Flooded

A little thing in the Australian on Friday caught my eye, and before you ask, no I won't provide a link. Two reasons. 1) I'm lazy, and 2) the Oz is strangely hard to search.

Page 5. An article's first sentence is "The Department of Immigration has been flooded with 85 applications from World Youth Day pilgrims seeking to remain in Australia - and that number is predicted to rise."

How's that flooded, exactly? Is 85 more than expected? Clearly the sub-editors at the Oz want us to feel like it's a lot. If all we have is the number - 85 - then you could just as easily write "Only 85 of the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have applied to stay in Australia, relieved Immigration officials say."

If this keeps up, I'll have to go back to the Fairfax press.

Less is more.

There was a thing in the Australian on Friday that was mind-numbingly stupid, and I just have to share it with you.

It starts out by saying that the share of the nation's wealth held by older people has increased. Which you'd expect. Then it says..

However the escalation in the share of wealth of older Australians has offset a falling share held by their younger counterparts.

Err.. if the share held by older people has gone up, then the share held by younger people would have gone down. There's no 'however' about it.

More Olympics

Useful rule: Any sport where people wear makeup isn't really a sport.

Medal Tally

I've not been following the Olympics much - I'm interested, but not that interested, and I'm a little uneasy about the way that the coverage we get here assumes that we're only interested in the Australian competitors. Now I don't want to sound too effete and metropolitan here - and I especially don't want to sound un-Australian - but I can't help thinking there are other great stories, some raw human drama, in the Games that doesn't necessarily involve Grant Hackett or Stephanie Rice.

I was looking in the paper today and I caught sight of the Medal Tally. There's two ways to represent this. You can say that what matters is the total number of medals that have been won (Gold = Silver = Bronze = A Medal), or you can do it by ranking the countries by the number of Gold Medals won, and using Silver and then Bronze as a tie-breaker. The second method makes a lot more sense to me. I mean, when we talk about Michael Phelps we say he won 8 Gold Medals in this olympics, not that he won 8 Medals. Had he won silver in that one where the other guy got really close it would have changed the story completely.

Of course I'm sensitive to the argument that this sort of strict ranking implies that a Gold is worth more than any number of Silvers. And you could conceivably work out some sort of exchange rate to allow for that (5 Bronze = Silver, 5 Silver = Gold) but we'd all have different ones, and it'd be just arbitrary.

Anyway, I was looking at the medal tally today and I was shocked and dismayed to see that Great Britain is ahead of Australia. Yes, you read that right. Great Britain. I don't begrudge them this, I'm just a little surprised. China, yes. US, yes. But Britain? If they had medals for comedy, littering, drinking, vomiting, being cross and looking sick I could understand it.

Top Model

I was glancing through the TV listings for the weekend (I'm with my kids, I need television. Color and movement distracts them). The blurb for 'America's Next Top Model' says, in its entirety:

A contortionist teaches the models how to strike extreme poses, which they later use in a circus-themed photo shoot. Back at the house, gossip leaves one girl in tears.

Bingo!

You know I always love it when people stumble upon this blog because of some random search in google. Some of my favorites have been...

- Chunky and muscly
- crisis how to kill the last monster
- my lovely older lady
- very refined place to live
- deborah hutton ruined
- dry cleaner wonthaggi

And of course I get lots of hits when anyone googles 'lawyer by day, bacardi by night', and you'd be amazed at how often people do google that. Or maybe not. I was.

Today, someone found this by googling 'i hate myself mid life crisis'. I wonder if it made it worse?

House of Meetings

I finally got around to reading a couple of the novels that have piled up on my bookshelf. I buy them because I think I'm a reader, but then, in the cold hard light of day I realise that there are many other things I prefer doing with my spare time - piano, sleeping, daydreaming, reading magazines... I like the idea of books, and I really like that feeling of having read something. I love talking about books. This last one particular, it makes me feel cultured and sexy. Which, as many of you know, I'm not.

I read "Salmon farming in the Yemen", which was much lighter than I had expected. And all the better for it. I identified strongly with the emotionally-repressed protagonist (he's like me, but a bit fishy) and I especially loved some of the language that was used to describe the riverbanks in scotland. His wife was hilarious.

Then I waded through "House of Meetings". There are some things I really love about Martin Amis. Give us some examples, I can hear you cry. Ok.. This one from "Night Train", not a great book, but it has this bit about our heroine:

"I was a bad drunk too, the worst, like seven terrible dwarves rolled into one and wedged into a leather jacket and tight black jeans: shouty, rowdy, sloppy, sleazy, nasty, weepy, and horny."

