Merlo's Blog

Javatari world traveller.

2008-05-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I've returned from a trip to Thailand. I have to say that before I went I knew I wasn't much of a traveler and this trip confirmed it. Don't get me wrong, most of the trip was enjoyable, but overall, I don't feel that I greatly benefited from the experience. I think I just got caught up in everyone elses excited talk of their overseas trips and people telling me how great they found it over there.

The biggest problem I think was the travel agent. Long story short, we stayed in Bangkok for a few days and then we planning on going to a resort on a less crowded Island for about a week. We were thinking that Bangkok would not be all that great and the resort part of the holiday would be awesome. As it turned out, almost the opposite was true. We'd told the agent we would be going on a belated honeymoon and that we wanted to stay in nice places. The hotel in Bangkok was 5 star and we had no complaints there. When we arrived at the resort, it was not quite what we'd been expecting. Unknown to us we'd been booked into a small, crappy bungalow, so we had to upgrade ourself to a hotel room, which we'd been led to believe was what we had been booked into in the first place. Even that was a massive downgrade from our previous accommodation. Then there was the rest of the resort itself, totally boring.

To cut this tale even shorter, we left 3 days early as we weren't enjoying the holiday anymore and just wanted to get home. Now we're struggling with the travel agents to get our money refunded from the nights we'd booked but didn't stay at the hotel. Overall I'll be thinking long and hard before going on anymore holidays.

Oh yeah, this blog.

2008-03-07T02:12:00.000-08:00

Well, I must say I've enjoyed not writing anything blog related for a while. There is no pressure for me from myself to think of stuff to blog about, which is nice.

I just thought I'd stop by and say that my life is all about work and family these days. Specifically finding a balance between the two. Although I won't bore you with the details there were recently a few changes at work that jerked me out of the rut I was in. Even though the changes seemed pretty negative in regards to myself and a few colleagues, I now see it as a positive thing...mostly. In short one of the people on the same level as me and my peeps was promoted rather suddenly to be the manager of the rest of us. It was also done behind closed doors, no interviews, no consultation, just a sudden promotion based on the opinion of one person. As you might imagine there was some backlash.

After a few days and some one on one discussion with the megaboss, things settled down a lot and I think we agree now that the right person was chosen for that specific job, even though he hadn't done the same time that some of us had. What it's meant for me is that I know that if I want to get anywhere with this company, I need to start to play my A-game and make myself specialized enough so that if an opportunity comes along in my field, I'll be the one thought of.

So just thought I'd share that with you. As you were.

Alas poor Yoric.

2008-01-02T01:03:00.000-08:00

When I first started this blog, I didn't really have any goals with it. I did not have the intention of writing witty, topical satire, or fascinating anecdotes from my life. I didn't even plan this blog to be about reviews, or stories. In retrospect, this lack of direction may have been a mistake. Sure I could keep writing random spurts of vague creativity when I have the time or inclination, but what is the point I wonder.

I think I've stated before that I never was particularly concerned about having lots of people come and comment or read what I typed. If I had cared, I'm sure I would have given up on this blog long ago. Still there is something nice about knowing that even a handful of readers are slightly amused, entertained, or even take the time to skim and offer a quick comment now and then.

Like much of this blog, you might be wondering where I'm going. If you haven't already guessed, I'm thinking about taking Merlo's Blog to the vet to have it put down. My desire to write about anything is always sporadic and I often wonder what is the point of putting something in the public eye, if no eye even turns to it. Once I get to 100 posts (pretty soon) I will likely move on from here.

I suppose if I could come up with a theme or some kind of direction I could revamp this site, or create a new blog from scratch. Any suggestions/requests?

I will of course announce if and when I have finished for good.

Season's Greetings to you all

2007-12-26T12:50:00.001-08:00

Just a quick message to say, season's greetings! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and will have fantastic new year. Especially if you had a crappy year this year. Personally this one was pretty great for me, but let's hope next year is even better.

I'd also like send good cheer to those who celebrate Festivus. Enjoy the Festivus pole and stay away from distracting tinsel.

And if you don't celebrate either of these traditions, peace and goodwill to you too.

Scum of the Earth

2007-12-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

When someone you know or a member of your family gets royally screwed over by another person you just can’t help but lose a little more faith in humanity. I am telling this story to make others aware that it’s not only buyers who should, ‘beware’, but also sellers. Especially if you are selling a house, even when in a hurry, do your homework and find out what a reasonable price for the house actually is.

I must say that Real Estate Agents were always high on my list of dodgy professions, but a recent incident has moved them to the top of the list.

Earlier this year, my grandma moved into a nursing home, and to afford the massive deposit for her to stay there, my mum had to sell her parents unit. It was located in a very nice suburb, close to shops, schools, etc. Although it was getting on a bit and needed some work, there was not a huge amount that needed to be done to it. My mum was under time constraints to sell it and so went to only one Estate Agent and trusted that they were professional experts and would try and get her the best price for the place.

At first my mum was told by the agent that it was probably worth about $300k , but after a subsequent visit, apparently noticed more faults with the place and dropped the estimate to between $200 and $250k. My mum semi-joked that the agent was probably selling it to a friend and was looking to get a decent price for them. She also believed that the people who were buying it would be moving in and living there. Ultimately she sold it for around $250k, believing that was the best price she could get.

Cut to a number of months later and my mum sees the unit back on the market. She even went to the open day and noted that they had probably spent a few thousand dollars on tearing the carpets up and polishing the floor boards, as well as painting the place and doing some other superficial work to make it look prettier. Then imagine my mum’s surprise when the place now sold for just over $450k! A far cry from the max $250k, the SAME REAL ESTATE AGENT had quoted her a few months earlier!!

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it doesn’t seem a stretch to suggest that the agent saw my mum as being a bit naive about house prices and saw a chance to take advantage of that and sell cheaply to a buddy (and pocket one commission), then pocket a second larger commission after the new owners had touched the place up.

If anyone has relatives in a nursing home, you know how expensive those places are and my mum could have done with the extra money to go towards paying for her parents to be well cared for, but that scum f**k agent wouldn’t give a damn about anything, but lining his own pocket. Personally I hope he burns in hell.

Angry rants aside, if anyone reading this is thinking about selling theirs or another property, I hope you remember this kind of scam, especially if you have even an inkling that the place should be worth more than you’re quoted by one person. Get second and third opinions, especially from expert third parties. And in the words of Fox Mulder, “Trust no one.”

The joys of a good election.

2007-11-22T17:06:00.000-08:00

I, like all Australians of voting age have to vote in the federal election tomorrow, and the burden weighs heavily on my broad, masculine shoulders…well they are shoulders at least. We have the great democratic choice between one of two guys running the country. That’s what it boils down to. Who really cares about those local nobodies you see posters for all over the place. I’ve never heard of any of them before, so why should I vote for them, they all seem to be cut from the same mold if you ask me.

As you might be able to tell by now, I’m not much into politics, or politicians for that matter. If someone starts talking to me about parliaments, houses, back benchers, etc, my eyes glaze over faster that a glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut. But stupid analogies aside, I’m just totally cynical of politics cause there is nothing keeping politicians or their parties from breaking, forgetting or rephrasing their campaign promises. Apart from the peoples ability to get rid of them after their term!

My favourite part of the campaign trail is over now and that’s the tv and radio ads. The methods used to promote one party and put down the other are nothing short of school yard thinking. Here’s an example I just made up which bares a similarity with many of the ads I’ve heard recently: “Mr X’s party believes your family deserves job security and financial security. (Said in a deep sleazy voice)--> Mr Y’s party eats babies, pisses on your job and steals money from your bank account while you sleep. (back to cheery voiceover) Vote Mr X’s party.”

So it’s off to some crowded polling station I go tomorrow to see if the government of this country will change, or be stuck with the same lot we’ve had for the last 11 years.

What the hell?

2007-11-14T03:00:00.000-08:00

Now I don't normally post youtube clips, but I saw this and thought to myself, "Now there's something you don't see every day." And OJ Simpson doing a magic routine certainly falls under that category. Enjoy.

Nice driving a**hole!

2007-11-09T22:04:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while since I’ve made any social commentaries, so I’ll start with something simple. Driving. How some people managed to get a drivers license, is beyond me. I realize that some road rules can be confusing and difficult to follow, but F.F.S. driving is not rocket science. Let me share with you some of my favourite peeves….

1. You are sitting in your car at a red traffic light and have maybe 3 or 4 cars in front of you. Surely the second the light goes green, everyone in the lane can put their foot on the accelerator and start to move forwards. Apparently not. In most cases you see the light go green and have time to ponder to yourself why some people’s neural impulses take 30-40 seconds to travel from their brain to their foot! The formula is simple, when your light is green, move your fricken car forwards!!

2. Even if there is no one particularly close to my car, I’ll indicate that I am going to change lanes. I DO NOT just suddenly, and without warning, start to drift into another lane. Apparently there are many people whoever fail to recognize that the roads were not build for them and will happily glide in front of your car without a single blink of their indicator. These same people also occasionally decide that driving on the white lines separating lanes is the way to go. I oughta nunchaku their arses!

3. People who have sound systems that cost as much as their car should realize that not everyone appreciates their taste in music.
I was sitting in my office at work the other day that is probably 15 metres or so, back from the road, when some genius drives by on the main road with his speakers up so loud that I could clearly hear the song in the building I was in. And worse still, I could actually feel the reverberations of the bass from where I was sitting. I could only wonder to myself, how bad that driver’s hearing must be to have to have his music up so loud.

There is a game on the Xbox called Full Auto, where you have cars with weapons such as rocket launchers and machine guns attached to them. I like to play it and imagine the other drivers are some of the people who exhibit the above tendencies.

Random news

2007-11-02T14:11:00.000-07:00

My sister has gone to work in the US (in LA I believe). Originally she was going to the states for training to help set up an office in France, but for some reason they must have liked her in the States and have decided to keep her there for now. She's coming back to OZ this week to go to a friend's wedding and we'll get to catch up with her then. It's a shame that the kids won't get to see one of their aunties very often, as she's back to the US by the end of the week.

I have to admit that I've gone back to facebook. I still don't like it and spend very little time there (less than I do here). I don't have a problem with people looking up some old friend to see if they want to catch up, etc, but it's a bit silly when you see people adding more friends everyday than anyone could possibly ever communicate with. (end rant)

I can't believe it's already nearly the end of another year! It's true that time seems to go faster as you get older. The only consolation about this for me is family. It's good to watch your kids learn more every day and enjoying things such as Christmas more each year. This Christmas will be the first our 2 year old really understands what's going on. She gets the idea of gift giving and loves having the extended family around so there are others to lavish attention on her (typical woman), so it should be a good Christmas. I really know I'm getting older, now that I'm starting to sound like a Hallmark card!!

Holiday

2007-10-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, the airfares are booked and the wife and I are going to Thailand next year! It's kind of our long delayed honeymoon. The kids will be staying with the grandparents while we go shopping and lay around on beaches. It's been a long time since my wife or I have been on a proper holiday, so to say we are looking forward to it is an understatement.

Private Eye

2007-10-06T21:12:00.000-07:00

I went to see a Melbourne Fringe Festival show earlier this week called Private Eye. Essentially it was a magic show with a old time gangster theme story to it. The story was pretty corny and the interspersion of magic in it made it occasionally hard to follow exactly what the characters were trying to do. This is not a good thing particularly when the story was pretty simple. Still the ability to combine magic with a story line is not an easy thing to do, so in that regard it was quite passable.

As for the magic itself, there was a lot of sleight of hand and most was done very well. Cigarettes appeared and disappeared, coins appeared and disappeared....come to think of most of the tricks involved that premise.

The best part of it was when one performer called Al Cappuccino did a routine with cards and cigarette that was clearly a routine that was far more polished than anything else in the show.

Overall I actually quite enjoyed it, but have to say that my main gripe was that the show was billed as 45 minutes, but it barely went for 30. I've paid about $15 before to go and see 100 million dollar plus movies that provide entertainment for 2 hours, so when I pay the same price to see something that only goes for 30 minutes it had better be as good as it can be. Sadly this wasn't. I'd give it a 6 out of 10.

My baby's birthday.

2007-10-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

My daughter has just turned 2! She had a birthday party of course, where about 15 of her little friends came around and mashed cake into our carpet and spilled juice on the floor.

The highlight of the day was when we turned on the bubble machine and the kids were amazed to see bubbles flying all over the lounge room. We quickly realized that the bubble mixture on the wooden floorboards made them pretty slippery and there were kids going arse over turkey everywhere (no one was hurt and we put down towels after that). Thankfully at this age kids (and their parents) get tired pretty quickly, so we were only subjected to the horror of a kids birthday party for a few hours.

We gave our daughter a slide and she got two annoying talking Elmo things as well as lots of duplo lego stuff that I look forward to tripping on at some stage in the future.

Wot I dun on my lst wekend.

2007-09-27T04:28:00.000-07:00

I had a pretty exciting weekend last week. Firstly there was my sister in-law's wedding, where I got a free dinner and there was no dancing involved at all. The guy she married also has an Xbox 360, so we can trade games, but unlike him (so far) I have kids and so game playing is a luxury I have little time for these days. I used to be able to lock myself in my study while my wife watching boring stuff on TV and I'd game my brains out. Now if I close my study door, my daughter knocks on it going, "Daddy, daddy." Cause I'm such a softy, I open the door and she comes in and pulls stuff off shelves and generally makes such a nuisance of herself that I can't concentrate on gaming. Then I have no choice but to leave my peaceful study and assist my long suffering wife with the two hellions. But essentially the wedding was good.

The other entertaining thing we did on the weekend was go to the Royal Melbourne Show, which for any foreigners is a big, yearly agricultural gathering on the outskirts of the city with lots of carnival type rides and show bags with sugary crap and other useless junk in them. Of course there are the animal pavilions, but most people come for the exorbitant parking and entry fees and the outrageous cost of all the food and showbags (which the sellers will try to convince you is good value for money). We had some of my wife's relations with us (mine wouldn't be caught dead there these days), which was great cause it spared me from going on kiddie rides with my daughter and from carrying her around all day. It was the first time we'd been to the show with kids, so it kind of made the experience more entertaining viewing it through a child's eyes. The most awful thing I had to endure there (apart from going through a big wad of cash) was having to sit through a musical Shrek show where actors (who should be out of work) dressed up as giant Shrek characters, pranced around a stage singing and generally doing awful voice impressions of the movie characters. How kids like that kind of thing I'll never know.

So I'm expecting this weekend to be dull in comparison.

Back to basics...

2007-09-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

I've just finished doing two weeks of training to teach me a whole lot of stuff that I already knew and is mostly irrelevant to my job. I won't bore you with the details, but essentially myself and my colleagues were told we would receive this training when we started...two years ago! It is only now that the powers that be have suddenly said, 'ok, now you have to do it.' As I could have told you before I'd done it, it was a big waste of time considering that over the two years I've been in my current job, I've kind of picked up that basic stuff we had to go through in the training.

I should also explain from the other side of the coin, the whole exercise is intended to give us an overview of what the people we will be supporting have to do, even if we don't end up doing it ourselves. I have no problem with that idea. The timing of the whole thing is what's stupid about it.

Anyway, I've finished it and let us never speak of the training again.

The consoling console

2007-08-31T03:42:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from being without my computer for a little while and I actually survived. You see I was tinkering around inside it and surprisingly it didn't come back on afterwards. This was fairly late in the evening and so after a couple of unsuccessful attempts at fixing it, I went to bed. I had to work the next few days so it didn't really bother me that much. But I've just had 3 days off and it was only on the last of these days that I really put any effort into trying to fix the thing. As I work in IT, I don't usually like to mess around with technical computing stuff on my days off. Anyway it turns out that one of the sticks of RAM had gone haywire and stopped working. So now my computer runs, but slowly.

I know you're probably wondering how I survived for 3 days of being home without using my computer. Well I just rented Bioshock for the Xbox360 and completed it. Great game by the way. So now you know how a nerd survives without a computer, he turns to his beloved gaming console for support. Oh and my wife was going on about me ignoring my family or something, I don't know I was too busy shooting splicers. Then she complains when I tell her I need more RAM. Sheesh, some people.

A Sappy Post

2007-08-16T23:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just have to take a step back and realize how good you have it. Unless you have it really bad that is. But I’m taking about me, so nuts to the rest of you. There are many things I could complain about, such as babies making crying noises at 2, 3, 4am in the morning, or the speeding ticket I got for going a couple of K’s over the limit, or my mounting credit card bill, or the fact that I’m becoming more sedentary as I get older, etc…but I’d rather focus on how fortunate I am. I have a healthy family that I am able to clothe, shelter and otherwise provide for. I enjoy my job, most of the time. I live in a country where I have a lot more freedom than most of the rest of the worlds population, I pretty much have a day off for every day I work….in short I have a lot to be thankful for and happy about. Most people reading this probably have a life that is a lot better than most other humans out there. So if that’s the case, please forward this message to 8 friends or you will die a horrible and painful death. Relax I’m kidding, don’t send this to anyone or they will probably punch you and that won’t be so good.

Farcebook

2007-08-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make...I recently created a Facebook account! But it's ok, cause I could only stand it for just over a week before I deactivated it. A friend in the real world had been pestering me for a while about joining up and I'd told him how I wasn't into it. It was his telling me that you could play chess with other facebookers that finally made me cave and have a look at it (I haven't played in a while and am a geek at heart ok!). In spite of the silly little games you can play, my dislike for the site quickly grew and in a spur of the moment decision (that I stand by), I deactivated my account leaving my many (I think it was 3) friends shocked and dumbfounded.

I'm not exactly sure why, but as soon as I signed up, I just felt really dirty. Aesthetically the site is crap, but that's not my main gripe. It's that vibe that Myspace has, of lots of people desperate to collect friends to show off how popular they think they are that irritates me. I know that not every person who uses it does it for that purpose, but it just seems like a waste of time to me. If I'm dealing with my friends I like to do so in person or verbally on the phone, not through little comments on a wall, or back and forth messaging. I know even blogging gets like that for some people, but certainly no one can accuse me of trying to be popular. ;)

long time no updates.

2007-08-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

Due to popular demand and the yelling of a certain triathlon person, I am finally updating this blog. To be honest I just haven't been able to summon the motivation to write about anything recently. When I haven't been working, I've been helping my wife deal with our two babies and getting in trouble for not helping enough. In the few bits of time I do get to myself, writing about what's been happening isn't high on the list.

Anyway....

One work related thing that really annoyed me recently was that we had two weeks of training sprung on us and the block of which I was put down for (with no consultation with me) was during a period where I would normally get 5 days in a row off and also one of the days was on my daughter's birthday. Naturally I complained about this and the so the boss switched my training block with someone else's. Under normal circumstances I would be happy....well not happy as I suspect the training will be a big waste of time, but happier. However the block I was switched to falls on my sister in-law's wedding day. The boss has been unrelenting about any further change as he states that things have already been changed for me. This whole saga really pissed me off and was a big zap to my work morale. But now that some time has passed I've calmed down a bit and may still be able to work things to my advantage, but we'll see what happens.

I'll try and post again sooner next time.

We now return you to your regular viewing.....

2007-07-08T23:01:00.000-07:00

Well, the TAR season has finished, so now I have to start spouting my own brand of crap again. To be honest I'm not sure what to say now.....which reminds me of the one and only internet date I went on, so I'll tell you about that.

I don't even remember how it started, but I met a girl online, sight unseen, and started chatting with her via email. I think it was probably 7 or so years ago (I'm really bad at remembering specific years). We were both at uni and had crappy jobs so at least had that in common. The emailing was very friendly and we seemed to get along really well in text. Sharing stories and laughs.

After some back and forth over a period of time we agreed to send each other a photo. She had originally played down her looks before doing so and was somewhat reluctant to send a pic, while I had accurately described my chiselled abs and stunning appearance...*cough, cough* Anyway, she apparently liked the way I looked and after seeing her photo I had to explain that I don't date transexuals. Ok I'm kidding about that, but it would've made this story more interesting. I'll be nice and say she was pretty average looking, but seeing as how I'm not a shallow prick I agreed that we should meet up and have a date. We spoke on the phone before hand and made her laugh with my Sean Connery impersonation. I have no idea why I impersonated Sean Connery, but it must have been good cause she still wanted to go on a date.

We decided to go and see a movie, so that if things didn't go well at least there would be a period of time where I didn't have to speak to her. For all the friendlyness we had on the web, when we finally met face to face, there was no chemistry. Absolutely 0%. So we got the tickets (I paid) and walked around for a bit to kill some time before it began. Rarely has there been such awkward silences between two people. We had pretty much discussed all the small talk stuff on the net, so neither of us had any material to break the ice (my Connery impression having been used up).

Long story short, we watched the movie, afterward I walked her to the train station, said goodbye, with no physical contact, and drove home myself. The next email from me pretty much stated that I didn't really know what to say to her now and she replied that she didn't know where to go from there either. After that we didn't email each other again. I moved on and I only hope she didn't have any hard feelings and didn't blame herself. So there you have it, that was my one and only internet date. Perhaps next time I'll tell you about picking up hookers in seedy bars.

