drunk? don't know who to call?

Other photos

New Years eve: Fondue evening and 'where is the love' house party at beleza on kloof street.

Beaverlac: up in the mountains. camping, sleeping and swimming.

Growing UP

yes. its happening. We can no longer escape it. 2007 is the year of the first babies, engagements and buying houses. Its very exciting. Congratulations to everyone and a special warm welcome to the newest, youngest(and not yet born) edition to the blog. LIAM. Here's a pic I've been meaning to put up for a long time....

Coachella

Who is up for going to Coachella this year?

Ja, its a fake, but admit it Phil, you squealed with delight when you read

"Crash Test Dummies"?

That is some funny shizzat right there...

happy ozfest

apparently, it's beat up a non-anglosaxon day in the land down under.

greg, if you are going to any rock concerts, please keep that ozzie flage you love so much to wave around under wraps. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6298929.stm

Happy Birthday Paul!

Hope you have a great weekend!
We expect tales of NYC madness on Monday please!

I'm famous

So, did you guys know i was once in a band?



Yeah, we had a 5-album record contract with Capitol, but they dumped us after our drummer "Spanky" Rabinowitz drank too much kosher wine (it was shabbos) and vomited over some zitty teenage girls outside Jon Bon Jovis dressing room after a "Rock for Spock" Star Trek benefit gala back in the eighties. Anyway, i still have a copy of the cassettes we had pressed...



Ja ja, kakstories, i made the cassette at this clever site. Make your own! Impress your friends!

The Garden

Hey julle

I've just been walking around the streets of Philadelphia (ooh, that sounds strangely familiar) and stumbled upon this incredible mosaic garden which was created by this guy called Isaiah Zagar. You can see his mosaics all over Philadelphia on random buildings, but this garden itself is awesome. Lots of winding pasageways decked out in all forms of murals and artworks. All quite surreal. Anyway, words don't really do it justice, so here are some pics......

The Mosaic Garden

Ciao
P

A reminder...

... that all the money, bling, success, adoration in the world doesn't stop you from being a lecher...

Also, this is our 100th post!!! Not bad eh guys? Now all we need is a professional looking header and we're set (Tals, nudge, nudge...).

Good Shabbos.

Grek

rock on!

Feeling very proud of myself after my feeble but exciting achievement yesterday afternoon... I went climbing at Peers Cave (above Fish Hoek)- ropes, chalk and everything! Managed to climb an almost vertical (admittedly not very high but ssshhh) rock face, but didn't quite make it over the overhang. But I was excused as the newbie :) I'm blaming it on climbing in jeans - no easy feat I tell you. This pic is how the professionals do it at Peers Cave - need something to aspire to right? For some reason I can't insert it into my post so you get a link, sorry.
Finally get what all these climbers I seem to be meeting at the moment are on about -I loved it!
OK, back to work for me :)

flags of the world get graded

http://www.otago.ac.nz/philosophy/Staff/JoshParsons/flags/ratings.html

check out the comments, especially libya, gambia and zimbabwe.
south africa gets an A!

Gentle Hands (TM) Brand Scrotum Message Cradle

"Units sold in the United Kingdom may be packaged with the wrong model power converter for international use. Use of an improper power converter can cause the cradle to operate at increased rates of speed and exert overwhelming force. In addition, page 43 of the manual contains errata. The phrase "raise the cradle to your scrotum and begin operation" should instead read "carefully lower your scrotum into the cradle. Always place the cradle on a dry, steady, solid surface."

As you may have surmised, today, Friday 19 January 2007, is not proving particularly productive for me. And you may also have surmised that thecleverest.com is my flavour of the week (thanks to Grek, who sent me a link to one of their kakker gags). I don't think their product recall gags are real, but who cares?

The Doctor

If only they'd taught maths this way in school!

This is wicked.

