Everybody is selling their house

Passed about 25-30 new For Sale signs on my evening bike ride. Wow. The economy is turning VERY sharply.

Cycling: Hawks Nest to Forster, return

Did this tough, long ride on the weekend for the third time in my life: 106km each way, bumpy roads, two good hills and 15km of dirt. Had good intentions of driving up on the Friday night and setting off early the next morning.

I actually got to Hawks Nest on Saturday and set off way too late at midday for a 6 hour ride, with 6 hours' daylight left. Lots of wildlife: surprised an eagle and it flew close in front of me for about 10 seconds, then a dingo crossed the road, then a baby turtle crawled across and hid in its shell when I went past.

Made it to Forster at 6.10pm and was totally shattered, cramping up for the last 20km. Stayed in a motel, finally got back on the bike at 10am Sunday and cycled back, stopping at more places. Everybody wanted to have a chat - passers by, shopkeepers, motorists - made it back to Hawks Nest at 6pm, totally shattered again.

Decided not to stop moving, got a roast dinner at the pub, did some shopping, sat in front of the TV and ... cramped up. Decided sleep was the best bet, woke up feeling great and drove to Monday work in Sydney.

What lol is to cats

I mentioned oldschool Internet cool geeks and had to go look up another (Justin Hall) and I find he now has a company working on his idea of "Passively Multiplayer Games", as opposed to massively: www.gamelayers.com

"GameLayers is to internets what lol is to cats." Awesome.

boingboing TV

These freaks are some of the original Internet cool geeks, the kind of people who were writing for Wired magazine in 1994, etc. And just about the only ones to keep going through the dotcom collapse and beyond.

Now they've started their own Internet TV show. Can subscribe to RSS feed, download or watch on the web: tv.boingboing.net (not necessarily worksafe)

I thought it was a good start anyway - stuff like the Japanese butt-biting bugs.

An important lesson for all Australians

How to cook kangaroo.

Minimise the beef and lamb. Kangaroo is cheaper, better and better for our environment.

A post on my blog for Lin

I'd have to post this.

Happy new year.

Further listening

I've got a finely tuned Yahoo!7 music radio station that plays what it thinks I will like, based on thousands of past choices. Really been enjoying it lately, so I thought I'd share.

Redesign day

The new picture at the top is part of one I took at Auntie Liz's 60th, at Duns Castle on the Scottish Borders. Highlight of a six-week holiday that included three weeks exploring Portugal and some time in England.

The iPod to the right is a Wimpy Player skin. The unlikely inspiration was that Rhaluka had one. It seems pretty cool, but I'm still hesitant about paying the $25 for the full version. The demo only plays the first 10 seconds of each song.

2006: Be in it

People should only blog when they have something to say. This is the second Internet boom; blogging is not the frontier.

Anyway, I predate you all. 20th-best personal homepage in Australia 1994! BTW this Roots Manuva Rage I'm watching is the best ever, living la vida late shift. Stone Roses, Prodigy, Tears for Fears, even the Oils.

In 1999 I broke my London-Sydney flight in Singapore, postponed my onward leg for 30 days and caught a ferry to Batam, an Indonesian island where it was easy to go through customs.

I caught a ferry to mainland Sumatra and a bus across to Bukittinggi (crossing the equator). I stayed for a week at Lake Maninjau, in a guest house run by a Muslim family, next to a mosque. Every morning I was woken up by the call to prayer. It was a beautiful, peaceful place and the locals were welcoming, friendly and I decided that someday I would return there after learning to speak some Bahasa Indonesia.

It was election time and a wild-eyed guy in Islamic robes came to town and gave a speech from the back of a wagon, and pointed an angry finger at me as I walked past (I guess I was the evil west). People in the crowd were clearly not taking him seriously.

I travelled through Sumatra and over to Java, on a bus full of local Muslim people who looked after me (with food and safety concerns). I reached Jakarta just before election day 1999, and my hotel was full of western journalists in flak jackets looking for trouble. Nothing happened, in fact everyone basically had a party and voted.

I went down to Jogjakarta and was shown around by a kind old Muslim tour guide, and again the singing from the mosques was a highlight. Then I travelled down to Bali, saw the festering tourist strip, fled to the rural areas and stayed my final two nights alone in a house in the middle of a rice paddy in a Hindu town (Bali is a Hindu island in a mostly Muslim country). It was peaceful, safe and just plain great.

A couple of years later 9/11 happened and everyone was more apprehensive about going to Muslim countries, but I still planned to go back to Indonesia someday because I knew the people were mostly peaceful and welcoming of foreigners. I remembered my bus companions practically clinging to me on the ferry from Sumatra to Java, making sure I was OK in their country.

Then in 2002 the Bali bombings happened, killing 202 mostly Australians and Balinese (and the ignorant pricks who carried it out thought they were bombing American sailors on shore leave). Then for bullshit reasons we invaded Iraq together, driving an even bigger wedge between cultures.