TAR - All Stars Episode 13 FINAL

2007-07-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 13 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

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The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Eric & Danielle being the last team to reach the Pit Stop but the third team to be saved from elimination on the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located at Umatac (Fort Nuestra Señora de la Soledad) in Guam, an organised unincorporated territory of the USA. The Finish Line was located inside the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, back on the mainland.

In the Detour for this leg of the race, teams had to choose between ‘Under’ or ‘Over’. In ‘Under’, teams had to swim underwater to gain access to a cave where their next clue was anchored to the cave’s floor. In ‘Over’, teams had to use a paddle board to reach a buoy to which their next clue was fastened.

Photos on the official CBS website suggest that the unaired Roadblock involved jumping off a cliff into the water below (because Mirna and Danielle were shown doing this task in the photos). The location of the Roadblock was most likely in Hawaii near the Detour, though the exact location is unknown.

At the San Francisco Mint (in the Race's final task), one team member had to answer four questions relating to their opinion of other teams on the Race. Their answers corresponded to a four-digit code. The other team member then had ten minutes to guess the answers and enter the code into a safe containing the last clue. Success meant that the lucky team could get a head start on the other teams, but if they failed, teams were still allowed to proceed once the ten minutes had passed.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Dustin & Kandice
2. Eric & Danielle
3. Charla & Mirna
~~4. Oswald & Danny~~

Note: As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Finish Line (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

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1. Eric & Danielle: WINNERS!

Last week: 2
This week: Up one place

Am I surprised that the couple I least wanted to win, won the million dollars? No not really. I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t think much of Ken and Barbie, but personal feelings aside, they were the only team in the final three to have finished last in another leg, and thanks to non elimination were also the only team to be given a second chance in the race. A pretty big advantage to a team that didn’t come first in any other legs. Just goes to show that only when they’re up against two beauty queens and a psychotic chick and her handicapped cousin do Eric and Danielle really shine. ;)

I like to think that in games such as this the best team or person should win and in this case I don’t think that happened. I can see the million being blown on booze and partying quite frankly. I understand from reading Bevis’s review that they are no longer a couple, so presumably they had to half the million after tax.

In this final leg E&D gave what I thought was their only good effort on the race and they seemed focused, didn’t fight and didn’t make any mistakes. Good for them.

~~2. Dustin & Kandice~~: ELIMINATED! (2nd Place)

Last week: 1
This week: Down one place

These girls were the ones I thought most deserving to win. So let me explain why…firstly they came first in 4 out of the previous 12 legs and of the other two teams even Charla and Mirna managed 2 first place gets in those legs. But such accomplishments count for nothing in this ‘competition’ (well, maybe prizes).

I also made a note of the places that each final three team came in all previous rounds and added them up. Naturally the team with the lowest score did best at coming closer to the front of the pack in all rounds in comparison with the other two teams. And the winner with 38 points is…..Dustin and Kandice!!! Next closest was Eric and Danielle with 47 points! (including the round they came last and rightfully should have been eliminated). Charla and Mirna had 54 points.

But….the game is mostly dumb luck (though experience with travel arrangements, navigating and negotiation certainly help), so such considerations are mostly for my own amusement.

Dustin and Kandice really felt the pressure in the final leg and had the first fight that I think we’d seen on the race. Thankfully they were able to resolve it pretty quickly and all was well.

The producers had done their best on this round to ensure that all teams would be very close together and it seemed that in most tasks everyone could watch what everyone else was doing cause they were only minutes apart from each other. If this type of situation could have occurred on all legs of the race I think the show would be even more interesting.

~~3. Charla & Mirna~~: ELIMINATED! (3rd Place)

Last week: 3
This week: No change

If Eric could be said to have been hampered by Danielle’s intellect, then certainly having a team member who is a little person should have made things much harder. Charla was clearly at a disadvantage in any tasks where running or physical strength was a factor and even running between connecting flights or to finish lines was something of a chore. In spite of this factor they did very well and were justified in their pride of being able to accomplish what many fully able bodied teams were unable to. I also felt that these two were the underdogs of the race…certainly far more than a strong, athletic, all-American Ken and Barbie type team like someone I could mention.

Although they started off strong by catching an earlier flight than the other two teams, they had to wait until the place opened up and so everyone else caught up. As hinted at above, in any situation of a mostly physical nature this team was at a rather big disadvantage and this leg had a good share of the physical, so their clever flight booking was to no avail and throughout the rest of the leg they had to chase the pack.

I had a love/hate relationship with this team, but I do believe that they did well to get into the final three.

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Well that’s this season of TAR over and I don’t think I’ll try one of these series reviews again (I’m sure some are cheering out there!). Way too much commitment. I think I’ll stick to posting comments on Bevis’s TV blog in future!

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 12

2007-06-22T00:37:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 12 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Eric & Danielle being the last team to reach the Pit Stop but the third team to be saved from elimination on the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located at Trilho da Taipa Pequena 2000 Park in Taipa, Macau, China.

In the Detour for this leg of the Race, teams had to choose between ‘Care Package’ or ‘Engine Care’. In ‘Care Package’, teams had to fill a 500-pound package with various humanitarian aid items for a neighbouring island. Once that was completed, the teams then had to board a transport plane and participate in an ‘air drop’ training exercise. Though the easier of the two Detour tasks, the mission took at least half an hour to complete. In ‘Engine Care’, teams had to clean an engine pod and associated flap section on the wing of a B-52 bomber until one of the base's sergeants felt the portion of the plane was clean enough.

In the Roadblock, teams had to perform a search-and-rescue mission. Using a GPS receiver, team members had to locate a pilot in the Guam forest, receive new GPS coordinates from him, locate the landing zone, and signal for a helicopter to pick them up and take them back to the naval base.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Dustin & Kandice
2. Charla & Mirna
3. Eric & Danielle
4. Oswald & Danny

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

--------------------

1. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 1
This week: No change

I think everyone, including myself really discounted this pair of blondes from the start of the race. Early on this discounting seemed fairly valid, but as the race progressed they’ve really shone and done well. Perhaps as no one thought of them as a threat that has played to their advantage. In the last few episodes they’ve really been disliked by the other teams and yet still seem to get to the head of the pack, so good on them I say.

They didn’t do anything wrong this week and in a leg where everyone seemed to be racing very close together they did well to not fall behind at all. It was funny seeing the girls trying to charm the drill sergeant into thinking they had done an adequate cleaning job.

Whichever one of them did the navigating task had no problems finding the lost soldier and making it back to the landing zone. Best of all she really seemed to enjoy herself doing the task. This summed up the one good quality that I like about this team, that no matter what the task was, they were always cheerful to do it and I don’t think I recall them ever being really prissy or precious about it.

Of the remaining teams these two are the most deserving to win, but I’m not too bothered if they do or not, cause for some reason I just can’t empathise with them. I don’t think they are horrible people or disagree with much of what they did, but I just don’t care much about them.

2. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 3
This week: Up one place

Who? Oh that’s right, they’re dead to me.

3. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 2
This week: Down one place

I actually don’t care if these guys win the race as long as someone beats, ‘dead team walking’. And I don’t really think this team should win, although if they did maybe Mirna could afford some driving lessons. As it was pretty rich to hear her telling the soldier who was chauffeuring them somewhere, “I hope you’re a good driver.”

These two were the only team to choose the task which involved packing and dropping off a care package. The soldier who was supervising this task had to tell them to be careful with the stuff they were packing as it was not garbage, when they were just chucking the food and books into the box.
I actually thought that they were goners when they chose this task when no one else did, and although the care package drop off took about 30 minutes, it didn’t put them too far behind everyone else.

I reckon that if I were to write a script for TAR which involved C&M, my summary for detours would read: (Charla performs detour – hilarity ensues). And indeed this was the case! I think I heard the soldier who walked with her on the navigating task tell Charla off at least 3 times for pushing buttons on the GPS device. Each time the guy sounded more and more pissed off as well, “I’ve told you mama, don’t press any buttons.” I could have sworn the guy was muttering, ‘Moron’ under his breath. It was made even funnier by the fact that in the beginning even Mirna had told her not to press any buttons, as though she had some predisposition to press random buttons on any electronic device that she got in her hands.

~~4. Oswald & Danny~~: ELIMINATED!

Last week: 4
This week: No change

Apart from Bevis, who’s nose is so far up Eric’s butt, he appears to be his tail (kidding!), everyone who’s anyone wanted this pair to win. Unless you’re a gay hating homophobe…and you’re not one of them…are you??? Now that hope is gone. The final three really should have included them, but that’s not to be. It doesn’t matter how deserving you are, or how many legs you win, this game has so many random elements that even complete jerks, plastic mannequins, or….Charla and Mirna have a chance at winning.

O&D bowed out gracefully and made a few more funny comments as they left. After Rob and Amber left these two were my main reason for enjoying and being entertained by this shows ‘personalities’. Without wanting to sound like one of the homophobe types I mentioned above, I find that with many game shows, the gay people or couples they have on them really seem chosen to help portray a certain type of bitchy, overly sensitive personality, but O&D were a refreshing change from this. They were always funny and very entertaining. I was a little thrown by their wanting C&M to win, but after their incident with yields, D&K and E&D, I can understand they might be biased against the other two teams.

So may the best of a bad lot win.

--------------------

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 11

2007-06-20T00:33:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 11 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Eric & Danielle being the last team to reach the Pit Stop but the third team to be saved from elimination on the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located at Hong Kong Jockey Club, Happy Valley Racecourse on Hong Kong Island, China.

In the Roadblock for this leg of the Race, teams had to perform the world's tallest Skyjump, walking around the outer rim of the observation deck of Macau Tower, and then take a tethered jump off the deck to the ground below.

The Detour was ‘Noodle’ or ‘Dragon’. In ‘Noodle’, teams had to make two bundles of traditional Chinese noodles. In ‘Dragon’, teams had to carry a dragon head and drum and carry it 3/4 of a mile to Nan Van Lake to find the one dragon boat the dragon's head matched.

After the Detour, teams had to locate a marked Mini Moke and drive themselves to the Pit Stop.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Oswald & Danny
2. Dustin & Kandice
3. Charla & Mirna
4. Eric & Danielle

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

--------------------

1. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 2
This week: Up one place

Well, so much for Karma catching up with them this episode! And it almost could have. I have to say that I thought it really stupid to have an equalising situation at the building that had the second yield in it. Three of the four teams basically ended up in a footrace to the yield and the order with which they grabbed some place cards was the order that they had the chance to yield. D&K got the first one, but had already used their yield and as I understand it, being first meant that the teams behind them couldn't yield them either. Second came O&D, and this was where it got interesting. While waiting at the entrance O&D made the offer to D&K that they would sell their yielding power for cash as they had none left. Not missing the chance to sink the boot in, D&K bought the opportunity to have E&D yielded again (although cruel, I found this very funny). True to their word although hating themselves they yielded E&D.

So you'd think that in choosing to shaft E&D again the bad karma would really be chasing the blondes, but they didn't seem to have any real problems after that and obviously stayed at the front of the pack, throughout this very close leg of the race.

The only note I made about these two was that I actually found it quite arousing to see them bouncing up and down on the noodle flattening pole in their black singlets (umm, anyone who saw this will know what I mean).

2. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 3
This week: Up one place

These two were their usual charming selves with Mirna yelling at Charla for telling her to cut the noodles thicker, when they were actually supposed to be thinly cut. While at this task they made the noodle flattening look even more amusing that it does when it's being done normally by lying across the pole and generally looking very awkard.

Now you would think that if you were going in a competition such as this where you know that there is driving involved that you would know how to drive. Apparently not so for Mirna, who managed to get their mini moke car, parked up against a pole and then needed to resort to getting a taxi driver to help them out of the situation (the second time we have seen this happen with her). In fairness to Mirna, Charla can't drive the normal cars either due to her height, so Mirna gets stuck with all the driving.

I think that Eric and Danielle actually beat them to the finish, but due to their wait from last weeks non-elimination they were finally passed by C&M.

3. Eric & Danielle - ”Marked For Elimination” (but SAFE!)

Last week: 4
This week: Up one place

These guys are dead to me. They should have been eliminated last week.

IMO, IF this show must use non-elimination rounds, they shouldn't punish them with delays, or taking cash, but insist that they must finish the next round in first place or they're gone, along with whomever finishes last. This at least shows that they deserve to be in the race (or end up being very lucky).

The only thing worse that could have happened this leg would've been if E&D came last again, only to the told, "Don't worry guys you're getting a third chance at this crucial stage of the game."

From what we saw of it, E&D actually did better in this round than in a number of their previous ones. Dispite getting yielded, they still finished the noodle making task ahead of C&M. They have also had quite a lot of bad luck at airports, but basically I think it's a joke that they are still in it.

I actually find Eric most humourous when he's annoyed, such as the times he was swearing and cursing O&D. Also when he wanted to throw them off the cliff at the end and after the blondes explained that it was mostly because of them, he offered to throw them over as well. If the cameras weren't on him, I think he might have!

4. Oswald & Danny - SAFE!

Last week: 1
This week: Down three places

Two non-elimination rounds in a row! Wow, two weeks in row where the game has not progressed at all...good thinking producers. Instead of non-elim rounds, I would prefer to see extra long legs where the leg was stretched to two episodes.

I believe that in reality game shows it IS important to be fair to all competitors in terms of the rules and so if you are going to give 3 or 4 teams a second chance (even if there's a penalty), it should be given to all teams. A second chance can and has made all the difference in the world. Not being eliminated at the end of a leg is a very different advantage to being the first to a random yield, or making a good or bad decision on a detour.

Anyway, this was a really bad luck round for O&D with a combination of choosing the wrong task and getting a taxi driver who didn't speak English at all and had no idea where they wanted to go. Perhaps the producers told the taxi driver to send them off course, to avoid the embarrasing potentional of E&D getting two non-eliminations in the same series.

Some of the funniest comments still came from this team as Oswald did things such as praying that the body of the driver wouldn't be found after he strangled him (while sitting in the back seat of the cab). Or telling the driver that he should be able to find the next destination as the name was written in Chinese on the clue and then asking him if he could read Chinese.

The sucky thing about O&D coming last now is that they are at a disadvantage at perhaps the most important stage of the race when they have done so well throughout the rest of it, whereas E&D have generally sucked through 70% of the legs.

--------------------

PS. Bevis - I'll answer any or your questions I missed, in the comments of the previous post.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 10

2007-06-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 10 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Uchenna & Joyce being the last team to reach the Pit Stop and the sixth team to be eliminated from the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located inside the grounds of Carcosa Seri Negara, a luxury hotel located near Perdana Lake Gardens in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In the second and final Fast Forward on this Race, teams had to travel five miles to a film set located at the former Kai Tak Airport where a high-speed stunt was being filmed for an action movie. When they arrived, they had to get in a car with a professional stunt driver and complete a stunt course, which involved sharp turns and ended with the car flipping over.

This leg's Detour was ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ or ‘Lost in Translation’. In ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, teams had to travel five miles to Tonkin Street and find a nearby building (the former Cheung Sha Wan Police Quarters). Once there, they had to climb up an 11-story bamboo scaffold while avoiding an ongoing battle between stunt kung fu experts to reach the top and retrieve their next clue. In ‘Lost in Translation’, teams needed to make their way four miles to Kowloon City and find Nga Tsin Wai Road. Once there, they had to search among hundreds of similar-looking Chinese signs for the specific sign shown in a photo in their clue. When they matched the photo with the correct store sign, the owner would hand them their next clue.

In the Roadblock, one teammate had to kick down stunt doors in an abandoned building and search through the rooms for their clue.

Teams also had to pull a model boat carrying a Travelocity gnome from one end of a pond to the other without having the gnome fall into the water.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Dustin & Kandice
2. Charla & Mirna
3. Eric & Danielle
4. Oswald & Danny
~~5. Uchenna & Joyce~~

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

--------------------

1. Oswald & Danny

Last week: 4
This week: Up three places

I hope these guys win at this stage. This is the second fast forward they've won and as a general rule they have stayed at the front of the pack throughout the entire race, so of those that are left they have played the best game.

Once again the start of this leg came down to who had the best ability to get on a standby list for a flight and then get on that flight. With the few teams that are left at this stage everyone knows where everyone else is, so Oswald and Danny knew that once they saw the fast forward challenge, no one else would beat them to it. The task itself was a complete joke, as all they had to do was sit in a stunt car while a stunt driver flipped the car. Scary if you'd had a serious accident perhaps, but a bit of a thrill to most. Getting to the fast forward first won them a very nice Hong Kong holiday after the race.

2. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 1
This week: Down one place

I usually find D&K to be rather bland, but this episode I was slightly attracted to them and felt somewhat sympathetic. I think it's probably because the three other teams decided to gang up against them and pretty much made an alliance that the final three teams would not include these blondes.

There was a lot made of the yield issue from last week and about how karma would bite them back, but not much came of it this episode. It is possible that the editors are setting up Eric and Danielle yielding them next week, or that they will be eliminated next week, but who knows. If that's the case, then it couldn't be scripted better.

It was funny to see them in an argument with Mirna over who was placed first on the standby list for their flight, but it turned out to be them.

Also amusing was the brief ride they had in a lift with Eric and Danielle, during which no one said anything nor made any eye contact.

3. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 2
This week: Down one place

Firstly kudos to Charla for climbing the bamboo scaffolding on the outside of a large building while having kung fu fighters suspended on cables, stunt fighting around them. I'm not sure I could have done that, cause I absolutely hate heights and have a morbid fear of widths...also lengths don't thrill me either.

Mirna was her usual loud and brash self throughout this leg, but strangely I found myself wondering what it would be like to be married to her! It's not a fantasy or anything...hey stop looking at me like that!! Her support and praise for her diminutive cousin was a nice, albeit unusual touch for her.

Mirna was the instigator of the alliance against D&K, which the others agreed upon at the airport. Not that it did any good at this stage though. Perhaps next week it'll mean something.

The worst thing that occurred to C&M was that towards the end they had to catch a ferry to Hong Kong Island, but unknown to them, they were driven there and when they finally got on the ferry, they were informed that it was returning to the mainland. This delayed them somewhat as they had to do a round trip to get back to Hong Kong.

4. Eric & Danielle - SAFE!

Last week: 4
This week: Down one place

Ahhhh!!! They should be gone! Non elimination rounds are the bane of this game. To me it just feels like the entire leg has been wasted when they do them. I though they only had two in the race, but perhaps I'd just forgotten the third one. These two have been limping (metaphorically) the last few legs, and now would have been a good time for them to go. But nooooooo! Random loser teams get given a second chance. I hope they're gone next week.

--------------------

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 9

2007-05-31T18:16:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 9 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Joe & Bill being the last team to reach the Pit Stop and the fifth team to be eliminated from the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located inside the grounds of Pieskowa Skala Castle in Krakow, Poland.

The first of two Yields on the Race was located on the elevated walkway near the Kampung Baru Mosque.

The Detour for this leg was a choice between ‘Artistic Expression’ or ‘Cookie Confection’. In ‘Artistic Expression’, teams had to travel one third of a mile on foot to Dewan Lama. Once there, they had to use an ancient technique known as batik to exactly duplicate one of three patterns onto and then dye a 45 square-foot piece of cloth. In ‘Cookie Confection’, teams made their way on foot half a mile to Chow Kit Bomba and had to search through 600 boxes of traditional Malaysian festive cookies, by biting into them, and find the one cookie that had a black liquorice centre.

The Roadblock on this leg was a nod to Malaysia's eco-friendly practice of recycling. Team members had to choose a bicycle with a side cart attached and then scour the nearby Taman Sri Hartamas neighbourhood for residents willing to give them their used newspapers. Once they had collected enough newspapers to make a stack eight hands high, they would receive their next clue.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Oswald & Danny / Uchenna & Joyce
2. N/A
3. Dustin & Kandice
4. Charla & Mirna
5. Eric & Danielle
~~6. Joe & Bill~~

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

--------------------

1. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 3
This week: Up two places

They made it to the top of the pack by exploiting the mistakes of others and not making any notable mistakes themselves, so good on them. The main issue that I suspect will come back to haunt them was the yielding of Eric and Danielle. I can only imagine that they felt they were fairly close behind and were a threat, but it only served to make them an enemy.

In the task where one of them had to collect old newspapers on a bike, it was funny to hear a local tell her that she shouldn’t have any difficulty getting free newspapers with the way she looked. Inappropriate and a little sleazy perhaps, but funny.

The girls also taught me that Phil must have a serious B.O problem cause as they arrived at the final destination, one of them said, “I smell Phil.”

2. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 4
This week: Up two places

Once again these two cracked me up. I should state that the ad for this episode made it look like C&M did something really underhanded that may or may not have backfired on them. In retrospect I can only imagine the ad was talking about D&K yielding E&D while confusingly showing footage of C&M cause I don’t think they did anything particularly bad. I suppose it could have been a reference to the fact that they didn’t let E&D share the two computers they were using early on to check flights, but later Mirna admitted to camera that it was fair play for Eric to later deny her asking a quick question of an airport person that he and Danielle were talking too.

C&M were in the lead for the first detour, which involved sorting through hundreds of boxes of small cookies for a single liquorish centered one. After spending quite a while on that, they chose to switch tasks and go to the one that involved replicating a local craft printing project (Batik). This switch cost them a bit of time.

