hola muchachos

Well, I've been taking a couple of photos, and figured I might as well put them up for my own amusement, perhaps yours.

For now a couple of my hometown, Darwin. From the Esplanade into the sun, so not great.

I like them, though.

Cheers

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.