The end of an era...

Sad, sad news last night. Sur Taj, purveyor of Indian Cuisine, our favourite local restaurant, has been sold... Efdias (REALLY don't know how to spell OR pronounce that) told us the news when we were picking up our Tuesday night special last night. I dropped by and talked to Ifdi tonight - and met the new owner - Benny. We'll be eating there Friday night, their last night. It'll be a bit of a party.

We always thought WE'D be the ones to leave Sur Taj... not the other way around.

Time means change...

We got in the paper!

Ok... so it's just the Southern News - but it's a big photo!

Another Day, Another March

On Saturday it was an International Day of Action for the Make Poverty History campaign. Around 100 people marched in Brisbane. The impact was great - check out Erin's photos HERE

This week is the 2005 UN World Summit where world leaders will be discussing these issues. Lets hope they have the wisdom to make some good decisions and save some lives.

Team Diana

Continuing the noble tradition of naming our trivia team after absent members, Team Diana did record breakingly well this evening. The major contributing factors, from team members were:

• Sarah - as usual, answering the majority of the questions
• Ben - for clarifying with Bomber that our 'double score round' was round 2, in which we scored a healthy 9/10
• Erin - for achieving 10/10 on the character/movie matching round
• Brad - for spinning the wheel and thus doubling the score of our previous (8/10) round

All this left us with a score of 68 - putting us in THIRD POSITION OVERALL!!!
Yes - there were more than 3 teams there. About 9 teams as a matter of fact.

Meanwhile... how can I rant about such trifles when the US government is trying to water down the Millenium Development Goals at next weeks UN Summit on Human Development: ABC News Item This is SERIOUS and could effectively mean the needless deaths of thousands/millions of people.

Finally, included is a photo taken by Loz on our camera at MxPx on Sunday night. I was there - up the back with Justin, Cathy and Andyroo. Mike, Tom and Yuri still rock, I must say.

Trivia with Bomber!!!

Photo courtesy of Erin
(Note to Bomber... you said "If I see that photo up on the internet I'll..." but you never finished your statement. So we thought we'd just try it... Plus - Erin did it first.)

Introducing... Sleepy!!!

Di just sent me this photo of Sleepy - our resident Blue Tongue Lizard. He loves our new garden and especially the 3 new goldfish in the water pot. I'll have to post some photos of the goldies soon!

- We're more than halfway through Harry. A little too much snogging in the latest book we think.
- We may have come last at Trivia at the Red Brick Hotel last night by the slimmest margin in our team's history. I think we got about 47, with the second last team getting 55. Our brilliant performance was due in no small part to the presence of Erin 'T-Bone' Gebert whose brilliance, especially in the music department was unsurpassed.
- Di's Mom is visiting on her way home to Adelaide from America for the next few days. And she's bringing Di a badgemaker, which is the source of much excitement in the Schultz household right now...

MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

We headed out on the streets again today to raise awareness of about the Make Poverty History campaign. This time, as well as markets at West End, we walked through the Queen St Mall and Brunswick St Markets in the Valley.

It was interesting how much more supportive people were at West End... how freaked out people seemed to be by it in Queen St Mall... and how nonchalant people were in the Valley. Of course there were exceptions everywhere.

I've never really taken to the streets in support of a cause before. I'm quite hesitant to step out of my comfort zone in this regard. A few things have contributed... one of the main things is being friends with inspiring people like Ben and Sarah - who have seemingly endless energy and willingness to put in effort for these causes. The other thing is that I guess the more you learn, the harder it is to ignore some of the frustrating facts in our world... The fact that 30000 kids die every day needlessly and most of us don't really regard that as a tragedy. We say we do, but if we really DID regard it as a tragedy, we'd be doing something about it. I guess it's a big step to actually believe we CAN do something about it.

ANYWAY - increasingly, I'm hoping to do something about it! So if I don't put postings in here regularly telling you what we're up to - let me know that I'm slacking off!

More Photos

Badly Update!!!

Make Poverty History - Street Theatre / Raising Awareness

Today a bunch of us went on a bit of a street theatre / awareness raising outing for the Make Poverty History campaign. Here's a few piccys of it! (Thanks for the photos Erin!)

The 8 Millenium Development Goals were represented by the 8 white statues:

1. Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger

2. Achieve Universal Primary Education

3. Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

4. Reduce Child Mortality

5. Improve Maternal Health

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases

7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability

8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development

We're doing it again a few times over the next few weeks and we need more people to come along to either dress up in white or to hand out postcards/armbands - if anyone wants to help out let me know!!

More Photos Here

Photos!

Got back from Indo on Sunday. NOTE: The fact that Sydney Airport has Krispy Kreme donuts only JUST makes up for the fact that it sucks having to fly via there to come home. Duty Free, Customs, immigration, flight transfers all took hours... missed my flight, got put on a later one.

Anyway, just letting you all know I have a bunch of photos HERE from the trip.

Can't get that song outta my head...

Friday afternoon - now in Kuta Beach at Bali. What a surreal week! And the people that work at mines like Batu Hijau experience it all the time... the contrast between mountain jungle / beautiful beach / huge, dusty mine...

