Movie Quote of the Day

This is not just a quote, per se, but rather a passage from Adaptation that I find amusing. Susan is high on orchid powder and talking to John over the phone. Incidentally, this passage is not in the final cut for the film:

Susan: Johnny, do you ever wish you could use your toes just like fingers?
John: Sure, all the time.
Susan: Really?! Me too! I love my toes! I never let them do anything fun! I wish they could do activities.

(Susan starts to cry.)

Susan: I want my toes to be happy.
John: They will be.
Susan: They're my friends and I ignore them! That's not right! I will walk on the beach tomorrow. Then I will buy a pair of beautiful ocean blue socks! A souvenir of the day for my toes.

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Squeezing in a quick game of squash tonight! Then it's back to work to monitor this stupid batch run. *sigh*

Have a great weekend! :)

Stuck at work

It's amazing how things go in cycles. Most days I've got barely anything to do, and then out of the blue the work fairy will tap his wand on my shoulder and I'll be swamped. I'm still at work at 10:21pm on a Thursday night, because I'm supposed to finish this batch run and the mainframe is running at full capacity. I've been flat out on projects all day.

Still, I get paid by the hour so I can't really complain too loudly.

Squash last night was great fun, although I felt a little more unfit than last week (go figure). I started off playing terrible, and lost to Anoop (who was playing really well) and then to Darren (who was playing average). I then picked it up near the end and starting winning again. But that was the first time they've beaten me, and I didn't much like the feeling. Gotta improve for next week! On the plus side, I played with my new racquet for the first time and it was great! Felt very solid with a nice large sweet spot, and easy to swing. Happy.

My weekend is starting to fall into place now... I've got ice skating Saturday morning, shopping and cooking Saturday afternoon, tennis Sunday morning and another flying lesson Sunday afternoon. No, I'm not taking lessons! I'm just getting another trial instructional flight with another school :) It's significantly cheaper than a real lesson (because they want you to learn with them) and you still get to fly the plane, so I'll take what I can get!

Canned Heat

Well, the Lone Ranger was conspicuous in his absence last night. Actually, I spoke to him as I was leaving work and he said his bad knee was playing up, so I didn't really expect him to be there anyway. He claims he will definitely be coming next week though. He even got two of his cousins to go along, but forgot to inform them that he wouldn't be there, so they had a ball without him.

The night was great as usual -- quite a few new people to dance with, and I stayed in the advanced class this time and learned some new dances. Boy, were they hard! One of them we just had to sit out and watch because Catherine and I just couldn't follow it. I'm sure we'll pick it up over time.

Tonight I'm playing Squash with the boys! Should be fun!

Desperate Ratingsdrives

Well, Channel 7 have done it again. Instead of the regular episode of Desperate Housewives Monday night, they put on this cobbled together piece of fluff called 'Secrets of Wisteria Lane'. And what were these astounding secrets?

- That the cast wear fashionable clothes that sell for thousands at auctions! (shocking!)
- That the cast all get along with each other! (outrageous!)
- That some scenes have been controversial! (gasp!)
- And that Wisteria Lane is not shot in a real street at all, but rather... wait for it... a studio back-lot! (you've gone too far! say it isn't so!!!)

Well wrap me up in tinfoil and pop me in the microwave. There I was, living my life, safely in the belief that the show was filmed in a REAL street called 'Wisteria Lane' somewhere in America, where they no doubt had to shuffle the house owners out during the day so that they can film really fast and then stuff them back at night in time for dinner..... and now this. I'm flabbergasted. My flabber is gasted.

Thanks a bunch Channel 7. A few weeks ago you put on a re-cap episode instead of a new one, and that sucked only marginally less. So now that's two crapisodes. At least there will be a REAL episode of DH on next Monday night. I don't care about the stars' fashions. I don't care how they got the part. All I care about is the story. And the great dialogue. Just press play and don't insult us with this banality. Capiche?

