....?

Raconte-moi une histoire, hein!

Il y avait une fois un garçon plutôt méchant. En fait, il se comportait d'une manière si mauvaise que sa maman a dû l'envoyer au lit. Quelle catastrophe!

Se plaignant, il ne voulait rien faire. En effet, sans être fatigué, le sommeil ne servirait à rien en plus. Il vaudrait pas la peine. Se réfléchant à sa situation, il a décidé d'agir. Au moins, suivant ses exploits, il pourrait mieux s'endormir, n'est-ce pas?

Voici alors ce qu'il a fait: il allait ouvrir la fenêtre, et il a commencé à monter l'abre ce qui se trouvait juste à côté de chez lui. Il y visiterait souvent, chaque fois qu'il se sentait entouré par les histoires de sa famille cassé. Son papa violent; sa maman ivre.

Là-dedans, Monsieur Lapin s'asseyoit presque immobile, fumant. La fumée, doucement, chatouillait le visage du bonhomme.

<< T'as pas l'air bien. Qu'est-ce qui t'es arrivé? >> Le sourire du Lapin était tout à fait faux.

How to watch Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire

So I've been watching a lot of Mad Men lately with my sister. In fact, after countless hours spent enthralled by the exploits of Don, we concluded that the show served as an essay on the failings of 1950s America, so often shrouded in the veneer that only expensive suits, smoking indoors, drinks before 9am, implicit racism, explicit sexism, misogyny, hostile takeovers and wiggle dresses creates.

I'm historically poor at participating in any sort of visual media. In fact, as far as comprehension goes, a twenty minute episode of The Simpsons is more-or-less exhausting my capacity. My friends assume I have seen Inception dozens of times because I find the shaky premise engaging and compelling. No. I just want to understand the premise, and above all, learn the names of the cast. Does there really have to be so many? Classic James Bond films? Forget about it- more than one villain and we might as well flag it. It's a wonder I don't fail my classes.

So you might assume that shows as multifaceted as these two would prove something of an impossibility, and yes: they are. Sure, I've managed to learn the names of Knucky, James and Margaret, Don, Betty and Peggy, but beyond this, the suits tend to blend into one, homogeneous grey blur. I become distressed at the sight of an apparently familiar character, despite their not registering with me in the slightest. I cry as new storylines play out, clutching as I battle to recall previous ones.

Thus, I've been forced to engineer ways to better understand the oncscreen antics in these shows. These are by no means foolproof; rather, my paltry comprehension can be focused onto a single plot thread, and hell, I might end up being able to précis events on monday at school. Now, if only I didn't have that crippling speech impediment... God I miss Pokémon.

1) Don't worry which characters are sleeping with each other. People in the 60s had the magical ability of being able to sideline their passions without letting meaningless copulation impinge on their psyches and inducing a depressing questioning of their existences. And you thought we had it great.

2) Montages of people being shot: these tend to be a common occurrence, especially in Boardwalk Empire. Much to my dismay, these generally leave me confused as to which vendetta is being exacted, and which waring factions are getting revenge for past wrongdoings. My advice: don't think too hard, just revel in the panning shots of blood on walls, conveniently at the same time as a gun goes off-... oh...

3) Why is prohibition so poorly enforced? A better question- why was prohibition proposed in the first instance? An even more frightening notion- could it happen again? Oh, the terror!

I am in Asia

check it: last night I almost walked in to a Burmese drag queen in a back alley, but it didn't bother me. This is what being in Asia does to you.

Sorry

I know it's been a significant period of time since my last post, meager thought it was. Historically, we bloggers provide excuses for these absences, so what is mine? Well, I'm exceptionally lazy, for one, and there was that earthquake...

Since it's been so long, I'll provide a little recap of the ensuing events in my great life:

• Our house lost pretty much anything even vaguely resembling water pressure for two weeks. Suffice to say my hair was downright filthy for a period of time, so much so that we resorted to paying to have it washed at the local salon (for a "bargain" special post quake price of $5!).
• School has restarted, albeit to an extremely confusing timetable, and shared classrooms with Avonside Girls' School. So confusing, in fact, that in the last two weeks I have managed to go to my french class twice, only to be told by year 9s that I am in the wrong place. How embarrassing...
• My sister turned nineteen! She picked up tights and a copy of a Frankie for her troubles, and myself a free pizza and glass of delicious Apple Cider for mine. Classic!
• The new Fleet Foxes album was released- er, leaked, I should say. I am listening to it as I type this, much in the same way that I have been for the last week. It's just a shame that I have only been enjoying it for three days of that, but good things take time and all that.
• My headphones finally arrived from quake/tsunami stricken Japan. The are great, especially when I can't bear being subjected to that top 40 shit at the gym, nor the puffing and wheezing of old men next to me on the rowing machine.
• I finally have grasped the points course structure of engineering at university. Never mind that I have no interest in engineering itself- as far as I am concerned, nothing could be so baffling as those charts that in hindsight are embarrassingly simple.
• I took this cool picture at the park opposite my place last Sunday evening in nice light:

 

• Also, during the course of several plumbers fixing our pressure, someone fucked up, and there was a several metre high parabola of water shooting across the road. Here's what it looked like:

 Thanks for reading, and looking.

late night realisation

Reading your own blog is like looking at yourself in the mirror: you can do it all you like but the quality of neither your blog nor reflection will ever improve.

I never thought I would say it

But I have run out of witty titles. No, just kidding, that will never happen. Seriously, though, I never thought I would say it, but I really want to go back to school.

It would be easy to say that I miss school, but in all honesty, I don't. School is not fun, no matter how you look at it. Fretting over my grades is not fun. Putting up with the dumb shits in my classes who insist on asking inane questions is not fun. Being handed two sets of calculus homework throughout the course of a single period is certainly not fun.

No, I miss the scant free time that having to go to school afforded me, and the ensuing savouring of these morsels of down time. Between three o'clock and when I might go to bed at ten or eleven, I reveled in merely not being in class, and despite our massive amounts of collective complaining, I'm pretty sure most of my contemporaries would have felt the same way.

But this earthquake here in Christchurch, it has put everything, as they say, out of whack. I now find myself with ample hours to while away, and frankly, I can't find enough stuff to fill them. It's a sad thing to admit, but this is really how I have been feeling. That isn't to say, of course, that I haven't gotten plenty done, and enjoyed most of the time off. Georgia and I spent a couple of days in Nelson with my hilariously upbeat grandparents, and have subsequently been to Halswell Quarry and The Groynes (yeah, great name I know) taking some sweet photos. But knowing that I don't tomorrow have work to go back to, tests to sit, leaves me with a hollow feeling. Not to mention the death and having our house condemned.

More than anything else, life's crappy parts, the working and going to school, highlight the not-so-crappy ones, and this system simply works. People need a job to do, and I don't think there's any two ways about it. Surely even in retirement you would get bored, and the monotony of endless games of golf and glasses of cider would start to become... monotonous.

