Through the eye of a noodle...

Well, it's about time that I put up a post again. Since finishing exams a couple of weeks ago, I've been working weekdays in my local pharmacy, where I normally work a shift a week during semester. It's not a bad job, especially since it offers experience for my course, blah blah blah. My favourite part, however, is the rare showcase of experiences that it offers if one is patient enough to wait for them to come along.
Today bore one such example. It's not every day that you see a mother and her mid-teenage daughter lingering together in the condom section... discussing the different styles, examining packs, choosing colours and textures... and all in an earnest effort to find just the right ones for their son/brother. Isn't family life wonderful?

Three strikes…

Some of you know that my poor Ma did herself some mischief a few weeks ago, falling back off a yacht, fracturing her right tibia twice from the ankle 2 inches up towards the knee. She has been ‘off her feet’ since, discouraged from doing much as her fracture types prevent a solid cast and her splint doesn’t provide much support if she should happen to accidentally put pressure on it.

She has been a big brave girl, reluctantly relinquishing her control over the house, over herself, over her day. She’s been getting a little better on crutches but really struggling with being so dependant on everyone and very much confined to the house. Some days she gets really down and others she buoys from some long neglected ‘sorting out’ task she sets herself.

Last night I woke to what could only be described as yelling. (I may not need to describe the sound as you quite possibly heard it from wherever you were, if awake after midnight.) My blood ran cold as I rushed out to the stairwell to make sense of the alarming screams. My poor Ma was huddled at the bottom of the stairs where Pa was desperately trying to make sense of the situation. It seems she had decided to try climbing the stairs with crutches, instead of heaving herself up on her backside as she has been. Three stairs up, she must have lost footing and crashed back down, landing on her lower back and quite obviously doing more than bruising it. I have never seen anyone in so much pain.

The long and short of it is that by 2am, the house was once again quiet, the ambulance having finally left in the pouring rain, drugged up Heather in the back, stressed out Miles following in the car. Buzz, who had quickly been removed from the scene, gradually reduced his frantic yelps of confused concern and joined in the strange new quiet calm. Heath and I staggered around the house a few minutes, trying to think of anything else we should do, then crashed back to bed.

This morning, Dad was fast asleep in bed. No Ma. Still waiting to find out how she is.

…And you’re OUT

The Bondi walk that wasn't

When we went to bed on Friday night the weather was fine and looking promising for our Bondi to Bronte walk the next day. Unfortunately we woke to pouring rain and 20 degrees!! An executive decision was made and the walk was postponed.

A call from G'Nick, however, renewed our day. And after much umming and arhing, we made our way into town to see the new Pissaro exhibition at the art gallery.

No french impressionist exhibition would be complete without a giant map and intercontinental jesting.

This Camille Pissaro fellow had about 160 paintings on show! and that was after vandals in the Franco-Prussian war destroyed about 1500 others! Talk about prolific. While Sarah fell in love with impressionistic street scenes and G'Nick roared with laughter over the herd of Cows (with only 1 cow in the herd) I found myself absorbed by his etchings. They were very moody and emotive. I especially loved the ones that G'Nick pronounced as 'Japanime influenced' I was unaware Japanime dated back to late 19th Century France!


After walking around the gallery for a few hours, we met up with G'Nick's mate Jessica (lovely girl) and had a spot of tea/coffee/mocha on the balcony under an unexpectedly sunny Saturday sky! Typical....the weather had certainly turned since we had been inside.

After a brief shopping trip...and some fabulous earrings, necklaces, bangles and the obligatory body shop visit we ended up taking the long, long, long escalator up to the top of skygarden for yum cha.



Of course the yum cha only fuelled us up for more shopping. This time of the shoe variety. No purchases I'm afraid, but I hear the boys loved the shiatzu massage chairs they found while waiting for us.

A thouroughly enjoyable day! Stay tuned for the announcement of the new date for the Bondi to Bronte walk. (May I suggest the 18th Dec?).

Le chien le plus moche du monde est mort

I know this photo went around as an email a while ago, but I thought it was fitting to put it here, since SAM is now dead!

Furthermore, his death made it into the french papers (well, the one I read anyway), with the above title: The ugliest dog in the world is dead.

Though it looks like his death was due to microwaving, this photo was in fact taken before his death, and he died from some sort of heart problem (my medical french needs a bit of work still).

