Dreamhost woes

Pardon my erratic website, I’m having database problems. If you are one of the numerous people piggybacking off my hosting, I’m working on it. In the meantime, feel free to do someting slightly more productive than composing your latest treatise on the injustice of the padded brassiere.

Monday, Monday

As we continue our inexorable march towards spring, I find myself standing on the tarmac in Melbourne. The temperature is 4 degrees, the sun is shining, and a light breeze blows from the direction of the city. Glorious.

With the chaos of last week’s performances of Man of La Mancha (including the consumption of enough alcohol to keep Billy Ray Cyrus happy for a month), work was quite difficult. This week should give me a chance to refocus and catch up on everything. Two days in Melbourne to start the week should help; my efficiency seems to increase by about 60% when I’m not around the office.

The phenomenon of Mondayitis is one which has been puzzling me of late. Is this simply an invariable symptom of the human condition, or can we overcome the Monday blues on a personal level? For years I have been content to write Mondays off as a waste of time, however I am now starting to believe that perhaps there is hope yet.

Consider the working week. We are locked in to a pattern of anticipation; eagerly counting down the hours until 4pm Friday, when we can crack open a beer, fire off the last couple of emails for the week, and then hit the town. The rest of the weekend is invariably spent trying to do as little as possible, while hoping that time will somehow get stuck somewhere around 3:30pm Sunday afternoon so that we can spend the rest of our lives drinking tea in the sun. Sadly, this is yet to occur.

The problem at hand then becomes one of expectations. Once we accept that it is simply not feasible to have a productive Monday, we can take measures to use the time wisely. You know all those pointless meetings which sap your valuable time on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday? Reschedule for Monday! Weekly shopping, cleaning out your desk/inbox, conversations with HR - all these time-wasting exercises are perfect to start your week off.

Anyhow, I can’t stay around here all day; I’ve got reference material to alphabetise. Adieu!

Countdown

My most ardent anthropoids,

Over the past five years I have lived with ten different people in five different dwellings. Friendships have been forged and broken, good times have been had and I am still on speaking terms with 70% of the people who I have been lucky enough to share a roof with.

For the past two months, I have lived by myself for the first time. Although it was slightly lonely at first, I had my dog with me, and spending most of the time out and about also helped. Now, just as I am getting used to being able to crank out the guitar at 1am every evening, this are about to change again.

In under 48 hours, the infamous internet celebrity Joel W. Courtney shall be moving in to my humble abode.

No more walking around the house naked, no more late night songwriting, no more storing underpants in the microwave.

On the other hand, we now have some sweet photography adorning the walls, I can have a quiet beer at home again, and there will always be someone to cook for. Here’s to a long and prosperous marriage!

Conclusively, comprehensively and definitively on top

Yes, I know of late that I have been espousing the virtues of Melbourne, however I am a Sydney man through and through. Sure, in Melbourne the bars may be cooler, the coffee and wine nicer, and the people friendlier, but at the end of the day you’ve gotta love this city for its body and not its soul. We’ve got the harbour, we’ve got the bridge, and we’ve got the beaches.

So it is nice to see that, in possibly the most important competition between Australia’s two major cities, Sydney has come out on top.

Sydney is officially grouped with NYC and London is the global edition of Monopoly. The positions were decided by a global poll; interstingly, although Sydney won the most votes worldwide, Melbourne was the most popular within Australia. I guess this proves that Melbournians will try anything to get one up on us.

Viva Sydney!

Tunes

That’s right, simians, I have caught up with the times and moved into the world of podcasting!

Actually, it’s just a song I just wrote. Apologies in advance for my terrible guitar playing skills. No apologies for my terrible singing skills.

Be Mine

Peace

An auspicious day

I’m on a roll; I’m on a roll this time
I feel my luck could change

I am reluctant to comment on the human rights situation in China. The media in this country, even our beloved ABC, seems to be phenomenally biased against the current regime. On the other hand, the Chinese media is so blatantly pro-red that a sizeable grain of salt is required with their reporting.

AM this morning reported on a spontaneous gathering of people in Tienanmen Square chanting the Chinese equivalent of “Aussie Aussie Aussie”, and immediately made the implication that it was some kind of state-run conspiracy to make it look like the Chinese people are all in favour of the Olympics.

Isn’t a more feasible explanation that the residents of Beijing are actually looking forward to three weeks of party time? Remember Sydney 2000? Drunken revellers swamping the city every night? Maybe Bob Carr put something in the water and we were all acting under the control of the state back then.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that there are big problems in China. After the recent unrest in Tibet, I received an email from an expat living in Lhasa which was quite chilling. China has two faces - the progressive, developing capitalist nation being presented to the world, and the secret, totalitarian communist regime firmly guiding the destiny of a billions plus citizens in the background.

Was it wrong to give the Olympics to Beijing? I don’t think so. Increased attention on the country can only be good, and as China learns to be a part of the world maybe it will absorb some of the western freedoms that we take for granted.

As for the Olympics themselves, well I don’t really understand why people get so excited - it’s basically a bunch of sports that noone really cares about, and it makes my scores at trivia evenings go down for a few weeks.

With one exception: go the Olyroos! 1-1 with Serbia and Montenegro is not a bad result, but given the tough group we have we’ll probably have to eke out a win against Cote D’Ivoire on Wednesday.

How far we have come

I feel like the world is changing. I have rediscovered my greatest love: music. I am playing my trumpet again, I have finally worked out how to play the guitar and am writing song.

I have discovered how truly lucky I am to have a great group of friends, and have also discovered just how strong that friendship is. I have managed to rebuild a shattered friendship with someone I thought that I would never see again. I have realised that I would like to build a closer relationship with my sisters, and am looking forward to doing so.

Finally, I have become a much stronger person. Never again will anyone be able to crush me so completely, and never again shall I let anyone walk all over me.

Vive le revolution!

63 years and counting

The 6th of August has passed by yet again, and still the world’s leaders line their troops up on either sides of the fence to toss rocks at each other.

It seems quite clear that the human condition leads to two contradictory sets of relationships - that of the individual, and that of the group. When cultures clash on a group level, the result is inevitably distrust, dislike, hatred and war. When cultures clash on an individual level, more often than not the result is an exchange of ideas and values, and a resulting increase in knowledge for both parties.

How do we move from the individual to the mob mentality? Is it simply that mobs are formed by the rotten element of society? I do not think so. Throughout history well-meaning people have been lead into battle by their leaders, their views temporarily altered by subtle propaganda and a misguided sense of nationalism.

I do not know the answer to this question. Until governments start to act responsibly on an individual level, we are doomed to centuries of bloodshed.

I’m back

Dear friends,

Let us not mince words. Times have been very bad. In the course of the past two months, I have experienced the deepest lows of human emotion. I have teetered on the brink of self-destruction, and been pulled back by close friends on more than one occasion.

However, every bad situation brings with it opportunity. The human condition is by its very nature ambivalent; to embrace the future while lamenting the past is fundamental to our nature. Opportunities are thrown at us haphazardly, and at times they can be slippery, whether they be in your personal or professional life. Occasionally, one is hit with a deluge of opportunity, and must make decisions which will affect their life in a big way.

These are the trappings of life. My stated goal is to provide the world with beer and sympathy, a task which has fallen off the radar in recent times. Now, I am back and ready to start with the sad story of the town of Whakatane; temporarily wiped from the face of the internet due to a slight pronunciation-related misunderstanding. Don’t feel downhearted Whakatane, it could be worse: think of all the poor people in Wetwang, England. At least NZ has decent weather.