Andrew and Kathleen

Made the trek to Parramatta for a social cricket match, organised by le organiseur extraordinaire, Tony Yoo. The pitch was reminiscent of Lords - a massive slope from one side to the other meant that if you were fielding on the top side of the ground, you didn't have to do much. Hot and sweaty in the field, picked up two wickets and a whole lot of hurt the next day from 3 overs. Stopped Amit from getting a well-deserved ton on 94, clean bowling up with a yorker that was meant to be a vicious bouncer (in keeping with the social spirit of the day) after he'd tonked me for 3 successive boundaries and was going for a 6.

Unfortunately, our team's run chase fell apart and Troy and I, last batsmen in, were unable to get the required runs.

The match was in honour of Hookesy. At the end of the day, we were all able to agree on two things:

• Hooksy would've been proud.
• Cricket was the winner.

Had a look at three properties; only really saw two, since the agent from McGrath's couldn't be bothered to turn up to the third, leaving the 12 or so people to disperse angrily. Nice one, McGrath.

We checked out a place in Bondi Junction that we discounted right off the bat since the front door of every other apartment in the block was made of plywood. Not a good look. And finally, the third place had big cracks in the walls and chips in the kitchen tiles, despite, or perhaps because of, having been built within the last few years.

Discouraging stuff. We're looking at maybe three or four places a week, and we haven't even got to the stage of being happy enough with one to even lodge an application.

We went to a function at the Osaka Prefectural Government Office, which is an office in Sydney run by Osaka government trying to facilitate Australian investment there. They're farewelling their current director, Harimoto-san, and welcoming a new director, Nakatani-san.

Nakatani-san seems nice enough, but it was the first words of his welcoming speech that confirmed it.

"I'm the next lucky bastard..." he began

Somehow, I think he'll be all right. He seems to have picked up the lingo pretty quick.

The new cheap-arse Australian airline has certainly affected the fares. We flew with Qantas last year from Sydney to Hobart, and it cost the two of us $450 each. We booked another flight, this time with Virgin Blue, for June. This time, it cost us $260 each.

Today we booked a flight with JetDirect in October. It cost us, and I kid you not, $200 each.

Qantas sucks, bloody no one likes them.

It's sort of like a law of nature that you never realise you're out of razor blades until you've completely lathered up. Completely out. Not even a plastic disposable razor (which do god-awful jobs, by the way, you'd have better results using a blunt stick).

Resorted to those feminine razor blades, held between thumb and forefinger. Not even a handle. Just the blade. The lengths us fellas have to go to...

Lying awake in bed Monday night, we were trying to figure out why it was so damn quiet. Then we realised. It'd had been almost two months since we had not had the fan on while we were sleeping.

Just like that, the rain that came on Sunday evening seemed to wash away the heat, the humidity, the sheer ugliness of summer. And not before time.

One of Kathleen's friends from uni who's now up here in Sydney got engaged recently. They're having their wedding in Hobart, like us. They're having their ceremony at the botanical gardens, like us. They're having their reception at Elizabeth St Pier, like us. Two days before us. Now THAT is coincidence.

There are only two wedding celebrants in southern Tasmania. If you don't want a religious ceremony, you'd better hope you can get one of them, otherwise it's the wedding office marriage for you!

OK, I'm on a bit of a theme here, but I was talking to one of the other blokes at work. He's getting married to a Kiwi over in New Zealand, and showed me the website of his wedding photographer. Check this photo out. How incredible is that? I've seen so many wedding photos that use the stock standard open-top car on the waterfront, blah blah blah, but this... this is another world.

He looked into the cost of getting married here in Sydney. One particular venue he was keen on was in Rose Bay, which is a fairly glitzy suburb - not Sydney's nicest, but reasonably exclusive. But get this: $20,000 was the minimum amount just for the reception. That's what we've budgeted for our entire wedding. Unbelievable. He told them to go root their boot.

We met a bunch of people on Sunday (woulda had more, but some people piked - those pikers) for Tropfest, which is the world's largest small film festival. We got there at 3pm. The event started at 8pm. So we had 5 hours to kill. Scrabble, card games, the papers, actually talking to other people, the day pretty much flew, helped by all the food people were foresighted enough to bring. It was cloudy enough to be actually comfortable outside.

The films were fantastic, obviously some better than others. The worst in my opinion are the ones that are just movie scripts of old jokes - as soon as you read the program, you think "Yeah, I bet I know what *that* joke's going to be". Some were obscure. Some a little depressing. Others had the entire crowd literally sighing with sadness. Beautiful.