So now I'm typing this after the second wave of Bali bombings, which have kept me up all night because I run websites in the news media. Before I go to bed, I just have one thing to say to terrorists and neocons alike, not that it makes any difference here: FUCK YOU, PATHETIC, UNREPRESENTATIVE, WARMONGERING MINORITIES.

I'm sick of having my world ruined more and more by people that don't even try to understand, who think violence solves anything. All I have is memories of a better time, and I'll probably never get back to Indonesia, ordinary people are being turned into grieving relatives, and kids are growing up on both sides thinking it's some kind of unfriendly, threatening culture over there. Not fair.

Happy Schapelle Day. It's like Australia Day, except that you have to work. All-day specials on TV, gatherings at surf clubs, thongs and Bintang t-shirts.

Well, it seems I'm not mad after all. A couple of years ago I reacted to the Rene Rivkin interview on Enough Rope by warming to Rivkin as a flawed, eccentric human being. Everyone else I knew saw it as proof of his awfulness, and that he was a bad guy. Yesterday I covered his suicide as part of my work and used a picture of his gold worry beads and cigar instead of a wild-eyed unrepresentative recent photo of him as a mental patient. But I still doubted anyone would agree with me.

Today, the interviewer agreed with me.

I'm going to start posting again, in short updates. The new pic at the top is from Fiji last year, had a great time. Wonder where I'll go this year? Went on two three-hour bike rides up north last week (had the week off) and felt inspired.

Yeah.

Bugger. Now I remember why personal web sites never get updated while you do it for a living.

I'm Producer - News & Current Affairs with AOL|7 -- that's right, a pipe in a brand name! -- which is Channel Seven (2nd biggest TV network in Oz) doing stuff with AOL (OMG my credibility) and AAPT (phones). And I'm happy. It's a buzz.

Good stuff outside work: NoFX "The Idiots Are Taking Over" (actually that's the entire programming concept at work), The Cat Empire (Melbourne Cuban jazz hip-hop), well-aged band X on Studio 22, Hilltop Hoods "Dumb Enough" and "People in the Front Row" (more Aussie hip-hop).

Written a few good features since the last update. Started doing some travel writing at long last and I'll upload some tomorrow. Fun article about nearly dying while travelling :)

George Dubya flies in tomorrow night amid expected protests. Wonder if anything will happen? I'm haunted by those nuclear nightmares of an 70s/80s childhood ... if I was Al Qaeda with one of those allegedly missing Russian nukes, I doubt there would be any trouble getting it across the Australian coastline.

Glad my visit to Canberra was last week.

To do list: follow-up to a freelance photo-feature (that was fun), start on another, use car to help friends who don't have one, get the hell out of car and start cycling, apply for job in NZ, apply for job in Sydney, put Emma's stuff on the web, harrass people for stuff they haven't done for me, follow-up to a follow-up of a follow-up about some more freelancing, clean the house, go away for the weekend. This is why I prefer "go to work for the week, then go away for the weekend".

Those Godfather movies were an experience. The first one was pure genius, but Godfather part II is just too long, with too many unnecessary scenes. The intense moments that marked the first movie are spread too thin in the second. First time I've watched a DVD that didn't fit on one disc.

One of those long-lost cheques from a publisher arrived yesterday, enabling me to pay some bills, eat some food and break my DVD-hiring drought. The conditions: they must be movies I wish I'd seen, and they must fit an advertised $14 offer for two overnighters and three weeklies out at once. So last night it was The Pianist and Far From Heaven. Later this week it's The Godfather Parts I and II (yes I've never seen them) and, um, Amelie.

They revamped the interface and I was incommunicado. Back with a vengeance.

Postcards from another world. Gone now.

I knew something momentous had happened. This is too cool:
"Sophie Monk is waiting for her suitcase in the arrivals hall at Melbourne Airport. Surrounded by fellow passengers, the willowy blonde doesn't notice the middle-aged man lurching towards her with the aid of a walking-stick. His wild hair and crumpled suit are the colour of cigarette ash and his face is as pale as milk. The distance between them closes until Monk, the "blonde goddess" of Australian pop, is standing just a few metres from Shane MacGowan, Ireland's ruined laureate of rock'n'roll excess.
They're blissfully unaware of each other. And the unlikely congress lasts just a few seconds. MacGowan turns on his walking stick and stomps off to the men's room; Monk grabs her luggage and scoots away to a waiting limousine. I'm left standing in the arrivals hall, feeling like I've just seen both ends of the musical rainbow."
The blonde one by Richard Jinman, SMH, 10-11 May 2003 (found in the recycling pile, haha!)

Bold prediction - Kim Beazley will be Australia's next prime minister. If it's not him or Bob Brown, I'm smuggling myself to New Zealand.

Tuesday kind of looks like Thursday if you're speed-reading. Anyway, I haven't done much in the last few days. The rain came when I was ready for some sun. Today, I saw the sun outside while I was working. So I went outside and the rain came. All I have now is a monitor tan, there's not even a moon. Tonight I finally succumbed and plugged in the electric heater for the first time this year. Tomorrow I'm getting up early to go for a walk in the national park, because I can.

