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fear and loathing in Broome

As we meandered our way through Western Australia, we took a taxi from the rather mediocre accommodation provided by ‘Ocean Lodge’ to Broome airport to fly back home via Darwin.

As we turned a corner on a deserted road, an Aboriginal woman and her daughter crossed the road in front of us. They looked up before crossing and walked quickly across the road towards a school. It would have been courteous for the taxi driver to have slowed down but he maintained his speed and turned to me in the passenger seat:

the other side of Aboriginal culture

Of course, unfortunately, there is another less attractive side to Aboriginal culture.

When I last visited Australia in 1990, we took a flight to Alice Springs. Back then, Uluru was more commonly known as Ayers Rock and people were freely able to climb the massive sandstone rock. I used to be quite proud of the fact that I had scaled Ayers Rock and written: ‘Nice view, bit busy, could use an ice-cream stall’ in a tatty visitors book on the summit. Now the rock has subsequently and rightfully been returned to the local Aboriginal communities who view it as a sacred site, I am almost ashamed of the fact.

Aboriginal culture

In the last week of the great Australian adventure, we took a guided tour from Kununurra to Broome, in a 4x4 truck, visiting Purnululu National Park and the Bungle Bungles.

The scenery was fantastic, the company was great and our guide was interesting, professional, humorous and knowledgeable.

One day, we also took another boat trip and a bushwalk at Fitzroy Crossing with an Aboriginal guide.

The Aboriginal guide was fascinating. He talked about Aboriginal culture, the importance of Dreamtime, respect for the environment, respect for each other, how Aboriginals lived off the land for 40,000 years, the extended kinship model, the need to take just what you want and not what you need. In fact, there are so many areas we could learn from the Aboriginal culture.

the wit and wisdom of Darren Bent

A sheet of A4. Blank. Completely blank.

I don’t know which is worse. Being rejected by Darren Bent. Or hearing the news via Twitter.

‘“Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go stoke NO do I wanna go Sunderland YES’.

Unfortunately, Darren’s twitter account ‘db10thetruth’ has miraculously been closed.

Why JS-Kit and Echo is doomed

Yet another service in the overcrowded blog comment field is JS-Kit who already have a conventional outsourced blog comment capability (similar to IntenseDebate and Disqus).

JS-Kit recently announced an extension to the service called ‘Echo’ which also includes any fleeting reference to your blog post, refreshed in real-time from other services like Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Reader and Facebook.

Echo isn’t generally available to mere mortals yet. Yes, you guessed it - it’s limited beta, invitation only and curiously, you need a Twitter account to even request an invitation.

mystery man

There’s only one man in the world who could have uttered the following:

‘On Monday I unfollowed 106,000 people on Twitter.’

Yes. You guessed it - Robert Scoble.

And yes, before you ask, he used a script.

Saint Michael of Chester

Can. Not. Parse. Input.

Does. Not. Compute.

Segmentation violation. Kernel panic.

History professors

‘You see - Thora Hird. I am aware of her work. You fancy her.’

tips for dealing with Australian customs

I passed through many customs, immigration and security checks at various Australian airports in the last three weeks.

Each airport has its own variant on a dire warning that reads:

‘Flippant, amusing or sarcastic remarks will not be tolerated. Offenders may be subject to a $500,000 fine and/or 10 years in jail’.

Of course, we didn’t tell Norman Junior III that. My - how we all laughed when he followed our advice and proudly (and loudly) announced to the customs official at Brisbane airport.

death of a disco dancer

After I finally got over the shock of Michael Jackson (I suspect Mr. Pharmacist with the white pills and syringe in the study) and being genuinely saddened at the recent death of Sir Bobby Robson, I’m not sure I can take any more.

Just heard some really crap news. Benson, the world’s largest living carp, is no longer living.

Benson, who loved disco dancing, weighed 64 lbs and was between 20 and 25 years old (apparently, Benson lied about his age a lot - similar to Jane Fonda) has died.