Quiero llevarte lejos, baby...

...dejame.

Good news. I've got a new keyboard with a space bar that works, and the intertubes are once more funneling the good stuff in and out of our humble home.

And I ditched my summer unit for uni.

Upshot...I've got a bit of time to put some old photos up. But not enough time to think of witticisms, so for these ones you'll just have to make something up yourself.

Trackside campground, Phillip Island. That there is the Southern Loop.

Ant West coming round the bottom of pit straight.

Start finish line during the 250 race.

American 125 rider Stevie Bonsey on his KTM.

Randy De Puniet, Alex Barros and Makoto Tamada.


And finally for today, Vermeulen with his Sheene tribute Suzuki colours.


Heaps more to come.

Chao, por hoy.

Saturday night's...

...already old.

I still have some more photos to put up, but even with internet on at home, the spacebar on my keyboard has mysteriously stopped working, along with all the number keys. Odd.

ItdoesmakeanythingIwritefromhomealittlehardtoread.

So I’ll do this at work.

The first time I voted in a federal election it was between the Vampire and the Duck – or at least that’s the way I saw it. Keating was tough and acerbic, and reminded me of my grandpa for some reason; Howard was a mean little twerp surrounded by snotty aristocrats. I was sorely disappointed in 1996 – and it only got worse, a lot worse, over the next decade or so.

Now, I’ve just realised what a difference not having Howard in will make to this place. Sure, I was bloody excited on Saturday night (even more so when I found out the new PM and treasurer will have their HQ in the Riverside Centre – I walk past there everyday and the downcast faces of the innumerable private school bullies was wonderful – I bet they’re stoked to have commies in the building), but it didn’t really sink in until my uni contacted me on Wednesday.

They sent me a letter to let me know that the amount of courses on offer had been reduced again. Since I enrolled in economics there in 2001 the number of courses has halved, and those left are geared towards business, engineering, law – basically vocational higher education. It seems that in Howard’s Australia learning how to think, rather than just to do, was a bad thing.

So, as angry as I am about the letter, I dare to hope that it may now change. Maybe too late for a lot of people – we’ll just have a glut of people than can fix stuff with nobody that can make a new one for a while – but eventually.

This election has also finally proved to me that the narrow left-right spectrum truly is dead, or at least only a small part of the story. Sure, economically it helps people work out what’s happening, but it’s glaringly obvious that it completely fails to adequately model social and environmental issues. Disturbingly, I can conceive of a Labor party that assumes the socially conservative mantle, while a Turnbull led New Liberal party openly courts the Greens and the gay vote. While I don’t really think it’s likely it’s fairly clear that the unnatural marriage of the small l economic liberals and the religious right is dying an overdue death.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the reaction from the international media. Of course the Guardian crowed about it, but that’s hardly surprising.

What is more refreshing is the reaction from some other news outlets around the place. Even the New York Times keeps its usual neo-conservative bias to a minimum.

The Howardistas may see Rudd as a me-too man, but it’s not the way it plays around the world. The Kyoto ratification alone completely changes how we might be viewed in a world that mainly dislikes the Bush administration, if not the US as such.

In short, I am beginning to be happy about the way the world sees our country again. It is becoming ok to get angry about overtly racist acts again, ok to be nice to people, ok to put reconciliation back on the table.

Is it because of Rudd? Not entirely – he’s like the rebound guy. A bit like the old one, but without the nastiness and the arsehole friends. The one you have a fling with while you get over your destructive relationship. The one just before you meet the true love – the real inspiration. Maybe her name’s Julia. Dunno yet, but I’m hopeful.

It all means that my life, pretty awesome before, has an extra bit of soy sauce on it*.
Got a place to live, a decent job, a good family
and, top of the list, a hot lawyer.

Yep, k has finished her degree, passed quite well, and graduates next week. Happily (although the money would be nice...) she’s not a sellout and won’t be prosecuting asylum seekers or trying to help big corporation avoid their obligations anytime soon.