Even has pictures to keep you interested. Basically, real-world numbers drawn randomly from almanacs or whatever do not possess the same distributional properties as numbers created randomly by a PC. Indicating all sorts of complex patterns going on in the real world. And yet, that famous guy (not Einstein) proved a while back that on some quantum level or something, everything really is intrinsically random. So as we zoom out, it would appear that patterns - real patterns - develop and sustain themselves. The patterns are themselves real things. Which means we ain't living in no reductionist deterministic universe. But that doesn't also mean we are free willed. Just that the world is more than the sum of it's parts. Or rather more likely, it has parts we can't observe or hope to understand (yet). Woohoo!

I wish you all a fabulous weekend. Jozi will be sans electricity for most of it, because you vokkin Kaapies can't keep your nukular power station in one piece, and because Eskom is actually only a marginally less kak company than SAA and Telkom. Funny that they were all once or still are state-owned monopolies.

The Doctor.

Remembering the Crocodile Hunter

This is pretty good. Sorry to anyone who's still using dial up and can't see video's.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLY!

WISHING YOU LOTS OF HAPPIES! This is from last year's paaahty - so please update soon!

Ciao
Phil

Special for Phil...

...via Preamble.

Also, I saw Catch a Fire last night (at the spectacular moonlight cinema on Sydney Harbour) and let me put all of your minds at ease, Ekhard Rabe does the Westerford drama department proud. He effortlessly replaces his well rehearsed, toffee-nosed accent with one far simpler, deeper and more Afrikaans than was necessary for the role. In fact, Leonardo di Caprio could learn a few things from him. Tim Robbins on the other hand was brilliant, and Secunda, as always, appears as a shining beacon of clean, sustainable processing of which all South Africans can be justifiably proud.

Groete,

Grek

the united states of the world?

a prize for anyone who can work out what this map is about...

New Yaaawk

Jeepers, three posts in a weekend, at least i got some work done too...

I went to NYC for my brothers wedding a few months back (after a week in Berlin for a conference). These pictures are mostly from my stepmothers camera, some are mine...

Benjamins Wedding NYC

bennett street bollywood masala

So here is a party invite to you all.. try get yourselves across the world (lifts might be hard..), or across the country (greggles) to join bennet street to celebrate the addition of two new housemates (lieu and marta) and miss alex's birthday on thursday.

Hope you're all well, we'll post some pics afterwards!!!

lots of love
tals

All is forgiven...

Iraqi meal was excellent... it was one of the best middle eastern meals I've ever had, and one of the cheapest meals I've had in Sydney. Fairfield is a different world though, like a little Baghdad. The restaurant was right next to one of those cafes where old moustached Iraqi men sit around smoking hookahs and playing some card game of backgammon or something and drinking that really dark tea. I dared the people i was with to sit down at a table but they all declined.

See below for pictures of messy half eaten meal...

Stolen secrets

As part of my concerted effort at work avoidance, i need to share something with all of you...

There is a free to air channel in Australia called SBS, which caters largely to the minority European immigrant communities (its "the wog channel" if you ask racist, small minded aussies). Its an outstanding channel, probably the best free television i've ever seen, and until a little while ago didn't even have adverts during shows! I know! They have commercialised a bit and show fewer foreign movies, but it is still head and shoulders above the rest of the commercial channels who only really show shite and think that Russell Crowes bowel movements are news.

Anyway, there is this show called Food Safari (Check the website here) and it is a show that picks a cuisine from a certain part of the world each week and shows some of the best places to get the most authentic food of that variety, shows some recipes etc. Its a concept perfectly suited to Australia and Sydney in particular that has pockets of immigrant communities dotted all over the place. Anyway, THIS SHOW HAS BEEN GIVING AWAY ALL MY FUCKING SECRETS. It has taken me 4 years of hard work and interrogation of every European and Asian person i could find to work out where to get the best dumpling/yeeros/curry/peri-peri chicken/custard tart/tandoori chicken/Vietnamese noodle soup etc. and this rotten cow is telling the WHOLE BLADDY WORLD!

