Welcome to the City of Al Bundy

My 2nd last weekend in oz was spent in the fertile Murray Riverina, warming the house of newlyweds Dickman and Anita. Some of you will remember that I couldn't go to Paul and Sarah's wedding, so I went on the honeymoon instead. I think I went one better last weekend: On Saturday night, Anita slept on the couch, and Dickman and I slept in the marital bed.

This is Dickman, with the cat scans of the brain cyst that was detected two weeks before his wedding. The black bits are ex-brain. Nobody has noticed any difference in Dickman.

Actually, he first noticed there was a problem the morning after my Swedish party, when he suffered a headache which seemed disproportionate to the amount of alcohol he'd absorbed. Anyway, he's had an operation and all is well now.

Twas a fun weekend, the backseat bandits were reunited:

we sampled some of the local goon and coon:

saw many exciting and acrobatic displays of nipple crippling

Late Saturday night, a pillowfight broke out

Things escalated very quickly, and some larrikin, some loveable scamp, tried to throw a couch onto Duke and Casey.

Certain members of the community thought that was taking things too far. Not me, I had big plans for the coffee table.

Next day we went down to the river and buggered around, floated on lilos. Rural bliss!

This next pic is from Sunday afternoon driving home, shortly before a freaking huge storm hit, and freeway traffic was slowed to 50km/h because vis was little more than 20 metres:

I got a cab home from Nth Sydney. The cab broke down in the overtaking lane of the Pacific Hwy, in a dip which had a river flowing through it. Had to wade out in dark stormy traffic and hail another. Convenient.

The group:

Luke, Olly, Nicole, Dickman, Anita, Nick, Pete, Alison, Casey, Me, Alex, Fro, Gus, Liz, Mandy

A picture is worth a thousand words

Or so they say. I think these photos are worth just one word, but it's a very very rude word. This is not the worst of it, so far I've resisted from posting actual nudity. Reef trippers will soon be sent a DVD with the full story.

If I offered that DVD to the public for money, the transition of this website from travel blog to porn site would be complete. Stay tuned for pricing details.

Parents and family friends, or anyone with conservative tastes, please stop reading now. Check back in a few weeks when everything is back to normal.

Here we go.

Start off with the classic. Unarguably the best photo taken by anyone on the trip, Jenny and Steve:



The Steve high kick alluded to in the last post. You really need the hi-res version to get full enjoyment, but this is nice anyway:



Infractions of island law must be punished severely:



Could this be your hand again Choco???



Where have I seen those before?





How d'you like them oranges? Jenny and your faithful correspondent:



ummm... I don't remember this at all... must have been my twin brother?



This one's kinda cute:



Of course, those poor traumatized kids will never be the same again.



blurry pictures always seem more incriminating...



Saved the rudest for last, Neckbeard's rude neck:



Ahh, good times, good times!

I know it's up there somewhere

Just got some more reef trip and Norway pix from gurocknroll. There's some real mantle-piece material in this collection!

From the makers of the hit game show "whose foot is that?" comes the new sensation "Where is Mat's left arm?"



Also, here is the house where we had the big new years eve party:



Some big mountain near her house



This is called "Troll Wall". People used to base jump off it until some swiss guy died, now its banned.

Ice Ice Baby

Umeå, Sweden. Temperature: about -15.

Went to -5 bar in the Toaster (oh the irony... they should rename it the bread-chiller) last night for J-Girl's farewell. Don't know who I'm telling that to, since everyone who reads this and actually knows who J-Girl is was probably there. Lil' B, you're the only one I can think of.

-5 bar is a frozen bar upstairs from Lenin Bar, you pay $30 for 30 minutes of coldness. Lenin Bar is an ambient-temperature bar downstairs from -5 bar with a decor consisting of pictures of Lenin and a variety of vodka bottles (all of which were Swedish, not Russian). Lenin Bar charges $5.50 for a beer. Such a money-hungry capitalistic pricing scheme makes me wonder how much involvement Comrade Lenin actually has in the operation of the business, and whether he's regretting lending his good name to it.

Anyway, having just come from -20, and being about to go back there, paying $30 to spend 30 minutes in -5 didn't seem like particularly good value to me. But since Paul payed for all of us, why not? Turned out to be lots of fun.

