Relations with my house mate had deteriorated beyond repair after coming in then storming out of the house twice one afternoon I asked her whats wrong. She said don't you think Gena's staying round a little to much I agreed to live with one person not two. This sounds reasonable until you take into consideration that since I had moved in over a week ago Gena had only stayed over one night and popped over once. Especially as I had confirmed before I moved in that I had a girl friend and would it be ok for her to stay over a few times a week. She was also completely miserable in all her contact with me.
It had gone beyond what I was willing to put up with for the sake of cheapness, if I was pop eye I would have eaten my spinach by now.
Gena's house mates where even worse, and they we actually breaking the lease on her house early and kicking her out next week. We where being persecuted, so in a surprisingly easy decision we spent our eight week anniversary looking for a place to move into together. Its important to note the Gena had been keeping track of the dating time elapsed.
I'm sure your thinking that eight weeks is far to soon to move in with someone and you are of course correct. I understand its way to soon but ... I like Gena ... I like her a lot when I think about all the things I want to experience in the future I kind of like the idea of her being there for them. Considering the amount of stress she was under we where handling things very well
I had managed to go almost four months without living with a women and as much as I enjoyed not having stupid stuff put on my bedroom walls, actually getting to wear my own socks and not having my room look like a make up shop that had just been ram raided it was time to give it another go. Taking all the knowledge and wisdom I had gleamed from the last two times. (by the way 66% of the women I have live with I meet on the Internet)
Who knows, besides everything what else could possibly go wrong?
Lesson learned:
Never move in with women that are single and over thirty especially if they own more than one cat.
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
Friday, 21 September 2007
Comics Lounge
During the week Milly got back one evening looking miserable, she had just been to a hypnotist and sunk $600 on three sessions to give up smoking. I was curious so I asked her questions about it, being very careful not to undo his work and find out what happened. As far as I can tell he did nothing and the only reason she was quiting smoking is that she didn't want to waste $600.
The main reason to use hypnosis for something like this is to make it a lot easier. Getting people to give up smoking is really your bread and butter as a hypnotist and it is incredibly easy to do and most people want to stop anyway. The skill is in making it as quick and easy as possible. This guy just charged $600 for something that I normally just do for free for people I bump into. I've been holding myself back to long its probably time I actually started charging people. As long as I only charge people when it works I see no harm in that.
Anyway Milly was completely miserable and was becoming a pain in the ass to live with, to try and cheer her up we invited her out with us to the Comics Lounge. She re payed us by repeating "You guys make me sick" when me and Gena looked at each other. They where deep and meaning full looks but no physical contact was involved. I am getting very tempted to hypnotise her back into smoking again!
Afterwards me, Gena and her friend Danny went out to town, Danny was hot but single I took it upon myself to pimp for her. As she seemed a little shy to approach blokes I would go up to them for her. I would go up to blokes and get them to go talk to her. Remember shes pretty hot around a seven to eight'ish so with beer goggles on she could easily be mistaken for a ten.
In an attempt to show that I was not gay and hitting on them I tried various openers but because I had over thought this and was a little drunk I abandoned this as I was just making myself look even more gay by opening with things like.
'Do you have a girl friend?'
The guys generally responded in a pretty friendly manner but very few of them where heading over to her, I decided it was time to sweeten the deal a little, by saying things like:
'Shes not after a relationship, she just wants sex'
'She has a twin sister and they've always wanted a threesome'
'Shes decided she wants to lose her virginity tonight'
These seemed to help a bit and eventually a couple of guys went over to her. It was odd nearly all the men that the girls had selected for me to approach on her behalf had girl friends. I very rarely encounter women that have boy friends these days. When one of the guys told me he had a girl friend I responded with.
'Look don't give me that rubbish, I'm a guy too and I know that when it comes to women Men don't run that fast'
His girlfriend was standing next to him her eyes burning into me and I was suddenly reminded of why I have been banned from all of my friends weddings. Part of me wanted to say
'look shes way hotter than that girl your with now'
Luckily I didn't, but now I know thats its really hard to find a good man. So my friends it looks like the prophosized (by sex in the city) thirty year old dating power transfer is upon us.
The main reason to use hypnosis for something like this is to make it a lot easier. Getting people to give up smoking is really your bread and butter as a hypnotist and it is incredibly easy to do and most people want to stop anyway. The skill is in making it as quick and easy as possible. This guy just charged $600 for something that I normally just do for free for people I bump into. I've been holding myself back to long its probably time I actually started charging people. As long as I only charge people when it works I see no harm in that.