Seriously, unless you want greasy chow mein with a side of salmonella, you have to know where to go in this city, and for a while, i did. I pretended i was friends with people, i studied the restaurant reviews for years, i checked message boards, I scoured websites, i did every thing i fucking could to find the authentic eating spots (i know this sounds very cloak and dagger, thats because it is!) and this chick has devalued it all in one sweeping food show. I learned in my economics elective that i should "maximise my utility" but this rotten externality of a show has ruined that idea.

I'm down people, but I'm not out! I am heading to some western suburb called Fairfield today (i have no idea where is it, but God help me, I'll find it) to have what is supposed to be the best Iraqi food this side of Baghdad. And if that whore of Babylon (this is funny because Babylon stood where Iraq now stands) has a show next week on Iraqi food, then there is gonna be some fucking shock and awe down at SBS studios let me tell you!

Greg out!



Ps Word on the street is that Morrissey will have something to do with the U.K. Eurovision entry this year. Watch this space...

Pulp Fiction

a drastically shortened version of pulp fiction but all the important parts are retained

Beautiful Beaverlac

No idea where the name comes from... But for those of you who haven't yet been to Beaverlac near Porterville, you need to go. On the 1st January we packed up our hangovers, some worse than others, and hit the N7 with tents and coolerboxes cooking in the back. It was incredible! So gorgeous and chilled and no phone reception!!!

Beaverlac

I should be working...

...but i am distracted. By many things. One of them is Karen O.



Another is the six lane highway outside my window (sorry, no youtube of that). Did you know that petrol at the BP across the road is 112.9 Australian cents today? I know because i can see their fucking ginormous sign from my window (and sometimes, if i dont wear earplugs, i can hear their truck refilling their tanks with petrol).

And another thing is that my computer sometimes loses the connection to our wireless router and connects to an unsecured network in our building called "MDMain". Ja, seems inocuous enough, until my housemate opened one of their share folders marked "Porn"... Turns out MDMain is the network maintained by Mike and Dave who live upstairs and are into all forms of kinky manlove. Sorry, no pics for this.

And another thing is that i have laaaaaank work to do.

Anyway, before i go, forget the iPod phone, its rubbish...
Single ladies (and Mike and Dave) your prayers have been answered... www.ohmibod.com

OK, peace in the middle east,

Greg

ciao vida

vida e! why have you forsaken me?!?

007 through Happy Eyes

Anyone for a rosy take on what's gonna happen this year? Below is the good news half of a pretty good article I read in Business Day today. The bits on Hillary Clinton and Thabooo Muh-beki/JayZ are funny.

Oh ja, and FRIENDS, Happy New Year!

"An optimistic scenario would run something like this: Iraq continues to be mired in conflict but there is no regional war. President George Bush does a “Richard Nixon” and visits Tehran shortly after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is ousted in the summer of 2007. Iran urges moderation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its nuclear programme is played down; no more threats to Israel’s existence are made.

Syria does not join the Iran-US détente but closes its border to traffic of Iraqi insurgents. Iran and Syria also rein in some of Hezbollah’s activities in Lebanon. The US also puts pressure on Israel to free more of the funds owed to the Palestinian Authority and stop attacking Gaza.

Hamas and the Fatah faction sign a binding cease-fire. Rocket attacks on Israel stop. Osama bin Laden dies in a Pakistani clinic.

Robert Mugabe dies in his multi-bedroomed mansion, which the Chinese helped to tile. Beijing offers to build a Mao-style mausoleum for the Zimbabwean hero but Zanu (PF) accepts Chinese food vouchers instead.

The new United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, visits North Korea. President Kim Jong-il offers to halt his nuclear weapons programme in exchange for direct talks with Washington and economic inducements.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney retires on health grounds; John McCain succeeds him. Hillary Clinton is pushed out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination over an affair with an intern.

Borat is made an honorary citizen of Kazakhstan; he pays a triumphal visit to the capital, Astana.

