Burn Fat Not Oil

I bought a road bike last week. I kept it a little quiet as I was afraid that I would never use it and that it would languish in my flat gathering dust.I'd like to think it was because I wanted to be more green, and wanted to do my bit. But to be quite honest, it wasn't. 

It was mainly because a) I am completely skint after moving country and there is no way that I can afford a car, and b) I was absolutely fed up with missing buses and having to wait for half an hour to get the next one, and was getting really annoyed with the way that the Sydney bus company assumes that nobody has to travel on a Sunday.

It has opened my eyes to quite a few things. Firstly it takes the same amount of time to cycle to work (about 3-4km away) than it is to get the bus because of the inconvenient bus routes, the constant stopping, and the waiting time. Also it can be quicker than driving a car (which don't benefit from the bus lanes) and is certainly cheaper (parking can be $20 per day).

In addition I have discovered that I absolutely love it! In my UK life, I used to spend probably 10 hours a week (sometimes double when working away) in the car, not a lot for some, but too much wasted time for me. Time I could have spent more constructively. Because of this, I grew to hate driving more than anything else. 

Now - I find myself finding any excuse to get on the bike. Even after just two weeks of cycling (and climbing, another recently discovered sport), I feel I am in the best shape I have been in since I ran a half marathon two years ago and the great thing is that it has taken no time out of my day whatsoever. Like the lady who tried to sell me an overpriced bike in my local shop said "Its the future".

If I can cycle in such a bike hating city as Sydney, I think I should be able to do the same back in the UK where we have more bike route (though the weather may counter that theory).

In other news, my recent trip to the hospital with my neighbours is already yielding excellent results. Aside from a box of chocolates I have also benefitted from a free barbeque, and they are going to bring me round leftovers today - result! I reckon they think that I am incapable of looking after myself. I certainly want to encourage that impression.

A Worthy Cause

In July my Brother over at AllThatComeswithIt is helping to organise, and will be taking part in a grueling walk on a 78 mile stretch of the Pennine Way in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity set up by his friends Neil and Rachel in memorial of their son Joseph.The Joseph Salmon Trust supports parents who have lost a child by providing financial assistance to those who need it most. This may be to help with funeral costs or to allow the self employed a break from work while they come to terms with their loss.

I would be grateful if any of those people who visit my blog, and haven't been across to my brothers yet (though that is where most of my traffic comes from!) would go and pay it a visit, and consider giving some money to the cause.

You can find out more about the walk at The Dales Walk Blog

Debunking Third World Myths

My new flat mate showed me this link to a site called Ted which is really cool. It gives an interesting insight into Global Economics (which is something I am prone to ranting about now and again). I recommend you check it out, even if you're not interested - the graphics are pretty cool. 

It also gives a link to a site called GapMinder on which you can create your own charts using UN information and see some pretty interesting trends for global CO2 emissions per capita.

Under the Bridge

Retrospective Monday is here again, (I may have to change this to a fortnightly event or I will run out of stories).

This is one that my friend The Artist told me:

You may remember me talking about my local pub 'the Nook', a haven for alcoholics and underage drinkers (perhaps future alcoholics) alike? Well, along with some of my other friends, The Artist used to work in the Nook on quite a regular basis (when he remembered to turn up to work). He would spend the evening earning his wages, then as far as I could tell - blow them all on after work lock-in drinking.

One particular evening (probably sometime around 2005), The Artist was feeling pretty down, having faced some serious girlfriend problems since moving back from his university town. He was drinking heavily with a whole group of employees and a couple of regulars, descending into more and more of a drunken state. 'Going Darkside' is a very apt phrase one of my friends would use, referring to that kind of drinking that turns your mood more and more dark and destructive .

Now Holmfirth, the town in which I grew up is built on top of a couple of rivers, one of which is the river Ribble. The river Ribble runs through town, past the Nook and directly under all of the banks and shops and the high-street. It probably passes underground for a grand total of around 70 metres and reaches a depth at that point of around 1 ft.

The Artist, in his self destructive state announced to his workmates that he was going to walk under the town, and made off to clamber down the 8 ft wall into the river. He spent a lot of time scaring us (his mates) with his drunken antics, to the point where we had become kind of immune. His work mates (who perhaps didn't know him so well) attempted to stop him, but were also a little the worse for wear and didn't put any real effort into it. 

After he disappeared into the black hole, it took them a few moments, to realise that they should go round the other side and make sure he got out alright. When they finally did, they couldn't spot him. Time passed, and they got more and more worried. They thought that in his depressed and drunken state he might have fallen into the water, hit his head and drowned.