My (not so new anymore) little nephews

Well it's about time I may a contribution so I thought I'd showed off my two sisters' little fellows. This photo is about a month old so they have virtually doubled in size since then. Chook is holding her son William and I'm holding Christian (Bridge's little boy). Today Im babysitting William and i know that motherhood is not really anything like this, but im bored! He's asleep now so there's not a lot to do! Luckily Chookie has the house under control or i may feel obliged to do some house work for her!

Subliminal, Liminal and Superliminal...

HEY YOU, GO JOIN THE NAVY!

Following on from Flit's post about optical illusions, I thought I would share an interesting flash movie about subliminal messages in adverts and songs.

Check it out

The song was the best bit, kind of hard to hear but totally creepy.

Giant Shoes by Demand!!

Hehehehehe

New Job

Hi all,

Just thought I would let you all know that I have just accepted a new position working in the Faculty of Economics and Business, as "Admissions Coordinator" for the Faculty.

I'm pretty stoked about the whole thing, it will be a welcome change from my current role where I basically have sod all to do, I expect to be very busy for the next few months as they are just entering the busiest admissions period of the year. I'll keep everyone up to date about changed email addresses etc once I know the details, but the move isn't for a few weeks (December 12th) so nothing that specific has been sorted out yet.

Cheers,
Richard

WOOHO... oh wait, who cares?

Let us all take a moment to congratulate Kate DeAraugo (crap, she must get sick of constantly having to spell that out to people!) on being the third person in a row to be voted Australian Idol despite the wishes of the record label. It seems the australian public enjoy putting Sony BMG through the hoops, not that it will stop them doing whatever they feel like.

In a massively underwhelming final, which Suzy and I couldn't bring ourselves to watch for more than a few minutes at a time in adbreaks (unfortunately, I still witnessed the HORROR of the top13 "aussie medley") Kate has won through against Emily Williams to secure the Sony recording contract. The second place prize? A Sony recording contract!

In 2003, I thought it was funny to see how little we saw of Guy Sebastian and how much we saw of Shannon Noll. The same thing happened last year with Casey Donovan being almost non-existant while you can't get away from that little Callea ferret. I guess after three years, it is boring to know that noone actually "wins", because a bunch of the losers end up with exactly the same prize, and often receive better support from the label.

As much as they can say it is decided by the australian public, that it is "our" australian idol, it couldn't be clearer that nothing is further from the truth. Everything I have heard about Emily is "the favorite", "the one with the talent" (while kate was insultingly labeled as "the one who worked really hard") etc etc. Just like last year with Anthony Callea, the label obviously had their heart set on Emily, and unless Kate really performs well in sales I suspect she will quietly vanish after a couple of singles, ala Casey Donovan.

Bah I say, I prefer competitions where winning is actually meaningful.

Sculptures by the Sea

Every year a bunch of crazy people get together and put up strange homages to life, loss, love, laughter...pretty much anything (not just things beginning with L) all around the coast of our eastern suburbian beaches.

Well this year, Flit and I decided to go along and join the bunch of crazies looking at these odd sculptures. Not a bad way to spend a slightly overcast but still warm Sunday afternoon. (it also fit in well with our love of free community stuff!)

I thought I would post some pictures of my favourites for two reasons:
1) to place a bit of culture on this blog
2) so Jenny can get a little reminder of our lovely beaches that she left behind (pity it was a little grey)

So here we go......

The first is of one of my favourite sculptures, a giant leaf. This one stood about 6" tall (for Jen, that is about 183 cm). Even though it was made of steal and fiberglass it still managed to look for very delicate and quite real.

These guys were HUGE and very cute.

I never thought I'd see Flit looking like such a little boy!

Just a quick one for Jen to remind her of what we look like and how beautiful our beaches are (so you come home to us).

Friday arvo waste of time

Here's yet another opitical illusion on the web although it doesn't provide any info on what part of your brain is being fooled or why it should be so...

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

Freaky huh! So who can provide links to any other temporary blindness inducing illusions worth seeing?

Finally!

Well it's about bloody time. For the first time in 31 years the Socceroos have qualified for a World Cup berth. After 90 minutes of normal time, 30 minutes of extra time and a penalty shoot-out, the socceroos defeated Uraguay in a game they dominated but struggled to put away. The better team won on the night, but Uraguay have every right to be gutted after that cruellest of football devices, the shootout, decided the outcome in front of 80,000 rabid fans. The Socceroos will travel to Germany next year to compete in the biggest sporting event in the world, and hopefully win a pool match or two.

