Tue, 20 Feb 2007
We walked over to the park near North Sydney Oval to see the QM2 docked over in Garden Island after tea last night. Even from there, you can still see the massive ship, despite the attempts of the city buildings to obscure it. It's hard to obscure something that big.
Took a few photos, but in the twilight, they didn't really turn out all that well.
But today the news is all about how the city went into gridlock, with cars choking the streets, as Sydney usually does when something out of the ordinary happens, such as, say, a weekend or a Friday night. Travelling by train home over the Harbour Bridge, everyone was craning their necks looking east to see the QE2 at CQ (Circular Quay) and the QM2 beyond that. They really are impressively huge ships.
At the second-hand bookshop yesterday I picked up a copy of The Stand, as well as the 1974 edition of the Lord of the Rings, which was the edition I had growing up. I lost my copy when moving from Melbourne (thanks, Wridgeway!).
There's nothing like the smell of a well-worn book, particularly one that you've read over and over again, but have not read for years. It's about time I got back into reading fiction, too.
Mon, 19 Feb 2007
On the way home, a couple of Fitness First people were handing out flyers at the train station. I was all prepared for them, too, had they tried to push one of their pamphlets upon me: I would loudly say to them, "Who needs to exercise, when you've got a body like mine! Hah!"
And then I'd thrust my hips at them, like Hard Gay.
Fortunately, I've never had to embarrass myself like that, since nobody has ever tried to give me a flyer. They instead try to give them to all the women passing by. I'm sure it's because they obviously realise it will be a lost cause trying to persuade someone as obviously in shape as me to join a gym.
Bonus link: Hard Gay Cooking Challenge - it's cooking and wrestling. On TV. In Japan.
Saturday night saw us hosting Chinese New Year dinner.
The star attraction was roast pork from Eva and Steph's Uncle Albert in Hobart. Unfortunately, in all the fuss organising to bring all the other dishes, drinks and pots from their place to ours, Eva and Steph forgot the pork.
Steph and I saved the day by driving back to St Peters to pick it up.
In the meantime, Kathleen, Eva and J Mac organised the rest of the food while Dickson, Lucy and Marcus watched them and drank in anticipation.
- long life noodles with tofu, carrots and mushroom (noodles eaten at Chinese New Year represent longevity)
- steamed prawns and gai laan
- Hainanese chicken
- steamed salmon
- bean curd, pork and lotus root soup
And the pork? The pork was fantastic.
The soup along came in Eva's 10 litre pot of soup, which she spent the entire previous day preparing and then simmering (bean curd, pork bone, lotus root). There was so much soup that she only brought one of the two pots.
There was so much food left over that everyone got to take home leftovers of everything.
That's what we'll be eating Monday and Tuesday!
Sun, 18 Feb 2007
Our friend CC had her farewell party at the Bavarian Beer Cafe in O'Connell St. She's off overseas to London, via the US, for the foreseeable future, her first big stint overseas, and the end to her first job out of uni.
It's always exciting when someone completely changes the direction of their life.
Tue, 13 Feb 2007
Kathleen was working from home this afternoon. Since I never call her during the day, I thought it'd be a nice surprise if I rang to say hi.
But when I dialled, the phone rang out. I continued to ring, on and off, about five more times over the rest of the day. Each time, there was no answer. Strange.
"God, what a persistent telemarketer I had today," Kathleen said, when I got home that night. "He rang all afternoon! I was going to pick up the phone and yell at him that I didn't want whatever he was selling.
But that was me!
"Oh. But you never ring me!"
Sun, 11 Feb 2007
We went with Steph and Eva to see An Inconvenient Truth at Naremburn Park last night. It was a very powerful statement about the need to act now upon global warming. I agree with the premise of the movie, and I agree with the statistics and evidence that support the statement that global warming is indisputable fact.
What was most interesting to me was the coverage the movie went into pre-empting the naysayers, with the usual muckraking statements provided by industries wanting to muddy the waters and cloud the debate addressed:
There is overwhelming conclusive scientific data and agreement on the symptoms and the causes. There is no "controversy" or "debate" within peer-reviewed scientific journals; the only disagreement is within newspapers and magazines, which have a vested interest in generating headlines, and for whom scientific evidence is no requirement to generating an article.
The claim that "businesses will go bankrupt and jobs lost" was the most interesting, with attention given to the attempt to impose lower emission limits upon US automakers, who claim that they will not be able to compete if limits are imposed. Funnily enough, the existing limits are more lenient (i.e. more polluting) than what is legally allowed in countries all over the world, including such new environmental pariahs such as China and India. In other words, US automakers cannot export to even places like China, which have higher emission controls than the US.
The Australian government is in the camp of those claiming that "business as usual" is too important to change, and that our economy is at risk if we try and adapt. What crap.
For a start, becoming a leader in renewable energy can only have beneficial results, as countries all over the world realise that polluting sources of energy, such as coal and nuclear, cannot be sustained.
Having said that, there is little point in complaining about the government's position, and it is even hypocritical to do so, without first putting your money where your mouth is. So, we've signed up for Greenpower-certified energy from our energy company, which costs only slightly more than regular energy, but is sourced from renewable energy, rather than polluting coal. Our last quarterly reading had 0 CO2 emissions. 0. If even 20% of Australian households did this, it would be a massive fillup to an Australian industry that has the potential to be a world-beater.
But what can a country with a population as small and insignificant as Australia's do? Imagine if every country on earth took this view. We have to start somewhere. Might as well start here.
Wed, 07 Feb 2007
Last night, riding up to Crows Nest to drop a DVD back, passed three girls waiting at the traffic lights to cross the road.
All three were wearing gym clothes.
All three were carrying a rolled-up yoga mats.
All three were obviously heading to the same yoga class in Crows Nest.
All three were standing a metre or two apart, studiously ignoring the others.
They were obviously all too cool for school, or too cool or indifferent to start a conversation using the obvious talking point.
That joke about the Englishmen stranded on the desert island not talking to each other because they hadn't been introduced seems to also apply to people in Sydney, sometimes.
Mon, 05 Feb 2007
We went and watched The Queen at Chatswood on Friday night, and were the youngest people in the cinema by a good ten years. It was a lot less musical than I thought it would be.
Seriously, it was a really good movie, focussing on the period just after Diana died where there was a press-driven backlack against the royal family, who were seemingly indifferent to the 'tragedy'. The movie humanised the royal family to an extent, giving some insight to how protocol drives them to act the way they do. It doesn't make a difference to my opinion - Australia still needs to get rid of this anachronistic and irrelevant institution.
Saturday night, we rented Thank You For Smoking, which was hilariously cynical. One scene in particular with Rob Lowe was hilarious.
Then on Sunday night I watched the other rental, Colour Me Kubrick - Kathleen gave it a miss, but then she also didn't watch Napolean Dynamite, and she missed out there big time. This one, she didn't really miss all that much. The movie was about a conman who posed as famous reclusive film director Stanley Kubrick, despite being flamboyantly camp and knowing nothing about Kubrick's movies. A little disappointing, with the basic premise being the funniest bit of the movie, rather than any of the scenes. Can't win 'em all.
