Two Princes

Was listening to that blast from the past by the Spin Doctors - yes, that was their name, was thinking how strange it is to see that phrase of spin, when the song was released well before I had ever heard of that public relations term. As I recall, goofy goofy band, silly song, but one of those that gets into your head and sells millions.

Came out about the time that I was leaving high school, and was thinking the three or four years after that were the closest I have come to having an actual extensive social life. Flitting between the cool group - well, the second best cool group, as it wasn't the alpha sports guys and cheerleaders crowd - as cool as I could get perhaps, the future lawyers, doctors and accountants group. The people who actually went to university to actually do the degrees in the minimum amount of time.

The other groups I flitted with were the slackers, who had signed up for university, but didn't know what to do with it, weren't really motivated at all, and the hmm, not quite sure how to class the third group - some pregnant teenagers, some heavy drinkers, bit of drug use blah blah, but a real sense of friendship and community about them - I know what some people would class them as, but I wouldn't use the type of terminology others would. Ah, the battlers perhaps is the best term, thank you John Howard LOL.

Was going out almost every weekend, some weekends two nights in a row - I never quite felt I broke into the brainiacs group, even though before my 'mental breakdown' at high school, I felt I was closest to that type of grouping. I don't know, maybe I just felt a bit cut out from the 'I'm doing a double law and accounting degree, what are you doing Tarquin' - OK, I exaggerate, on the Tarquin bit LOL. I dunno, maybe I just found them a bit snooty or something - this is of course in hindsight.

I just was at a very dark stage of my life then, and I felt that I wasn't adding much if anything to the conversations, a centre of darkness to the room. I had my depression to feed off, mentally back then, and felt it polluted the bright young professionals vibe in that group. I felt more at ease with the slackers and drinkers, a feeling of belonging or something.

But, at least I was out socialising, not just with workmates. Apart from my decade or so in Upper Hutt, I just don't feel I have stayed in a place long enough to gain deep friendships. And in my latter twenties and as I have hit 30, sometimes it feels too much of an effort to go out and make new friends, especially since I'm not sure which direction my life is headed, I doubt it will be long term in Brisbane - and, of course, the old chestnut of what do I bring to a friendship blah blah blah.

Hmmph, I knew I shouldn't have started writing this one LOL.

There was a catchy song on Triple J just before - My Bush Would Make A Better President, by Digital Primate, some Aussie hip hop or dance artist. With obligatory myspace website, going by the google search. Catchy song, I like the politics of it as well, but hmm, surely they could think of releasing it on a better date than September 11?

Later peeps
Pauly

More MoFo Movies

The title today of course is inspired by the mofo snakes on that mofo plane in that Samuel L Jackson movie out at the moment, and what does the L stand for anyways. Have seen three good movies the last three weekends - Brick, United 93 and Thank You For Smoking - and you don't often associate August movies with quality.

Smoking was good but not fantastic - not laugh out loud funny as I hoped it would be - or maybe I was just intimidated that there were only three other people in the cinema with me, a mid afternoon Monday session, didn't want to appear to be too loud or something.

Am sure I can go downmarket next weekend though - either Snakes On A Plane or Clerks 2. Dogma was Kevin Smith's last good movie, from what I have heard Clerks 2 is a run away lest ye have thine eyes burnt out kind of disaster. There is a horse sex scene in it apparently, and that's all I had to hear to never want to see it.

Quality movie wise, Jindabyne is supposed to be good, but it has been running a while now, whether it is still on next week is the question. And, like Match Point earlier in the year, one of those critically acclaimed ones that eh, I'm not sure I can really get a lot of enthusiasm up to actually go watch, to pass on those mofo snakes in the multiplex.

We will see, no doubt.

Paul

Silly Mid Off, Sillier Game, Silliest Umpire

Let's go over to the arcane world of cricket - even though I am a fan of the game myself, and, stranger still, more a fan of the five day traditional type than any bastardized shortened version, I can admit that it can often seem bizarre and weird. Especially this week.