Anyway Milly was completely miserable and was becoming a pain in the ass to live with, to try and cheer her up we invited her out with us to the Comics Lounge. She re payed us by repeating "You guys make me sick" when me and Gena looked at each other. They where deep and meaning full looks but no physical contact was involved. I am getting very tempted to hypnotise her back into smoking again!
Afterwards me, Gena and her friend Danny went out to town, Danny was hot but single I took it upon myself to pimp for her. As she seemed a little shy to approach blokes I would go up to them for her. I would go up to blokes and get them to go talk to her. Remember shes pretty hot around a seven to eight'ish so with beer goggles on she could easily be mistaken for a ten.
In an attempt to show that I was not gay and hitting on them I tried various openers but because I had over thought this and was a little drunk I abandoned this as I was just making myself look even more gay by opening with things like.
'Do you have a girl friend?'
The guys generally responded in a pretty friendly manner but very few of them where heading over to her, I decided it was time to sweeten the deal a little, by saying things like:
'Shes not after a relationship, she just wants sex'
'She has a twin sister and they've always wanted a threesome'
'Shes decided she wants to lose her virginity tonight'
These seemed to help a bit and eventually a couple of guys went over to her. It was odd nearly all the men that the girls had selected for me to approach on her behalf had girl friends. I very rarely encounter women that have boy friends these days. When one of the guys told me he had a girl friend I responded with.
'Look don't give me that rubbish, I'm a guy too and I know that when it comes to women Men don't run that fast'
His girlfriend was standing next to him her eyes burning into me and I was suddenly reminded of why I have been banned from all of my friends weddings. Part of me wanted to say
'look shes way hotter than that girl your with now'
Luckily I didn't, but now I know thats its really hard to find a good man. So my friends it looks like the prophosized (by sex in the city) thirty year old dating power transfer is upon us.
Saturday, 15 September 2007
50 year old party
It was my second day at my new pad and my house mate Milly was kind enough to invite me to a party. She works at a school and it was one of the teachers fiftieth birthday bash. I had a feeling this was going to be absolutely horrible so I had to go ... to spice up the blog a bit. I've been pretty happy recently and I'm sure that make for rather dull reading.
Unfortunately this party was probably one of the most rocking I have ever been too, it was in a music venue/pub and the blues, jazz band was absolutely rocking. It was far more rocking than my twenty first. We drank cheap beer and rocked late into the night. Me and Milly where invited back to the guys house with a group of others, this is where things got interesting.
I'm twenty nine (I had written twenty eight first then had to work it out and correct myself) Milly was 31 and then there was around 20 odd years gap between us and the other guests. On arrival a couple of the women returned to being normal fifty year old women and started cooking snacks. The rest of the group did something that I really wasn't expecting ...
They continued drinking and started to take/smoke copious amounts of drugs, I felt relieved that the spirit of youth and rebellion still burned on regardless of age. I found a lot of them very interesting so I pretty much stopped talking and went into information gathering mode. One women particular stands out in my mind as she was telling me about what a nightmare it was to have teenage children, this sounds pretty normal especially as she runs a department at her school. She was holding a glass of red wine and a joint why she told me. She even mentioned that she would have killed her kids if they did anything like what she was doing now.
I had a lot of fun and absorbed many anecdotes, but I left with the taste of hypocrisy in my month. What makes it ok for you to do things that you would punish your children for? As stupid as Drug prohibition is I can understand why some people buy all the propaganda they are feed about it and pass it on to their children. But these people .. they knew better .. they knew the truth ... they knew that most drugs users go out take drugs then go back to work the next day having had a really good time and talked nonsense like you where saving the world for a while. Why did they hold there children to a different standard to themselves?
I'll guess I''ll know the answer when I have kids, but I really deplore hypocrisy and will try my best to avoid it. Or am I just being like the pre pubescent child that swears he will never have a girl friend.
Unfortunately this party was probably one of the most rocking I have ever been too, it was in a music venue/pub and the blues, jazz band was absolutely rocking. It was far more rocking than my twenty first. We drank cheap beer and rocked late into the night. Me and Milly where invited back to the guys house with a group of others, this is where things got interesting.
I'm twenty nine (I had written twenty eight first then had to work it out and correct myself) Milly was 31 and then there was around 20 odd years gap between us and the other guests. On arrival a couple of the women returned to being normal fifty year old women and started cooking snacks. The rest of the group did something that I really wasn't expecting ...
They continued drinking and started to take/smoke copious amounts of drugs, I felt relieved that the spirit of youth and rebellion still burned on regardless of age. I found a lot of them very interesting so I pretty much stopped talking and went into information gathering mode. One women particular stands out in my mind as she was telling me about what a nightmare it was to have teenage children, this sounds pretty normal especially as she runs a department at her school. She was holding a glass of red wine and a joint why she told me. She even mentioned that she would have killed her kids if they did anything like what she was doing now.
