A bizarrely Aussie way to celebrate Australia Day...
I had just walked past the taxi rank, up and over the railway station, and was halfway along a looooong, lonely bitumen road, which was melting in 42 degree C heat, when one of my thongs had a blow out. The only way to walk home was to tie it to my foot with strands of buffalo grass and stalks of paspalum.
The strap on these Kenji flip flops is fabric and there was an almighty snap yesterday! Not sure the fashion will catch on, though. The new strap is rather scratchy, attracts stray cows, and requires mowing (or is that mooing)?
What made it all worse was that, while I was limping home in the heat, a stoic young guy in his late teens went striding by in bare feet, carrying his thongs in his hand. I swear I almost considered offering him cash for his footwear, especially since He Wasn't Using Them!
I love this juxtaposition of a metal tree and a real palm tree at Darling Harbour. Waiting for Australia Day celebrations to begin. I celebrated Australia Day by eating half of the Australian coat of arms. Yummy kangaroo on potato mash and asparagus. And it was delish.
At Baia San Marco restaurant, Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling Harbour: the traditional Australia Day fireworks begin.
Central Station was also decked out for Australia Day celebrations.
My friend Jonathan participated in the Central Flash Mob event today, and provided a blog entry about it. Well done, Jonathan! It would have been fun to be there. (That's not Jonathan in the above pic, of course. The Flash Mob organisers have started uploading photos, with more located on their Facebook page.)
Over our third annual Australia Day dinner tonight at Baia San Marco, my Star Trek Meetup group discussed the concept of flash mobs and, to my surprise, I discovered that our colleague, Adam, had co-organised the first such Sydney event in 2008! Small (stationary) world! Once again, the power of Facebook.
Motionless, but only because they're watching fireworks.
I've been thinking tonight that I'm still, pretty much, a stickler for rules.
When I was a kid, I used to see other kids breaking rules all the time. Used to drive me crazy.
Near my house there's some government land that provides a ten-minute shortcut to the train station. It's covered with "No trespassing" signs, but everybody uses it. During the Sydney Olympics in 2000 they officially opened it up, created bitumen approaches to the existing footpath that bisects the land, then locked it all off again afterwards. Although I did use it for a few months after the Olympics, I just can't stand climbing through the tin-snipped hole under that "No trespassing" sign...
However, there's something very... appealing about an event such as this:
Tomorrow, an event called Central Flash Mob is getting together a massive group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who will freeze for five minutes in the waiting area for CountryLink and intercity trains at Central Station in Sydney. They will place themselves in various culturally-united positions (handshakes, hugs, etc). The exact time of the freeze will be at 9:15am on Australia Day.
After the five-minute freeze they will then disperse abruptly as if nothing has happened. It would be amazing to see the bedazzled expressions of the unwitting staff, tourists' and commuters' faces as they see hundreds of people just freeze in time.
For law-abiding little ol' me, it's like rule-breaking without breaking rules. It's kind of like in the 80s, when attending science fiction conventions in Brisbane, we had to try not to look like a street march (banned by Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen) when groups of us went out into the Queen Street Mall for a late-night coffee.
I need to be in the CBD tomorrow afternoon, and I'm not so sure I want to be, ah, "stuck" there all day! So I can't attend the flash mob, although I'd love to be there. I'll be sure to freeze here, at the computer, and I'll look for the footage of their efforts on Youtube.
Oh! Here's one they prepared earlier! I hope there's a video for tomorrow's event.
Happy Australia Day for yesterday. Hope you spent it suitably.
Sunday's magic number: 90.6 I'm feeling fairly good about this! A loss of almost 2kg! I've been fairly consistent in my resistance of naughty stuff during the last week, and even my Junk Food Day choices were relatively healthy. Mind you, there was also a delicious lamb kebab, and a loaf of pumpkin sourdough bread, I brought home from Katoomba on Wednesday. Last night was a bit of a feast of fine food and drink - including lots of garlic bread/pizza and numerous glasses of Merlot - at Baia San Marco in Cockle Bay to see the Australia Day fireworks in style.
Despite the massive Australia Day crowds at the Waterfront Bar (which started an entry surcharge of $5 per head about an hour after Nate arrived there), and the throngs on the Old Pyrmont Bridge when they opened it up to let the endless flotilla of ferries go through!), we had great company, new Star Trek friends, old Star Trek friends, glorious weather, and fireworks at our front door.
Baia San Marco's food was excellent as usual. They did not hurry us, despite being so busy, and that left lots of room for chatting - and dessert. When we couldn't get free access to the Waterfront, Baia even let us have our table one hour early!
ABOVE LEFT (clockwise from left to right): Sonia, Djura, Ben, Chris, AdamJ, Iarfirithwen and Caprica_Six. (After a few merlots, and with all the dark lighting, the photos are a bit fuzzy.)
