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.

Norway
What to make of this? I don't doubt the murder of Oslo describes himself as "Christian", but I doubt he says he's "right-wing", more likely "conservative", and here we have the possibility of definitions. When this angry, hate-filled person says he's Christian, he means he's not a Muslim. Perhaps not a Jew or a Hindu, but I doubt he's ever taken his thinking as far as that. He has defined himself as the opposite of the Other of the day, and we all know who that is. In another time, before or yet to come, that could have been different. But he's no Christian, that's certain.

As far as being "conservative", well, that's come to mean something other than what it once was. Instead of trying to preserve something good, to slow reckless progress, conservatism, as we've seen in the U.S., perhaps especially lately, really means trying to roll back the clock to a idealised fantasy age: the 'fifties, the 'forties, the nineteenth century in more than some cases. This bastard is no different from the tea party crazies or the English Defense League or the National Front or whomever else you'd care to name. They want a different age, but have no understanding of what was truely at work in that age and why it cannot be.

I mourn Norway's losses, both the people and the sense that such madness was not part of their culture. It's in us all, unfortunately. Please let us find our way to a better relationship among ourselves sooner than it seems we have in us.

Gas
Australia's got a carbon tax, until 2015 - according to the plan - when we get a emissions trading scheme. I'm not opposed to either, but have my doubts about the overall efficacy of the plan on actually reducing emissions, although still willing to support positive efforts and evaluate whatever outcome is achieved, howsoever little that will be in my lifetime, especially with the Chinese, the Indians, and the U.S. unwilling or unable to act. For that matter, aren't India and China still among the developing nations, i.e., lumped in with Africa et al., and therefore those that will be on the outer with developed nations acting, not acting, and requiring their participation.

I guess it's one of the advantages of the Australian government's setup, that we can put through this kind of legislation, without having to have a "mandate", and without having to deal with a just-say-no opposition capable of siphoning off members of the party in power. Party-line voting can be trouble, too, but here's Australia taking action when the big players can't get it together to have it on the agenda even.

Sure, we have the usual suspects proclaiming doom, but, quietly, in other areas, you've got businesses and people looking for a way to make it work, and to make a profit, too. Will it cost jobs? Maybe, but it'll probably create some, too. Will it kill off entire industries? Please.

Auckland, Again
I'm spending a lot of time in Auckland these days, but I don't mind. It's a nice little city, although I wonder what it would be like to live there? I hear the transport system is pretty bad, and travelling to and from the airport supports this.

Although it seems every city aspiring to some notability put up a needle at some point, I rather like this one.

Festivals
The Vivid festival is one. Can't say the line-up is particularly interesting to me, but I still enjoy the lights.



The Customs House display was very animated and closely tailored to the elements of the facade, which made it quite a drawing card. The crowd on that side of Circular Quay was substantial.

Up the Rainbow Bridge
Happy Easter! To celebrate this most holy of Christian festivals, I went to see a movie about a pagan god: The Mighty Thor. Of course, they've made him an alien and Birfrost a wormhole, but all the mythological characters and structures are otherwise largely intact, including Sif and the Warriors Three, Volstagg, Hogun, and Fandral. I've never been much of a fan of the Thunder God, but with the Hulk and Iron Man already out there and Captain America coming up next, it's obvious we'll be getting an Avengers movie before long, so it's important to keep up.

Kenneth Branagh did a good job, and Anthony Hopkins makes a good Odin. This Australian kid they found to play Thor was beyond perfect, and engaging in just the way the movie is overall. This is light entertainment, as it should be. There's a lot more humor than we've seen out of Marvel Studios in general, and just enough of the various other dramatic elements to keep things moving right along. The spectacle of it all is not in any way underdone, but I have to question the 3D.

I'm not unhappy with it, entirely, but there wasn't much reason to bother, really. Standard 2D would have been enough. Funnily enough, movies have always been effective at deceiving the eye into a 3D experience, without the glasses. In this case, the illusion of depth was, I think, counteractive to this illusion. The different planes in which the action took place seemed flat layerings of one image upon on another, with none of the rounding binolocular vision affords in reality and our brain has supplied in movies over the years. Some of the faster action sequences seriously suffered in this respect. I'm hopeful they'll start leaving it alone if they can't make it any better than this just yet.

Dear Russell Crowe
I started attending Rabbitohs games as a member the year before Peter Holmes a Court and Russell Crowe bought their controlling interest, having learned to enjoy the sport since moving here, adopting them as my team out of a sense of loyalty to my ex (who only ever cheered for them because of a soft spot for small animals) and because, c'mon, any team with such a fearsome mascot is worth supporting. (Yes, I know, that's sarcasm, not irony, the sense of humour that Australians think American's don't get, so maybe we don't.)

But for all the investment Mr. Crowe has put in - especially the addition of Sam Burgess and David Taylor last year, and Greg Inglis this year - how am I left with such a win-less team? Granted, it's only round seven, but the only performer on the side is the littlest guy, Chris Sandow, who's kicking wonderfully well, not to mention scoring tries that seem to galvanise the squad, if only for ten minutes or so.

People talk about players being "80-minute men", but I'd say the Rabbitohs manage about thirty per half, before fading into irrelevancy. The Bulldogs didn't just manage to off-load the ball whenever they needed to, they also managed their passing in a way that suggested South Sydney had collectively taken a blow to the head that left them unable to follow the movement, letting Canterbury penetrate the defense easily.

The score, 36-24, suggests a closer game than it was.

On the station platform on the way out, a local wag remarked, "next year, brother, next year". Seems like maybe that's the way this season will turn out. Do I need to think about a new loyalty?

Shipping News
Someone comes to town, someone leaves town. With shipping containers full of stuff.

Auckland's container port seemed to always have something going on.