During and after the roadblock task which Mirna thankfully did, Mirna in particular got a bit carried away with her own semi-celebrity status and began referring to local youngsters as the future Charla’s and Mirna’s of the world (heaven help us!). Even going so far as spouting off generic advice such as staying in school and staying away from drugs! It was all done tongue in cheek and was pretty amusing.

3. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 5
This week: Up two places

The most notable thing that this pair did was get yielded and hearing Eric refer to D&K as dirty, pirate, hookers was priceless. I guess they didn’t understand why they’d been yielded either.

Danielle was complaining that while she ended up doing all the tasks which were intended for guys (ie. strength related), such as the newspaper collecting one, Eric always ended up doing the effeminate girly tasks. I should also point out that it was Danielle who found the liquorish cookie (the only team to complete this one, although it wasn’t shown what Uchenna and Joyce did), so she basically carried the team this week. Which was certainly a first.

4. Oswald & Danny

Last week: 1
This week: Down three places

Talk about a reversal of fortune! O&D must be really feeling the pressure cause they made a number of mistakes. Their initial plane flights started them at the front of the pack, but they both wanted to do different tasks on the detour and ended up going back and forth numerous times before finally settling on the Batik craft task. They buggered this up by miscounting the number of symbols they were supposed to print and basically had to start all over again.

Danny was in a really bad mood this entire episode and was put in a worse one having to do the newspaper collecting task as Oswald had some issue with bikes. Quite frankly Danny just seemed really childish throughout this leg.

I hope they can find their stride again for next week, cause they have been going so well up until now.

~~5. Uchenna & Joyce~~: ELIMINATED!

Last week: 1
This week: Down four places

I was afraid that this leg was going to be another episode of “The Amazing Airline Ticket Race,” but as it turned out it only E&J suffered an airport fiasco. They made the mistake of having a flight plan with very tight connection times and paid the price. Sometimes a risk will pay off with this type of thing, but other times it bites you in the arse. Personally I think that this was the wrong place for such a risk. It was very early on that this stuff up was revealed and so you would have had to be a fool, to not be able to tell who would be going.

Basically we didn’t see E&J for the rest of the episode until they turned up at night to be booted out by Phil. At least they had won the other series that they were in, so they already had $1 million….minus tax.
.

--------------------

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

TAR - All Stars Episode 8

2007-05-24T20:07:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 8 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

--------------------

1/2. Oswald & Danny

Last week: 2
This week: ???

I don’t even know who came first or second out of the top two teams due to a stupid task called an ‘Intersection’. This meant that teams had to pair up with one other team and O&D joined U&J. Starting ahead of the other teams (except for D&K) gave these two teams the chance to do the fast forward task of counting steps in a couple of towers. Upon completing the fast forward, they were then able to reach Phil at the finish within about 10-15 minutes from the start of the episode, which is why I think that this combination of tasks was really stupid from the viewer point of view. The reason I don’t know who was first or second was that when they reached the finish with E&J, they all jumped on the mat together and Phil just announced both teams as number one.

Earlier in the episode at Auschwitz concentration camp, it was touching to note how moved they were by merely being at that monument to the atrocities of mankind. The more emotional one started crying again as he talked about how fortunate they are to have the freedoms that they have today. Admittedly just about every other team was emotionally effected by the place.

As a side note on the Auschwitz thing, I found it interesting to note that most of the teams with the exception of Eric and Danielle and Dustin and Kandice (unless they’re Jewish and I don’t know) would have likely been placed in a concentration camp for their differences if they’d live in the area during Nazi times. Thank goodness with live in more progressive times.

It should be noted that although both teams finished together, there was only one prize and they had to choose who got it! O&D very generously allowed U&J to have the prize with no arguing at all.

1/2. Uchenna & Joyce

Last week: 3
This week: ???

As mentioned above they finished together with O&D and most of what I said about them can be applied to these two.

I’ll just use this opportunity to reiterate how stupid I thought it was to use an intersection and a fast forward at this point. If the producers decided to get rid of fast forwards and non elimination rounds, I at least would be happy. Such things exist for no other reason that to allow the producers to manipulate the game if you ask me.

3. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 1
This week: Down two places

I’m not the biggest fan of these two, but even so I was pretty pissed to see that in the first 10 minutes of the show they had gone from having a huge lead at the end of the last episode to dropping back to third place! Then the intersection meant that they had to wait around for hours and hours for the back of the pack to catch up! MESSAGE TO PRODUCERS: If people are crap enough to end up being way behind then leave them there to be eliminated! Stop giving these losers chance after chance to catch up! (END RANT).

The team that D&K least wanted to join up with (C&M) just happened to be the next team to arrive, so after deciding whether they should hide instead, they joined up with them rather than wait longer.

When given the choice of a task where they had to make and deliver some pastries, or make some sausages and then eat a thick 24 inch sausage, the three skinny blondes and the little person decided to do the sausage task. I don’t think Charla was too happy about this.

After the mammoth sausage eat, when one of the beauty queens had finished, she promptly threw up (not on purpose though) and Eric who was there by then made the funny comment, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Florida.”

Even though I think the other two teams finished the same task a little before them D&K managed to find the cars first and get a taxi driver to lead them to the next task. Basically one of them had to put on a suit of knight armour and lead a horse up a path. From there they only had to walk up to Phil who was standing with some crack-ho………or perhaps it was in Krakow, I can’t remember.

4. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 4
This week: No Change

Where do I begin?? This episode should have been called, Poor Charla, cause she had such a crappy day and that just describes her time with Mirna. At the sausage eating task I believe that she was the last to finish and much to my amusement had to throw up a couple of times which really disturbed the opposing teams. C&M could also put a lot of professional burpers to shame.

In their attempts to drive to the next task Mirna had to enlist the help of a task driver to take the hand brake off in the car and then got into a massive fight about which driver would direct them and how much to pay. When her yelling yet constantly referring the to the taxi driver as ‘friend’ failed, she broke down into tears. Begging and possibly cause he was on camera convinced one on the drivers to accept a lower price than he wanted. Throughout the rest of the journey to the castle Mirna did nothing but complain and made verbal attacks about how useless her cousin Charla was and how she did nothing. Charla was soooo over it all that she just agreed with Mirna, clearly having no energy left to argue.

At the knights armour task Charla volunteered to do it and I’m sure that this had nothing to do with Mirna’s hassling of her in the car! Seeing her in armour reminded me of one of the dwarves from Lord of the Rings and she did well to direct the horse to the destination in spite of the fact that she was clearly scared of it (understandable with her height) and fell flat on her face twice.

Even though these two are clearly insane, I’m glad they’re still in the race.

5. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 5
This week: No change

If it wasn’t for non-elimination rounds these two knuckleheads would be gone this week. As it was Joe and Bill had to stand aside for 30 minutes and that’s why they are still in the race.

The biggest thing that happened with E&D was the big fight that they had over their communication. Danielle stormed off after Eric refused to allow her to buy a $2 cup of coffee. Eric is purely competitive and Danielle seems to treat the whole race like it’s a big holiday and just an experience. I don’t side with either of them and would probably be more interested in this team if Eric had kept his old partner Jeremy.

They got stuck with Joe and Bill in the sausage eating task and the only one who really didn’t want to do it was Danielle. I would’ve thought that she had eaten plenty of sausage in her time and 24 inches wouldn’t be a problem, but apparently not (oh you know I had to include some innuendo!!).

I don’t really remember much of what happened to them after that task, only that they finished after Joe and Bill, but were saved cause of their 30 minute wait.

6. Joe & Bill - ELIMINATED!

Last week: 6
This week: No change

Finally they are gone. They started off by claiming that they were going to use brains to beat Eric and Danielle. This was followed by footage of them walking straight passed a box with the bus pass that they needed in it, three times! Funny stuff.

Naturally they were eager to do the sausage eating task and I think they were the first to finish……no comment.

At the knights armour task, upon seeing Charla in armour, I believe it was Bill who commented that she looked like, “A dressed up rat”! I have no idea what he meant by this, but it seemed rude and nasty. Which nicely summed up how the two of them came across in the race.

--------------------

Tips note:

Upon looking at the tips I put for this episode last week (although it was only posted the other day!), I realise that I did not amend it with my actual tips when I hastily posted it. This occurred because I was so far behind and had been trying to write three reviews at the same time which made things confusing. For one thing I had meant to specify that I figured J&B would go in this episode as noted in my comments for last week.

As a result of this and the fact that I haven’t gained much enjoyment from tipping, even when I have on occasion been right, I’m discontinuing my tips entirely.

Sorry to anyone who actually cares what my tips have been so far, but the tipping omission should allow me to get my reviews online a bit quicker as well, believe it or not.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 7

2007-05-22T21:53:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 7 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Teri & Ian being the last team to reach the Pit Stop and the fifth team to be eliminated from the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located inside the grounds to the ‘Old Fort’ (Ngome Konwe) in Zanzibar Town, Tanzania.

The Detour was ‘Perfect Pitch’ or ‘Perfect Angle’. In ‘Perfect Pitch’, teams had to make their way three-quarters of a mile to the Prymas Palace and choose a grand piano. Then, they needed to use the provided tools to tune one of the keys. Once the concert pianist played a piece of Chopin's music and determined that their piano was in tune, he would hand them their next clue. In ‘Perfect Angle’, teams made their way approximately half a mile to the Escada Boutique to pick up a mannequin and carry it another 400 yards to the Panoramik Laboratory. Once there, teams had to use an x-ray machine to locate a clue embedded somewhere inside their mannequin which needed to be positioned at a very specific angle for the image to capture the name of their next destination and commemorate Marie Curie.

The unaired ‘Roadblock’ required teams to row a boat out onto the reflecting pool in front of the palace. The objective is unknown.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Charla & Mirna
2. Oswald & Danny
3. Uchenna & Joyce
4. Dustin & Kandice
5. Eric & Danielle
6. Joe & Bill
~~7. Teri & Ian~~

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

--------------------

1. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 4
This week: Up three places

These two did really well this week. As I said to Bevis after the show as we lay next to each other in bed, “Who would’ve thunk that the bobsy twins would’ve been the lucky ones to catch the earliest flight.” *
This business of flights brings me to the first order of business….which is of flights. The first trip the teams had to make was from Mozambique to Warsaw, and because the producers of the show knew that such flights were difficult to get, each team was given ‘default tickets’, but had the option of trying to get earlier flights. Naturally all the teams were desperate to find an earlier flight and a good part of this episode was spent watching the teams sitting around in travel agencies trying to book tickets. Not very interesting to watch and totally a pot luck situation as to who could get a decent flight. D & K were the luckiest team and managed to get the earliest flights to Warsaw.
Lucky booking wasn’t the only skill that helped them, as one had been studying pianology (the art of playing the piano – also a word I just made up) which was very useful in the task where they had to tune a piano key. At the previous clue they learnt that they had to look for Chopin (actually a guy dressed as him, who had to sit out in the open air playing the piano for 3 days straight waiting for teams to arrive). One of theses girls (I’m guessing the non paino playing one), when she learned they had to look for Chopin said, “For real?” To which the other replied, “He’s dead.” It would have been funnier if she had noted that a dead composer is also a……decomposer. But you can’t have everything.
In spite of this faux pas, I still think these two played the smartest game, but not by much.

* Bevis and I are both happily married and so this is a joke!

2. Oswald & Danny

Last week: 2
This week: No change

In the war to book earlier tickets these guys tried to take advantage of Charla & Mirna’s charming personalities in talking with the travel agents. Suprisingly this did not work exceedingly well. I belief that after waiting 6-8 hours they finally got tickets out of Africa that were marginally better than the default ones.
The only other thing I recall about this team is that during the piano tuning task they broke two strings before finally being allowed to move on.

3. Uchenna & Joyce

Last week: 3
This week: No change

These two were the first to get in contact with a travel agent in Africa. Unfortunately they called the travel agency that O & D, C & M, and D & K had just arrived at. These three teams rather cruelly badgered the agent into pretty much hanging up on them! After they did managed to get a flight plan organized later, they missed one of their connecting flights, which the editing made to look like a complete disaster, but I don’t think they did too bad to finish third. They struggled a bit to find the piano tuning task as well.
If I was Phil, I would have slapped Uchenna for the amount of times he said, “For real?” upon being told they had come 3rd.

4. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 1
This week: Down three places

Personally I wouldn’t be taunting a taxi driver in Warsaw about whether he likes Polish Sausage or not, but that’s just me. What they didn’t know is that if you taunt one Polish person, they all know about it. This meant that no Pole would give them directions when they most needed it.
These two began to do the piano tuning task like everyone else so far, but being completely tone deaf had to abandon it after a while and do the other task while involved getting xrays of a mannequin for the clue hidden inside.

5. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 5
This week: No change

They say that the race is a tough test on any relationship and these guys are nearly at breaking point. Danielle doesn’t really do anything but look pretty, and Eric should have known that before they began, but instead he doesn’t miss an opportunity to put her down and insult her intelligence. I’ve heard him on numerous occasions refer to her as ‘knuckhead’. If she was my bitch, I’d treat her right. Anyway enough silliness. These two douche bags couldn’t get any decent flights due to being way behind from the previous leg of the race and so had to use the crappy default tickets, which put them 6 weeks and 3 timezones behind everyone else (ok I’m exaggerating).
For the first time I’ve seen on TAR (although it may have happened before), the two last teams were so far behind that the first teams were beginning the next leg of the race while they finish this one!!

6. Joe & Bill

Last week: 6
This week: No change

A non elimination round saved serial bores Uchenna & Joyce and now the other non elimination saves my most hated team!!! Where were they to save my beloved Rob & Amber! I will avenge thee! ;)
Anyhoo, these two got stuck in the same situation as Eric & Danielle, but chose the mannequin task which took them a bit longer. They are so far behind and now with the 30 minute penalty for coming last this week, they are sure to be gone next week….I hope.

--------------------

Last week's tips:

To be amended...

First Team:
Last Team:
Biggest Argument:
Smartest Team:

--------------------

Next week's tips:

First Team: Oswald & Danny.
Last Team: Charla & Mirna.
Biggest Argument: Eric & Danielle.
Smartest Team: Oswald & Danny.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 6

2007-05-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 6 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------
(Bevis’s intro begins)

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Uchenna & Joyce being the last team to reach the Pit Stop but the first team to be safe from elimination on the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located on the grass out the front of the Fortaleza de Maputo (literally, ‘Strength of Maputo) in Maputo, Mozambique.

The Detour for this leg was ‘Solve It’ or ‘Schlep It’. In ‘Solve It’, teams had to make their way one third of a mile to the Beyt al Chai hotel where they would put together a 62-piece puzzle that recreates an image from a style of local artwork known as Tinga Tinga. In ‘Schlep It’, teams made their way one mile to the Kijangwani Lumber Yard. Once there, they had to choose a local handcart and load two 50-pound logs into their cart. Once loaded, teams had to travel more than a mile to deliver the logs to a shipyard.

This leg's Roadblock had one team member learn how to use a traditional wooden weapon called a rungu used by members of the Maasai people by throwing it 65 feet to destroy clay targets in order to retrieve their next clue from inside.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Charla & Mirna
2. Dustin & Kandice
3. Teri & Ian
4. Oswald & Danny
5. Joe & Bill
6. Eric & Danielle
7. Uchenna & Joyce

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

(Bevis’s intro ends)

--------------------

1. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 1
This week: No change

They’ve done it again! I have to say that for the most part I didn’t find this episode very interesting as half of it was spend at the airport. As I’m writing this a couple of days after seeing the episode I can’t be sure of all the details, but I think everyone was told of a certain flight and then told that they had the option of finding a quicker way. Charla & Mirna were the first couple to take a risk and put fly to a destination knowing that they were only on a standby list to the connecting flight. This risk paid off big time and put and kept them way ahead of everyone else.
An amusing part of the episode was seeing Charla throwing up over the sick of a boat due to seasickness.

2. Oswald & Danny

Last week: 4
This week: Up two places

These two were my vote for dumbest team this week, as they were in first place, but decided they had enough time to stop at a market and buy some fruit. That is the only reason they ended up coming second.

3. Uchenna & Joyce - ”Marked For Elimination” (but SAFE!)

Last week: 7
This week: Up four places

As these two finished last in the non-elimination leg and didn’t finish first in this leg, they had to wait for 30 minutes after they reached Phil, before being checked-in. In spite of this no one overtook them while they were waiting, so they didn’t pay much of a penalty. Good on them I guess.

4. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 2
This week: Down two places

I don’t recall them doing anything noteworthy.

5. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 6
This week: Up one place

These guys had the worst luck this episode! The worst thing that happened to them was that they were told that they had got a couple of standby seats, got onto the plane, were all set to takeoff, when they were told that there was a mistake and they had to get off the plane. This stuffup ensured that a couple of other teams would finish ahead of them.

6. Joe & Bill

Last week: 5
This week: Down one place

I really wish they had finished last this week. I don’t even know why or how they are still in the race.

~~7. Teri & Ian~~: ELIMINATED!

Last week: 3
This week: Down four places

Between the two last teams the most likeable one was bound to go. Ian was really showing his stubborn side in this episode and insisted on sleeping at the airport despite Teri disagreeing with the idea. Turns out it made very little difference. At least now they can go back to Florida, or wherever old Americans go.

--------------------

Last week's tips:

First Team: Eric & Danielle. (Wrong)
Last Team: Teri & Ian. Correct!
Biggest Argument: Eric & Danielle. (Wrong)
Smartest Team: Danny & Oswald. (Wrong)

--------------------

Next week's tips:

First Team: Danny & Oswald.
Last Team: Joe & Bill.
Biggest Argument: Charla & Mirna.
Smartest Team: Danny & Oswald.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 5

2007-05-17T03:43:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 5 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------
(Bevis’s Catchup text)

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Rob & Amber being the last team to reach the Pit Stop and the fourth team to be eliminated from the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located on the Martial Glacier in Ushuaia, Argentina.

For the Roadblock, one team member had to use a large, landmine-seeking rat on a series of complicated leads and cords to find a race marker above a deactivated mine. Once their rat gave the signal that it had found something, an Apopo Mine Technician would search the area. When the Race marker was found, the team would receive their next clue.

This leg's Detour was ‘Pamper’ or ‘Porter’. In ‘Pamper’, teams had to travel half a mile to the Maputo Central Market, choose a nail polish kit, and convince people to pay them to paint their nails, which in Maputo is a job usually performed by men. Teams needed to earn at least 30 meticals, which is about one US dollar, to receive their next clue. In ‘Porter’, teams made their way two miles to Market de Janet where they would use their bare hands to fill 10 large 45-pound bags with coal and sew each of them shut. Then, teams had to carry one of the ten heavy bags to a specified address where the owner would hand them their next clue.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Oswald & Danny
2. Eric & Danielle
3. Teri & Ian
4. Joe & Bill
5. Dustin & Kandice
6. Uchenna & Joyce
7. Charla & Mirna
~~8. Rob & Amber~~

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

(Bevis’s Catchup text – end)

--------------------

1. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 7
This week: Up an impressive six places!

If I was giving each episode an individual title, I would call this one, ‘The Equaliser’, cause things happened that allowed the people at the back to catch up. Those who started off first, fell to the back of the pack and those at the back managed to get to the front. This trend was proven by Charla & Mirna who managed to make their way from last place to finish first. At what I think was the roadblock task, each team had to choose one of their members to lead a trained rat over a course to detect a defused landmine that had the flag they needed. Sound crazy, well it was. I kept imagining that they forgot to defuse one and suddenly the rat would be blown to smithereens, but that didn’t happen. C&M were the last team to complete this task but it was hard to judge how far behind the others they finished. The thing that put them ahead was the detour task, where teams had to choose between shoveling coal into sacks with their bare hands or paint the nails of people in a shopping alleyway. This is one of the situations that I mentioned one or two weeks ago where one of the tasks is just crap and puts people behind. Although it might seem a daunting task to convince passersby to part with even a few small coins to have their nails painted, this task was by far the quicker one for everyone that did it. C&M performed the task very well and were funny to watch as they persuaded even some men to have their nails painted.

Although I have commented in the past that these two generally annoy me, I was actually glad, albeit somewhat surprised to see them come in first. The are certainly a little left of center, but are quite entertaining to watch!

2. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 5
This week: Up three places

This was yet another team and another instance for these two where they failed to properly read clues. During the first task where they had to find another clue at an avalanche beacon with a tracking device, these two headed straight for the snowfield without bothering to get the tracking equipment. Upon realizing this and having to head back for it, it was funny to hear Charla and Mirna comment that the beauty queens really weren’t that smart. Interestingly enough the two blondes were the second team to chose the nail painting task over the coal shoveling. Even though they were previously behind, this choice allowed them to come in second.

3. Teri & Ian

Last week: 3
This week: No change

Hmmm, the third team to do the nail painting task. Not much to say about these two.

4. Oswald & Danny

Last week: 1
This week: Down three places

While C&M are by far the most unintentionally funny pair, these guys often cause me to laugh due to some of their jokes. O&D were the first of the teams who did the coal shoveling task to finish and when they arrived at the pitstop they were covered from head to toe in coal dust. I’m not sure which is which, but one of them came running up to the host Phil with his arms spread for a hug. The usually unflappable Phil who is meant to stand impassively next to a local in native dress, took off in a run in the other direction. It was very funny to watch. In the end they must have settled down and were given the well deserved 4th place.

