shamed the world and it's post cold war naivety. The world watched and talked whilst people were murdered and displaced. The only possibility of the outside world actually being able to act as if it did anything about the conflicts at all would be to demonstrate that justice was attainable without the use of a gun. The prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic and other perpetrators of offences against humanity on every side of this conflict might have gone some way to extend the reach of international law outside of that merely imposed by force by interested parties. It was important that Milosevic be shown to be guilty that he could be called a convicted war criminal, important because that is all the world had left from the wars in Yugoslavia. Part of me is pleased that the world is denied the right of convicting Milosevic because it serves to underline the fact that all attempts at sorting those bloody wars out were pointless talking shops as his trial has now ultimately become.

Am I sorry the man who gave the world ethnic cleansing is dead? No I'm not, not at all, but it might have been better had he died after being sent to jail.

Cranberry and lychee martini

A quick recipe for a great drink. In your cocktail shaker put:

3 shots of vodka
2 shots white rum
5 very thin slices of the freshest root ginger you can find
4 ice cubes

Then fill the shaker to two thirds to three quarters full with cranberry juice and top off with the syrup from your can of lychees. Shake until very cold. Serve with a slice of ginger and a lychee in the glass. Try not to drink too many, you won't be able to.

Edit, 2 January 2008: having recently discovered lychee liqueur you can amend this recipe and replace one of the shots of vodka with one of the liqueur. this makes the drink slightly less potent so if you're feeling extravagant just add an extra shot of lychee liqueur to this recipe. Also I have found it best to add a few slices of ginger to the shaker.

Weekend body boarding

When we moved from our last pad we bought a fair amount of kit from Loopy Lou, our affable but bonkers landlady. This included 2 used but serviceable body boards. Naturally as we live on a pretty good surf break we have been trying them out.

This is an enterprise not without its' hazards as the swell off the ocean comes straight into Maroubra. It gets fairly big and there can be a lot of white water to get through (if you have google earth installed on your PC click on the image to get go to the place marker).

The Sunday before last we had a great afternoon mucking about in the surf which was a fairly consistent 2-3 feet. Due to the physics of waves one in every few is much bigger than the waves around it having been amplified. This means that fun 2-3 foot waves can frequently include a 4-5 footer that can catch you completely unawares. The usual side effect of not spotting this wave until it's a bit too late is that you get completely wiped out by it. Just as you are recovering from the near inevitable drubbing the waves behind the monster normally hit you (they say here that it's the fourth wave that kills you, I have only ever been hit by 2 at time but I am not gong to get complacent). Whilst this sounds terrifying, in practice you don't actually have much time to be scared and self-preservation takes over.

We had had 2 good hours of catching waves pretty easily and not getting hit by anything. At about 5pm the waves started to get a bit bigger but I hadn't really noticed. In fact I didn't really notice anything more than a bit of a bumpy ride until I reached the beach and turned round to see Emily get sucked into the top of a 5 foot wall of water, which then fell on her. The two waves behind it predictably did their worst and she got out of the sea hyperventilating and shaking. Game over.

Unperturbed this Sunday we went out into a much bigger swell with 2 guys who've been doing this for 16 years or more. Using a current to get behind the breakers we soon found ourselves in what Coastalwatch described as a 3 foot swell. Beg to differ, by about another foot. Whilst this may be an illusion created by the fact that when you are in the trough of a wave it looks twice as big as it is, it was a pretty convincing illusion.

This was fun for a while, even restfull, watching big blue and green mountains roll underneath you. I will confess to being a bit scared by how far out we were but soon realised that we were pretty safe, as far as shark bait goes. Catching the first wave in proved pretty easy, the damn thing was so powerful you didn't need to do much to get it. Em got hit by it, and then the two behind it. It is a reassuring testament to human resilience that she got out of the water in one piece. Scared but otherwise unhurt. It took us a while to pluck up the courage to go back in.

This time Emily catches the wave, then gets hit. I get hit twice and then catch a wave. This time though there is a difference, the lifeguard is watching. The net result is a bollocking for not knowing what we're doing (exacerbated by our English accents no-doubt). It's a fair cop guv'. That night lying in bed I can still clearly feel the waves rolling under me. Closing my eyes results in flashbacks of breaking waves. Not the most restful night's sleep I've had. Still, I would happily go for an hour or two of it now. It's 3am and I'm supposed to be playing tennis at 7.

Busses

Sydney's busses are pretty good. They are well used and generally reliable. During rush hour they are crowded to the point of bursting but at the weekends and during even slightly off-peak hours they revert to the normal status of bus networks everywhere i.e. sinkholes for the hopeless, the disenfranchised and the truly strange.

The hopeless largely manifest themselves as people who don't know where they're going or which bus they need to get there. They resort to stopping every bus that comes past to ask exactly the same set of questions, receive negative answers and be told they need to get a different bus. This absolutely exasperating if you have any kind of desire to reach your destination at all. It is only the hung-over look of the people attempting this that holds me back from bellowing at them to stop wasting everybody's time and read the bus timetable handily displayed at the stop.

Other forms of public transport have their nutters but they simply don't have the strength in depth of bus nutters. I'm not just talking about people who mutter a bit and aren't particularly socially able. I'm talking about people who are genuinely odd. There is a guy who gets the bus from Maroubra who must be an urban Witch Doctor. He is probably six feet tall, even before putting the boots on. Naturally he dresses head to foot in black and is covered in totally artless tattoos (spider's webs, inverted pentagrams, you've seen it before). He also wears dreamcatcher earings (black), a skirt (black) and has the habit of starting conversations with people without warning and whether they happen to be there or not.

