Excursions The longest period of travel I've ever had started with a final trip to Auckland for work. So some final photographs are in order. Next time I go to New Zealand, I hope for the south island, but if back north, at least the bay of islands or thereabouts. Auckland's nice, but I've seen enough of it for a while. Albatross populate the harbour extensively. They're quite loud, too, some mornings, but are something to see, soaring along. Not so much just standing there, though. I do like their tower very much. Their harbour is almost more open ocean than anything else, but watching the fog roll in and lift by early morning is lovely. On the final weekend, there was a special exhibition on of Japanese art, for which a demonstration of Japanese drumming was performed. The hotel we stayed in had a distinctly Overlook-ish aspect. I kept expecting to see creepy twins at the end every morning. After a brief stopover back home for Easter weekend, I flew to Paris to meet the girlfriend, who was traveling there for work, but had also built in some tourism, as you do. Paris is a very distinctive city, in large part due to Napoleon III, who tore down vast sections of it, rebuilding according to a particular style, and also with an aim to have large boulevards, not easily barricaded, so as to prevent having another, successful revolution. These buildings along the Rue de Rivoli, as seen from the Tuillieres Gardens, are a good example of the style. Not that Paris doesn't have its colourful aspects, such as a bit of graffiti here and there. Or their museum of modern art, the Pompidou Centre. Something newer in that regard is the pedestrian bridge, the Pont des Arts, which the citizens and others have determined should also serve as a monument to relationships. Couples attach a padlock where they can. No word on whether they keep the keys, just in case, or not. Besides gilding everything they can, a common motif in Paris are their stone lions. They're pretty good. This one's actually Greek, in the Louvre, but I liked the expression on his face. This one's in Versailles. He looks appalled at something, but there's no indication what it may be. This last one is on a fountain, but he's a good example of snarl. The view from the top of the Arc de Triomph is hard to beat. That other arch at the far end, the squared one, was built for the 200th anniversary of the Revolution, and is actually outside Paris itself, where the buildings are limited in height. Outside the city limits, they can go as high as they want. Didn't get to Montmatre; maybe next time. One thing we did get to was the Louvre, of course, along with thousands of others. My favourite painting was the Wedding Feast at Cana. We also took in Notre Dame. The gargoyles are a lot of fun. For a day trip, we took a minibus to Versailles and Claude Monet's gardens in Giverney. Versailles was the proof that there is just no getting away from crowds when touring Paris. But the grounds are extensive and extensively sculpted. Pruning must be a university degree course. The gardens at Monet's house were wonderful. The set-up made you easily see what the Impressionists were on about. Every bend and aspect showed you different things the light was doing, and you could imagine what the day would do to change each view as the light changed, day to day, season to season. It may have been one of the best parts of the trip. Once B.'s work week kicked in, I traveled up to York, where Mom & Dad had the intention of seeing the minster. It's a fair bit more time in York than I think is entirely called for, and the weather generally was bad for walking around ye olde England, although maybe giving a feel for the way the city would have often felt back when it was still new. I'm amazed that the city wall was retained for all these centuries, but someone had some serious foresight. One element of the trip that was particularly welcome is that Mom & Dad know someone there, someone who is engaged in studying and restoring the stained glass. So we got quite a lot of information about the process. And, of course, York's minster was spared much of the ravages of Cromwell's iconoclasts, so there's quite a lot of stained glass to look at and learn about. My favourite, however, was a small panel, playfully inserted along the bottom of some other work, involving saints and such, but depicting a monkey, and telling a little story, from right to left, of the monkey being ill, being attended by a monkey doctor, and then having a monkey funeral procession, when that didn't work out so well. It was good to see Paris again, after 24 years, and York, after 30, but it's nicer to be home. No more travel beyond the Blue Mountains or Central Coast, I think, for a good long while.

Paris!
Just until Sunday, and the first three hours waiting for B.to arrive, but it's her party, so to speak: I wouldn't be here if she wasn't coming in for a conference, and with some holiday time to kill. But I didn't expect to be here ever again, really, and not since 1988, so very excited.z

High Finance
What a pack of self-serving lies. Goldman Sachs has been known for decades as a pack of rapacious bastards. Why do you think "thousands" of people apply for jobs there straight out of university? Because they'll pay off their student loans and live in a fantastic Manhattan condo before they've been there 10 years, let alone 12. Investment banking should be subject to stringent regulations, or criminalized.

