The Ultimate Paradox

04:00 pm - Nobody like you when you're 23

Today is my birthday. Hurrah.

Current Mood: content

01:00 am - Adventures in China part 1

OK so I'm back in Perth. I was too busy to update while I was in China so here's some retrospective recaps of what happened. I'll divide it up because I know your attention spans aren't what they could be. Tonight is me getting to Chengdu, tomorrow I'll write about the event and later this week about the few days I spent in Hong Kong on the way back.

Macau

Once I landed in Macau early in the morning I had several hours to look around. It has a heritage trail on the western side of the main island, away from all the casinos. As you follow the trail you’re pretty aware of the gap between rich and poor, most of the cityscape is pretty depressing and it set the tone for much of the rest of the trip. On the trail are temples, churches from Portuguese times, fortifications and to cap it off the ruins of a massive cathedral – only the façade remains. Some areas have a pretty epic number of tourists but other lower profile sites are much quieter. I saw the skyline on the way from the airport from one of the three massive bridges across the bay. Spectacular.

Journey to Chengdu

From then it was on to Guangzhou to get my train to Chengdu. I’m not a massive fan of Guangzhou, it doesn’t have much to recommend itself. It’s kind of what I used it for – a gateway to more interesting places. It has a pretty decent metro though, probably for this reason. I met a German guy on the bus who when we arrived introduced me to his Chinese friends who spoke decent English and helped me get my ticket sorted out. As I knew was a risk, the train was sold out so I had to get one in the morning. I got a hotel near the station for 230RMB which was actually pretty good.

The train wasn’t overly fun. My bed was the third bunk and dangerously high in the air with a pretty basic ladder to get up there. It was also hard. Asians for some reason seem to like their beds very hard, even in decent hotels. I don’t understand. It was more than 28hrs too so I spent most of my time sleeping, reading or trying to sleep and failing. They turn out the lights after 10pm so you really have nothing to do unless you bring a torch. I had some food and the crew laughed at my wrong yet effective chopsticks technique and asked me questions in the little English they have. Everyone in China loves Australia, it’s an instant doorway into their good books.

General thoughts about China

I’m not a massive fan, to be honest. On the plus side, everything is cheap so you can afford to do things you wouldn’t normally and you can get 580ml of beer for about A35c (seriously). But it’s a pretty depressing place in some ways. The pollution is just terrible. China seriously needs to STFU about being made to bear the same burdens as the West in ETS negotiations, the smog is fucking appalling and if the rest of us need to be forced to go along with this climate change stuff then so do they. Screw their emerging economy. Honestly even on a clear day visibility of the horizon and even closer isn’t great. They also seem to place no value on hygiene or cleanliness of toilets and back areas. In basically every establishment the front will look nice or at least ok but if you try to go to the toilet or if you walk past a back room or staff area or something it will be in a terrible, even gag-inducing state. Even at the convention centre. WTF China? Also it needs labour unions for construction workers desperately. They don’t use real scaffolding, they use a bamboo lattice and often no ropes or harnesses, just a helmet, maybe. Conditions aren’t great either.

Current Mood: tired

05:34 pm

Time to get the internet to work: 2 days.
Time to get around the Great Firewall of China: 12 seconds.

More later.

Current Mood: amused

02:39 am - The French are better than you

Out of 168 battles fought since 387 BC, France has won 109, lost 49 and drawn 10. How's that for a bunch of supposed cheese-eating surrender monkeys?

Told you the French were awesome.

01:54 am - Burn the blasphemers

Anyone who does not like our glorious national game of AFL should STFU or turn in their citizenships.

That is all.

02:17 pm

The publicly charming but rather dense ex-actor who liked to pretend he that was a cowboy and the world was his horse." - Robert Sherrill on Ronald Reagan.

11:09 am - Four more years

Solid proof Bill Clinton is still The Shit.

Current Mood: pleased

12:10 pm - "Women can't write about sex"

I thought some readers of this LJ might have something to say about this.

09:10 pm

So the apartment has had no hot water for more than two days now. I'm very unimpressed.

Current Mood: annoyed

10:43 pm - Today on the Violence Channel

This weekend int and I went to the Blue Mountains. They are cold, but not really that big a deal compared to fucking Canberra cold. We went to Katoomba and I saw the Three Sisters which I thought were much more isolated but aren't. It's like the whole reason the town exists. Continued on to Jenolan to go caving which was fun. Similar deal to the caves down sound in WA but obviously every cave is different and always entertaining.

Watched Idiocracy, which is both hilarious and highly depressing, and Army of Darkness (AKA Evil Dead 3) with the very awesome Bruce Campbell in it killing zombies in medieval England. So much win for a totally stupid and incredibly campy movie lol.

Today I did a whole stack of sightseeing a photo taking and ate pancakes as I always do at least once in Sydney. It was good but I walked around heaps and now my legs hurt. Back at The Oz tomorrow for another week.

