Category: the daily column

Reporter: Mr Howard, you’ve said that pulling troops out of Iraq would be a bad thing, and–

John Howard, PM: Yes, and I’ve maintained it, the Coalition should not be pulling troops out of Iraq, and I stand by George’s troop surge.

Reporter: Is it true that you’re also sending in more troops?

John Howard: Yes, we’re looking at sending in more troops, to help train more Iraqi police so that they can maintain law and order in Iraq.

R: Isn’t it true that police are the most targeted of all Iraqis?

JH: Which is why we need to train more.

R: To send them to their deaths.

JH: Ye-, no, now, that’s not fair. They’re a little untrained right now, and understaffed…

R: Because most of them are in the mortuary?

JH: Now I said that’s not fair, and…

R: Mr Howard, Tony Blair is pulling 2000 troops from Iraq, while you’re sending more in.

Picture Bambi jumping onto a busy night motorway.

JH: (mumbles under breath Bugger me) Well we’ve always maintained that the coalition should maintain an appropriate number of troops in Iraq

R: Which is 20,000 more Americans, 700 more Australians and 2000 less British?

JH: Well what’s appropriate for the British isn’t necessarily so for us or the Americans. I’ve always said they’re too close to the French surrender monkeys. They really should have moved the whole island towards America, that would’ve stopped the pansies from the Continent influencing things. Load of crazies, all “freedom and liberty”, driving on the wrong side of the road…

R: Like America?

JH: What? No, of course not, they do it the right way.

R: The ‘right way’?

JH: That’d be the American Way. It’d be unAustralian to do things any other way.

R: Thanks, Mr. Howard.

(*any resemblence to reality is purely coincidental)

I’ve been working a whole year! Only 44 more to go.

What have I got to show for it? Um… Not a whole lot. Sure, travel, experience, knowledge, all that kinda fuzzy stuff, but nothing I can “hold”, y’know?  It’s one of those things about working in an information-based industry, but I do occasionally hunger for something physical to be produced from my endeavours.

Is it just me?

The first rule of blogging is: don’t talk about work. It’s a cardinal rule, the violation of which can result in much pain and regret in future.

Meh.

So back in October last year, I foreshadowed going overseas for my “second rotation”, but didn’t really follow up on it here – effectively, the idea had been shut down between then and January. When I spoke to HR early in the year, the final nails had been prepared for the coffin of the idea… but then, along comes the senior manager, and asks if I’m ready to go to London.

Am I.

Some complicating factors aside that I may or may not detail, that’s just blew-my-mind huge chance I’d never miss. I’d be over there for 6 to 7 months at least, from around April to at least the end of the year. Many details remain to be told, but chances are looking good.

(and then there’s that sneaky little bit of me that clings to the complicating factors, and the whole idea of “Damn just have some stability for a while!” and hopes this jinxes it just like before… down, evil traitorous thoughts!)

Oh and I got a bonus and a raise! I’m now earning roughly one and half times what I was expecting to earn for a few years to come when I imagined things back at the start of uni. Teh sweetness.

But keep it hush, you.

Throughout France, the lights were turned off for 5 minutes as a way of raising awareness of climate change

While the primary objective was to raise awareness, I’m not sure how switching off the lights would do that explicitly. However, the main electricity operator said there was a drop of some 800MW, or 1% of France’s total consumption. 800MW is a decent amount of energy – a single modern nuclear power plant generates about that much.

The question from me would be: why don’t we do it more often, and for longer? There’s entirely too many lights on at night that needn’t be.

Having spent the last two days effectively giving people the finger, and a pretty ugly looking one at that, I can tell all you right handers: you have no idea how much you use your left hand’s middle finger.

Ow.

Forgive me, gods of plain-speaking, for I have sinned; I have created something which I called a “matrix” for the first time at work.

I know not how to atone. It can only be downhill from here.

There was a jumper at Kingsgrove station today.

We were delayed 25 minutes or so, but even within the first 2 minutes people were getting impatient. We were told that we were waiting for police and emergency services to arrive so that they could take care of it, rather than have someone jump onto the train or the tracks. The gaurd opened his door to allow people out if needed, and suddenly there was a rush on. People from 4 carriages down came up and out, and I wondered: for what?

20 minutes later, the jumper was taken away in a stretcher. I’ve no idea what exactly happened, as I stayed inside, but I’m fairly certain there was no jump. The train moved and there was a mad rush to get back on.

Strangers joined in abuse of the gaurd, the police, everyone they could conceive of causing the delay. I heard one lady say “oh there’s one every month,” I’ve caught the same train more or less for 6 months and never had it once. “it’s pathetic, always delays me by half an hour,” she continued to moan to total strangers.

It disgusts me to think how selfish these people are.

Someone tell me how we know the birthdate exactly, but the date of death shifts every year, according to a mysterious and complex formula they use to torture 1st year Computer Science students with. IT’S SO STUPIDLY COMPLEX!

Bet you didn’t think about that before, did you?

(Screw the PC crowd – Merry Christmas y’all!)

A haze hangs over the city, and has for the last three days. The smell of smoke pervades, as bushfires in the Blue Mountains have burned for the last 3 days. It’s almost a constant of summer in Australia to have bushfires, but it seems that this year it’s going to be particularly fierce. Twice we’ve been close enough that there was some concern for the house, and it would be lying to say I wasn’t worried about it again this year round.

This all reminds me vividly of the summers of my youth, the baking heat and dry wind making it feel like you’re standing just outside a furnace. All the plants wilt in the heat, save the ever-hardy eucalyptus, and the chirp of cicadas plays on into the night. From tomorrow, even more appropriately, the cricket will be on, and then there will be no question of summer. I think it’s the first one I’m going to be working through, which will be different for me.

It’s going to be a long one.

Thank you one and all for coming to the party! I had a great time, even if I didn’t eat or get to spend the time with each and everyone that you thoroughly deserve. I still have many a tale to tell from London, so there’s plenty of talk to be had.

Note for next time: (a) arrange DJ myself, and (b) organise after-thing beforehand, rather than expecting to come up with something on the spot.

ed: need photos from anyone who took them… I didn’t take my camera out nearly enough =(