For me, this is like using the money cheat in that classic game, The Sims. Sure, repeatedly hitting "RosebudAAAAAA!?!?!?!?!?!?!" was great for a while, and the subsequent millions of dollars in my virtual account brought a vague smile to my face, but after constructing a palace featuring an entire floor full of scuba tanks (and then the bastard had the nerve to go and not like it!) what else is left to do? It's the ongoing grind, the battle, that makes the results worthwhile. Money, weekends, without what preceded them are meaningless.

I used to enter all of those Australian maths/english/science competitions back in primary school, and a few days before them, my mother and I would leaf through practice papers. A grind, sure, but I knew they helped. Anyway, one night I felt especially melodramatic, and whined "can't we stop? I've done enough!" Even though it was all  ploy, my mother bought it, and much to my surprise replied, "Sure, if you think so." At eight years old I simply couldn't compute having gotten my way, and hastily backed down, guiltily conceding to do another paper.

And like that, I will gladly return to the unrelenting dullness of school, so happy that sneaking some time on my Xbox means something once more.

op-shopping and sweat-shopping

Opshopping has never been an activity that compelled me that much. This could be down simply to my not having any real interest in clothes, or maybe because I always used to see it closer to the manner in which the Americans do- as "thrifting". That somehow buying second hand clothes was demeaning, and made me "thrifty" with all its awful connotations and implications. 

My sister, on the other hand, has been at this game for years. She often comes home, laden with skirts and dresses, blouses and jackets, proudly announcing how little she paid for them. And these weren't bad looking pieces by any means; they were just nice, regular clothes, that you or me had passed on to the store, who later passed them on to Georgia for one tenth the original price. Funnily enough, probably one much closer to what the clothing chain would have purchased the clothes off the factories for. 

This leads me on to my next point, about sweat shops. Being in South-east Asia fairly regularly lately, I often had t shirts and pants thrust in my face by local shopkeepers, so desperate for that one sale. I don't even care that much that I am likely paying thrice what the local people do- to me, 30 000 dong makes hardly any difference. It is, after all, only $1:50. Something about "fake" clothes repels tourists like me, but especially where things like Chuck Taylors are concerned, how is "fake" any different really to "real". We all well know that Nike, and their subsidiary, Converse, are notorious for use of sweat shops, and what's more, the poor quality of their shoes, even when "real" means that there's virtually no difference in what I buy on a smelly backstreet in Hanoi, to what I pay twenty times as much for in my local Rebel Sport. 

Georgia and I recently took a séjour up to Nelson, anxious to escape the earthquake-ridden Christchurch. In town, and in the local settlement of Richmond, we went out armed with the goal of doing some successful opshopping in some new opshops. Georgia is well attuned to the entire process, and under her watchful eye, I managed to score a sweet corduroy jacket and a dress shirt for the grand total of $16:60- what a steal (and I mean that without sarcasm, for once).
 
I always imagined myself in my adult life, jet setting around the globe, of course being paid vast sums of money, and among other things, wearing only the finest clothing by Hugo Boss, Dior etc, but maybe I'll now have to revise this. Well, at least I'll surely still own a Breitling for each day of the week, seeing as though the $10 Bell&Ross that I picked up in Hué broke only two days after it was purchased.

Top Spin 4 impressions

2009's Top Spin 3 was, to its own rights, a good tennis game. The genre had been suffering from an outright drought for a couple of years, and what there was (ie Virtua Tennis 3) I felt did an overall poor job of imitating the sport on any level other than an aesthetic one. The Top Spin series had always done a decent job of balancing realism with accessibility, but moreover, tipped the balance in the favour is realism like "a big fat fucking retarded fucking black girl on a see-saw opposite... a dwarf", much to my delight. Yet TS3 was by no means perfect. Overly sluggish movement, bland audio, dismally inaccurate animations (Federer's serve- come on!) left me feeling vaguely cheated, seeing as though I had forked out $120 for a merely "meh" title.

Of course, critics disagreed with me, evening  criticising Top Spin 3 as catering only for diehard fans, yet it didn't fully cater for me. This just reinforced what I already suspected: that I expected far too much from a tennis game, and being a fan of the sport was little more than a handicap when the time came to revel in playing a recreation of it.

When I read that yet another sequel, Top Spin 4 would soon be released, I greeted this news with mixed emotions. On the one hand I was excited to see how the developers would improve on its predecessor, yet at the same time I badly didn't want to set myself up for more disappointment. Furthermore, a new developer, 2K Czech, was taking on this mighty challenge, and this, coupled with screens resembling Top Spin 3 almost perfectly, left me with a resounding foreboding feeling.

I yesterday downloaded the Top Spin 4 demo, and despite its being needlessly large at 1 GB for merely a single tiebreak, I walked away impressed. Rather than redesign the mechanics of its predecessor, as I had hoped, it tweaks the gameplay mechanics, mimicking some of the nuances of tennis much better than 3 did. Serving with the analog sticks works far more smoothly this time around, the press and hold feature of more subtly implemented, allowing for an easy power/control choice, and on "Hard" difficulty, the AI foregoes cheaply ridiculous reach in favour of wily tactics, and provides a fair challenge.

The much lauded "TV style presentation" wasn't quite as smooth as I had expected, and the audiovisual department hasn't seen quite the overhaul I had hoped, but hell, it's gameplay that will keep you coming back to a title, not the other shit that we are immediately struck by. Top Spin 4 may not have implemented the commentary feature that fans like me begged for during its development, but 2K Czech impressed me. The nicest thing I can say is that I am still playing, and occasionally losing at, the demo. The computer even makes faults and unforced errors every once in a while- wow.

I probably won't but this game, seeing as though I'm meant to have quit altogether, but it's nice to know that in my absence, the genre is plodding onwards.

-Thanks for reading.

I take a ridiculous amount of time to brush my teeth these days.

Not only these days, too, but for years now, I will enter the bathroom, and emerge perhaps ten minutes later. What am I actually doing in there that takes so long?

Here's the answer: nothing. Absolutely nothing. I start of fine: toothpaste squeezed out in a small pea-sized ball on my mangy brush. Then: I stick the brush in my mouth- no problems there. And soon after, something happens, something I can't stop from happening. I lose focus inexplicably, and my mind wanders.

I start imagining programming a robot that can navigate a car through traffic, and the legal requirements that would hinder its production, or about what it would be like to be the only survivor in an apocalypse, at the things I could later steal. The only thing I don't actually consider is the activity I am currently engaged in.

As a result, I just stand there aimlessly, or pace around sometimes, brush in my mouth, doing nothing. I like to think that the toothpaste's mere presence in my mouth helps to clean my teeth, and that years of doing this has left them super tough and able to absorb toothpaste unusually well. I mean, they are kinda white...

