31 March 2007

Sydney plunged into darkness

At 7.30pm tonight, Sydney was plunged into darkness for an hour. No, there was not a power black out. It was in support of the environment. From Sydney Morning Herald -
Sydney switches off lights

Staff Reporter
March 31, 2007 - 8:00PM

Sydney's famous icons switched off tonight as the city embraced Earth Hour, an initiative designed to highlight global warming.

The Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge and Luna Park all went dark and many lights in CBD buildings were turned off, although a number of lights remained on.

Australian actor Cate Blanchett described Earth Hour as a beginning.

"It's an hour of active, thoughtful darkness, a celebration of our awakening to climate change action," she said.

About 65,000 households and 2000 businesses committed to joining Earth Hour, which is part of an effort to cut the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent in the next 12 months.

Celebrities and dignitaries including Labor MP Peter Garrett, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd attended a function at Mrs Macquaries Chair and watched the city skyline go dark.

Restaurants offered candlelight dining, while the Coca Cola sign at Kings Cross was switched off for the first time since it was illuminated in 1974.

Street lights, safety lights, road lighting on the city's bridges and lights for public security were left on.

Entertainment and sporting venue lights operated as normal.

Earth Hour is an initiative of WWF-Australia and The Sydney Morning Herald. It is hoped in 2008 Earth Hour will go fully national.
Sydney Harbour Bridge at 7pm before the lights go out.
Sydney Harbour Bridge at 7pm before the lights go out

The Harbour Bridge and city lights turned off.
The Harbour Bridge and city lights turned off.

Sydney viewed from the rooftop of the Connought Residential Building on Liverpool Street.
Sydney viewed from the rooftop of the Connought Residential Building on Liverpool Street.

Mind you, why these big company buildings had their lights on in the first place on a Saturday night is a little strange.

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Didn't do much today, apart from some house cleaning and watching the Kangaroos vs Collingwood match in the afternoon.

Tonight I finally visited the Wests Rugby Union Club a few minutes walk away (after nearly seven years). They have Fox Sports and I was not going to miss my team's season opener (not broadcast on our free to air channels).

football - round 1

BRISBANE LIONS: 2.5 (17), 5.10 (40), 6.13 (49), 9.15 (69)
HAWTHORN HAWKS: 1.0 (6), 2.3 (15), 2.6 (18), 6.8 (44)

GOALS: Brisbane: Notting, McGrath 3, Lappin, Stiller, Brown, Rischitelli, Sherman
Hawthorn: Franklin 3, Boyle 2, Clarke
BEST: Brisbane: Black, Power, McGrath, Roe, Stiller, Adcock
Hawthorn: Franklin, Young, Jacobs, Bateman, Lewis, Boyle
INJURIES: Brisbane: Copeland (hip), Lappin (calf)
REPORTS: Lewis (Hawks) on Stiller (Lions) for charging
CHANGES: Beau McDonald (Lions) in for Charman (Achilles)
UMPIRES: Grun, Head, Pannell
CROWD: 27,104 at the Gabba

Tonight's game was appalling, even if my team did win. Kicking accuracy needs improving and Moody should have kicked three goals instead of behinds.

Check out Michael Rischitelli's amazing goal



Michael Rischitelli


Justin Sherman


celebrating a goal - Lappin, Black, obscured, Stiller and Begley


Simon Black


Nigel Lappin (great to have him back again after being out for so long with injury)


Simon Black wraps up Hawthorn's Brad Sewell


Colm Begley, Simon Black and Justin Sherman celebrating with the club song after the win

30 March 2007

oh no, we're the 'new yanks'...

Ben Groundwater has written an interesting blog in the travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald - 'New Yanks and jafas: why no one likes Aussies anymore' .
It used to be awesome being an Australian abroad.

When I first started travelling, only about 10 years ago, everyone loved an Aussie. You walked into a pub, someone would hear your accent, and clap you on the shoulder and buy you a drink. "G'day," was an acceptable pick-up line.

You'd find yourself the token conversation piece at get-togethers, where you could persuade people that you wrestled kangaroos for a living. Doors magically opened, hassles were incredibly smoothed over, with the help of an Australian accent.

