Category: general

links for 2005-07-05

Happy Birthday Nadia

A late happy birthday to me mate Nads. Not that she reads this. Or does she? Anyway, much fun was had at her party on Sunday night at the Hollywood Hotel. Everyone has fun there don’t they? Well Joanne and Thommy got hassled by some random blonde for not playing enough “current” music (for crying out loud, it was Nadia’s party ya scrag!), Adam put in a good effort of trying to get into a fight and Matt C got hit on byone or two random girlies on the prowl. I had an awesome time, cumulating to my kareoke performance of Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” (Too cold! Too cold!). I feel I now have a calling… but I have to deal with that meddling Cyia first. I feel she may be a hinderance to my future in the kareoke industry…

Oh yeah, I’ll try and get photos from the party online tomorrow, I swear!

Surfin’ fun

The gang

For the first time, in a really long time (perhaps 10 years) I went down the coast for a bit of bodyboarding fun. The last time I went all the way down to as far as Jervis Bay for Black Rock. This time I went only as far as the Wollongong region aka “Coal Coast”. I got up real early to meet up with Pete, James and Mel at BJ’s place at 6am. Sheesh. The sun wasn’t even up at that time.

So we headed down to the Gong, stopping off at Maccas on the way for breakfast. Our first stop was Thirroul. Looked OK, not too many people, but we thought we’d have a drive up north of Thirroul to check things out. I think we drove past probably Austinmer Beach, Headlands, Coledale Beach and Thommos before we hit the end of the road. The other beaches were OK, with one of them looking quite good, but it was too crowded, so we headed back to Thirroul where there were more breaks and it was less crowded.

Heading out at 8am, the waves were decent (around 4ft maybe??) and it was just hollow. Just hollow enough for me to snag a couple of nice barrels. Unfortunately due to my laughable state of fitness at the moment, I spent a good portion of my time stuck in the impact zone getting pummled by whitewash.

Later on we went for a walk to buy some stuff (notably, I finally bought a board leash after not having one for years). When we got back around 11 or so, the waves were still holding their size, but unfortunately, it was mostly closing out and the barrels were pretty much gone.

We headed to Wollongong after that for some lunch, and on the way back we stopped off at Garie Beach in the Royal National Park to see what it was like. That was my first time there, and it was beautiful. Shame about the surf though. By the time we got there, there was a full southerly gale in force, and everything was blown out. But I guess Garie can now be a mission for another weekend 🙂

Congratulations!!!

Congratulations go out to my big sister Rebecca, who is getting married to her long time boyfriend Chris, who asked her to marry him last week. Don’t stress about Mum and Dad not getting too excited about it, its just the way they are! The immediately families reactions for Rozie and I getting married were pretty low key as well. I remember Rozie’s Mum’s reaction was “That’s nice” and she continued to finish washing the dishes.

When Rebecca and Chris told my parents that they were getting married, Dad’s first reaction was “So Chris, are you going to change the power points in your house from single to double points?”. Admittedly my first reaction when Mum told me was “Yeah, right.” So I shouldn’t talk!

I guess its just a family thing… 😆

Aphex Twin and Luke Vibert

Crowd is pumpingI Love AcidMore crowds

I went with Adam, Nadia and Rozie to see Aphex Twin and Luke Vibert on Tuesday night at the Metro. Personally I loved it. It was a crazy mix of acid house (thanks to Vibert) and all the fun stuff from early 90’s rave music; acid techno, breakbeat, hardcore/gabber and drum ‘n’ bass. Absolutely heaps of 303 noises going on for most of the night. I haven’t heard that acid noises at a party in such a long time. I think for the most part though, big Aphex fans were disappointed the music was too “dancy” and didn’t deliver what he is known for, experimental music. A big thumbs up for me though, as it sounded as though Aphex and Vibert were delivering a custom set for a party, not some sort of noodly experimental electronics music wankfest. Good on them! Perhaps I feel this way as I’m not too attached or sentimental about RDJ, so I was going to be more or less happy with what he delivered.

Kung Hei Fat Choy

Happy Chinese New Year for those of you into that. Its the year of the Monkey by the way. According to 12 Zodiac my forecast is not that great 🙁

This will be an average year for you. The good news is, as long as you keep a low profile this year, there will be no major ups and downs like the roller coaster ride some other people have this year.

Patience and caution should be your motto. Think once, twice and even three times before you act and speak. Most importantly, you must refrain yourself from visiting the sick or attending funerals. nstead, try to go to as many weddings as possible this year. Better yet, if there is wedding or celebration in the family, it will bring the good vibes and good luck and turn this year to a much better year for you.

There will be few lucky stars on your side, but the luck will not be constant. Therefore, it is wise to consolidate this year rather than to expand.

Perverted scientists who advance an insidious theory called “evolution”!

The other day, I was talking to a work collegue about Mac OS X and Darwin.

“Darwin?”
“Yes, Darwin,” I said. “You know, the scientist who came up with the theory of evolution and all that”
“Oh, yes. The theory that we came from apes.” Then he responsed with, “that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

I was quite taken back. So much so that all I could come back with was, “Well I guess you haven’t heard of many silly things in your time”.

I’m not quite sure what bothered me the most. It was either that in this day and age in Australia that someone thinks that creationism is a good theory, or that he so single-handly wrote off evolution as the silliest thing he’s ever heard of. Probably moreso the latter.

But it did get me thinking that I have quite quickly written off creationism as a possibility without much thought, the same as he did. I didn’t do biology at school (except when it touched upon during the general science classes during years 7 through 10), so I guess I’ve never really had a good thinking about evolution. Its just something that I’ve accepted as the truth, much the same as my collegue has accepted creationism as being the truth. I guess it never really helped that many people within the church that I attended while I was growing up didn’t accept creationism as a valid theory for how species came into being. In fact I remember one of the Sunday school teachers that I had for a couple of years actually teaching us that the World getting created in seven days was just primitive humans best guess of how it started.