During the interval, some bloke even proposed to his girlfriend - as soon as it became clear why he was on stage, everyone was yelling, clapping and cheering. With that sort of backdrop, how would you say no? Clearly a fella who knows how to put the pressure on.

It hasn't rained for ages. Absolutely ages. And of course, as soon as you put a big event on outdoors, you can guarantee yourself a sprinkle. But why oh why, if the rain can hold off an ENTIRE DAY, does it have to start in the last ten minutes?? We consoled ourselves with the fact that the SMH has the DVD in Monday's paper (which, it turns out, is only a voucher, and the DVD takes 6 weeks to ship - WTF?) and bolted for the train.

But geez, how much advertising can they sneak in? Sneak's not quite the right word, the advertising all but comes up to where you're sitting and yells at you "Hey, look at THIS ad! Sony's SPONSERING the event! And HEY, what about FORD, check THIS CAR out! It even has ONE OF THE TROPFEST directors MAKING A MOVIE ABOUT IT!" It felt a little dirty, and I doubt the idea of the original creators had big corporate logos adorning the screen. Sort of like an ad sponsered by 16 short films. Then again, if you want to put on a festival for 100,000 people, you have to suck it down.

Another thing - why do young female presenters always have to try and out-bloke the blokes? References to getting plastered and falling asleep on the red carpet with the celebs, how much of a pick-up event it is... if we wanted a bloke, we woulda got one. And he wouldn't have got away with half the things they were saying.

Ah well, if you're a little over Tropfest, you could always check out Squatspace.

So West Coast look incredibly sharp as they flog grand finalists Collingwood by 100 points (who are missing most of their mid-field), Carlton whip finalists Sydney by 100 points, Hawthorn only 30-odd points off Brisbane (who were playing their reserve team). The only consistent is that pre-season is inconsistent. It's hard to get a bead for how teams will perform in home and away when the rules have changed and the teams are not their best 18.

Troy reckons February's too early for the footy. I disagree, but I will say that February's too early to be making predictions about grand finals.

Caught up with our friend Al for dinner, since she was up from Melbourne for the weekend. Her dad works for one of the airlines, so she's one of the lucky b*st*rds who get to fly for next to nothing.

She's living in Elsternwick, in the same street as one of the most popular brothels - the Daily Planet. Funnily enough, it's one of the streets I was looking at moving into when I first moved to Melbourne a few years ago. Seriously, I didn't even know about the brothel until the bloke who was living in the apartment I was looking at pointed it out. Honest.

Anyway, she reckons there are two advantages for living there:

• Constant police presence means it's a pretty safe street.
• She never needs to give directions to the taxi driver.

She was staying with a (male) friend up here. I only mention it because of something she pointed out that struck me in a "yeah, that *is* true" kind of way. And here is Alison's rule for knowing who lives in an apartment:

If the toilet has air freshener in it, a girl lives in the place. If there's no air freshener, but instead, a box of matches, it's a bloke.

True!

Spent the morning rushing around Surry Hills like mad fools in what would have to have been the hottest summer morning in the history of the world. It was quite literally that hot.

Was planning to spend the afternoon watching the football I taped last night on the couch in front of the fan. Richmond and Footscray, shown on NSW TV at the god-awful time of 12.45am. How can Australia's premier game be treated in such a disgraceful manner?

It's been 144 days since the final game of season 2003, which is 143 days too long in my book.

Hell hath no fury like a man, longing for the return of his chosen sport like a woman longing for the days of 100% off sales, who forgeteth to press the record button.

But wait! there is still hope! West Coast and Collingwood are on tonight. Another late night.

And for chrissakes I wish the AFL would stop piss-farting around with the rules in the pre-season. Pre-season's for getting the players back into match fitness, not trying to soften up the supporters into stupid rule changes.

On a rostering note, Hawthorn don't make the trip up here until the end of May.

More on the topic of football, here's an article from The Age about why football is so important. Could there be any better defining anecdote than this one:

Several years ago, I received an email from an American who had picked up Australian football on cable TV and become a Carlton supporter. After 10 years, as a wedding anniversary present, his wife had given him a return ticket to Melbourne for him to check out the home of this game he had come to love. And so, in the course of visiting as many grounds as he could, he went to Arden Street where, to his surprise, he was taken into the rooms, shown around and introduced to Byron Pickett, with whom he had his photo taken.

When he got back to the US, he sent me an email. "There is nothing like this in America," he wrote. "Do Australians know what they've got?" He couldn't believe that a club that was involved in an elite sporting competition could be so welcoming, so accepting. He sensed the old egalitarianism that is still a part of most footy clubs, the sense of belonging and community.