Although due to all the equalizing in this leg this didn’t end up mattering, at the start of the episode during the avalanche beacon task these two finished it up last seemingly because they couldn’t figure out how the tracker worked. This caused them to become pretty frustrated with each other.

5. Joe & Bill

Last week: 4
This week: Down one place

Perhaps the most disturbing thing that I learn this episode was that they both claim to wear ‘thongs’ or ‘g-strings’. That is an image I could really do without. It became even clearer this leg that most of the other teams dislike these guys as much as I do.

6. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 2
This week: Down four places

How the mighty have fallen. I was happy to see these two finish so far back. Mostly cause I find Eric to be somewhat overbearing and bullying. His constant putdowns and ‘semi joking’ insults of his partner and girlfriend Danielle should give her a clue of what life will be like further down the road with this jerk. An example of this was seen when he blamed her for coming in behind Joe & Bill in the last minute footrace, but from what I could tell, he was also behind them when they made it to the mat.

7. Uchenna & Joyce - SAFE!

Last week: 6
This week: Down one place

Oooh, they were lucky this was a non-elimination round! From what I could see the main problem they had was finding the house where they had to deliver the sack of coal from their shoveling task. They were informed that if they didn’t finish the next leg in first place, they would incur a 30 minute waiting penalty before they could check-in.

--------------------

Last week's tips:

First Team: Oswald & Danny. (Wrong)
Last Team: Charla & Mirna. (Wrong)
Biggest Argument: Charla & Mirna. (Wrong) – It was Oswald & Danny on the ice.
Smartest Team: Oswald & Danny. (Wrong) – I guess it was Charla & Mirna.

--------------------

Next episode's tips: (as tipped in the comments last week, once the ‘double episode’ thing was realised)

First Team: Eric & Danielle.
Last Team: Teri & Ian.
Biggest Argument: Eric & Danielle.
Smartest Team: Danny & Oswald.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 4

2007-05-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 4 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------
For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Rob & Amber
2. Uchenna & Joyce
3. Eric & Danielle
4. Dustin & Kandice
5. Oswald & Danny
6. Teri & Ian
7. Joe & Bill
8. Charla & Mirna
~~9. David & Mary~~

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

1. Oswald & Danny

--------------------

Last week: 5
This week: Up four places

The editing didn’t really show us how they got to the head of the pack so easily, but somehow they did. I’m thinking it was mainly because everyone else was making a lot of mistakes. Obviously they also made the right choices and didn’t run into any bad luck, so good on them. Plus I picked them to come first so I’m glad they did.
One of them also made a very funny comment at the start of the episode, that I’m hoping Bevis noted, cause I didn’t write it down.

2. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 3
This week: Up one place

Eric made another comment about Danielle's boobs and they came second, that about sums up their input this episode. Oh no, I almost forgot Danielle showing her smarts by saying ‘Australia’ when she meant ‘Argentina’.

3. Teri & Ian

Last week: 6
This week: Up three places

I don’t know how these guys managed to come in third place. The stand out moments were when they couldn’t follow simple directions on a compass, eg. Going south, and the other thing was the trouble they had finding the clue box for the roadblock (although in fairness they were not the only team to go astray looking for it). Experience must count for something I guess cause often older teams like this stay in the race for far longer than I expect.

4. Joe & Bill

Last week: 7
This week: Up three places

I don’t like these guys and hope they are not in the race much longer. They must had been reading their instructions carefully this week as they didn’t veer off course this time. I'm looking forward to next week as the preview showed them getting into a big argument with Eric and Danielle.

5. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 4
This week: Down one place

I will mention here that all the teams at the back of the pack from here on were the teams that chose to do the ‘building’ task rather than the navigation task in the detour. In past series of TAR, Phil has announced why one task might be better than another, eg, one may favour strength, while another might be done quicker by someone with good attention to detail, etc. This does not seem to have happened this series, or if it has I just haven't been paying attention. As far as I can tell, one task is almost always just crappier than the other. D & C made a bad choice by going for this one. It was funny to hear one of them saying that their weakness was to over think things! The producers obviously included that because they knew people would find it an amusing thing for two beauty queens to say.

6. Uchenna & Joyce

Last week: 2
This week: Down four places

These guys are boring. I like them, but they are about as interesting to watch as paint dry in this race! I think they were only one of two teams to finish the construction of a signpost task as the other two who tried their hand at it left in frustration after a while. There was a bit on the boat toward the finishline where the old rivalry between this couple and Rob and Amber was brought up, but at that point I thought it was a red herring as I was really expecting Rob and Amber to be going, due to their stuffing up.

7. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 8
This week: Up one place

These two are truly an unintentional comedy duo! There was an advert on TV that stated that everybody loved Charla and how in this episode she would be asked to be a hero! WTF!??! Apparently to whoever does the advertising, Charla carrying stuff up a flight of stairs while Mirna yells at her is hero behaviour!!! Granted it did look hard for a little person, but seriously, she wasn’t saving lives or anything. And since when does everyone love her?
The best comedy was when Amber lied to them that there was a clue down a dirt track when there actually wasn’t. It was funny because they continued down the path a bit, and then had a ‘waaaait a minute’ moment after which Mirna insisted that being a lawyer made her know when people were lying! In that circumstance I would have thought common sense should have been enough. Later when they confronted Amber about it, she lied again that she had been directing the comment to Rob about something else. In an interview to camera about this Charla, commented that what Amber said just didn’t make sense!.....derrrrr, because she was obviously lying!

~~8. Rob & Amber~~: ELIMINATED!

Last week: 1
This week: Went very badly for them!

In TAR people are often eliminated because they either make one or more serious mistakes, or luck just isn’t with them. In the case of R&A, both of these factors played a major part. Mistakes were made early on and the final nail came through taking longer than another team to sort through a huge pile of letters.

Rob wanted to do the task that involved building a signpost that had the destinations of one of Magellan's journeys on it. Although he knew that Magellan set sail from Seville rather than...Guam I think, which was what Amber thought (this seemed to be the main 'trick' to this task), Rob didn't know that the Phillipines is not spelt 'P-H-I-L-L-I-P-E-A-N-S' (or something like that). Amber either didn't know or didn't notice, because that appeared to be the reason that they spent ages on the task and then finally decided, along with D & K, to quit the task and try the navigation. This set them at the back of the pack as I believe U & J who started after them were able to leave first. At some point D & K also got ahead of them. The funny thing was that when Rob and Amber began the navigation task, Rob correctly figured out the destination without needing to refer to the compass much. This was possibly because he had intercepted some directions that an air steward was intending to give to Uchenna! If only they had picked the other task instead!

Anyway when they hit the road block they were neck and neck with U & J with C & M just over 20 mins or so behind them. U & J seemed to find their letter from previous racers in the piles of envelopes they had to sort through, while Rob had bad luck and was searching through the wrong piles for too long. C & M caught up and Mirna seemed to find their letter pretty quickly as well.

While they did not win any friends on the race they bowed out quite gracefully I thought and their competitive drive will be missed from TAR - All Stars.

I'll finish up by listing their sneaky/underhanded behaviour on this leg:- Rob stealing directions meant for Uchenna, Stealing a taxi that C & M had called for and finally lying to C &M about where a clue box was. Truly a pair of sneaky bastards. ;)

--------------------

Last week's tips:

First Team: Oswald & Danny. Correct!
Last Team: Rob & Amber. Correct!
Biggest Argument: Charla & Mirna. Correct!
Smartest Team: Oswald & Danny.....Not sure, they came first, but I don't remember anything really clever they did. I'll wait for Bevis's judgment with this one and say I'm Wrong! unless he says otherwise.-----After conferring with the judge, Bevis has deemed me Correct!....on a technicality.

--------------------

Next week's tips:

First Team: Oswald & Danny.
Last Team: Charla & Mirna
Biggest Argument: Charla & Mirna.
Smartest Team: Oswald & Danny.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

.

TAR -All Stars Episode 3.

2007-04-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 3 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia ended with Kevin & Drew being the last team to reach the Pit Stop and the second team to be eliminated from the All Stars edition of the show. The Pit Stop was located in the town of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the Race:

1. Rob & Amber
2. Oswald & Danny
3. Joe &amp; Bill
4. Eric & Danielle
5. Uchenna & Joyce
6. Dustin & Kandice
7. Teri &amp; Ian
8. Charla & Mirna
9. David & Mary
~~10. Kevin & Drew~~

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the Pit Stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

--------------------

1. Rob & Amber

Last week: 1
This week: No change

Once again they finished first, but I’m a bit concerned by some happenings including them that appeared in the previews of next weeks episode. But I’m jumping ahead of myself. R&A got off to a good start in this episode by asking some locals for the address of a late night travel agency where they were able to book tickets on the earliest flight to the next destination. Apart from Rob taking a wrong turn based on a ‘feeling’ they went about their usual work and most of the time managed to stay ahead of the pack. Coming in first got them the extra prize of a home gym….as if they couldn’t already afford one!

2. Uchenna & Joyce

Last week: 5
This week: Up three places

I actually think these two played the smartest game on this leg. They were the second team to think about booking their tickets online rather than waiting for the airport counters to open. They even offer to buy the tickets of a few other teams who were also waiting at the airport. Unfortunately only one of the other teams provided the security code for their credit cards and so ended up on a later flight, but that was completely their faults. U&J also took advantage of asking locals for directions and I’m sure there was some other reason that made me think this, but I think they did this leg better than just about every other team, which jumped them up position wise, but not quite enough to beat R&A.

3. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 4
This week: Up one place

Eric has some serious explaining to do for that green tracksuit that he was wearing for the first part of this episode. He looked like the green M&M. Danielle once again proved herself fairly useless and held them up a bit at the fish transporting task. In fairness to her however, in this task where large, live fish had to be transported between breeding tanks, other team members had some fear issues with the fish too. Eric seemed to be the only one getting really annoyed has his partner for her slowness though.
E&D also had a bit of a run in with the old gay couple after they eavesdropped on them asking directions. The eavesdropping trick seems to be a common one in this game and the old gay guys tried to block E&D in with their car. It was pretty petty really.

4. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 6
This week: Up two places

I thought the beauty queens were gone when it got to the last 10 minutes of the show, cause when they reached the finish line, Phil told them that he couldn’t check them in as they had missed a clue! This forced them to back track somewhat to find the clue they had missed. But either the other teams were way behind, or the clue mustn’t have been far away, cause by the time they got back to the finish line, they were still in 4th place!

Other that that rather big stuff up the girls did very well and from the start of the episode kind of partnered up with Ian and Terri quite amicably. They also had a bit of bad luck when they were leaving the second task, as their car would not start, which allowed a couple of other teams to leave the parking lot before them.

5. Oswald & Danny

Last week: 2
This week: Down three places

These guys dropped back a bit from last week and had a fairly uneventful episode. The funniest (and perhaps most un-PC) comment goes to one of them when they reached the finish line and saw that the person dressed in national costume was a little person, they said, “Charla’s (the only little person in the race) gonna be in love!”

6. Teri & Ian

Last week: 7
This week: Up one place

Even though they teamed up with the beauty queens, they still managed to end up a couple of places behind them. The team they had a run in with was Charla and Mirna, after Mirna tried to barge in when they were talking to someone behind the counter at the airport. From what I could see Mirna was totally in the wrong and was just being rude. Ian called for security, but I don’t think anything came of it.
The second task, which was the choice of doing a 40ft rock climb or going on a white water rafting trip (everyone chose the rafting, which they apparently decided was quicker) was the cause of a bit of a scare for these two. Terri fell out of the raft into some pretty serious rapids, but they were quickly able to rescue her and in the interview afterwards Terri said that the whole thing was very exciting!

7. Joe & Bill

Last week: 3
This week: Down four places

Once again one of these guys demonstrated their inability to read instructions and didn’t read a vital part of a clue that mentioned a place name. They were very lucky to find Charla and Mirna by sheer chance, who surprisingly told them the other place name (big mistake on their part too). These guys should have come last because of the seriousness of their mistake, but again, luck saves another couple of smucks in the race.

8. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 8
This week: No change

These two have become the masters of eavesdropping, but whoa betide anyone to tried to take advantage of information that they discover!
I was highly amused by how terrified Mirna was by the fish and it certainly took her a while to build up the courage to pick them up.
The other humorous thing was when they grabbed some local, who told them he actually had to go to work, and dragged him through the second part of the race with them. Mirna even apologized when they got back into the car still in swimsuits after the rafting task, but he didn’t seem to mind. In their rush they also forgot the keys to the car in the changing tent and had to go back and get them at a crucial time.

~~9. David & Mary~~: ELIMINATED!

Last week: 9
This week: No change

Personally I really liked these guys and was sad to see them go......just kidding Bevis!

This was another team that had fish issues, with David pretty much standing in the tank just looking terrified at first, but once he finally started he really picked up speed and got through the whole task quite quickly.

As far as I could tell, the loss was Mary’s fault. David saw a sign and pointed out that he thought there was something important on it, but Mary pretty much told him to shut up and keep going straight. This resulted in them going way off course toward the end of the leg and ultimately being eliminated.

In the post ending interview they stated their love for each other, so alls well that ends well.

--------------------

Last week's tips:

First Team: Rob & Amber. Correct!
Last Team: Charla & Mirna. (Wrong) - I should have just stuck with Bevis's prediction as I did predict! ;)

Yield? No. Correct!
Fast Forward? No. Correct!
Elimination Week? Yes. Correct!
Biggest Argument: Eric & Danielle. Correct! - I'm disagreeing with Bevis's assessment here as I didn't really notice David and Mary arguing. I thought they were communicating in the same way they have always done. Eric's cracking it at Danielle in the fish task really stood out more for me.

Smartest Team: Rob & Amber. (Wrong) – I felt it was Uchenna & Joyce, pretty much for the same reason Bevis did.

--------------------

Next week's tips:

First Team: Oswald & Danny .
Last Team: Rob & Amber (based on the preview, and in shows like this teams I like almost always have bad luck. I'm pretty certain that if they don't leave they will finish near the back. Possibly I should be predicting the same as Bevis though.

Biggest Argument: Charla & Mirna.
Smartest Team: Danny & Oswald.

NB. I will not be predicting the yields, fast forwards or elimination weeks anymore, cause in the previous weeks I was just using Bevis predictions for these as I have no idea if there is any science behind these catagories.

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review of this same episode that BEVIS posted on his blog.

The trials and tribulations of babies.

2007-04-26T03:39:00.000-07:00

I won't go into a whole lot of detail about the birth of our son, apart from to say that at just over 9 pounds, it wasn't easy for my wife to push him out. As a guy, I must say that the toughest part of the pregnancy was hearing my wife yell out in pain at the contractions and effort of the pushing. It is not the most pleasant thing to hear, or feel I'm sure! When you see a doctor stiching up the incision that had to be made in your partners genitals to get the baby out, you wonder just how 'natural' the process really is.

Last night, was our first night at home with the new baby, whom we have named Jake. Our daughter went to stay with the wife's parents in the evening. Although Jake was very quiet during the day, at night he became pretty restless and started crying a lot. Mostly when one or both of us were nearly asleep. Thankfully it wasn't too difficult to settle him though.

Cut to 3:30am, when the wife's folks ring and tell us our daughter had woken, was crying and they couldn't settle her. Figuring she was homesick they kindly dropped her back at our place. She actually had the sniffles and pretty much woke up crying roughly every hour until the morning proper. Normally she sleeps through the night without any trouble, but for only the second time in her nearly 19 months we had to sleep her between us, cause it was just too frustrating to keep getting up to settle her. I think the wife and I got about between and hour or two of sleep the whole night. At 7:00am, she sent me to the shops to get some formula and baby bottles cause although she'd intended to exclusively breast feed, her nipples were already in extreme pain. I picked up a couple of danishes, some muffins, red bull and ice cream, just for good measure though.

I'm glad we have the support of family and friends who are sometimes annoying in the amount of times they all ring to see if there is anything they can do, but it is appreciated. Jake has been very sleepy today, so we can only hope that remains so tonight as well. I fear we're in for another sleepless night though.

Good news everyone!

2007-04-24T03:10:00.000-07:00

At around 5am this morning, my wife gave birth to a 9 pound baby boy! Now begin the sleepless nights and learning to deal with two babies. As if I didn't have enough to do. Seriously though I'm thrilled to have a son and daughter now.

TAR - All Stars Episode 2.

2007-04-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 2 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

--------------------

(Bevis's Recap Begins)

The last TARAS episode we saw here in Australia was the premiere episode of the season, and ended with John Vito & Jill being the last team to reach the pit stop and the first team to be eliminated from the All Stars edition of the show. The pit stop was located at the top of Mirador Cotopaxi, a mountain in the Cotopaxi National Park, just outside the city of Quito, Ecuador.

For the record, this was the order in which the teams reached Phil on the mat last episode, and the order in which they started this leg of the race:

1. Rob & Amber
2. Oswald & Danny
3. Teri & Ian
4. Eric & Danielle
5. Joe & Bill
6. Dustin &amp; Kandice
7. Uchenna & Joyce
8. Charla & Mirna
9. David & Mary
10. Kevin & Drew

Note: If you're already ahead of this point in the series, please refrain from giving any spoilers in your comments. Thank you.

As always, I’ll provide my thoughts on each team in this episode, listing them in the order in which they arrived at the pit stop (hence the 'Spoiler Alert!').

(Bevis's Recap ends)

--------------------

1. Rob & Amber

Last week: 1
This week: No change

My favourite team came in first, yeah! At the start of this episode it was a bit worrying due to their planning an alternate route to Chile from the majority of the other teams, which would have gotten them there a little earlier. But due to bad luck this flight was delayed and so everyone else apart from Oswald and Danny got to the next airport before them. Thankfully (from my thinking at least) due to the equalising nature of certain spots in this game the delay didn't end up costing them much. This factor of the game where bad luck can be cancelled out by these 'time equalisers' can be pretty frustrating and adds to the random nature of the whole thing.

Rob proved his background in construction could come in handy during the detour task when he and Amber had to operate a large front end loader to shift a large pile of dirt. They finished this task first which allowed them to stay in front until the pit stop which was the next stage in this leg.

Although they tried to be too smart for their own good, perhaps with the initial delayed flight problem, the fact that they still came first demonstrated that they were the smartest in this leg IMO.

2. Oswald & Danny

Last week: 2
This week: No change

Not too much to say about these gays, I mean guys, cause the editors decided they weren't interesting enough to show much of. They must have had the same idea as Rob and Amber with the initial flight plans, and still managed to come in second place, so apart from the bad luck, they must be doing something right. The highlight was seeing Oswald crying at the apparent beauty of some desolate piles of white rock called Moon Valley!

3. Joe & Bill

Last week: 5
This week: Up two places

Another fairly boring couple. One of them read the instructions correctly in the detour task that stated that each member must take turns and the other ignored him. Only at the end did he realise his mistake and the other guy had one turn with the loader. I haven't seen anything yet to endear these two to me.

4. Eric & Danielle

Last week: 4
This week: No change

I'm not sure if Eric implied that Danielle was a dumbass near the start of this episode, but such a term could have been applied to him in the puzzle task. One member of the team had to enter a room that had pictures of various locations and their names on the wall. There were also a number of alphabet letters scattered around the place. It shouldn't take a genius to detect what the idea was. Still Eric ended up being the first or second into the room and one of the last few out.

I feel that Eric has a lot in common with Rob in terms of how ruthless they can be with their lies and behaviour, but of the two, Eric comes off more bullying and less personable IMO. I don't like him, but I would totally sleep with Danielle! ;)

5. Uchenna & Joyce

Last week: 7
This week: Up two places

The funniest thing about these guys was the way Joyce somewhat bragged of her observational abilities and yet nearly finished last in the letter finding puzzle! The look on Uchenna's face in the cab when Joyce was admitting that she didn't do too well was priceless. I've never seen anyone do a better facial impression that expressed the word, "DERRRR!"

6. Dustin & Kandice

Last week: 6
This week: No change

Whichever of these two did the letter puzzle, figured it out very quickly (or so the editors showed us), so there is some cleverness there. There was a funny scene where they were scared off by 'Mirna and Shmirna', who lost the plot over them following their car!

The only stuff up they made was taking a wrong turn, but they rectified that by asking directions. I'm curious to see how they go next week.

NB. I understand why Bevis thinks they were the smartest team, but they finished too far back in the pack to classify as 'smartest' in my book.

7. Teri & Ian

Last week: 3
This week: Down four places

These guys did nothing notable in this episode that I can recall.

8. Charla & Mirna

Last week: 8
This week: No change

I take back what I said last week about liking these two. They are clearly nuts! They get so stressed about everything and start yelling at each other and anyone else who's around. They made such a stupid mistake cause of their hotheadedness when they stopped their car (they were following a taxi-driver) cause Dustin and Kandice were following them. They confronted the beauty queens and demanded that they share the amount they were paying the taxi driver or get lost. Dustin and Kandice smartly decided to leave and went ahead while Mirna yelled at the driver about money and a couple of other teams overtook them! Absolute morons.