And in "The Information", there's a passage where he talks about domestic servants, maids, who've arrived as though in crates from Vientianne and Bogota, with names like Ming and Atrocia. Atrocia??!!?? I liked it so much I almost persuaded my best friend to name his daughter that.

But the other thing I really remember about The Information was that towards the end I just couldn't care less what happened, I'd lost interest. I didn't care about the characters and the story was... well, I don't know. Have you read The Information? What did happen in the last chapter? I read it, but I couldn't tell. The language is fizzing all over the page, as it does, and it all seems terribly significant but you can't actually figure out what's happening. I still have no idea. And I don't care much.

I got to within about 20 pages of the end of 'House of Meetings' and realised that I'd lost interest. And I'm quite strict when it gets like that. I just put it down.

Music

There was a staggeringly funny article in this morning's SMH (a surprise really), about how you can use teenagers' musical tastes as a useful diagnostic tool for mental illness or various forms of social dysfunction.

Music style......Associated Behavior
---------------------------------------
Pop................Struggle with sexual identity
Jazz...............Misfits, loners
Rap, Metal.......Unprotected sex, drink-driving
French Rap.......Theft, violence and drug abuse

I especially liked the one about pop. Kylie fans?

Then they found someone who disagreed, and said "The key to understanding any teenager is to treat them with respect by listening to what they have to say, rather than typecasting them according to the type of music they listen to". Which is, of course, sensible, but does also rather take the fun out of it. I'm off to listen to some French Rap, really loud.

The A-word

I went down for coffee this morning at my usual place, the nice cafe downstairs in my building. The nice italian girl (who lives on my floor) was making the coffees, as she has been for a year or so. Very good coffee too. As she handed it to me, she said "there you are, Andrew". Andrew? What does she know? Those of you who know me well will remember that the name has a particular resonance for me. And there are, in fact, a number of people in Sydney who knew me as 'Andrew'. But her?

Dinner. Friend.

I was supposed to go visit my friend Ian tonght for a couple of beers and a wide-ranging discussion about everything, but I'm feeling a little under-the-weather and decided to stay home. An early night. I have a sore throat and a mild cold. And am generally a bit miserable.

I decided that what I really needed was a laksa, and as luck would have it there's a very good little malaysian place near me. I went there looking superbly sporty in my tracksuit pants and fleece (not, I hasten to add, a bogan tuxedo, but close).

I went in, they showed me to a table, I sat down and ordered immediately. "A chicken laksa", I said to the waitress. "Anything else..?" she asked, in a way that seemed to me to suggest that I really should be spending more than $10. I'm normally pretty immune to that sort of thing (or maybe I'm just imagining it - you know how over-sensitive I am in restaurants) but I did want something else.

"Belachan kangkong, if you have it".

She looked at me as though I'd suggested she lie down on a linoleum floor naked while I rolled hard-boiled eggs at her. I said it again slowly and tentatively, "Belachan kangkong". She stood there, mystified. I grabbed the menu from her and pointed, by which time the proprieteress had joined us. I jabbed at the menu with my finger "there.. belachan kangkong.." They looked at each other. "Belachan kangkong", they repeated to each other in surprised tones, and it sounded exactly the way I'd said it first.

And before you start, Malay's not tonal. So let's not do that whole blame-the-victim thing.

Anyway. They brought it all out and it was superb. Then, as I was paying the bill I chatted a little with the proprieteress, a middle-aged cheerful chinese woman.

Her: "Did you enjoy your meal?"
Me: "Yes, very much indeed.. just what I needed"
Her: "You are all alone tonight, where's your friend?"

I've been there maybe five times over the last year, and always alone. Which friend? Or was it a metaphysical question?

I hate myself for this (and you will too)

I was at the gym the other morning, and as always at the gym I wasn't looking very fabulous. Scuzzy shorts and tshirt, I'm not really a gym-bunny. I got on one of the elliptical trainer machines and started off. It asks you what sort of program you want, how long for, your age and your weight. I'm used to all that.

On the machine next to me was a young woman in her mid-30s (to me that's young. Maybe not to you. I have a larger range now). I noticed her out of the corner of my eye. Picking up someone at the gym is the last thing on my mind, I wouldn't even know how to start. I'm not there to impress anyone, I strictly mind my own business. But as I was starting up this elliptical trainer, inputting what sort of routine I wanted, how long I wanted it for, I found myself hesitating when it asked me my age. And I did it. I lied to the machine. And as I did it I knew (there was a sinking feeling deep down in my soul) that I was doing it because of her. Aaaargh...