After a while, he still didn't appear and anxiety increased. Eventually (not willing to clamber into the hole themselves), The Artists work-mates saw fit to call the police. The sensible thing to do ... but unfortunately this triggered all kinds of crazy chaos. 

The police had officers down in the river searching for him amongst the rocks and in the pools but with no success. Worst of all had had mobilised search helicopters (the kind I used to see chasing down criminals in Leeds - how I miss the place) which scoured the river with roving searchlights for some distance up and down. There was no sign of The Artist. He was no-where to be seen.

The next day The Artist turned up for work with no knowledge of all of the drama of the preceding night at some point in the afternoon (on time for once). He was a little hungover, but had enjoyed a descent lie in after walking through the tunnel and deciding to walk up the hill straight home for some sleep (following his exertions).

"Christ are you OK?" was what he got as soon as he got through the doors.

"We searched for you EVERYWHERE, we had the police helicopters out and everything. We had no idea what happened to you!" Said the Landlady.

"Why didn't you try calling my mobile?" Said the Artist. "It was switched on all night!"

"..."

Pieces of Eight

My brother at allthatcomeswithit tagged me with  Meme a while ago whereby I have to give 8 answers to some questions and stuff. As I have a hangover and it is 8am on a Saturday morning, the answers will probably not be mind blowing (like my amazingly imaginative post title). But I will give it a go.

8 things I am passionate about

Lucy

My Friends (not in a pervy way)

My Family

Climate Change

My Job (at the moment anyway)

Hiking

The Gym (bordering on obsessive)

Seeing other countries (I don't want to say traveling as I hate the traveling part)

8 things I want to do before I die

The Inca Trail in South America

Trekking in Nepal / Tibet

Own my own bar

Hiking in the jungle

Become renowned in my field of work (I realise this isn't compatible with the bar)

Live in a number of different countries

Develop the largest collection of movies ever seen by mankind

Grow my hair back

8 things I say often

No worries (a recent development)

The

And

I (I like to talk about myself a lot)

Me (as above)

Ey Up (confuses people at work)

Bollocks

Crap (swearwords of choice)

8 books I have read recently

The Weather Makers - Tim Flannery (excellent book)

Red Dog - Luis de Bernieres

The Shadow of the Wind - Caros Ruis Zafon

Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin

Seven Years in Tibet - Heinrich Harrer

The Lonely Planet Autralia (what? its a book!)

Fall of Kings - David and Stella Gemmell (I am ashamed to say)

Blue Mountains Best Bushwalks

8 songs I could listen to over and over again

Honestly? Ones I do listen to over and over (when I have some means of playing music):

Torture Me - Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Mr Jones - Counting Crows

Tarantula - Faithless

Concrete Schoolyard - Jurassic 5

6 Underground - Sneaker Pimps

Barbie Girl - Aqua

Everlong - Foo Fighters

Sombody Told Me - the Killers (don't know whether this is the correct name, but couldn't be bothered to check)

8 things that attract me to my friends

Honesty

Loyalty

Honesty (again as I think it is pretty important)

Laid backedness

Sense of humour similar to mine

Worse looking than me

Always got my backedness (I've invented a new word)

Ability to have fun anytime anywhere

8 people that should do this Meme

I don't think I have eight readers who have blogs, so I am just going to invite whoever wants to tag themselves in my comment section.

The Artist and the Moped

Its Retrospective Monday here at RCWR and as such I will attempt to regale you with a tale of my glorious past.

It was three in the morning when I awoke as the taxi slowed to a halt in the patch of wasteland next to our hostel. We were caught in a monumental Slovenian thunderstorm, the kind where you can't see more than a few meters and you have to protect your head from the painful impact of the raindrops. 

The City Worker, The Artist, the Nurse and I were coming back to the small, very industrial town of Koper on the Venetian coast, an hours drive from Trieste in Italy. We had been out on the beers in another place named Izola - the so called 'Blackpool of Slovenia', and most of us were more than a little worse for wear (particularly the Lawyer who we had lost at some point earlier in the night). The combination of beer and jet-lag (we had been up for around 26 hours at this point) had sent us all to sleep in the taxi, and in our doziness waking up, we neglected to notice that we were still about a quarter of a mile away from the hostel until it was too late and we had paid up and were getting out.

The Artist and an Old Man in Piran, Slovenia 2005

The extremely heavy rain caused us to make the decision to run as quickly as we could back to our room to avoid getting wet. the Nurse ran off first, closely followed by myself and the City worker. The Artist was considerably more drowsy  (or maybe more inebriated) than the rest of us and was slow to catch on to what we were doing. When he finally realised what was happening, he made to sprint across the road afterwards .... then BANG!