If I were to think up a genius invention which would revolutionise the modern world, I can almost guarantee it would happen during this time, when I am supposedly cleaning my teeth.

And then I snap back, realising that eleven minutes has passed (I often stroll by my Mac en route), and thankful that nobody has seen this awkwardly comical display.

The day the earth didn't stand still

Yes, I am making this post based partially on having thought up this witty title- actually it was my friend, but whatever, I poach jokes where needed. I imagine Lionel Shriver did the same thing when she dreamed up Double Fault to be the title of her tennis/marriage themed novel, and again when whoever directed Snakes on a Plane thought that one up. How could you not make that movie?

But as well, I believe the appropriate space of time has passed to start blogging about the serious natural disaster that recently took place. I have some stories, but of course there is much worse out there.

It's strange that last time there was an earthquake, I felt so much more panicked and scared. Lying under my table with my mother at 4am, my head till vaguely groggy from the night before's doses of Lindauer, and listening intently to the dull crackle of her Sony walkman, I struggled to grasp what had actually happened. An earthquake. Facts and figures began floating in: 7.1, centered at Darfield, lots of damage. The following morning my friend and I took a walk around our neighborhood and would gasp at each minor crack, confounded at how the earth could just split like that. Pfft, I was an earthquake noob back then.

I heard someone say that having already experienced a quake of reasonable magnitude, the city would have been much better prepared for the 6.3 on Tuesday- I certainly was not. Standing amongst some blocks of classes at school, clinging to the nearest pole for support, I really had no idea what would be happening outside of my little universe. We joked, mouthed things to vague acquaintances like "what the fuck?" and generally reveled in something different; being taken out of the monotony that is school's daily routine. Out on the field, standing uncomfortably in the light rain and cold, I remained more or less unfazed. Only the solemn seriousness of teachers gave any indication that what had happened might be no laughing matter in the grand scheme of things.

I tiptoed away, biked home, and stepped inside. I was promptly greeted by shocking mess, featuring a heap of broken glass and other items, thrown on the floor messily- in other words, exactly what I had not seen in last year's quake. Some sizable cracks lined the walls and ceiling, and in the study my router and external hard drive lay on the floor: oh no! Most worrying of all, though, was the complete absence of my mother, who I had believed to be inside during this time. I pretty much assumed the worst- she had simply fled.  Dark thoughts began to swirl around in my young mind- who would make me magic up my quiches, arrange my freshly ironed clothes neatly in my bedroom, amuse my friend's parents on weekends? She soon popped in the door, though, giving a resounding scream of freight. Mine was of relief.

Later, we all sat outside- those aftershocks coupled with the cracks left the house as a last resort- sipping our respective poisons: champagne for me, gin and tonic for my brother and sister, white wine for my mother. We made earthquake themed small talk, and stared blankly at the mess around us. My point abut not being prepared is that I couldn't comprehend that an aftershock, of which the last few had been tiny and dissipating, could be that bad. Yet it was. Many dead, thousands of buildings condemned- including our own humble abode- and town practically ruined. Now where can I obtain that best Thai fried rice in the city?

The Tiger

The dappled moonlight shone fiercely, but could barely penetrate the dense canopy. The result was a peculiar pseudo-luminance; here and there pillars of sparkling light spiraled down, eventually reaching the forest floor. They illuminated the frantic, ever-changing nature that was the rain forest: mosquitoes danced en mass in a serene ensemble. Crickets, the forest's orchestra, engineered its perpetual melody, one that would last the night long, only, finally, ceasing once the sun cast its first brilliant red tinge into a distant horizon. The air was almost completely still on this night, yet still hung thick with moisture, a consequence of the suffocating humidity, a specter that never subsided.  He made his presence known to all the creatures in this place, lacing their every movement with an uncomfortable heaviness. The slightest breeze, cooling, eased its way through, gently brushing aside lush vegetation, before at last, rustling the Tiger's generous whiskers.

He stood, wrinkling his nose and twitching his ears- tuning them to the very air's frequency. Nothing escaped the Tiger, and even now the slightest rustling bushes or humming insect greeted those soft, pointed ears with ample clarity. But these were of no interest to him, and he discarded them as a bored child might a toy. He stood, crouched low, his body hard with now tensed muscle. Despite his bizarre, unmistakable appearance the darkness enveloped him, concealing his massive figure to the point of complete incognito, and only his eyes, his two shimmering eyes, betrayed the Tiger's presence. Eyes which pierced through any undergrowth, inducing a dread, a fear, in any of his enemies' hearts. It was the Tiger's eyes, more than his teeth or his claws, that they had learned to avoid so desperately. Yellow and bright, they boldly challenged any other creature. But none would answer. Here, the Tiger was king. 

His throne stretched endlessly before him- vast and sublime. It was one the Tiger knew so well; he was born there, he had been raised there, he had hunted there. Tonight, he would hunt again. And he would kill. Bloodshed would always follow the Tiger's hunts, and all were well aware of this.

In the distance, the churning of the shallow stream was pleasant, soothing. It cleared his mind of all thoughts- that was good. He must focus entirely on what he was presently doing, lose himself in the act of killing, of taking a life, of liberating a soul from this world, and allowing it to pass into the next. This was the afterlife, what they in the forest called only the White. The Tiger was not especially religious or sentimental, merely he accepted what he had been told, and what his ancestors had been told. He didn't feel any kind of animosity towards whichever creature he might happen upon tonight- taking a life was a matter of survival, of subsistence. An animal would be no less happy in his next life as he was in the current one, and in this sense the Tiger would never be remorseful following a kill. But nor would he boast about the act- it was not an aspect of life he particularly enjoyed, rather an essential one, like breathing. Certainly it was equally as instinctual to him.

Yes, he was getting closer now. He felt it deep inside him, an energy synonymous with his hunts. He felt the very pulse of his prey, let its scent fill his lungs. Long, slow breaths told him it remained oblivious to the Tiger. Presently, he padded forward, allowing his massive hind legs to gradually transfer weight to his relatively slender front ones. Silence. Through a last section of bush, he emerged on a small cliff that long since surrendered to the tenacity of creepers and moss. Below him stood a Boar, its head dipped, lapping at the clear, freezing stream water; the lifeblood of the forest. Here the moon's glow projected unobstructed, and it refracted and reflected over the surface in thousands of glittering specks. They dazzled the Tiger. The Boar now raised its head, its laryngeal prominence thrusting up and down as it gulped the water. It raised its vile, protruding snout in worry. 


Now was the moment. The Tiger did not hesitate.


His whole mass coiled tightly, he unwound in a fraction of a second, accelerating through the air in a high arc, like a diver. Before the Boar became aware of his freefall, the Tiger was upon it. It screamed, attempting to rear back, but the Tiger, in one expert move, sank his teeth into its soft jugular, silencing it. Blood, hot and red, gushed out generously. An emotion like frenzy overcame him, and he bit and tore at the Boar until only bloody bones remained. The Tiger slowly came to; regained his senses and awareness. It was over, the hideous whims of the malicious night had been satisfied once more. The Tiger was free.


