My weekly yoga gripe

I love my weekly yoga classes, but there's one bit that I can't stand.

The partner work.

Usually it's not that bad, but sometimes you get stuck with a partner who has smelly feet and underarm hair. And if it's a hot sticky day then this can totally gross me out.

What's up with this partner work anyway?

Results are IN

Oh my! My PhD thesis examiners' reports have just come back!!
This is the moment I've been fearing, dreading, and waiting for for so long.
My heart was thumping as I read them.
But other than a few rather minor corrections everything looks good!!
I expect I'll have about a week or two of work to fix things and then it's off to the review committee, and that's it.
Years of work are nearly done and now it's time to reap the reward: to be able to put those three letters after my name...

Two amusing things I saw today

1. A geek at uni with a tee-shirt that says:

> cd /pub
> more beer

and then hubby says that it would have been funnier if it said "cd /usr/local/pub"

2. A cheap plastic mobile phone toy with a picture of a Barbie-like doll, and written above it in pink swirly letters:

Benign Girl

I'm sure it sounds better in Chinese.

Go Australia

A few days ago I was listening to Question Time at the Parliament on radio (there was nothing better to listen to) and I was thinking to myself how proud I am to be an Australian and to have leaders that are mostly smart, speak to the point, are polite, and get things done. I can't help but compare this to the Israeli Knesset where the politicians are rude and loud. That's when they bother to show up of course.

And then the next morning I heard the news of the police raids that narrowly averted a catastrophic terror attack here in Sydney and in Melbourne. Australia is lucky to have such good leaders, who are not afraid to do the right thing in face of harsh criticism.

I must say I was saddened, but not surprised to hear that a major terror attack was planned. I know that it's not a matter of if, but when, it will happen. When we moved here 4 years ago I thought it was wonderful to be able to live in a country where I can ride the bus without worrying about it being blown to bits by a suicide bomber. Now I don't take that for granted any more. Rather I feel like I did when I lived in Israel during the late 90s, when buses were being blown up quite a lot. You go to work and live your life and deal with it.

I just hope Australia doesn't have to learn how to deal with it, and all planned attacks will end like this one did.

In other good news, the terrorist responsible for the two Bali bombings suffered spontaneous combustion.

Le Riots

Usually I get pretty depressed when I hear the news, but lately I've found myself enjoying the news immensely.

I've had some guilt feelings about my reaction to the riots in France. I should feel bad about the violence, and I do feel bad that people are killed and injured. But I can't help giggling every time I hear about 700 more Citroens being torched, and the French intellectuals talking about how disadvantaged and misguided the poor youth are and how this is the only way they can express themselves etc etc ad nauseum.

I love reading all the advice that France is getting from the rest of the world.
France is eating the stew that it has been cooking for years.
The same France that has always coddled and supported Arab tyrants, that has nothing but venomous words for the US and its war on terror. The same France that wallowed in corruption in Saddam's Oil for Palaces scandal. The same France that sold Iraq not one, but two nuclear power plants. The same France that sends its heroic navy to blow up the Greenpeace boat. I could go on but I'm getting nauseated.

So it is with great satisfaction that I watch France burn, and its leaders hem and haw while riots spread.

It will be mighty interesting to see how this develops. Will the riots spread to the rest of Europe? I suspect they will at some point. Will France surrender to the Muslim Youth? Could be, could be.

In the meantime I can't help but be reminded of that Monty Python sketch with the Killer Cars being eaten by the giant mutant cat.

I'll give Blogger one more chance

and then I'm outa here.
I finally have something to write about, and the time to write it, and then Blogger goes and eats my posts. What's up wit dat??
Here's a bit of trivia: did you know that if you type "Blogger ate my post" in Google you get about 2,400,000 pages?

Horsing Around

Last Tuesday was an important day in Australia, The Melbourne Cup -- the race that stops the nation. I decided to try to get into the spirit of things since I'm now a citizen. I tried hard, but found it difficult to get too excited about a bunch of horses. I don't think I'll ever reach the point where I'll wear an expensive dress, huge hat, and high heels to actually go to a race, however I did put $2 on a horse at the office sweepstakes. My horse came in last, which is good because there's a consolation prize. But he didn't actually make it across the finish line, being the only horse to not finish the race, so that according to the sweepstakes rules I didn't win anything. The damn horse should have been shot and dragged across the finish line. Oh well, I suspect it's at the glue factory by now.
Meanwhile, everyone loves the big winner (for the third time in a row!), Makybe Diva, (sounds a bit like Macabee) and some new parents have even named their daughters, born on Tuesday, Makybe. How awful is that, to be named after a horse.