I had a lot of fun and absorbed many anecdotes, but I left with the taste of hypocrisy in my month. What makes it ok for you to do things that you would punish your children for? As stupid as Drug prohibition is I can understand why some people buy all the propaganda they are feed about it and pass it on to their children. But these people .. they knew better .. they knew the truth ... they knew that most drugs users go out take drugs then go back to work the next day having had a really good time and talked nonsense like you where saving the world for a while. Why did they hold there children to a different standard to themselves?
I'll guess I''ll know the answer when I have kids, but I really deplore hypocrisy and will try my best to avoid it. Or am I just being like the pre pubescent child that swears he will never have a girl friend.
Friday, 14 September 2007
Moving day
Well it was finally time for me to leave the safety of the young peoples home. On my second day of looking for houses I found a bargain ... for just £45 a week there was a place just 25 minutes train/tram from the city center. She mentioned that she was really looking for a woman flatmate I just made a joke out of it and that seemed to put her at ease.
It was between a supermarket, gym, swimming pool and park. The house was a bit studenty and the woman that lived there seemed a little quiet ... almost to quiet. I would put up with a lot for such cheap and convenient living. I had seen another room I liked in Kensington, it was a little to far out of town but I was very tempted to take it anyway so I could say that I've lived in Kensington.
She took my round the second hand shops and I brought some cheap furniture, for the first time since my arrival I was purchasing things that I couldn't take with me, I guess I'm really living here now. On my first walk to work I noticed something wonderful, it was bin day and in Australia instead of the boring collection of old fashioned Oliver Twist style bin men we have in England the bin trucks have a giant robotic arm on the side that grabs the bins off the side of the road and pours them in the truck. I really wanted a go!
My commute takes me on a train Sandringham which I get off at Windsor, for some reason this always puts a smile on my face. With my own room and a part share in an Internet connection I felt compelled to buy a laptop. Then I did what anyone would do on their first night they had there own room and there own computer in three months ... I looked at porn.
It was between a supermarket, gym, swimming pool and park. The house was a bit studenty and the woman that lived there seemed a little quiet ... almost to quiet. I would put up with a lot for such cheap and convenient living. I had seen another room I liked in Kensington, it was a little to far out of town but I was very tempted to take it anyway so I could say that I've lived in Kensington.
She took my round the second hand shops and I brought some cheap furniture, for the first time since my arrival I was purchasing things that I couldn't take with me, I guess I'm really living here now. On my first walk to work I noticed something wonderful, it was bin day and in Australia instead of the boring collection of old fashioned Oliver Twist style bin men we have in England the bin trucks have a giant robotic arm on the side that grabs the bins off the side of the road and pours them in the truck. I really wanted a go!
My commute takes me on a train Sandringham which I get off at Windsor, for some reason this always puts a smile on my face. With my own room and a part share in an Internet connection I felt compelled to buy a laptop. Then I did what anyone would do on their first night they had there own room and there own computer in three months ... I looked at porn.
Monday, 10 September 2007
Apec Debrief
For most of my life I've been very non political, instead thinking more about myself, individuals and the small groups of people around me. I've pretty much always disagreed with what government was doing but I just kind of left it at that really. Now I'm actually starting to think a lot about these things and this coupled with a twelve hour bus ride results in this rant.
I know I'm the crazy/eccentric one but here are a few things I just don't seem to be able to understand.
A few people have commented that I was silly to go to a protest, but if it wasn't for people making a fuss we wouldn't have a lot of the great things like democracy that we enjoy today.
Money has no intrinsic value, we just made it up ... its a collectively imagined principal that we pay an awful lot of credence to. By and large money seems like a good system it massively simplifies trade but it has some huge holes. Remember we lost the gold standard in the forties so there is more money in print than we have actual resources to justify it.
The environment is a real thing, the major cause of us continuing to pollute it is money, so here we have an imaginary concept that's actually harming our reality. Even if money was real we won't really have much use for it if the human race mostly dies out. CFC's the 100% proven ozone killers are not to be phased out completely till 2040, what kind of crazy time scale is it. By some good fortune we have a protective layer around our planet that protects us from nasty radiation from the sun. Why on earth is it taking us fifty odd years from when we found out that CFS where destroying it to stop using them?
We live in a world full of imaginary lines people on one side of the line can be the richest in the world and people on the other can be starving to death ... to me this is crazy. The reason we are not feeding/clothing and educating these people is basically because its not profitable to do so. Again numbers going down instead of up on some computer screen is causing real harm to the world. Travel and where you are allowed to live/work is restricted based on what random country you happen to be born in. I believe where ever you are born you are a person and deserve the same rights to the planet as everyone else.