You get given big fluffy coats, and if you wore thongs you get some ugh boots and plastic sanitary socks. Then you watch a little safety video (!!!) and go into a room where everything is made of ice, the walls, the seats, the bar, even the cups you drink vodka from. The vodka was Swedish, and so was the girl who gave us our coats, so it all made me a bit home-away-from-homesick. A bit of ice-dancing cured all that.

It is somewhat surreal standing in a frozen room look past frozen walls out a window over Circular Quay on a hot summer's night with all the tourists in their skimpy summer clothes. In the narrow gap between the ice-wall and the window paul spotted a drink token someone had dropped. We picked him up by his legs and lowered him down the gap and he grabbed it, but got a bit stuck. A bit of leg-yanking and he was loose, and the free drink was shared by all, and there was much ribald merrymaking.

Paul also cracked a hilari-arse joke about "cold hard cash" with the bar girl. The amazing thing is, she admitted he was the first person to say that! To me, that reflects badly on Sydney.

Since I don't actually have any pictures from last night, here's another one of a cold place. Kjetil on ski trip he just got back from to Oppdal, near Trondheim, Norway. I assume he doesn't mind me posting it.

Tonight is Brett and Melinda's house-warming in The Bronx, aka Redfern, I got my gat..

And one pattern in the weave is interwoven with many others.

Update: For some more comical fare, here's an interesting story I heard on the Seal Rocks weekend. Some of my readers might know Brent from the dive club. He's on the right on this pic from my farewell party:

He, Brett and Plucky have been getting into paragliding lately, and Woody will soon join them. It's like hang-gliding, but with a parachute which also serves as a wing.

A couple of weeks ago, Brent successfully navigated his way into some power lines. We're not talking your standard 240v road-side wires, but the big-mama 11,000 volt bastards that roam across the countryside.

His chute got caught up across several wires, causing a largish explosion, and taking out the power to two towns. Also, one of the wires flew off in the explosion, whiplashed around and hit a roadsign, shooting arseloads of current directly into the ground right near a water main, the water main exploded, taking out the entire water supply to one town.

Last weekend, at Seal Rocks, he was jetskiing around on a shonky engine he'd already half blown up that morning. Suprisingly enough, it died, and he had to swim a couple of hundred metres to shore, in largish chop, dragging a jetski behind him.

Quite a run of luck, especially as this is all just after he got out of hospital, having driven a small tree branch pretty far into his leg while attempting to land his paraglider.

Hats off, to all of those who erred before me, and taught me how to survive.

I have little to say, but was sitting daydreaming about Emmy Noether's theorem, an interesting little mathematical nugget.

In Lagrangian systems, every differentiable symmetry creates a corresponding conserved quantity.

E.g. in classical (non-relativistic) mechanics,
1) Symmetry with respect to translation gives conservation of momentum.
2) Symmetry with respect to rotation gives conservation of angular momentum.
3) Symmetry with respect to time gives conservation of energy.

The third seems much more surprising and inticing than the others, for what has time to do with energy? But is that just because I'm not confused enough by the first two?

And if somebody read that with understanding and said "so what?" would they necessarily be missing anything apart from a certain dizzy feeling?

la di da.

Update: For my right-brain dominant readers, I offer the following plagiarised thought:

Mightn't we imagine a man who, never having had any acquaintance with music, comes to us and hears someone playing a reflective piece of Chopin and is convinced that this is a language and people merely want to keep the meaning secret from him?

Soulful expression in music - this cannot be recognized by rules. Why can't we imagine that it might be, by other beings? If a theme, a phrase, suddenly means something to you, you don't have to be able to explain it. Just this gesture has been made acessible to you.

Back to pictures and bad jokes later, I'm just in that sort of mood...

Here sharky sharky sharky

Karl Pilkington's argument against technology: "I mean, if we hadn't invented in aeroplanes, would we have wings by now?"

Also "I wondered about the big bang. I thought, was it really a big bang, or did it just seem big because there was no other sound to drown it out?"

Thank you Brett G for a stand in camera. It survived Seal Rocks.

Jenny (in the background) and I surround a fearful, halo'd Grey Nurse in an underwater cave:



This one hasn't flossed in a while...



Our evil plan was to get a photo of a shark wearing a viking helmet. Strangely enough, the sharks didn't really enjoy it, and this was the best I got on camera, woody approaching with helmet in hand.