Thought I'd post a few photos while I'm still travelling - always seems a little more exciting that way...

On the last evening at Batu Hijau I escaped down to the beach again and went for a proper walk along it. It's so remote and beautiful there. Even more so now that I'm thinking about it at Kuta Beach, Bali. On the way back to the mine town where I was staying I stopped in at a local cafe for dinner. Mine food was fantastic - but I thought I better sample at least one local meal.
Below is the seaplane that took me back to Denpasar, via Mataram on Lombok Island. Had some GREAT views of the islands - I love the volcanoes, which I can't remember the names of at this point.

Seeya!

PS It's that 'I've been to Bali too' song. I much preferred the song that was stuck in my head in Istanbul... or New York City...

The Bouganville Modem

Hey all!
I've finally managed to track down an Internet cafe at this minesite on a remote corner of Sumbawa. Having a good week work-wise. Trialling our driver training system in various vehicles on the mine. Had a tour of the open-cut goldmine pit. Pretty mind-boggling. I'm not really sure what photos I could post that wouldn't be corporately sensitive, so I'll try to post a few from the beach near the minesite. Lots of the contractors/consultants stay at the resort on the beach. I was booked in there, but things didn't work out. Would have been fantastic if they did. It's storybook beautiful down there.

Just uploaded the above photo. Took too long so I'm not gonna do any others! Will post a bunch more when I get back on Sunday morning. You can't see it in the photo, but there are some MAMMOTH waves at the beach behind me. Sometimes the water just seems to explode. (PS I had to hitch a ride here, then run the 5 or 6km back to my residence, avoiding the rabies-ridden monkeys on the way.)

Seeya! B.

PS The Bouganville Modem comment is in relation to the speed of this internet cafe. This posting could very well be being tapped out to the outside world by morse code... well it seems like it anyway.

It's a beautiful, beautiful world...

Why is it a beautiful world? Because today BOOST Juice are offering FREE juices or smoothies to people named Brad or Angelina! I was happy to play my part in this tacky marketing scheme. I have received 2 free smoothies so far, and intend on visiting at least one more BOOST Juice store before closing.

Ant Ant Ants!

This is a cooperative ant farm - owned by myself and my illustrious fellow-worker, Steve. 'Farm' is a bit of a misnomer though, since I don't think the ants will actually be breeding since they are all female workers. In fact, as the average age of female worker ants is 3 months, I believe this will be a sort of opposite of farm. What's the opposite of 'farm'? Any suggestions?

Anyway - it IS fascinating watching them! The blue gell provides them with sustenance as well as matter in which to dig!

I'm going HERE next weekend for a week for work.

Turns out that Badly Grown Garden is not growing so badly afterall... 

My Bro's Finger!

My brother did this to his finger yesterday morning... he's a chippy, and was using a nailgun. They removed it at the hospital, but he's got to have surgery today to remove some wire that stayed in there. OUCH.

I'm glad he took the time to take some photos though...

X-Ray showing the wonderful aim... and you can see the bit of wire that got stuck in there. 

We won't make poverty history??

Had an interesting chat with a friend on the weekend... he asked about the Live8 concerts, looked at my Make Poverty History armband and said "You won't, you know." I processed his meaning, then started to explain the goals of the campaign... halving world poverty etc. He went on to explain that if the world was given a clean slate, if everyone had the same wealth and opportunities, then people are still going to rise up and exploit other people who will then end up in poverty. "The Bible says there will always be poverty... etc etc".

I agree - the liklihood of completely erasing all forms of poverty from the world is pretty much nill. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything about it. I'm sure my friend would agree, but implicit in his statements was the extra sentence... "so why bother doing anything at all?".

8 guys in Scotland can make decisions that will change the lives of millions and we should try to influence them to make the right decisions.

I believe there is no worse wrong that we can do, than to have the ability to save someone's life, but not to do it. I'm guilty of it...

PS The whole G8 summit has changed with the bombings in London I guess...

Badly Grown Garden

Presenting... a feat of engineering, nature and art, created at 9:30pm last Saturday under lights...

'Badly Grown Garden'

Named in honor of 'Badly Drawn Boy', who's soundtrack to 'About a Boy' we were listening to during the garden's creation. If the name turns out to be ironic, then we can always call it 'Bradley Grown Garden' - a fact pointed out by Ben Smede. Thank you Ben. Although the garden IS a joint project and it would be quite unfair to give credit to only one half of the team.

Inhabitants include a chilli bush, some lemongrass, two tomato plants, a rocket plant, thyme, and oregano. Updates on BGG's progress will be published regularly.

In other news...

• Julie (Di's sis) is coming to visit for 10 days
• We picked up my Mum and Dad from the airport yesterday, back from a megatour of Canada
• We ate at Sur Taj on a WEDNESDAY night for the first time in memory. Thanks to a visit from Mark Dingle. Non-Tuesday Sur Taj food is wonderful. As is Tuesday food...
• 'Downfall' is a depressing war movie. Go see it if you're into that sort of thing. I thank my ancestors for immigrating to Australia before the World Wars!

Happy New Financial Year! (If you're into THAT sort of thing...)

A closeup of the pride of our backyard...