Perhaps busses are treated as territory by odd people and they feel that they have to patrol their routes regularly. Maybe they are some kind of staging area or display ground for a contest in who can be the strangest. If they are, the prize in the heavyweight class has to go to the lesbian couple whose combined weight must be 200kg (a bit over 30 stones). One of them is clearly an avid sports fan, I have never seen her wear anything other than AFL shirts and necessarily loose fitting jeans. She too is covered in tattoos whose locations probably had more to do with the relative sobriety of the wearer than actual choice.

She has rather fetching haircut with a plaited rat’s tail at the top and shaved sides that makes you think she aspires to being an Amazonian Indian. Though I doubt the rainforest has quite enough lollies for her. Her partner is by far the larger of the two. If she wishes to exit the bus she has to do so without turning around as attempting this manoeuvre in the narrow gangway of the bus would wrap her nameless flabbier extremities around the interior of the bus, potentially smothering fellow passengers. She is otherwise remarkable in that she seems to dress entirely in second hand clothing. Presumably the off-casts of people who have now become thin. Just how many obese lesbians must there be out there to generate a second hand clothes market?!

None of these people are particularly intimidating or scary but there is one passenger that everybody fears. She joins the bus between Maroubra and Coogee. She is docile and keeps herself to herself not even muttering. Sadly she reeks to high heaven of some noxious chemical quite clearly designed to repel the inevitable infestations to her unsanitary person. Her long grey hair is stained a revolting yellow, her clothes cannot now be dated, warped as they are by her lumpen form. Should smells one day become visible this woman will be trailed by an acrid choking green-brown trail.

She seems to be totally unaware that the cloud she lives in brings tears to the eyes and may well be hazardous in poorly ventilated areas. Whenever she is on the bus I find myself wondering if her olfactory sense failed before the smell, or because of the smell. She lives in a scentless world where everyone mutters and coughs behind her back. My sympathy goes out to her, kind of.

The real reason most of these people have to get the bus is, because of whatever reason, they should not be allowed anywhere near a car. In the case of the last passenger because she would suffocate very quickly being entirely oblivious of the toxins building to deadly levels in the air around her. The two lesbians would take hours to get into and out of the car; in fact I doubt that anything without sliding doors would even work for them. The Witch Doctor who talks to absent friends is also liable to stop to allow them to cross the road making him a deadly hazard to other road users. These are people deemed by society to be too strange to drive.


Post script
The part of me that enjoys antagonising idealists (i.e. my brain) wants to point out that the bus is by far the cheapest way around any city and as such, broadly speaking it represents the social underclasses. It will probably go on to point out that trains, whilst nearly as affordable, are slightly more expensive and travel further afield to far more affluent suburbs. After that it will hopefully run out of ideas as the last thing the world needs is a tongue in cheek Marxist theory of commuting. Fin

Spam

Normally I don't get spam but a few emails seem to be creeping through the net recently. I thought I would share the one below as it has a kind of Haiku like poetry to it:

here mischievous beautiful motor? here slow did. love mischievous friends am letters companion?
reply make wife slow bought.
slow is different nothing goes.
beautiful sandwich immediate leader. reply rich yours am? we make anybody least off.
companion here turning he shining.

I suspect it is piece of oriental spam (sweet 'n' sour? spam in black bean sauce?) may have been translated using a crap piece of software.

Maybe I should think up a reply:

here forlorn motor none. mischevious rental driving. already least off. easily companion shining. innadequacy beckons strongly.
improved sin wife no. all bought before.
fast is better everything passes.
reply blog rich are.
beautiful breakfast eventual domination.

It'll do for the moment.
I am sat at home waiting for people to take away the washing machine, I'll think of something good to write in a minute....

Filed under:

• garbage

Linkdump

To add fuel to the fire of my burgeoning addiction to the internet I have added a new function to the sidebar; the linkdump.

In this section I will be posting all the stupid little random links I come accross in the course of dossing about on the internerdwebnet that I find amusing but that don't warrant writing about. It took me a while to figure out how to make this work and it still needs a little fine tuning but I'm pretty happy with it. New clickables are always good.

Unfortunately it also means that I will have to find a new development project to keep me entertained. Hmmmmmm.... tabbed sections, you say? A bit complicated, but I'll work it out.

Landlords:two:Oz

Moving to Australia has meant a return to dealing with landlords, and to be fair, our first experience was fairly easy. All we had to do was deal with a nutty Californian lady who could talk about anything until coherence and subtlety were distant memories. Pretty easy really, especially as she was quite happy to join you for the odd glass of vino whilst she did so. Our current landlord is a different matter entirely.

Whilst trying to rent the place from him we turned up to look at the flat at the time allotted. The estate agent rings on the intercom. No answer. The estate agent tries again:

Landlord: “Er, I’m sorry I got a bit drunk last night and I’ve got a child here at the moment. It’s just not convenient, can we do it later?”

We exchange axious looks of the 'Bloody hell, that’s bit more than dodgy' type. Estate agent looks suitably sheepish but keeps his cool admirably. We are assured that Landlord is not actually a pederast but slightly ditsy and has forgotten to mention that the child’s parent is also there, he hopes.

