Andrew and Kathleen

The BOM have put the nervousness back into the wedding preparations with the forecast for Sunday:

Showers clearing.

Which isn't as bad as rain, and the 'clearing' part would indicate that by mid- to late-afternoon the rain should have stopped.

Fingers crossed.

The only consolation is that we're still a few days away, time for the forecast to change.

We are now sitting inside at my mum's place in Hobart, with jumpers on and the heating going. Today was 14 degrees. Celsius. If I told you how cold it was, you wouldn't believe me.

The worst bit is, all our interstate guests are going to smile knowingly. Ah yes, Tassie summer, they'll say. It's hard to try and change the image of Tasmania's summer when there's snow on the mountain!

...are going well now that we're in town and getting all the last little bits sorted.

The following is not the conversation you want to be having with the hotel where you're staying on your wedding night, 10 nights away from the date:

Hi, I'm just calling to confirm an accommodation reservation for early January.
I'm sorry, we're not taking bookings.
No, I want to confirm an existing booking.
We're not taking bookings since early July.
We had a booking.
We've called all our guests to cancel.
You haven't called me.
Maybe two or three guests we haven't called because we don't have their phone number.
I see. And this has been since July?
That's right. We're renovating.

Luckily, we were able to make other arrangements, but after six months of urging all our guests to book early, it was a bit of a wake-up call!

Wow - a mayor at one of the Sydney councils resigned after being caught on camera accepting a bribe. this is the sort of shenanigans that you imagine as part of a movie or something. You know he's an amateur when the cash wasn't even in an envelope or something!

I told Kathleen about it.

"Huh, of course he took it, he's Asian," she sniffed.

But the best quote goes to the bloke's wife:

While Mr Tsang was not talking, his wife of 26 years, Grace, yesterday said her husband was a "good man" who had never arrived home with thousands of dollars in cash and would probably be better dressed if he had.

"I know he doesn't look very good all the time," she said. "If he had a lot of money he would look better."

Sometimes you think you know someone, and then they go and do something totally out of character.

Lu, what are you doing?

Wow! It's 10pm, and the gusty change that the weather bureau forecast has come in. It's blowing sweet cold air right through the window. This house is pretty hot at the moment. It's not a furnace, it's not uncomfortable, but it's damn warm.

That's the one good thing about living in Sydney*. If it gets hot, at least it cools down a little at night.

* Unless, that is, you live in the hellfire furnace that is southwest, west, or northwest Sydney. Cheaper house prices maybe, but at the cost of multi-hour commutes and stifling heat.

Eva and I had a BBQ birthday yesterday at Centennial Park. Thanks, Sydney, for the 35C day. I appreciated it, standing over a hotplate in the noontime sun!

Seriously, it was a stinking hot day, and it's amazing how people's appetites just wilt in the heat. We came home with so much barbecued meat and snack food it's not funny. Of course, barbecue tastes so much better a couple of hours later - just like leftover pizza - so it was not a problem.

And I've managed to maintain my tan (or lack thereof) - no sunburn yet, and we're almost at the end of December - despite having had a few days out in the Sydney summer sun. That's what liberal sunscreen will do for you.

When the temperature hits 35C at a barbecue, you need something to cool you down:

Thanks for the present Kris!

We've bit the bullet, just before our New Zealand honeymoon, and bought a new digital camera, a Fuji FinePix E550.

Interestingly, the first three responses from a Google search bring back a user review, a magazine review and a user review before the official page. That's how you sort through the marketing bulldust.

We needed a new one after the old Nikon got pinched. Suddenly, the Nikon became the benchmark that we reviewed every camera against. Everything was either too big, too small, too expensive, too cheap and nasty, too difficult, too simplistic...

The new Nikons unfortunately look like crap, and they're too small for my hands. Plus the little animation that appears whenever you turn it on would just chew through the battery. And knowing marketing departments, there'd likely be no option to turn the animation off.

The Canons used 4 AA batteries, which is just stupid, and the screen was too small. We bought it at Digital City which, although not the cheapest, had the most knowledgable staff at each of the two stores that we went too, than any of the other places we looked at.

With Kathleen picking up her wedding ring from the jewellers last night, we now have all three rings. The wedding is less than three weeks away! Everyone at work is starting to head off on holidays, wishing me a happy Christmas and New Years. And a happy honeymoon!

Reading about the "snoozing jellyfish" reminded me instantly of Kathleen:

A team of north Queensland experts found one of the world's most deadliest killers, the box jellyfish, goes to sleep around 3pm and spends its afternoons and evenings napping on the ocean floor.

