Humble Opinions

I came to Adventure and Party City with the intention of taking another bungy jump off a high bridge, but that hasn't happened yet. Two days were spent with colleagues from Griffith Uni taking a brief holiday after the conference - main activities: drinking, eating, drinking, bonding, slandering previous heads-of-department, current deans, pro-vice-chancellors and associated sociopaths, and drinking. Worth doing. Now I've converted an Introduction to Paragliding day into a full course! The Intro day was exhausting. And painful. The day involves learning how to make a safe takeoff, and a relatively safe landing. Takeoff involves racing downhill as fast as you can trying to imitate an angry goose - chest and head down, arms stretched out high behind your back holding on to the glider controls. The result usually is to pull the glider in front of you so that it pulls you over onto your face, or lower one hand/control just slightly so the wing moves suddenly to one side an...

The ANZMAC conference in Dunedin, New Zealand, was a lot better than expected. I arrived a couple of days earlier to attend the Doctoral Colloquium with one of my PhD students, Jannie Adamsen. Jannie found it all really helpful to meet with other Doctoral candidates, potential examiners and professors who may be able to offer advise. It was fun for me too. Good to see how other candidates tackle their problems and how other supervisors manage. Some students were doing trivial rubbish, some were trying to solve all ultimate questions at once, and some were doing stuff that could be really useful. And It was really gratifying to not hear a single mention of the "five chapters model" for a PhD - a rigid template approach that seems to me is designed for witless students, and supervisors with zero abstract thinking skills. The good people at CENGAGE (was Thomson Learning) had set up a big display featuring the new Marketing Research text book I've written with St...

Sri Lanka is a wonderful country! I'm here for only a week and my dear friend Amal KarunaRatna, with whom I started my PhD program with about 20 years ago, is my host. It's also a poor country. Crippled by a constant war between the Singhalese Sri Lankans and the Tamil Tigers in the North for the country, plus inept and corrupt government and inefficient bureaucracy, the country has only rudimentary basic infrastructure: roads, schools, and other services. Bureaucrats are so poorly paid that things get done only when they're bribed, or they're commanded to by their bosses, who have been bribed. Teachers and hospital employees are terribly poorly paid. Today our driver, Mohinda, was picked on by a tired and frustrated police officer and was fined 1000 Rupees (about $13), about two day's pay. To take care of the fine, we had to go to one place to get the forms to fill out, then another place to actually hand over the cash, and a third place to recover the dr...

I took a couple of days off to see Gallipoli, the site of the WWI fiasco that killed thousands of Australians and New Zealanders (and French and Canadians, and Britons) in a useless attempt to capture some territory held by Turkish forces so as to control the Bospherus Strait, linking he Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Many more Turks also were killed, so it's of great importance to them as well. More importantly, the Turkish defense was commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, the man who soon after lead the Young Turks movement, essentially a political rebellion against the old military guard, that created a united Turkey. Ataturk saw that long prosperity for Turkey lay with the progressive West rather than with the East. So the story of Gallipoli is something that all Turkish children learn about. Kemal Ataturk ; (Inscription on Gallipoli Memorial put up by Turkey in 1934, also on Ataturk Memorial at Tarakina Bay, Wellington.) "Those heroes who shed their...

From Braga, Portugal I probably didn't give Braga, Portugal, a fair chance. After all, the VirtualTtourist website lists the 800-year-old city as one of the beautiful cities in the world. It also says that in a very religiously conservative country the people of Braga are the most conservative, verging on fanatical. It certainly showed up in the city's total lack of any nightlife - I went searching for a cafe or bar where there would be people listening to music and talking. There simply aren't any. Maybe it's just that I was in Academic conference mode. The food served at the conference dinners was interesting though. The staple seems to be dried salted codfish, reconstituted in water or milk, served on beans, or inside a pastry, or on bread. And of course thinly sliced ham. That's it. Even then perhaps I'm not being fair. Salt cod (water), salt cod (milk), in pastry (three kinds), on bread, mixed into beans (three kinds), sliced ham, tomatoes, cucu...

Madrid and Barcelona were way too rushed. I spent too much time messing about making arrangements for trains and flights to and from places and too little time just enjoying the places themselves. Anyway, I did get to see some of the wonderful architecture of Gaudi in Barcelona: Park Guell, Casa Batllo, and the cathedral, La Sagrada Familia - still under construction. I got lost in Madrid trying to reach the Prada Museum via the back streets and instead found, in short order, the red-light district, some very up-market apartments, and the financial district where I stumbled into an art gallery just opening an exhibition of neo-realist photography spanning the fascist periods of Spain and Italy through to the late'50s. I should have slept on the train from Madrid to Barcelona but instead spent most of the night in the dining car with a Peruvian family man with a US green card who takes a class in Madrid every Friday for his accounting qualification, a Canadian IT specialist o...

From Last days in ... I succeeded in my first solo crossing of a Cairo street today, and I rode four times in a Cairo taxi in the last two days. So, having faced death, it's time to move on to another challenge. Off to Madrid where the Basque separatists have just announced that their "permanent ceasefire" has expired and they're all set to restart their campaigns. I'm in the cafeteria at Cairo airport. Like all airports, it's a monopolist's paradise - I've just paid the same for a bottle of water as I paid for two people to share a huge lunch earlier in the day. From Last days in ... My guide and friend, Mr Ibrahim, took me for a walk through some parts of old Cairo yesterday afternoon and today. Wonderful history of course, most of which went in one ear and out the other. Not that I was uninterested, but it's hard to keep track of which sultan built which grand mosque to honour which brother he had murdered in order to gain the sultanate ...