But it's all gone wrong ...

It seems that too many whining, loud and obnoxious Australians have given us a bad name. Yes, I have seen them in Phuket (Thailand), Vienna (Austria) and elsewhere. They have no respect for local cultures and customs, complain rudely and are obnoxious drunks. I would not normally talk to these people in Australia, so why would I bother in some foreign city?

Now we are considered as ugly as American and German travellers.

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I made oven baked Atlantic salmon cutlets (farmed in Tasmania) for dinner, with couscous, butter beans and baby squash. Nice.

The football season returns this weekend. Woohoo! Tonight, there is a delayed (by one hour) telecast of the Melbourne versus St Kilda match which I am watching on free to air TV. Tomorrow, I will have to find someplace to watch my team's game against Hawthorn which has cable. Bah!

29 March 2007

breaking bread with the neighbours

I like this story from The Age.

Breaking bread in the park

Baker Thomas Moritz unloads another batch of loaves from the community oven to be enjoyed by crowds of locals.

Baker Thomas Moritz unloads another batch of loaves from the community oven to be enjoyed by crowds of locals.
Photo: Supplied

March 27, 2007

A local council used its loaf, spent a little dough, and brought a community together, reports Richard Cornish.

BY THE banks of the Murray River, in the shade of an old river gum, stands a wood-fired oven.

A puff of smoke signals that Michael Laubli has fired the large brick oven, feeding it with red gum logs from the back of his ute.

The following afternoon, when the fire has reduced to a bed of ash and embers, Albury-Wodonga locals and visitors arrive with pots, pans, tins and trays filled with the food they will cook in the Albury community wood-fired oven under the supervision of Laubli, official oven co-ordinator. Everyone is welcome.

"The idea came from Albury City Council's cultural development officer Narelle Vogel, who saw a picture on a Canadian website and said, 'I want one of these for Albury'," says project co-ordinator Chelsea McLaren from Hume Murray Food Bowl, a group representing and promoting local food and wine producers.

A $15,000 State Government grant kicked off the project and wood-oven "guru" Alan Scott was brought in to help design and build it.

The decision to sink tens of thousands of dollars into a great block of brick and concrete in local parkland was not without its critics, however.

"There are some people who think the idea of building the oven was a complete waste of money," says Hume Murray Food Bowl's Noelle Quinn.

Thomas Moritz, a King Valley farmer and baker, who also worked on the oven concurs. "When we were building it we had people coming past us and giving a lot of negative comments - that it would be vandalised, or covered in graffiti," Moritz says.

"But when you build an oven like this it has an incredible effect upon the community. People gather round," he says. "They like to watch. Everyone wants to come and help."

Laubli has supervised every firing of the oven since its official launch last October by Mildura chef Stefano de Pieri.

"We've had hundreds of pizzas, loaves, quiches, focaccias, biscuits, roasts and lasagnas," he says. "People wait for their food to cook, then eat it in the park."

Laubli explains how a typical community day progresses: "When we start cooking the oven is around 400-300 degrees," he says.

"Because it's so hot we start with really quick dishes like pizza and Lebanese bread; they are in and out in a flash. Then it's time to bake breads. After three hours the temperature drops to around 275 degrees and that is when the roasting starts."

Laubli trained with baker Moritz (Boonderoo Farm Bakery) and he juggles the requirements of a vast array of dishes and their cooking times with ease, opening and closing the door to regulate the oven's temperature. "Yes, I am under the pump," he says. "But the adrenalin buzz helps you to co-ordinate and perform."

The oven has already been the focus for several successful events. On Australia Day more than 600 people gathered in Hovel Tree Park to watch an open-air screening of the hit Australian film Kenny.

The local slow food group fed hundreds of them with potatoes, pizza and scones baked in the community oven.

The profits made that day have helped fund an education program co-ordinated by staff from Albury-Wodonga's Slow Food convivia. Last week the first lesson of a children's food-education project was held at the oven - year 3 students from Wodonga Primary School kneaded and formed dough, baking bread and free-form pizzas," says Slow Food Albury Wodonga's Margaret Benbow.

"They'll make their own choices of toppings and taste something good, not like the muck they serve from those American foreign chains," she says.