Don't Hassle the Hoff!

Words fail me. Please click here.

So, which day should we go?

My Home Movies

I think they mostly speak for themselves. If anyone finds this content offensive or feel it paints an innaccurate picture of their true character, tough bananas.

Oh ay oh ay (please make it stop)

Dancing in the Dark

Under Bridge Anomolies

The Damage

The hoover hooved, the screeching discomfort-causer screeched and caused discomfort, the white bright spotlight focused all attention on my distorted face, the dentist mumbled incoherently at me through his mask, peering into my very private mouth with his goggles and reaching in with his rubbery aqua coloured hands. The nurse counted the number of long noisy instruments being stacked in my mouth and the blobs of pink raspberry flavoured paste flying out of it. My own prickly conscience hovered about as witness to my gross indignity.

The verdict? Not bad for 4 years without professional supervision. Got a little cavity though that will need a little filling.

And now? My dignity has since recovered, with my mouth restored to the closed & private position and my face having had a splash or two of water.

My pocket is feeling pretty smug after the $63 gap for my three shiny new X-rays. I have not told it about the impending filling, but that won’t rip the guts out of the Christmas budget either. The cuff of my jeans are soaked from the walk back to work in the rain. My gums feel a little beaten up.

My resolve to be a good and vigilant patient has been restored. Once again, I vow never to leave appointments so far between, to floss EVERY day, to cut down my tea drinking further and to generally drink more tap water.

Yeay dentist.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wish me Luck

Following in the intrepid footsteps of Richard the brave, I will be attending my first dentist appointment since 2001 at noon today. While I do not have a tooth ache or any such troubles, I am very scared of the potential bills that may come after me in the wake of a professional inspection of my chompers.

Here's to me getting out of there with a clean and scale and no need to go back for another six months (years?)!

Looks like we are in for an Australia Cry-dol

Or "Better Late than Never"


So happy.... so very very happy. In a triumph of good sense over perversity, Lee Harding was ejected from the competition and denied a place on the Opera House stage (I might be wrong, but thats probably bull, I suspect they all get up on stage at some point).

When Emily was the first to go through, I assumed Kate was definitely gone. I figured that if Kate was safe, they would put her through first and build up the terrible (yeah right) tension between Emily and Lee, both of whom are percieved to be much more deserving than Kate. But no, thankfully I was wrong (it does happen occasionally) and Lee was punted from the competition.

In some ways its a real shame, because if he had gone through and won they would have had him singing awful crap that was in no way related to his own preferences. Now, if he gets a contract I imagine he will be plonked in front of a band to do Simple Plan covers with different words and live happily ever after.

I am thrilled for Kate, and I hope we see her win through as the next Australia Idol, but I find it VERY unlikely at this stage, I think Emily has it in the bag. I will sure as hell be sending in a few votes in in the vain chance of seeing Kate through to the prize.

Everyone brace yourself for next week, Nostrew predicts MANY tears, regardless of the actual result.

World Class Eater

No no, not me for once... Here we have Sonya "the Black Widow" Thomas, the USA's top ranked competitive eater, ranked number 2 in the world. She is 5'5" and weighs just 45 kilos, but dominates eating tournaments across the country since she won her first event in 2003 eating 18 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

That was nothing, and she has since put in records such as 65 hard boiled eggs in just over 6 minutes, 32 hot dogs in 12 minutes, 48 soft-shelled chicken tacos in 11 minutes and a staggering 552 oysters in 10 minutes.

She is currently the USA's top earner in the world of competive eating, but she hasn't quit her job as a manager of Burger King. She only eats one meal a day, a Burger King Chicken Whopper, large fries, 5 chicken tenders and 3 king size diet cokes (42 ounces each).

Here we have her at her win of the "Big Daddy Barack Burger" competiton, where she ate the 9 pound burger in just 48 minutes. Of course that was just the meat, once you count the whole thing plus water, it was more like 18 pounds (a bit over 8 kilo).


The world number 1 is similarly skinny, a 5'7" japanese man wieghing in at 65 kilos.

So Lovely!

