Swedish meatballs?

I wonder if James watched this show whilst he was in Sweden? Apparently these are straight men competing in some type of game show kissing competition.

Telstra magic...pulling bills out of a hat

This is a photograph of Telstra's CEO in the act of conjuring up my latest bill.

How I love Telstra! All those memories of dialling their service centres, choosing from those exciting automated telephone options and being disconnected from their queues. I'm so pleased I'm one of their valued customers. Imagine how boring it would be not to be valued by Telstra and just in receipt of their standard rather than their valued service?

Some years ago I 'bundled' my Telstra services to take advantage of the discounts they offered under those arrangements. Apparently they could afford to offer the discounts in part because of administrative savings through 'bundling' my accounts and bills. I eagerly awaited the first of these 'bundled' bills, waiting expectantly for one jumbo bill to replace the separate bills I had been receiving for years.

A lot of time passed before the first of those bills arrived. Actually years passed by without such a bill. Well, let me speak plainly, no such bill arrived.

I thought I would telephone Telstra to enquire just when I could expect my first 'bundled' bill. I know that I really just wanted an excuse to try out their telephone service centres again. After all it had been a while since I had experienced the excitement of choosing which enquiry option I wanted and of course I really wanted to spend countless hours listening to thrilling music, interspersed with Telstra messages until it was time for my place in the queue to be disconnected. As it happens, I had one of those rare chance opportunities and was connected to a service operator who informed me that whilst my services were 'bundled' Telstra had not yet found a way to actually 'bundle' my bill. Thus I was reassured that I was in receipt of the best service that Telstra could offer.

Then a few weeks ago I received correspondence from Telstra informing me that I would soon receive an exciting new bill with an even more exciting new account number to cover my 'bundled' services. Sure enough, a few weeks later a new bill arrived by email and as promised it did contain a new account number. I could scarcely contain my excitement as I logged on to the Internet to pay this 'bundled' bill through BPay and what a little surprise Telstra had in store for me. My 'bundled' bill was linked to separate customer reference numbers covering sub parts of the account. How convenient! I made separate BPay entries for each customer reference number to pay the 'bundled' bill. Effectively nothing had changed.

And Telstra had still another little surprise. In the mail yesterday was a paper bill from Telstra duplicating the email bill it had sent me earlier. My 'bundled' email bill had given birth to an identical 'bundled' paper bill.

As I said...how I love Telstra.

Who would have guessed?

This report was just read on a radio news bulletin.

"Sydney's traffic is slower now than four years ago, and we're being warned it's only going to get worse.

The latest Auditor's report has found congestion isn't getting any better.

Morning peak hour motorists on Victoria Road are only reaching an average speed of 23 kilometres an hour."

Did we need an Auditor's report to know that Sydney's traffic is getting worse?

Ghost Riders in the Sky

The Ghost Riders in the Sky by Vaughn Monroe was the Number 1 hit on the day I was born according to this site.

Searching for myself...

(Artwork: Raphael Perez)

As my blogroll suggests there are quite a few blogs I follow regularly. I'm impressed how so many bare their souls with beautifully written posts revealing their inner most thoughts and emotions. Breenlantern is one such blogger who writes vividly. Another fascinating blogger with quite a different style is Kezza. These are just two examples.

The more I read these blogs the more I wonder about my own emotion and passion. A cursory examination of my blog will confirm that I reveal far less of myself than do these passionate men. And it has always been that way.

Before my mother developed Alzheimer's Disease she often commented that I may have inherited her looks but that I am my father's son in character. Sometimes the comment was spoken in jest but as often she was admonishing me for an action or behaviour of which she did not approve.

My father belonged to that stoic generation of men who were quiet and did not show emotion. There was no such thing as a metrosexual in their day. It was very difficult to know what he was thinking deep down. I saw him cry just the once and that was the night when the Police brought me home to my parents after entrapping me at a toilet and, I suppose, the realisation of my sexuality hit him. He never cried again in my presence nor did he mention that night.

I didn't really doubt that he continued to love me, although he didn't state it but I was never certain what it was he was thinking.