High above the forest, a violently bright Toucan sang out loudly, spreading new of what had taken place. Below, the water tinged pink.

an article to fill in time while you await a better one: funny french sentences.

I promise the upcoming post will actually be decent, it's just taking me a long time seeing as though I have quite a bit of devoirs at the moment, plus it's quite descriptive and I inevitably labour over each sentecne for ages, slowing overall progress to a snail's pace, as it were. Here are the aforementioned funny french sentences, but perhaps only if you speak french:

- "Je me réveille plutôt tôt pour avoir le temps de prendre mon temps". Meaning: I wake up rather early so as to have enough time to take my time.

- "On en a envie". Meaning: We feel like it.

- "Sa propre chambre propre". Meaning: His/her own clean bedroom.

- Teacher: "Quel est le temps aujourd'hui?" Dumbshit student: "Jeudi". Meaning: "What is the weather like today?" "Thursday."

democracy with a side of toast.

I saw an interview on Breakfast the other day, the subject of which being "why should scalping be illegal?" with regards to the 2011 Rugby World Cup. The actual topic under discussion, though, was "come look at this freak who has an opinion vaguely resembling something original; let's interrogate him with often irrelevant questions not pertaining to his original argument".

This article has two points to make. The first is about the shocking decline of Breakfast following the departing of Paul Henry. The second is the broader and more general opinion that scalping indeed shouldn't be illegal, and that the fact that it is a merely another example of the unnecessary interfering with economics by our nanny-state government. Phew, long sentences there.

Breakfast was never that bad. Let me rephrase: it always rested miles ahead of its six o'clock counterpart, thanks to some much needed personality and wit in the form of Paul Henry, who has since 'resigned', though under immense public pressure, meaning that he was as good as fired. In Henry, Breakfast had somehow managed to discover and fill a niche- news with soul. His became a humour iconic of our young nation, a satirical wit thoroughly lacking from other shows, be they the following (and I really don't envy them because Henry only highlighted their total blandness) Sunrise, or the dismal Australian Good Morning, both little more than advertising thinly veiled by far-too-cheery yin/yang style hosts and a certainly blind wardrobe guy.

These shows had nothing, nothing on Breakfast, and Henry and the rest of the team knew it. They knew the joys of a complete 6:30am media monopoly, and the managers must surely have spent days at a time on luxury cruises in baths of $100 bills surrounded by women who would make Burlesconi blush. Henry, too, grew bolder with each week, and what began as a single remark regarding a woman's pseudo mustache (I laughed) or use of the phrase "fucking mongrel pommy prick" at the QANTAS Awards, grew and grew, finally and perhaps inevitably, culminating in one hell of a week. Slamming the Governor General as "not a real New Zealander" (despite Henry himself, as the "pommy" witticism referred to, being born in the UK) followed promptly by the "Diksit" (etymology: dik- shit) incident. The poor man.

Or maybe it was foreseeable, not only to the public but to Henry himself. Maybe going out with a metaphorical "bang" was his way of immortalising himself in pop culture- god knows he had the self-inflated view of himself that would crave desperately an Achilles-like downfall. His equivalent of Steve Irwin's death (not that the Crocodile Hunter's fate was self-engineered (or was it- possible conspiracy theory (ha, brackets within brackets (Inception!)))): a method of ensuring he never fade into the interminable mediocrity celebrities fear so deeply in the twilight of their careers.

It makes me mad, the routine our public have fallen into these days- one of the more regrettable byproducts of free speech I guess: we love something, be it Paul Henry's sharp tongue or otherwise, and then as soon as someone even slightly oversteps the mark, we are suddenly out for their blood. The same idea carries over to politics, in the sense that our populous are fundamentally all swing-voters, and it only dawns on us to vote for the opposing party (I'm only talking Labour and National here) once we have grown tired of not the other party's policies and ideologies, but rather are prompted by some external intervention like revelations that John Key earns a bazillion dollars and drives a Bentley. So? His job sucks, and he at least deserves to be compensated for his efforts. We expect a ridiculous amount from our politicians, and utterly fail to acknowledge that we could scarcely do a better job.

Back to Breakfast. For a short while, the hung in there, making do with substitutions like the straight-talking and occasionally droll Peter Williams or intelligent and eloquent Alison Mau, or even, god forbid, the scarcely post-pubescent Jack Tame. Yet there was a noticeable void, a profound feeling of emptiness, that no weak one liners could fill. You felt it every time the cameras panned over to Tamiti in some nondescript North Island village; you felt it when we were greeted by the furiously fast-speaking Corin Dann at the Business Desk, to discuss figures I can only imagine even he harboured no real interest in.

Ah yes, Corin. He now sits atop Henry's once extolled throne, paired with what I can only contemptuously describe as the washed-up b-grade presenter Petra Bagust. It seems that Henry (and, granted, Pippa Wetzell) were tough acts to follow. Breakfast is meaningless to me now, joining the likes if Pokémon and Home and Away. I will tune in only if it is already on, and even then, will only pay the bare minimum amount of attention required to get the gist of what is being discussed. My apologies, Mr Dann, but it is my belief that it would have been better to stick to the markets and currencies- your journalistic style and apparent glare at guests simply doesn't make for gripping viewing.

As for this scalper business, I fail to see how it is very different from my sister buying clothes from an Op-shop and re-selling them on TradeMe users at five times the price- and, naturally, pocketing the difference. Nor do I see anything inherently unethical about this- at the Australian Open, and most events, last minutes tickets are sold at vastly inflated prices, and this is the basically same thing, isn't it? The only difference being that someone other than the organisers will profit- and in the case of the Rugby World Cup, the Government. I do see the irony in my being outraged at this having just openly derided those who do exactly what I am doing, but in my defense, the act declaring scalping sports tickets as illegal could surely easily be reversed.

Sure, I'm all for increased export receipts from the World Cup (cue endless flow-on effects), and I'd rather see this profit re-dispersed in the health/education sector than go directly to private corporations, but what about this fabled market dictated wholly by supply and demand?

I suppose I'm just a capitalist at heart.

a cool story... bro.

I know that ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars (each using their respective sirens) are given unconditional right of way by other cars. But what about from each other?

Scenario:  a man is cooking a surprise dinner for his wife, to mark their anniversary in the gentlemanly fashion. At the same time however, and unbeknown to this man, a burglar is breaking in to his apartment. Just as his dish is nearing its completion, the man hears the sound of glass breaking, followed by the appearance of a balaclava clad thief. He is shocked.

So shocked, in fact, that he flings his dish into the air, and it ricochets back into his face, scolding him. Other fragments fly past the curtains, setting them promptly alight.

