chain gang

It's difficult not to be sceptical about the visit of Dick Cheney to Australia. His musings on China, Iran and the Middle East are suspect, to say the least. Cheney is really the brains behind the Bush administration and a key architect of the disasterous war in Iraq. The unelected Rumsfeld has gone and has now received a dumping from John McCain.

Cheney, however, has been able to hide behind his bumbling and cliche ridden boss. Bush has undoubtedly taken some of the flack that should reasonably have be sheeted home to Cheney.

Naturally Australia, like the vassal state we so often seem to be, laid out the red carpet, closed the streets to traffic, and generally brown-nosed the so often mistaken VP. When will we grow up? An alliance is one thing. Sycophancy is quite another.

celebrity

I don't understand it and I don't crave it. I really have no notion of what its about or even why it exists. But evidently it drives a whole industry of magazines and media.

I notice that even my favourite online paper, the Sydney Morning Herald, regularly features pieces about talentless yet, um, famous, c's. Their names wont be featured here. Why add to their glory?

Time is fast flying and we still have a lot of packing and 'closure' before leaving. In fact, there's only four weeks of teaching and then a week or so of hols. It's fantastic that the school will continue though I doubt that we will get to hear much about how things go after Becki takes charge.

Soft Landing?

My last post mused on how things might go for Yes School in the next two months. The answer came last week when a young American called Becki and a Japanese friend bought the school. Not only that but we seem to have had an influx of trial students - by my reckonning, about 10 in the last week. It's nice to be so popular again though it's come a little late for us. But more power to the new owners. We really hope that they do well.

So there is a little less for us to do over the next two months- plenty of teaching still and a lot of packing and sending. But we are happy for the continuity.

A few days ago I cracked a rib as a result of tripping over a large concrete seat in the middle of the pathway near the new Aeon. A shocking place for it but I should have been watching where I was going, not musing at the view. As a tribute, I leave the above photo. The injury occurred on the right of the concrete bridge. And boy does it hurt!