9. David & Mary

Last week: 9
This week: No change

Why the editors didn't incorporate 'dueling banjos' into the show's soundtrack for this couple is beyond me. They were very nice at the beginning when they stopped to tow Charla and Mirna out of some mud. It actually seemed like they might make an alliance. Then towards the end of the leg C&M overtook Dave and Mary in their car and it was 'game on moles'. Mary realised that being nice to other teams wasn't working for her and it was no more mrs nice hillbilly.

Oh, and calling out the answer to the puzzle test while a nufty from another team who hadn't solved it yet is standing behind you, ain't too clever either!

~~10. Kevin & Drew~~: ELIMINATED!

Last week: 10
This week: No change

Oh, lol, lol! Are these guys are a joke, seriously? How did they make it to 'All-Stars'???? Apparently Drew was the only person to need oxygen after getting altitude sickness after going 10m above sea level or something like that. Then Drew got them bogged in the mud and after using Kevin as a tree to pull them out, he almost dragged him along behind the car! Very dangerous and thoughtless.

Drew was just mean spirited when he pulled the hillbillies bags out of the overhead compartments at the front of the plane. It achieved nothing apart from annoying other people. He is either a hypochondriac, or is on some serious painkillers, cause he was clearly more focused on his own discomfort rather than what was going on around him.

The icing on the cake for these guys was when Drew insisted on driving at 40kph even after they had moved into the 50kph area as neither of them saw the sign. This stupidity of course allowed every other team to get ahead of them. When Drew stormed off after Phil told them they were last, it was a case for good riddence to bad rubbish for me.

--------------------

Last week's tips:

First Team: Rob & Amber. Correct!
Last Team: Kevin & Drew. Correct!
Yield? No. Correct!
Fast Forward? No. Correct!
Elimination Week? Yes. Correct!
Biggest Argument: Eric & Danielle. (Wrong) - This was clearly Charla & Mirna.
Smartest Team: Rob & Amber. Correct! (although Bevis disagrees - and I'll state here that in my tips whomever I say is the 'smartest' team has to come in the top 4 teams as well as doing something I consider 'smart', because smarts without application is useless. Ultimately Bevis and I don't have to agree on these things and such is the beauty of us both doing reviews. But seeing as how I'm right and he disagrees, logically he must be wrong! ;p hehe)

--------------------

Next week's tips:

First Team: Rob & Amber.
Last Team: Charla & Mirna (mostly to be different from Bevis, who I suspect will be right).
Yield? No.
Fast Forward? No.
Elimination Week? Yes.
Biggest Argument: Eric & Danielle.
Smartest Team: Rob and Amber (I can't help it, I like em. They do have to come in the top 4 and do something smarter than the others in that group though).

If you haven’t already done so, check out Bevis's review of this same episode on his blog (once he's posted it).

.

TAR - All Stars Episode 1.

2007-04-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

... Spoiler Alert! ... Spoiler Alert! ...

If you haven't yet seen (and you intend to see) episode 1 of The Amazing Race Series 11 – All Stars Edition (TARAS), do not read any further!

Most importantly: If you're already ahead of the episode I'm reviewing where you live, please refrain from giving any spoilers to the rest of us in the comments. Thank you.

Also …

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm doing the reviews of this season as inspired by Bevis who will be posting his own (likely much more comprehensive!) reviews on his blog, so anyone who's interested can view the perhaps differing opinions of two evil masterminds.

You will also likely notice that the format of both of our reviews will be roughly the same and I give all credit to Bevis for the layout and finding source material (ie. photos, etc) .

The first episode of The Amazing Race All Stars began much the same as every other series with the introduction of the contestants, so I’ll begin by giving my initial opinions of the couple in this season.....

Host (lucky) Phil - To me this guy is a poor man's Jeff Probst (from Survivor). I don't dislike him, but there is something weird about him. I think it's just that I find it hard to read his emotional state from his facial expressions. After hosting all the previous TAR seasons, he is certainly very competent at his job.

--------------------

1. Rob & Amber

Having watched every episode of every season of Survivor (except most of the last season due to family commitments), I really like these guys. Granted they are pretty ruthless, charmingly arrogant and often seem like they'd stab their grandma in the back for $1 million, but hey they are interesting to watch! In the last TAR season that they participated in, all the other contestants were obsessed with them as they already had celebrity status from Survivor. It looks as though already in All Stars, the others are shaping up to do the same thing. In fact in the first episode another couple has already told them how great it was to actually meet them!

I really hope these guys win as they came season in the other season and they have only won $2 million dollars from Survivor, so they really need the money!

2. Oswald & Danny

I would say that they are the token gay guys, but there is another gay couple so I can't. From what I've seen so far, they seem to be quite nice and have been reasonably friendly with a couple of other teams. They were also working well together and often singing each others praises. As it's only the first episode, and I didn't see the other season they were in, I don't know what they're capable of.

3. Teri & Ian

Being ageist (joking!), I don't usually like the older teams much (true). They made have more experience than the others, but that often doesn't keep they from usually ending up close to or at the end of the pack and making stupid mistakes. I have been suprised in other seasons that the older couple usually do better than I expect, but often stay longer than I think they should, due to good luck for them, by other team making even bigger stuff ups and coming last.

4. Eric & Danielle

Eric did well with his previous male partner in another season, and yet has dumped him for one half of a more attractive couple, who did much worse than them in the same season. Because of this I feel that Eric is carrying a dead weight in All Stars, but time will tell.

5. Joe & Bill

This is the other gay couple. To be honest I haven't really developed any opinion of them at all cause they were barely featured in the first episode. All I recall about them is that they named their team after their pet dog, 'Guido'!

6. Dustin & Kandice

Dumb and dumber if you ask me. However I may be pandering to the stereotype. This is another couple I don't really have a 'sensible' opinion on. They didn't do much this episode.

7. Uchenna & Joyce

I believe they are the only team in All Stars to have won the previous season they were in, just beating Rob and Amber in that one. From the comments that they often make, they really seem to struggle with the concept of their relationship (possibly as a result of finding it difficult to have children) and they had a number of stressful incidents in the season that they won. Overall they do seem happy together most of the time and clearly have something going for them. To be honest I find them pretty boring to watch and can't stand the hairstyle she currently has (this haircut may have something to do with her head being shaved in their previous season though).

8. Charla & Mirna

As you might be able to tell, Charla is a little person and she certainly doesn't let it impede her in any way! Both these girls are very self assured and intelligent and I quite like them. I still have a feeling they won't do brilliantly, but I hope they at least make it to the top 5.

9. David & Mary

Hillbillies.

10. Kevin & Drew

When I first saw the pic of these guys I thought they were cancer patients, but it turns out they are just incompetent and slow. Firstly one of them was being beaten in a footrace by Charla who is probably between 3 and 4 feet tall, then later that guy falls over getting out of a car and thinks he's dislocated his shoulder, then they get a flat tyre and end up driving for quite a distance on the flat cause they believed that changing it would have set them back to0 far (possibly right as it turned out). I'd be very suprised if these clowns last all that long at all.

~~11. John Vito & Jill~~: ELIMINATED!

I think Jill is pretty cute, so I would've liked to have seen her around a bit longer, but overall I didn't have much vested interest in this team. A few of the teams whet to the wrong entrance to some national park and the delay put them all at the back of the pack. Ultimately it was just these two who paid the price for the mistake that a few had made.

--------------------

Next week's tips:

First Team: Rob & Amber.
Last Team: Kevin & Drew.
Yield? No.
Fast Forward? No.
Elimination Week? Yes.
Biggest Argument: Eric & Danielle.
Smartest Team: Rob & Amber .

If you haven’t already done so, check out the review Bevis has posted!
.

Newz Flash!

2007-04-11T03:21:00.000-07:00

In conjunction with Bevis enterprises, a deal has been signed whereby I will be posting alternative episode reviews of the tv show, The Amazing Race - All Stars series! By alternative I mean that they will be different from the ones that he is already famous for posting about. Amongst the 8000 other TV shows he already reviews on his afore-linked to blog.

So after reading Bevis's well thought out and intelligent reviews of each episode, you can come here and read a hastily written, gibberish account of my opinions of what happened. Aren't you lucky? This is only something I intend to do for this series and this show, just cause I want to see if it's fun and I like to steal the good ideas of others. Bevis is well aware of this and has endorsed it (probably cause in comparison his reviews will look even better!).

So stay tuned for the first episode coming soon!

PS. People overseas who see the show before we do in Australia, please resist the urge to spoil by mentioning stuff we don't about know yet....and I ain't referring to electricity or bathing!

I'm late, I'm late...

2007-04-01T23:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time to blog recently as there has been too much going on in RL. Our 2nd baby is almost due and we had a false alarm the other week. We had some legal proceedings (working in our benefit) a couple of weeks back and it's my birthday in a few days. And that's just for starters. I'll explain all in detail when I have more time. In the meantime be well.

2007-03-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

The following is something that was sent to me in an email. I don't know who came up with it otherwise I would credit them, but it wasn't me. Likely this has circulated with everyone else on the planet, but I just thought it was funny enough to post. Plus I don't have anything better to say.

When Barry Dawson goes swimming he doesn't get wet, the water gets Barry Dawsoned.

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Barry Dawson.

Barry Dawson counted to infinity - twice.

Barry Dawson invented every colour. Except pink. Tom Cruise invented pink.

When Barry Dawson does a pushup, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the Earth down.

Barry Dawson hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.

Barry Dawson gave Mona Lisa that smile.

Barry Dawson can slam a revolving door.

Barry Dawson once visited the Virgin Islands. They are now The Islands.

Barry Dawson's calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Barry Dawson.

Barry Dawson can speak Braille.

Barry Dawson's tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. Ever.

Superman owns a pair of Barry Dawson pyjamas.

Barry Dawson owns the greatest Poker Face of all-time. It helped him win the1983 World Series of Poker despite him holding just a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoly card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game Uno.

Barry Dawson sleeps with a night light. Not because Barry Dawson is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Barry Dawson.

Barry Dawson doesn't pop his collar, his shirts just get erections when they touch his body.

Once a cobra bit Barry Dawson's leg. After five days of excruciating pain, the cobra died.

Barry Dawson divides by zero.

Barry Dawson is always on top during sex because Barry Dawson never f***s up.

When Barry Dawson exercises, the machine gets stronger.

Barry Dawson doesn't use pickup lines, he simply says, "Now."

Barry Dawson sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled drinking ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Barry kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.

Barry Dawson can kill two stones with one bird.

Barry Dawson once had an erection while lying face down. He struck oil.

Barry Dawson once devoured a whole wheel-barrow full of clay to prove to a friend that the expression "*****ting bricks" wasn't just a figure of speech.

The only time Barry Dawson was wrong was when he thought he had made a mistake.

More things you wanted to know about me, but couldn't be bothered asking!

2007-03-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

I'm empathic. That's right, I can read peoples minds! No wait, that's telepathic. I can however read and feel people's emotions acutely. Now I know what you're thinking (maybe I am telepathic), you assume that everyone can read peoples emotions. But that's not really true, as most folk are very good at putting up masks and barriers to appear happy, when they are actually miserable, or pretend that they don't like someone, when they actually have a massive crush on them. Well, I can see through their false facades, and what's worse, if I'm around them too long I start to feel the same way as them. I gotta be honest and say that this is part of the reason I'm not a huge people person. I don't hate everyone, but in RL, I don't get along with a huge amount of people. I'm not a social retard or anything, I just don't 'click' strongly with a great deal of humans. Bears on the other hand.....

When I am in a shopping centre or any crowded area I really have to focus on blocking out the 'emotional' static from everyone around me otherwise it feels really oppressive. It doesn't stop me going out, but it often keeps me from completely relaxing when going out. When I was single I did consider becoming a hermit and living out away from society, but then where would I plug in my Xbox? How would I access porn? No that wouldn't have done at all. Still the idea of living like Yoda might be cool for a while.

Empathy of any kind is vitally important in a relationship I feel, and I think it's why my wife and I get along. I see other couples and it frustrates me when one side can't tell that they are really shitting the other, or that they don't even care that they are doing it. I can tell very quickly when my wife is losing her patience with me and often before she starts throwing stuff at me. Then I can act appropriately. So I will end this post with some kind of moral lesson (yes there's a first time for everything). Pay attention to the people around you (that you care about), notice how they are feeling and act accordingly. If you're normally selfish, stop focussing only on how things effect you and give a thought to the fact that you are little more that a single multi celled organism amoungst an ocean of billions of other multi celled organisms on a planet that sits in a sea of infinite space. And to quote the end of a Monty Python song, "And pray that there's intelligent life, somewhere out in space, cause there's bugger all down here on earth."

C'est Geek Chic

2007-03-11T17:23:00.000-07:00

My inner Star Wars geek and inner martial arts practioner have finally celebrated together upon seeing this inspired creation.

Yes, it is a Darth Vader like suit of Samurai armour!! I believe it costs a few thousand dollars and is initially only going to be available in Japan, so I won't be owning one anytime soon.

I realise that many people who read this blog might not be interested in such a bizarre work of art, but too bad! It's not always about you ok. ;-)

So I'm unfit again.

2007-03-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

After a break of a few months I finally got back to Ninjutsu training last night. And it damn near killed me! In my time off I did bugger all exercise (mostly because of the heat). Well no where near the amount required to get the heart rate up properly. As a result of throwing myself back in and turning up on a night where they were having black belt training stuff, it was a case of too much too soon. I did part of the previous class as well and about two thirds of the way into the b.belt class I was ready to throw up on my opponent as I felt that exhausted. I had to pull out a bit early and just sit down. Not only did I physically feel like crap, but I felt like I was letting my training partner down. I must get my fitness back up to an acceptable level. What is hard is that in my job I'm pretty much sitting down for nearly 12 hours straight for each shift. I don't think my boss would accept the idea of replacing our chairs with exercise bikes or treadmills though.

Holiday excursion

2007-03-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

I took the family to the Melbourne Aquarium during the school holidays. We went in the morning, in the middle of the week, cause my thinking was that other families wouldn't have shift working dads who had wednesdays off, so it shouldn't be too crowded. WRONG! It was very busy and we had to wait in a pretty long queue in a mid 30's summer day, with our baby who we found out later had a cold. After negotiating the crowd and paying the exorbitant entry fee we finally made it inside and had look at some of the tanks with a variety of fish in them. It was about this time that I realised that fish aren't particularly interesting and to be honest I was more interested in the structural integrity and engineering of the tanks. The baby seemed to be only slightly more impressed than me and was equally amused by all the kids running around. And where there's kids there are prams. Thousands of them I'm sure. We also had one which although essential with a young child is very annoying. There are a number of people that seem to think that it is easier for someone pushing a bulky pram to be able to move around, than it is for them to move their fat arses and take one step to the side.

As anyone who has been to the aquarium before would know, there are a number of levels in the place and although there were escalators, we had to take the (very slow) lifts thanks to aformentioned pram. There just happened to be a number of.....'non-able bodied people' at the aquarium that day and one of them was in the first lift with us in her wheelchair and her carer. As I was standing there holding the pram, this wheelchair bound young woman reached out and grabbed my hand! Now I should state that I'm not a big fan of being touched by anyone, so someone who's intentions I could not read touching me kind of creeped me out a bit. She started to draw my hand towards her face and I believe she was trying to rub my hand on her cheek, which was kind of sweet in an odd sort of way. Then the carer noticed and told her to be more gentle and I drew my hand back. She still reached out again and tried to grab my hand and when I moved it out of range she reached further and grabbed my t-shirt and pulled on it! This time it was my turn to tell her to be gentle and I moved back as far as I could in the small lift and thankfully the door opened and we could all get out.

The aquarium itself is a very interesting place and had it been less busy we would have been able to take more in and read the info about the fish etc, but it was very hard to get to some of the smaller tanks, for crowds of children and fat parents. The highlight was the 'Oceanarium' which is on the bottom level, where the tank extends over head and and pretty much all around you. This tank has huge sharks and stingrays and all sorts of fish who's identities are a mystery to me. My daughter and wife seemed to like this area as much as me. It is also a bit of fun trying to find the exit in that place as well. After escaping and stopping in at Southbank we headed home.

It was also my mum's 60th birthday so we went out to a nice chinese restaurant for dinner while the sister in-law baby sat. A pretty great day overall. Apart from baby being grumpy, the crowds and the heat.

NB. I just wanted to make it clear that I have nothing against non-able body/mental people (don't know the politically correct term) and if an able bodied person had done the same thing to me in that lift it would have equally creeped me out. Fat people however..... ;-)

Crap!

2007-02-28T15:48:00.000-08:00

Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while would know that about 7 months back I mentioned that my car broke down and I ended up shelling out over 3 grand to have the engine reconditioned. I was told that this should keep it running well for at least a few more years. Well a couple of days ago on my way back from work, it broke down again. Dead as a dodo. We had to get it towed and expect it to be the internal computer that's kicked it. We can't afford a new car right now, and I'm worried about the expense of having it fixed. Everything else in life was going so well, that I should've expected something like this.

In better news, our annoying neighbour and her kids moved out a couple of weeks back. I think they were evicted actually. The new ones are a young couple who we haven't met, but I hope they'll be less bothersome.

The dreaded Huntsman.

2007-02-23T00:51:00.000-08:00

If you are in or around our garage area at night, you are likely to see our huge (about the size of my hand with it's legs out) friendly neighbourhood huntsman spider. Now, as long as it stays the hell away from me and makes no attempts to enter our house, I'm ok with it it living. The dog sleeps in the garage too and hasn't complained about this other guest, so he/she must be alright. Come to think of it, the dog doesn't talk so if he did have a problem, it'd be hard to communicate it to me. But I digress.

The other night I was leaving work at 11:00pm and went out to the, by then empty carpark. As I was unlocking the door I glance at the roof of the car and there staring me in the face was the huntsman spider. As it was in the middle of the roof, the idea of trying to flick it off would have been a risky one, as these suckers can move pretty fast. As I already had the door open I quickly got in and had the stupid thought that maybe if the car was going fast enough it would fly off. Yeah right, as if an eight legged creature that can climb vertical surfaces and create sticky web is really going to have trouble moving about on my car. As I drove off I was very lucky I didn't crash on the way home cause every few seconds I was turning around to keep an eye on every window of the car. A short way into the journey I did see it crawling down the back window towards the boot. Long story short, I made it home safely and using my electric side mirrors to check the sides of my car I managed to leap out and close the door behind me without another sight of the horrid arachnid. The next day (in daylight) I checked the boot, but couldn't see it. Now I am filled with the dread that the awful beast has made it's nest somewhere in the innards of my vehicle. Anyone want to buy a 92 Magna with possible spider infestation?

White trash review

2007-02-22T00:24:00.000-08:00

I really feel sorry for Britney Spears. Recently she went into rehab for one day, came out of rehab, shaved her head, went out with a silly wig on and then checked back into rehab again. Poor moppit, if I've been married to K-Fed I'd probably go a bit crazy too. I can only imagine that the shaving of her head was because she'd already flashed the world her other shaved bits after getting out of a cab with no underwear on, and so was making a statement. I don't judge her though and hope she can get her crap together and start acting like a normal mother to her kids. She doesn't need to try and be a Paris Hilton wannabe and hang around with jerks. If only she'd met a great guy like me when I was single. Maybe she could have helped me out with my fledgling rap career?

Oh no, not him again!

2007-02-16T01:54:00.000-08:00

In spite of popular demand, I've returned to blogging. Seriously I was getting hundreds of emails a day begging me to post about something, anything........would you believe 10's of emails a month........how about an SMS and and a wrong number on my mobile. Nevertheless I'm back and well rested, kinda. I've actually been pretty busy with work, practicing and designing new magic effects, training and avoiding all the nappie changes that I can.

I did take a week off from work to have some family time, but it was during the school holidays, so when we went to places like the Aquarium or the Zoo, the place was swarming with other peoples hatchlings, prams, and worst of all, other people themselves. I'll write about our Aquarium visit in another post, cause it was that much fun, and I don't want to cram all my banal anecdotes into my first piece.

Suprisingly, even though I'm doing more work (extra shifts due to others holidays), our workdays have really quietened down recently. Partly cause the rubes are becoming a little more use to the system and also because we have written some scripts and programs to make our job easier. I had a very nice pay packet this month in part for my butt busting ( to get money to prepare for the next child and some big bills) , but also I received extra pay for some of the public holidays I will have to work (the bane of shift work). So all is ok on the financial front...for a little while at least. We ain't rich, but as I get paid monthly it's good not to be too worried about whether we'll be struggling just before the next pay day.

The wife is big as a house and still has a couple of months to go. She's completely over it and mostly we have to sleep in separate beds cause she has to get up numerous times during the night and that kinda makes sleeping hard for me. We find ourselves apologising a lot to each other these days. Her, because of hormonal outbursts and me because she doesn't get my damn dinner on the table in time........kidding! I just get frustrated and feel helpless sometimes, not that I would ever want to be pregnant.

It's good to be back. Anyone thinking about a blog rest, I can recommend it!