This new political climate means k and I can wander about the world, proud to be from a tolerant, forward thinking, and compassionate country. I know the problems won’t be fixed overnight – the damage the divisive little prick did to this place will take a long time to fix.

To the man who declared his “victory over political correctness” his biggest achievement – I hope you die a bitter, twisted old man, forever bewildered by your loss, watching as a little country took a prime spot on the world stage as soon as you left, and rejected your insular, sycophantic, and all around gutless world view.

To k – let’s go places and see places together and talk about stuff and do good things for nice people.
And meet me at the station this arvo, then can we go to the hardware store because I need a wheelbarrow.


____________________________________
*because soy sauce is good on EVERYTHING.

Come as you were...

I catch the train to work, now, a grand 12 minutes of relaxing against the second door of the first car of the second half of the train.

Yesterday morning, as always, I was leaning back, headphones in, the sounds of Mana (I have a theory this will help me learn Spanish) drowning out all and sundry. Most of the old folk were sitting down. Incredibly enough, the private school kids had given up their seats this time, and four of them were clustered around the middle part between the doors – two boys, two girls.

On of the boys was doing much the same as me – leaning back against the wall as he watched his friend with thinly disguised disgust. Said friend was busily chatting up an All Hallows girl (whose friend was looking similarly unimpressed on the other side of the carriage).

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I was sure it was inane and annoying, so I just glanced from time to time.

A strange look from a fellow commuter, about my age, caused me to turn my music off for a second.

“....so, yeah, I found it last night,” the boy was saying, “It’s sort of laid back, maybe like Jack Johnson a bit? And he sort of looks like that guy from Idol? The surfer?” Everything was a question.

“Yeah, right, cool. What was that song? Teen something? Is there a version of that?” comes the reply.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit, no, it’s other stuff, but it’s not bad – called Unplugged.”

Right, so that’s what the other guy was laughing at. Well, not me. More power to the younguns I say – took me a lot longer to recognise the value of Led Zeppelin.

Then the kicker:

“So, what other cool cds does your dad have?”

Was it really necessary, that comment, just to spite me? I turned my Rock en Español back on.

Which is probably dad rock in Mexico.

A note

I've just today noticed that the photo's I've been putting up from work don't upload with a link to the actual shot - just a thumbnail.

So, for those with some sort of Google reader action which gave you a post which doesn't exist, I've deleted the post until I can put it up properly. Wouldn't want to deny youse all the glory of the full size photos, hey ;)?

In the meantime, why I still like the man, even if some of the tosspots at the pink blog find him too spicy (I read one comment at LP that Beazley was better, FFS!)

Chao, por hoy.

Like he's riding on a motorbike...

...in the strongest winds.

So, I'm back from a pretty awesome weekend at the motogp on Phillip Island, during which I took almost a thousand photos, some of them even have bikes in them! I might post a few of them if we ever get the internet back at home, but for now, back to the trek.

The first one is the porters running past us with their 25 kilo packs.

The first camp site, Klaire looking for the dunnies. The porters would carry all the tents and stuff and have them set up by the time we got there. As well as the yellow bucket with beer and soft drink. No fridge – luckily it was so bloody cold the beer didn’t need one.

A shot of a mountain which loomed over us all day as we climbed “Dead Woman’s Pass. On the third day we started at an altitude of about 3000m. Over the next six hours we climbed up to 4200m. Tougher than I expected. Coca leaves worked a treat.

Looking back as we ascended. I can’t remember the name of the mountain.

Note Klaire, sans pack and bedroll, and sans sunny disposition, and lucky that was too. Not much oxygen, and it was cold so our heads were freezing making us dizzy.


Somewhere up there is the top.

And, just because I like mountains, a gratuitous photo of the mountain behind us again.

And we’re there. This was our group. We went with a company that is pretty small (Peru Treks) and they pay more/ treat their porters better. Our group had 16 people – some of the others had up to 40. Most were English (3 Londoners – all law students so they had a lot to chat to Klaire about – 2 from York, and 2 blokes from Northern England who talked like the Pikies from Snatch – when they’d had a few drinks I could understand less than I could Spanish). No Americans, which was good. There were other groups around, handing out little ribbons to the first one up, and woohooing like morons. One of the nicer Yanks I met turned out to be Canadian.


