And the thunder rolled...

Another Saturday on the water, and what a day it was. There was only the lightest of breezes in the morning, but around lunchtime things really picked up. I have no idea what the wind speed was, only that it was getting up to very challenging levels.

So the race started, we took off down the river tacking back and forth like madmen and madwomen. With the force of the wind, many tacks included a generous portion of swim time. All through the first lap the wind continued to increase ahead of the coming thunderstorm. Things did go quite well on the first lap, until a gybe around a mark that was intended to turn into a run. The actual result was a spectacular capsize - I was ejected from the boat, rather than sort of just leaking into the river. At this point I had been catching up some other boats. They righted their vessels much more quickly than I did, so that was the end of that charge.

However, while capsized I did make significant progress along the course: The sail was sticking up perpendicular to the water, so a few hundred metres of course was completed while capsized. Of course, pointing the boat into the wind so that I could actually right it, get in, and get underway took a long time...

Eventually, back underway running before a strong breeze, planing in front a closing RiverCat ferry, things started looking up again, and thanks to my relative light weight, I started catching up on the downwind leg. The following reach worked really well, I actually passed another boat (okay, Jeff was making some emergency adjustments to his rudder). Then it's back to working into the wind... covered half the upwind leg, and then capped it, righted it, capped it, righted it, capped it... all the while not making any headway at all. I think this marks the point where the conditions exceeded my modest sailing ability.

With the see-saw nature of this adventure, my rudder pin was dislodged and the rudder fell off. Hurray! Caught it before it sank to the gluey bottom of the river.

Once I had re-attached the rudder, caught my breath, I started applying the principle of not going completely head-to-wind, and limped around the course, the 'encouragement' of the race leaders lapping me ringing in my ears, exhaustion and refrigeration taking their toll.

Halfway through my second lap the race was abandoned 'cos of that thunderstorm. We may be mad enough to sail in strong winds and driving rain, but when there's lightning and thunder, sitting in the middle of a wide expanse of water with a little bitty aluminum mast sticking up doesn't seem the wisest thing to do.

And for the defining moment of brilliance, I had left my backpack under a tree... which seems to be in the path of the park's primary drainage routes, and hence everything, including my phone, drowned.

I must be mad to love this so much.

The Children of Men - P.D. James

Nothing like the movie, that's for sure. It's a lot better by virtue of having the whole backstory to give the tale some context, which I really appreciated. In the movie, I could identify (besides the general idea of the movie) only 3 of the characters (the rest were tweaked, I suppose under artistic licence), and a couple of discrete points in the plot.

It certainly wasn't as descriptively gory and brutal as the movie, and the ending was far more interesting - there's no escape in a boat in the book.

I suppose a movie that slavishly adhered to the storyline in the book would have been rather boring - it would have been all about the main character's (Theo) path through dystopic future Britain. The movie needed to have all the stuff getting blown up and people being shot and references to terrorism and whatever else in order to keep in topical and interesting so enough people would go see it. The book, on the other hand, is free to wander a little more philosophically.

Chalk up another point for the books in the old books vs. movie version tally.

Monsieur Ibrahim

Saw a promo for this movie a while ago, and we just rented the DVD and watched it.

It's pretty understated and cerebral; the humour is the same way. It's a bit of a thinker, what with the Sufi storekeeper befriending the young Jewish boy and passing on all sorts of bits of wisdom about life and happiness and so on.

Vellum - Hal Duncan

Whoa... either Hal's really freaking brilliant or he's on an extended disassociative experience. Basic premise: underlying the 'real' world is the Vellum, which is a sort of meta-history/time/place/map/everything. There's good guys and bad guys. There's this weird mystical thang and nano-thingys that sort of complement it in a scientific wonderland remake of old legends and stories. People seem to exist in a multipley-instantiated way... the experiences of one instance kind of meld and distort the those of the other instances. Myths and stories and histories from all over the world roll around with each other like spaghetti on a toddler's high chair tray...

Basically there are a handful of key characters whose stories live in multiple times, multiple places, and in multiple aspects. So just try and keep up with 3 time periods for 3 people in a couple of different locations, all in a page or two.

This book hurt to read. It's fascinatingly intricate, and really, it's kind of fun to have a book that so terribly convoluted that it requires careful attention.

Moving Mars - Greg Bear

Pretty good bit of science fiction here - the Moon and Mars have both been colonised, globalisation is reaching its logical conclusion back on Earth, and whaddaya know, there is economic and political tension between the three chunks of rock.

It's not a particularly rollicking tale, and just sort of proceeds steadily through the plot... beginning, middle, end, close book. However, it's got that good mix of the familiar and the fantastical which keeps it pretty engaging.

