ANZAC Day - and Curse of the Golden Flower

First things first, a great deal of respect to the ANZACs. Today is ANZAC day, where we remember and pay respect to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. It's sort of like Remembrance Day back home, but is typically celebrated by a dawn service, a breakfast, and then a day spent at the pub playing two-up.

We didn't follow the prescribed rituals, and went to see Curse of the Golden Flower instead. I don't think I really appreciated the movie, and found it rather dull and hard to follow. Pretty impressive cinematography though.

One other ANZAC day note: some twits went and spraypainted the War Memorial with the message that ANZACs are murderers. Simone told me about an ANZAC who commented that it is a pretty disgraceful and shameful thing to do - and that when the people who did it sobered up, they'd realise that too.

June Callwood on CBC's Ideas podcast

I just listened to the April 23rd podcast - June Callwood's 2002 Dalton Camp lecture. Get it on the Ideas podcast site here while you can, it's only archived for about a month. I was only vaguely aware of June Callwood, which is rather shocking considering my university education had a lot of social awareness stuff in it, and even more shocking considering I studied in a school of communication and journalism. Just a bit of an oversight there, I suppose.

Anyway, it's a funny, penetrating, and moving lecture; one of those that sets aflame the passions of social justice in a cold, dead corporate soul. Many of the stories she recounted I am familiar with - such as the young woman who was stabbed to death in New York over a period of twenty minutes, screaming the whole time, the good burghers who heard her screams, but remained uninvolved in their apartments, and the reporter who interviewed every last one of those burghers, and got the story published - but in the retelling she somehow makes the stories mean something just a little bit more than they used to.

Even for non-journalists her counsel is achingly simple: every good, kind act diminishes the evil in the world just a little bit.

Beautiful stuff. Ms Callwood passed away on April 14th, and she still had her pilot's licence.

Noticed that...

it was warmer in Ottawa than in Sydney today. Unbelievable, it was only a max of 18 or so degrees. Maybe we better plug the car in...

The DNTO podcast this week was all about old folks - I had no idea Leslie Nielsen was 81. Right near the end of the podcast Sook-Yin talks to Sybil Rampen about the "Hell's Grannies" documentary. Sybil's something like 78 years old, and one day she got bored so she got her friends together to be a motorcycle gang.

Great stuff.

Anyway - Saturday's race was a bust thanks to the wind not showing up to play. At least I was able to find the car in the morning. It ended up being a good little sail anyway, but the season is clearly drawing to a close with the wind becoming lighter and more erratic.

We're just like the big guys though: the Louis Vuitton Cup races have been postponed a few days for lack of wind too.

Dude, where's the car?

The best laid plans of mice and men. I wandered out to bring the car up to attach the trailer in order to convey my nearest and dearest (object, not person!) to the river. Strangely, I couldn't find the car in any of its usual hiding spots up and down the street.

Ha ha, joke's on me. Friday night we met up with a near and dear friend in North Sydney for some light refreshments. Taking into account both the challenge of locating parking there, as well as the way in which NSWPD frowns upon driving after some light refreshing, we caught the train in from work. One of us caught the train to work, the other had taken the car to work... so when we both caught the train to the pub... the car remained at one of our workplaces.

So I ended up seeing The Freedom Writers, likely taglined somewhere as the inspirational feelgood movie of the year. Long story short: rookie teacher wins the hearts and respect of her gangsta students and changes their world.

That description sounds pretty snide: the movie was a lot better than I expected, and (if you can believe what you read on the Interweb) remarkably true to life. Very impressive, Miz G.

Nearly a month since the last post. Shocking.

Yes, it is positively shocking that a month has gone by and nothing has been inscribed here. Since then I've been sailing twice, both with good results. Another handicap start, and a regular start. Last weekend was probably my best run yet, finishing 5th last or so, a definite improvement over the start of the year. Very very cool... and now I have a secret weapon. I bought a book with training plans and drills and stuff in it. Nothing will keep me from a top 15 finish, in true Canadian international sporting competition style.