Blog rest

2007-01-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

I am taking a blogging vacation. I have been less and less inclined to write about stuff recently and have a lot going on in the real world, so have decided to formally give myself a blog break. I believe such things aren't entirely uncommon. Last year was my first year of actually trying to write online stuff, and quite frankly I'm suprised I posted as much as I did. I may not post for a month or maybe more. I will try and stop by some of my favourite blogs to say hi, or make some stupid comment, but don't expect to see much action here for at least a few weeks. I'd also like to say thanks to anyone who has ever posted a comment here....unless they've been mean, those people can go to hell. ;-)

As well as being my first year blogging, 2006 was my first full year as a parent, the year our second child was conceived, the year I finished my 3rd uni degree, the first full year in my current job, the year we bought our first house, the year when one of my sets of grandparents both died, as well as lots of other stuff happening that I can't bring to mind now.

So this is goodbye for now, but not forever. Mwwhaaaahaah!!!

Is Borat For You?

2006-12-20T01:38:00.000-08:00

I haven’t really felt like writing about much recently, but after seeing the movie, Borat, I felt inspired to get back on the keyboard. For those of you who don’t know, the movie is a mockumentary about Sasha Baron Cohen’s character, Borat, who basically seems to have been created to allow him to pretend to be a foreigner and insult…..well just about everyone. If you are easily offended, or even moderately offended by ‘controversial’ humour, then this probably isn’t the movie for you. I felt the film started off slowly with his initial jokes, such as his introducing the people in his home village in Kazakhstan and pointing out the town rapist while chastising him with “naughty, naughty,” to be not particularly funny, but an insight into the fictional world that Borat lives in. He also has a passionate kiss with a woman who he then introduces as his sister, the number 4 top prostitute in Kazakhstan. I felt all this was a little awkward and wondered where he was going with the whole thing. Strangely enough it was the ‘very’ offensive stuff that was the funniest. Now it should be pointed out that the actor is Jewish himself, before being too disgusted at Borats rather ‘medieval’ attitude that all Jewish people are evil, poisoning monsters. One of the funniest parts of the film was when he and his director accidentally end up at some sort of bed and breakfast run by a friendly, older Jewish couple. Borat and his director are terrified that they will be killed during the night (by this harmless pair) and actually make a run for it. At this point I should explain that probably 85% of the people that he interacts with in this movie, aren’t in on the joke and genuinely seem to think that he is a reporter from another country, who is just experiencing severe culture shock. An example of where this works well is perhaps the most disturbing and disgusting scene of the film where he ends up wrestling nude with his fat director in a nice hotel. The fight continues downstairs (after getting on an elevator filled with some shocked other guests, and into a reception room where there is a dinner for a large group of merchant bankers taking place. The looks on some of the people in that room were priceless!

The whole point of the movie is that Borat is sent to America to learn some good stuff that can be brought back and implemented in Kazakhstan. Once there he begins a quest to find Pamela Anderson and make her his wife. Of course hilarity and numerous disasters ensue. There are some things that seem very odd while watching it, but at the end of the film make sense, eg. The rubber ‘fist’ dildo.

In my opinion as well as having ‘shock’ value, the film also pokes fun at America and people in general. The number of people he attempts to greet by introducing himself and then kissing them on both cheeks, who either swear violently at him, or actually run away, shows how fearfully some people live their lives. There is a whole lot of fun and a reasonable amount of frightening nudity here, but you have to have a broad sense of humour and remember it is all a joke to ‘get’ this film. I liked it overall, but my wife hated it (even though she was laughing a lot!). I give it 7 out of 10.

Bright lights.

2006-12-09T23:06:00.000-08:00

We've all seen them. Perhaps you live in one? Those houses that every year around this time make the power companies rich by lighting up brighter than Chernobyl with lighting decorations. You'll be driving at night and suddenly become distracted by some bright lights made up of luminous Santas, reindeer, candy canes, icicles and various other gaudy christmas accoutrements. Chrismas whores I say! Fire hazard I exclaim! Ugly eyesores, I bitch! Why someone would go to the trouble of dressing up the house with electric lights to draw attention to themselves is beyond me. Some spend a small fortune redecorating their front yards to look like a European Christmas scene. If this is how the outside looks, I'd hate to see the inside. It's no wonder they call it the silly season with behaviour like that. What would baby Jesus think, I wonder? Still I suppose the kids must like it. Just call me scrooge. What do others think about extreme Xmas decor?

NB. I am happy to announce that my Blogger commenting problem seems to have been fixed.
Also I did not steal the idea for this post from Halfheartedhack, as it was in draft before I noticed that she had posted a very similar gripe.

You get what you pay for

2006-12-04T16:08:00.000-08:00

Ok, now I'm pissed! A couple of weeks back I moved to that Blogger Beta thing and since then I've had nothing but problems. Firstly I can't browser blogs in Firefox like I use to, cause the comments go all crazy. Secondly, instead of just being able to sign in with my username, I have to use an email address. And thirdly I've had some issues with uploading photos, but that is a normal Blogger problem, so I'm not too annoyed about that. I would have put up with all this without comment, but for the last few days when I've tried to comment on some of my favourite blogs (while logged in as myself) I get this message: "Error We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it."
I get this on 80% of the blogs I have attempted to comment on recently.
Not only is it a crime for the blogging world to be denied of my humorous and witty comments (also modest), but other bloggers might think that I haven't been visiting their sites for a bit! So to anyone who may be thinking this (don't laugh, there might be someone!), I apologies on behalf of Blogger. I have a good mind to write someone an angry email. If anyone has experienced similar issues (and can still send comments), please let me know. I suppose we get what we pay for. Apart from these incidents I really like Blogger and think that in general it's a good web application.

Oh joy, it's nearly christmas

2006-12-02T20:29:00.000-08:00

I have mixed feelings about Christmas this year. It'll be good cause our daughter will be nearly 15 months and beginning to appreciate that this is a different time of year with fun stuff going on. Also good as I've bought my wife some perfume and a trumpet (it's ok cause she doesn't read my blog). The trumpet, cause although she already has one, it's pretty old and battered, which affects the sound of it and I don't think she's ever had a new one. Obviously she is also able to play the damn thing quite well, otherwise it would be a complete waste of money and would merely annoy me as she learned how to use it.

I got an Xbox 360 earlier in the year and stated that I didn't really need anything for Christmas cause of that treat. But the wife (bless her) still wanted to get me stuff. Hey, who am I to stop her! We realise that pretty much from next year on all the present money will be spent on the kids, so it's the end of self indulgent presents for us.

The other sucky thing will be the annoying transit between my family and the wife's family for two dinners. As I don't eat a great deal in general, having two huge meals forced upon me kinda makes me feel a bit ill. They both want to see their only grandchild, so it's not much of a choice to try and get out of one of them. As punishment I'm going to subject them to one of my semi annual magic shows. That'll teach em.

Good news everyone!

2006-11-28T18:52:00.000-08:00

I have two pieces of good news. The first is that my wife got me a Test Tube Alien! It does say ages 7+ on the packet and I'm 31 so it must be ok for me to use right? Ok, ok, she bought me a kids toy cause she knew I'd like it. Or as I tell people, "I'm interested in the technology behind it." But that's just to save face. In reality I have the heart of a small boy......in a jar on my shelf.

Oh and I almost forgot*, my wife had her second pregnancy ultrasound this morning and we're having a boy! The due date is in April, so there's still some time to wait, but it'll be great having two babies. My wife has got away without too much discomfort so far, but last night not long after I'd joined her in bed, she suddenly felt nauseous (I'm pretty sure it was a coincidence that I'd just joined her!) and had to rush to the bathroom. Thankfully she made it out of our carpeted bedroom, but unfortunately didn't make it any further than the wooden floorboards of the hallway, before vomiting everywhere. Amazingly this was outside the baby's bedroom and she didn't even wake up. You know its love when you are cleaning up someone's upchuck in the middle of the night without thinking about strangling them.

(* I was joking when I wrote that I 'almost forgot' about the ultrasound!)

Bad TV and Good Website

2006-11-27T03:09:00.000-08:00

I happened to see some of the Australian version of 'Comic Relief' recently and I have to say that although it wasn't very comical, it was certainly a relief when I turned off the TV. The concept is a great charity idea, but to keep people interested and donating money, any TV charity has to be either quite funny or at least entertaining. This was neither. They had dredged up some awful, old comedy acts such as 'Kylie Mole', from 'The Comedy Company', a show that hasn't been on TV for years. Most of the other skit stuff that I saw was incredibly weak, even though some of it was coming from comedians who I normally find hilarious. I felt that it could have benefited from more decent stand up comics doing bits, rather than the too tired sketch comedy approach that they went for. Did anyone else see this? And find it amusing?

Now to balance this post out with something positive. I recently bought some perfume online for my lovely wife for Christmas (getting in early this year). The site that I went to was www.strawberrynet.com and I have to say that it is a good business. I believe it is based in Hong Kong and the prices are pretty damn good. The thing that prompted me to praise them like this is that the shipping was free! And to make it almost too good to be true I received the package in only 4 days! In my pervious overseas internet business dealings this is almost unheard of. So if you're looking to get some perfume or aftershave or anything like that I'd suggest you check out www.strawberrynet.com .
P.S. This is an unpaid and unprompted advert, and from me that's rare. :-)

Rant - lateness

2006-11-24T12:20:00.000-08:00

I can't stand it when people are late. I'm ok if someone now and then turns up to things late, but it is the people who are consistently never on time that bug me. 5 minutes is ok, 10 minutes - maybe traffic, more than 15 minutes is incompetence and disorganisation. Let me give you a recent example. I have a friend who is renowned for being late. Great guy, but if he had to pick up $1 million by a certain time or lose it, he wouldn't end up being any richer. This guy will likely not even be on time for his own funeral. He told me he was coming around to my place at 1:00PM. About 12:45 I get an SMS saying that he will be around closer to 2:00PM, but hopefully before. So I go about my business and lose track of time (because I don't have to go anywhere). When I look at my watch its 2:30! He finally turned up at 2:45! This guy's life is not THAT important. He is single and lives with his parents about 15 minutes away from me, so WTF is he doing that makes him nearly 2 hours late?? In this case he didn't explain, but in the past when he has they are always very weak excuses. While this of course is not a massive disruption to my life cause I was at home and had stuff to do, similar incidents have happened while going out somewhere and I hate waiting for others. It's rude and inconsiderate to be late, so if you're this kind of person, get a fricken watch, spend the microsecond it should take a normal person to estimate how much time you need to get somewhere, then give yourself another 20 minutes cause you're probably an idiot without a realistic concept of time and then prepare yourself to go early. IT'S NOT THAT HARD!

This is also a problem in my workplace. Without going into the politics of my work, even though I work with a small team of people there are some who are constantly late. EVEN when they are on a shift where it is just them and the boss!! How stupid is that?! The boss might grumble at them, but there is no punishment! I'd be docking pay for it, cause a line has to be drawn. It means that the person who is on first often has to do more work and if it's busy of course it's even worse. Again there are other reasons the boss isn't too hard on us which I won't go into, but ultimately these people make the whole team look bad. If I can wake up early (which I hate as much as anyone) and make it into work on time, then anyone can. I too would like to spend an extra 10-20 minutes at home either sleeping in, or having more breakfast or whatever, but being on time to things demonstrates that you are a reliable and competent person which is how I would like to be seen.

Well I'm glad I got that off my chest. I should really state that I don't "hate" people who are late as such, but basically don't understand their behaviour for the reasons mentioned above. I hope this post doesn't come across as a Michael Richards racist, rage tirade type of thing. ;-)

The Joys of Moving

2006-11-22T01:32:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows the horror of moving house and the annoyance of just moving stuff around. Although I didn't have to move house, I did have to move rooms recently, and all because of that baby. Oh she'd been eyeing off my study ever since she was born! Or more accurately her old room which was still fairly bright in the evening had become increasingly more so since the introduction of daylight saving and its accursed extra hour of daylight. I mean who but God has the right to go meddling with time like that?! So what if it was getting darker or lighter earlier...or whatever the hell it was doing, just let it be. Anyway my study was the darkest room in the house which suited my nefarious purposes and it was also bigger than the baby's room. But 'she who must be obeyed' had the bright idea of switching the baby's room with my study so that bubs might be able to go to sleep earlier. As this was somewhat aligned with my goals (eg. baby asleep = chance of action), I agreed. Then I remembered that the baby's bed does not fit through the doorway and needed to be disassembled....also that for a 13 month old, she has a lot of junk...also that I have a lot of junk, two desks, a bookcase filled with heavy books, a big TV, a set of drawers and various other small bits of furniture. In short after a long day with the baby at the in-laws and my reassembling the baby's bed, only to find that my wife had misplaced a screw, my finding it and having to reassemble part of it again, I can't be stuffed ever moving anything again.

Also, I still haven't gotten any action! (Ah, who am I kidding, I'm too tired anyway)

* Javatari's bad joke of the week (true story) --> I was driving past this chinese restaurant today called Sha Tin. I thought to myself, "I really wouldn't want to dine there. After all, who wants to eat in a place that's been ShaTin." Boom-Tish!!

Magician Profile/Review - Derren Brown

2006-11-16T00:07:00.000-08:00

What Derren Brown does, is a combination of magic, psychology, suggestion, misdirection and showmanship. He is one of those performers that can read the mind of a spectator while actually looking like he is reading their mind. He doesn’t use a phony, over the top persona in his presentations and the spectators he uses in his demonstrations often buy him as being ‘the real thing’. Brown of course admits to the things he does as being trickery, sometimes even when he’s demonstrating them, yet still is able to amaze people, including me.

Although any description of a trick is a pale imitation of actually seeing it done I will attempt to explain one of Derren’s effects. In his trick ‘Smoke’, he spreads out a deck of cards in front of a spectator who is asked to look at one and remember it (while he turns away). Upon turning back he then reads the spectator’s mind and tells them the card that they have looked at, admittedly sometimes on the second try, but often on the first. While they are reeling from this Derren pulls out a cigarette which he lights up, while commenting that it is interesting that they picked that card as it isn’t even in the deck. The deck of cards which has been sitting on the table in plain sight this entire time is once again spread and they cannot find the card they looked at before. Derren then coughs and takes the burnt ‘cigarette’ out of his mouth and it is shown to be their rolled up card! This description is as accurate as possible as to what you would see it you witnessed this effect. Just think for a second how impossible this would look if someone did this with you. I do know how’s it’s done and with all great magic it’s fairly simple and very deceptive.

To actually see him do a demonstration look here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFGG6zWByhM

One of the TV shows he did in Britain was called ‘Messiah’, where he flew to the US and presented his skills to various so called ‘real’ psychics and various new age kooks. Now, they didn’t know he was a magician, but his ‘rule’ was that if any of them asked him, he would freely admit that it was a trick and that he was using ‘magic’. Strangely enough in the episode that I saw, where he demonstrated the ability to replicate the drawings of someone in another room, the psychics all took it at face value and no one questioned his ‘powers’.

What I like about him is that he is a thinking man’s magician who rather than using brightly colored props makes people question whether what they are seeing is real or not while entertaining them at the same time.

I'm a fruity gardener

2006-11-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

At the risk of sounding older than my 31 years, I have to say that I rather enjoy gardening. When we bought our house, I was able to put in a vegetable garden and have gained a strange sense of satisfaction from tending to and eating the stuff I've grown. So far we've had lettuces, radishes, snow peas, normal peas, celery and a couple of potatoes from the garden. Two more recent plants that I put in were a strawberry and a raspberry plant. So it was with great joy that I ate the first raspberry of the season a few days ago and happily watched as the second was soon to grow to fruition. Also the first strawberry was almost ripe as well.

Now flash back to yesterday, it was a public holiday in my state of Victoria, but because of my contract I still had to work and worse still, I wasn't getting paid any extra. This put me in a bad place to start with, so I dealt with the day in the apathetic mood that it deserved. When finally it was over with, I was happy to go home to my beautiful wife and daughter. It was there that I received the worst news of all....the nearly ripe raspberry and strawberry were gone! Birds had swept in past our large and useless guard dog and taken them! As I went out to witness the horror for myself, music from several war films was running through my head. How dare those feathered finks take crops that I had put my blood, sweat and tears (not literally) into! Due to the difficulty, legality and environmental concerns associated with killing off all birds in the region I had to combat these avian adversaries though other means. And how did I do this? Well, using all the ingenuity I could muster, I put small plastic bags around the remaining unripe fruit. Let's see them take those off with their pitiful talons. The moral of this story is that you should never come between Javatari and his fruity garden!

Some Spiders Are Our Friends

2006-10-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

I've hired some spiders. I rent them out space on the roof of our toilet. Well they don't actually pay any rent, but neither do they drop on my head when I'm in there either, so we're square. They do some work though. We have a minor problem with silverfish and it's not uncommon to find one or two running along the bathroom floor or in a sink early in the morning. The spiders however eat the silverfish, or at least suck the nutrients out of their bodies, leaving lifeless husks, which are much easier to pick up with a vaccum. The only spiders I don't like are the vigilantees. Big, fat, poisionous to humans varieties, such as wolf spiders or the dreaded white tail. These often crawl on clothing, or along the floor and I'm certain they actually try and hunt humans. Cute daddy long legs or any other non threatening species are ok by me. So give a spider a job.

I had a ball

2006-10-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

Last friday I went to a ball. That's right, I put on my beautiful, sequined ball gown and went off to dance. Well not quite. I actually wore the same suit I'd been wearing to work that day. Having arisen at 5:00am to do so that morning, and coincidentally at the same time on the morning before. Foolishly I am not able to go to bed early either, so needless to say I was pretty damn tired by the time I got home and found my wife ready to go. Oh, and did I mention we were bringing the baby to the thing as well?

Upon arriving there was a row of flaming torches leading up to the building, as the theme was 'Fire and Ice', which blew black smoke all over us. Inside, the decorations were pretty nice, but I found out later that they had planned some huge theme related decorations that hadn't worked out and so had been abandoned. Why the MC mentioned this in his intro I don't know. The other inspiring thing he said was that the hilarious person who had been scheduled as MC had not been able to attend so we were stuck with him, ie. without comedy. They did have a live band which, played soul music for some reason. They were quite good except I wasn't a huge fan of the song selection. I mean they didn't even play 'I like big butts', by Sir Mixalot!

Amazingly even though the place was very loud, the baby stayed asleep...at least until the wife woke her up to change her...but mostly to show her off to people. She handled it well considering that she'd dozed off in the car and woken up to loud music and people dancing around like idiots. As usual people doted over her which allowed me to pickpocket them while they were distracted (kidding!).

Now the point of a ball is to dance. Well....I didn't dance. I was too bloody tired I tell you! Plus someone had to look after the baby. I rather enjoy watching other people dance anyway. For instance there was this one guy (late middle aged), who almost literally flew around the dancefloor like a gazelle! He and his partner (he mostly danced with two women) whirled around at great speed, spinning like a fricken whirling dervish. It was clear that he'd done quite a bit of some weird dancing style before. It was very funny to watch, but I had to take my hat off to him. Most other people gyrated around with a varying degree of skill.

For me the night was pretty crap based on my condition, but I swear next time I'll haul my arse off the seat and tear up the dance floor....mostly cause I'll have a nail in my heel.

2006-10-25T23:08:00.000-07:00

David Blaine Street Magic Spoof

Check out this hilarious David Blaine street magic parody. I find it very funny, but I do have a strange sense of humour. Warning there is some swearing in this clip!

The Good,The Bad and The Garbage

2006-10-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

This week was my first week back at work after 2 weeks off on holidays. When I left there were various problems going on, both externally and internally. When I got back, bugger all had changed. You’d think that as an organization got bigger and earned more money, it would have the resources to cut out the people who were causing the problems or not providing evidence that they were trying to fix them. Anyway that’s my gripe about work and it’s only taken me a few days to become jaded and annoyed about stuff. Otherwise it’s still a good job.

In much better news, yesterday I finished the last subject of the course I was studying off-campus. Although off-campus study sounds good in theory, it is a real prick to manage while trying to balance work, family and staying sane with some socializing and hobbies. I now have to wait a few months in anxiety to see if I have passed this damn subject or not. I feel that I will just scrape by which I wouldn’t mind, but am terrified of the possibility I may not have had enough time to put in the quality. Time will tell.

We went to a place called Collingwood Children’s Farm the other week to show the baby some farmyard animals that she hadn’t seen before. I gotta say that it was a bit of a crap hole. Perhaps if you go with a school group or something, they give you an interesting tour, but otherwise you just wander around a fairly small farm type environment with dilapidated buildings, few animals – goats, pigs, few horses, couple of cows, some sheep, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks and geese as well as a couple of peacocks. Oh, and two cats I think. I don’t really know what I expected, but perhaps more hands on opportunity or something like that. For $16 to get in, I like to think that I’d get more than what I could see from a drive through the country.

The other day I saw the Di Vinci Code on DVD. In 98% of books that get made into movies, the book is much better. As most people probably already know, this film demonstrates this fact to a high degree. The book is high paced and hard to put down, while the movie really drags in some parts and skips over some interesting details. If you want to see this type of movie, go rent National Treasure with Nicolas Cage instead. The Di Vinci Code only gets 5/10 in my opinion. And is it just me or does Tom Hanks act almost exactly the same, no matter what role he is playing? With some actors I really buy the character they are playing and forget ‘who’ they really are in a sense, but with Tom I can’t help but see him as just Tom Hanks.