On the hunt for a new apartment. We've been scouring realestate.com.au and domain.com.au for something. We're looking at Surry Hills (if we can get it!), or north shore, something like Wollstonecraft or Waverton. It's pretty difficult:

• A lot of places, especially in Surry Hills and Bondi Junction, don't have a car spot. We're reluctant to park on the street, Just In Case.
• A lot of places on the north shore are just too suburban for my liking. There's a difference between quiet and mind-numbingly boring.
• Most places are only open for inspection in a 10 minute window on a Saturday morning. The same 10 minute window. I think it's so you have no bargaining power. "Your prices are too high; we'll look elsewhere" becomes "If we don't sign up for this one, we'll have to wait until next Saturday, 10.30am to 10.40am to have a look at another place".

Taking tomorrow and Monday off work. Technically, I'm not employed as a full-time employee, so I have no reservations about taking time to look for another job; everyone knows I'm not there for the long-time, but just until something in my chosen area comes along.

The only problem with the current state of affairs is that things are, well, too comfortable. I'm paid well, the job's not particularly taxing, I can leave early. But the longer I'm there, the more restless I become and conversely, the less inclined I am to look for something permanent.

It's time to light a fire under my arse and get moving. Ring some people, meet some people, and get back on track.

I got the following email from Greta:

From : Harrison, Greta
Sent : Monday, 16 February 2004 1:16:41 PM
Subject : The undead

Oh god.. I am extremely traumatised,

I had to shut the kitchen door last night because of the racket that something - I presumed the ewok that had been bothering me- was making in there. When I woke up, I noticed one of my mousetraps wasnt there anymore - spooky - I thought. After looking around I noticed it over near the fridge with a tail sticking out. Fine - this mouse has somehow dragged the trap around to the fridge and died. Explains the noise. So I pulled the trap out. Mouse was most certainly not dead - I let go and the mouse started running around the kitchen with the trap attached to its back leg - gross! I couldn't deal with it - so Anke came down. I remembered mum once suffocated a mouse at star street with a floor mop - so we got ours and Anke tried to suffocate it - the only thing is it started squeaking.. REALLY loudly - and Anke who is a bit of a hippy got very freaked out by the squirrel sounds and couldn't do it. - so she managed to put it in a plastic bag - hoping it would eventually suffocate in there. Then the bag started moving around. So I got a saucepan to hit it but we both started freaking out and I couldn't do it. So then Anke suggested we drown it in a bucket. So we put the plastic bag in a bucket of water in the shower. After we'd filled it with hot water for about 5 minutes it seemed to do the trick - then we noticed the bag was still moving - what is this - some kind of evil undead mouse from a Stephen King film?? We think it eventually died after we cut all the air bubbles out of the bag and I held it under the water with a pasta server. Now Anke's really worried that karma is going to get her and I was too disgusted to eat breakfast.

Honestly, it was like that film ,was it Shallow Grave, where they keep bludgeoning this corpse. Now people at work are appalled that I spent have the morning torturing a small creature.

I want to move to Notting Hill.

I haven't received a funnier email in a long, long time. I get a mental image of the two of them running around pratfalling chasing the mouse. They should make a movie about it.

Oh wait, they already have...

One of the props I used in my self-introduction classes when I was teaching junior high schools in Japan was the good ol' Pacific Peso, otherwise known as the Australian dollar. They are pretty much the only notes I've ever seen that are both colour and almost indestructable. Along with cockroaches, the only thing to survive the holocaust will be the Aussie dollar. What I used to do was hand out the notes to the class, and wait until they made their way to what I thought would potentially be the biggest pain-in-the-arse kid in the class. Then announce that they couldn't be torn or ripped. Ah, the look of anticipation on their innocent, young faces when they double-checked with the teacher, that yes, they could try and rip them in half! The puzzlement that passed their features as the notes would stay in one piece! The endless sticky-taping I used to do after each class after said kid would live up to my pain-in-the-arse label and wield the scissors! The little buggers.

Never at any stage did I realise that I was Breaking The Law. For, of course, once again Innocent Fun is the victim - because this is apparently illegal. I think just as long as everyone here can keep a secret, I may just get away with it.

Which begs the question of whether doing that folding trick with the $5 note to turn the picture of the Queen into some two-bit hooker is still safe?

Some guy in the US mixed his own album by dubbing the lyrics from rapper Jay-Z's Black Album with the music from the Beatles' White Album to produce... the Grey Album. It's been written up in Rolling Stone and the NY Times amongst others.