The Artist ran straight into the first of two mopeds that were coming at breakneck speed around the corner into the road where the taxi had just pulled away. Both moped and rider were thrown down the road (moped taking considerably more damage than rider). The rider got to his feet and ran to his bike trying to set back off again. But no use. The moped was well and truly trashed.

At around this time, The City Worker and I had realised what was going on, stopped running and turned back to help our mate. The Nurse had well gone (didn't notice it apparently). As I remember the two guys were off their bikes screaming in Slovenian at The Artist, who still didn't have a clue what was going on (and was completely unharmed). We ran over to where they were and coaxed the Artist into walking off and going home. At this point I think the Slovenian guys realised that we were English. They changed tactic.

"Your friend ... he come with us ... we go have drink", they kept on repeating in their best English.

"No, we're going home" we replied

"Don't worry" they said "We just have drink"

We were under the influence, but not stupid enough to fall for that one (though it wouldn't have been the first time the Artist had wandered off). And though one of the guys was pretty big (there's always a big guy), there were three of us and only two of them. They grabbed the Artist by the arm and tried to pull him away (he was just swaying at this point), as we grabbed the other and pulled him back in the other direction like a kind of Christmas cracker, and tried to walk off. Every time we did, they would come back and grab his arm again and pull him away again. This wasn't working and the Slovenians were getting more and more irate.

What happened next was the most hysterical, poorly co-ordinated comedy of a fight that it wouldn't have looked out of place in a Charlie Chaplain movie. The two guys came at The City Worker and I (who were honestly just trying to get away with our friend in one piece), and we defended ourselves. I think at one point The Artist was on the floor and being kicked whilst the City Worker and I tried to pull them away. 

I remember attempting to throw some punches, but I was pretty hammered and I don't think any of them hit anyone, and The City Worker did the same.  When finally we managed to get the Artist away and run back to our hostel, the good thing about this, and about us being so drunk was that none of us really got hurt. The Artist had some cuts and bruises, a torn T-shirt (his favourite apparently) and wounded pride, but that was it. I myself have one clear and embarrassing memory of the injury that I sustained that night.

I remember clearly standing there, about 15 feet away from our assailants, not moving ... just standing. Then, completely randomly - falling backward for no other reason than my drunkenness (and gravity) onto my backside and scraping all the skin off by elbow on the hard concrete.

Only when we got back to the room and thought about it for a bit, did we realise ... the guys on the moped were completely off their faces too, and that was - in fact the only reason why we didn't get killed (despite the fact it was three to two) as we were essentially as much collective use as half a person.

The police cars turned up around 2 minutes after we left the scene to apprehend the Slovenian guys. The Artist told us his tales of the extreme dislike of the Slovenian police for British tourists - a lucky escape. I always felt sorry for those guys, to whom the cost of a moped must have been extremely high, we probably would have offered to pay some money if they had been reasonable. I still can't understand how the police never came to the hostel considering they must have heard the accusations of the Slovenian pair, and we were at the only hostel in the entire town.

(sorry Mum)

Holding the Baby

I had a very strange day today. I was on the way out of the building when I received a phonecall from my neighbour. He told me his wife was sick and could I go round to see she was ok while he came back across the city to take her to the hospital. 

"Sure" I said "No worries!" (picking up the Aussie lingo)

I turned around and went to their flat and knocked on the door. After some knocking she came out answer and boy oh boy did she look sick. Red faced and passing in and out, she couldn't construct a sentence.

And over the next 10 minutes while waiting for said husband to return, I discovered something about myself that I didn't know ... sh*t am I useless in an emergency!

Literally all I managed to do was to stop her from falling over when she kept passing out, get a container for all of the sick that was being produced, and tentatively offer a glass of water.

When husband arrived, we got in the car and raced through all of the beach bound traffic in North Sydney, beeping the horn, and flashing the lights to try to get people to move over ... no-one did. You could see them all infuriatingly sitting in their cars thinking "Whats this pillock doing? No way I am moving over". I don't blame them, I would have done the same (probably with an added finger), not knowing the reason why.

I had the job of trying to hold Wife upright (she was now completely out cold) while calling the emergency room , who apparently can't come to the car with a stretcher for some unknown reason, meaning that she had to be carried in with great difficulty by husband.

So there I was, outside the emergency room, with a 2 week old baby! Me ... with a baby! ... I did mention that she had a baby that was only 2 weeks, didn't I?

I think I have only once held a baby in my entire life, and that was my niece Amy several years ago. This frightened the hell out of me.