Current Mood: tired

07:16 am - Rules to skippering your drunken friends through a night out

1. No one gets left behind. Ever.
2. Stay together, make sure everyone knows where everyone else is at.
3. Assess the male/female ratio of your group, make sure you have enough guys to keep eyes on all the girls.
4. No girls leave the club alone and in pairs only if they have a well-defined exit strategy.
5. Dance in a position where you have eyeballs on everyone, or can at least check them every 10 seconds. If there's more than one reliable not-drunk person, divide this up.
6. If someone is really drunk or not overly responsible, watch them like a hawk and always assign someone to look after them if they wander off.
7. Make sure your search and rescues don't leave holes in your coverage.
8. Identify and quickly neutralise any problem entities either by monitoring activity, stern looks, strategic positioning or, if necessary, direct action.
9. No one falls asleep.
10. Keep your phone on vibrate.

Add more.

Current Mood: sad

09:58 pm - Things

1. Have not started essay. I have a flexible extension due to the whole getting pneumonia thing, but it needs to be done really soon as I have two more to get done for Sunday.

2. UWA finally scores a point. It won't let me sit my exams in Sydney and I'll still be over east during the deferred exam dates. $400 and three days of interning will be lost flying back to sit them. Fuckers.

3. UWA doesn't do external at all. This mean's I'm going to have to overload next semester (insane) because I (hopefully) won't be around to do exams in first semester next year.

4. Insurance for internships is driving me crazy and may make the entire venture fall on its head. Fingers crossed.

5. Have three days to sort all this out.

6. WCG is during second week of second semester exams. If my exams are during this week I have a problem and will have to somehow convince UWA to move them. I don't think it will sit well as a reason.

7. Silver lining: May get to go to the Australasian Reporting Awards Dinner next Thursday - AFR is trying to get me a seat. It's a business reporting awards thing. It's definately not the Walkleys but I'm pretty psyched about the possibility.

Now to work.

Current Mood: frustrated

11:10 pm - Who remembers The Truth? lolz

Looking back on it now, this was a warning to me. Someone was telling me, "Don't go to work for the Truth". Remember Truth? Ezra Norton's amazing weekly - ANOTHER NUN OVER THE WALL AT TEMPE CONVENT. BEASTLY BROTHER IN BED WITH BOY. NORMAN VON NIDA CAUGHT IN LOVE BUNKER.

I did go to work for the Truth, and I was ambitious and foolhardy, so the editor said one morning that the paper was stuck for a sex maniac story, and since it was too late to find one I'd have to make one up. To my everlasting shame, I did. I invented a sex fiend who travelled on crowded suburban trains. He had a hook fashioned from a wire coat-hanger up his sleeve, and he would surreptitiously lower the hook and gently raise the skirts of girls standing next to him to glimpse the tops of their stockings.

The editor loved it. "If it's not true", he said, "it should be." The only change that he made was to christen the sex fiend THE HOOK, and have him operating that very Saturday night among crowds coming into town. The following Tuesday it was clear that we had got away with it. No other paper had denied it. How could they? The railway authorities had not complained, and there was no word from the police. Then my telephone rang, and an official sounding voice said, "Detective Sergeant Plowman, Bankstown police here. You the reporter who wrote that story about the sex maniac, the Hook?" "Yes", I said. "Righto," he said, "just wanted to tell you that we got the bastard this morning."

- Phillip Knightley.

Current Mood: amused

01:28 am - Editing essays at 1.30am

Lizzy's essay: The public generally considers the Democrats to be better at handling unemployment and Republicans better at fighting crime.
Me: Haha, "Republicans better at fighting crime."
Lizzy: lol, I kinda gave up.
Me: I have a mental image of John McCain in a red cape and tights, with zombie Ronald Reagan as his sidekick.
Me: I like it, it's staying in.

Later at 2.30am:

Me: OK done editing.
Lizzy: With Australian examples and shiz nit?
Me: I made up some BS, yeah.
Lizzy: Is it accurate BS? Is it actual stuff that's happened?
Me: Yeah. You can google for references.
Lizzy: So long as you're not like "this can be seen when John Howard wore a green thong at a nursing home."

Current Mood: amused

08:54 pm

Californian politics is so messed up. Citizens should vote for less things, not more.

12:06 am

See, what the people who are a little bit thrilled about the decline of newspaper companies don't get is that while the diversified new media thing might be sleeker, cooler and what people allegedly want, it's basically toothless. You need gigantic, monolithic newspapers or their associated websites with large, broad readerships and fearsome reputations to keep the powers-that-be in check. Some random niche website will not command the same kind of respect or terror as the NYT or Washington Post.

Even I, a tiny little intern, know that when I call up someone and say "hi this is Nic White from [insert scary publication title here]" they need very big balls indeed to fuck with me. You need massive audience, clout and reputation to force people to cooperate, they need to know that if they mess with you, if they stall, if they lie, if they beat around the bush, you will nail them to the wall and everyone will know. At the same time, they know if they play ball and are reasonable, they might get some good press that will help them out. Neither carrot or stick work if no one cares who you are. The increase in cooperation I've witnessed moving up the intern food chain from uni publications to local papers to The West Australian has been very educational.

The only winners are the powerful who wish to do whatever they want without consequence. Everyone else, without exception, loses.