Movie Quote of the Day

From Seven, by Andrew Kevin Walker...

Mills: Come on, he's insane. Look, right now he's probably dancing around in his grandma's panties, yeah, rubbing himself in peanut butter.

I am the dancing queen... er?

A new ritual in my life lately has been Ballroom Dancing at West Preston. Every Tuesday night from 8pm till 10:30pm is an open Ballroom class in this old hall. All sorts of people turn up, as it's only $12 and the emphasis is on partner dancing. Very much like those 'old school' dances where everyone would dance with someone for a bit, then change partners and dance some more, then change partners again. It's actually a lot of fun, and due to the constant changing of partners you get to know the people there pretty well. My friendgirl Catherine was the impetus for this dalliance with elegance, as her mum wanted to drag her along one night. She appealed to my kinder side and I said I would come too, thus defending her from any sleazy 80-year-old men who happened to be there.

But we were way off. The people there range in age from 19 to 50, and they are all really lovely. We didn't predict how much fun we would have there, nor how many friends we would make. I for one did not predict that there would be a few really cute girls there in their early 20's! Although I have thus far struck out magnificently, at the very least I've made some great friends. And this dancing lark with Catherine is really challenging too, as she has started taking it quite seriously, and we really enjoy burning up the floor together.

Anyway, last week I took a work colleague along, who is recently married and wanting to impress his blushing bride. He is of Sri-Lankan descent, and his name Ranga is pronounced 'rung-gah'. His first lesson was a total disaster, and I never knew that anyone could be quite as uncoordinated as he. He was so stiff and wooden that I almost mistook him for a piece of the furniture. This was made even more amusing by the dancing teacher, who read his name tag and called him 'Ranger'! I have since taken to calling him the Lone Ranger around the office.

Tomorrow night, another lesson... will the Lone Ranger loosen up? Will Scott finally get somewhere with Danielle or Jacquie? Will pigs fly? I say the answer to all these questions is a resounding NO. But we WILL have stacks of fun! :)

Come Fly With Me...

Well that was a blast!

Saturday morning at 10:30am I was at Moorrabbin Aviation Services ready to launch into the skies. But first, I had some basic aviation instruction in the classroom as provided by my instructor Reinhard (also known as Ryan). He went through the basics of attitude, pitch, altitude, airspeed, ailerons, elevators, rudders, and demonstrated the instruments on a large poster of the Warrior dashboard. Because I'd flown in Microsoft Simulator I had a good idea of all this stuff already, but it was good to hear him clarify it anyway.

Then we went out to the plan and he showed me how to do the pre-flight check. This is a thorough going over of the plane, checking the flaps, bolts, elevators, engine mounts, propellors... basically ensuring that we'll have a safe flight and nothing will drop off! I hopped in and steered the plane while he pushed it out onto the tarmac, and then the fuelling truck arrived and it was filled up to the brim with avgas. Donning our headphones we then set off in a slow taxi to the runway, with me steering (while on the ground, steering is done with your feet via the nose gear, not with your hands). We got clearance to take off, and he floored it. I had the yoke during takeoff and he told me when to pull back. I eased back on the wheel (quite a long way in the end) and the nose lifted up and... we took off! I kept the plane as level as I could whilst maintaining the climb -- it was an amazing feeling. For the next twenty minutes or so he showed me how to use attitude to maintain altitude, to climb or to descend, as well as the importance of not 'chasing the instruments'. I basically did around 80% of the flying up there, with him telling me where to go (bank left here, head out to the coast, okay you can roll out now) and it was wicked fun! I got a great view of everything from 2000 feet up! I lined us up for landing and after descending for a while he took over for the hard part -- landing! All in all it was a fantastic experience and so much fun!