Parking & the City
Here's a book that creeps like NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell and Miranda Devine really ought to read: Rethinking a Lot. Maybe if they would read a little more than they'd talk/write, they'd be able to think, too, but it seems unlikely. But they'd rather present themselves as the arbiters of all that is good and holy, and that ain't bicycles or pedestrians or anyone trying to use what's on offer in the city that isn't parking.

Quote of the Day
"We don't need altar boys" says a Roman Catholic Church spokesman, in reference to trying to shut down a pedophile-priest victim's advocacy group. Should have thought of that sooner, eh?

The State Versus the City
The State Government of NSW changed hands not so very long ago, moving from Labor to Liberal, and the new Premier, Barry O’Farrell, has been finding his feet ever since. Not unlike his predecessors in the job, however, he has found the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, irksome.
Under Bob Carr, Labor NSW attempted a power play, redefining the various council boundaries, including joining South Sydney Council with the City of Sydney Council, attempting to wrest control for their preferred administrators. It backfired. Clover went rogue, becoming an independent, but retaining her position as Lord Mayor and her seat in State Parliament. Why should that be so? Because she does a good job for her parliamentary constituency and for the city. She has remained a gadfly to so-called conservative commentators and all extreme right politicians, including those on the Labor Right.
She had an idea that the City of Sydney, made up as it is of disparate suburbs, many quite small, but all expressing different characteristics in one degree or another, could share its various offerings in a way that made it more liveable overall. Part of her idea was to introduce environmental sustainability efforts, such as co-generation of power in council buildings, but also getting the various bike paths that had been introduced over the years to actually link up, encouraging us to stop relying so much on private vehicles. Better bus service, maybe an eventual return of trams, and even the introduction of traffic-free zones within the CBD were in the works. These various efforts could also have the effect of getting the people who visit the city regularly for work to linger for a meal or an event outside of work. If the city has more to offer and more ways to ease the problems of getting in and out, we’d feel better about sticking around. Hell, we might even think about living here, instead of commuting back and forth from near and far suburbs. All very laudable.
But bicycles are like vegetarianism: they generate a nearly inexplicable derision, if they are not outright despised. Those cyclists, with their tights and their invariable disregard for their own safety or that of others, whizzing through traffic, except when they’re going slower than the traffic on the streets they’re forced to share from the lack of bike lanes that they don’t deserve, because they wear tights and won’t ever ring their bells as they approach a pedestrian and . . . foam, foam, foam. What is it about bikes in the city that’s so bad?
Anyway, Clover started joining up the bike lanes, putting some in where there had been none, too, and keeping pedestrian and vehicular traffic separated. My GOD! She spent money, taxpayer money on bicyclists!
So now here comes Barry, and before anything can be done in regard to city streets within the City of Sydney, a committee of seven members will be consulted, four of whom are appointed by Barry, and three from the City. Any chance of progress? Only if progress meets Barry’s definition, which, so far, appears to be none.
Barry’s concern, ostensibly, is the effect to city businesses when bike lanes reduce on-street parking, or if no-car zones would reduce accessibility to businesses by people in cars. As if there weren’t other ways to get there (Barry: the trains! The buses! Didn’t you say you were going to fix those?).
If traffic is a problem, Barry, it isn’t bicycles that are the cause, it’s that you (and previous governments) have done nothing but create new suburbs with little else than highways that join onto city streets not capable of accepting the volume. Newtown’s King Street and City Road can’t handle what they receive. Even Parramatta Road can’t manage the volume from the west – even on weekends it’s easily overwhelmed.
What’s needed isn’t an intervention on bicycles. What’s really needed is better planning. Parramatta and Chatswood have the potential to be true alternative city centres, creating corridors that could feed into one another. Trams, light rail, improvements to the existing passenger trains that aren’t just schedule tweaks to hide poor on-time performance, more buses, more alternatives to driving into the city, these would help.
It won’t happen. Not anymore. We had some momentum for a little while, but the derailleurs are on now.