In 1974 I was posted to London to work there for two years. Although I had travelled overseas twice previously on holidays, this was to be the first time I had lived away from my parents. They saw me off at the Airport. Within a week of my arrival in London I received a letter from my father. It was the only letter he sent me in my life (other than the briefest notations at the bottom of letters my mother sent). It was a beautiful letter. I had no idea that my father harboured such passion and love for me.

But that was it. He never really opened up to me again except for something he said to me less than a week before his death. He was in hospital and I was helping him from his bed to a chair by the window and he whispered to me "You really do love me". It was said as a statement of surprise. He was dead before the week was over.

And so here I am, my father's son - pragmatic as ever - keeping most of my thoughts to myself. This particular post notwithstanding.

"I've been advised..."

Our new Premier, Nathan Rees, has the unenviable task of turning around the under performance of the NSW Government which has been lurching from one debacle to another.

I was listening to a radio interview with him during the week and his answers to question after question began with the phrase "I have been advised...".

Apart from the repetition being irritating this phrasing which seems very popular with our politicians at the moment seems a convenient way to avoid responsibility and hide behind the views and actions of anonymous public servants.

We elect politicians to make decisions and whilst it is appropriate for them to inform themselves on issues through advice and other sources, in the end they ought to take ownership of their decisions and expressed views.

Should I pack my passport and visa?

Every four months or so I have dinner with a group of former work colleagues and generally these are at restaurants in the Eastern or Inner Western Suburbs. These are areas convenient to where I live and with which I am reasonably familiar.

Following the usual email exchanges the next hookup has been arranged for Friday December 12 and this time will be at Kings Langley in a restaurant that one of our dining group has opened since we last got together.

Where the fuck is Kings Langley?

I can see clearly now....

I live on the fifth floor of a twelve stories apartment block whose external windows are cleaned every quarter by a company which employs fit young men who abseil the building to perform the task.

I'm rarely at home when they do the cleaning but one of my fantasies has been that I just happen to be in bed masturbating when one of the young men pops down to do my bedroom window. Of course, the fantasy is rounded off by him popping in to give me a hand...so to speak. Needless to say that fantasy, like so many others of mine, has never remotely come close to happening.

As it happens I was at home on Wednesday afternoon when one of the cleaners made his way down the wing adjoining my side of the building. Here he is cleaning a side window to my neighbour's apartment.

Australia

Australia is perhaps the most heavily promoted of movies in this country and any resident who is unaware of it can only have an abode six feet under. For their benefit, Nicole Kidman is the English aristocrat, Lady Sarah Ashley, who travels to Australia to confront her no good husband at his cattle station only to find he has inconveniently died. Instead she meets Hugh Jackman, the Drover, and then....well, you can guess.

I went to this film with Hn and Ae (with whom I holidayed in the Kimberley and Darwin only a few months ago) and with Je (who had visited the same region earlier). We all were interested to see the locations we had enjoyed on our holidays captured in the film. Ae had shared a convivial drink and more with neighbours earlier in the day and I was annoyed that she turned up so drunk that for a moment I had wondered if she had suffered a stroke. She tried unsuccessfuly to mask her state with makeup that reminded me of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

We found our seats, in Ae's case robotically a la Herman Munster, and then endured thirty minutes of pre film advertisements mostly incorporating excerpts from the film to the extent that it seemed as though we had seen the entire film by the time the familiar 20th Century Fox fanfare trumpeted.

Finally, the film was underway and the first twenty minutes was an embarrassing representation of Darwin as it might have been portrayed by the Beverley Hillbillies. Kidman was all swagger and shriek during these scenes. At that point I reappraised my opinion of Ae. She had found the perfect state in which to view the film. My heart sank at the thought of nearly three hours more of this embarrassment.

As I was thinking the worst, Ae leant over, placed a sweaty hand on my arm and in a Vera Charles like 'stage whisper' heard by the entire audience conveyed her opinion, "this is dreadful". Her comment was so powerful that the film almost immediately settled down, dropped its - until then - cartoonish qualities and began to improve. Even Kidman toned down her 'performance' from this point.

The film's improvement now seemed to infect Ae whose stage whispers became fewer and less audible with each passing scene until she no longer resembled Vera Charles and started paying respectful attention to what was happening on the screen.