We struggled through contract negotiations with Landlord during which he tries to bypass the estate agents and manage the property himself. Having learnt that Landlord is a bit useless. We are having none of it and refuse to talk to him until he goes through the agent. After we had managed to sign a contract, about 3 months after we first saw the flat, we are provided with one key. The keys to the building are restricted security keys and can’t be copied at just any corner store. They also include a smartcard that gets you through the front door and up in the lift. We have exactly zero hope of getting these copied. There are 2 of us, there are two names on the contract, we work to different schedules in different companies in different places and do different things outside of work. It is profoundly difficult for us to organise our lives round one key. We call Landlord and ask for another key:

Landlord: “Oh, oh yeah. Of course you’ll need that won’t you?” Yes. Yes, we will. "I’ll bring it over on Thursday."

I leave work early on Thursday to get home in time for Landlord to bring the key over. Landlord fails to arrive. I rearrange for him to bring the key over at the weekend. Landlord fails to arrive. On Monday I call Landlord and then the estate agent:

dataphage: "Landlord has failed to provide us with a key, which means we can’t access our post to sign the inventory you’ve sent us. I have suggested to him quite strongly that he drop the key off at your branch office in our building. Perhaps you could ensure that he does given that he has failed to do so twice this week."
Estate agent: heavy sigh "I’ll talk to him."

I get a flustered call from Landlord assuring me that the key will be left at the office 10am Tuesday morning as arranged. A strange feeling of unease comes over me on Tuesday morning. This grows until I can no longer restrain myself from calling the branch office.

dataphage:"Hello, has our landlord left a key for us?"
Branch office: "No, there’s no key been left here." A note of curious laughter enters Branch office's voice "Who’s your landlord?"
I give Landlord’s name.
Branch office: Unhelpful snigger

They have clearly dealt with him before and no longer have to. I call the estate agent's main office and explain the situation:

dataphage: "If I am to be able to collect the key I must leave work in next 15 mins and it is not where it is supposed to be."
Estate agent: heavy sigh "I’ll talk to him. Don’t leave work until you hear from me."

Three quarters of an hour later I get a call from estate agent: "We now have the key. Oh, and by the way we close in one hour." I am at least a 40 minute bus ride from their office and I’ve just missed the last bus that would get me there in time. A scream of rage escapes my lips and my colleagues give me a look of the kind normally reserved for axe weilding loonies. I charge out of the building pausing only for a brief tirade against the slowness of the lift. I flag down a bus and find that I won't actually have to threaten the driver as it is going in roughly the right direction. To my chagrin it is doing so at the speed of an off-peak city bus in heavy traffic. Eventually I get to roughly where I'm going and have to run for 20 minutes to make it to the estate agent's office in time. Landlord's name is mud, although I find many varied themes on mud most of them far less polite.

Imagine my joy then when the washing machine and the steel shutters on the front of our balcony break. I call the esatate agent who calls Landlord. Landlord's first reaction is to call me.

Landlord: "The washing machine is still under warranty from the shop I bought it from."
dataphage: "...and..."
Landlord: "Well, why don't you go there and get them to come over and fix it?"
dataphage: "Which shop is this?"
Landlord: "Oh you know, the second hand appliances shop on, er, what's the name of that road now.... You go up Maroubra road, take a left at the roundabout, then take a right, and then a left I think, er... and it's opposite the supermarket in that little row of shops hidden away a bit, you might not be able to see it from the road. I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the place."
dataphage: "Do you have any paperwork for the warranty?"
Landlord: "Er, no."
dataphage: "A reference number?"
Landlord: "Er, no."
dataphage: "A contact I can speak to?"
Landlord: "Er, no."
dataphage: "A phone number?"
Landlord: "Er, no."
dataphage: "Right so let me be completely clear about this. You would like me to go hunting around a part of town I don't know, for a shop that I don't have the name of, in a place it might not be, to ask someone whose name I don't have to fix my washing machine for free with supporting with paperwork I don't have?"
Landlord: "I'd better go down there and sort it out."
dataphage: "And the shutters?"
Landlord: "You'll need to speak to the Building Manager. His name is Mark."
dataphage: "Mark what?"
Landlord: "Er..."
dataphage: "Do you have a phone number?"
Landlord: "Er, no."
dataphage: "Do you know where I can find him?"
Landlord: "He's sometimes at the office downstairs at about 8:30. Sometimes."
dataphage: "I leave for work at 7:45"
Landlord: "Oh."

I have to put up with this dipstick for at least the next 11 months.

Landlords:one:UK

It appears I am forever cursed to have inept and daft landlords. They have become a recurring theme whenever I have to rent property from someone I don’t know.

My first muppet landlord experience was, as it no-doubt is for most people, with the owner of our university digs. Dave, Ben and Chris (Bryce too if you read this) you may be forgiven an involuntary shudder when I mention the name Simon Whittaker.

Being at University in the small west-midlands town of Alsager was tough enough without being troubled by idiot landlords. For a start there were the locals who were almost universally hostile until you had either been a regular in their pub for at least a year or allowed them to gatecrash your party. Even then there were a few I wouldn’t like to meet on a dark night, or even on a summer’s afternoon come to think of it…

Mostly though the difficulty I experienced living in Alsager was the general feeling in that time there passed more slowly than in the rest of the country. We were there from 1996-99, the dot.com technology boom and subsequent bust was about to happen, it was just before the turn of the millennium, and the rest of the country was alive with a buzz of energised anticipation. In Alsager it was still 1976 and time shuffled forward in gloomy apathy and total ignorance of the progress in the wider world.