Update: See, it's all about depowering Clover. What bastardry.

City of Sails
As usual, these days, more time in Auckland. Although I didn't bring a camera this last trip, which was sort of too bad, as I climbed to the top of Rangitoto island, which is a volcano, 600 years old, approximately, in the middle of the harbour, and walked across the entire width of New Zealand (o.k., fine, it's only about 6 or 7 kilometers across Auckland, but the walk, especially with the divergences I took because of the mediocre map and sometime intermittent markings, was probably closer to 16 or more). But I did also get to be in town on the last trip for Auckland Anniversary Day, which included the Seafood Festival.

The Seafood Festival costs, this year, NZ$20 to get in. Then you spend NZ$10 to try something to eat. Anything you buy is pretty much enough to be lunch, so you either need to be very hungry and willing to spend an extraordinary amount of money for lunch, or very choosey. I fell somewhere in between, but enjoyed my selections.

Also on that weekend, I climbed to the top of Mount Eden, Auckland's highest point, and an extinct volcano. Climbed isn't what it used to be, as really I just followed the road up to the top. But it was a swell view.

Here are photos:

View from Mt Eden


Mt eden Crater


Mt Eden Crater View


View from Mt Eden


on Mount eden


Seafood Festival Crowd


Seafood Festival Fire


Seafood Festival Flyover


Seafood festival Stilts


Seafood Festival Makeup


Regatta


Container Loading


Container from harbour


Night Port

Alpiney
I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it in NSW over Christmas, but possible snow in Victoria – in summer still seems extreme.
As for the Americans missing on Kosciuszko, well, I suppose they must have taken a more adventurous pathway than the steel track we followed two weeks ago, but I won’t be surprised, after the various groups and individuals we saw departing the track for one reason or another (including contributing to the giardia problem, to discover that the well-trodden paths around there were abandoned for overconfident trekking. Luckily, there are no bears (but, sadly, no tigers, either).

Xmas Across Australia
O.k., so not really across Australia, just down to Melbourne and back. Although not just down and back, more like down and around a bit.
We drove down the highway through Goulburn, where stands a monument to two things: the roadside attraction, and Australia’s long-time reliance on wool: the Big Merino.

Not long past that point, we reached a highlight of any road trip along this route: the Dog on the Tucker Box.

The story behind this monument is inexplicable, at least insofar as a monument to the moment was required, but there you have it: a dog is perched upon the tuckerbox forevermore.
We also passed by Holbrook, home of the world’s most landlocked submarine.

We stayed over in Albury, a large enough inland city, just across the Murray from Wondonga, the two localities combining to a population just under 100,000. So big, as far as non-Capitol cities are concerned.
From there we proceeded to the most haunted spot in all Australia, at least for cineophiles: Hanging Rock. We even had a picnic.



No sign of Miranda, but it was nevertheless, or perhaps in consequence, a remarkably similar experience to the film. Other than having to walk up there. Hanging Rock itself, however, is surprisingly inconspicuous. It’s basically just a big rock that’s fallen across a chasm through the escarpment, forming an overhang to duck under back down (or up) the outcropping. There was spookiness, a little, I suppose, but also flies, lorikeets, and kookaburra.

After hitting Melbourne and having a fine Christmas there, where I was gifted with a stovetop espresso pot (sure to see much use for a long time to come), we went up and over to Thredbo, one of Australia’s skiing destinations. In summer, this resort town resorts to having people use the mountain for mountain biking and hiking. There’s a golf course, too, but I can only imagine the frustration of hitting your ball upslope onto the green, only to see it roll back down.
Thredbo backs onto Mount Kosioszko, Australia’s highest peak, at just over 2200 metres. The main chairlift takes you up to the start of a steel walking track (not galvanized, as the meadow plants don’t care for the zinc), and this takes you most of the way up to the top, winding through remarkable glacial rock formations and the source of the Snowy Mountains water scheme, supplying water and electricity to a substantial part of the region. Small streams trickle through from the top, with cachements of bogs and pools, and populated by galaxia, thumb-sized (or smaller) fish, who, swept down lower, feed trout.




But, hey, look: snow!