This was the highest point on the trek at 4,215m, and the wind came through the pass like freight train – actually, that’s a stupid analogy, freight trains are slow – more like a shinkansen. There was some scrambling of taking packs off and digging around for some warm clothes – it hadn’t felt that cold on the way up because we were stuffed – I think my sweaty shirt froze. We didn’t hang around that long as it was ridiculously cold.

That’s it, I had better do some work now.

More to come.

Chao.

Kick....

Push.

Nice one. The evil photo blocking server seems to be having a day off, and seeing how Optus still sucks (3 weeks now) I thought I might put some more shots up.

I did promise it would be Cusco, and I’ll get to that. First a couple of quickies:

A couple of locals kicking the footy on the reed islands. I did wonder who has to get the ball when it goes out of bounds, maybe they’re that good that it doesn’t?

Us on a wall on Taquile.

Finally we got to Cusco. Just in time to make the trek deadline after a slightly hellish 8 hour van ride. We did have a couple of days to look around. This was the courtyard of the little hotel we stayed at – Los Niños Dos. All the rooms are named after the orphans the profits go to – ours was Gladys.


A view of Cusco over the Plaza de Armas. Cusco was the first place we really started to encounter big tour groups, lots of Americans and Europeans. The square reflected that a bit, having heaps of people hassling you to buy various stuff.

An example of an Inca wall in Cusco using the ashlar technique. Apparently this meant it was a significant place – I assume this means a pub, or perhaps some sort of concert venue. This wall is almost a thousand years old – the Spanish, when they took over, tended to just build on top of the Inca foundations.

Then we got up and some ridiculous hour, got on a bus, and ended up at Kilometre 82 – the start of the Camino del Inca (Inca Trail) – 49 kms. At this point we were pretty chirpy and excited. Note K with her pack and bedroll, smiling and ready to go.

And note K, still with pack and bedroll, smile a little smaller, at one of the rest points on the first day. We had gone maybe 6 k’s at that point, and climbed a few hundred metres, I guess.

The first of the Inca sites – Llactapata . It was used mainly for agricultural production, apparently. The guide reckons the curves along the front deflect the flow of the river in flood so it didn’t wash the whole joint away. He also told us the Incas were Socialists. He was pretty cool.

Dammit, I had a whole lot more written, but the server's back to its tricks, so that’s it, I had better do some work now.

More to come.

Chao.

You say times are tough...

...we've got the best of both worlds here.

So, the question I had for today was – is Peter Garrett a sellout? I was beginning to agonise a bit over that, but I realise the simple answer is...no.

As much as a whole bunch of people are carping on at the moment about his acceptance of US bases, uranium mining, Gunns pulp mill acquiescence, etc, etc; at least he might shortly be in a position to actually do something about it.

Put your single issue ideology aside for a tic and think about it carefully – the ex-lead singer of the Oils as environment minister.

It gives me goosebumps.

I really believe that when Ruddy skips down the carpet at the victory speech Power and the Passion should be blaring out over the PA.

Or maybe “Been Away Too Long”

Have I been away too long
Have I been away too long
Have I been away too long
I just can't wait

I imagine completeness
No spin cycle deceit
Time and tide keep on rolling
Now the world’s at my feet

Of course King of the Mountain is the obvious choice – it reminds me of the rubbery figures ads on telly advertising an Oils tour when I was a kid – Hewson and Keating and I think Oaks – Keatings doll singing while Hewson’s looked sad and wobbly. Well, they were all wobbly I guess, but still.

Maybe not Mountains of Burma, though, given the lack of action on that one.

I was going to go from here to some more photos, but more often than not the work server blocks my ability to upload anything but text, so you might just have to wait until the net is back at home.

Hasta la semana proxima.

Chao.

Just a quick note...

October 4 headline roundup:


news.com.au:
CCTV pics of Lady Di.