Flashback to last Sunday, and an exciting - keeping it all relative - fourth day of the England v Pakistan test at the Oval in London. England had hammered the Pakistanis in two of the previous tests, but this one Pakistan were well on top, with England fighting to avoid the follow on. Umpire Darryl Hair had a close look at the ball, said it had been tampered with by the Pakistanis, awarded five penalty runs to the English, got the batsmen to choose a new ball, and continued play.

The pendant in me is wondering what those five penalty runs are classed as, byes, no balls or something different? Will have to go have a look at the scorecard sometime or other, but anyways, this happened in the early morning Australian time, so when I logged online and read the news, the penalty runs had been swept aside by something much more strange.

The Pakistanis were a bit unhappy about it all, but played on until the tea break. They didn't return once the tea break was over, even though the English batsmen and umpires had gone out. The umpires went and asked the Pakistanis what was going on, but were asked in return why the ball tampering decision had been made. The umpires went out to the middle again, and took the bails off.

After a half hour or so protest, the Pakistanis came back onto the field, but the English and the umpires weren't out there. Chaos ensued, and the 23,000 spectators were told not a hell of a lot about what was going on either. It seems that both the English and the Pakistanis wanted to keep playing, but the umpires wouldn't come out - technically, taking the bails off when both teams aren't on the field means the end of the match. Technically, Pakistan had forfeited the game.

There have been walk outs by teams from cricket grounds before of course, but none had lasted as long as the Pakistanis on Sunday. Sure, make a protest, sure, ditch an entire session, but surely everyone could have slept on it overnight and catch up some of the wasted time on the final day? Apparently not, and what with Darryl Hair's form for stubborness, he has been the one that has gotten most of the stick.

Hair of course being the one that no balled Muralitharan in 1995. He has hardly umpired a Sri Lankan game since, and the Pakistanis weren't too happy with him late last year for giving a run out when the batter was in his crease but off his feet avoiding the bowler throwing the ball at him. The accepted wisdom on the Indian subcontinent is that Hair is biased against Asian teams.

Pakistan's captain, Inzaman Ul-Haq, was put up on two charges of bringing the game into disrepute - on the ball tampering itself and the protest leading to the forfeiture, and there was talk that if he was banned from the game for up to the eight game maximum, the whole team could leave England. Much scrambling by the English board trying to get replacement teams lined up, either South Africa or the Windies.

I read the news this morning, and Thunderstruck by AC/DC is playing in my head. The most appropriate word, considering what happened in England overnight. The International Cricket Council (ICC) had a press conference in which they stated that Darryl Hair had offered to quit the game, for a non-negotiatiable, not to be publicised fee of half a million dollars (best spoken a la Dr Evil, with little finger at the side of your mouth - or Ren talking to Stimpy would also work).

For about ten minutes there I was laughing out loud thinking 'you dickhead' of Hair's request. On deeper inspection, he would probably make about that much in the four years he was proposing giving up, but the initial reaction was that he was trying his hand at blackmail. You give me money, I go away, or some such.

In discussion with at least three lawyers, the ICC decided to forward the email to the Pakistan Cricket Board as it would likely have an impact on Inzamam's disrepute hearing, and decided to release it to the public because it would likely get leaked anyway.

The gist of further correspondence to that request for money was Hair saying that racism was accused as well, the amount would be reconsidered, Malcolm Speed, the ICC head replying saying the request was inappropriate, and Hair replying back saying yes, he withdrew the request because on further consideration it was inappropriate.

Hair has no chance of ever umpiring another international game ever again, and I would doubt the lower grades will take him either. For the somewhat musty world of test cricket, it has been an insane week.

Funny old game, innit.

Paul

Shanksville, Pennsylvania

Just a quick one, to give a brief impression of United 93, the movie I saw this afternoon.

I started crying about three minutes in, when the taxi trip to Newark Airport showed the World Trade Centre, pre-8.36am Sept 11 2001, but this wasn't going to be a Hotel Rwanda, where I was basically weeping non-stop.

After that initial scene I didn't cry, I didn't feel a reaction to the movie for a long time - I was trying to reach inside myself to find an emotion to feel when watching the screen, but I couldn't, it was as if I only had a hole in the centre of me that was deflecting all the fear, the horror, the sadness, the tragedy and all that. And that felt wrong to me, not being able to find an emotion - I felt bad because of it.