I took the car keys and parked it extremely carefully, thinking to myself all the while that this person, my neighbour who had only known me for a month had entrusted me with his entire life. His precious newborn baby, and more importantly - his new Mazda! If the baby hadn't have been there. I would have been tempted to steal the car (unfortunately he knew where I lived)

Seriously though, the act of getting the tiny little arms of a two week old baby out of the car harness was torture for me. Fearing that my big clumsy mitts (I cant even write text messages properly) would hurt his delicate fingers. Every so often (during the 10 minute procedure) I stopped to look round - hoping someone would rescue me, would take the baby from me and sort everything out. No such luck. 

All I remember from past baby holding experience is to support the head (that is my entire baby knowledge in one sentence). This I did, and hoped that the rest would sort itself out. then the baby (Josh - its a bit wrong using the terminology the baby isn't it? I think I will revert to real first names at this point) started to cry! Uh oh!

I decided there was only one thing for it, I had to live up to my responsibilities ... I had to be a man ... I had to be heroic ... I crept into the waiting room and thrust little Josh into the arms of the first woman in the waiting room who looked old enough to have had kids and politely requested "please stop him from crying ... oh and please don't steal him - my neighbour would kill me!"

The lady was successful, and luckily husband returned in about 10 minutes. they are all staying in overnight tonight. I don't want to go into details (I saw too many of them in the car), but I think his wife is over the worst of it, and should be out tomorrow hopefully. I wish them well.

This little disaster also reminded me of newly departed Lucy. She is always excellent in a crisis, and is always good with kids. This is why we make such a good team (she is good in a crisis - I am rubbish).

Nice Man from Nigeria

I was looking for a new flatmate this week, but luckily a nice man from Nigeria has emailed me and told me that he wants the room at any price, and all I have to do is give him my bank details.

Flatmate - done.

Fusion and Fission

Gordon Brown's government this week gave the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power plants in the UK. A relatively bold move, but one that all energy and economic analysts knew that they would have to do eventually.

At the same time Sir David King (a man who I greatly respect for - as the article states, first bringing Climate Change onto Tony Blair's agenda) has criticised green campaigners for potentially harming the Climate Change debate (or rather the action on Climate Change).

When I was at university studying Environmental Management, I came across a few greenies (and lived with a couple). They joined environmental NGOs and a couple of them were really into what they did, volunteering for local cleanup charities - and some of them went on to work for them. Which is fantastic. 

I was also always accused of being a tree-hugger by my friends (who didn't really know what I did) and was asked whether I was a member of a charity or was going to work for one. I always gave the same reply: "I think there are bigger and better ways of improving the environment than working for an NGO - working from within a company or government (something which has regularly sparked debate within NGOs)". 

Sir David King , in his article accuses Greenpeace of being Luddites (link included for any Americans) with respect to their stance on Climate Change. And I am inclined to agree with some of his thoughts. In my opinion, the threat of climate change is so huge now (species have already been made extinct, the great barrier reef is at 60% of it size 20 years ago, the destruction of the polar ice caps is accelerating the whole business - i could go on) that it vastly outweighs the smaller threat of a (don't get me wrong - completely horrific and undesirable Chernobyl). Any risk has got to be weighed on potential severity as well as the likelihood that it will happen (99% for climate change). 

What further complicates matters is the fact that the UK is on the potential verge of a very large energy crisis that absolutely no-one seems to be taking a blind pit of notice of. It seems that the economy has been so hunky dory for so long now that people have forgotten past energy crises. Consider: 

• We have used almost all of our natural gas which we found in the North Sea (and which triggered the period of economic prosperity that we are now in) and within the next 10 years we will be 90% reliant on natural gas imported from Russia;
  
• All of our coal fired power plants are old and knackered;
• the lead time on the construction of a nuclear power plant is something like nearly 20 years (I didn't check this so correct me if I am wrong).

When you consider the evidence - the main shocker is that Gordon didn't sign the papers earlier!

The absolute last, last thing we want to do is to return to coal as the Australians (incidentally the largest emitters of CO2 per capita in the world) will continue to do (Rudd staunchly rejecting nuclear options). A lot of people (for example the Yorkshire RDA) have been pushing what they term "clean coal". Essentially this would mean use of some form of Combined Cycle Gasification with untested carbon capture schemes. This really is no solution to me. The lead time for the carbon capture would be no better than turning to nuclear, and this does not address the fact that there are so many people on this planet (1.2 bn in 1900, 6bn in 2000) that we would just be accelerating the time it took to rid the planet of coal resources forever.

I cant see any other option than (short term) to continue to flog our old plants until we can build some nuclear ones, in the meantime trying to pursue efficiency and renewables to take the load off the grid wherever we can. 