There isn’t much else to Thredbo, not even in winter, although I suppose a skier might say otherwise. So after two nights there, we headed up and the over to the sea, where we visited Kiama, and its famous blow-hole, a section of rock where the waves crashing through generate enormous spouts of water.


We also walked along the Sea Cliff Bridge, a little further up the coast. This remarkable piece of engineering replaced a section of roadway long given to periodic closures due to rockslides and collapses, and where people from the neighbourhood or passing through will clip engraved padlocks to profess undying love for one another. No word on whether tradition includes throwing the keys into the sea or if each party gets one, just in case, but some showed considerable weathering, and many showed significant creativity. I may have to revisit this site someday in the future.



A lot of photos haven’t come out, so the selection here is the best available. If I can get any others, I’ll add them later.

The Secret of Turning Lead into Gold
The Doc Savage pulp stories are perhaps the epitome of formula, and, as many of us who follow such matters know, of committee writing. Here's the brief on how to write one.

Lester Dent, aka Kenneth Robeson, genius.

I wonder what could be done with this when applied to a conventional novel? Is it too late to try? (Perhaps next NaNoWriMo?)

Still Disagree?
Although after the Iraq War, I could barely stand to read anything he wrote, due to the unvarying effort he put into including his support for the war into even the most remotely connected, and even in no way connected, book review or other commentary piece, I remember that I used to like Christopher Hitchens, and could even still appreciate what he wrote. Now I guess he gets to find out about God.

Results
1:35 in City2Sea. Better than City2Surf, but not by much.

Most fun part of the race: pre-gun spruiker kept saying "city to surf", plus the kilometer flags were all branding for the Sydney race. I guess they're waiting to see if it takes off.

Very flat run, so pretty tough, really.

A New State to Visit
I haven't been to many US States, but maybe a trip to Arkansas is called for. I missed out on the Gates, to my eternal regret, and Christo may not have too many projects left in him.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I Persist in Doing
1:06 in the Run4Fun. Acceptable, for this year, anyway. Got to get back on form. I should have been under an hour. But I will treat it as a tune-up for City2Sea, next weekend.

Roundup
I’ve been lazy, sort of. This year’s Sydney Running Festival saw me in the 9k, at about 55 minutes, instead of trying for another half marathon, and there’s been lots of other running around, by which I mean trips to Melbourne for work, another round of which starts on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, there’s been the various Nobel Prize winners, and the usual nationalistic spin these receive, such as the headlines here touting the participation in physics by the local boy, one of three to take the prize as a team, whereas the U.S. accounts pretty well ignored him. As they would. Pretty much no coverage of the literature prize, which would have all been different if the Syrian favourite had taken it home. Assuming Syria is home. Or not home, if not.
And Steve Jobs has died, of pancreatic cancer, poor bugger. Sorry for his friends and family. But has the world really lost such a genius as warrants flowers piled up outside the Apple Stores, including Sydney’s location at George & Kent Streets? And Facebook tributes? O.k., I’ve never been one to take up the whole Apple experience, but I don’t have much need for a home PC than the internet and a few basic applications, and work is just work and pretty well limited, for me, to the same set of software. So operating systems or not, Apple and Steve Jobs have little to do with my life, despite owning an iPod Shuffle and a Samsung Android phone (that pretty neatly rips off the iPhone look and feel). Steve Jobs made me buy something. So have lots of other unsung marketers , designers, sales personnel, waiters, waitresses, typographers, whatever. I’m glad he made good on the promise I’m sure everyone saw in him, and admire how he pulled Apple back from the brink more than once (having pushed it there himself at least once, and having made his own dumbass moves in between – remember Next? How’d that work out? Oh, yeah, back to Apple, then). But the endless mourning keening? C’mon. He made you buy things. He didn’t change the world. Facebook and Twitter run on Windows, too, and started there, and mobile phones predate Jobs, as do touch-screens and e-books. We may employ the refinements he added to the tools we had, but the refinements weren’t his and were coming anyway. Getting there first makes him a better salesman, and that’s been enough. Just remember, he made you buy things, even when you already had things, the same things, but that doesn’t make him Gandhi, let alone Jesus.

