Below are the most recent 6 friends' journal entries.

Friday, November 13th, 2009
liq	11:47p	Herro Team America is such an underrated movie. I don't know why its so funny, but it is. There's just something about puppets. So .. staying in Canberra for Christmas this year, for the first time. Hoping there will be other orphans around. I think some of my family might be up, briefly, but not for long. What is there to do in Canberra at Christmas? How about a BBQ? (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
dmmaus	5:30p	Adelaide Temperatures in Adelaide for the past few days, plus forecast for the next seven: 9 Nov: 39°C 10 Nov: 39°C 11 Nov: 39°C 12 Nov: 39°C 13 Nov: 39°C 14 Nov: 39°C 15 Nov: 40°C 16 Nov: 28°C 17 Nov: 30°C 18 Nov: 36°C 19 Nov: 38°C (9 Comments |Comment on this)
politas	1:03a	Arrogant archbishop blissfully ignores all criticism ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) Current Mood: enraged (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
dmmaus	8:57p	England and Wales trip diary - Day 9: Monday 8 June, 2009 Rhymney House Hotel, Rhymney, South Wales. 20:40 We've just had a delicious dinner at the Rhymney House Hotel, which is a pub on the outskirts of the small and anonymous Welsh town of Rhymney. We don't think many tourists come this way, and even fewer foreign ones. The pub is in an old house converted into the bar and dining areas on the ground floor, with a few rooms on the two floors above. Our top floor room overlooks the quiet country road and the babbling stream just beyond it. We're here because we left Cardiff quite late, at about 16:00, and wanted to drive north a bit before ducking into some accommodation. We targeted Rhymney at the top of one of the valleys leading down from the Brecon Beacons highlands and turned into the town looking for a pub or similar. The town looks grey and drab and we found nothing promising at all until we passed beyond its borders intending to cut across the ridge to the larger town of Merthyr Tydfil. But as we drove out of Rhymney, we came across this place and pulled in. The friendly barman showed us to a room and we took it, thankful to have found somewhere welcoming to stay. This morning we were still at the Holiday Inn in Cardiff. Breakfast was a large buffet as you'd expect from a well-patronised hotel with many rooms. I avoided any hot food at all and ate muesli mixed with all-bran, followed by a banana. I also gave in slightly to temptation and had a small pastry - some sort of nutty danish. The juice selection included the ruby red cranberry juice which finally identified the red juice back at Tintagel for us. M. had muesli and bran flakes, and then an egg on toast. We also grabbed a couple of apples for later in the day, and I took a couple of small individual cheeses for later, to have on bread rolls - a camembert wedge and a sausage of smoked cheese. ( shopping arcades, castles, and rural Welsh graveyards ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
liq	7:59p	I was in Melbourne on Friday for the Conference of Economists. It was kind of interesting. There were some serious VIPs there, talking & taking questions. I didn't think up any brilliantly insightful questions so the opportunity went past me. John Brumby was there - Victorian premier. He did a bunch of slides about how Melbourne was better than Sydney - not that relevant. Actually, it came off as insecure. I think if the event had been in NSW, there wouldn't have been a bunch of slides showing why Sydney is better than Melbourne - it is simply taken as unspoken and obvious fact. Malcolm Turnbull was there too. He has a very large head, and his demeanour is incredibly forceful. But his speech was too partisan & I think the audience were hoping for something more interesting. Swanny was there. He comes across as a bit of a lightweight, too dependent on talking points. He's no Costello, that's sure. Gillard spoke &, like Turnbull, was too partisan to get much interest from the audience. But her answers were excellent - she is a formidable lady, and her voice isn't quite as Kath & Kim in person either. Our own minister - Carr- was there too. Only a small number of people went to the seminar he was leading, perhaps because they didn't know he was a minister. He needs to lift his profile some. It was interesting. Never have I been near so many important people before. On the whole, they did seem to be smarter and more articulate than your average joe - something that should be reassuring. Alas, Conroy wasn't there. If he'd been there, I would have actually asked a question, maybe. About internet filtering. More on that later... maybe: I have lost the rhythm of updating this journal. It might be due to Facebook. All for now: Alex is sitting next to me making a soap swimming pool out of dead puppies on Dwarf Fortress. How do you do that on a game with no graphics anyway? That last paragraph is one of the worst ever written, but I'm going to leave it there anyway. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
dmmaus	11:51a	Weekend away I didn't keep a detailed diary, but here are the highlights: Hiring a Mazda MX-5 convertible and driving up to the Hunter Valley. Staying at a friendly B&B, which was decorated thoroughly and consistently in an African motif. (The owners were from Mozambique.) Dinner cooked by the B&B owner herself - excellent pumpkin soup followed by salmon fillets, and astoundingly rich chocolate tart for dessert. Driving around the vineyards, checking out country produce and galleries. Platter of locally produced cheeses and wine for lunch, eaten at a rustic picnic table right next to the grape vines. Wedding anniversary dinner: warm sourdough bread, vege tortellini, braised lamb neck, all with various fancy trimmings, Valrhona chocolate pavé for dessert. And with dinner they let us try a few of the wines made on the premises for no charge! Tour of an organic vineyard and winery, with an enthusiastic guy telling us about the vine farming practices, how they recycle water and mulch and so on, how they do the harvest. He showed us the composting worm farm where vine trimmings and general rubbish go. Then showing us the processing equipment, giant vats full of wine (one of which he opened the spigot on and let us drink a sample straight from our hands), crushers, filters, etc. And then the barrel room where they aged some of the wines. And, coolest of all, the lab, where two young women were doing various chemical tests on the wines, with the help of a wall full of flasks, bunsen burners, condensing tubes, titration tubes, and so on. Wine tastings: learning to tell the difference between semillon and chardonnay, and merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and shiraz. And some yummy sweet dessert wines. Cheesemaking talk, in which we learnt how some of the local cheeses are made, while having a look at the cheesemaking and aging rooms. Dropping in at a vineyard where a friend of ours is getting married next year (since his uncle owns the vineyard). We scouted out the photography locations, and got treated to a special wine tasting, in which we sampled a very wide range of their wines, including some of the reserve vintages they don't normally open for tastings. :-) A brewery tour, in which a guy took us around a small beer brewery, giving us samples of different types of beer to taste as he described how they were made and the differences in the ingredients and fermentation processes. Another excellent dinner, in a restaurant with its own smokehouse. The split pea and smoked bacon soup was amazing. Spicy smoked pork sausage, beef wrapped in the restaurant's own bacon. Mmmm. Drive back through the countryside in the sports car, taking the scenic route home rather than the freeway. We were only gone from Saturday to Tuesday, but it feels like we packed in about a week's worth of holiday. (Comment on this)