The on-the-ground scenes at air traffic control and the rest were riveting. I was mentally shouting to the actors up there to think outside the square - the planes have gone under radar coverage over Manhattan, connect the dots, it's so easy to do. But it wasn't, back five years ago - it was unimaginable to connect those particular dots back then.

And at the military base, trying to get rules of engagement, trying to scramble jets to do whatever it was that might have been Plan B, I could just completely feel the frustration at not being able to shape events, to protect America and the absolute silence when the Pentagon was hit.

But still I was trying to find an emotion, any emotion inside myself to connect myself to the screen, other than a sense of detached appreciation that this was very well done. About the final half hour of the movie is focussed completely on what happened on Flight 93, with the growing sense of hopelessness and desperation among those in the air - masterfully done.

The screen went black, a few words came up, and I came to the realisation that I was trembling, my arms were shaking. I had searched for an emotion to connect to for two thirds of the movie, but in the high adrenaline of the ending, I had found it. Terror, in the purest sense of the word.

A must see movie, to take us back to how we reacted, how we felt that day. To forget all the other crap that has happened in the interim, and to focus on what actually happened.

Simply stunning, absolutely moving.

I Blame Robert Jordan

It has been a long time since I have read fantasy novels - the dragons and sorcery kind of fantasy, not any other sort LOL - and I blame the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan for that. If I had known that the series would have been eleven books long and with no sign of an end anywhere in the next decade, I may have given it a miss, no matter how good the first six books were. Or no matter how well written the main characters are.

The past four or five books in the series have felt like treading water, while still introducing new characters, bringing back formerly dead ones, and halving the length of the books, making it seem like an endless drip feed. Maybe this is what drug addiction is like, because despite knowing that the next book isn't going to end it all, and may not even be good, you still have to buy it, just to get that extra step closer to some sort of closure.

So I would say that over the past three or four years, my appetite for heroic fantasy has gone downhill quite a bit - this from a guy that used to vociferously read - if I have the meaning of big word of the day vocifierous right - Tolkien, Terry Brooks, Raymond E Feist, Tad Williams, David Eddings, even Terry Pratchett. The last few years though, I have been more into books about crime, terrorism and general non fiction - the new terrorism genre of course morphing from the old cold war spy thriller type of book.

But, for the first time in a long time, I am reading fantasy again, and was so eager to get the next book in a series that, with a chapter still to go on book one, I went around three stores in the city on Friday night to find book two. Yes, from Angus and Robertson to Dymocks to Borders, I was on a mission, and I couldn't wait until later in the weekend to buy it. Step up for the 'I Brought Paul Back To The Genre' Award, Steve Erikson.

And he's Canadian as well - with my experience of that nationality, I guess I better run away now LOL. But of course it is going to be Vancouver's season in the hockey this year, surely?

Off to the movies shortly - United 93 most probably. Not a movie to take a bin of popcorn to - perhaps just a subtle soft drink to moisten the dryest of throats. Haven't felt this much trepidation of going to a movie, but at the same time an overwhelming urge to see something so depressing, since Hotel Rwanda. Remembering back, almost five years ago, to the disbelief, the incredulity, the overwhelmingness of what I was seeing on my TV screen, the sense of what on earth happens next.

The other options for theatre today are Thank You for Smoking, Jindabyne and The Sentinel, but I don't think I can stand to wait to watch United 93 - the tension even, and the possibility of delaying it until September 11 itself. No. It will be distressing enough to watch it on August 20.

And no, I won't even go further into the thought that the monthly death toll in Iraq is the same as America's September 11 2001. Not in a single day, of course, but each month, for the last six months at least, and no sign of any change on the horizon. Not going to go into the opinion pieces I have read in the American papers about Iraq the last couple of days. Nor even the Lebanon pieces...

I have got to steel myself to be depressed seeing a movie, get all the crap of the five years since, let alone the last six months, out of my head. Sometimes I just want to go back to the time, September 10, when Mexico was America's best ally and Dubya was a harmless joke.

Yeah, it has to be United 93 now, thinking this much in the last few paragraphs about That Day.

Babbling now, so I will sign off before babbling more.