Our house wasn’t bad as far as student accommodation goes, we even had a suitable cupboard to hide Bryce in. The bugbear with renting it was the landlord. Simon wasn’t a bad person; he wasn’t malicious and didn’t do anything out of spite particularly. He was just a tit.

Take as an example what happened when the oven gave up the ghost. We ring Simon and tell him that the oven is broken and receive the answer: “I’ll get my father in law to come round and have a look at it this weekend.” Fair enough. A week goes by and not a whisper from Simon. We ring again:

”Hi Simon. Can’t help but notice that the oven is still knackered and we haven’t heard anything from you.”
“Ah, yes sorry about that I’ll pop round this weekend and get him to look at it.”

Simon arrives on the Saturday morning, half an hour late. Simon collects rent checks and we talk casually pretending that there isn’t a pungent whiff of marijuana in the air. Half an hour later a venerable old gent in dressed in tweeds complete with matching flat cap rides his ‘sit-up-and-beg’ bicycle up to the front door and announces his presence. This could go one of two ways we think. This guy is either going to bring out an ancient Swiss army knife and rebuild the kitchen with it or install a Victorian wood fired cooking range. After a fortnight without an oven either one of these will be a bonus.

The venerable old gent removes his cycle clips, puts on his half-moon specs and fiddles with the controls on the oven. “Hmmmm”, he says, bends down and takes a look inside. He puts a hand in his pocket; here comes the Swiss Army knife we think. He takes out a handkerchief and stands up cleaning his specs. Simon asks:

“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well it it’s broken isn’t it.”

Oh for pity’s sake.

Simon had a habit of arriving unannounced and bringing his children with him. Thankfully as we had a Playstation we had a ready-made way of keeping them quiet and out of the interesting array of stoner gear that was artfully semi-concealed around the house.

It was when he brought around the baby that I think I finally gave up trying to be reasonable and discovered that I couldn’t stand the man. When collecting rent cheques and checking the house for damage you need both hands free. The activity is incompatible with holding a baby, so he gave the wretched infant to me! I found another reason not to have children that day: they’re bloody heavy. Fighting back the urge to rid the world of Whittaker’s progeny, and trying to suppress revolting speculations as to the bore and capacity of Mrs Whittaker I stood there struggling with the boss-eyed baby for about an hour. I was only relieved of one drooling freak by the other when it became abundantly clear that I had categorically had enough.

The last straw with Whittaker came when we were in the last term of our three years and were about to move out. The phone rang:

"Hello Simon"
"I’m going to send round some people to look at the house"
"That’s fine just let us know what day next week they’re coming round and we’ll make sure everything is ready."
"Er, in about twenty minutes…"
"WHAT?!"
"Er, um…"
"Simon you will note from the contract you signed that you are required by law to give us 24 hours notice before any visit. We have spoken about this before."
"Er, um, er…"
"We will do this just the once on the concrete understanding that we get at least a day’s notice in future is this absolutely clear?!"
"Er, yes um er…"

The doorbell sounds before I have put down the phone and 7 wide-eyed 18 year-olds are stood on our doorstep blinking in the sunlight. The house was just about big enough for the 5 of us. I have no idea how they fared with 7 people. We left them in no doubt as to what they are getting themselves into with Whittaker.

The second landlord …er… landlady was not a problem being a very houseproud and efficient person. Unfortunately the reason we were able to rent her flat in Stratford in East London was because she was moving to New Zealand. A fact which meant she left the management of the place to the local branch of Winkworth Estate Agents. These people managed to combine laziness, incompetence and ‘English as a second language’ difficulties in one disastrous package.

When the boiler broke it took three weeks of arguing with them to get it fixed. I don’t know if you have ever tried to do without hot water for three weeks but it isn’t much fun. Cold showers are not invigorating in February, they are life threatening. Naturally we refused to pay the rent that month and made the estate agents explain to the landlady exactly why. She wasn’t pleased and they eventually lost her business.

Winkworth did not cover themselves in glory and like most estate agents wanted to the minimum amount of actual management and still collect the money for it. A pity then that the plumbing in our upstairs neighbour’s flat began to leak eventually leading to the ceiling of our bathroom falling in leaving a hole into our flat you could easily have climbed through. Net result, we can’t use the bathroom for showers or baths, again. Whilst the insurance certainly covered this, the estate agents were so hopeless that we had to organise the vast majority of the work that had to be done on the place ourselves. By the time we moved from Stratford I had truly had enough of renting.

In other news...

I've got a hangover so I'm not doing any work and I don't feel like writing anything good. Instead I shall be plumbing the depths of the internet for crap. It's going to be a long day...

Cartoon causes religious outrage.

Italian granny snatches jewelery. Sorry.

In case you missed this story: British Inteligence's most sophisticated surveillance technology is a rock. Q division are clearly running out of ideas.

The events of 11 September 2001 are all a big conspiracy. No, really.... Although when you read about what everyone was doing the day before you do begin to wonder a bit. They clearly knew that something was about to happen.

A collection of useless trivia, much of it untrue.

Pi to one million places, just in case you need it.

How to turn a room sideways. Bloody students.

Water bottle jet pack.

Don't try and cure hiccups with a gun. It might prove a little too effective.

There is now a new surgical option for ugly people. A genuine face transplant. Maybe that's what world class airhead Paris Hilton needs to be able to change her fixed facial expression.