And they also found it wakes up 14 hours later at dawn the next day and hates to be disturbed.

As a device for delivering vast amounts of beer rapidly into the human body, the beer bong is quite suitable, and probably requires no further optimisation. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason why you would need to supplement the beer bong mechanically.

Really.

Holy crap.

Without a doubt, the best place in the world to be stuck behind a nervous driver is now right here in Sydney.

You may have heard that a dance remix version of the national anthem has been released for New Years' Eve. Predictably, the usual suspects are trotted out for the usual dose of outrage, anger and gnashing of teeth.

I swear the evil mastermind behind the remix is right now in his underground lair, making motions of a fishing rod and cackling evilly. Just reeling them in!

Seriously.

Today, we saw the first use of a SLAPP lawsuit against Bob Brown and the environment movement by a bully boy company beholden to nobody, the first person caught by roadside drug testing passes a subsequent test, and the crook behind one of Australia's worst corporate collapses pleaded guilty, but the item that generates the most amount of media interest is this tiny little storm in a teacup. Unbelievable.

We met up with our friend Elaine for dinner last night in Chinatown.

She's the last of 12 graduates hired through PwC's Melbourne office in January 1999. That division is now part of IBM. 6 years later, only 1 is left. PwC are the posterchild for staff retention at the graduate recruitment days.

Elaine's been in Auckland for over a year on a project. NZ was great for two weeks - but I'm not so sure about an entire year!

I'm waiting in the foodcourt underneath the Galeries. There's an old bloke sitting waiting at a nearby table.

He's dressed in a white shirt and a white tie with the 'Japan' emblazoned in red and a motif of the rising sun.

A small sprig of carnation is in his shirt pocket, and there's a bunch of purple gerberas on the table next to his coffee and his briefcase.

This briefcase. It's old and battered and brown. Except for the lid, where, painted in white, is this:

God is love
God is Great
Allah
Japan 日本

Every so often, he pats down the hair at the back of his head and glances around. I wonder whether he's waiting for someone.

And then, he gets to his feet, picks up his belongings and wanders off. As he passes by where I'm sitting, I see another of his possessions that I missed before. It's a magazine, and I can just make out the word "Japan" before he's gone.

He certainly likes Japan.

I've always thought that Sydney drivers are maniacs on the road. The most impatient drivers I've ever encountered. I can't believe that getting angry on the road is worth losing your life over.

Two cars were involved in a minor crash on Glebe Point Road and after both had pulled over an argument between the two drivers quickly turned violent, police said.

Witnesses say the argument was over who had the right of way at a set of traffic lights.

Police allege the 60-year-old man was punched and knocked to the ground before his attacker fled in his car.

Witnesses say the man cracked his head on the footpath.

The 60-year-old suffered critical head injuries and died overnight in hospital, with his wife by his side.

...

"We are seeing very aggressive driving, particularly on the roads of this state and particularly by young people.

"At this time of the year, at Christmas time, when normally thoughts turn to family and friends, it's time to just cool down and drive your vehicle in accordance with the circumstances on the road."

Amen to that.

My old flatmate Greta and I can get pretty competitive when it comes to buying presents for each other. Not that we want to spend heaps and heaps of dollars - we try and find the funniest, tackiest or weirdest item we can find. Half the fun is the look of sheer "what the hell?" on the other persons face.

She got me a good one a few years ago for Easter - "Happy Easter From Barbie", complete with pink easter egg and a little story book to go with it. I returned serve with the "AFL Footy Egg", an egg the size of a small football.

Anyway, I found a great Christmas present for her this year. She's going to be bouncing off the wall when she gets this present. She'll really jump for joy. This is one present she won't get over in a hurry!

The last time I ate McDonald's was in March 2002. I was in Indonesia on a project, I was late home one night and all the small Indonesian restaurants at the bottom of the hotel were closed. McDonald's did home delivery in Jakarta, and I was too tired to be any more imaginative.

I knew I would feel bad after eating it - I'd been living on Indonesia food for the previous eight weeks, and reverting back to such a massive calorie-laden meal in one fell swoop could not have been good for me. It was no surprise then, that I felt so crook afterwards that I swore I would never eat it again.

In a similar vein, the worst ever food poisoning I have ever had was on the night after having a meal from Wendy's. I have never felt so ill in all my life, and I was this close to missing an international flight because of nausea.

We finally saw Super Size Me on DVD last night. The very first supersized meal Morgan Spurlock ate made him throw up. A lot of people say that the film isn't realistic, it's a gimmick, no one eats only crap for an entire month.