You can imagine how the record labels reacted - with lawsuitivity. Failing to understand Basic Psychology - if you tell people they can't have it, they want it more than before.

Illegal Art has the album up for download. It's pretty good.

Kathleen, Lucy and I finally got around to seeing Lost In Translation. Fantastic. Having been there and done that, so to speak, you can appreciate how difficult a place Tokyo is to be for people who don't really want to be there, which the movie attempts to portray. The sense of being an outsider is captured, in the characters' observations of a lot of the weirdness that is daily life in Japan. The posing teenagers in the video arcades, the strange TV shows and bizarrer hosts, the Japanese attempts at English, and of course, the airheaded fellow Westerners.

Is it an accurate reflection? Yes and no. It's obvious that, by the end, Bill Murray's characters has fallen in love with the place, despite his initial misgivings, and the final taxi ride to the airport is almost a homage to the city.

The SMH review gets it pretty much right. Interesting to note that this movie is PG in Australia, and R in the United Puritanical States of America.

Dickson's in the doghouse at the moment. He was meant to book a table at Juju's in King's Cross, but didn't get around to it, and of course, couldn't get a seat when he finally did.

So we went to Sea Treasure in Crow's Nest last night. Which is an amazing restaurant, one of the best Chinese places in town.

Kathleen made the mistake of getting the waiter to recommend one of the fish. Which he did. The $88 one. We enjoyed the fish, but the indigestion came with the bill.

Finally got a chance to try those new Kahlua Tim-Tams. You know, the ones that'll transform innocent little kiddies into mindless, alcoholic freaks, slavishly hunting for their next binge with but one whiff - for god's sake, won't somebody please think of the children?!

The above is a heading from the Murdoch papers. No, seriously. No, really, I am. You couldn't make it up if you tried.

The real target market? Women. Aged 25 to 40. Who, it seems, merely need the smell of kahlua to entice them into stacking these things waist high in their shopping trolleys. Suckers.

But, gee whiz, do these things reek! You can quite literally smell them across the room. It's like Arnott's marinate the bloody things for a week before they pack them or something.

In passing, I will note the quote from Community Alcohol Action Network's James Munro:

"Can we now look forward to alcohol-flavoured corn flakes?"

Indeed, we can, Jim. Indeed, we can.

On a more serious note, I haven't seen a bigger media beatup since Grandma's trifle got a run.

A bit of background to this story. When we came back from Japan, I was doing a search for some Australian blogs to read regularly, and replace the Japanese ones I used to read but now only make me travelsick. One of the ones I settled into reading regularly was by an American girl living in Sydney.

Back to the story.

I got on the bus from work in North Ryde back to the city, and just as I was about to sit down, glanced at the girl sitting next to the window. The face looked familiar. I was sure I knew who it was, but the last thing I wanted to do was make myself look like a goose by saying "Hey! I know you! I read your website!" and getting told, "No, I don't run a website, you sicko!"

Ever tried to get a good look at someone, without actually looking at them, while they are sitting next to you?

So I'm sitting there. "I'm sure that's her." I notice she's listening to an iPod. Which I vaguely remember reading about on her blog. She's got a homemade bracelet. Which I vaguely remember reading about about on her blog. So I figure, I'll say hello, and if she has an American accent, I'll know it's her.

"Excuse me," I said. "This is going to sound really weird and stalkerish. But I know your face."

"Really?" With an American accent.

"Yeah. I read your website."

Complete and utter amazement. With a little bit of shock. "Really? You must be the first person I've met that does. That I didn't already know," she said.

I think I can understand how disconcerting that might have been.

Kris' version of the story is here.

I got published! Check it out!

I wrote an article a while back about stitching digital photos together. It got picked up by Linux Journal, an American magazine that, by the time it comes to Australian newsagents by airmail, costs me A$14.95. That's pretty exxy.

As part of the deal, I even got three free mags. The article'll be in Issue 119, which is March 04.

I told Kathleen and Greta a few weeks ago, and they had a bit of a giggle about how geeky it all sounded.

Well, it might have been funny then, but look who's laughing now!

Wow, I'm really chuffed about this!

The photo is one I took while we were in Japan, of the Tsurumi River near Kamoi. I used to walk home along it every day - in winter, you could even see Mt Fuji, beyond the snow-capped mountains. A beautiful sight.

Kathleen ran into an old friend of mine from school/uni days, James, who we somehow managed to lose contact with. Six years later, she bumps into him in a street in Crows Nest and, it turns out, he now lives just a couple of blocks away from us in Surry Hills. How bizarre is that?