The CRSC Marathon to the Gladesville Bridge

Instead of sailing a normal race course around our normal sailing patch of the Parra, we had a marathon, sailing from near the Concord Bridge right down to the Gladesville Bridge (with a loop into Hen and Chicken Bay), and back. Way too cool, sailing in new waters. Arrr, we be explorers.

I didn't place too proudly, so in addition to my lack of experience and/or skill, I claim the following handicaps:
1) Different boat from usual, so every quirk I was used to wasn't there, and the quirks that were there were inscrutable to me.
1a) This boat seemed to absorb water into the hull. Seemed like about fifty litres over the course of the race, so ... it got slower (even slower than at the start!)
2) The Mortlake ferry got in my way. It's on cables, so I was rather cautious about trying to slip past. In the end I circled around a couple of times to avoid running into the ferry and the cables. I suppose a better sailor would have avoided the situation altogether, or handled it more effectively, but hey.
3) No telltales or leech pennants on the sail. As long as it wasn't flapping, it was set right.
4) ... er, no, that's about it.

On the upside, coming in last does mean I got to sail for longer than anyone else. Again.

Lee Kernaghan in Concert

Great crowd, good venue, good music.

My favourite part was when Lee remarked on the "No photography/video/audio recording allowed" sign at the entrance, noted that "They don't realise this is a Lee Kernahan concert!" and proceeded to invite the audience to fire up whatever recording devices they had. A little later on, he noticed one of the fans near the stage with a video camera, reached down and took it... and made an impromptu video of the band on stage, the crowd, and so on for a few minutes, and then handed the camera back to the fan.

Classy.

Oh, and the concert was great too.

Pathway to Treason - Ken Harris

A cautionary tale against taking Australia recklessly down the republic route by an erstwhile public servant (or some such function). Set in 2021 or thereabouts, 'Straylya's adopted the republican model by essentially doing a find-and-replace on the Constitution, replacing "Governor General" with "President," without due consideration to the bounds of authority between the Prez and Parliament. She'll not be right. Imagine the hijinks when the President decides that hey! the Constitution doesn't say anything about me being a figurehead, and in fact... yep, there it is, I'm the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. No worries... but what's this about the Government (with the Prime Minister in charge) having authority too... hm. What potential for conflicting ideologies and subsequent orders.

In order to bring this all to a head, the book's plot relies on trusty terrorists to assassinate the Australian and American ambassadors to ... some place in Asia. And off we go!

In the end, this is more of a policy paper masquerading as a novel. Even the effusive praise on the cover is from generals and political types.

Chameleon - Mark Burnell

Just another thriller for the 21st century. No one is who they seem; ideology and emotion collide, but rather straightforward afterall.

Not a bad book by any stretch, and with a few interesting twists and turns, but... not a standout. I've already forgotten the main character's name, though the 'bad guy' was Boba, or Bola... or something like that.

In your dreams - Tim Holt

Hurray, this one was funny and reminded me of Terry Pratchett, with a fun melding of the fantastical and the mundane - a building that knows when it's hallways should be shorter or longer between two points, depending on whether it is the chairman of the bank or a lowly intern making the trek.

Plus one of the most reluctant heroes, as well as a greatly humourous debunking of the hero archetype, AND a solid story, this was a great book.

It was worth the sunburn

Spent close on 7 hours on the water on Saturday, as the remaining scraps of sunburn peel will attest to. All those seemingly fruitless circuits around the marks are paying dividends: I no longer swirl at the dreary depths of the results form. Even better, I made it around the course before the timekeeper ladies went off for tea. Granted, I came last, but it was within the time allowed by the sailing rules. I might have been second last had I made the last tack properly and not nearly capsized. So:
September 2, didn't finish (on time).
September 9, didn't race 'cos of work.
September 16, didn't finish on time.
September 23rd, didn't finish (but I am listed first among the didn't finishers!).
September 30, didn't race.
October 7, first finish! Hurray!
October 14, sailed a different boat, so that confused the racecounter a bit, finished second last!
21 October, last of the non-finishers.
28 October, didn't finish, but made it into the first lot of non-finishers.
4 Nov wasn't so good, dead last.
Remembrance Day we did some short races, and I placed 21st out of what looks like 27 active boats, but if we count everyone, it's 21st out of 40 or so.
18 November, dead last, but only by 13 seconds.

Aye, these be promising results.

Children of Men

What an...odd movie. It's not really an escapist exercise at all, this one. It reminded me a little of 'V for Vendetta', in the blatantly obvious links between current world affairs and a dystopic future.

I really didn't like all the spattering blood and random dying. You know, after the first dozen or so the point's pretty well made.

Simmo's just made the point that it is pretty '1984-ish' with Clive Owen's character starting off all jaded and not caring about the miserableness of the world but rather believing that he just has to go along with it.