The more we can start to become one race of people hopefully the more we can drop all this nonsense about different people hating other people because of something that happened several thousand years ago. The idea of land ownership is just completely stupid ... who are we buying it off? Why do they have any more claim to it than us? What gives someone the right to grab an area of the planet and say its theirs? Just because someone wrote down on a bit of paper a long time ago that the land is theres? An army gives you a means to do it but it doesn't confer a right to do it.
I feel its also worth mentioning all the parasitic humans who just do things like trade shares or currencies they don't actually produce anything just steal small amounts of money off an awful lot of people. When they trade currencies governments and central banks also have to trade to stabilise things, effectively money from the public purse gets given to them everyday. I'm going to include lawyers in this too, they are really only needed as the law has been made completely over the top complex, mostly because it was made by other lawyers. Imagine a law that's written that you can easily understand. Imagine how much easier tax returns could be if they weren't based on deliberately complex laws that artificially create the need for accountants and lawyers.
Religion ... I'm not even going to start on this one, sufficed to say that as part of our continuing evolution its really past time to take the emotional nappy of religion off. If your an adult with an imaginary friend please keep it to yourself and don't use it as an excuse to do anything other than making your life and the world a better place. Good Dam it! Jesus Christ! Religion makes me angry ... your continued belief in magic is doing real harm to society and which no longer covers you over my global belief that you can do/believe what ever you want as long as you don't harm another person. Please just stop for a moment and think about how childish and harmful faith based reasoning is, don't let it continue to another generation please. If that voice inside your head when you pray really is god then hes spoken to me too, he said
'Tell the others forget about all the dogmatic religious crap, be nice to everyone and have fun. If you really must worship me, have an amazing and good life. Oh and tell them its best not to mention me in public it makes them look a little crazy'
Why do we put up with this crazy system of voting once every five or so years for someone that's going to lie to us and not even do what the few things that we voted them in for. If only there was some way of collecting every ones opinion together rapidly and easy and using that to shape the future, oh hang on a second we do, the Internet! If a bank system can work why not a voting system? wouldn't it be nice to actually have people involved in the debate and deciding there future? Think about all the great things the Internet has achieved by bringing peoples minds together and start to wonder what else it could achieve.
I believe political assassination should be the standard way of handling wars, if some crazy guy at the top wants to start a war then it makes sense that he should be the one getting shot at.
All the power in the world resides with the people if only 10% of the people in the world own 90% of the wealth then they are exceedingly outnumbered. What ever continues to happen to us on our planet is our choice there is a cooperate machine trying to turn us into a giant dollar sign but we hold the plug in our hands.
I know I'm the crazy/eccentric one but here are a few things I just don't seem to be able to understand.
A few people have commented that I was silly to go to a protest, but if it wasn't for people making a fuss we wouldn't have a lot of the great things like democracy that we enjoy today.
Money has no intrinsic value, we just made it up ... its a collectively imagined principal that we pay an awful lot of credence to. By and large money seems like a good system it massively simplifies trade but it has some huge holes. Remember we lost the gold standard in the forties so there is more money in print than we have actual resources to justify it.
The environment is a real thing, the major cause of us continuing to pollute it is money, so here we have an imaginary concept that's actually harming our reality. Even if money was real we won't really have much use for it if the human race mostly dies out. CFC's the 100% proven ozone killers are not to be phased out completely till 2040, what kind of crazy time scale is it. By some good fortune we have a protective layer around our planet that protects us from nasty radiation from the sun. Why on earth is it taking us fifty odd years from when we found out that CFS where destroying it to stop using them?
We live in a world full of imaginary lines people on one side of the line can be the richest in the world and people on the other can be starving to death ... to me this is crazy. The reason we are not feeding/clothing and educating these people is basically because its not profitable to do so. Again numbers going down instead of up on some computer screen is causing real harm to the world. Travel and where you are allowed to live/work is restricted based on what random country you happen to be born in. I believe where ever you are born you are a person and deserve the same rights to the planet as everyone else.
The more we can start to become one race of people hopefully the more we can drop all this nonsense about different people hating other people because of something that happened several thousand years ago. The idea of land ownership is just completely stupid ... who are we buying it off? Why do they have any more claim to it than us? What gives someone the right to grab an area of the planet and say its theirs? Just because someone wrote down on a bit of paper a long time ago that the land is theres? An army gives you a means to do it but it doesn't confer a right to do it.
