Fit

I’ve been going to kung fu twice a week now for a while, just the other day I went to a 3^rd classin a week, a tai chi one. All this training takes up a reasonable bit of time and it can be reasonably draining and exhausting. However, I feel distinctly better because of it, and more relaxed and comfortable through the days compared to when I wasn’t doing anything physical.

I also am starting to feel fitter and stronger.

OHH MY FUCKING GOD!!!! Kana just gave me some chips!!! WASABI LOBSTER CHIPS!!!! Now I love wasabi peas, these chips knock them completely out of the water, I’m assuming you would get them at some asian supermarket!!! Go now! Buy buy buy buy wasabi lobster potatoe snacks! GET THEM NOW!

Its just a nice feeling, I think in conjunction with this I’m also slightly bigger than I used to be, I’m going to think positively and assume some of it is fat, but some is muscle!

PS: This post was written about 1.5 -2 weeks ago, since then i havnt attended kung fu, due to looking for a place to live related activites and overtime work. Ironic.

P.P.S: I have also lost the paunch I developed in melb, so i'm assuming a lot more is muscle than before, I put this down to healthy living... that, or living in a perpetual sauna, either or.

Blogging

I hope to blog more in the future, this I endeavor I hope to be aided in by the purchase of a Palm Top PDA, with it I shall hold the future in my hand, esoteric hand stokes, aided by a small plastic wand will turn every gesture into a mystical creation of words, wireless would aid immensely in conveying that information to the centre of my mystic universe… my awesome laptop… which can now be purchased for a grand less than I paid for it, almost a year later…

Anyway, any suggestions or advice on what to get are appreciated, someone in melb has one they want to get rid of for $50, if your reading this, post the details on here, so the nice people can read it and advise me :p

Bloody Queensland

It's hot here. Really hot. I have almost had enough of nights too swealtering to sleep in and queenslanders relating to me in a way I can only describe as truely australia; "Hot? Nah, this isn't summer. Now last summer, that was a summer. I think I've only had the aircon on twice this summer, if you can it a summer, more like spring. Wait till next year. We should have a real summer then."

Accommodation

I hate it. Every place I’ve lived in recently, either it has people living there who suck, in one way or another (the bad way), or the place sucks. Air conditioning is a must. People who clean up after themselves is a must. Crazy old alcos are definitely out.

Me and my baby are going to be moving in together, most likely with some Korean girl, there are some other options, but basically, as long as we know the person, they aint a pig, or like crazy or something them living with us would be awesome. At least then I don’t have to take pot luck with whoever moves in with us.

Taking essentially pot luck with what a place is like and how much of a pain, or lack of one the owners are is enough.

I recon as long as the place seems clean, big enough, has aircon and I’m living with people I am pretty sure I can live with, it should all be fine.

This is Brisbane… maybe if we went for the random flatmate option we might end up with one of the hot strippers who strut around the city in black tank tops and hot pants, distributing discount vouchers to their next lap dance…

The blackness of night returns

My vehicle has been repaired, its graceful black lines will grace the tarmac once again, occasionally shuddering and shaking and rattling as per the other issues that have not as yet been address

The day my car exploded

I thought today was going to be an ordinary day, get up, get dressed, go to work, have my usual set of frustrating encounters with the usual people and go home and eat and stuff… ordinary.

As I drove my car into the city to drop off my girlfriend she tells me the story of her dream last night, she dreamt that I had some kind of relationship with someone else, who is a friend of mine in Melbourne, and then after finding this out, she started a relationship with the same person. In this dream I then found out about her relationship with this friend of mine. Jen you were part of a dreamt love triangle :p

The only part of this that seems particularly out of place, ok, well one of them is that I would be upset…Admittedly on some levels this would bother me, but my girl, having a relationship with a girl, that I was also having a relationship with… I may not be much of a mathematician, but 1 + 1 + 1 = THREESOME!

All that aside, after the dream was related to me as I drove to work in stop-start traffic, and after I finished laughing and promised to relate this story to whoever frequents this page, did the atmosphere become severly 80ish as clouds of dry ice, surrounded us, and there was David Bowie, complete with glass juggling ball, tights and tennis balls… No, just kidding, the bonnet of my car started vomiting evaporated coolant through the gaps of the main panel. A passing driver kindly informed me of the pooling coolant underneath my car, and so I turned it off.

Stopped in the middle of a busy near-city street I interrupted a lane of traffic while the RACQ tow-truck was on the way. A kindly Brisbane Transport truck kindly waited behind me, protecting my vehicle and making nice with traffic flows. This vehicle came fully equipped with a padded bumper, ready to push me off the road if required.

My car was eventually towed to a radiator repair place, within a few hundred meters of the incident. The fixing of the broken pipes will run me down $440 dollars, damn Chrysler and their parts. This has already occurred and has not solved the problem, apparently my fan, the thing that cools the radiator is not working… further looking at will occur and an auto electrician may be called for.

This incident is possibly not that major, and can be expected of a car of this age, however the addition problem of the fan seems to be icing on the cake of a problematic vehicle.

This has not been the best of days.

Eragon

Recently I saw Eragon. As a lover of fantasy, this was a treat. I have some good and bad things to say about the movie, but for a variety of reasons I will call this movie good.

The Good

In recent years any major movie that was fantasy or sci-fi based tended to have a dodgy unoriginal story, weak characters and there has been a recent move towards good special effects.

