Party like it's 1994

Aside from some excellent karaoke last night, this weekend has largely been spent downloading old computer games that used to keep me entertained for hours when I was 14. Amazingly, people are still playing Doom, Transport Tycoon and others online. The latter even has people making realistic, country-specific graphic sets. Each to their own I guess.

The karaoke last night was great fun - I think ever since two karaoke sessions in Singapore, I've been hooked. At about 3.30am, when Elissa and Jackie were out of the room, some other people knocked on the door, as they'd been removed from theirs. "Come in!" I said, and they did. I even got accompaniment from one of them on Hall and Oates' Maneater. Elissa and Jackie were pretty surprised when they got back to a room full of people, but we all exchanged names, and went for a drink afterwards with our new friends. Then we came home, and sat on the balcony watching the sun rise through the mist over Randwick.

That's what I'm doing wrong...

Cartoon by Dave Walker. And the site I got it from referenced We Blog Cartoons.

Honestly...

At work last week, someone left some food out in the kitchen with a note "Please help yourselves". Everyone promptly did as instructed, and the food largely disappeared. I guess it might have been something to do with being a charity, but someone left a $5 note on the side, next to the food, maybe absentmindedly, maybe in payment. Either way, when all the food was gone, there was the note, and the notice. $5, with a note next to it saying "Please help yourself". How long do you think that would last?

Funnily enough, more than two days passed before both the note and the cash were cleared up. I like working for a charity.

In Rainbows free, but pirated anyway.

This story made me smile. Not only is Radiohead's new album available completely free of charge from their own site, but it's still been registered half a million times on peer-to-peer networks (though how they get these figures I've no idea).

I 'bought' it for free too. They've had a fair bit of cash out of me, and I know as soon as it's out on CD I'll go buy it, so I don't feel too guilty about not throwing a few quids thier way. I'll probably not download Oasis' and Jamiroquai's forthcoming free to download albums though, but not out of any moral feeling.

A good-natured whinge about the rugby.

Well, no one expected England to get that far, but they did, and they held their own in the final. I could moan about the disallowed try, but I think it looked out as well, by a fraction. I think we lost to a better team, a more consistent team, and I'm proud to be an England supporter (albeit one who couldn't be bothered to watch it live), which I wasn't when the tournament started.

What I want to moan about is that as soon as the final coverage was over (the 2pm repeat, I didn't have the energy for the Australian 4am start) the Aussie commentators started whining about the style of rugby England had adopted. Presumably Australians think that people are conspiring against them if they don't win a World Cup at least once every three times. There were calls for a 'more entertaining style of rugby', 'less rules', 'less emphasis on kicking' - anything that would have had them win their match against England, to my mind. Essentially, they were calling to make Union more like League, and to make it more rewarding for the Southern Hemisphere style of play (grown, in Australia, largely from an enthusiasm for League over Union). Read the engraving on the World Cup, the lineup of winners since 1987. Do the Southern Hemisphere really need any more help?

Tell me a bedtime story

Last night I had a dream I was at a Herbie Hancock concert, for some reason being held at a youth hostel in the middle of an enormous lake. I have a vague idea of who reads this, so I can say with confidence, most of you were there, and you seemed to enjoy the music. Oddly, Ed Feast, a friend of mine from Grantham, was the featured pianist, rather than the named artist. Herbie was using his guitar-keyboard-thingy mostly. Afterwards, Herbie and I were sailing a dinghy, and I asked if he'd let me come over to the US some time and jam with him, Lionel Loueke, and the rest of his band. "I know the bassline to Chameleon and everything". He said "No way, man!" which on reflection, is probably what he would say in real life.



It's odd. Last time, indeed the only time, I saw Herbie play, I was generally speaking buried in Access queries and spreadsheets with no idea of how to escape. A few days later, (5 days to be precise) I decided to escape here, to Australia. Right now, I'm working for a company who asked for a data entry clerk and got me. As a result of a little problem-solving and time-saving I've been doing for them, I'm buried in Access queries and spreadsheets again, largely of my own free will. So maybe, in a roundabout way, the dream was trying to tell me I was actually quite happy being buried in Access and Excel problems, and that despite moving to the other side of the planet, I seem to have sought out more of the same. Or maybe that's far too tenuous a connection and, as usual, I'm thinking about things too much.



Either way, it was just nice to be on a sailing boat with one of my favourite musicians.

I like my coffee like I like my women - covered in Bogongs!

At the moment, most of Sydney is covered in Bogong Moths. Initially I had confused conversation about Bogongs for conversation about Vogons, and later, Bogans, but I caught up in the end. These things get everywhere. The air is thick with them in certain parts of town, you could wave a big net and catch a hundred at a time. One office issued a memo, reportedly, telling its employees not to yawn outside the building.

We have found some entertainment in this, though. Every evening, Scampina, Elissa's cat, chases a moth round the living room, and then eats it. She's a pretty pathetic hunter, and like most cats, tends to play with her prey. She still hasn't figured out that when you let flying prey go, it flies away, and you have to wait half an hour for it to land near the floor again. Entertainment value aside, the more moths in the living room, the more exercise the cat gets, and because she tends to sleep better after exercise, which means she doesn't get up early and miaow at the bedroom door from 5am, the more sleep I get. So the more Bogongs the better, I say.

Temping in Australia - I feel good!

I'm on to my third temping assignment at the moment, and in many ways my favourite.

The first assignment was a day's work in Adobe InDesign, laying out a report for a teacher's association. Teachers are usually represented as overworked, underpaid and underresourced. The general mood in that office was pretty grumpy and sarcastic.

The second assignment was four months with a financial services company in the CBD. I was calling people and inviting, and at times demanding, payment for overdue invoices. The atmosphere in the office was relaxed but, being a finance department, still efficient. I met some great people, and despite a few difficult clients, had a good time.

Now I'm working for a cancer charity, doing data entry and random Excel and Access tasks. There's a great atmosphere in the office, with the sort of people you'd expect to work for a good cause rather than a big pay packet, and while there's still some gentle pressure, there isn't the same demand you get from working for a business. I think I shall find a charity to work for when I get home.

On an unrelated note, today we failed to get tickets for Big Day Out in Sydney, meaning we failed to get the opportunity to see Rage Against the Machine and Bjork perform in Centennial Park. I suspect we may try to get in by fouler means though, whether fence jumping or volunteering. And there's still a chance to see the show in Queensland, where everyone is reportedly a bit slower. Hopefully that means it won't sell out as quickly.