I feel its also worth mentioning all the parasitic humans who just do things like trade shares or currencies they don't actually produce anything just steal small amounts of money off an awful lot of people. When they trade currencies governments and central banks also have to trade to stabilise things, effectively money from the public purse gets given to them everyday. I'm going to include lawyers in this too, they are really only needed as the law has been made completely over the top complex, mostly because it was made by other lawyers. Imagine a law that's written that you can easily understand. Imagine how much easier tax returns could be if they weren't based on deliberately complex laws that artificially create the need for accountants and lawyers.
Religion ... I'm not even going to start on this one, sufficed to say that as part of our continuing evolution its really past time to take the emotional nappy of religion off. If your an adult with an imaginary friend please keep it to yourself and don't use it as an excuse to do anything other than making your life and the world a better place. Good Dam it! Jesus Christ! Religion makes me angry ... your continued belief in magic is doing real harm to society and which no longer covers you over my global belief that you can do/believe what ever you want as long as you don't harm another person. Please just stop for a moment and think about how childish and harmful faith based reasoning is, don't let it continue to another generation please. If that voice inside your head when you pray really is god then hes spoken to me too, he said
'Tell the others forget about all the dogmatic religious crap, be nice to everyone and have fun. If you really must worship me, have an amazing and good life. Oh and tell them its best not to mention me in public it makes them look a little crazy'
Why do we put up with this crazy system of voting once every five or so years for someone that's going to lie to us and not even do what the few things that we voted them in for. If only there was some way of collecting every ones opinion together rapidly and easy and using that to shape the future, oh hang on a second we do, the Internet! If a bank system can work why not a voting system? wouldn't it be nice to actually have people involved in the debate and deciding there future? Think about all the great things the Internet has achieved by bringing peoples minds together and start to wonder what else it could achieve.
I believe political assassination should be the standard way of handling wars, if some crazy guy at the top wants to start a war then it makes sense that he should be the one getting shot at.
All the power in the world resides with the people if only 10% of the people in the world own 90% of the wealth then they are exceedingly outnumbered. What ever continues to happen to us on our planet is our choice there is a cooperate machine trying to turn us into a giant dollar sign but we hold the plug in our hands.
Saturday, 8 September 2007
APEC Day 2
The news in the morning was the best I had ever seen, the three hundred million dollar security operation had been breached by a group of Australian Comics named The Chasers who just got three motorcade looking cars put a Canadian flag on the front one and drove through all the security. Once they got outside George Bush's hotel they decided they better turn around before they got in trouble, when one dressed as Osama Bin Laden gets out ... and ... well attracts surprisingly little police attention. Stop now and watch the video in the link (episode 15 if your reading this at another time) its amazing, they really stole the show and I have an incredible about of respect for them. George Bush was on normal form, as he blundered through his speech he called the conference the OPEC conferences and thanked the people of Austria.
This was the day of the big march and I'm not sure how but they managed to find even more police, the route of the march was completely enclosed by police and police buses. I'm not sure how but one protester had managed to get a poster up on one of the buses. For those of you that haven't been on a march yet its really fun, there is a carnival kind of an atmosphere and everyone is having a really great time. Well apart from the police you could see on there faces that even though all of them where here they where still massively outnumbered.
The march carried on with much chanting, lively music and on the way back to Hyde Park, once there the police surrounded the park leaving only one way in or out and it was time for the speakers to do there bit. The speakers where very good but had some very different messages to say. Some would be thanking us for being peaceful and other speakers would try and incite the crowd to go and attack the fences around the CBD. Things remained fun very much like a music festival this was great I didn't really feel like toppling global capitalism today, it was slightly rainy after all you really need a sunny day for that.
The news that evening was great, Australia like England and America has two main political parties the really right wing one and the not quite so right wing one. So the news tends to be polarized to either supportive of the government or against it a bit. Watching the news that evening was great in a small way I had just taken part in history. It was nice to see the new reporting on what we had been doing today. Also for the first time I had first hand experience to judge the accuracy and bias of the news. They all agreed that during the day there had been 17 arrests, mostly for small infractions like spraying tomato sauce on the Pro Bush protesters who where there too. Seems a bit over the top to me, but I'm pretty biased on this one.
Then depending on which channel you watch there where between three thousand and ten thousand protesters and the police presence was described as either completely over the top, aggressive and trying to provoke the protesters or as the good guys that kept Sydney safe from the hordes of evil anarchists. I'll add the press to the list of things that I should fix when I take over the world ... evil laugh
This was the day of the big march and I'm not sure how but they managed to find even more police, the route of the march was completely enclosed by police and police buses. I'm not sure how but one protester had managed to get a poster up on one of the buses. For those of you that haven't been on a march yet its really fun, there is a carnival kind of an atmosphere and everyone is having a really great time. Well apart from the police you could see on there faces that even though all of them where here they where still massively outnumbered.