My former boss and mentor always tells me that in a century or so we may be able to find the solution to safer fusion power but until then...

In the meantime I think the time has come for the likes of Greenpeace to pull their heads out of their arses...

Evolution

"Thousands of years of evolution have resulted in the infamous White Ibis developing an elongated beak to enable extraction of the very last dregs of Victoria Bitter"

Alone Again

I just got back to my flat from going with Lucy to the airport for her return flight ... which wasn't much fun. She was over here for just a month, but it was amazing how quickly we fell back into our old ways and got comfortable in Sydney life. She rapidly filled the flat with her presence and the female touch (and her dirty clothes), and now only hours after she has left - it already smells and I can't find the TV remote (Lucy usually finds it for me).

We had a fantastic last couple of weeks, taking in beaches, the zoo, christmas in the sun, fireworks on sydney harbour, the blue mountains, botanic gardens and ferry tours. 

Bizarre scenes at Taronga Zoo:

But we tried to make the last couple of days a bit special, and went to the Opera House to watch an absolutely brilliant production with tickets bought for us by my friend The City Worker. The funny thing was he told us "the good thing is that there is no singing or dancing" when I spoke to him the other day .... it turned out to be a contemporary dance production. But as I said - it was really good! We also hit the opera house bar which has some spectacular

 views.

The Opera house by Night:

So after a fantastic couple of days, the hour journey back was a little tortuous and depressing. Nothing could really make me laugh tonight, but if I was going to laugh at something - it would be this supremely balanced piece of journalism that I found in the local train newspaper:

It must have been a slow day for news.

Writing About Writing

This blog is getting  little confused for me and I like things to be organised. I generally tend fluctuate between writing posts on topics that interest me such as ramblings bout climate change and politics (which no-one ever comments on), posts which will hopefully appeal to the majority of my readers who I think are largely family and friend keen to know what I am up to all of these miles away (which I try to minimise in an effort not to bore other readers), and posts for myself about things that have happened in the past in a kind of an autobiographical way which I can hopefully look back on in the future.

I began to make some kind of attempt to sort the whole blog thing out by trying to begin to use wordpress and separate out different pages in my blog, but to be completely honest (despite the fact it always lists english spellings of words as 'mistakes', and it never wants to post my pictures) I like the simplicity of blogger. What really pee's me off is the blogger logo at the top (though some people have managed to get rid of this?)

I took Jeff's spinning naked lady test over at View from the Cloud today and it told me that I have a right sided brain (i.e. I am artistic rather than mathematical). This probably explains that despite the fact I would like my columns a little wider, and wouldn't mind if everything lined up properly and pictures were evenly spaced. I really don't have enough interest in the detail to bother changing all the code and everything (hence the delay in the move to Wordpress - I cant even figure out how to upload multiple files from my Mac. 

If you look back through my posts, you can see the typo's littered everywhere (especially missing 's's as that button tends to stick), but I rarely have the patience to go back and change them all. I am so lazy that every time I have a problem with the blog or anything, I find it easier to email the expert rather than sort it out myself. 

As I speak, Lucy is in her last few days here in Australia and will be flying back to the UK soon (she is tapping away on the last of her essays as we speak). So the next couple of weeks will be pretty hard, though it will give me a little bit of a chance to return to my reclusive lifestyle and sort everything out on here (Dan - expect a lot of emails).

WTF!

I was listening to some cheesy hits show in the radio the other day, playing classic tunes of 'yesteryear', when something came on that really shocked me. I can't remember the tune, but it was some kind of heavy baselined inane dance track that immediately sent my mind racing back to my university days ... or was it my college days...

I got images of myself in my head of me -  just the other month ... or maybe a year ago dancing incredibly badly but trying to maintain my cool in some sweaty sticky floored hole of a clubin Leeds .... or was it in Huddersfield trying my luck with everyone that went past. It made me smile.

What didn't make me smile was after the end of the song when the radio DJ announced that what I had been listening to was a track from 10 years ago.... from 1998!  

1998 was 10 years ago! Thats 10 years! I am 10 years older than I was when this track was released!

More than once in 2007 when I occasionally listen to some classic chart show, when some Boomtown Rats (don't really know who they are - don't care) hit from the 80's comes on I would think to myself "why don't they play something modern - something good". Then I would be placated by a track from Oasis' latest album ... is it "Whats the Story Morning Glory"? ... or I think there was maybe one after that ... I'm was never sure.

It has actually only just dawned on me, that I am now completely removed from my decade. My decade has not only gone, it went a long time ago. I have also begun to notice that I don't like anything I hear in the current charts whatsoever (except for Ocean Colour Scene - those guys rule).