In April a similar event will be held for year 3 students from the Albury Public School, who will make scones, bake them in the oven then serve them to a group of elderly citizens.

Benbow is a keen user of the wood-fired oven and is particularly smitten with the flavour it imparts to her food.

"There is an intangible factor that happens to food cooked in a wood-fired oven," she explains, "we coated a loin of pork with sea-salt, black pepper, garlic, rosemary and sage, and roasted it in the oven with more garlic, shallots and potatoes. The flavours were deeper and more developed than if I had cooked it in a gas or electric oven," she says.

But the locals end up with more than just a good supper. Neighbours and strangers sit together and talk about the food they are cooking, their family and other community matters.

"There is a real engagement that happens around that oven," Benbow says. "We would like to see other councils around the state, and around the country, do something brilliant like this."

Albury Community Wood Fired Oven, Hovel Tree Park, adjacent to the Albury Swim Centre. Next firing is on Saturday. Open for baking and roasting from 2pm-7pm. Dough for bread and pizzas is available from Valentine's Bake House, (02) 6021 6135.

Social capital and community capacity building require financial support and investment. There's nothing better than breaking bread together.

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I worked from home today. I should have these 'people free days' more often. What was missing was Keiser. She was always a great help.

28 March 2007

random thoughts

Hens' teeth are rare, hence the saying 'as rare (or scarce) as hens' teeth'.

But what about ducks' teeth? No one ever mentions ducks' teeth.

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Emily came around tonight after being away. We watched some of Heroes which I had taped for her.

27 March 2007

drink it, it's good for you...

Generations of Australians were raised on Ribena as kids because it was good for you, as it contained blackcurrants which had 'four times the amount of vitamin C compared to oranges'.

It seems that the manufacturer of Ribena, Glaxosmithkline (GSK), is in big trouble in New Zealand after two high school students tested the drink for vitamin C content and discovered none. They then made a complaint.

GSK has now been fined in New Zealand for false advertising.

See
- Sydney Morning Herald of 22 March 2007
- Sydney Morning Herald of 27 March 2007
- The Age of 27 March 2007

When I was a very young kid, one of my cousins told me that Fanta was better for you than Coca Cola as it contained oranges and had vitamin C.

It's a bit like McDonalds claiming that they sell food...

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Daylight saving ended on Sunday morning and I had not realised until watching morning TV and wondering about the programming at that hour.

Now I wake up earlier than usual (by the clock) and have been getting in to work earlier as well. And going to bed earlier.

26 March 2007

Scotts Tower

German architect Ole Scheeren has designed a new 153 metre tall residential tower in Singapore, to be built on the corner of Scotts Road and Cairnhill Road, close to the Orchard Road shopping strip.

There will be 68 apartment units with a total floor space of 20 000 square metres. The unique design features four individual towers offset from each other and suspended from a central core. This opens the ground level to allow a shared space of communal leisure facilities.

See - WorldArchitectureNews.com

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Back to work today. Ho hum. I've introduced Margaret to Firefly, which I'm glad to report she is enjoying.

25 March 2007

EU 50

Today, the European Union (EU) celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding, the signing of the Treaty of Rome which created the original European Economic Community, now the EU. The six founders were Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Fifty years without war between any of the countries which now make up the EU is unprecedented in history. Integration, and expansion from six to 27 countries, has played a major part in that. The EU has at the same time become a force for peace in the world.
Certainly something worth celebrating.

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I took Kane on a longer walk this morning to the markets which was about a 20 minute walk each way (normally it takes me less time, but Kane being a dog wanted to smell lots of things like shrubs etc).

At the markets I tied him near the pet store and bought some items. Then I took him inside the pet store where a staff member gave him a treat. There were so many smells that I think Kane didn't want to stay too long.


Kane's person came and collected him tonight. We had a lot of fun this weekend, even if he wouldn't play with a football or a little rubber ball.

24 March 2007

our five captains

On Monday (20 March), my football club announced the new captaincy to replace Michael Voss who retired as captain last year.
The Vodafone Brisbane Lions have announced the appointments of Jonathan Brown, Luke Power, Simon Black, Nigel Lappin and Chris Johnson as the club’s co-captains for 2007.

