Time

Having a free subscription (thx to our previous tennant) to Time magazine has made me painfully aware of how ignorant I am re: things happening in the world. It really is scary learning what is happening around the world right now, that living in our precious, cosy homes, we can be completely oblivious to.

Should we care? Mushie has always been of the opinion that watching the news is "too depressing and upsetting" - and i certainly agree with that. There is way too much suffering going on in developing countries, warring african states, Palestine - Israel, Iraq, let alone the local news about rape, murder etc, to feel very excited about watching the news (i guess that's why they have that naked news .... certainly adds a different twist to news)

I guess I pride myself on my own powers of judgement - that i can see a certain situation/issue and know in my mind what is the right thing to say or do then. (like knowing not to walk down dark alleys or being careful to wash your hands carefully after treating someone's feet for example :)

However, when I think back to pre-iraq ,when Australia was deciding wether it would join the US at war, and I thought ... i guess that's ok, why not ... WHY NOT?!?! How about that Iraq was not responsible for 9/11, that Bush and his governement had lied about the WMD (weapons of mass destruction), that the UN would not support the action, that soldiers would die ... are we partly responsible for not having an opinion, and in silence, supporting our governments who persue these illegal, immoral, stupid wars?

Wedding season!

Holiday Essential facts:
* 8 weeks and 4 days of holidays, 3 weddings, 10 seperate flights
* Places visited - Norway, Denmark, Sydney, Fraser Island, Thailand
* 2 Halo nights, 3 spring roll nights, 1 new nephew
* 960 photos

Thanks to everyone in Sydney for what was a very very enjoyable 5 weeks in Sydney. Time went by incredibly quickly and as always it was really hard to leave Australia again (though the next time we come back, might be for good!). While Sydney is warming up, London is just getting darker and colder. It does have a certain charm to it though! Time to return to work, and i thought time to hand out some awards.


Best wedding dance
Contenders - Bootylicious at Simo/Cel's, the Tango, and "It had to be you"
Winner - While Bootylicious had 15 girls up there shaking it (and that impressive "quickly- spreading-legs" manouever) and the Tango had Bernie (yes, bernie!) doing some classic dance moves; "It had to be you" had it all. Tap dancing, hat and cane swinging, singing (of a questionable quality - but still singing!) - brillant Bundies!

Best meal
Wow, a lot of awesome eating took place on this trip. Got to visit most of the old haunts, though we missed the fish markets (-d'oh!) , but along the way we got into some "hatted establishments". On the home cooked side - Gobbo, Jo and Anna (go the risotto!) also produced some quality that shouldn't be go without mention.
Contenders - Guillarme @ Bennelong, Yoshii, Tetsuya
Winner - Yoshii - the lunch time meal of Wagu beef was amazing, and though the portion size wasn't huge, big enough to leave u satisfied and yet still wanting more. Love the Good Food month!

Best wedding speech
There was only one real contender for this award - Gav, Bernie's best man - what a ripper of a speech. It had everything - generous servings of taunts and embarrassing stories, random telegrams, defecation and nudity stories. The hits just kept coming.
Winner - Gav

And a few random awards ...
The "he's taking so long, maybe he got stuck" Award for slow garter removal - Sandy

The "Country Road" award for terrible posing - Boomsticks

The "Are you sure he doesn't hit both ways" Award for man-love dancing - Gobbo

The "Ouch! My nipples are turning purple" Award for drunken nipple twisting - Kev Y

and notable mention for the last three awards - Mantwan

Extreme makeover

I cringe every time i see this show - and not just due to the abundance of bad teeth, disjointed noses and ugly melons. Even though I have to agree with the Mushie sometimes that "it really makes a difference in their lives" and sometimes their surgeries are really required, there's something about the whole premise of the show that just makes me a bit uneasy.

I can see how easy it would be to just go get surgery - why not? we all have parts of our bodies that we don't like or think that we could improve. Is it just like wanting to splurge some money on yourself and going to buy an accessory like a rolex? It's quite amusing cause these people that get on these shows sometimes just look normal - not anything that wrong with them, but they get this license to shop for new body parts - they're like "i'll got my nose done, my eye lids lifted, tummy tuck, and yeh some new breasts, i'd like some bigger ones thanks".

The thing that is shocking about these tv shows is more the underlying mental thoughts of the people that "win" by being selected unto the show. They cry with joy when they are selected to have surgery, they weep when they see their new breasts. They talk of how their slightly mis-shaped nose has held them back from potential jobs and dates. They put so much faith in the fact that being prettier will change their lives. Time magazine suggests that the tv series "Extreme Makeover" suggests that "The absence of beauty precludes a normal existence."