To that, I offer this rejoinder:

The very first supersized meal made him throw up out the side of his car. This is on Day 2.

I felt crook just watching him try and finish the food off.

But a large part of the movie was Spurlock entering schools and finding out the crap they serve every single day. We're watching students walk up and order chips, pizza, drinks with as much sugar in them as a cola, all kinds of junk, with nothing healthy in sight. "We try and help them make informed choices about what to eat," says the school's food coordinator, obviously not seeing the irony.

The incredible thing was the sheer size of the servings. The drinks came to half a gallon - almost 2 litres, and most of that is high-fructose corn syrup. Sugar.

Every day, McDonald's alone generates enough rubbish to fill the Empire State Building.

How can anybody eat that junk?! Even the salad is unhealthy.

There's a pretty good review here.

We went to dancing lessons last night for the wedding. Hopefully we won't look too uncoordinated on the night. Picking up the steps is relatively easy, and once your muscles can 'remember' the movements, it gets even easier. Kathleen got pretty hyper about how well its going, I think she thought I was going to be an unimprovable, uncoordinated, rhythmless IT dork or something!

Finally, after a year where I kept thinking I was 27, now I actually am.

It's been like this for the past week, and will be the same over the weekend. Disgustingly humid, threatening to rain, but never quite making it. Nasty stuff.

I'm hanging out for the cool weather that Sydney thunderstorms normally bring.

We finally settled on the pieces we'll get the quartet to play at the wedding, after having found a website that offers sample MP3s of commonly-chosen wedding pieces. Nice.

We spent a couple of hours this afternoon going through all my MP3 CDs, trying to find good songs for the reception. The key criteria being either danceability or cool-in-a-retro-kind-of-way. Greta and Darise both have an amazingly diverse taste in music, so it will be interesting to see whether what we've come up with passes muster.

After having waited for 10 business days, about 8 more than I'd expect the process SHOULD take in the 21st century, for a replacement credit card for the one that was stolen, I finally rang the Bank. Where's my card?

"Hmmm," said Darren (he decided he was on first name terms with me). "It's been sent to the branch. In Toorak."

"In Victoria."

"That's right."

"You people know I don't live there any more, right? That both my mailing and physical address are in New South Wales now?"

Silence at Darren's end for a few brief moments.

"Well, I can get them to forward it to the ANZ branch in Surry Hills, if you like."

But even that's not really a solution, given the banks' propensity for opening hours that are less than 7 hours in duration. And I'm nowhere near Surry Hills when the branch is open, so what's the point? I get Darren to contact the Toorak branch and forward it to a branch in the Sydney CBD where I may get a chance to actually get to.

Even then, I know I'll ring again tomorrow to make sure he does, because now I just can't trust them not to stuff it up again.

But how can it be possible for a card to turn up to a branch and for no one there in Toorak to actually look up on their computers to contact me about it? Just remember, banks, I'm 26, almost 27, which is the prime time for me to be thinking about a mortgage...

It's been stinking hot since Sunday. Luckily the last three days have been reasonably cool in the morning, which means I get to work's air con before it gets too ugly.

At Central Station, trains to North Sydney are running every 2 or 3 minutes, which means if one of the trains isn't air conditioned, I wait for the next one.

Can you imagine anything worse than commuting in from the outer suburbs on a non-airconditioned train?

Today, Kathleen had to visit one of AMP's Penrith offices. She caught the train. One hour. No air conditioning. What a shitty city Sydney can be sometimes.

I'm sick of summer and it's only the first day of December.

The first sign of Christmas really being here is not the gaudy Christmas trees being shunted up in shopping centres. Nor is it the Christmas cakes being brought out of storeroom hibernation at Coles to clutter up the aisles.

The true sign of Christmas is the first "Christmas Banned" story appearing in the papers.

The twilit sky last night was just begging to be photographed. But we don't have a camera anymore.

I wanted to take a photo of the smashed glass when we arrived home last week. I think it was that that made me realise "Oh, hey, we did actually get some stuff stolen." Until that point, we thought that since the TV, the computer, and the DVD were still in their rightful place that somebody had just broken the window accidentally.

Not sure what camera we should get to replace it. I'm keen on another Nikon, but Kathleen wants a Sony. We shall see, we shall see.

Kathleen, Steph, and I went out for a quiet beer after work today, since it had cooled down nicely. We ended up in a pub in Surry Hills on Quiz Night. Despite our small team (compared to the cast of thousands that some other teams trotted out), we ended up a quite respectable second-last.

We need a Yank in our team. Fair dinkum, half the questions were American geography.