The march carried on with much chanting, lively music and on the way back to Hyde Park, once there the police surrounded the park leaving only one way in or out and it was time for the speakers to do there bit. The speakers where very good but had some very different messages to say. Some would be thanking us for being peaceful and other speakers would try and incite the crowd to go and attack the fences around the CBD. Things remained fun very much like a music festival this was great I didn't really feel like toppling global capitalism today, it was slightly rainy after all you really need a sunny day for that.
The news that evening was great, Australia like England and America has two main political parties the really right wing one and the not quite so right wing one. So the news tends to be polarized to either supportive of the government or against it a bit. Watching the news that evening was great in a small way I had just taken part in history. It was nice to see the new reporting on what we had been doing today. Also for the first time I had first hand experience to judge the accuracy and bias of the news. They all agreed that during the day there had been 17 arrests, mostly for small infractions like spraying tomato sauce on the Pro Bush protesters who where there too. Seems a bit over the top to me, but I'm pretty biased on this one.
Then depending on which channel you watch there where between three thousand and ten thousand protesters and the police presence was described as either completely over the top, aggressive and trying to provoke the protesters or as the good guys that kept Sydney safe from the hordes of evil anarchists. I'll add the press to the list of things that I should fix when I take over the world ... evil laugh
Friday, 7 September 2007
APEC Day 1
Firstly I know going to a big protest on a tourist visa is a bad idea, its a especially bad idea when the Australian police are all over the news saying how they are prepared for Riots and have a new water cannon so powerful it can kill people (and to think the rest of us in Australia has to take 4 minutes showers because of the drought).
But with George Bush, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao and Australia's Neo conservative John Howard all in one place at one time who could resist a four for one protest bargain? Well the answer to that is probably most of you. These are the people most directly responsible for making the world a more polluted and dangerous place and when the time comes I at least want to say that I did something, even if it was only add myself to the large numbers of people on the streets saying I don't like what your doing.
Being as part of the reason that I was going was due to environmental grounds me and Gena decided to get the bus from Melbourne to one of its neighboring city Sydney. Flying there would only take an hour but it would make us hypocrites and I'm willing to sacrifice some comfort and convenience to avoid that. A bus ride sounds innocent enough till you get on the bus and realize the trip is going to take twelve hours plus. Australia is huge, really huge and just going to a different state normally involves driving for longer than it would take to traverse the entire length of England. My English mind find it really hard to process the huge amounts of undeveloped natural land in between the cities, this really is the new and almost totally empty world.
To help pass the time on the twelve hour trip they played a movie, that's right one movie in a twelve hour trip ... immediately I saw a hole in their plan. The movie came on and it was a Kevin Costner one ... well at least it was going to be a long movie. Luckily I had Gena sitting next to me and some conversation and shenanigans helped the trip pass much more pleasantly.
When we arrived Sydney was completely empty, our coach was driving through Sydney during rush hour in the morning and only had to stop if we happened upon a red light. It was a ghost town, we walked around the botanic gardens in the heart of Sydney and it was about 10 minutes before we saw anyone. There was a strange eeriness about the city streets and the thought kept recurring through my mind, this would be a great time to film a zombie or post apocalyptic film.
This was till you got to the green/red zone, the Australia government had erected a seven foot tall metal fence with concrete blocks behind it basically sealing off the Sydney CBD, when you got here there was a lot of people, they where all wearing the police uniforms but at least they where people. It was like being on a set of a movie, this obviously would be the bit in the movie where the zombies/anarchist looters attack the area where all the survivors (who in a new tradition have all trained as police) are starting to rebuild civilization.
Its really hard to just describe how many police there were ... near the Green zone whenever and which ever direction you looked there would be at least a handful of police there and a police car or two. I've never felt so safe and so in danger at the same time I got to wondering with this many police here it would be a great time to commit a crime somewhere else. Seriously what are the terrorists thinking about with all the security eggs so obviously in one few square mile basket why don't they attack somewhere else?
Being a veteran protester now ... after all this is my second protest I was prepared for anything ... we went to Hyde Park. Then something I really wasn't prepared for happened ... nothing! There where a few stands, a stage with a few people singing and talking and the normal bunch of anti capitalists trying to sell you things and a couple of hundred people milling around Then at three o'clock that ended and we just ended up doing some sight seeing.
But with George Bush, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao and Australia's Neo conservative John Howard all in one place at one time who could resist a four for one protest bargain? Well the answer to that is probably most of you. These are the people most directly responsible for making the world a more polluted and dangerous place and when the time comes I at least want to say that I did something, even if it was only add myself to the large numbers of people on the streets saying I don't like what your doing.