Paul

Fully Sick

Have been a bit under the weather the last few days. It started when I was on the bus on Sunday, and I started feeling chest pains, feeling like my heart was thudding against my ribcage. Being male, I did a bit of shopping, saw a movie although my chest was hurting more and more - by the way, Brick, the movie, big recommendation, although takes a bit to get into.

Anyways, past the hospital twice to town and back and not stopping off to check anything out. My chest still hurting quite a bit. Went to bed, had a sleep, woke up and felt a lot better. But almost as soon as I got into the office Monday morning, I tried to raise my left arm to get my headset off the monitor, and sharp pains shot through me. Told the boss how I felt, made an appointment for the doctor, and headed home.

I shouldn't have had the piece of McDonald's toast though, because that made me miss the train by all of about thirty seconds, and I had to wait another half hour to get home.

Pottered around the house until the appointment at the medical centre, said to the doc that I felt chest pains on Sunday, chest twinges as I was describing them on the Monday - was put on the ECG for about five minutes, checking my heart rate and stuff. Diagnosis was not a heart problem or anything like that, rather I had caught a virus that had inflamed the muscles on my rib cage. Take two panadols every few hours and see how tomorrow goes - and silly me said don't bother with the medical certificate...

Tuesday morning, 3am, I awoke in a big fever, covered in sweat - my ribcage hurt so much it felt ready to crack. Feeling coming and going from my limbs - then trouble breathing. Staggering down the stairs to have a drink of orange juice, and suddenly the feeling of almost panic, of whether I should ring for an ambulance, left. Passing in and out of sleep for the next few hours, dreaming that I had to write a report at work about how sick I was, dreaming that I flaked out, seizure like. So realistic, the only way I knew it was a dream is that I didn't wake up with every muscle and joint sore.

In no situation to go to work with the lack of sleep I had - read a book, slept and web surfed on Tuesday. Got more chills on Tuesday evening and night, so rugged up completely when going to bed that night, and then got completely overheated, headache and all the morning after.

Without a medical certificate, kind of thought that I would need to head back to a doctor for a third day off in a row, but of course with it being Ekka Day, all of 9 to 5 Brisbane was off, including the doctors. Rang the afterhours, but their voice message said that if they thought it wasn't major, they would just recommend seeing a normal hours GP - and I didn't feel that sick.

Still, spent the morning sleeping, the afternoon reading - with a throbbing headache, constant muscle aches, wanting to cough but not being able to breathe deeply enough to do so, as well as sneezing.

Today, the headache had gone, but my throat is still scratchy - but felt well enough to head into the office. Minimal time on the phones though, was working my way through email and fax things to do instead. Was feeling sick earlier this evening, that my lungs and throat were filling with muck, with minimal allowance to cough it all out, but it is okay just at the moment...

Paul

'Unimaginable'

The alleged terror plot to use liquid explosive to bomb planes flying out of the UK threw up the word 'unimaginable' this week. To use in context by London's Deputy Police Commissioner, 'we are confident we've prevented an attempt to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale'.

I'm sorry, but my imagination can completely think up a scenario where three planes are bombed over the Atlantic every hour for three hours - especially in light of the fact that there was a similar plan to bomb twelve planes over the Pacific in the 90s. It would have been unimaginable to have happened in that Seinfeldesque 'decade about nothing', but all our imaginations expanded a heck of a lot during and after September 11.

It was unimaginable to think of an entire American city flooded by a hurricane, or would be unimaginable to have a nuclear weapon attack, or a release of plague or something. Actually, I take that back - to think of a cup worth of Iraqi anthrax in a city subway system was actively encouraged at the United Nations before that particular invasion, as was the concept of Saddam with nukes. Weapons of mass destruction anyone? Anyone?

Planes being blown up, even multiple targets, is very imaginable. After seeing the chaos in London on Thursday, also imaginable is an attack on crowded airports, which would screw the travel industry just as much as bringing actual planes down - without the bombers having to go through security checks.

The Twin Towers came down less than five years ago, but it seems another lifetime, a long time in a galaxy far far away. Western politics has thrived on an environment of fear, the concept of being with us or against us, neutering opposition by calling it unpatriotic, and refusing to negotiate with people or countries you disagree with. Or perhaps withered is the better word.