Where would we be without mobile phones? They seem to be the only way to triangulate a group of friends coming together these days:
"Where are you guys? I'm in the queue at the door."
"We're over here. Table 38. We're waving at you now."
"Hey guys, I've been trying to get across the pedestrian bridge for 70 mins. Have you started dessert yet?"
"Where did you go, mate? I thought you only stepped out to see the fireworks?
And so on.
Thanks to all thirteen members who weathered the crowds and supported the first re-energized Sydney Star Trek Meet-up at Baia restaurant, plus the extra members who caught up with us after dinner.
ABOVE (from left to right): Ben, Chris, Therin of Andor and Paranoid Tailor.
Today, when I should have been doing some housework, I finally got around to adding a Site Meter to this blog.
I hadn't really felt a pressing need to do so - I used to have counters on both my "Number 96" and Geocities' "Star Trek" home pages but, as the suppliers abandoned them over time, I never replaced them. But I was still a bit (well, a lot) curious as to who was visiting this blog site (and I'd begun realising that most visitors never left actual messages or sent emails, but that didn't mean that they hadn't visited, enjoyed, or returned for more another day). I was also wondering how often people were regular readers, and/or how they found me in the first place. Other bloggers keep asking me if I know my stats, and it was kinda embarrassing (and a bit Luddite) to just shrug.
Well, it's paid off already. There's a cool world map facility and it shows from where on the globe people are reading you. Now, at this point, I knew the only reader was me, having only just uploaded the site meter seconds earlier - and there I was, a little yellow dot on Sydney, Australia - but then a little red dot lit up in the USA! Following back using the clickable tools, I discovered that there was a hot link from IDW Publishing's site, who'd found my brief review of their new "Next Generation" comic. So within only a minute of placing the site meter, I already knew that people could/would be finding "Have Phaser" that way.
So the housework can just keep piling up now, 'cos this is fun! Happy Australia Day!
The youth of Sydney's West were out in force today, herding themselves towards Olympic Park for the Big Day Out concert. I was on a past peak-hour country train to the city this morning, and it was a slow trip, and standing room only, all the way to Lidcombe! Large crowds were also coming the opposite way when I arrived at Central. I had to smile at the many more people than normal wearing Australian flags like superhero cloaks, as they sailed through the milling throngs. This was in defiance of the organisers' supposed attempt to discourage flag waving at the event, lest it fire up more racial violence.
So how are you spending Australia Day?
As for me, the re-energized Sydney Star Trek Meetup Group's members shall be flocking to Cockle Bay, Darling Harbour, in the late afternoon - hoping to avoid most of the family crowds - to have dinner at Baia restaurant. Have been there once before - and it was excellent, both for food and atmosphere. Italian food on Australia Day, yeah, why not?
It's a far cry from the days of organised ST fandom in Sydney, when we could easily get 100 people to a meeting, but we actually had to cap our RSVPs at 15. So it should be intimate, with about six brand new members, several of whom are new to Australia. So Aussie Trekkers are doing their bit for immigration and multiculturalism, even if John Howard just fired his minister and renamed her portfolio!
Today, on TrekBBS, someone asked why none of the Star Trek series or movies featured a ridgie didge Australian character.
However, the poster had forgotten Wendy Hughes (left), aka Lt Cmdr Nella Daren, love interest of Captain Picard in "Lessons" (Star Trek: The Next Generation), is Australian, albeit without a strong accent. Born in Melbourne, Ms Hughes speaks (in most of her many TV, stage and movie roles Down Under, such as Lucy Sutcliffe's niece, Vanessa Harrison, on Number 96) with very cultivated English pronunciations, similar to many Aussie actresses working in Australia in the 70s. So, anyway, there's at least one Australian Starfleet officer.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Liam Bilby ("Honor Among Thieves") is also played by an Australian, Nick Tate (right), previously of Space: 1999 fame - and Holiday Island infamy! Since Bilby and his family reside at the New Sydney Colony - and a bilby is an Australian marsupial - I assume his character is also supposed to be of Australian origin (despite his American accent).
Tate was also a shuttle pilot called Dirgo on TNG ("Final Mission"), but that character is an early Michael Westmore humanoid "forehead alien". Bilby in DS9, though, definitely pays homage to Nick's human Aussie roots.
These two actors are certainly not the only Aussies to have worked on Star Trek, but Dame Judith Anderson (as Vulcan High Priestess T'Lar on ST III) and ex-Neighbours' Alan Dale (as Romulan Praetor Hiren in "Nemesis") both appeared on the silver screen in pointed latex ears!
Otherwise known as "Therin of Andor", Ian McLean has had an active association with "Star Trek" and science fiction media fandom in Australia since 1980. Before then he was an avid fan of the "Batman" TV series (60s) and the Australian TV classic, "Number 96" (70s).
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