The horrendous first twenty minutes aside, the remainder of the film was not without its interesting moments. I tended to focus on the background scenery rather than the foreground action but elements of the storyline grabbed my attention as the film progressed. I have to admit that overall I enjoyed the film but it is not the masterpiece we might have hoped.

The young Aboriginal boy, Brandon Walters, steals the film and of the rest I thought that Bryan Brown did the least damage to his reputation in a comparatively small but important role. Jackman is presented as eye candy in figure hugging clothing and shirtless moments. Kidman's performance waxes and wanes rather like her lips appear to do from scene to scene.

I don't know what overseas audiences will make of this film and its strong Australian and Aboriginal references. One thing that Australia does not possess is moderation. Baz Lurhmann displays an unerring eye for cliche and not a single one is missing from the film.

Son knows best?

People of my vintage might remember a popular American family comedy television series in the 1950s called Father Knows Best. It was a hit series in Australia. The wise father who triumphed at the end of each episode with his unfailing wisdom was Hollywood star Robert Young. In that series the parents were always wiser than their children. This was scarcely surprising since they were alert, enjoyed good health and had the advantage of experience over their still adolescent children.

I wonder how those children would have managed in today's world taking on responsibility for their aging parents?

I am in the situation where I have taken on virtual parenting responsibility for my widowed mother who has advanced Alzheimer's Disease. I took over her care full time when my father died six years ago following a short illness and until her condition became too advanced for her to safely remain at home. Now she resides in a nursing home.

A long time family friend rang me this week to enquire what gift he could purchase my mother for Christmas. He hasn't seen my mother since she entered the home and I suspect cannot visualise what little awareness she has now of her surroundings. In these circumstances I feel that any gift is really just a waste of money as she simply would not be interested nor take any notice of it.

When I give her a card for her birthday and read the inscription to her, she looks at it briefly without really seeing it and then takes no notice of it at all. It is gone from her mind within seconds of me showing it to her.

I felt bad telling him not to bother with a gift both from the point of view that he might feel that I am brushing him off and for denying my mother a gift. I tried to explain the situation as gently as I could hoping he might understand and promised I would pass on his and his family's best wishes to my mother.

I do this regularly anyway, even though my mother no longer knows who I am referring to when I tell her about friends from her past. Indeed she rarely remembers her own name let alone mine.

In these circumstances I sometimes wonder does son really know best?

It has started....

Yesterday I attended the first of three works Christmas (or end of year) parties that are happening within eight days.

The first was the volunteers' party put on by the hospital which is very good at recognising our role. Each year the party includes the handing out of service badges and certificates recognising five, ten etc years of volunteer service. I received my five years' badge at yesterday's party which was accompanied by complimentary comments about my performance which were very nice to hear. Others received badges recognising five, ten, fifteen and (in one instance) twenty years of volunteer service.

I knew I was to receive the badge but I was surprised later during lunch when I was singled out for further mention and given a generous Department store cash voucher as further recognition of my efforts. I blushed with embarrassment when called to the podium.

The lunch was cold seafood and salad topped off with a fruit platter. There were no hot dishes (meats, pies, quiches) of previous parties. Seafood is not my favourite cuisine and I have to be cautious as I have sometimes suffered bad effects after a seafood meal. I stuck mostly to the smoked salmon and salad but risked eating a few prawns. Thankfully there was no adverse reaction and surprisingly I felt quite replete despite selecting a modest amount to eat. I really need to discipline myself to modest servings if I am to lose some of the unwelcome weight I have added to my frame in the past year (which coincides with my blogging life). Blogging is a weight hazard!

Unfortunately there were no cute men of the calibre in the photograph at the party.

Tomorrow, the Nursing Home is staging its volunteers' party and then next Wednesday it is the turn of the home's Day Centre.

The 'just ask' policy

(Taken from Post Secret)

American Teen

American Teen is a reality style documentary covering a year in the lives of a graduating class at a high school in Warsaw Indiana.

The film focuses on five students representing a spectrum of predictable types. I found the nerdy student, despite his acne, more attractive than the main sports jock although a secondary jock was better looking than them both. The secondary jock also seemed much older in looks than his classmates yet his behaviour at times was immature. Similarly the odd one out female student was far more interesting than the supposedly attractive class favourite whose behaviour at times was reprehensible.