The five-man captaincy group is an AFL first and will involve each of the players sharing the club’s leadership roles and responsibilities. Each will be recognised as club co-captains.

Lions Chairman Tony Kelly made the announcement in front of a crowd of Lions members, supporters and media at the club’s new social club, the Lions Den.

“I am pleased and delighted to announce to all our members, supporters, sponsors and the AFL community that the captaincy duties and functions will be shared amongst our leadership group,” Mr Kelly said. “The history books will reflect that all five men are co-captains of the Brisbane Lions in 2007.

Lappin, Brown, Black, Johnson, Power

Some supporters would have preferred one captain (and many choose Brown), but I support the club's decision, even though I would have liked Black as captain (he is the most awarded and decorated, and a really nice guy to talk to).

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Margaret decided to go to Sydney today and bring back more possessions from storage, so Kane and I have the house to ourselves (at times like this, I miss Keiser more).

I took Kane on three walks today.

Early this morning, I walked him to the end of the suburb to meet Tessie, the border collie. They smelt each other and when Kane marked a spot, Tessie marked over it. Then on the way back, Murphy, a husky said hello and then Jake, a labrador kelpie cross.

Around midday, I walked Kane to the local shops and back. He did not offer to help me carry anything.

Then tonight, after I fed him, I walked Kane around the block.

I also made up a song for Kane to the tune of La Marseillaise - words like 'Kane likes to go for walks etc'. I miss Keiser and singing her songs to her.

23 March 2007

DIESEL - in a climate changed world

Diesel, the Italian jeans and clothing company, has produced some very clever print and bill board advertising that includes strong messages about climate change.

Very clever.
















Makes me want to go and purchase some Diesel clothing. It might help save the world.

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Dane dropped Kane (the German Shepherd) over this evening. Kane is spending the weekend with me while his people are away for the weekend. He does love his walks. I've taken him out for two walks tonight.

22 March 2007

idiotic flag waving

Here is an interesting article from The Australian.
Dangers of whipping up cheesy patriotism
BEYOND SPIN
David Salter
22mar07

THE jingo is out of the bottle. Ostentatious displays of the flag and unabashed appeals to so-called Australian values have moved to the midstream. The Coalition's spin doctors first blew on these coals of nationalism for political gain but the media has been close behind, enthusiastically pumping its mighty bellows.

Only a decade ago Anzac Day was allowed to pass with appropriately restrained coverage. Today, each new April 25 is hyped with ever more mawkish newspaper supplements and protracted dollops of sentimentality on that night's television news.

The media whips itself - and the public - into a froth of emotion that plays more like crass jingoism than respect for the fallen.

The same news and current affairs programs that feign outrage at any attempt to restrict the display of Australian flags at pop concerts wallow in its heavy symbolism when flag-draped coffins return from overseas. (Again, these choreographed rituals are a new development, appropriated from the potent showmanship of US military ceremony.)

No politician now chooses to make a formal announcement without the national flag in the background. Even Menzies, no slouch when it came to stirring nationalist instincts, would have eschewed such overt displays of cheap patriotism.

The line between nationalism and racism can be perilously thin. Some of the drunken young thugs who draped themselves in the Australian flag while bashing "people of Middle Eastern appearance" at Cronulla in 2005 have now been before the courts. The repeated screening of news footage from those ugly days makes uncomfortable viewing, particularly for those who believe our national emblems have no place in the incitement of hatred.

Yet, in his sentencing of one of those rioters last week, the magistrate himself fell into the trap of thoughtless nationalism. Unwisely adopting talkback argot, he described the offender's behaviour as "so un-Australian". So un-Australian as the violence against Chinese on the goldfields? Equating nationality with decency creates a false syllogism.

This same streak of unthinking racism emerged in The Sydney Morning Herald's reporting of the March 7 plane crash in Indonesia, which killed, among others, a group of Australian police, diplomats and a journalist. The SMH ran its biographies of those who'd died under the headline: "True Australians who carried their values and dedication into foreign service". Who, pray, are the false Australians and what can the Herald tell us about their values? We should not be reading loaded cliches on the news pages.