Current Mood: bitchy

03:41 am

Oh so I forgot to mention that I'm in Melbourne with a few people from interstate/overseas this weekend. I'm typing this from the hotel lobby. It's been fun so far and I'll update more later. I'll be back on Monday.

Current Mood: tired

12:09 am - Out here in the fields

So before I do a proper update on the happenings of the past 10 days or so, I'll devote an entire post to Saturday night. It was the night of The Who + Counting Crows concert that I'd been working up to for months since I bought my tickets. It did not disappoint.

You could tell the concert goers on the train. Some were obvious, dressed in distinctive red-white-and-blue target shirts, retro vests and flat caps, others could be identified by the sense of excitement and expectation. After more than four decades, The Who were back down under - and this time they were bothering with Perth. We bought the tickets months ago, but it's real now. I arrived about 6pm at Perth Oval. It is not a big oval, dwarfed by Subiaco and used only for soccer, WAFL and rugby, but does nicely for a good-sized rock concert.

More than half the field was covered in chairs and, to my horror, a huge spotlight and camera tower that completely obscured the stage from the general admission stands. Fortunately, I had paid good money and would be sitting in front of it on one of those chairs. There were only a thousand or so people sitting or milling around buying food, beer or merchandice from trailer stalls.

After not too long a random British band I'd never heard of took the stage and played maybe half a dozen songs. They were surprisingly good, but there weren't enough people around to give them hearty applause. I walked around a bit, taking in the progressively intensifying atmosphere.

The sun set, the lights went out and Counting Crows were up next, a band that rank high among my favourites and have crafted some truly magnificent rock ballards that still shake my soul after countless listenings. Their style and demographic was not at all compatible with the title act so it was a bit disappointing to not see them recieve as much attention from the building crowd as I was prepared to give them.

Unfortunately I don't have their latest album and therefore didn't know half their 11-song set, but they played "Mrs Potter", "Long December" and, mercifully, "Mr Jones" - my unrivaled favourite song in the world. No performance by this band is the same as they routinely drop segments from songs into each other, change lines and play with pitch and harmonics. This was quite evident and while sometimes it's disorienting, others it's a powerful insight into the inner workings of a band let by such a tourtured soul.

The dreadlocked and bearded lead singer Adam Druitz's struggle with his own brain chemistry is in many ways the driving force behind the band's musical direction and possibly the reason for its magnificence. You can hear in his voice and see in his eyes the turmoil within. It's not just a band playing music, it's people baring their souls and letting them become instruments in themselves. We will be back, they said.

Intermission. People run to the toliets, grab one last round of beer or stock up on chips. There's only half an hour to go. Can't miss any of the two-hour set because your baby boomer bladder can't hold out. I find my friend Louise and her sister and father, who remembers the old Who, and discuss plans to get up and dance in the aisles whatever the security had to say. It didn't matter, by halfway through the first song, "I Can't Explain", the entire stadium was on its feet, where we all remained, chairs and reserved seating be damned.

It was electrifying. The surviving members - singer Roger Daltrey and lead guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend - may be 65 but they can still sing and play with barely a hint of slowing down. Sure the voice has aged and graveled like Bruce Springsteen, and the outlook is no longer one of youthful rebellion, but they're no Mick Jagger who should have stopped years ago out of sheer embarassment. Not only did they have the stamina to play 22 songs, but many of them were extended beyond their already longer than average lengths.

The crowd loved it, particularly as this was the first time they had ever been able to see the band live in Perth. Many of them were older and had grown up with The Who in their prime and mustered the strength to rock out with them, hopefully not for the last time. I had been concerend the atmosphere would not compare to that of more recent bands, but while it lacked some of the energy and insanity of Southbound and other shows and festivals populated by under-30s, the crowd belted it out with as much vigour as anyone else. We danced, sang, jumped and waved arms around in a euphoric way that only great music can move you to.

The band spoke of how sad the night was, it being the last stop of their tour, and how much they had enjoyed being in Australia and loved and appreciated the people they had met and got to know. "We want to know more about who you are" Pete said before launching into "Who Are You". He said they regreted taking so long to come back. I know bands say this stuff to everyone, but we can only hope they mean it and will be back sooner rather than mater. They spoke of what their songs meant to them and how they had come up with many of them. In some ways, the show was an allegory of how the band has changed over its lifespan, beginning with their first hit "I Can't Explain" and ending with a mournful acoustic of new song "Tea and Theatre", which really tells the story of getting old, which was proceeded by "The Amazing Journey".

They're a band keenly aware of themselves and their place in the world. "My Generation, we fucked it up... You fix it," they ad-libbed during "My Generation". They aren't the young rock soldiers they used to be, back when rock and roll began and civil rights were still a contentious issue. Their role has changed with their hair. They failed, they fucked it up, and now it's our turn. We're supposed to do better, not make the same mistakes. Who's next?

Current Mood: impressed

03:18 am - No kidding

"My Generation... we fucked it up. You fix it." - Pete Townshend during My Generation at tonight's concert.

Proper recap later.

Current Mood: tired

09:24 pm - WIN

Current Mood: amused