In Britain, the ailing queen abdicates but jumps a generation to hand over the throne to Prince William. The Scottish nationalists win the parliamentary elections and promise independence within three years. In France, Ségolène Royal becomes the first female president.

A big breakthrough in battery technology prompts some of the oil majors to support enhanced investment in electric cars. The US administration starts to warm to the Kyoto protocols. Many western states accelerate their civil nuclear programmes.

US scientists claim that regular signals from deep space may be interpreted by year-end, establishing extra-terrestrial contact. Eventually it’s discovered that the sounds were in fact the last few neo- conservatives trying to contact earth from the alien planet on which they dwell.

The new year will contain many “unknown unknowns” but Iraq is likely to remain the central issue of western concern. This year could be the year of real drawdown or regional war — that may depend more upon the mood of Iraqis and regional players as much as on decisions made in Washington and London.

It could be a rough ride but since the first days of the new year are inclined to hope, it might be worth erring on the side of optimism. The politics of oil — the origins of most fighting in the Middle East — may well slowly give way to the politics of global warming. As ever, California leads. Look out for Arnold Schwarzenegger: he may not be allowed the White House but can still make his mark on Capitol Hill.

In SA, crime could suddenly drop, President Thabo Mbeki may become a teetotaler and Jacob Zuma could join a monastery — and Somalia manages to freely elect a functioning government.

Surely a bit of mindless optimism is allowed at the start of the year?"

‖Dr Moorcraft is the director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis, London.

and a few more..

new years and beyond

And so here are a few melbourne new years moments..
it started out as a pre drinks thing at my place.. quite bizaare.. woman in red singing, playing the flute, man behind her on decks and amps and strange reverb pedal.
but it was nice to say we 'had a band in our living room!" (They were my housemate's friends.. )

I ended up going out with Lil(housemate) and the three crazy germans. (see pic) to a mad house party near a park. Think 'open party std 7" kind of crazy.. street lined with people, dancing on the rooftop and a mad dj playing breaks and all things fun in the driveway.

Have included pic of kelly and myself, tim (one of my faves..) along with lil, marta and myself going out last friday. -just because i can..

It's great having Al at the house. (she's my fifth housemate now!) And it feels quite normal to have her in the city! She fits right in! (But then I always knew she'd love gluten free Melbourne!)

So here's wishing you all a fabulous 2007, filled with adventure, fun, exploration, inspiration and all the stuff inbetween.

love to you all

speak soon,
t
xx

ps and see you soon too!!!

Happy New Years from New York City

Hello all

In response to Kerry's challenge, here's a pic from New Years in New York. 36 hours of travelling found me and my workmates in Philadelphia. The next day we got straight onto a bus to get to NYC to meet up with more friends for New Years Eve in Bryant Park. The evening started slow due to the jetlag, but the open bar managed to cure that. After a massive party we had to find our way back to the apartment we were staying at in the rain. Got lost in the subway but finally made it home safe and sound. This pic is us just after midnight.

hey - i promised you guys and i am not one to reneague....

so here is my first post. wooooohooooo! okay pics coming soon - when i can work out how to do it.
nothing as saucy as kerry
"nuzzling" paula unfortunately but it will have to do....

Pictures we never took

These are pictures we never took, of the fireworks we did actually see... Notice the enormous emerald and coat hanger on Harbour Bridge (Sydney is known affectionately as he "emerald city" and the bridge "the coat hanger" - 'strewth!).

Despite weather man Pete's forcast for rain and thunderstorms, I was right and it didn't rain! We had a barbi with the engineers and the possums who were playing in the tree. We then wandered down to the to watch the fireworks and drink bubbles, all a bit drunken so we are low on photos. Greg is suffering, is bloody grumpy and is curled up on the couch watching the Simpson's despite taking some magic pink pills. We hope you all had a rocking evening, that your heads don't hurt and that you had fun! Happy New Year guys.