I can easily make a top 10 list of my favourite authors and hovering startling close to the top would be this man, Alexander McCall Smith. He is an absolute artist!

I got my taste for the works of this incredibly subtle and insightful Scottish law professor with the first in the series about Mma Precious Ramotswe and her detective agency, set in Botswana. I've paced myself, making sure I read two other authors between each installment, but I'm now in the swing of the sixth and final book and I'm really going to miss Mma Ramotswe!

These books are warm, gentle and clever and make me laugh out loud. You can tell from the way he writes that McCall Smith grew up in Africa and the Botswana he reveals is ancient, beautiful and simple. I am now in love with the idea of the place and really want to visit. I have read another of his series about a German linguistics professor and am totally enchanted by McCall Smith's work.

I'm not overly sure what sort of reading the SRF likes, aside from a bit of fantasy and sci-fi, so I'm not game enough to recommend it outright but...

Milson's Point mega whateva

Boy meets Girl, Boy tackles girl and shoves face into breasts; its an age old story.



some kind of blurry community

Bald fight!



There really is a troll under the bridge! And Flit's there as well

SRF Event suggestion - For approval by the committee

G'Day all,

After a brief and slightly innebriated discussion at trivia on Thursday, it was suggested that as a SRF event we might go along to Harold Park Paceway in Glebe and watch the trots.

Here's the deal:

When: Friday 25 November 2005 (Last Friday of the month)
Where: Harold Park Paceway
How much: $10 entry and then as much as you want to gamble. The $10 gets you $30 of 'Harold Park' money for you to spend on food and drink. Sounds like a bargain to me!

http://www.haroldpark.com.au/promotions/promotions.html

I would like to formally suggest this as an event.

Thats it.

What the crap is wrong with this country?

I have no clue what goes on in the mind of Australia's youth, but suffice to say it is a scary and barren wilderness. With less than 30 votes between them (according to da G and Bulgey McFishEyes) Lee and Dan England were placed in the bottom two. Lee got sent back to his seat, and Dan got sent packing.

I am a bit lost for words at this stage, I have spent a few weeks writing hate posts about Lee and Emily now, but with them and Kate in the final three, I am sad to report that we will almost definitely end up stuck with at least one, if not both of them. THE HORROR!

Interestingly, when Dan got voted off Emily managed to stay in control, so I guess she was pretty stoked. The first time I haven't seen her burst into tears for a long while now, I guess the wheels were turning while she realises that her biggest threat vocally just got booted.

The highlight of the shows for me was when they asked for comments from people on a beach. One person praised Lee for having such an original style (!!!!) and another said how wonderful it was that Emily was so emotional and kept crying (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). WHERE DO THEY FIND THESE PEOPLE!?

Ok, thats enough about Idol, its now a total writeoff and we have another talentless HACK coming our way ala Anthony Callea. Ok, I wouldn't be upset if Kate wins it, but I would be very surprised. I think Emily has this one in the bag (please don't let it be lee!).

I want to share some other amusing news related to music, and Sony BMG in particular (non nerds can stop reading now). It turns out that whenever anyone has used a Sony copy protected CD in a computer, it has stealth installed a program on your computer. Now, this is something called a "rootkit" which is essentially invisible in every way from your computer, and can render other files invisible too simply by putting "$sys$" at the start of the filename. This would be extremely handy to hackers and viruses as I am sure you can all imagine.

The best part is, Sony keeps changing the story. First there was no mention at all, then they say it is there but perfectly safe. Then they admit there might be a “perceived” security issue and kindly offers an uninstaller. To get the uninstaller you need to provide personal details (which Sony’s privacy policy allows them to sell to marketing firms) but what they actually email you is a patch to remove the decloaking function. Apparently it just executes a single windows command, but the patch is 3.5megs. THEN they admit that the patch has a lot of other functions too, all necessary to ensure “security” (I thought there wasn’t a security problem?). At every stage they have denied or lied about it, and changed their story just a little bit when someone calls them up on it. Gotta love Sony!

Check out the original story here (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html), a follow up here (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/more-on-sony-dangerous-decloaking.html) and a rebuttal from the company that designed the software here (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/11/sonys-rootkit-first-4-internet.html).

The Milsons Point Mega Fiesta

Friday night may have been relatively spontaneous, but it was by no means subdued or respectable.