Dinner ladies investigate what's in Superman's lunchbox:

There were just so many options for captions for this picture that I had trouble choosing one. Rejections included the disgusting 'Superman tosses dinner ladies salad'. Thank God I didn't publish that one.

Still unemployed

I didn't get the job I interviewed for on Monday...

...and to begin with I was disappointed but life goes on. I did well to get an interview for it at all to be honest. I was stupidly nervous and I'm not sure I gave the best account of myself, but it's difficult to perform when your mouth is so dry that your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth.

I now have a lot of people to contact and lots more searching to do. I have also restored the post below which took a quick break whilst gainful employment was a possibility.

And now some pictures!!


A cockatoo, these things are everywhere. They screech extremely loudly and strut around like they own the place, a bit like me after the third cup of coffee.


A wallaby. They all give you this look.




Big lizards are very cool and also strut around like they own the place. To be fair, having seen them fight each other, I'm not going to argue.


Sydney harbour bridge at night.




New years eve fireworks from Taronga Zoo.


The view from our front window. It's a tough life innit?!

Give us a job...

The following post is provided for entertainment value and as an indication of the state of mind of the writer. Any similarity to organisations or people living or walking-dead, whether implied or implicit is unintentional, honest. It is also and an indication that you need to find a new job...

Dear [insert bland first name]

Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today and answer my standard questions aimed at unpicking the ambiguous and confusing job title advertised on SEEK.com. I have read the role description published on your website and am still none the wiser. I can see from this that you have decided who the role will report to and avoided specificity in all other areas so that applicants remain ignorant of the degree to which they will be used as a dogsbody. Clearly you have no idea what this role will actually entail and have rolled together as many indefinite responsibilities as you can into a single list. I have also noted that whilst your advert states that there are ample opportunities for progression and personal development with the organisation that there is absolutely no concrete commitment to this process in any of your literature and not even a suggestion of it in the role description.

Despite the obvious risks to my career, happiness and wellbeing involved in taking on a role that your organisation is clearly incapable of defining and whose exact nature you are attempting to conceal from applicants, the job title would look good on the increasingly elaborate work of fiction that is my CV and I would like to apply for the role. I have recently arrived in Australia on a four year business sponsored working visa. Since August I have been working for a large boring financial organisation doing something far less interesting and important than I can make it sound.

Prior to this I spent two and a half years working for a UK Children's mental health charity staffed largely by mental children. This was an exceedingly challenging and diverse role where I was made to implement secretive descisions made over my head and against my advice. My major responsibility was to plan, schedule, resource, coordinate, track and report on the complete cycle of training projects to unreasonable timescales and tiny budgets for overdemanding and ignorant clients with the absolute minimum of guidance and supervision.

I also undertook ad-hoc projects which were better suited to the remit of more senior members of staff but were evidently too tedious for them to undertake. These could be as varied as: generating strategically significant marketing collateral that the organisation was too cheap to outsource to a professional service; designing and implementing department proceedures for members of staff to bypass; and coordinating organisation-wide events designed to alienate valued employees or expose organisational weaknesses to competing providers.

I see my major skills as:

• Guesswork - Being able to read my superiors' mind and act on half-impressions in the absence of proper guidance
• Bullshitting - Producing written information given as fact based on targets rather than achievements, constructing budget assumptions based on logistically impossible sales targets and being the point of first contact for clients and customers who have bizarre and frightening questions that no one could have feasibly anticipated
• Manipulation - Strongarming people, cajoling, lying, blackmailing, pleading, bursting into tears and when all else fails asking nicely to get my way
• Panicking - Arriving at interim solutions that somehow are never converted into full processes, working out of hours, completing tasks well outside my job description and taking the easy, expensive option when important tasks become urgent ones

I want to continue to develop and continue utilising these skills in an organisation that has a reputation for incompetence, an atmosphere of buckpassing, belligerence and recrimination.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Is that an iPod in your pocket or are you just a poser?

I, like many, have iPod envy. I really want an iPod and far too many people I know now have one. The reason I haven't bought one is broadly the same reason I haven't bought a digital camera of my own. When I have money I don't have a computer to allow me to use it properly. Now that I have a computer I'm utterly boracic.

But it isn't just fiscal limitations that are stopping me from buying one. It's also the fact that owning an iPod also marks you out as the kind of person who owns an iPod i.e. an overgrown music obsessed adolescent who ought to stop spending all their money on CDs and grow up a fraction. This isn't simply jealousy talking or me attempting to cover up any lingering status anxiety I may have. When they first came out the status that an ipod conferred on its' owner could be likened to that of the mobile phone or a filofax. The kind of people that owned one either needed it as a business tool to back up their hard-drive or wanted to be the kind person who needed it and weren't (I shall call these people "Business" Tools).

The iPod seems to have gone through a kind of high speed version of the acceptance that both these functional accessories went through after years of being the mark of a complete prick, probably because of it's stunningly good design and an equally well conceived ad compaign. However, when Levis start making jeans with a remote control, docking station and headphones built in you know it really is going back to being the walkman for wankers. Probably the worst indication of the syndrome is the people that use the headphones that come with the iPod, the horrible little white ones. Proprietry headphones are notoriously and universally bad. The first thing anyone should do when they buy a product that needs headphones is replace the ones that come with it. I don't care who makes them for apple they are by the very definition of the thing, shite. They are also a very conspicuous status symbol, wearing the white headphones is the equivalent of waving your iPod at people and shouting "60 gigabytes of musical pleasure!" in the most obnoxious possible way. When people in London started getting mugged because they were wearing them I was secretly quite pleased (I also wished I'd thought of it first and that I had the guts to try it).