(Media Watch finished its program that week with a brief visual tribute to The Australian Financial Review correspondent who died in the crash. Fair enough, but were similar marks of respect shown to the many journalists of other nationalities who've been killed for what they wrote rather than by wretched luck?)

Meanwhile, the Nine network clearly believes there is a ratings advantage in branding its output with glib patriotism. Its locally produced shows are garnished with an end graphic that declares them "Proudly Australian". Presumably this pride does not extend to the rest of Nine's transmission schedule, which includes dinky-di material such as three distinct iterations of the CSI franchise, Cold Case, Days of Our Lives and Good Morning America.

Less obvious, but equally obnoxious, is the use of tax revenue to fund socially engineered nationalism. After a decade spent trying to curb the ABC's independence with death by a thousand budget cuts, the Coalition has learned how to come through Aunty's back door. It has given Film Australia an extraordinary $7.5million to make a flag-waving 10-part historical series for showing on the ABC. Money was clearly no object for this project: $750,000 an episode is twice the budget for a standard 55-minute documentary. (This is the same Government that hectors the ABC about waste and the need to find more efficiencies.)

The premiere episode screened last Sunday and dealt, in overblown style, with the building of Sydney's Harbour Bridge. Its first few minutes were so heavy with cheesy re-enactments and melodramatic overstatement ("emblem of a divided country", "battleground for Australia's future", "hopes and dreams of an entire nation") that it was difficult to take anything that followed seriously.

But the most offensive aspect of this galumphing Australianism is that it is so often underwritten by ignorance. Outlining the theme of the next part of Film Australia's series, its executive producer, Alex West, asked rhetorically how our nation could have sprung from "a few boatloads of witless, illiterate, half-starved Poms".

If that's his informed opinion on the achievement of Governor Arthur Phillip and the First Fleeters, then he should not be in charge of an infant's school history class, let alone a landmark documentary series.
I agree with a lot of this (but disagree with some points). This form of patriotism that we seem to be appropriating from the Americans is rather shallow.

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I miss Keiser laying on my lap.

21 March 2007

Knut - Berlin's latest baby

There is a debate going on about Knut, a polar bear who was abandoned by his mother and left to die, and whether it is right for a human to nurture a polar bear.

Animal rights activists in Berlin claim that human hand-rearing of a polar bear violates animal rights, and Knut should have been killed, and that they become too attached to their human carers.

See
- Sydney Morning Herald of 21 March 2007
- BBC News of 20 March 2007

What a stupid reason to kill a perfectly healthy polar bear. Elsie (of Born Free fame) was attached to George and Joy Adamson, but eventually her instincts overcame any strong bonds she had with them.

Polar bears in the wild are already dying due to melting ice floes caused by climate change. They need saving.









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Margaret made a tomato tart for dinner.

20 March 2007

Australia: it's like nothing on TV...

From spiked by Patrick West:
...One of my Aussie colleagues is often asked why she chose to live in miserable, rainy Britain. I asked her the same question the other day. Her answer was simply: ‘Australia is nothing like Neighbours. It’s more like Kath & Kim.’

She went on to explain that the Land Down Under is not populated by the hearty, the gregarious and the welcoming, but by white trash (I don’t particularly like that phrase because no-one has the courage to use its equivalent, ‘black trash’, but you get the point). Australians are some of the most coarse, racist people on earth, as Kath & Kim rightly portrays...

...This is why so many Australians, especially the clever ones, move to Britain or elsewhere. Because despite all of their protestations against Barry Humphries’s character Sir Les Patterson, Oz’s own farting, swearing reprobate ‘cultural attaché’, Australia remains a philistine country. Think about it. Who do the Americans celebrate as national heroes? George Washington, George Gershwin, Ernest Hemingway, Franklin D. Roosevelt and so on. We Brits revere Chaucer, Shakespeare, Elgar, Nelson and Churchill. And who do the Australians put on their postal stamps? Ned Kelly, a murderous bandit who famously put a metal dustbin on his head and tried to kill coppers. Can you imagine Britain having Harry Roberts as a national hero?

This is why all the most cerebral Australians, such as Clive James, Germaine Greer, John Pilger and Peter Singer have lived for so long either in the UK or the USA. They all wanted to get away from the land of Kath & Kim.