We finally caught up with him last night for a few drinks at Forresters. Unfortunately, he was an hour late because of the trains - how in god's name is it possible to take 2 hours to travel between Chatswood and Central?!

After that fiasco, he was keener than ever to have a beer!

It's always interesting what people have been up to after their first few years out of uni. Seems most of our friends work for a few years, then take off for overseas, and come back older and wiser, less willing to tolerate crap working situations.

Why is it still called the Paramatta Rail Link if it doesn't go to Paramatta?

Hot day. Choice between sweating inside a sweltering apartment, or sweating outside in the sweltering heat. Caught the monorail down to Darling Harbour, where they had a dragon boat racing competition over the weekend.

A lot of corporate teams, decked out in their uniforms, some taking things rather seriously.

Most of the races seemed to take *ages* to get organised and lined up at the starting line, plus it was scorching under the sun, so we gave it a miss in favour of Coogee Beach. Major reason for going? We live a few blocks away from the direct bus route, which makes it nice and easy.

Clouded over a little in the late afternoon, which made it a bit more pleasant. Water surprisingly cold - but nice after you get used to it. Ended up having a great time.

We've got to get organised with the wedding invitations - we need to get them out with plenty of notice for people to book flights and accommodation in Hobart, both of which are often in short supply over the Christmas/New Year period. We had a look at some materials at Eckersleys in York Street, and came up with a few good ideas. Hopefully we can come up with something distinctive and meaningful. We've got a lot of ideas about the themes we want to use - our time in Japan, Kathleen's Chinese heritage, something about footy for mine (just joking) - but very quickly we run into limitations cost-wise. We need to sit down and budget for this thing, too!

(With apologies to Electric Six)

Sam had his 30th birthday on Saturday night. We met at the Columbian on Oxford St, which was pretty cool, even if I did feel nervous by myself at the bar. I think if you're a straight man there you virtually need your girl on your arm at all times JUST IN CASE. I'd hate for there to be any confusion.

Ended up at Stonewall, which was, if at all possible, even gayer. I mean that in the homosexual sense, not that it was crap.

We probably stood out like sore thumbs all night.

Hadn't seen Sam for a while, so it was good to catch up, and meet a few of his workmates.

A quiet night in with some DVDs after the week. Australia was represented by Rage In Placid Lake (Ben Lee's such a bad actor, it's actually distracting). Not a bad movie, but trying a bit too hard to be satirical. Welcome To Collinwood on the other hand was hilarious. I've actually seen it twice on a plane between Australia and Japan... sort of. I tuned in both times 15 minutes into the movie, and the captain decided to turn off the movies 10 minutes before the end. So I'd never actually seen it all. Luckily, it was worth the wait.

Today's SMH had a front page article about how crap the rail system's performance, or lack thereof, is. Even the staff admit the timetables are worthless. As if to prove the point, public transport went into meltdown mode, right on cue, this arvo after a gas leak in the city loop. People were lined up around the block at Wynyard, trying to get on a train. I was lucky - my bus into town was unaffected, and from the city I can walk home, watching all these people and thinking, "You poor buggers!"

The worst bit was no-one seemed to know what was going on, and the train attendants seemed to revel in their inability to help people. No assistance, no direction, no idea. In Japan, you'd have people with megaphones directing people to entrances and exits, letting people know what was going on. Here, they just sort of lean in the ticket gates and act stupid (although it's probably not an act, if you know what I mean).

Transport in Sydney sucks. There is no way in the world that it can possibly call itself anything near world-class. Except for world-class shambles.

Some big news from over the weekend:

• Kathleen found her wedding dress at a small shop in Rockdale in Sydney's south. Now she only needs to decide whether to buy or hire it.
• Kathleen's young cousin Emily, who lives in Hong Kong, got accepted to do her medicine degree at the University of NSW - so she'll be coming to Australia to live for the next six or so years (at least!). She apparently has an American accent, the result of learning from American teachers in HK. We'll have to beat that out of her change that.

I have some photos from our recent fishing trip to The Entrance up here.

"A high-volume system like (Windows) that has been thoroughly tested will be by far the most secure."

Bill Gates says that the security of Linux and Apple sucks, during the same week that the worst-ever virus, which only affects Windows computers, wreaks havoc.

Microsoft has also posted a warning about using Internet Explorer. Their suggestion: don't click hyperlinks, instead, type them in by hand.

Please, use Opera, or Mozilla.