Beer can bomb hoax.

Swim star’s daughter marries just before passing away.

Britney has visiting rights, and Dr Phil wants to help.

Ecstasy stash in potato head.

Home and Away breaches ‘G’ classification.


BBC News:
Australia bans African refugees


NY Times:
Australia bans African refugees.


Washington Post:
Australia bans African refugees.



I can’t decide if I’m happy or unhappy that most of the world won’t see news.com today.

Time for a beer.

There's klingons on the starboard bow..

..scrape them off, Jim.

Again, the internet is gone from our home. Never arrived actually. I’m on hold to Optus at the moment, trying to talk to that ridiculous voice system. So I’m scanning through some sites I look at occasionally.

Onlineopinion.com.au is an interesting case. Generally, for most of the political/ current issue type sites I read, the post serves mainly as a stimulus for robust discussion. As mentioned earlier, that normally doesn’t extend to news articles, but most blogs seem to attract enough reasonably intelligent commenters, whatever point they speak from, to get a good discussion going. That said, there are more than enough sycophantic love-in sites to go around, with hordes of regular commenters eager to jump to the defense of the poster should anyone new question their wisdom (I’m sure this isn’t unique to the more progressive side of politics – it’s just that the others seem to lack imagination and just end up at Ackerman or Bolt).

Back to OLO – it’s different. I find that I avoid reading the comments more and more on here. For every intelligent comment on OLO, there are five written by complete nutters WHO randomly CAPITALISE shit (incidentally, I think I might include that in my exploding cookie plan). I’ve thought about making comments in the past, but the nearest I got was a desire to pull someone up when they used the word “acronym” to describe an initialisation.

I really don’t have the energy. I recently heard it described as a blog by someone - it's not, but it does have some good articles.

And in a perverse reflection of Sherd’s weird fondness for science blogs, I have taken to reading a lot of economics blogs. There’s a few good Australian ones, like Quiggin and Club Troppo, and many more OS blogs. Because I am super intelligent I like to read them and then forget where they are because I assume I’ll remember the address.

Oh well. Here’s an example I was reading today. I’ve even added it to my bookmarks this time.

Now I have to write an essay. Photos later, perhaps.

Chao.

I wanna rise up..

...over Mulholland.

On occasion I read the news.com comments, as I think I've mentioned, although I'm really trying to quit.

Much as I am trying to quit reading overly dramatic teenage angst type blogs written by twenty somethings who know everything but have forgotten they're old enough to know better(trouble with that is it doesn't leave very many - on the other hand, that's a good thing - I would rateher read about someone's cat than a tortured sycophantic discussion of right wing politics, or left wing politics for that matter).

The blogs I have come to terms with and tend to stick with the ones with fewer comments.

As for news.com, I propose a solution.



When you go to make a comment a question appears:



Please choose one of the following:

A: I’m making this comment because I know a bloke this happened to therefore this makes me qualified to give my opinion.

B: I’m making this comment because I’m interested in contributing to this debate in a meaningful manner.

C: I’m making this comment just to stir shit up.

D: I’m a moron.



Answering yes to any of these makes the website send your computer a cookie.



Subsequently, the next time you type “your” when you mean “you are” the cookie sends a message to the motherboard, causing the monitor to explode. Shrapnel embeds itself in the part of the brain that controls the fingers, rendering you unable to type.



Because people that comment on news.com news stories have too much time on their hands and need to be stopped, regardless of their motivation, and the mangling of the English language is just the final nail.



On second thought, maybe I’ve had too much coffee today.

Cause we're stoppin' all stations....

Buenas tardes señores y señoras.

It seems my brain is about to collapse under the sheer weight of spreadsheets (although I am inordinately proud of the effectives of my “sumproduct” formula, and its effectives at evaluating data according to various criteria, although given the size of the dataset involved, perhaps a dsum would be better, but then the complexity….arrrgggh).

So I’ve decided to take a break and take up the South American story again.