I don’t mean to be rude to the Australians, who are really quite charming and part of me does warm to their earthy sense of humour and childlike joie de vivre...
A response on spiked by Guy Rundle:
...mistake in West’s article is his claim that all Australia’s leading intellectuals have left. This leaves me no choice but to take the odious path of cultural boosterism and reel off a list of those who haven’t left, or didn’t leave, Australia: Nobel Prize-winning novelist Patrick White; world-class poets Les Murray and AD Hope; Nobel Prize-winning scientist Peter Doherty; philosophers David Armstrong and Rai Gaita; Booker Prize-winner Thomas Keneally; France’s most performed overseas playwright Daniel Keene; Pritzker (architecture’s Nobel) winner Glenn Murcutt; actor (now artistic director) Cate Blanchett; scientist Tim Flannery. There are many more.

Those whom West cites as ex-pats (and he left out the most talented ex-pats, such as novelist Peter Carey and critic Meaghan Morris) are overwhelmingly those who are either global travellers, such as John Pilger, or metropolitan performers such as Germaine Greer (who alternates between A-list work and Celebrity Big Brother-style fiascos) and former clip-show host Clive James. It’s those who stayed – such as White, Murray or Murcutt – who produced world-class work, connecting local traditions to global modernism. Maybe West hasn’t heard of them because they don’t work in his narrow world of the London media.

What is really awry in West’s piece is that he has missed the way in which the image of Australia is used within British culture and debate for purposes that have nothing whatsoever to do with the southern continent. The fashionable disdain in Britain for the suburbanism that dominates the image of Australian life is a barely disguised form of prejudice directed at working-class and mainstream culture, displaced in such a way that it can avoid charges of naked elitism.

...The point is that Australia is ahead, not behind, the curve the UK is on – it is dealing with the problems that any society faces when it has started to satisfy the basic needs of a large section of the population. Kath and Kim is neither a clown show nor a proletarian minstrel turn. It is a slightly rueful self-reflection on the difficulties you face when you have got everything you think you wanted – the house, the garden, the holidays, the shopping centres – and now you’re wondering what else you can do. Not understanding that, Mr West, leaves you looking, well, a bit of a galah.
Mr West is a snob. Obviously he has never been to Australia and derives his comments from television and conversations in a pub.

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Today was a work today. Thankfully there are only three days left before the weekend.

19 March 2007

the Sydney Harbour Bridge

The Sydney Harbour Bridge (nicknamed the 'coat-hanger' by Sydney-siders) turned 75 today. To celebrate, the bridge was closed yesterday and some 200 000 people walked across it.

See - Sydney Morning Herald (18 March 2007)









The bridge isn't as spectacular as some others around the world, but it is our bridge. It isn't as big as many others, but it is pedestrian friendly (there are footpaths/sidewalks on either sides). And for every Australian coming home via Sydney on a long international flight, the view of the bridge out of the aeroplane window is a welcoming sight.

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Today was a public holiday in Canberra. Kane the German Shepherd came over in the afternoon for a couple of hours. He is a huge dog and very well behaved. I took him on two walks, firstly around the corner and back, and then to the local shops. He was content to lie on the floor and rest. Thankfully given his size, he didn't want to lay on my lap. It also rained a bit today, so Kane smelt like a wet dog!



Kane's people are going away this weekend, so he is coming to stay over then. I wonder if he will run after a football.

18 March 2007

Alex

Comic strips in newspapers can be very clever. One of my favourites is Alex, published in the UK Daily Telegraph. The double entendres are subtle.


(click on image to make bigger)

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I did some pruning/gardening today. My friend (from work) Deborah's son Hugh came over to mow the lawn. Keiser used to love greeting and chatting to him.

This afternoon, I also had a short nap on the couch. There were many things that Keiser and I did together, like taking daytime couch naps. I miss her very much.

Mary was over this afternoon so I cooked a roast pork belly (marinaded in kecap manis, black vinegar and ginger), served with baked potatoes, a cucumber salad (that Mary made), and blanched gai lan greens.

17 March 2007

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

Pionta Guinness, le do thoil.