At this point, the man's poor wife makes her timely arrival. Surveying the scene (the thief is standing dumbfounded), she dashes to the phone and calls 911:

911 Operator: "911 what is your emergency?"

Wife: (incoherently) I-, my husband-, random thief in pompously idiosyncratic attire-, CURTAINS!

911 Operator: Very good, Ma'am. A fireman, police officer, and medic will be at your house soon.

Yet, little did any of the persons involved realise, they would soon have another tragedy on their hands, as the policeman, ambulance driver and fireman all believed they had the right of way...

So en route to the caller's house, a huge collision occurred. In fact, this phenomena continues endlessly, and can be observed to this very day.

The end.

argument at an airport lounge

Premise: a man and a woman queue to enter a lounge at an airport. The woman, well-dressed and aged about 35, is named Eva. Behind her stands a shabby, portly man of about 40. This is Gary. Seated behind the desk is the young staff member Harriet.

Harriet: Good afternoon, Madam. Where are you flying to today?

Eva: (extracting a card from her purse and handing it to Harriet) Singapore- on Singapore Airlines. DJ4… something.

Harriet: No, no- that’s fine. Go on through.

Eva: Thank you.

(Eva carries on towards the entrance of the lounge. Gary starts towards the desk)

Gary: Hey…(squinting) Harriet. Can I come in?

Harriet: Umm… are you a KrisFlyer member sir?

Gary: Huh, a what? Oh nah, but I know Jane- you know, in customs. She said it wouldn’t be a problem. (in mock voice) I promise I’ll be good.

Harriet: Well, usually unless you’re flying in Business Class or are member of our KrisFlyer service you can’t-

Gary: (in annoyed voice) Look, my boss doesn’t fork out three grand for me to be spoon-served Bollinger like the rest of these up-themselves rich pricks. All I want is to-

Eva: (standing observing from entrance in plain disdain) You want to what? What exactly do you want? To sip some free Bollinger while the rest of us “rich pricks” had to work to be here?

Gary: I’m sorry lady, who are you, and why is this your business?

Harriet: (flustered) No it’s fine, it’s fine. I’m sure you can come in this once-

Eva: No, it’s not fine. This man shouldn’t be here; he isn’t allowed to be here. Why don’t you explain to me the reasoning behind my paying to have access to this lounge, when I could, far more easily, claim some acquaintance in the deepest recesses of the airport and instantly demand entry?

(Gary stands, dumbfounded)

Gary: I-, you can’t-

Eva: Yes? Do go on- we are intrigued to hear your opinion.

Gary: (enraged) Look! I’m not some fucking bludger! (he fumbles in his jacket’s inner pocket, withdrawing a ticket. He thrusts it on the table) I’m on the plane, for god’s sake!

Harriet: Please, sir. Please don’t yell.

Eva: Just fuck off. (muttering) Anyway, you’re far too badly dressed to-

Gary: What did you say, bitch?

(at this point, two more men of Gary’s age stroll through the lounge entrance, laughing- Terry and Joe)

Terry: Hey! There he is!

Eva: (nodding knowingly) Uh huh- I see. You thought you might just sneak your cronies in, too. Where do you people get off?

Joe: What is this?

Gary: You people? You fucking cow; you-

(Harriet rises from her seat)

Harriet: (yelling) LEAVE! All of you! Now!

(Gary, Terry and Joe all back out in disbelief)

Eva: (flustered) Gosh, I’m really sorry. I’m not usually so forceful and…loud. I just got so pissed off. What a cock!

Harriet: (breathing heavily) Wow. That hasn’t happened before.

Eva: I’m really sorry it had to. Honestly, usually I don’t care about this kind of thing. Just that guy… (trails off)

Harriet: I always hope I don’t get those kinds of people; they think that just because their kid’s best friend’s bloody aunt had a job here they suddenly are entitled to whatever they feel like. We are trained to decline them politely… but I usually just want to avoid a scene, you know?

Eva: Of course, everyone’s the same. You look so young- you can’t have been here that long?

Harriet: (smiling) Yeah, six months.

Eva: That’s not long to have to deal with a situation like that; with a guy like him.

Harriet: And the hours are awful. Trying to sleep during the day just doesn’t work the same. I wouldn’t put up with it, except I get travel perks. But then, who wants to when you might get stuck with people like them.

Eva: Fuck!

Harriet: What?

Eva: I just remembered, I’m sitting next to that asshole.

Harriet: (grimacing) Now I’m sorry. You might need that Bollinger now- inside on your right.

Eva: (giggling) Maybe I could sedate myself and not have to see his ugly face?

(they laugh, and Eva leaves)

The life I need.

I play video games too much, and I should stop.

This will be the statement central to today's discussion, so read it carefully.

I've been gaming for a long time. I have fond memories, in fact, dating back to the halcyon days of 1999, playing our family's Sega- a racing game, which I sat watching for hours, transfixed by the ever-changing colours and dancing pixels. I didn't reason this at the time, though. Rather, gaming was simply an amusing way of passing the time, and could easily be likened to playing with Lego, or watching old episodes of Pokémon on tape.

Unlike Ash's nomadic adventures, or my beloved uniform plastic bricks, though, gaming has stuck with me until now. This in itself doesn't mean a great deal- adults who fished or skated as kids still indulge in these activities on a regular basis, don't they? And up until recently, I didn't give it much thought. With nearly half the world's population having played a Call of Duty game, and 'gaming' itself being more or less intrinsic of modern pop culture, it has always been easy enough to find like minded souls, and in this way, to justify several times over this habit and its implications- or lack there of, as I always figured.

Because practically everyone I know aged similarly to myself games. We game at home, we game at our friends' places, we game during the day, and into the small hours of the night. And when we aren't gaming we talk about gaming, think about gaming. We may hide from the stress of everyday life, of work and school and relationships, instead choosing to hide in a perfect, blissful place where we are granted absolute anonymity and the freedom to slam others, to 'make friends', to shoot, stab, kill and generally put our angst and worries behind us. Who wouldn't want this?

YouTube lies in the middle of what I believe to be the modern version of  Golding's "essential human illness".  A community where anyone can seek, and often find, worth in their lives, in the form of something as meaningless as a thumbs up. YouTube has bred a generation of kids searching so desperately to fit in that they will forgo having an actual opinion in favour of a comment or attitude that they know will earn them support. Support from who? A 16 year old in California, thousands of miles away, who happens to...what? Play the same game as you?

Practically no effort goes in to making a gameplay/commentary on YouTube. We might respect guys that post up huge scores, but who hasn't known the joys of a well-planned spawn trap in their life times? I am so fucking sick and tired of seeing people's comments as "nth nuke"- I don't care, and anyone who does really needs to take a good, long, hard look at themselves and the empty life they have. Because while video games might provide a few hours thrills at a time, deep down, we know it isn't doing us any good, and for me at least, almost any other activity gives me at the very least vague sense of fulfillment.