I had a few laughs watching this and found the film an interesting glimpse into the American education system, so different from the system and school from which I received my education.

Overall, though, I found it difficult to believe that everything we see in the film was natural activity occurring without interference or direction from its makers.

World AIDS Day

1 December 2008 marks the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. In 1988, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the first World AIDS Day in an effort to raise public awareness about HIV/AIDS issues, including the need for support and understanding for people living with HIV/AIDS. The day is also an opportunity to highlight the need for continued development of education and prevention initiatives.

Over the past 20 years, World AIDS Day has been established as one of the world’s most successful commemorative days. It is now recognised and observed by millions of people in more than 190 countries around the globe.

All Australians are encouraged to wear a red ribbon during AIDS Awareness Week and on World AIDS Day.

Tripping the light tram-tastic

This post is for Andrew who leaves me green with envy over his detailed descriptions of tram travel undertaken on the extensive tram system in Melbourne.

Unlike Andrew, I could not say that I caught tram number X, then changed to tram number Y and ended up on tram number Z when I took Sydney's light rail to the Casino today to purchase my new Priscilla tickets.

Once the owner of one of the largest tram systems in the world, Sydney now has the one partially novelty, partially commuter service.


I took the light rail from Capitol Square (at George Street) to Star City where the Casino and the Lyric Theatre are located. I could have travelled for free as the conductor seemed to assume that I was Casino employee and did not seek my fare but being the honest soul I am I summoned him back and paid the $5.70 return fare. Most of the seats were taken on the outbound trip when I boarded and some of the passengers departed at the various Darling Harbour stops.


By coincidence I had the same conductor on the return trip and perhaps he remembered me or else once again assumed I was a Casino employee because again he did not approach me about the fare. I don't know why he would have thought I was an employee as I was dressed in casual shorts and a white T-shirt.


When I returned to George Street, the Christmas Parade was in progress and I caught the very end of it as it was passing by the Sydney Town Hall.

I had thought about using the monorail for the return trip but in the end didn't bother. I am still a monorail virgin having never travelled on it in all the years that it has been operating. My original resistance to using it was ideological as I was aghast at the eyesore spoiling Sydney's CBD when it was constructed. It has been around now for so long that it has become a part of the city and my resistance has dissipated.

See the light

The See the Light T-shirt in the photograph has been specially designed by Chris Cheng and will go on sale from World AIDS Day tomorrow. Thirty per cent of the proceeds from the sale of the shirt will go to the AIDS Trust.

If the model in the photograph is sold with the shirt then sales should go through the roof.

Joern Utzon (1918 - 2008)

Joern Utzon, the Danish Architect, who designed the Sydney Opera House has died in Copenhagen at the age of 90.


Sydney, in particular, and Australia, in general, have much reason to be grateful to Utzon.

Priscilla deserts us...

A couple of months ago Fs, in Canberra, suggested that we go with Bn to see the stage musical Priscilla Queen of the Desert which is currently on its second Sydney season. The first Sydney season was a huge success but none of us had gone to see it and this second season was scheduled to end on 18 January.

For reasons too complex for me to explain the only weekend that suited the three of us was the final weekend. I hasten to explain that I was available virtually every weekend but both the other two were heavily 'booked'. How is it that other people lead such hectic social lives?

Anyway Fs booked tickets for the evening of January 17, the second last performance, which we have been eagerly awaiting. Fs booked flights to Sydney for the weekend and had obtained the theatre and flight tickets.

Then yesterday, I was reading the Daily Telegraph and found deep into the paper a small paragraph stating that Priscilla is closing earlier on December 21, a victim of the financial crisis which has left its January bookings a disaster. I rang the theatre which confirmed the early closure and text Fs who had not heard the news. Fs is being sent a refund for the theatre tickets and with Bn will not be able to see the show before its closure.

My basically free diary allows me to seek an alternate performance but Fs and Bn are both disappointed. For once my lack of social life has worked in my favour, although I would have preferred to see the show with the others.

Not quite TGIF...

(The New Yorker)

A piece of Australia

Baz Lurhmann's Australia has opened. Much of it was filmed in the Kimberley District of Western Australia where I visited in August/September.

This is one of my photographs in the region, our wide land brown at the end of the dry season.


(Click to enlarge.)