Being as part of the reason that I was going was due to environmental grounds me and Gena decided to get the bus from Melbourne to one of its neighboring city Sydney. Flying there would only take an hour but it would make us hypocrites and I'm willing to sacrifice some comfort and convenience to avoid that. A bus ride sounds innocent enough till you get on the bus and realize the trip is going to take twelve hours plus. Australia is huge, really huge and just going to a different state normally involves driving for longer than it would take to traverse the entire length of England. My English mind find it really hard to process the huge amounts of undeveloped natural land in between the cities, this really is the new and almost totally empty world.
To help pass the time on the twelve hour trip they played a movie, that's right one movie in a twelve hour trip ... immediately I saw a hole in their plan. The movie came on and it was a Kevin Costner one ... well at least it was going to be a long movie. Luckily I had Gena sitting next to me and some conversation and shenanigans helped the trip pass much more pleasantly.
When we arrived Sydney was completely empty, our coach was driving through Sydney during rush hour in the morning and only had to stop if we happened upon a red light. It was a ghost town, we walked around the botanic gardens in the heart of Sydney and it was about 10 minutes before we saw anyone. There was a strange eeriness about the city streets and the thought kept recurring through my mind, this would be a great time to film a zombie or post apocalyptic film.
This was till you got to the green/red zone, the Australia government had erected a seven foot tall metal fence with concrete blocks behind it basically sealing off the Sydney CBD, when you got here there was a lot of people, they where all wearing the police uniforms but at least they where people. It was like being on a set of a movie, this obviously would be the bit in the movie where the zombies/anarchist looters attack the area where all the survivors (who in a new tradition have all trained as police) are starting to rebuild civilization.
Its really hard to just describe how many police there were ... near the Green zone whenever and which ever direction you looked there would be at least a handful of police there and a police car or two. I've never felt so safe and so in danger at the same time I got to wondering with this many police here it would be a great time to commit a crime somewhere else. Seriously what are the terrorists thinking about with all the security eggs so obviously in one few square mile basket why don't they attack somewhere else?
Being a veteran protester now ... after all this is my second protest I was prepared for anything ... we went to Hyde Park. Then something I really wasn't prepared for happened ... nothing! There where a few stands, a stage with a few people singing and talking and the normal bunch of anti capitalists trying to sell you things and a couple of hundred people milling around Then at three o'clock that ended and we just ended up doing some sight seeing.
Monday, 3 September 2007
Take two
This is what I meant to say yesterday before I got stuck on the whole time tangent thing.
Things are so different now than they where when I arrived in fact they are massively more different than at any time in my past. I'm reasonably set up here, I have a girl friend that already has all the qualities I'm after in abundance. I haven't even needed to house train her, change her taste in music or anything. I have a couple of friends. Most importantly I have a plan for roughly how I want the rest of my life to pan out.
I'm sure this plan will evolve as I continue but its wonderful to have something to head towards. The only real purpose of a goal or plan is to inspire you into action anyway. I'm missing a couple of small points like a place to live or a job but these are just small details that I'm sure will work them selves out eventually. I've always know there is a lot of jobs waiting for me all over the world, I believe the skill is in avoiding them rather than finding them.
The is a slight down side in that I'm not adventuring as much as I was, I'm having more fun now than I was but I'm starting to think about possible ways of combining the best aspects of both realities. For example I'm only loosely associated to the people in my hostel, I'm not there very much anymore and I don't feel like part of the community. Now I noticed one evening I was using this not feeling like part of the community as a reason to not go and talk to people, making it a self fulfilling prophecy. I started to wonder just how many other times I've done this before.
There just isn't the urgency to talk and make friends that I had when I started, I've even been sitting in the bar reading and pretty much ignored the girls coming and sitting next to me, even when they tried to start talking. I'm just not used to this feeling of contentment. This is of course all in my mind and if it in my mind it is under my control. Its our life and we can brew whatever cocktail of feelings we wish.
Its just at the moment it kind of feels like playing poker without money, without the risk it really takes the edge off things. I've decided to go on another night out on my own again and spice things up by just doing some more experiments.
Things are so different now than they where when I arrived in fact they are massively more different than at any time in my past. I'm reasonably set up here, I have a girl friend that already has all the qualities I'm after in abundance. I haven't even needed to house train her, change her taste in music or anything. I have a couple of friends. Most importantly I have a plan for roughly how I want the rest of my life to pan out.