Not Legolas
Today was fun: archery at Olympic Park. For AU$20, they give you a bow, three arrows, and a target to shoot at about twenty or thirty meters away. They give you a bit of a lesson, mostly safety tips (don't aim anywhere but at the target, please, mostly) and off you go. You spend a fair bit of time waiting for everyone to have fired so you can go retrieve, then waiting for everyone to get back on the line, but the pace picks up pretty quickly, mostly, and you actually spend a fair bit of your 90 minutes actually shooting, the final two-three sets including a balloon affixed to the target, so you get a bit of competitive spirit, if you're shooting with a partner or friends. I managed a couple of hits in the centre and only a couple over the top. My friend and I each hit the balloon once, so that was satisfying, even if it is a little silly.

The serious archers follow similar protocols, but their equipment is their own and their targets set much further back, naturally. Some of them bring scopes, so they can check how they've done or how they're progressing, while waiting for the retrieval phase. None of them looked elfen, either.

It was fun. My first three fingers still hum a little, and there's a slight ache in my left shoulder, but I think the spring sun was more an issue than any new athletic effort. I'd definitely do it again. The problem is not even so much when as how seriously do I want to make it regular. Other than the beginners class, there are only two casual shooters options, and the weekend one means buying gear. Frankly, as much as I had fun, I don't think I'm that serious. (On the other hand, carrying a bow and arrows on the train out to the park would be very crimefighter, wouldn't it?

Robots & Magazines
One of those Groupon deals came through to my email account the other day, offering an iPad2 with a Phillips docking station for under a grand. A pretty good deal, even if the tablet discount wasn't where most of the value offered lay.

The iPad doesn't offer much to me: I've got a PC and a wired modem, and I already have a phone (that isn't an iPhone), but one thing I could have by buying an iPad is a reliable subscription to the New Yorker magazine, and for about half the price.

Every week it's a toss-up as to which issue will arrive in my mailbox: the current week's, last week's, maybe one a month old, or none at all. They arrive still in their sealed plastic, so I don't suppose the postman is reading them first, but how I can walk into a new agent's and see the current issue on time and not have received my subscription copy, well, I reckon it's either the distributor or the fact that the newsstand issue is $15 and my subscription would cost them money if they delivered it.

The potential for it to be a problem with the distributor is pretty high. Conde Nast was using Pitney Bowes, and the addressing slip included a "how's my distribution" website link, to which I regularly posted every week, highlighting for them their failures to be timely in delivery. At some point in the last year, a different distributor was chosen, still with a website to report problems to, but the delivery was nearly always on time. My updates to the website warmly congratulated them on their performance. So Conde Nast switched back to Pitney Bowes. And delivery is woeful once again. And there's no website.

If I bought an iPad, there'd be no issue with issues, but I can't really justify the spend for the equipment, although it would be only a matter of years and years before the subscription discount paid for the hardware. Assuming the software, i.e., internet connection for the weekly download, didn't eat that up.

And then there was Sony. They've got a new tablet, due to hit the market soon, and I like the sound of it. It's an Android-based tablet, for one thing, so it would be compatible with my phone, more or less. It's got a USB port, and its memory can be upgraded via SD card. It folds up. Folded halfway and turned horizontally, you get a mini-PC interface, screen on top and "keyboard" down. eBook pages can be presented verso-recto, just like a real book.

And Next Issue Media offer subscriptions to publications from five publishers, including Conde Nast's New Yorker. (The others are Time Inc., from whom you can get Fortune and Time; Meredith, who publish Fitness and Parents, and Hearst, for Esquire and Popular Mechanics; New Corp's in there, too, but not offering anything yet.)

My original dilemma became somewhat more acute when an online auction site started offering iPad's for bids starting at $40, but I like the sound of Sony's tablet, even though I don't give much of a stuff to games and movies and music on it. Since it's not even on offer until later this month, though, I can do some research. Like, how much can it be used to replace my aging laptop? With both 3G and WiFi connectivity, I could go WifFi only with my current internet provider and ignore the 3G calls in favour of my Optus account, maybe. Seems worth waiting for.

Now if the Atlantic Monthly would get on board. . . .