When last we spoke we were halfway through our jaunt around the Peruvian part of Lake Titicaca, on our way to Taquile - an actual island.

We hopped of the boat, and started our walk over the top of the island – the path was nicely paved for a change.

The Taquileños live by the creed of don’t be lazy, among other things, so there are no beasts of burden, cars, bikes any sort of labour saving devices on the island (although I saw a tv there, and I reckon it had a zapper doover). This is a view looking back across the lake to Bolivia.

Eucalyptus trees – a strangely familiar sight. Apparently they were introduced by the Spanish from here because they’re hardy, to stop erosion, etc, and now they’re close to being an invasive species.

A more long range shot looking back across the lake. That white bit there is the Cordillera Blanca in Bolivia (sorry the link is in Spanish – the English wiki entry points to the Peruvian one) across the other side of the lake.

This is the main square of the village. The little girl was trying to sell us little woven bracelets – school was on strike – and she enlisted her little brother, who was one of the cutest kids around. We relented and tried to buy one of the kid, but he got scared and ran away. His sister saw the lost sale and whacked him.

So he whacked her back.

Then they collapsed on the ground giggling.

Good times.

We then had to walk back down the other side, which was pretty high – the shot is looking back towards the town of Puno.

And it’s adios from us at Taquile.

Proximo semana – Cusco, el capital del Incas.

I can tell it's summer...

...from the size of the bugs that fly throw my window.

Of my new place, beacuse there's no flyscreens yet.

I thought I’d throw a couple of thoughts out there, just to let you know I’m still alive. Optus isn’t going to hook up our intertubes until next week, so I’ll put some photos up then.

First, I’ve just read an article in which some uni or another has predicted that up to 80% of Australians will be obese or overweight by 2020 (the year, not the crap cricket). A sobering statistic, I thought…at first.

It occurs to me, though, that unless I change my lifestyle significantly, I could reasonably hope to be in the minority. That could be a bad thing – minorities not historically getting a good run in this country – but I guess at least they might start making plane seats bigger in response to market demand.

And, given the new house purchase, 2020 is getting close to the time I could probably afford overseas travel. The seats should be as big as a double bed by then, I reckon.

Then again, that’s well past the peak oil prediction of 2011, so society will have collapsed according to some.

Which will mean everyone will be skinny as things return to the dark ages.

And plane seats will probably get smaller.

Which brings me to – would it be better if Labor lost the election? A few people reckon the world is overdue for a recession , and if even the smallest of the oil shortage predictions, or the climate change predictions, are realised, there’s going to be a downturn.

In a philosophical sense that’s not completely a bad thing – something’s gotta give; infinite growth is a stupid and unrealistic concept. However, while I don’t actually think that the punters in Australia are stupid, I do think they’re generally pretty selfish and insular, so they don’t know (or perhaps even care) about how the economy actually works – I think they’ll blame whoever’s at the wheel.

If that’s Labor, could we see a Whitlam style backlash at the end of what could-have-been a good government? If Howard won, and Costello took over, and economy went bung, they would have even less credibility left, keeping in mind that about the only area they are consistently ahead in the polls in is economic management. Perhaps if Labor threw it away, and could hold out for another three years, they would be assured of a decade in power after that.

Then again, could we handle another three years of neo-conservative bullshit?

At least there’s a positive if Labor were to lose.

But then, I suppose for them to win in 2011, by my theory, the economy would have to go to shit, which wouldn’t be good for anyone.

Arrrrr, ‘tis a right quandary aye foind m’self in.

Chao, por hoy.

Bring out yer dead !!!

Ever seen the classic scene from The Holy Grail? And wondered what it has to do with Puno, Peru?
Well, then you're a little strange, but I'll get to that.

For today, we're in Puno, a city just across the border from Bolivia in Peru, on the shores of Lake Titicaca (which is impressively large - don't skip a trip if you get over there). Our second land border crossing was interesting. We sort of hopped off the bus, walked a few hundred metres across a bridge, and wound up in Peru.


We wandered around town and took the obligatory autophoto in the main square.