Will I undertake my pilot's licence? At this stage I think ... No. As much as I really want to (it's so much fun and really interesting) it's also very expensive. To get my pilot's license for VFR conditions will take me around 60 hours of flight time and about $15,000. That's a not-insignificant amount of change! I think it would be better to pay off my car and credit card instead :)

However, I definitely want to do it at some stage in my life -- just when I haven't got quite so many bills owing! For anyone wanting to know what it feels like to fly an airplane, please check out one of the local flying schools in your area. Ask for a 'Trial Instructional Flight', and at the school I went to it was only $88. That's pretty darn reasonable!

Weekend Warrior

For some bizarre reason, I've got a bee in my bonnet about flying lately. I'm not entirely sure where it came from, but one day it just popped into my head that "hey, I'd love to be able to fly an airplane", and then next thing I know I was ensconced in reading material trying to find out all about it.

It's odd, because I've never had any interest in flying before. Didn't care. But now I can't seem to get enough of the subject. I even bought a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator and a joystick because I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Well, tomorrow morning I'm booked in for a flying lesson at Moorrabbin airport (about 25 minutes drive from me). I'll get my first taste of flying for real (as opposed to the virtual kind) and see if I still like it. If so, I'm going to start up lessons on the weekends and get a private pilot's licence. Don't tell my mother -- she'll freak out and think I'm going to die.

(Oh, the title of this entry is alluding to the aircraft I'll be flying -- the Piper Warrior single-engine prop.)

Other plans for this weekend include Squash with my work buddies on Sunday at 3pm. We've just started playing this week, and had such a great time that we have all bought our own racquets! It's nothing like tennis, really. Very fast paced, extremely exhausting, and relying on tactics instead of good strokes. It's fun! Plus, it's always indoors so there's no weather issues, which is key considering I'm in sunny Melbourne *cough*.

Updates on Monday! Have a great weekend all!

Reviews and stuff

Books Recently Consumed:

You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again: Hollywood Uncut by Julia Phillips.
A brutally honest look at how Hollywood functions behind the scenes by the Producer of The Sting and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Definitely not for children -- it's crude and confronting.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling.
For kids and adults alike, this is the 6th book in the 7 book series. Questions are answered but new ones are raised. I'm getting an idea of where this saga might end now. Exciting stuff -- but only if you've read the previous 5!

Goldie Hawn: A lotus grows in the mud by Goldie Hawn.
An interesting autobiography about a girl who built an empire out of playing dim. Surprisingly, she is smart and lucid. It was her dyslexia that caused people to assume incorrectly. Pretty cool.

Tell No-one by Harlan Coben.
An absolutely thrilling ride about a man who discovers that perhaps his wife is not dead after all. Exciting stuff, and can be read in one night.

Music Recommended by His Highness:

Never Gone by the Backstreet Boys.
Great poppy CD, with very catchy numbers as you'd expect from these dudes.

Hopes and Fears by Keane.
A british trio who write some of the most beautiful melodies and lyrics. These songs are ethereal and gorgeous, helped by a great voice. Perfect emotional pop.

Technology Versus Horse begins!

Hi all,

I was inspired to do this by my friend Webby, who suggested that we could all keep tabs on each other's lives easier with these blogs. I must agree that it's a pretty decent idea if we all keep them fairly up to date. Thus, my blog is born.

Oddly enough, I created one of these in October of 2000 when I went to London for work. It was called "Strewth! An Aussie in London" and was regularly updated to detail my daily exploits in that fair town. Of course, when I say 'daily' I mean weekly and when I say 'regularly updated' I mean three times.

Hence, I just deleted that one and have started anew. The paint is still wet and it smells like 'new car'.

If you are pondering on the title of this blog "Technology Versus Horse", it comes from one of my favourite movies -- Adaptation. Those who have seen this film will no doubt know the quote of which I speak, but if you haven't then what the hell is wrong with you!

"I'm putting in a chase sequence now. The killer flees on horseback with
the girl. The cop is after them on a motorcycle. It's like a battle between
motors and horses. Like, technology... versus horse."

Kaufman is a genius...