However much I rail against the iPod though the fact remains I desparately want one. I tell myself that I am waiting for the technology to settle down, that the current 60gb machine will eventually reach the size of the current iPod nano in accordance with Moore's Law, that I'd break it and that there are better storage devices out there that do more, but well, they just aren't as pretty really are they? Another problem is that I don't really need one. A 60gb iPod can store about 15,000 songs. That's more than a thousand albums which means unless you are a slightly obsessive DJ you will have paid for an awful lot of empty space. Even if I used the iPod to store pictures it will never be full, it can hold 150 hours of video, I don't watch that much TV, especially not on a screen that size, I don't buy DVDs and I go to the cinema quite a lot.

In any case I'd probably rather have a book than listen to music and the portable eBook reader is still a woefully innadequate thing by comparison almost certainly because books do not have the profit margin of music. Perhaps I will wait for an apple version of the eBook technology that links with something like the iPod (an iLibrary?). Text is a much more easily stored and compressable data format than music, pictures or video. Sony quote an average figure of 800kb for an eBook file. That means that, even uncompressed, you could fit over 76,000 books into 60gb of storage. You could have an encyclopaedia, a dictionary, a thesaurus and a truly vast array of fiction to take with you everywhere. You might just persuade me to pay for that.

Happy New Year!

New Year's day and I wake up in an oven. Is this a hangover induced suicide attempt? Am I trying to end it all rather than face a week-long headache? Tutting at the inefficient method of bringing about my own demise - clearly I was drunk when I thought that one up - I decide to go and find a better one that will deal with the overwhelming feeling of nausea more swiftly. Perhaps I could fill my lungs with gas and inhale a lit match, that at least will be swift and relatively painless and has the added benefit that someone else has to clear up a lot of mess...

Why is it so bloody hot? Vaguely I stagger to my feet wondering what callous bastard has shrunk me and is now trying to cook me. Perhaps I have been kidnapped by a race of giant sadists intent on roasting me for a celebration lunch. I started fumbling around and find that I was actually in the flat, which means at least there will be something cold in the fridge. The fridge!! Quick climb in the fridge! Ahhhhhhhhhhh, that's better. Well what d'you know the little light stays on! Ooh look a nice cold beer. Mmm beer, now how the hell am I going to open it...oh rapture it's got a twist off cap!! What the bloody hell is going on? The door's opening, someone's going to try and take my beer! No getoff stoppit shutthefuckingdoor it's hot out there!

I find myself extracted from the fridge by force, removed from my comfortable perch atop the salad crisper and thrust back into the oven that the flat has become. My mother is shouting at me in a whispery kind of way. Ah, no she's actually whispering. What's this strange uncomfortable feeling? During my brief refrigeration I have sat on the broccoli. Not all my faculties are incapacitated, swiftly I break of a couple of florets and shove them in my ears. The world returns to an almost normal volume. Yes, yes, happy new year to you too now why the bloody hell isn't the air conditioning on? What's that you say? You're going to flay a pig? That's no way for a vegetarian to behave. Ah no I've misheard you haven't I, you're actually going sailing. The ocean, that's a good idea it might be cooler in the ocean.

At top speed I charge back into the bedroom and smack straight into a wall of flashing lights and pain. Making a mental note that moving too quickly makes the chattering monkey that clearly crapped in my mouth hit me in the eyeballs making it difficult to see I struggle with my boardshorts. I remove the lower broccoli and try again - success!

No time for footwear moving as quickly as the pain will allow I grab a towel and charge out of the front door. I can see the ocean, it's calling to me, soothing cold water...ouch...must quickly get to the soothing cold...OUCH... aaaAARRRGGGHH FIRE FIRE FIRE Why the hell do they make roads out of black stuff in this country what a stupid idea. Dash for the sand, that'll be cooler. No it's bloody not!! FUCK.

There are thousands of people between me and the sea aaaarrgh!! In a move that would have amazed my secondary school games teachers who tried in vain to get me to play rugby I flatten six people and run round a further five. There is an audible sizzle as my feet meet the water. The lifeguards are advancing on me menacingly. I offer them some broccoli in an attempt to placate them but it only annoys them. Out into the water pronto, they'll never catch me out there. Look they're jumping around and shouting with raw naked frustration. Call yourself a lifeguard and you're afraid of the sea? You big girl's blouse!

Bloody hell the waves are big today. The rip tide's quite strong too. I wonder if that's what the lifeguards were...SPLADOOSH...glub...WHOOSSSHHH...

New Year's Day was the hottest day in Sydney since 1939 and the hottest New Year's Day on record for the city. Not good weather for a hangover. Thankfully the fairly sizeable swell coming into Maroubra Beach knocked some sense back into me.

Naturally with it being a public holiday and 44ºC everyone, and I do mean everyone, was at the beach. So was I until common sense intervened, I went back to the flat and cranked the air conditioning up. Unfortunately whilst the waves were working their magic the sun was burning my back. Hangover + Sunburn = You Have Only Yourself to Blame. Bugger.

Sydney's 'race riots' (bloody hell, actual news!).

You may have heard that Sydney is currently experiencing a few public order difficulties. This is not a new phenomenon. It's summer, beaches and sunshine attract young people and have always been regarded as territory. Add beer into the mix, a liberal dosage of racial intolerance, beat well and hey presto your very own riot-ette.