I'm sure this plan will evolve as I continue but its wonderful to have something to head towards. The only real purpose of a goal or plan is to inspire you into action anyway. I'm missing a couple of small points like a place to live or a job but these are just small details that I'm sure will work them selves out eventually. I've always know there is a lot of jobs waiting for me all over the world, I believe the skill is in avoiding them rather than finding them.
The is a slight down side in that I'm not adventuring as much as I was, I'm having more fun now than I was but I'm starting to think about possible ways of combining the best aspects of both realities. For example I'm only loosely associated to the people in my hostel, I'm not there very much anymore and I don't feel like part of the community. Now I noticed one evening I was using this not feeling like part of the community as a reason to not go and talk to people, making it a self fulfilling prophecy. I started to wonder just how many other times I've done this before.
There just isn't the urgency to talk and make friends that I had when I started, I've even been sitting in the bar reading and pretty much ignored the girls coming and sitting next to me, even when they tried to start talking. I'm just not used to this feeling of contentment. This is of course all in my mind and if it in my mind it is under my control. Its our life and we can brew whatever cocktail of feelings we wish.
Its just at the moment it kind of feels like playing poker without money, without the risk it really takes the edge off things. I've decided to go on another night out on my own again and spice things up by just doing some more experiments.
Sunday, 2 September 2007
Father Time
I've been in Australia three months now and have made 53 blog posts including this one, that's on average one post every 1.74 days. So far my charity www.sponsorabackpacker.com has raised a stonking £13 or almost 21p per day, I wonder if there is a country where I can live like a king for 21p a day.
I've never really had a good grasp of time, I quite often forget what day/month or even year it is. I remember getting in to an argument with a girl in a pub about how old I was, she was born in the same year as me and insisted I was 27. I was absolutely positive I was 26 after all what kind of idiot doesn't know how old they are? Well ... me, we ended up and getting some paper and a pen out of her bag and drawing it all out, it was a shock aging a year in a moment. Normally you have a whole year to prepare for getting older, your just not expecting it to creep up on you and pounce randomly.
But then again, after that I never worried about birthdays anymore, they seemed very mild compared to that random ageing shock and the truth is you get old a day at a time not a year at a time.
Anyway ... sometimes I feel like I have hardly been in Australia at all, other times it feels like I have lived here my whole life and that twenty nine years in England bit was just a dream. I tend to classify time by which girl I was with during that period, probably an unusual way to navigate the forth dimension, but its the best chronographic land marks I have. I think one of the reasons I have such problems with time is that I changed quite radically from time to time and develop a partial amnesia from my past selves and there activities.
I know I spent six months living in a bed sit above a beauty salon just before I left for Australia but for the life of me I can't remember the room. All I can get is a couple of random memories of going shopping and an argument or two with the land lady. I can if I really try get back is memories of Claire (the girl I was living with at the time). I'm guessing its maybe because I spent most of the last year or so in England doing pretty much nothing. Maybe some things really are worth you remembering to forget once you've learned from them?
Over the past few years things have started to stabilize into more of a general progression than massive swings in random directions. There are still oscillations but they tend to be in behaviour rather than identity.
What do you guys think about time? I'm interested
I've never really had a good grasp of time, I quite often forget what day/month or even year it is. I remember getting in to an argument with a girl in a pub about how old I was, she was born in the same year as me and insisted I was 27. I was absolutely positive I was 26 after all what kind of idiot doesn't know how old they are? Well ... me, we ended up and getting some paper and a pen out of her bag and drawing it all out, it was a shock aging a year in a moment. Normally you have a whole year to prepare for getting older, your just not expecting it to creep up on you and pounce randomly.
But then again, after that I never worried about birthdays anymore, they seemed very mild compared to that random ageing shock and the truth is you get old a day at a time not a year at a time.
Anyway ... sometimes I feel like I have hardly been in Australia at all, other times it feels like I have lived here my whole life and that twenty nine years in England bit was just a dream. I tend to classify time by which girl I was with during that period, probably an unusual way to navigate the forth dimension, but its the best chronographic land marks I have. I think one of the reasons I have such problems with time is that I changed quite radically from time to time and develop a partial amnesia from my past selves and there activities.
I know I spent six months living in a bed sit above a beauty salon just before I left for Australia but for the life of me I can't remember the room. All I can get is a couple of random memories of going shopping and an argument or two with the land lady. I can if I really try get back is memories of Claire (the girl I was living with at the time). I'm guessing its maybe because I spent most of the last year or so in England doing pretty much nothing. Maybe some things really are worth you remembering to forget once you've learned from them?
Over the past few years things have started to stabilize into more of a general progression than massive swings in random directions. There are still oscillations but they tend to be in behaviour rather than identity.
What do you guys think about time? I'm interested
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