Interesting fact: if you pick up a port jackson shark, hold it facing in a particular direction, then give its tail a flick, it'll shoot in that direction at full speed. You can shoot them into other divers, etc. Here woody is in a small cave with three or four sharks, attempting to shoot a port jackson into one of them:



After the dive Brett S. said... "You know, we usually just sit outside the cave and watch the sharks, we don't go in there and fuck about with them.". "Yeah", we said, "that's usually".

Jen and I still have sore arses from the ride woody gave us. Boat ride, I mean, haw haw. Litte rubber ducky in hefty swell, we got the whole thing airborn, it really seemed to glide in mid air, then smack down into the trough. Those boats are really tough!

xo all.

More

Update: whack rappers beware, Kirkman and I-Rock are bashin braincells on the mix tonight.

we want Ian!
not the one from nepean!
who isnt very me-an, who never stops peein.
girl's, he's got three in
many more in sweden
better get a lead-in
cos the guys, we dont need him
and we can't afford to feed him
but the girls, well they heed him

what did it take to breed him?
3 cows, a man, and a steed...him
his mama gave birth and freed him!
that ian from nepean sweden!

(Kirk and I spat alternating rhymes in an msn rap battle thisafter)

Some from above water now...
These photos were taken by various people.

Wildlife enthusiasts and seedy perves alike will find a lot to enjoy on Lay-dee Musgrave (pick the Norwegian):


Mags shows up the boys with a spangled emperor (the best of the best) on her first ever spearfishing attempt. What did I spear? Several metres of empty water column, and a sandy patch recently vacated by a largish trout.


Mat maintains a zen-like state of calm as the world zooms past him.


Make of this what you will. The girls and I seem to have a sufficient supply of tequila for the time being.


After a long, hard day, woody enjoys an ice-cold cock.


Tutan-comin-atchya.
Spot the difference.


More candle-lit goodness, from the card table at the playboy mansion.
choco and steve.


mat and choco.


Cus, pensive. Don't eat the flag behind him, I think it's poisonous!


FUGU ME!


For those who care, my final PhD thesis is currently at the book binders, and will be handed in tomorrow.

David McGhan's Underwater World Around Him

Wierd and wonderful underwater creatures is the theme for today.

This thing is actually an animal, it crawls around and uses those leafy bits to grab food. (I'm talking about the red thing, not woody, although the description works pretty well for him too.)



A wobby in a cloud of little fishies in the back of a cave.
What's a wobby? The thing in the middle, a type of shark.
(That's it's head)



A spanish dancer whirls and twirls above a human hand. Never has an underwater creature been more appropriately named. Except maybe the Puntang Goby.



A banded cleaner shrimp. If you've seen Finding Nemo, this is the dude with the french accent! Apparently sometimes you can get them to climb in your mouth and clean your teeth for you. This one respectfully declined to work on mine, citing occupational health and safety concerns.

I'm a scientist, your satellites are weak. They get dimmer every time I speak.

Update: for anyone who doesn't read it regularly already, there's some more island photos on Mat's blog

Hmmm... the same reviewer who called my style of writing "annoying" raised three or four theoretical issues with my thesis. Such as: the control signal can have finite escape time. But they're all wrong. Every mathematical point he makes is wrong. And he even commits the cardinal sin of starting a sentence with "Obviously" which is bad enough when what you're saying is true.

He found a few typos, which is always good, but apart from that, he just wasted my time. And if anyones gonna waste my time it'll be me, damnit! By writing a blog, for example. Or trying to sneeze backwards.

But he'll still be frontin' while I'm kickin' back feet-up in a penthouse apartment sippin' hennessey and watchin' sesame street in a silk robe. Star struck with one buck, your girl look like Donald Duck.
Yeah.

In other news, here's one of Jason's pics from the island, very artistic!

Ecce Homo

Dunno what happened, but blogger deleted my post.
It was still on the atom.xml thing, so here it is again.

Here you go Katie, behold the man:





And to keep things fair for the boys and lezzos, here's one featuring Sara's ever-popular coconut boobie-holders:



And one featuring three girls and a suitably impressed native islander man:



For anything further, I'll need credit card details.

Also, courtesy of Kjetil, a rather amusing, and 100% accurate, article about Norway which turns into a boring car review about half way through.