Magician Profile/Review - Criss Angel

2006-10-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don’t know who Criss Angel is, let me describe him. He looks something like a reject from a 90’s rock band and in fact he has a band and thus obviously does like music…if yelling like a freak is what you consider music. If you want to see some photos of him, go here. This is not his claim to fame however, nor why I am writing about him. I’m writing about him as he is quite a famous magician. This might sound like an oxymoron, particularly if you don’t really pay attention to magic at all and couldn’t name a magician other than Houdini or Copperfield if your life depended on it. However Angel has done a couple or seasons of his own magic series, “Mind Freak”, and put out a few dvds and made quite a bit of money. He has also paid his performing dues and didn’t become a success overnight. So what’s so good about him, you may rightly ask? Well let me describe a couple of his tricks. On his tv show he has done stuff like put a piece of thread into his mouth and then pull the thread out of his eye….yes I said eye! As a prelude to this he had a coin signed and placed in his mouth, then apparently swallowing it, he showed some people on the street the coin moving down the inside of his arm…under his skin, where he made an incision with a knife and removed the signed coin! Other memorable effects include seemingly floating himself and others in an open area, setting himself on fire and walking on water.

He is a character that people often love or hate. Love because he does some amazing illusions and is far from the old top hat and tails magician of yesterday. Hate because he doesn't smile much and perhaps comes across as a bit of a poser. A lot of other magicians are probably just jealous of his success and might say things like, "If I had a huge budget and access to the magic constultants (yes there are magic consultants) that he has, then I could do all that stuff." That may be the case, but he is the one who has put in the effort to make it all happen. My personal view is that I enjoy the majority of the magic that he does, but don't really like the stunts that he seems to love doing. For instance the other night I was watching his show and he performed a stunt where he got into a box that had explosives on one side of it and stayed in the box while it blew up! You may be thinking that such a thing sounds like a trick, but that was not how it was billed. His idea was to feel what it was like to be as close to an explosion as possible and he did it. Personally I think it would have been better that when the box exploded, he had vanished, but no, the box went all over the place and there he was, lying curled up on the bottom of it. Love him or hate him, he has certainly done a lot to raise the profile of magic...at least in the US anyway.

Happy happy, joy joy

2006-10-11T02:25:00.000-07:00

I went to the hospital today. It's ok though, I wasn't injured, sick or anything bad like that. I was going for the benefit of my wife. It's ok though, she's not injured, sick or anything bad like that either. We were going to get her 12 week pregnacy ultrasound! That's right, we're going to be parents again! As if one wasn't enough! The difficult part for the woman with this ultrasound is that she has to drink a lot of water and then not pee for a while so that her bladder is full. Apparently this makes it easier to see the womb, or something like that. If you have ever tried to prevent a pregnant woman from peeing when she needs to, it's not a good idea.

The guy who did the ultrasound verified that the fetus has two legs, two arms, a heartbeat and a brain, which is much like our earlier model and slightly more than I actually have. Needless to say, we're pretty excited to have our second on the way, but there are still much of the same nerves and worries associated with having a baby. While on the topic, congratulations to Bevis on the birth of his son.

Crap Movies

2006-10-09T02:39:00.001-07:00

A while ago, a friend of mine complained about my posts being too whiney. So to shut that whinging bastard up, here is a post where I am being positive and talking about something I enjoy. Bad movies. That’s right, I like really bad movies, particularly the horror genre. There is nothing better than sitting back and watching something that perhaps 10, 20 or 30 years ago was supposed to scare the dickens out of people, and laughing your head off. Only by watching these classics can one really appreciate how far movie special effects have come. One of my favourite bad movies is called ‘Troll 2’. It is obviously the sequel to ‘Troll’, which featured Julie Louise Dreyfus and Sonny Bono (who ironically also dies in the movie). Now Troll is about a, err Troll who with his magic powers is trying to turn an apartment building into a gateway to his own dimension by killing off the people in each apartment. However Troll 2 takes bad films to a new extreme. Firstly it is about goblins and not trolls. Secondly the actors are the drop-outs from the acting school where acting school drop-outs go after they first drop out of acting school (trust me this sentence makes sense). Thirdly the costume special effects are of a worse quality than if the film makers had gone to a local novelty store and picked up some bad Halloween masks. This film is so damn awful, it’s great. If you're lucky you might find the Troll/Troll2 DVD in your local video store. It’s a must see! I can almost guarantee you won’t see a crappier feature length movie this year!

To prove that I am not the only nutcase to like this sort of crap, check out this fan website!

Baby's First Birthday

2006-10-03T07:11:00.000-07:00

It was my daughter's first birthday yesterday. Happy birthday princess!

10 pieces of advice and wisdom for aspiring or soon to be dads.

2006-10-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

Are you nuts! Seriously, really think about it.
The Geneva Convention prohibits torture by sleep deprivation for extended periods of time….babies disregard the Geneva Convention! You may have heard from other parents that kids don’t sleep for normal periods of time. However, only when you are woken about 8 or more times during the night for months on end, while having to get up and go to work everyday, do you really understand the horror.
Babies smell fresh and clean right? WRONG, they smell like vomit, poo and urine until you wash them, and that’s if they even tolerate being washed. Oh, and get used to smelling like baby vomit, poo and urine yourself.
All babies are supposed to be good and free from evil, but that’s a myth too. Case in point, Stewie Griffin from ‘Family Guy’.
In Australia you get a bunch of money for having kids. This is true, but after the plasma TV, Xbox 360 and leather sofa to keep the wife happy, the money is all gone.
Q: “Babies aren’t that expensive are they? I mean, I’ll still be able to afford to go out the pub every weekend with my mates right?”

A: “Hahaha, you crack me up hypothetical guy! If you want to be single again soon, sure go ahead.”

Q: “It’s worth it all in the end, for the love you get back from them isn’t it?”

A: “If by ‘love’, you mean resentment and anger that you don’t give them everything their greedy little hearts desire, then I suppose so.”

Q: “Will my love life suffer from having kids?”

A: “Yup. And only when your wife/partner wants more vermin..I mean children, will you be allowed to enter the forbidden zone again.”

Q: “I’ll be raising another human life, surely I need some sort of license or training to become a parent?

A: To operate heavy machinery, fire a gun, or take part in most professional occupations you do, but any psycho can have children.

Q: “Oh no, I’ve already gone and had a baby!”

A: “Then my friend, you are doomed.”

NB: Javatari is a happily married father who may or may not be qualified to give parental advice. If children persist, stop having sex or use protection.

I've joined civilisation

2006-09-23T22:27:00.000-07:00

I finally have ADSL at home!!! Anyone who has put up with dial up for as long as I did can feel my relief. Its one thing to have broadband at work and be happy to be able to browse the web at reasonable speeds (although we’re still a lot slower than Europe and the US), when you are supposed to be working. But for all those times when you’re at home and wanting to check or download something, if you’re on dial up, you are constantly reminded of how bad it is.

The main thing that put me off broadband for so long was the price. Working in IT and still having to dial up to get to the Internet was also a secret shame. Finally I just gave in and bought a modem and got it DSL provisioned. Sure the novelty of having ADSL at home as well as work will wear off soon enough, but for now I’m riding the wave baby!!

Oral Adventure

2006-09-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

I went to the dentist the other day and it actually wasn’t too bad. Of course, it was no ‘sex with Angelina Jolie’, but as far as having someone rape your mouth with sharp metal implements it could have been much worse.

After sitting in the waiting room for only about 10-15 minutes, the cute dental hygienist approached me with what looked like a menu. She informed me that I had a choice of tv or music while I was having my teeth cleaned! 'About time I started getting something back from the dental experience', I thought. With my tv show chosen, a short time later I was in the chair and found a flat screen tv in front of me, as well as one on the roof for when the chair was reclined. Thanks to my not really thinking ahead, the episode of the program I’d chosen had the words, ‘pube’, ‘tits’ and ‘testicles’ mentioned within the first few minutes, as well a featuring a somewhat PG rated sex scene a bit later. I wouldn’t have normally batted an eyelid, but I couldn’t help wondering if the cute hygienist who was examining my mouth thought I was some kind of deviant, for choosing this show. At the end of the exam she commented on my gums and how well I’d been treating them. ‘She wants me’, I thought, while trying to remember if I had ever actually done anything to consciously enhance my gums. I was also curious if she complimented everyone who didn’t have a gingivitis riddled mouth, but I didn’t ask. While we waited for the actual dentist, I queried her as to whether she had seen anything to be concerned about. She worried me a bit by saying evasively that she had mostly been inspecting my gums (what WAS her obsession with gums?).

When the dentist arrived and had a look, he asked her what she had been concerned about when she came to look for him (I knew she was lying!) and he started poking around at the back of my mouth. After more prodding, the dentist let me out of the chair. He then informed me that the thing they were conferring about was a small dark spot on one of my teeth that was likely decay…..however it was not very big and he was happy to let me decide what to do. Option 1 – fill it now? Option 2 – wait 6 months and see if it gets any worse? Then the hygienist chimes in and says that she and I had discussed that the next visit would be in a year. The dentist said that would be ok too! I was a bit stunned and asked if a year would really be fine before the small hole was checked and he told me he wouldn’t consider it reckless. Naturally I said, ‘Screw getting it filled in now if I can leave it and not shell out over a hundred bucks plus the pain of getting it filled’….. or words to that effect. Any dentist who tells me that I can put off dental work for another year, is ok in my books. Then off I went to the local fair to buy some fairy floss and jaw breakers.

Merlo REVEALED!

2006-09-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

A lot of people come up to me in the street and ask, “Why is your blog called Merlo’s Blog, when you go by the name Javatari?”

And I always respond the same way, by saying, “How the hell do you know who I am?”

Often they respond by saying, “Well I was standing behind you in the internet café where you were just posting on your blog and a read a bit of it.”

Sometimes I yell in reply, “Get a life you git and stop following me.”

But to all you kind readers out there…all two of you, I thought I would explain the phenomenon behind the name of this little hillock in the landscape that is the intermijig.

It all started about two years ago I believe, when a couple of thespian (actors, but not gay) friends wrote a play to perform in the comedy festival. It was about these two loser guys who were getting advice about women from another guy who was just as clueless as they were. One ended up unsuccessfully hitting on his interior decorator, and the other was used as a doormat for an attractive blonde. Throughout the play, at certain points the phone would ring and the audience would hear a voice on the answering machine who was basically just calling up to chat with the guys for no reason and even though he specified in the message that it wasn’t important, he declared that he would call back later. The two guys never did ring him back and it turned out in the end that the phone guy was stalking the interior decorator chick. That phone guy was referred to as Merlo and I did his voice!! Yes the masked Merlo has finally been revealed! My buddies had no faith in my acting abilities so they recorded my voice to be played back as voicemail. No respect I tell you. The play was funny, but the whole Merlo thing was a bit of an in-joke, so I decided to use the name in my blog title. Mostly cause it amused me and also I wasn’t in the right state of mind to come up with anything clever when I name this thing. So there you are, mystery solved. Go about your business.

Death

2006-09-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of death going around recently. I found out on Monday that my mentor from my previous workplace had died. I took up his old job after he left when it was discovered he had cancer and that was around a year and a half ago. He pretty much beat the cancer but died of emphysema in the end. He was the complete opposite to what you would except from an IT guy. Firstly he was in his sixties, secondly he was a rough looking guy, thirdly every second word that came from his mouth was ‘f***kin’ and he was loud, fourthly he had previously had careers in the army and as a truck driver. The main thing about him was that at the top of his personality, he was a good guy. If you were up front and honest with him you’d gain his respect, but if you were a slacker or someone who is too scared to the bend the rules now and then to get the job done, chances are he wouldn’t have like you much. The thing I respected most about him was that he was never afraid to speak his mind, even when he knew that others would disagree with him. Bob you’ll be sorely missed.

Of course everyone knows about Steve Irwin’s death and there are already many blogged comments about it. All I want to say is how sad I am for his family; you can only imagine the void that they will have in their lives with him gone. I for one liked his crazy energy and I hope the Irwin family can find the strength to deal with it and continue the work that he so loved, as I’m sure they will.

The third death related item is that my family’s eldest cat ‘Benson’ had to be put down the other day as he had become very sick and was in a lot of pain. He’d contracted feline AIDS from fighting with other cats in his earlier days and his condition only would have gotten worse with time. It was still a very tough decision for my family particularly my mum to have to come to. A lot of people who have never had pets or don’t feel any kinship with animals won’t know how real the grief of losing a beloved pet can be. But for anyone who does know, it can be just as painful for some as the loss of a human friend. A previous cat that we had got hit by a car, and while mortally wounded he crawled into a neighbour’s backyard where he died alone which I found very distressing, but at least Benson was with my mum when he passed away. He was a real tough guy character of a cat and we’ll miss him dearly.

I have never had to deal with much death before and when you are faced with it, be it human or animal it really makes you realize that even though someone may be full of energy one minute, we only ever have a tenuous grasp on this thing we call life.

Yay magic!

2006-08-29T03:35:00.000-07:00

"There will be no Magic in this house. It is a path to loneliness with people
mocking you behind your back." -Micheal Bluth (Arrested Development)

A while back I promise to write something about my interest in magic, so here is something....

I have always liked magic even though both my parents are muggles. Now before anyone gets the wrong idea, I’m not talking about Harry Potter magic, or summoning demons from the pits of Hades, or even dancing naked with free spirited, unkempt people in a circle of candles. Not that there is anything wrong with any of that…..well maybe the summoning demons part, but to each their own. I’m talking about magic as in tricks and illusions, or the art of entertaining people by fooling them. Unfortunately many people still think of magicians or even those interested in magic as being tossers who like to wear tuxedos and pull rabbits out of hats. Well they're wrong!! We mostly don't wear tuxedos! For the main part though magic these days has come a long way.

Even within magic there are many types of magicians. Here are a few examples….

The Houdini type of escape artist, who puts themselves in situations that look dangerous or difficult, only to get out of them at the last minute.
The David Blaine type of street magicians, who performs magic for people on the streets. Usually a ‘money in the hat’ situation, unless you can get a TV special.
The Copperfield type of stage illusionist, who spends a great deal of money on large elaborate props (and hair styling products) that they perform with in theatres.
The close-up specialist of which I can’t think of a famous, commonly known name, who performs for more intimate, smaller audiences, perhaps at a casino table or similar setting using cards/coins, or any type of smaller object really.
Other categories I could describe include, mentalists, children focused magic, parlour/table magic, as well as getting into common specific props, such as coin, card, silk, cigarette, dice, matches, etc, etc.

Personally my interests fall mostly into the close-up category although I also enjoy ‘Bizarre’ magic which is an area that is notoriously difficult to describe, but essentially is good for freaking people out if done well. :-) I don’t do a lot of performing and when I do it’s mostly for friends and family, as it’s a hobby for me and I have a job to earn my money, but it’s something I love.
If I can figure out how to post my own video (and compress it to a viable size to post), I will put up a couple of tricks that I do to demonstrate my skill or lack of it.

Drink Driving

2006-08-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of my daughter engaging in some drunk driving. I must have got her Ribena mixed up with my hip flask of Blackberry Shnapps. Anyway she is a mean drunk and put up a real fight when I had to take the keys away from her.

NB. Obviously she is not really drunk and I would never condone the consumption of alchohol by any minor. She's actually stoned.

Random junk about me cause I don't have time to write a coherent post.

2006-08-17T01:54:00.000-07:00

I had an intervention via the radio this morning. Robert Palmer came on and told me that I might as well face it, I was addicted to love. I thought, who the hell does he think he is to try and tell me what I'm addicted to!

When I was dating my wife, I sent her an sms that read, "If I could bottle my charm and wit, I'd be a rich man." (I'm often modest like that) She actually showed her mum the message which was kind of embarrassing, and annoyingly her mum later advised her not to marry me! (not solely based on that sms though!)

When I was in primary school I had a crush on the tallest girl at school. When my friends asked me if there were any girls that I liked, I said her name and they laughed (possibly cause I am not very tall). To cover up, I pretended I was joking, which they believed. I've always felt kind of guilty about that and wondered what might have been if I'd had the guts at the time to follow up on that crush.

So I was standing at the traffic lights today after just having pressed the button. About 30 seconds later this woman comes up from behind me and presses the button again. What the hell! Did she think I was an idiot who just stood at the edge of a road for my health? Obviously I was waiting for the pedestrian lights to go green and so does she think that pressing the button again would make the lights change faster? Naturally I pushed her into oncoming traffic.

There are many things I can't understand, but one of them is telemarketers who continue to try and talk, or win you over, even after you tell them that you are about to hang up. Often you hear them continue to chat, up till the second you put the phone down. What possesses them to think that phrases like, 'I'm busy', or 'I'm not in the slightest bit interested', or 'Go to hell', are indications that you want them to 'try' and win you over.

One of my most embarrassing ‘life moments’ was when I was a teenager and was in my family room wearing my pajamas (and no they didn’t have a Spiderman pattern on them!). My dad was standing in front of me and for some stupid reason I decided to do a side kick. The unfortunate result of me kicking my leg out to the side was that my….wang fell out of the hole in the front of the pajama bottoms. Needless to say that I don’t make a habit of flailing my legs about when I’m freeballing in loose pants these days.

Survivor clone

2006-08-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

As many of you may know, there is to be an Australian Celebrity version of Survivor coming soon to a TV near you - At least if you live in Australia. Why they are going down this tired and lame path I have no idea. I am a big fan of the original Survivor and have watched every season. Some years ago, some ‘genius’ decided not to air the US Survivor season 4 – Marquesas, but instead to copy the basic show format and make it a lot crappier with Aussie contestants and host. I was later able to see the Marquesas season and it was one of the best in the whole show as it introduced Boston Rob to the audience. Now they are once again hijacking the US format but using C-D grade Aussie celebs. Hopefully someone will die and make it interesting. Thankfully they aren’t sacrificing another US season for it, but I can predict that it will likely be as successful as ‘Yasmin’s Getting Married’. Why do TV people constantly have to take successful shows and locally adapt them, often taking the spirit of the original out of the formula and ending up with a cheap copy? Are we so desperate to hang onto reality TV?

Blond Moment

2006-08-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

I rarely do stupid things, but the other night I had a real blonde moment. But firstly some history. I work on a technical support helpdesk and I usually answer the phone by saying something like, " [business name] helpdesk, Javatari speaking." Then after they say hi and tell me who they are, I often say, "How can I help you." So now that you know that I can tell the annecdote. It was late in the day and I was pretty tired, but I had to call the helpdesk of another business that we had previously logged a work order with. So I called and waited on hold for a bit and began to daydream which was a big mistake cause when the lady on the other answered I began by saying, "Hi this is Javatari from the helpdesk, I mean helpdesk. How can I help you, err, I mean I was calling to find out about a work order we placed." By this stage the woman on the other end of the line was pissing herself laughing at the idiot who couldn't work out basic telephone protocol for when you are the caller. The annoying thing was that I was supposed to be calling to find out why they weren't acting faster on a job, and starting out by sounding like a chump isn't the best way to demonstrate your authority.

Uni blues

2006-08-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

I started my second semester uni subject a couple of weeks ago and it's the last subject of the third degree I actually intend to complete. After this (as long as I pass) I have sworn off formal study for at least 10 years. Ever since I left high school (93) I have been involved in some sort of tertiary study. I can safely say that after all these years of cramming my brain full of uni level information, I don't think I'm much smarter. If anything my mind is less....um, good at thinky stuff. I still hate assignments, I still despise exams, I think most lecturers are one dimensional bores and I have paid thousands and thousands of dollars to find this out. When I ask myself why I put myself though all those missed lectures or drawing pictures of naked women while pretending to take notes at the lectures I did attend, I struggle for a good answer. Ultimately I reckon that for the most part it beats working...well apart for the not getting paid bit. When you do enter the workforce employers look at a good degree as though it is some sort of holy grail, but many of the people I know who have decent degrees are not necessarily the best workers. Anyone with a lot of cash, a dash of intelligence and who's willing to put in a semi-decent effort can get just about any type of degree, but does that make them good at a certain job??? I'm not bashing education as a whole, but most of what I've learnt at uni I could have sat down with a few text books and taught myself for considerably less cost. Of course, at the end of that I wouldn't have had a piece of paper from a fine tertiary institution.

Pilates of the Caribbean - review

2006-07-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

I saw ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ yesterday and I’ve decided to give it a review here and warning about it. The first thing I must say is that if you really hate movies where the whole thing is a set up that mostly gives half answers and half reveals only to finish up with a HUGE ‘to be continued’ feeling at the end, then perhaps this isn’t the movie for you. Or at least wait until they have made the next sequel and then watch this one on dvd before seeing it. The reason I say this is that unlike the first one which left you feeling satisfied and happy that you have seen a whole film, for me this movie was purely the setup for the next sequel. Perhaps I have been ignorant by purposely avoiding reviews about this film, but I was really expecting a beginning, a middle and an end. But now (as the film makers obviously intended) I will have to wait until the next one in this series comes out to find out what happens with all the loose ends. And loose ends there are! Eg. What has become of Jack Sparrow? What of Will Turners relationship with Elizabeth Swann? What happened to the poor dog that got left with the Cannibals? What are the East India Trading company’s plans? Can the new captain be trusted? Etc, etc. Too much unfinished business in a movie if you ask me. So that’s my main gripe out of the way.