The other thing was the backstory: there was none, beyond 'the entire world's gone to crap, and the human race has been infertile for the last 18 years.' Yep, I feel a real connection to this story. Bah.

Apparently it's based on a book by P.D. James. I hope that this is a case of the movie being a lousy manifestation of the book.

So: it's great in that it's an indictment of the conflict-laden paradigm of contemporary foreign policies, and of painfully xenophobic mentalities. It's not so great in that it's gross, blatant, and a little unengaging.

Thar she blows - all over the place!

That was a windy Saturday to be out in a little ol' boat. I'm not sure what the final score on the wind speed was, but I think it was up there on par with the day I got a black eye and broken glasses from a swinging boom.

I reckon there's about 8 guys at the club that handled it alright and completed the race - the majority of us headed for shore after a lap or so.

Strong winds compound the difficulty factors: 1) Really strong winds can be tough to handle. 2) Those winds whip up pretty neat waves that can be fun to surf down, or fly off the top of. They also break over the bow and spray which makes 3) things a lot wetter than normal, and 4) add in the winds and it gets pretty chilly. (I should get some more insulation!)

All that whingeing aside, it is freaking awesome hanging off the side of the boat on the knife-edge of capsizing, but just flying along (and actually believing that you are in control!)

Whew.

Bobbin Head Walk

Catch up time. One fine Sunday Simone and I had a stroll up in scenic Bobbin Head, part of Ku-rin-gai Chase National Park, about a 30 minute drive from lovely Meadowbank.

It was a bushwalk around Cowan Creek - we started a little late, but managed to walk for a good way. Wonderful having this nature reserve so close to the metropolis.

Took some pictures too.

Sydney African Film Festival

Well, Simone's gone and done it again and made me just a little bit more cultured and aware of the world.

We attended the opening of the Sydney African Film Festival, put on by a bunch of folks from the University of Sydney, and proceeds from the festival go to Hands of Help, which is one of those charitable organisations that sends caring wealthy(ish) Westerners to go and build schools and other civil infrastructure that governance-challenged dicators don't seem willing to spare funds for out of their corrupt practices.

So, it's all a good cause. We saw three featurettes, also known as short films, which were written, produced, filmed etc., by African filmmakers. Just a little confronting, particularly "Noura's Summer" starring Noura who's just done really really really well at school and is pretty much set to get a scholarship to university. As an added bonus she's been promised in marriage. WARNING: PLOT SPOILER. She suicides.

And that set the tone for the evening - stories of how crap life is in the poor parts of Africa (I know, that's most of it, but there are undoubtedly a delightful corrupt elite who are doing alright).

Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman

Whee, this was fun! I'd heard about Neil Gaiman, but since it was all such fulsome praise, I avoided reading his stuff.

That was a bit of a mistake, I think. This was a very enjoyable introduction. Not strictly science-fiction, as I was led to believe was Gaiman's genre, but rather fantastical, or more accurately, I think, a translation of old mythic tales for contemporary times.

Wow, a bunch of great books in a row. I'm a lucky lad at the moment.

Believe it or not, there are lousy days to be on the water

What a miserable day... drizzly, overcast, cold (by Sydney standards). I hated to do it, but puttering around in a wind-powered bathtub doesn't appeal.

So, it's a day of household chores and errands instead.

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Here's a bit of an old book! Simone and I were chatting about books we had or hadn't read as littl'uns, and I could not remember if I'd read Wind in the Willows. So the only logical course of action was to head out the the friendly West Ryde branch of Ryde Library Services, and pick up a copy.

I still don't know if I've read it before - Mole, Toad, Rat and Badger seem strangely familiar, as do elements of the story (in remarkably vague ways), but I don't think I've actually read the book.

It's a great read, though. Heaps of fun, threads of morals and values running through it without being all preachy to turn off the kiddies. Great stuff. This was an older edition too, with delightful line drawings, with the added treat of some colour plates with line and watercolour illustrations.

Lovely.

The Calcutta Chromosome - Amitav Ghosh

Wow... anyone who's got an issue with non-chronological stories need not bother with this one, as the quest for a cure for malaria moves in and out of phase with a century or so long story of selective immortality set in, as the title might suggest, India.

Challenging and mostly fun to read - two good books in a row. Most excellent.

Storm Front - Jim Butcher

This was an engrossing quick read - and it is the first book in a series! That makes me pretty happy.

Call this a cross between a fantasy book and a detective novel. Fantasy elements with a detective-y style. Harry Dresden's a mortal practising wizard in Chicago, trying to make a dime working as, well, a wizard PI kind of guy. Weird things happen in that line of work, and this book tells the tale.

It almost seems like a silly little book, both in size and subject, but it is refreshing in its novelty. Magic is everywhere, it seems.

I'm looking forward to reading the next instalment.