And this is how they do in downtown Puno. There wasn't a lot of cats around, so the dogs sort of pick up the slack.
And Monty Python? Well, it turns out in Puno that the garbage trucks play a tune. We were out to dinner in a nice little place on a small street - actually, most the streets were small- and a garbage truck rolled by. I thought it was an ice cream truck for a sec, as the Peruvian version of Greensleeves wafted through the night, then people started flooding out of houses and shops, arms full of rubbish, to chuck in the back of the truck. The driver just has to cruise about with the stereo playing. Nice work.

And this isn't the place we were out for dinner at. But it was our first introduction to the ubiquitous Andean music band at every restaurant with a chance of a tourist.

There were six of us in the joint that night, tourists, that is.

Happily we were joined by 10 or so band members, along with a procession of dancers.

For two hours.

We managed to book a day trip to the Uros Islands for the next day - and it was pretty good. Some of the other people on the tour were dickheads, but not too bad - really the first sort of tour group people we came across.

This one is a shot of one of the reed islands, made of reeds, with houses, made of reeds, and boats, made of reeds.

And in the background - reeds.


Here is the livestock pen - rabbits and guinea pigs - cows being less than practical on a floating island made of cow food.



A longer shot of one of the islands. There are about 40 islands with a few hundred people living there, although they actually count by family group, not individuals.


This one shows how they make the islands. The reeds actually grow in a shallower area, and they cut chunks out with the roots still attached but floating. then they stack the reeds on top in a cross hatched pattern after tying chunks together to make a bigger island. Eventually the reeds break down and they just keep adding more - I guess one day they need a new one. Once it gets a bit crowded, say more than ten families, they just make a new island as well.



They have a school, too, but it's actually permanently attached, although the playground floats.


Then we jumped back on the boats for the trip to Taquile Island.


Fotos de la isla Taquile la vez proxima.

Chao por hoy.

Life aint only supply...

...and demand.

Estamos hoy en La Paz, Bolivia. This is a shot from our bloody awesome hotel room. Towards the top there is El Alto - originally sort of a suburb of La Paz, it is now a city of almost a million in its own right. Because it's at the top of the mountains it is also now higher than La Paz.
Semantics, I say - any place that is largely above the treeline, and where breathing gives you a migraine, is high.


This is La Iglesia de San Francisco, or some such name. Sort of at the top end of la Paz, near where we were staying. This was in the news recently - some drunken Argentino climbed up during a festival and killed himself by jumping off. While he was nude. Ahh, good times.



The streets at the top of La Paz. Electricians are busy there, or maybe they're not, given a lot of these jobs look fairly DIY.
The San Pedro Prison, and no, we didn't do a tour - much too gutless for that. Read the book Marching Powder, or just surf the net a bit - very interesting place.

The obligatory local beer photo. Not a bad drop... no, actually, I lie - I can't remember, but it had to have been okay because we didn't have any bad beer on the trip.

A basket of Llama foetuses at the Witches Market. Apparently they're good luck - people buy them to bury under the floor of a new house. Unfortunately, they weren't on a menu anywhere - you'll just have to wait for the fried guinea pig, coming soon.
Finally, I took some shots out the window of the hotel at night and stitched them together. You can sort of see the seam, but you get the idea, right? Oh, yeah, the photo is quite big, give it a sec to open.

Para nuestra aventura siguiente, vamos a la ciudad de Puno, en las orillas del lago Titicaca.

Chao por hoy.

Well I'm a freaky streaker like Winnie the Pooh...

..t-shirt and no pants I dance the boogaloo.

So, back to the photos. I’m starting to forget what went on , so I’ll do my best.

First, another picture of the street in San Pedro, me walking down it.

There’s this cool little museum in the town. These were some artefacts showing how Incas and others used to use different things for snorting an ancient form of cocaine (for purely ceremonial reasons, of course!)

Ancient drop spindle.

500 year old thongs.

Us on the Bus, just before our first ever land border crossing.

En la mañana, tenemos ir a La Paz.

Chao por hoy.