Category: Random observations

I watched three films over the weekend:

Finding Neverland

Excellent.

About Schmidt

Excellent.

The Shipping News

Okay.

Previously, I linked to Ben’s recommendation of five new mid-sized cars. Well now he’s posted his advice for all to see.

Some time prior to Christmas, I e-mailed Ben and asked him for his thoughts on the latest Toyota Corolla and the New Holden Astra (Ben is the person I speak to about all things car related because, well, he knows a lot about a lot of cars). I subsequently received an essay of over 1500 words, which not only compared these two cars, but three others in the same class as well. He’s posted a list of these five cars in his weblog, which includes links to the official web sites for each of the cars. If you’re interested in the comparison he wrote for me, I’m sure I could arrange to have it forwarded to you (with Ben’s permission, of course).

An exciting century from Ricky Ponting and some excellent bowling from Daniel Vettori helped the Rest of the World comfortably defeat the Asian XI in the tsunami charity match yesterday. But the real news is again the generosity that people have shown in the wake of the tsunami. The match raised another $14 million for World Vision. This comes just two days after over $20 million was raised by the Reach Out concert. Brilliant. It’s not possible for too much money to be donated to the tsunami appeal, since aid agencies such as World Vision will use excesses in other disaster struck regions of the world.

After finishing A Pair of Blue Eyes, I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, which I thoroughly enjoyed. First published in 1954, Fahrenheit 451 predicts a bleak future in which firemen start fires instead of putting them out, where books are banned, mechanical hounds track down criminals and where the walls of the "living room" are large television screens. Guy Montag is a fireman who becomes disillusioned by the state of things, and rebels. A fantastic book.

In Melbourne I bought a copy of The Commanding Heights – the battle for the world economy, which I’ve since begun to read. I didn’t get to see many episodes of the PBS series on SBS, so I bought the book instead. It documents the history of the world economy and presents the reasons why the economy is the way it is today; i.e. why capitalism gained the ascendancy over communism, and why the "commanding heights" (those industries – such as oil, mining and the utilities – which are critical to the economic health of a nation) have been relinquished by governments and swept up by the market. It starts out in the aftermath of World War II, where it highlights the key people and the important decisions that led to the immediate revival of the European economy. I’ve not read any further than this, but so far it has been written with clarity and purpose; even at this early stage in the book it’s possible to see the general direction in which the book is headed. The authors, Daniel Yergin (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize) and Joseph Stanislaw, write in a style that maintains the reader’s interest when it would have been all too easy to present the material in a much drier fashion. I get the feeling the authors are probably in favour of completely open markets, so it’s unlikely I’ll agree with everything that’s said, but it ought to be a good read anyway.

Karen and I spent the first week of the new year down in Melbourne. It’s the first time I’ve had a really good look around the city, and I must say, I was very impressed with what I saw. It was somehow very European, with all the little cafes built along the alleyways, the numerous parks and gardens, and the old style buildings. Despite it feeling like the middle of winter in the height of summer, and a tendency for it to rain just as you step out of the hotel, I found myself really beginning to like Melbourne.

Among other places, we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens, Acland Street in St Kilda (where all the cake shops are), the Dandenongs and Phillip Island. We were frequent visitors to Myers and David Jones, which were a short walk from our hotel on Little Bourke Street. Even visiting those two stores was a novelty due to their enormous size and their vast gourmet foods sections.

There are more photos from our trip here.

More photos here.

There’s an abundance of new life around the university lake at the moment, including ducklings, dusky moorhen chicks, a dabchick chick or two and baby lizards. I was in at university today finishing off the introduction to my thesis (only the conclusion to go!). Karen went to see Somersault at the Schonell Theatre.

On our way back to the car, we found a little wood duckling which had been separated from its family. It was chirping and looking very lost.

While Karen kept an eye on the duckling, I wandered around for a bit trying to locate its family. I managed to find a family of wood ducks with ducklings that looked the same age as our lost duckling. We picked up the duckling and took it to its family. I was delighted when the parent ducks, upon hearing the chirping duckling in my hands, started running towards us. We hung around for a little while to make sure the duckling really was from the same family. It wasn’t long before all the little ducklings, including our little duckling, huddled under their mother. It’s quite amazing, but there are about seven little ducklings underneath the mother duck in the photo.

There are more new photos here.

Holy crap.
BBC
SBS
The Australian
ABC
CNN
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Since everybody else is doing it…

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