The week since I was in Melbourne didn't feel quite real, because being in Melbourne didn't either. It's strange to lie in a hotel room and watch the news from home, even though you are home. The place kept reminding me of Glasgow, with its arty greyness and architecture. I was even on a train full of Collingwood fans after their team was defeated, which was a lot like living on the Celtic side of the Clyde.

Great email from my cousin Sara who's cruising down the California coast towards Mexico in a vehicle with people she met the day before. Hmm ... when she was here in March she had no money. But I still remember how good it feels to be rent-free, moving through the world, until you need to stop. But soon you need to start again.

This is like a Thursday blog or something. Anyway, I ended up at a wierd little blog called Evil Ninja and his comment on Star Wars Episode II made me laugh:
"So if the glowering, hyperventilating and self-groping every time he talks to Amidala weren't enough to make Anakin Skywalker creepy and weird, we must always remember that he built himself a gay dad using spare parts. Nothing's wrong with having a gay dad, but purposely building one out of spare parts when you're nine?"

If there is no honour among thieves, you would think CEOs would want to differentiate themselves. I used to pay $10 per month for an online gaming community that made its owners very rich. The new owners now have four times the users, but raised the price to $12.95 and introduced extra fees for some areas. That is the difference between honourable capitalism and milking it. There should be a way for users to reward restraint, or a realisation that profit alone is not success.

That interview is tomorrow. Rounding up published work, referees, and thoughts of teaching. Had a "good luck for tomorrow" telephone call last night, made me check the itinerary just a few times ... apologies for not catching up with anyone lately.

Now I have to write something to pay for it. Don't worry, the cost was in three figures, not four. But when you can't play the Matrix trailer you've downloaded, it's time to upgrade. Anyway, got a job interview in Melbourne next week and they're flying me down for it.

In 1986 I wrote to Rene Rivkin at my dad's suggestion, in an attempt to get a holiday job. Dad, an admirer of Alan Bond and John Elliott, relentlessly fed me business magazines which piled up unopened. Knowing very little about Mr Rivkin except that he was a famous stockbroker and I had made a profit in a share trading game run by my economics teacher, I wrote to say how much I admired him and would like to work for him. Now that I think about it, the letter was my first attempt at manipulating somebody with words, and it worked.
"Dear Simon, Thank you for your letter. Mr Rivkin would very much like to meet you."
Eventually the invitation was reduced to an impending phone call. On the appointed day, I set up a pen and paper beside the phone downstairs and waited. I was upstairs when the phone rang and raced down the steps, but it stopped after about 4-5 rings and didn't ring again. Dad explained that Mr Rivkin was the kind of person who had a phone next to his toilet because he didn't have enough time to make such calls. I was kind of glad I didn't have to talk to someone who was taking a shit.
Ultimately Mr Rivkin's secretary arranged for me to work in the courier department at Rivkin James Capel, where I earned $130-$160 a fortnight for two sets of holidays, delivering $2 million cheques and share certificates to banks, other stockbrokers and Kerry Packer's Australian Consolidated Press where I would later work as a journalist. I even stood in an elevator once while Mr Rivkin puffed on his cigar and fidgeted with his worry beads, but I wasn't brave enough to say "I'm the guy who sent you the letter". I knew I was being exploited and I encountered some awful people, but I was 16 and it was my first ever income. Eventually it became my spending money on an exchange trip to Germany.
So tonight I watched a nearly-broken Rivkin interviewed on Enough Rope two days before he was convicted of insider trading, expecting to despise the guy. And after all this time, I finally came to admire him. He can have that letter and keep it, because he told the truth -- that the mega-rich are all corrupt and engaged in bribery, and that they get rich at the expense of other people. Rivkin admitted to trying to bribe someone and failing at it, along with disobeying an order from Kerry Packer to "lose my fuckin' son some fuckin' money" because he felt sorry for Jamie. He said he had been unwilling to hurt people in order to get richer, and I respect him for it.
I'll be watching for his sentencing, and I might even write to him again.

Grilled kangaroo meat beats beef or lamb and doesn't mess with Australia. But I just wanted to see what it looks like when you post on another day.

That bike ride did me good. I've been thinking about what to add to my site and there will definitely be a photography section. Found some old assignments from photography classes and I've got a digital camera and a scanner, so there really is no excuse. Naturally there will also be plenty of writing, including the long lost European bike trip in serial form. I'll have to set up a simple way to publish new pages, such as an editing program that can upload.
It would be nice to think I could make a living from freelance writing. Obviously it's possible, but I'm not sure if I have the energy or motivation. I've been commissioned to write a 2000 word piece at $600 per 1000, but I also have 3-4 fantastic ideas for features that would surely be purchased, if only I could be bothered doing the research. And then there are opinion pieces. And creative stuff. As I gradually untangle myself from corporate news brain patterns (again), I might deliver. If I do, I'll be moving out of Sydney. Even if I don't, I'll be scheming and dreaming. Give notice, pack up life, move to the desert like the book Generation X, damn the torpedoes and write.
Whatever appears here will take time. My online friends are heading to another virtual world which is where the fragment of pic at the top is from, but I might leave them to it.