Serenity would be an exception to this. Lord of the rings was a good well rounded series of movies, if a tad long.

This movie does have well produced special effects, pretty dragons and magic. The story is based on a novel, the basic story seems fairly standard fantasy fair, I have not read the books the movie is based on although I have some vague intentions of doing so.

The cast was fairly good, although some melodramatic overacting on the part of, well a lot of people, but mostly people in the bad guys camp, John Malkovitch I’m looking at you.

But basically you have a farm boy, and dragon, magic and awesome fights, happen to him. He plays his part of too naïve and stupid to survive well, and the sheer luck and ‘things’ that make him special suffice to keep him alive in these situations, pretty standard high fantasy fair. He manages to play this well.

A commendation deserves to go to Jeremy Irons for his acting and character in this movie. Playing the grizzled old guy who has been there and done that, takes the role of helping out the young whippersnapper and trying to make sure he doesn’t die horribly too quickly. His character has the most depth of any in the movie and probably is by far the most interesting and engaging.

The Bad

This movie struggles from two main aspects, the first is detail, the second is storytelling.

Detail

The movie seemed very standard fantasy fair, nothing terribly new or exciting in any of the concepts presented, giving the books the benefit of the doubt and knowing that they are quite long books (also standard fantasy tradition) I’m quite sure a lot of detail has been left out of the movie. This resulted in just about every character being fairly 1 dimensional. The boy with potential, The girl who is a princess, the evil sorcerer, the evil tyrant, I think you get the idea. This included the story. My belief is they could have shown us less story, but told the part of the story they chose more completely.

Story telling

The movie started off with a juxtaposition, they overviewed a series of events, bloody wars, killing and oppression (by the evil king). We were then quickly introduced to The Village, where The Boy With Promise resides, while The Princess is pursued in some other place by the Evil Sorcerer. So we have a world in turmoil, the village they then introduced us to was idyllic, a lovely place to be, so the tone of the scenes and music lead us to believe, later it became a darker village, with more nasty overtones.

This was contrast at the same time by a violent battle, these scenes were mixed together, for story line reasons, but together they make the combination of events seem to clash with their underlying tones. I think the reason for this was they didn’t know if they were making some kind of fairy tale for young people or a grittier story set in a fantasy land. This dichotomy of purpose resulted in a few other scenes that seem to jar with the feelings the music and imagery presented when contrasted the context and content of the scene, such as mid way through the movie, DUN DUN DEEERRR something bad happened. The aftermath of this really bad thing was serene music and an idyllic picture of mountainous terrain with an almost divine evening sky and sunset… how is that sad!? How does that imagery and sound enhance the moment, to me, it didn’t, it was just a bit silly, pretty but silly.

I griped a reasonable amount about this movie, but I’m happy with it, because the overall quality of the movie was higher than most fantasy offerings, and I hope for more in the future. This is a good, vanilla or white-bread fantasy movie. Not great, but not terrible. There might be the odd overused cliché but they can be ignored and there are some good performances. Lest we forget, pretty scenery, special effects and dragons :p

Struck Dumb

Saturday was going to be a hard day, full of getting ready for the week ahead andd house hunting. It was going to be a right pain, but for a good cause.

On Friday I found out that this pain, that would have been in the name of improving the quality of my life in Brisbane, could not occur.

Currently we are working on a silly project in a kinda silly way. This project was also excepted with too little time to complete it, so my Saturday was taken up by overtime. In spite of this getting in the way of things that I needed to do, I guess I didn’t mind that much, except that on Saturday my car didn’t start. The second time within 1 week, battery issues that related to other things… I’m no car expert.

The amount of pain and hassle this caused was unbelievable.

House hunting will have to wait till next Saturday now, because of work and this is Brisbane where real estate agents don’t work too much on Sundays.

This morning I went to tai chi class, run by the kung fu school I go to, and that was pretty nice and energizing.

Keeping you updated…

Whirlwind

My girlfriend and I find ourselves back in Brisbane. The ebbs and flows of our trip to Melbourne left me almost without breath, but definitely relaxed and relieved.

On arriving there I was greeted by my best friend and we immediately went to the city to China Bar, one of my favorite restaurants, for a late dinner. We were joined by his girlfriend and went back to there place. The following day we went to Chadstone, for shopping, and my grandparents, for Shabbat, and Brunswick St, to Polly for late night drinks in a decadent atmosphere.

Melbourne knew how to greet our arrival with unseasonal cold and wet weather, quite out of the range of Queensland weather, and did it ever make me miss that town. So following the cold I was taken down with a bad sore throat. But never did I let it get me down. The bad weather did not actually start until after the wedding that was one of the main purposes of our visit.

After that there was Christmas with family and friends, hideous amounts of shopping at as many major places for shopping as possible. Dinners, restaurants, cafes, chocolate, clothes and a New Years party in the middle of the country in an abandoned converted church with my friends and copious amounts of stuff that you bring in a new year with, food, drink, other and music.

And then the wind down… more of the same, shopping, eating, friends.

It felt full on, relaxing, and awesome.

I miss you all.

My girl loved every minute of it, the place, the people, the food, THE SHOPPING

We even managed to get sick numerous times during the trip and it was still awesome.

Further break down and description of events by request, all requests be answered via blog.