I am going to quit gaming. Let me rephrase: I am going to try and quit gaming. I realise that nothing is actually holding me back- this isn't smoking. I know no one is with me, but that's the point (except, apparently, Ukrainian Limbs). I will find other ways to fill my time, and I won't think longingly back to these bygone days with nostalgia. I will feel sad, considering what I could have achieved in this time, in lieu of slaying Old King Doran, killing thousands of SpetSnaz operatives, surviving several zombie apocalypses. Gaming will one day die, and I won't be entrenched in the pitiful community that faithfully obeys it when that happens; I will have transcended gaming altogether.

Thanks for reading.

Differentiation- Your calculator is the scene of the crime.

An extract from my script for Differentiation, a mathematical comedy that parodies Inception.  Enjoy.

Differentiation

 

By William

Munn 

INT. PHARMACY - CONTINUOUS
Row upon row of wooden shelves holding hundreds of dusty
glass bottles of all shapes and colors. At the far end, a
portly 40-year-old man rises from behind his desk, beckoning.
This is YUSUF.

Yusuf: So, you are seeking a mathematician 

(Cobb nods)

       To calculate problems for a job.

Cobb: As well as to be our runner for Cantamath.

Yusuf: You know, I rarely go into the field, Mr Cobb.

Cobb: Well, we would need you there to tailor equations specific to our needs.

Yusuf: Which are?

Cobb: Great complexity.

Yusuf: (nodding)Ah... A function within a function- two sets of brackets.

Cobb: (leaning forward) Three.

Yusuf: Not possible... that many functions within functions would be far too baffling for a non-Korean student.

Cobb: It is...possible. You'd just need to use a graphics calculator.

Yusuf: A powerful graphics calculator.

(holds a rectangular object up to the light)

       This, I think, would be a good place to start. I see it every day.

Cobb: Where?

(Yusuf beckons to a door. On it is written "D12")

Yusuf: Or, perhaps you will not want to see.

Cobb: (beckoning) After you...

INT. CLASS ROOM, BURNSIDE HIGH - CONTINUOUS A class room with ROWS of low DESKS. Each with a school student. They type numbers and symbols on their calculators. An ELDERLY BALD MAN watches over them.

Eames: (counting) 18, 19, 20- mostly Asian. Bloody hell.

Yusuf: They come here every day, to practice calculus.

Yusuf nods at the Elderly Bald Man, who moves to the nearest desk. Reaches out to the STUDENT. Gives his face a FIRM SLAP. The student does not even stir.

Yusuf: See? Very diligent.

Cobb: How long do they work?

Yusuf: Three, four hours every day.

Cobb: How many papers?

Yusuf: With this calculator? About 40 papers, each and every day.

Saito surveys the room, appalled. 

Saito: Why do they do it?

Yusuf: Tell him, Mr Cobb.

Cobb: After a while, it becomes the only way you can be challenged at school.

Yusuf: Can you still use the Binomial Theorem, Mr Cobb?

Cobb stares at the students, still uneasy.

Eames: They come to do calculus?

Cobb turns to the Elderly Bald Man, who looks fondly at his dreamers.  

Elderly Bald Man: No. They come to live the calculus. The algebra has become their reality. 

The Elderly Bald Man pokes a crooked finger at Cobb's chest.  

Elderly Bald Man: Who are you to say otherwise?Who are you?

How to do well in Call of Duty

These are the integral steps which, if followed correctly, will almost guarantee a great score in any Call of Duty game. I have compiled these based on years of experience with the best-selling franchise.

1. Be host. You'll know if you are host because next to your name (Viet Will) there will be 4 green bars, and if you are like me and live in New Zealand, your teammates' and enemies' connections won't be terribly god (i.e. red or yellow).

2. Laugh as your enemies flee helplessly, safe in the knowledge that your every shot is bound to hit. You are host, after all. This is your world, and you make the rules.

3. Sit back and enjoy your utter dominace, and the ensuing mass rage quitting. What a legend.

Hell design

I still don't believe in hell, but if it did exist, I'm pretty sure this is what it would look like. Took me about half an hour. Enjoy.

The Alexander Supertramp article

In case you aren't entirely familiar with Alexander Supertramp, I'll summarise: It was the self-assigned alter ego of one Chirstopher McCandless, a young American college graduate who, confunded by a material good-orientated, greed-hungry capitalist society, hiked into the Alaskan "wilderness", sporting little more than a semi-automatic rifle, a sack of rice and more than a few youthful ideals.

Needless to say, McCandless died.

His was made a famous life, and death, following the release of a biography by Jon Krakauer, and later a film. Both these texts, though (jeez, I am horrified by my adopting of NZQA's bullshit phrasing) painted the portrait of a disaffected, bright, humanitiarian, Thoreau-like young man, whereas a source not bound the constraints by a novelist's poetic license like Wikipedia represents an entirely different school of thought, as it appears. Reality.

And what a harsh once McCandless must face up to. His apparent total lack of preparation and general ineptitude where a hostile place like Alaska was concerned, compounded by his romanticisation in Into the Wild provoking many Alaskan natives to lash out. I have picked the best of them and pasted it below, from Sherry Simpson:
 
"Astounded by page after page of such writings, we counted the number of people identified in the notebooks. More than 200 had trekked to the bus since McCandless’s death, and that didn’t account for those who passed by without comment. Think of that: More than 200 people, many as inexperienced as McCandless, had hiked or bicycled along the Stampede Trail to the bus — and every one of them had somehow managed to return safely... Among my friends and acquaintances, the story of Christopher McCandless makes great after-dinner conversation. Much of the time I agree with the "he had a death wish" camp because I don’t know how else to reconcile what we know of his ordeal. Now and then I venture into the "what a dumbshit" territory, tempered by brief alliances with the "he was just another romantic boy on an all-American quest" partisans. Mostly I’m puzzled by the way he’s emerged as a hero, a kind of privileged-yet-strangely-dissatisfied-with-his-existence hero.... For many Alaskans, the problem is not necessarily that Christopher McCandless attempted what he did – most of us came here in search of something, didn’t we? Haven’t we made our own embarrassing mistakes? But we can’t afford to take his story seriously because it doesn’t say much a careful person doesn’t already know about desire and survival. The lessons are so obvious as to be laughable: Look at a map. Take some food. Know where you are. Listen to people who are smarter than you. Be humble. Go on out there – but it won’t mean much unless you come back. This is what bothers me – that Christopher McCandless failed so badly, so harshly, and yet so famously that his death has come to symbolize something admirable, that his unwillingness to see Alaska for what it really is has somehow become the story so many people associate with this place, a story so hollow you can almost hear the wind blowing through it. His death was not a brilliant fuck-up. It was not even a terribly original fuck-up. It was just one of the more recent and pointless fuck-ups."