Do we really live in a society that thinks that?

1yr in London

In the last 2 weeks we've celebrated my birthday (all of 27 years now - and feeling old too!) , Trish's b'day and hit our one year anniversary of being in London. It was a time for celebration and reflection - a year filled with European travelling highlights (that I can now list off like a seasoned traveller) - Greece, Italy, Dublin, Paris, Barcelona, Sydney, Southern Spain, Poland, Vienna, NYC, Amsterdam and little trips around England. A very quick 12 months of frantic travelling, early saturday morning starts, late sunday night returns and very tired monday's at work.

It's been an amazing time. And through all of our first year we've been lucky enough to have good friends to travel with and share experiences. Unfortuanately 1 year has come and gone and G/A have have embarked on a 2 month long trip before arriving back to Oz early in Aug.

Early on, most weekends in London (if not weeknights also) involved spending time at their place, eating mushroom risotto or spaghetti bolognese from their industrial size pots, drinking cordial (called squash in London and served at a 'G/A special' 16:1 water to cordial ratio) and playing monopoly. Other times it was eating out at the local Malaysian place or KFC, or them throwing our garbage out for us and G catching a glimpse of someone taking a dump next to the bin. And always there was eggplant/aubergine for A! ALWAYS!

We'll miss you guys! One year down - maybe 2 to go? Get your butts to london, before we finish up here. It really is the time to travel. Lots more places in Europe to see - then there's South Africa, Africa safari, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Russia, South America ...

Sit on the fence long enough and you'll get splinters

I must say that I am an absoloutely terrible decision maker. When it comes down to two options, I can too easily see both sides of an argument and see that they both are valid and both have merit.

When visiting Amsterdam last weekend, we were bombarded by the plethora of "coffee houses" (to get hash/weed) and "smart shops" (for your magic mushrooms) - as well as sex shops and red light district stuff - that dotted the city centre. [Sidenote: Interesting names for the stores! As our tour guide was saying "don't go to coffee houses to get coffee, and don't go to smart shops to get smart".] If you didn't know before, prostitution and marijuana has been made legal in Holland.

Anyway, re: legalising marijuana, they are convinced in Holland, that by doing so they have caused a reduced demand for so called "hard drugs" (presumably your cocaine, heroin etc). In that sense legalisation has worked. They apparently are also the pioneers of the safe needle exchange, and methadone programs. They do also have a very friendly/helpful population and despite the festive nature of the weekend (and the incredibly heavy drinking) their were very few incidents of violence.

On the other hand, I can't help but think that there is something wrong with the attitude of "if we can't stop it, let's just legalise it so that it's no longer illegal". Is it better to have a higher proportion of people smoking hash, then a lesser proportion of people on soft and hard core drugs? Is hash (socially not acceptable) only as bad as alcohol (socially acceptable)? Is getting stoned the same as getting drunk?

[sidenote #2: i recently heard that a friend of mine has begun working at a tobacco company - another potential fence-sitting situation. It's a job, someone's got to do it, the money's good - on the other hand, i did a good job, millions more are smoking and dying now, i affect kids as well as people that buy my products .... hmm, not sure if i could deal with that. do we have an onus to not just live and work, but to contribute to the good of society?]

Weird place amsterdam ... very pretty, incredible canals, beautiful tulip fields and countryside. The general attitude of the country of - "if it doesn't harm anyone else, it's fine" - has led to a loosening of morals and things that were once taboo are no longer.

Nice place to visit, poss tooo loose to live in.

I'm back!

Gee it's been a long time between blog updates. Almost got to the point of forgetting my password to get into my blog. My comments have been reduced to "Nonez" all round due to my lack of payment to blogspot. Is it laziness? Have I nothing left to say?

Personally I've found that I started writing mostly about sport before realising that there were lots of people (Boston Sports Guy in particular) who wrote better about it and where much more fun to read than me. Than there were the serious posts which always felt like they took too much emotional energy put into them (interestingly enough that xbox vs the wife post was very easy to write - no lack of energy to put into that one!). Than there is my serious lack of english skills - which means typing simple thoughts takes much longer than it should.

Few easy decisions were made - write shorter posts, make them less meaningful (if that's possible) and leave the sports to the experts - too easy.

Hope to see you back here soon!