Invading countries and killing people is not the way to win a war on a thing such as terror. For every guerilla, insurgent or terrorist killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon or elsewhere, another person will get radicalised enough to join up - especially if civilians are getting killed, raped or tortured. The go to plan of getting the military involved has been tried, but where this has been tested it hasn't quite gone according to the initial plans, let alone considering any new threats (perhaps Iran or North Korea).

Over the past five years, our imaginations have been given too much free rein for much of anything not to have been thought of.

Paul

Water Water Everywhere

Water in Queensland, or the wider Australian nation, is a sensitive topic. Despite all the other riches in this country, despite the brash national self confidence, despite this state's drive to get another million people to immigrate within the next twenty years, water is about the only thing this place is lacking.

Brisbane, a city of one and a half million people, is in the middle of a drought situation, with serious water restrictions in place - you are not allowed to water outside with hoses and sprinklers, buckets only. Swimming pools however, are exempt, because if too much evaporation took place, the filters would stop cleaning the water, allowing them to become great mosquito breeding pits.

And the restrictions are likely to become more severe in a month or two's time, if the dam levels continue the way they have been - swimming pools may get mandatory covers, to lessen evaporation, and goodness knows how outside watering will be cut further back. The gardening, sprinkler and irrigation industries are already massively affected by the restrictions.

The Gold Coast's dam is full to the brim, and there was a weekend a few months back where the Gold Coasters could water outside to their hearts' content - it didn't come across as the best of public relation exercises to the rest of the South East, and I don't think it has yet been repeated. There was also discussion of an exemption for the watering restrictions for the over-70s - not sure whether that went through or not, but it just appeared to me as if no one else cares for gardens or anything apart from the elderly.

The State Government and the councils have been arguing back and forth about whose responsibility it is as to who has stuffed up water policy the last two decades or so, but nothing seems to be being done. The state government started advertising the last week or so in the newspapers about this new water grid plan they have got - my thinking is that the water crisis has been with us for at least a year, and only now are some plans being written up?

And the Premier has had his 'oh woe is me' look on his face the last couple of weeks, seeming to blame the councils for not doing anything, while still not declaring a state of emergency with the water supplies. And Beattie has taken on the ministerial water portfolio, and there is suddenly talk that the state may have an election sooner rather than later, spurred on by this water situation.

Oh, and Toowoomba had a referendum a couple of weekends ago, to ask whether recycled waste water should be mixed in with the drinking supply. The town voted 61% to reject the proposal, even though the recycled water would be put through more filters than the normal tap supply, seemingly spurred on by the no campaign talking about falling house prices if recycled sewage was used for drinking. The next day, greater restrictions were put on Toowoomba's water usage.

A loaded phrase, either calling it recycled waste water or recycled sewage - and the Premier is promising a referendum in the South East about it, but not until 2008 - what will the lake levels look like then, I wonder? And all the politicians, state and federal, kept ducking supporting the yes campaign in Toowoomba, the town mayor was left out to dry by herself it seemed.

Not to mention that 98% of rural New South Wales is in drought conditions.

The Toowoomba voter decision seemed to me to indicate that it is alright for our water to be pure and untainted by waste water (and you can't tell me that water as it is in the dams is all pure and clean anyways) and house prices won't fall, but in five to ten years when south east Queensland is a desert, will we be worrying about house prices then? Apart from where two million people will be moving to of course.

Oh, and not water related, but very nimbyish - there are scheduled to be another million people living in the south east corner of the state in the next twenty years. Dependent on water of course. One of the levels of government, state I think, proposed putting a new subdivision of ten thousand homes out at Wacol - the locals were on the television saying they would prefer the area to remain green space. Umm, duh - where is everyone else supposed to live if you have your green space?

I do agree with them about the state of the roads out to Ipswich though, they are a nightmare already. But the tunnel underneath the Story Bridge will sort all the traffic out - or should we spend on water infrastructure and new dams? And will there be cars as we know them in twenty years time, what with the price of petrol - or will the airports, to take another petrol related example, continue to expand at speed?