The actual facts of how the race riots came to be are both unclear and unimportant. The events of the previous weekend are part of an ongoing attitude of intolerance by everyone concerned. The state premier has said that the riots are a sign of an undercurrent of racism in Australian society, I'm rather afraid he might be right. The Prime Minister said that he did not think that this was the case, even Aussies have greeted this with a degree of disbelief.

This is difficult to explain and has a lot to do with the Australian national character being more than a trifle confrontational. In absolutely no regard is anyone blameless in this situation, everyone involved has some level of culpability. That is not to suggest that there are no victims. As normal everyone ends up suffering for the actions of the idiotic few.

Talking to people this week everyone has some dubious 'a friend of mine' story of being hassled by 'Lebs' on the beach (people of middle-eastern appearance, normally young men). Most of these seem to centre around dress code with people being surrounded and told to cover-up if the girls are wearing bikinis. This pretty much typifies how everyone approaches this situation. The caucasian majority are not too keen on people that look different and the immigrant population are not too keen on assimilating. These stories were all too prevalent and the Aussies were a bit too quick to give them to everyone else.

The original intent of the protests at Cronulla was as a demonstration against gangs on the beach. This demonstration was meant to be a peaceful family event . A text message was sent round by someone who had clearly got the wrong idea calling on people to 'reclaim their beach'. From that point on the whole process seems to have been hijacked by people who had an axe to grind.

The media too must take their share of the blame, which is a sizeable chunk in their case. You may have seen footage and photographs of the riots and they are as unpleasant as one might expect. I doubt very much if anything about them struck you as odd. Compare these pictures to other footage you have seen of riots. All the shots are very close up and are taken from the point of view of the rioter. The photographers and cameramen were in the thick of the action, right in the middle of it. How the hell did they get there?

The media had been talking this story up all week into a race issue in the hope of actually having something to report. Their presence is enough to bring about the display mentality and alchohol and group presence the diminished responsibility that triggered people into idiocy. The reporters were going into the heart of the crowd and asking difficult questions of people that had not the intellect, the vocabulary or inclination to answer. Something the replies showed up:

"No I'm not a racist. I love everyone. We've just had e-fucking-nough. We've had e-fucking-nough."

What he'd had e-fucking-nough of he didn't say, possibly this was the subject of the leading question given to him by the journalist looking for a good vox-pop or possibly he didn't have the wit to qualify his statement.

And then there are the racists, quite a lot of them. Many of them were wearing the cross of the 1854 Eureka rebellion. This flag is very similar in intent to the American confederate cross. This is a shame because it should have none of the racist overtones given its origins. The Eureka rebellion ought to occupy a place in Australian cultural history similar, to that Magna Carta has in England - smaller scale obviously.

Despite all the sound and fury this was pretty small beer as far as riots go. Nothing got burned, no-one was killed, there was no looting and no planned violence. LA, Paris, London and just about anywhere that has had real civil unrest would have laughed this off. To give you some kind of idea of the scale of it, there has been worse violence at football matches in the UK, probably with more pronounced racist overtones. So how did it get in to headlines worldwide? Well for a start because the Australian media are keen to make a name for themselves and really want to export news as much as they import it - which is a little difficult as they are a bit short on product - also because the way they report here has to be seriously overblown to make an impact on an unusually pragmatic and sanguine populace, something that doesn't translate very well elswhere. Secondly because the received image of Australia elswhere in the world is red desert with some kangaroos in it interspersed with beach paradise inhabited by sports obsessed beer drinkers - which is more or less correct - the idea that Australia has overwhelming social issues is a bit new to people who don't think very hard about its' origins and history i.e. everyone. And lastly because nothing happens here and anything of significance happening in Australia is news almost for that reason alone.

The police in any country do not normally cover themselves in glory in situations like this but I have to say the Sydney police seem to have handled themselves pretty well. They protected people from the mob, didn't get involved, and didn't allow themselves to become a target. Actual violence was for the larger part confined to property, there were a few unlucky individuals but it could have much, much uglier. The reaction afterwards has been enourmous. There have been peace and anti-racism rallies, emergency legislation and additional police brought in. All the beaches were locked down this weekend with police putting roadblocks up, searching cars and in real trouble spots not allowing anyone but residents access to the beach. This could be seen as a major over reaction but the police did manage to confiscate a few petrol bombs and some home-made weaponry but total arrests this weekend were in single figures. It is also only 2 weeks to Christmas, and Aussies spend Christmas on the beach. Everyone wants this finished before it ruins the biggest holiday of the year. The cynical amongst us might also be tempted to suggest that this is a result of the Prime Minister being asked difficult questions at an international conference. Whatever the reasons the beach was beautifully quiet. If that is the way things are going to be then the police can have road blocks every weekend.

Shark season

With summer comes shark scares, yay! Most beaches here have shark sirens which are custom designed to scare the shite out of everybody, which is fair enough as nearly 5 meters of shark is going to give you a bit of a breathless moment anyway. However the ensuing panic of hundreds of people making a break for the shore may well excite the pointy-toothed leviathan - turning it from casual observer interested by all the funny soft pink things in the water to frenzied attacker confused by all the food suddenly trying to run away.

Everyone's reaction to a shark in the water must give the lifeguards a bit of a giggle. This quote is from the most recent news story where a good-sized shark was spotted off Bondi Beach:

"There were 100 people up the top screaming like monkeys," said Anthony Carroll, one of the lifeguards who went out on jet-skis to alert swimmers.