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I was out for most of the day (seven hours), meeting up with Declan and Nell at 4pm for a few pints of Guinness in celebration of St Patrick's Day. Then a quick and cheap dinner at Sammy's Kitchen (Chinese and Malaysian cuisine) in the city (their noodle dishes are very tasty).

The Labor Club in the city was not showing the football game on their subscription channels, so we ended up at the Southern Cross Club on the southside and watched the game on their big screen (the sound was down unfortunately as the other screens were showing a rugby league game).

What a disappointing game. Just as well it is only pre-season.

Football - preseason NAB Cup grand final

CARLTON: 1.2.1, 1.4.3, 2.9.3, 2.12.7 (97)
BRISBANE LIONS: 0.2.2, 0.6.7, 0.7.11, 0.10.12 (72)
NINE POINT GOALS: Carlton: Fisher, Carrazzo. Brisbane Lions: Nil.
SIX POINT GOALS: Carlton: Fevola 4, Fisher 3, Scotland, Koutoufides, Russell, Whitnall, Stevens. Brisbane Lions: Stiller 2, Johnson 2, Brown 2, Moody, Sherman, Wood, McGrath.
BEST: Carlton: Stevens, Murphy, Thornton, Fisher, O'hAilpin, Fevola. Brisbane Lions: Black, Harding, Adcock, Stiller, Sherman, Fixter.
INJURIES: Brisbane Lions: Notting (dislocated shoulder).
REPORTS: Cameron Wood (Brisbane Lions) by umpire Jeffery for striking Cain Ackland (Carlton) in the third quarter.
UMPIRES: Stevic, Vozzo, Ryan, Jeffery.
CROWD: 46, 094 at Telstra Dome.

I watched the game live on TV at a club tonight. It was a disappointing loss.


Merrett


Moody


Sherman


Sherman


taking stock at quarter or half time


Black


After Browny's goal


Black

16 March 2007

random thoughts

The goose stepping I wrote about on Wednesday night started me thinking...

If we didn't have knees (that bend), could we ride bicycles? Indeed would bicycles have been invented? How would we sit down and then get up again?

Knees - if you don't have them, you'd miss them.

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I made a Rogan Josh lamb curry for dinner tonight. It was nice.

Smallville is getting really interesting. The Green Arrow/Oliver Queen is so cool. He challenges Clark Kent's notions of morality and ethics.

From CW/WB
Additionally, there is a new billionaire in town with the arrival of DC Comics character Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow (Justin Hartley, "Passions"). Although he has no superpowers, Oliver is a gifted archer who qualified for the U.S. Olympic team, but chose to put his skills to work as the "emerald archer." He steals ill-gotten gains from the rich and gives to the poor. Oliver comes from Star City to Metropolis to aid in the recovery from Brainiac's deadly virus. While in town, he meets and is charmed by Lois Lane, igniting suspicion and a little jealousy in Clark. Oliver discovers Clark's abilities and asks Clark to join him in his new project - forming a league of superheroes.


15 March 2007

stories of the sea

Three stories from today's Sydney Morning Herald.

1) Massive sunfish about 1.5 tonnes off Jervis Bay on the New South Wales coast spotted in December last year.

See - SMH Science Blog



2) Giant underwater eddies (whirlpools) off the coast of Sydney

See - Cyclone of the deep sits off Sydney


This scientific chart shows the deep blue pools sitting off the coast of NSW

3) Old man who lives on a cliff in Sydney is about to be evicted

See - Time's up for caveman


Jhyimy 'Two Hats' Mhiyles does not want to leave his makeshift home on a Bondi cliff.

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Not much to report today. I convinced Margaret to watch Thumbsucker. She thought it was a teenage film. After she watched it, she decided she liked it.

14 March 2007

random thoughts

The goose-step is a type of military march common in Eastern Europe and former Nazi Germany.



I was wondering why the march is called the goose-step. Surely, geese don't march and waddle like ducks.



But they do. Now imagine if those armies had taken after the duck waddle!

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We had a Thai beef salad for dinner, except instead of the beef, we had kangaroo fillet. Tonight, Margaret and I watched the film Thank You for Smoking. Very clever. Now I am watching The Covenant.