Shirefolk

You know you are are in "The Shire" when the bleached blonde next to you has an Australian flag as their mobile phone background, there's a drunk girl clutching stubbies of VB and a uniformed schoolkid with a surfboard on the bus.

Unknown gripped poop

A Google automatic translation of sightseeing spots are Yanai in Japan.

I know I can't wait for a very much dry detention because I axed my mother first, gripped by unknown poop.

The television tax

We pay for our public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, through our taxes. Is this so different from the commercial stations? Each time we buy an advertiser's goods we pay a small fee towards their television advertising budget, and thus towards the commercial stations.

Just think of your money going towards reality television. Do you mind so much paying your taxes now?

The businessman and the scientist

"The problem with scientists is that they don't know how to monetize their genius. When the water flowed out of Archimedes' bathtub he should have shouted 'Ka-ching!' rather than 'Eureka!'".

This evil lair is defended!

Thanks to my colleague Daniel the evil lair (ie office cubicle) is now defended by a missile system. Annoying users can no be dealt with directly from the PC - there is no longer a need for me to get out the bamboo stick. They will feel the force of cold, hard foam against their weak skin!

What was really amusing is that the missile launcher didn't work out of the box. It would move around, but the rockets failed to fire. A search of the forum revealed that this was not an isolated problem. Thankfully, the solution was simple. Just hit the rear of the launcher a couple of times!

I like a problem that requires a violent solution. Muhahahaha!

Alex and the Art

Alex has now seen two blockbuster art exhibitions in his first two months. A couple of weeks ago we took him to the Degas Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Today we caught a train into the city and viewed the exhibition of Monet & the Impressionists at the Art Gallery of NSW, just a few days before it is scheduled to close.

He was whinging in his stroller, so I took him out and carried him in my arms around the gallery. Alex was wide eyed and staring the whole way, gurgling and chattering away. We know he likes good art - he can't stop staring at the fine print of McCubbin's "The Lost Child" in our lounge room. I think he's now taking more notice of the Monet print as well!

The pieces of Monet's work on display were gorgeous. We fell in love with his works, and those of the other impressionists, when we visited the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Claude Monet is inarguably the best of all of them, with an incredible ability to capture both light and life in his paintings.

Just one more exhibition to attend now: the Powerhouse Museum's Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination. I'd better play the DVD's to him first!

An Asian weekend

On Saturday we were doing a rare shopping trip to Bankstown when we discovered the Lunar New Year festival celebrations. There were crowds, stalls and dancing display with the event compered by the popular comedian Ahn Do (pictured below). Had a very enjoyable Vietnamese lunch at the My Canh restaurant, along with many other parents and strollers. They serve the best tomato sauce rice that I've tasted.

This afternoon I had my first Japanese tutorial with Noriko. Learned to talk about likes and dislikes, along with family. One of her Japanese friends lives very close to us. It was interesting to find out that we have seen so much more of Japan than they have.