I want to make a neat, contradictory summarising statement, but so succinct yet so very very accurate is this criticism that I struggle to fault her logic. Yes, McCandless was a dumbass, and people more knowledgeable on the topic could doubtless spend all day taking to pieces his poor decisions, leading him from one bad situation to the next. I want to say, "yet cruelly analyse his ideology and actions though she may, Simpson must admit that McCandless has achieved something..." But what? We knew what no food and no map already led to.

We just didn't know anyone would do it.

It just occurred to me

that for thousands of years, people wouldn't have known what their face looked like. I mean, of course, they might've checked themselves out in rivers and ponds, but still.

Isn't that a frightening thought?

New Year's Resolutions

Like most people, I like the idea of bettering myself throughout 2011, just not the effort required. It's become something of a sport in the modern day, making new year's resolutions that deep down we realise will remain otherwise unfulfilled. It's been a while since I've done this kind of thing, so I'm unsure as to how it will pan out. And seeing as though I don't recognise any gaping personality flaws I may posses, or pressing issues in my life, I've had to get more creative. In compiling and detailing these ideas, though, I'll be sure not to be too vague. Reading things like "be more adventurous" just pisses me off. Now for the mighty list:

1. Get to the gym, get more muscular.

Last time I got a membership, I mainly did cardio, but this did little for my scrawn, and since I've long since quit most sport, there's no real need for me to be especially "fit". Some inklings of biceps would be nice, I mist admit, despite my not being obsessed with muscle as being indicative of my heterosexuality like a lot of people.

2. Complain less about air travel.

Because, let's face it, I'm pretty lucky to be jetting off to bonny Asia as it is. 12 hour flights really aren't that bad; rather, the real horror comes when, only 3 hours in and 9 to go, I imagine all the things I could be achieving if only I weren't stuck in a thin metal tube, the acrid smell of body odor in my nostrils and a fat man snoring in my ear. I could be achieving anything. My solution- pop a few valiums.

3. Read one book every month, post reviews on blogspot.

This comes more from a need for new material on my blog than anything else. Still, I feel inherently cleverer and cultured upon finishing a book, and I could always do with playing less Xbox. As it is, I'm caught between re-reading Treasure Island and old issues of Xbox 360 World, the reviews of which I can now quote right down to the witty captions.

4. Reclaim (at least partially) my former tennis form.

Playing against my father the other day, it suddenly dawned on me how shit my game is these days, and how my twelve year old self would unequivocally whip me in a proper match. Sure, I won 6-1, but my shotmaking, especially where my serve was concerned (by the end of the match I was flinging serves at him, the double fault count approaching 20!) truly worried me. One day I will be able to fondly appreciate that I am past my best, but damnit, not yet.

5. Learn to write in cursive.

Looking over my exam papers, I am frequently appalled by the shockingly poor quality of my handwriting, as well as baffled that markers could actually understand what I wrote. Indeed, when e's become a's you know you're in trouble. My friend has even gone so far as to kindly refer to it as an "illegible scrawl". Cursive would simultaneously solve this problem, as well as giving a marker/teacher the impression that I am in fact a hard working guy, rather than some lurking psychopath, and am discussing the properties of ionic substances, rather than compiling my "people spying on me" list.

6. Be more positive.

You'll have to excuse the vagueness here. I tend to complain a lot, in want of something insightful and clever to say. Often these complaints are warranted, like if I pass a mock-tudor house, but I imagine it can get too much. Obviously changing your personality is difficult, but by approaching experiences with a better attitude, perhaps I'll enjoy them more?

There are, of course, more things to add, but a year is a short space of time. Being more adventurous can undoubtedly wait until 2012. Oh wait, the world will end then. Oh well.

The Beautiful Game (sort of)

The Australian Open is upon us once again, and for the most part, I couldn't be happier: I love tennis. I feel I've done a pretty decent job of watching most of the good matches, and having just witnessed the downright clinical thrashings of Federer, Nadal and Ferrer, I have some musings I would like to share.

1. Tennis, by nature, is a frantic, intimate, emotional game. As such, it evokes a range of feelings from viewers like me, ranging from job to downright disdain and despair. Here's what I mean:

- I love seeing Ferrer's terrier-like ball tracking finally rewarded by Murray's inevitable blotched overhead. Classic.

- I love Federer's uncanny ability to suddenly raise his serve to the exact appropriate speed and angle to ace whoever he may be playing on the big points.

-I love smooth-talking, cool chair umpires who don't take shit from the likes of Roddick, and who make overrules without a second glance.

- I love how a bigger deal isn't made out of Andy Roddick's name. I mean, come on- Rod Dick? He might as well be christened Colloquial term for penis/Colloquial term for penis. Hehe.

- I love how the crowd blatantly and unequivocally is cheering harder for Federer, despite his playing against a home favourite (and yes, total wanker) like Hewitt. 

-Yet I hate seeing Judy Murray, doubtless a pushy cow like I imagine her to be, stand up to applaud her son's shots, teeth bared and fists clenched.

- I hate how the likes of the 199 ranked Tomic appears to actually harbour belief that he may triumph over a top ten player, solely because of "home advantage".

- I hate the over use of the trite phrase "good hustle" from commentators- this isn't American Football for christ's sake.

- I hate it when players emerge on to the court, so heavily bandaged that if they showed up looking like that anywhere else, a friend might reasonably comment, "were you hit by a bus or something?"

- And I hate staying up till 1:30am, only to have my heroic efforts rendered pointless by that fucking Scot.

2.  When you watch as much tennis as I do (and granted, plenty of others see much more- Sky does a generally dismal job of putting tennis even vaguely high on their priorities), you come to know the players well, and if you're like me, to speculate about their lives. An example of this come up when the camera inevitably pans to the players' boxes- specifically, to their parents, who are often present. 

Take Federer and Murray, for example. Federer, of course, is the infinitely cooler one of the two. I see his parents, his father surely being the guy the Monopoly man was based on, and I imagine that they leave Federer alone most of the time. That even when he was Murray's age, they had better things to do than perpetually run around after Rogie. That he called them up and said, "hey, guys... fancy free tickets to the Open this year?"

Murray, on the other hand, lies at the opposite end of the cool spectrum. He is, and will always be, a mumma's boy (is that how you spell it? Looks a but ghetto to me). I look at Judy looking rough as usual in the stands and see her subconsciously re-wording the constructive criticism she will doubtless deliver to her son following the match, win or lose.

Thanks for reading.

Like the new layout?

I went for the black because I care about conserving power by allowing my monitor (and yours!) to display darker colours.

And for the same reason, I go to blackle.com, rather than google.

*I actually don't. Nor do I care about energy. Like most people, I'm a bastard.*

Quand je serai plus vieux, je vais...