If only there was a Sim City sandbox mode for the real world :P

Paul

Good Articles

Just a quick one to note a couple of good reads I have had this weekend - just newspaper articles, but of the sort that attract my attention, so much so in fact that I have printed copies out for myself (testing out the new whizz bang scanner printer we have gotten).

This one from the Guardian is basically about the moment where the glass suddenly looks half empty instead of half full, the straw has finally broken the camel's back and such. With wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon - not to mention the not quite genocide in Darfur, nor the probable conflict between Ethiopia and the Islamist factions in Somalia - and North Korea firing missiles, Iran possibly building nukes, along with Gaza being hit by 300 artillery shells per day. Oh, and Condi preaching to the Cubans that they will have democracy soon - because it has been such a hit in Baghdad - oh, civil war is a possibility in Iraq according to the top brass in the Pentagon, whatever happened to Strategy for Victory?

It's all too much to take in sometimes - and V in particular says that I should stay away from newspapers, or at least the international pages in them, and focus on the positives on a more local level. Or even stay away from Australian or Brisbane news and focus on friends and family. Sometimes I would love to just be able to go to mySpace instead of the BBC news site on my web travels, but I am just not hard wired that way.

The second article that has caught my attention this weekend is from the New York Times, about men without college/university qualifications having less chance of getting married than a generation ago, whereas the reverse is true for women - these being American statistics of course. Hmm, I don't have a university qualification...

An interesting article, but hard to summarise or paraphrase it - I don't want to say that women are more financially independent or picky or anything, based on one or two comments in the piece LOL. Or to say that the job market for 'uneducated' men - boy, I dislike that phrase, as if going to lectures is the only sort of education you can have - is more unstable than it was back in the day, or despite how intelligent a person may be, they could never be management material without a series of letters after their names. Or to generalise about how men who don't settle down are therefore always afraid of commitment...

And of course, with reports like the NYT piece, I look at myself, and inwardly shudder.

I am my own worst critic though, in all aspects of my life.

Paul

Bledisloe

The Bledisloe Cup made its first visit to Brisbane in a decade last week - for rugby union's second city in Australia, that is disgraceful for the biggest game of the year. And don't give me that crap about how England and South African games can possibly compare. Since 1996, Melbourne has had the game twice, and Sydney seven times - plus the World Cup semi.

Of course I support the All Blacks, the Hurricanes and the other Kiwi teams, but I do support the Reds - when they aren't playing Kiwi opposition - because I would like to see the game grow in this part of the world. With no Super 14 coverage on free to air TV and endless AFL coverage, over all three commercial channels no less, it is a bit hard to be a rugby fan here.

Anyways, the ABs won a rather dour encounter, not too much excitement about it, only one try in the match and that was a breakaway, but with a four point margin for over half the match, it was as tense as anything. Could have been more tries, but just too many handling errors.

And what the heck was it with the Wallabies continuing to warm up, using the practise bags, after the haka? And on the haka, what with all the controversy about whether the ABs would do the throat slitting one, I have to admit that it was actually exciting when they did the 'real' haka - I haven't felt that frission of excitement, anticipation, and pure joy to the haka in a long long time.

Anyways, the last time a Bledisloe Cup game was played in Brisbane, ten years ago, the last weekend in July 1996, I was actually in town. Well, flying through on the Thursday and Friday before, on to Singapore, London and two months of Contiki bus touring. I was on the flight that took the Bledisloe across the Tasman, and I held it, had a photo with it, in Wellington airport - teary eyed farewell from the parents for my first big trip overseas, and all I had my eyes on was the Cup.

Not quite perhaps, but it would be funny to embellish that thought into real memory LOL. And then on the plane, sold out full of rugby heads - how did I time my trip to coincide with that? - that ran out of alcohol halfway across the Tasman - for the young ones out there, that was back in the day when alcohol was provided for free on flights, and you actually got a menu that didn't have prices attached, kind of hard to imagine in these low cost airline, charge for everything additional to the actual seat days, of course the fare prices were through the roof but you didn't have sneaky things like taxes or fuel surcharges adding 300% on top of what you thought you were paying...