Dance Theatre

I used to go see Pina Bausch what seemed like every year at the Brooklyn Academy. I have to say I never really knew what story I was being told, but part of that is the number of stories at work in each set and each dancer and often more than one in each separately and together. Pina Bausch's choreography explored so much of human nature and expressed all the contradictions as well as all the coincidences and congruencies, for human beings individually and as social beings, micro and macro. A visionary not just of dance but of people.

So I had to see Pina, the new Wim Wenders film. And I'm so glad I did. Even though, with the music and settings, it differed radically from the shows I went to, the feelings were there, the humour and drama and sensitiveness to character, all very German, I suppose, too, but not something you couldn't relate to in any other cultural context. I think that's part of the triumph of Wenders' film: so much of it is shot outdoors, in urban and other man-manufactured settings, as well as indoors and in more theatrical sets. The 3D, well, I'm still not entirely convinced of this as necessary, but it worked, at least after the first few minutes, when, as usual, it had that layered 2D feel, peering past a translucent sheet into another and another, not giving anything rounded. I think the dance helped add that sense of a true third dimension. These people in motion, with passion.

I was a little . . . not put off, but not accepting entirely of the little soulful-look voice-over interviews of the company dancers reflecting on their time with Pina, but in the end you have to walk away with a true sense of what she did for them, as a leading artist, for their own lives as artists, and how well they loved her.

Pina Bausch, as I recall, always appeared in her productions, not as a principal necessarily, but more as a matter of principle, which, somewhat obliquely, I got the sense was not entirely her own idea. But her presence in these pieces, based on what I've seen and the footage in the film, always supplied a kind of grounding element, felt by the other dancers.

My recollection of seeing Tanztheater productions doesn't include music, at least not much, but the addition didn't distract, maybe enhanced. There's a slight tendency to watch the dances with a sense of them as "interpretive dance" with the music present, but that would be a mistake. Merce Cunningham made dance and music separate, but that doesn't mean they can't be complementary, even when one has, essentially, nothing to do with the other. The music's more present because we're dealing in movies than in is required for the movements, but that's o.k.

Seasonal
Another City2Surf gone by, this year with low training, bad tendonitis, and a poor result that will see me relegated to the back of the pack start next years (I can hope to get back into the greens again if I can get a regular training schedule underway and avoid injury). Too many half marathons last year, so I'll stick to the Bridge Run in September and build back.

One of 85,000 entrants: it's amazing how organised this race is and how little congestion, on a comparative basis, there is, although runners with headphones on really need to start behaving as if not being able to hear anyone else is the same as not being able to see them.

Downgrade
Standard & Poor’s has a helluva nerve, downgrading the US’s credit rating. The US should have downgraded S&P, not to mention the other credit-rating companies, all of whom were at the very least complicit in the financial crisis the country went further into debt to get through, bailing out all those crooks at Goldman Sachs, for example, whose products S&P etc. rated.

Repuglicans have a helluva nerve offering any rebuke when it was their gamesmanship that put the country on the brink of default, all so they can keep the top 1% of the country from having to pay their fair share of tax.

China’s got a helluva nerve opening their yap to tell us to spend less on the military (although we damn well should), when they’re not going to do anything but buy more debt anyway, let alone adjust their own currency to reflect their economic realities.

This whole debt monster debate should be a non-starter. Debt itself isn’t bad, and government debt is often a good thing. If we can get out of Afghanistan and Iraq sooner rather than later and avoid getting in a new war, we’d start saving all kinds of money. Let the Bush tax cuts expire and we’d actually start getting some revenue back. Then maybe we could spend something on jobs creation, something neither the military nor the tax cut-beneficiaries are doing much of, at least not internally. (The military seems to be doing a helluva a job on creating jobs for illegal arms merchants and drug smugglers, and those tax cut magnates are sending jobs overseas as fast as they can, to China, among other places.)

Let’s do something right about the financial services sector. Call it revenge, and why not, but it couldn’t be so hard to put something in place to ensure that the credit rating agencies are required to be independent of the products they rate. There are valid ways to create non-compete clauses in employment contracts. Something similar could work. How about a five-year moratorium on employees of financial management companies being employed at a ratings agency? No funds to be managed by an agency engaged in issuing ratings? And let’s put some teeth into the regulations we have and start enforcing them.