It all started well enough with the House of Chicken taking a short train ride to Milsons Point. There we met with the House of Nugget representative, G'Nick. Hot chips were bought, and down the hill we all walked to find our perfect picnic spot.

As we unloaded, we counted the bottles of wine...1...2...3...4...
we counted the prawns.....1.5kgs....
we counted the picnic-ers...1....2....3....4...5
we counted the bread......1 loaf...(we didn't actually count the bread, but it fits so shut up!)

All was looking good for our evening picnic.

As we ate, we debated Industrial relations reforms, stay-at-home-parenting...you know...the usual light hearted stuff!

The 1....2...3...4...bottles of wine disappeared and the conversation became less intelligable.....a quick run to the bottle-o gave us another....1....2..bottles of wine.



As they disappeared in the same way as the others, we became friends with the security guard who patrols the pillons....I think during the course of the night we all left our mark on our national icon.....I shall say nothing more on this topic!



More runs to the bottle-o, more disappearing wine and Mattes turned up! By now things were decidedly silly....the ipod went on and blasted out through the golf's speakers and many a drunk hooligan danced around the little car in an almost feverishly tribal display of athleticism and very long arms!



Now unfortunately the batteries in my little camera ran out at this point so the real beauty of the evening was not captured by me. I do believe, however, that Mattes had a phone/camera and I now call on him to illuminate Noodle's memory....

Not known at this address....

Hey all...

Just a brief one to let you know that I can no longer receive e-mails at my RACGP e-mail address. Because I don't work there anymore.

Until I become a member of the workforce again, my hotmail adress is the best one..

bryan_foley@hotmail.com

Man I wish Richie still smoked...

Coz then I could get him one of these for Christmas:





or if i was feeling particularly generous:



And if you have no idea what they are, here in-situ:

Light study relief

Well, it's STUVAC week again. HOORAH! Okay, okay, I was procrastinating. But when I searched for "crazy" in the google image search today, I happenned across this site. I found the below links especially funny:

Present from Grandma
Victory by default
Plans with hamster
Y'all ready for this?

Go gee gee!

Hmm. The gee gees went and in our sweep of 3, Gretta's came in a boring first, with mine in second and third. Our native victorian did not manage a place. Poor Noodle. Quite gallant to let the ladies win!

Thankfully free of baby photos.

Not that seeing pictures of other peoples children isn't the most fascinating thing in the whole wide world, but I figured I would pass on something even MORE fascinating to the discerning public... My idol update.

Yes yes, cheer all you want, I too feel that euphoria everytime I read those words, you aren't alone and there is nothing wrong with what you are feeling. Unless your catholic, in which case you are full of sin and going directly to hell.

Moving swiftly on... this week Daniel Spillane was voted off Idol by the australian public. They almost got it right, because if Andrew and Jimmy are to be believed (and I doubt that they are) there was just 0.2% in it, which is a pity because the HATED Lee was next in line to be put up against the wall.

Daniel sung a rather good version of Foreigner's "Cold as Ice" which I am a big fan of, but it wasn't enough to save him this week. We all knew it was a matter of time for Daniel, but I had hoped he would last to the top three. I think we may see him again, since he is essentially the whole package. He can sing well enough, he is clean cut and likable, and strikes me as someone who could be "easily molded" into the sort of person the record companies are looking for. He definitely had been improving throughout his time in Idol, and each week I was a little less certain that he would be sent home.

Lee did a so-so version of My Sharona (let us hope he also is a one-hit wonder, all signs point to yes). Kate did a reasonable Lady Marmalade (but considering what she sounded like when she wasn't singing, I think it was an excellent performance), Emily whipped out a bit of Chaka Khan (pity it didn't serve her as well as it did Rikki Lee!) and Dan England did Desperado (I was so certain it was going to be Hotel Calafornia when they announced it was the Eagles).

Personally I wasn't too thrilled by the 70s show, with the possible exception of Daniel's performance, not that anyone else enjoyed it it seems. Next week is Elvis night (and by some STRANGE cooincidence they have an Elvis special on directly after, who'd a thunk it?).

I am hoping that Lee's lack of votes translates into getting booted next week, but I am also getting more and more concerned that Emily isn't going to get kicked off in time. It seems likely that she will end up on the radio regardless of a win, but then anyone who has suffered through promotion of Anthony Callea can handle it I'm sure.

Here's to Lee getting kicked off next week!