Anyways, the plane was full of rugby heads, I had a lucky seat draw to win an All Blacks jersey - back in those nostalgic Canterbury before we sold our soul to adidas days - signed by Sean Fitzpatrick. The signature was just in chalk or something, and it rubbed off completely sometime in Europe - after Paris, but before Rome I think.

My mother was saying to me that if I had kept it in mint condition it could be worth a bit nowadays - again, reminiscing, 1996 was before eBay - but Sean Fitzpatrick wasn't my favourite player at the time, so the quicker the signature was gotten rid of, the better. The only thing was, that as soon as he retired, it seemed the ABs lost a lot more matches, maybe that hard nosed, talk to the ref attitude was worth something - although I can't stand George Gregan when he chats for 79 minutes to the referee either.

And what is it with referees and microphones anyway - do we, the audience, actually have to hear them natter away to all and sundry? I long for the old days, when all you heard of the ref was his whistle...

I overnighted in Brisbane, a near airport motel, the connecting flight to Singapore was not until the next day, and this was the first week of the Atlanta Olympics - a few days before, back home, I watched amazed as New Zealand, Danyon Loader, got a swimming gold medal - I would like to see that race again, in the breast stroke I think, because the memory I have of it is that he was about fourth at the final turn before powering in to win the thing. Was simply amazing, because at the time we had not won a swimming gold ever.

Anyways, so the swimming competition from Atlanta was on television the night I stayed in Brisbane ten years ago. If there is anything approaching a national sport in Australia, that unites everyone who loves the summer game or winter football codes, it is swimming - and boy, were they Aussie Aussie Oy Oying when I was watching the box.

Of course, I could have changed the channel, but sport is an easy turn brain off thing to watch, rather than dipping my toes into Australian television of the mid-90s, which, apart from Blue Heelers, I had hardly any experience of.

I could do a whole series of Hotels I Have Been In By Myself if I wanted to - from the overnighting in Brisbane between flights, to Singapore five different languages on television, working up the courage to go out into the hot and humid outdoors, to London, missing my connecting flight back from Belfast, starting to let myself fall apart after ten days of band aiding myself after the disastrous second H trip, to Saskatoon and Vancouver in January, feeling without any direction, the mind numbing coldness outside, the cold numbness inside.

Yeah, Belfast and London I was broken, Saskatoon and Vancouver I was numb. That about best sums it up. And yes, one day I might stop thinking or writing about my Northern Irish experience, but it's not likely to be anytime soon.

I was meaning to keep this on just the one topic, the transit through Brisbane ten years ago, but as usual, my mind sprouted various different thoughts from the one original memory.

More later
Pauly

So Much For Regular

Well, there I was thinking I would get back into the writing habit, with three entries in three days, and now what is it a week later with nothing more, hmm.

Have been having some weird dreams the last few days - in one, John Howard was at a conference in Indonesia somewhere and was the target of a suicide bomber. Not sure what happened apart from that the riot police came out from everywhere firing tear gas all over the place. Then my workplace turned into the anti terrorism unit from 24, and one of the workmates also turned out to be a bomber of some sort.

A couple of days before that, I had a dream that a dog was following me around, until I went into a fish and chips shop and shooed the dog out - for some reason there was a mixed up map of Denmark and central Africa on the shop wall, instead of the usual species of fish posters. I stepped out to give the dog a chip, but it had got in with a pack of other dogs and was running all over the place.

And then a day or two before that, was just thinking of the 'geography' of my dreams - how in deep sleep the lay of the land as it were seems as real as err real life. How there is a park next to the house in Wellington there, when in fact there was no such thing - how I have dreamed about walking around hills all the time, that remind me so much of the Rimutakas - or the leafy tree shaded school that reminds me of the bus stop in suburban Brisbane that was nowhere near any school.

Or the shopping centre or school where some of my most persistent nightmares as a child occurred - or the grass verge next to the sea, with pohutukawas (New Zealand Christmas trees) in their reddest of blooms. The city square that for some reason reminds me of Warsaw - or the valley with Soviet style statues, an industrial park and a road running along the hill. I'm sure I'm not making any sense, but I am sure it is not only me who has the old familiar dreamscape in my subconscious - sometimes it can feel more real than anything happening while awake.

Yes, I am going to go all Matrix and woah on everyone, deal with it LOL...

Paul