Now for a quick explanation of the main plot. The film starts with Will and Elizabeth being arrested by a new sinister character who is some Lord that is high up in the East India Trading company. Basically he represents the capitalist scum bag type that will stop at nothing to increase their profits to buy nicer wigs, brandy and other such upper class English paraphernalia of that era. Throughout the movie not much is revealed about their grand plans, but it’s obvious they’re up to no good.

As for Jack Sparrow, well apparently to get his ship (The Black Pearl) in the first place, he made a deal with Davy Jones that after 13 years he would serve aboard his ship (The Flying Dutchman) as one of the damned crew. Or….he could find another person to take his place. Of course Davy Jones really wants Jack, so when Sparrow tricks Turner into taking his place, Jones says that it’s not good enough etc, etc and then spends the rest of the movie chasing him.

The story with Davy Jones is that he was a pirate who fell in love with a woman (shock-horror!) and then had some problems which aren’t really explained, and so he decided to cut his own heart out so he couldn’t feel anymore. Apparently doing so didn’t kill him but instead gave him eternal life/death and as a bonus he is able to summon the Kraken (gigantic, mythological sea creature) to wreak havoc on his enemies. Another of his powers is that he can make a deal with sailors to serve aboard his ship for a hundred years (or more if they want!) thus putting off the judgment of the afterlife for 100 or more years of slavery. Over time these damned sailors become mutated into weird hybrids between humans and sea creatures mostly just to cause a lot of entertainment for computer animators. As for Davy Jones heart, well he placed in a box and wears the key to the box around his neck. The key to the box is what Jack Sparrow wants to get and preferably without putting himself in danger if possible. With Jones heart I believe he plans to get out of his debt and possibly do other stuff, but again that’s something that isn’t really explained.

Confused yet? Well obviously each character has their own motivation for doing what they do and in this film there are a lot of characters. It is possible that I have given the impression that I didn’t really like this film, but that isn’t true. I did enjoy it even though it didn’t have as many comedic moments as the first one and is considerably darker with more deaths either shown or that take place between scenes. Johnny Depp is great as Jack Sparrow as he was in the first film and I liked a lot of the other characters even though there are too many to keep a good track of. The main thing I didn’t like about it was that I think a number of scenes were dragged out too much for the sake of making the third film. The story and some of the script was pretty messy, but in general I did like where it was going. It’s just a big adventure film and if that appeals to you, you should still get something out of it. I gave it 3.5 out of 5. It might have otherwise been 3, but Keira Knightley was hot.

Nobeltitus

2006-07-21T22:44:00.000-07:00

As the son of two doctors I feel fully qualified to notify everyone about the current epidemic that seems to be sweeping the nation. Mainly restricted to males between 14 and 30ish, it is a debilitating illness that affects not only the sufferer, but also those around them. I have named the disease, ‘Nobeltitus’. The first symptom is the loss of fine motor skills, specifically the ability to either a.) Put on a belt at all, or b.) Put on a belt, but be unable to buckle it tightly enough to keep their pants up. This symptom results in the sufferers pants resting at various points between the mid gluteus maximum muscle and the half way point of the femur bone. A further tragedy of the illness stems from the exposure of the ‘plumber’s crack’, or ‘coin slot’ of the patient to all around them. Sadly the victim is either unaware of a.) The distress they cause others and b.) How much of a f***wit they look in their condition. Unfortunately there is no known cure. It is suspected that patient zero or the initial carrier is ‘Jamie’ from the Australian Big Brother TV show and so far the attempts to isolate him in a quarantine area with suffers of other annoying disorders such as ‘Whineyvoicitus’, and ‘Cantshutupism’ have been successful. But I’m not sure how much longer this can be maintained.

If you know someone who has contracted Nobeltitus, please kick them in the butt as much as you can. It can’t be cured, but hopefully one day these idiots will realize that it’s not cool to be able to see the top of their tool.

A grand visit

2006-07-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

Let me start by saying how much I respect old people. They always have a story to tell and so much life experience that I think we could all learn from. However one of the few things that really scares me is ‘crazy’ old people. I don’t know why, but it just freaks me out when some oldie comes up to me and starts spouting gibberish or treating me like I’m some relative even though I’ve never met them before. With this in mind you can image the dread I felt at the prospect of visiting my grandpa in the home where he lives. I have been there before, but every time I get this feeling like I am going to be swarmed by a bunch of zombies who will claw at me and ask me if I’ve seen ‘so and so’ who for all I know has been dead for 10 years. Many of the people in the home have some form of Alzheimer’s or Dementia including my grandpa who can only recall bits and pieces of information, but still recognizes family and friends.

When we got there, we made the mistake of bringing the baby who is of course a magnet for those in their twilight years. Only those who had the energy to get up actually came over to see her up close and she just kind of stared blankly at them as though not sure what to make of the strangers who were trying to hold her hands. The weirdest thing was when I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder and saw another hand rest on my grandpa’s arm. Upon turning, I saw an old Italian woman who began saying something in her native tongue and then started to praise my grandpa as a lovely man, before turning her attention to the baby and saying how lovely and beautiful she was. Then she tottered off. I thought to myself, ‘what a nice lady to be so flattering about my family’. Then my grandpa said that the lady always came up and was very complimentary about everything and I suddenly felt used. We left when the lunch bell rang and I though to myself how stupid my fear was and how selfish it was to let it keep me from visiting my only living grandpa who may not be around to too much longer.

After that we spent some time with my grandma who still lives at home and she told us of some of the other characters in the home that she had seen when she visited. We told her about the Italian woman and how she might have some competition for grandpa and she mentioned that one time another man in the home had invited her back to his room! I had to suppress a cringe about that one though.

I guess the point of this is that if you have relatives not long for this world, you shouldn’t put off visiting them cause you’re too busy or are concerned about having to look at those close to passing on, but try to spend as much time as you can making them feel loved and happy cause although you might still have many years left to live, chances are they won’t always be around for all of them.

This has been a community service announcement.

Random update stuff

2006-07-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

• I have to come up with 3 grand by Wednesday (car repairs). Suggestions? Originally I was to have a few months to pay it back, but there was a communication issue and now I have four days.

• A while back I posted about finding a syringe on the sidewalk in a relatively heavily trafficked area. Well a few weeks later it was still there. Are the druggies getting too picky to take used needles now? Have needle exchange programs spoilt them?

• My plan to get my fitness back up is proceeding…slowly. I have done a little more exercise and have been eating a few more vegetables, but have found it hard to really get my arse out of a chair. It’s too warm and relaxing in the house and too cold outside to really get into sweating. And I hate gyms…and jims.

• I wonder what would happen if everyone just stopped going in to work at the same time and just focused on surviving? If anyone who tried to gather power for their own desires was ignored and we could all just try and become better humans. It’s a shame a utopian society can’t exist cause people are just so, f**ked up.

• It was my wife’s b’day a few days ago and we had no money and I had to work so it sucked.

• I like the show ‘Futurama’ and one thing that always makes me smile is one of Benders (the robots) favourite lines: “Bite my shiny, metal ass!”

Busy much?

2006-07-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve been hellishly busy recently. Last week I worked 60 hours and the other night I didn’t leave the office till midnight. When I first started this job, things were pretty cushy with good pay and only a mild amount of work. More recently a new computer system is being introduced and the bulk of the work and support of it falls to us. We had a meeting the other day where the boss pretty much said that play time was over and we would become more and more busy. We even had to set up a proper roster as to when we take our breaks, whereas before each of us would usually take lunch whenever we wanted and half of the rest of the day was a break. The boss (who up till now has been very laid back and turned a blind eye to most of our internet browsing/book reading/snacking when we felt like it, etc) for the first time mentioned the ‘P’ word, which scared me, he referred to, getting the most ‘productivity’ from us! I fear that he may soon approach us, fire the double barreled fingers at us and say, “Hey buddy, how do you feel about doing a few extra unpaid hours tonight?” Then what’s next, barcodes on the neck? Another thing that struck me as odd in the meeting was that the boss was saying how much he likes his job, but the thing he didn’t like was all the paper work, and he soon hoped to shift some of it to us!! WTF, who says ‘This is what I hate about my job, but guess what, I’m going to be letting you do some of that aspect soon, so that’s a burden off my mind.’

Thankfully I like my job so it isn’t too bad and usually the boss is a good guy, but some days you wonder if all the time away from your family is worth it. Then you remember that if you don’t work, you lose your house, cars, ability to feed and cloth said family, and you realize that maybe it is worth it. The important thing is to find the balance I guess.

2006-07-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

One of the best magicians today

This guy named, 'Cyril' (poor guy), is one of the best magicians around and the stuff he does sums up the kind of magic that I like.

Funny business.

2006-07-06T01:54:00.000-07:00

While at work, I often go for a walk during my break to get away from the cretins. So imagine my amusement when I saw this van while out on my wanderings today. That place must give new meaning to the term 'King Dick'!

Car woes

2006-07-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

My car broke down the other day when I was coming home from work. Very annoying, not only for the inconvenience of having only one car between two people, but also cause I have to deal with mechanics. I know about as much about cars as I do about shopping for women's shoes, so when a mechanic starts talking about car parts that I've never heard of and all the work that needs to be done, my eyes glaze over and my hand moves protectively over my wallet. Thankfully my father in-law is a ‘car man’, (not a Transformer like Optimus Prime (although that would be really cool), I just mean he knows about cars), and can usually sort the necessary from the to-do-later basket of suggested repairs. In this case the best thing we can do is to have the engine ‘reconditioned’, whatever that means, which will set us back about $3000. Yay!, we’re going to be broke again.

As our other car is a bucket of bolts and even older, we also decided to invest in a much newer second hand car. A 2004 Astra to be precise, so as long as the finance goes through we should have the newest car either my wife or I have ever had. Yay! (for real this time)

Nuisance neighbour.

2006-07-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

This is a difficult issue for me to relate without me coming off sounding a.) judgmental, b.) nasty, or c.) both. So I’ll just try to keep to the facts and let you decide.

A few days ago a single mum and her two kids, both under 10 years old, moved into the rental next door to us. Pretty much the next day/morning, the kids show up on our doorstep saying that their mum had gone and they didn’t know where. Apparently they had a phone number, but when it was rung no on answered. We let the kids in and my wife looked after them while I questioned them about their mum (thinking the worst, that she might have abandoned them or something). My wife also left a note on their door so that the mum would know where they were. About 15 or so minutes later she arrives and explains that she had mentioned to the eldest while she was in bed, that she was going down to the shops for a few minutes, but some roadworks had kept her out longer than she’d planned (I wasn’t in the room, but could hear this as she explained it to my wife). Now my wife being an overly nice person was friendlier that I would have been to a mum who left her young children on their own, and pretty much told her to let us know if she was going to do that again, so that at least someone could keep an eye on them. I disagreed with this because her kids aren’t our responsibility and I don’t think you should leave kids on their own in the first place. The next couple of days after this, the kids have shown up on our doorstep (while I’m at work) and on one occasion invited themselves around for dinner, telling their own mum that my wife had invited them when she hadn’t! Yesterday morning they showed up again peering in our front window and loitering on the doorstep. This time I opened the door and politely told them to piss off (I didn’t swear at them at all), by telling them that it was rude to hang around other people’s property and that they should go back to their own house. That very night when my folks had come around for diner, the mother turns up telling us that she had to pick up her boyfriend from the train station and that she was leaving her kids alone, so if we ‘wanted’ to pop in and check on them she’s let them know it was ok! When my wife goes around there and gets stuck, having to be rescued by me, the kids are showing her some pics on a mobile phone and amongst them are moving porno images! This mother had left a phone with accessible porn with her children!

Now all this is over the course of a few days and I can clearly see that they will fully take advantage of my wife’s kind nature and I want to put a stop to it. If much more irresponsible parenting becomes apparent I may have to contact child services, but would like to avoid doing that. Any suggestions?

Martial Arts Background

2006-06-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

I thought I might post a brief couple of things about myself so that anyone who cares can get to know something about me. My two passions in life (apart from family) are martial arts and magic which are a very strange combination. In this post I’ll give a background on my martial arts training and talk about magic in another post…..

When I was in primary school I was like most boys, and would flail my arms and legs around in attempts at Karate type kicks and punches. So at the end of primary school I was enrolled in a term of Karate at a local school. I absolutely hated it. Mostly because the sensei (teacher) would tell me off for not moving fast enough, or not punching strongly enough. Also the guy never smiled and had the personality of one of the wooden boards he would often break. After this experience I swore off Karate and thought about other martial arts in early high school which was when I set myself the goal of getting a black belt. Next I enrolled in Ninjutsu with (as far as I’m concerned) the only remaining 800 year old traditional school. But only stayed with it for year or two because one of the teachers was a complete tool (eg. After whacking me in the shins with a bamboo training weapon he explained that it didn’t hurt cause it was a training weapon. Well the black bruises that soon appeared would suggest that it did). After that I reluctantly agreed to check out a new Karate school that was building an international reputation and found to my surprise that it wasn’t too bad. In fact 5 or 6 years later I achieved my goal of getting a black belt. I even taught at the club for 3 years and achieved my 2^nd Dan grade (One step up from a normal black belt). Towards the end of my Karate career I became a little disillusioned with it and its limitations (no grappling, no weapons, some impractical techniques, focus on physical strength, etc), so I did some Aikido, but only for a few months cause it was an expensive class and the training was a little too stylized. In about 2003 I went back to Ninjutsu (outdated website), but with a different club and haven’t looked back (though I don’t get to training as much as I’d like). I have my brown belt in it currently and if I get my butt into gear should be able to get black belt in that in a year or so.

Pointless advertising

2006-06-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

There are a series of ads on tv at the moment about insurance for old people that feature a panel discussion. This is a stupid concept for a number of reasons and it just shits me in general. Firstly they have the spokes person sitting in the middle and on either side of her are a couple of B/C grade celebrities from at least 10 years ago. I believe the idea is that because they are old they might make the insurance company look more credible. The ads run in a series over time which is even weirder cause the ‘celebrities’ seem to change and often only one of them makes a (lame) comment/joke in each ad while the other 3 just sit there (waiting for their paycheck presumably) doing nothing. Whoever suggested to the company that a 30 second ad utilizing a panel discussion format was a good idea, should be smacked upside the head.

Viva la health!

2006-06-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going on a self imposed health regime and I intend to blog about my progress (motivation permitting). The waist around my pants has slowly been getting tighter recently and I'm pretty sure it's not cause my pants are shrinking as my significant other suggests. Since high school I've been training in martial arts and until about 5 or so years ago I also did a good amount of weights training, so I consider myself reasonably fit. However in recent times as the other demands of life have crept up on me I've become a lot less active with even my training suffering as a result. I've eaten whole boxes of chocolate chip cookies, drunk litres of soft drink, devoured whole bars of family sized chocolate and gorged myself on various desserts, and that was just yesterday. Enough is enough, I need to eat more fruit and veg, drink no sugar or diet drinks and most importantly regain my physical activity. I want my washboard stomach back, women to swoon when they see me in the street and men to wonder when they see me, if one of the Greek statues from the museum has come to life and is wondering around the city. I will become healthy again damn it! So who's with me?.............Is that crickets I hear chirping? Did a tumbleweed just roll by?

My avatar

2006-06-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

People often ask me what that strange thing I use as my avatar is. Well actually no one has asked me at all, so for my own amusement I will explain. Some years ago I was traveling through South America and came across a certain tribe of Jivaro Indians. I did a few magic tricks for them and they started to view me as some kind of deity figure. After a while they became bored of my astounding antics and I began to hear whispers that one of them was going to ‘head hunt’ me. Thankfully I had one more trick up my sleeve. I borrowed a piece of grass matting from someone and rolled it up into a cylinder shape. Muttering a few words of magic gibberish, I unrolled it and inside a rifle had appeared. Everyone was amazed (as they love guns almost as much as their American neighbours), but asked me to get the hell out of their village as I was no David Copperfield. “Thank goodness for that,” I replied and flew back home. As a parting gift they gave me a shrunken head that is now one of my most treasured possessions. This is the item that appears as my avatar.

Of course I could be lying.

Flying High

2006-06-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a work trip up to Sydney. I flew up and back….and man are my arms tired!! Boom-tish! (Actually bad jokes are relevant, so bare with me) It was the first time I’ve been on a plane since coming over here from Scotland as a child. To be honest I wasn’t that excited about the trip, not due to fear of flying, but more over having to drive around Sydney, but I’ll get to that. I flew on Virgin Blue and I learnt a number of things about flying, the main one being that flight attendants shouldn’t make jokes! Here are a couple of examples of their material: “Please make sure your seatbelts are firmly fasten around your necks, sorry, waists.” Or this gem…“When opening the overhead compartments, please be careful that nothing falls out, cause ‘shift happens’. “ I’m sure some of their gags were straight from the ‘Jumbo book of Dad’s Jokes’.

Upon arriving in Sydney I had to drive myself around in a hire car and let me explain why this wasn’t particularly enjoyable for me. 1. Most of the lanes on the roads around the area are about a foot narrower than those I’m used to driving on in Melbourne. 2. NSW drivers are insane, and often try to merge into gaps of 1cm between cars. And 3. the streets were designed by a dyslexic town planner who used a bunch of crooked, twisty pick-up sticks as inspiration for their design.

Also I had and still have a cold and felt crap the entire time. The work side of things was pretty productive, and there were a few amusing anecdotes resulting from that….but who wants to blog about work?

Curses! Beaten by an infant.

2006-06-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

I may be fairly well trained in the martial arts, but that didn’t stop me from getting beaten up by my 8.5 month old daughter. It began as any normal baby play session with my wife and I lying on the floor entertaining the little one. Then my wife got the idea of putting her on my chest. So there I was on my back with a baby atop me staring down at my face. Then she pounced, leaning forward she placed her open hand at one of the corners of my mouth. Expecting a pat on the face or just for her to put fingers on my lips I didn’t think to defend myself. How foolish I was, for the next second she clenched her little hand into a fist, scrapping her tiny fingernails across the sensitive skin around the lips. She even drew some blood! Letting out a somewhat girlish yelp I removed my daughter from attack position and leaped back into a fighting stance. Putting on my best ‘bad kung fu movie voice’, I said, “So, you have mastered the Eagles Claw technique! Now let’s see how you handle my Iron Monkey style!”

Seeing where this was going, my wife stepped between my opponent and me and said, “Honey I think it’s time for your brain medicine.”

Leaving the room I swore on my ancestors that I would have my vengeance. No baby gets the better of me. If only I could overcome her Shield of Cuteness technique.

Krispy Kreme Krud

2006-06-23T05:05:00.000-07:00

The other day was the grand opening of the first Krispy Kreme donut franchise in the state of Victoria, in the land of Oz. This was first brought to my attention by fellow blogger BEVIS. For some reason the KK people decided to open this store in the middle of nowhere, in a sleepy suburb called Narre Warren. So having the day off myself, I packed the wife and rug rat into the car for the 30-40 minute drive down there. Now let me say that I expected it to be a bit busy on the opening day, so left in the early afternoon hoping that the morning fatty’s would have gorged themselves enough and have rolled home by then (not that I have anything against overweight people). Unfortunately I had greatly underestimated the number of greedy SOB’s out there. So when the store came within sight of our car, I noticed the massive line of traffic in front of us and the huge queue of people lined up (a good hour or two wait at least) snaking around outside the store. Being a crowd hater from way back and after a short discussion with the missus we decided to turn around and drive 20 minutes back in the other direction where we stopped at another shopping centre and enjoyed custard filled donuts at a normal donut shop. Then feeling a little sick, but still hungry we followed that up with some sushi. Hmmmm donuts and sushi, together at last. I said to the wife that we would have to venture out to Krispy Kreme some other time, to which she replied, ‘You really are a fat bastard.’

discarded syringe

2006-06-23T03:35:00.000-07:00

So I was walking through the area where I work the other day, and I see a syringe lying on the ground next to one of those trees that they plant in the sidewalk. Well it got me thinking, and I’m really sick and tired of all these diabetic people who just throw their needles away after they’ve had their ‘hit’ of insulin. Who do they think they are, shooting up on a substance they’ve foolishly become dependant on? It’s sad really to think that a diabetic person can get so desperate for the insulin that they sometimes rob people at gun point. And on more than one occasion I’ve been walking down a street and I’m sure I’ve seen one of them gazing longingly at my properly functioning pancreas. I’m sure that with proper counseling these long suffering people can be helped.

Or maybe the syringe belonged to a common junkie…I don’t know I’m not psychic.

2005-08-31T00:29:00.000-07:00

Wow, my first post on my very own blog! My first blog attempt as well, which is suprising considering I work in IT...and hate the word blog. I can just imagine this group of fellow IT geeks sitting around devising the first web log and chatting amongst themselves about term to use to describe it. Then one of them says, "Hey, it's a web log, so wouldn't it be funny if we shortened the term to 'blog' instead? Cause then we just have to say one word, and it's a funny one!" Then the other geeks would have cried with joy and tried to lift the alpha geek who had coined the term up above their shoulders, but due to limited upper body strength, ended up in a pile on the floor. And so began the world of the blog.