It looks like the Bondi shark is either hanging around or has brought a friend as another sizeable one was spotted at Tamarrama yesterday.

It's not like people don't know there are sharks here. Divers specifically come to places like Gordons Bay and Clovelly to see the sharks. It is also extremely rare that people get bitten. It has been a year since anyone has been attacked and people were surprised when that happened. The guy who was attacked last Christmas was English. The shark bit his board so he punched it on the nose, got out of the water, got another board and went back in. Dozy pom. This was at Bronte Beach, which is about 1.5km from Bondi as the shark swims.

The beach that I live at, Maroubra, is listed as critical habitat for sharks and large fish, there are diving and fishing restrictions as you can see from the sign in the picture. It is also one of the most reliable surf breaks in Sydney and on any given day there will be at least ten people in the water on surfboards (most people who get attacked are surfing - wetsuits and surfboards make you look like food even more than if you are just swimming). I have not yet heard of anyone beeing attacked or even seeing a shark at Maroubra, probably because they treat the open water with a bit less complacence.

The normal air patrols that give the lifeguards early warning of big sharks close to shore do not have the funding to run this year and the police don't have the resources to do it instead so there are going to be a lot more of these scares this summer. I've decided I'm not going to let it bother me. If you get bitten you are profoundly unlucky and the chances of it happening are so small as to be comparable with being hit by lightning. I say this because I was in the ocean at seven this morning and it was a great way to wake up. Emily chose this as the moment to tell me about the shark scares and quickly freaked herself out and started jumping at shadows in the water, they turned out to be seaweed.

Summer has arrived...

Summer has quite clearly arrived in Sydney. It hit 40°C here yesterday, even the Aussies called that bloody hot. Thankfully the humidity stayed below 20% so you could still move around in it but it was a bit like being shoved in a tumble dryer. It's on days like that I really appreciate the breeze off the ocean at Maroubra and - joy of joys - the air conditioning in the new flat.

Unfortunately what I really wanted to be doing was not sitting at work in icily air conditioned building. This was however the most sensible thing to be doing. I went downstairs at lunchtime to read my book and made the mistake of putting my bare forearms on the table. The tabletop is was solid granite and had been in the sun all morning. I made a sound like a wounded baboon and found something to rest on.

My mum arrives here for Christmas on Friday morning from the UK, where it is winter - I hope she's ready for it. Christmas is going to be a bit odd I think. We have a couple of friends coming over for dinner and there's mum and Rik and Em and I. That's six people, we have only 5 chairs of various heights, 5 sets of cutlery and 4 plates. Oh well we'll just have to get pissed and not worry about it.

We have discovered that there is a wireless internet connection here, though we can't establish whose it is or why it's here at the moment. I can't say it's troubled me overly. It means I have the internet at home so I shall be spending far more time tossing myself senseless whilst Em isn't around updating things on here and getting some more fiction and other writing done. Of course what I'm supposed to be doing is looking for a job but I've already spent 2 hours doing that tonight and I'm rather bored of it.

I've got to do something productive with my time or I'll go bloody nuts. I recently re-read the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy and it took far too little time. My brain is about to start making trouble for me if I don't find something to do and there's only so much tennis I can play. I have started playing chess again but I'm not too good at it. I guess a proper job is the only solution. I don't want a job I want to spend all day at the beach. It's only accross the road, I wouldn't even have to walk far. Oh well, back to the slog, I'll see if I can find some funny jobs to write about...

Bowls update...

Bowls proved typically sedate, sadly, but with a few interesting additions.

There was the ever predictable cold fizzy alchohol, which combined with the high temperature made for a slightly hazy experience. But what really made it for me was the four-piece jazz band who played loungecore/cool-jazz versions of contemporary hits. My favourite was probably Guns 'n' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine which was very good indeed. Radiohead's Creep wasn't bad either and the couple of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs I heard from them were pretty good too.

Lawn bowls is quite unnecessarily difficult. Why people take it up at retirement when at best they have only 2 decades to practice is quite beyond me (and no they don't bowl overarm here).

Bowls & football

Going bowling this aftertnoon with work...

...Crown Green bowls. Yes the 'Pensioners in White' sport. It is unbelievably popular here, every suburb seems to have it's own club which is well used.

This may have something to do with the Aussies winning the Bowls World Cup some years ago, apparently. The Aussies, by their own admission, take no interest in a sport until they can win it and just don't talk about it if they lose.

Imagine the fervour a few weeks ago when the 'Socceroos' qualified for the World Cup, you know the real World Cup, football with a round ball. You have to call it 'Soccer' here because 'Football' means AFL and 'Footy' means rugby, usually rugby league.

I watched a documentary about the origins of Aussie rules football a few weeks ago. The game was developed by Tom Wills a Rugby School alumnus from the rules of Rugby football and an Aboriginal game played with a stuffed possum - I kid you not.

Tom Wills coached a team of Aboriginals to play rugby despite the fact that the Aboriginals were responsible for his father's death and was a bit of a visionary as far as Australian sport is concerned. Unfortunately he was a raging alchoholic and stabbed himself to death in a fit of Delerium Tremens.

Frankly I'd rather go bowling than play either Rugby or Aussie Rules, though given the natural competetiveness of the average Aussie I'm wondering if they haven't made up some new rather more physical rules of their own. Am I going to come back from bowls black and blue? Updates as they happen.