I'm constantly trying to organise and consolidate my life- considering what I'm doing at the moment, what I've done so far, and must crucially, what I will do in the future: let's talk jobs.

First, I planned on a life of solving crime, this after watching Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century on Saturday mornings. He and Watson flew around on circular hover crafts (because let's face it, how else does one actually know it's the future?), wearing trench coats, and smoking pipes. It seemed a grand lifestyle, the laser guns and all that, but even at the age of 7 or whatever, I could still see the single fault in that it wasn't yet the 22nd Century. So, I moved on...

...to Marine Biologist. Not sure the motivation for this one, however. I used to be quite the animal guy, next to Simon, of course. He was the animal guy. I had decided the oceans were cool, and being a scientist was even cooler. When my Year 5 teacher announced one day that her daughter was had the very same job to which I was aspiring, I demanded to know more. The very job. Marine Biology just sort of faded away, and for a while (like I should have been) I remained uncertain on the career front.

Yet this didn't fly with my OCD need to catergorise everything. At the time our house was being renovated, and I liked to pore over the plans, examining in awe the way our architect had included every detail from sinks to the garden hedge, and the wispy way she penned her name and address in the bottom right corner. Architects even had a way of making doors look sweet. This was my motivation for taking graphics in Year 9, which I found to be dismally boring. Onwards.

I fly quite a bit, and I had always harboured a vague interest in planes, and pilots. This, of all my various planned careers, must have been the most closely and seriously examined. I read up on being a pilot, talked to a bunch of people from the industry, and even took a test flight. I was very gung ho for a month or so. I was told I had the perfect, exacting personality for the job, and that the perks would be outrageous. It was my medical examiner, a great old man, who finally spoke seriously to me. "I found it dull," he said, "because essentially, you're just monitoring equipment." This last piece of advice resonated with me, and has since put me off the idea of flying for a living. That, and I realised that I deeply hate flying, and what with my bad eyesight and asthma, getting the medical renewed every year would have been a pain in the ass.

Last night, having seen half of The Social Network, I settled on come IT job. Good pay, according to TradeMe jobs, plenty of travel opportunities (because I'm that angled around pay- my father's son), and typing code is just so cool. I don't know anything about it, of course, and I'll have likely changed my mind in the coming weeks. It's good to dream, though.

I just hope that by the time enrollment for Uni actually comes around, I won't be fixated on something awful like teaching.

Choice shots from Vietnam!

Since you're all probably growing tired of the same old material- opinions and the likes- I thought I'd try something different and post some photos from my July 2009 trip to Vietnam- the birth of the "Viet" prefix you know and love. Here we go:

This is from the chocolate buffet at the Sofitel Hotel in Hanoi- one of the few places I actually heard french being spoken in this francophone nation. Georgia and I spent about an hour here, but could have done with another two or three to simply make our way through the myriad of cakes, slices, sauces, creme brulés, fondus etc etc. This plate was soon demolished by myself.

On to Hué. Specifically, Georgia and my hotel room at the Saigon Morin. The colonial style, a throwback to the bygone days of the French colonisation, could be seen throughout the entire hotel. The far window afforded a great view of the river we later trudged over, and the mandatory basket of fruit before it.

Still in Hué, at the Forbidden City, an old temple-type attraction. We threw some food into the pond, and were met by these swarms of gold fish. I count 223 of them.

Read this sign- honestly, read it! The spelling/grammatical errors are everywhere you look, and for me represent all that I love about the language barrier. We found this at a beach resort somewhere between Hué and Hoi An, and rolling on the sand- almost like drunkards. Oh, the ragulations!

At the beach in Hoi An, minutes before the downpour began. The beach was quite crowded in the opposite direction. The beach was one of Hoi An's few highlights, I have to say.

Taken during our final night in Hoi An, as we ate tea in a restaurant overlooking one of the town's pretty canals. Georgia took this photo, and we agreed that it had the sort of artistic composition that professionals searched for.

I struggle to shrink into one of the tunnels used by the Viet Cong during the war. Around me, crowds of Americans gasp at my incredible feat, though I am soon outclassed by the petite Georgia, and an ever littler Vietnamese guide.

The single flattering photo of me from me all 387! We are dining at a backstreet Indian restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City towards the end of the trip, enjoying the delights of a Bollywood film and some good Yellow Dahl (is that how you spell it?).

I have a dream...

Foreword: It's 2011. New year's resolution: fewer shithouse articles. After this one.

After seeing Inception a bunch of times, I got more interested in dreaming, as I'm sure everyone else did. Figuring that inducing lucid dreaming wasn't particularly likely, though it would be inceptionally (see what I did there?) cool, I have taken it upon myself to actively try and recall my dreams following my waking, and failing that, to write down the few incoherent fragments that are there.

Here is an example, fresh from my cahier. It begins in a doctor's office. He is, for some reason, cheerily telling me that my bum is now made of molten rock. No wait, I just remembered that he found out by accident, and I was doing a medical examination in the first place. Yes! All my friends were there. How strange.

This can't be what you had in mind, Martin Luther.

Yes, back to the main event. An ass made of liquid rock, as it were. As I sit hunched in a decidedly shitting position over some sort of x-ray machine, I gasp as my bum is highlighted with pulsing yellow goo. What a tragedy- I could weep, and possibly do.

My parents try to console me. My sister tells me, "harden up Will, it's not that bad." She of course, doesn't know the severe implications of this burden yet- and neither do I.

It's bees. Bees are attracted to my bum. Just to remind you, the premise of this dream is that my bum is made of molten rock, and now serves as bee-nip. In my desperation in the doctor's office, I suggest cutting the rock out. But no, he tells me, "that would risk thousands of swarming bees!" Great. At home, the bees are a constant presence. They come in twos, threes, but don't appear to want to sting. Thank god I'm not Sami/Nick/Luke. But I cower all the same, and refuse to sleep in my bedroom, with its freshly formed hive above my pikachu.

The dream gets hazier after this. I only know that I somehow become desensitised to the bees, which seems to me as implausible as the bum thing. The dream progresses...

Now me and a few friends are at my school, Burnside, skating. This while the annual Year 9 Dance is taking place. Also, I am a boarder at the school, despite them not offering this as an option. The bouncer has confiscated my deck, and I am forced to improvise. Finding a stick of fair length, and deeming it worthy, it set about creating my new longboard.

I don't profess to being especially handy, but somehow, this board materialises, even though I only recall playing with those plastic bands that can only tighten and never loosen. We called them Chinese finger traps.

This is where I woke up, at 10:38am. The dream took place between 7am and then- i.e. my second bout of sleeping that night. My friend Simon once noticed this phenomenon, and he was dead right. In trying to decode the dream's meaning, I like to think back to my time playing a forest folk in my Intermediate school's rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the lines we sing:

In dreams, things are never what they seem.
No one knows just what it means.
In dreams...

I think there's a tear in my eye. How poetic..