From Diving in Dahab I'm staying an extra day in Dahab. I ate with the professional dive instructors from my dive shop last night and I was invited to a party tonight: a local restaurant has just recruited a former student of Jamie Oliver and this is his opening show. Why not stay? I miss a day in Cairo, and almost certainly loose any opportunity to easily take a day-trip to Alexandria. An excursion I'll have to look forward to for the next trip. From Diving in Dahab I made two more dives yesterday, this time armed with an underwater camera borrowed from the dive shop. I've posted some of the results to the online picture gallery: From Diving in Dahab But I've probably finished my diving for a little while. My ears and sinus's were taking a beating, so better to let it go for a bit. So now I'm just taking walks along the shore. Life's pretty tough. From Diving in Dahab

I'd seen just about all of the amazing temples and monuments that I could handle for the moment so I made a spur of the moment decision to change my plans and take the plane from Luxor to Sharm El Sheikh on the night of the 29 May. My booking agent in Cairo and the people at the Luxor airport couldn't have been more helpful. They cancelled my train trip and hotel and bus for the next two days and rearranged to have me collected at 12:30am in Sharm El Sheikh and driven the 120 Km to Dahab. This has saved me more than two days of travelling and sitting about, and give me more time near the Red Sea and back in Cairo. Service and courtesy towards tourists in Egypt is very good. If they could get the toilets to work it would be great. So here I am in Dahab , about half way down the East coast of the Sinai Peninsular. On a clear night you can see the lights of a Saudi city that no-one around here seems to know the name of. The Red Sea is THE place in the world to enjoy scu...

Rushed for the first part but wonderfully relaxing after. The 3:30am start to drive 300Km to Abu Simbel was a pain. Wonderful temple, incredible feat of engineering to move it up the hill away from the waters of the Aswan dam an' all, but was it worth the time and heat and fatigue? Not really. Still, I suppose I can now say that I've done it and seen it. The two day ride down the Nile in a felloucca was just magical. I was so tired after the train ride and the early start the day before that I was exhausted so time spent just lying about and watching the scenery and chatting with some very interesting fellow travellers, or learning from our host, Captain Mohammed, and his regular visits with mates along the way. An interesting side trip was a visit to the once-a-week camel markets in Darow - the largest in Egypt - where camels are brought in from Sudan 1500Km over 45 days for sale to traders, farmers, racers and butchers. (A young eating camel goes for LE4000, a racing c...

Tired and dehydrated after a drive out to Aswan damn and to the Kiosk of Qirtassi which had to be moved 100 metres, piece by piece, to make way for the damn waters. Fabulous history surrounding the structure, which is in remarkable condition considering that this Roman-Egyption trading post (at least that not covered in sand for most of the last 2000 years) has been graffitied by all sorts of Coptic Christians from about 60AD who didn't like the pagan images, to French, German and English explorers and soldiers in the 18th and 19 centuries. But their lettering is copy-book. Tomorrow up at 3:30am for a three-hour drive out to Abu Simbel. Armed convoy, just to be sure there's no trouble. Then back early afternoon in time to board a Falouca for two nights afloat on the Nile. So I probably won't be posting for another three days or so.

Pretty tired so I'm making this a brief one. It's end of day two and I've had a fabulous day tripping around the Saqqarrah pyramid and the Pyramids of Giza. They're old. Nearly 5000 years. And some of the paint is still on some of the relief paintings, and the hiroglyphs are amazing in their clarity and beauty. I'll tell more of the story accompanying the some of the pictures in my gallery (links to the side of my blog: http://winzar.blogspot.com)

It's been a fairly full last few days. Of course I shoulda' coulda' woulda' several things but I didn't. Fortunately I have some friends who are so generous and so gracious. Despite several checks with the post office I couldn't send my suitcase full of winter clothes back to Australia, but Kurt and Barbara are taking care of it for me. Dennis helped me to pack by sitting there Sunday morning repeating over and over "that's interesting... now pack your bag... Focus" Robin and Dennis and I enjoyed a last lunch at the Ironwood before Dennis drove me to the airport. "Always the airport driver - never the driven." Hopefully Dennis will be taking one of those drives for a flight to exotic climes soon. It's sunset on my first day in Cairo. It's already been a full day. I arrived in my hotel at about 2:30 this morning slept and after breakfast of bean stew, bread, cheese and fig jam washed down with very sweet tea I visited th...

What great day of golfing! Dennis had booked a foursome at Kananaskis months in advance for Saturday. So the four was made up of Dennis, me, Kurt, and Patrick, the owner of the Ironwood Stage & Grill. It was the first time I'd had a chance to talk properly with Pat, since he was always at work when I saw him but, like his friends, he's a smart and engaging guy but with a razor wit. Kananaskis surely is one of the most beautiful golf courses in the world. It takes up a small valley between snow-peaked mountains. It's also regarded as a "challenging" course. Almost every hole runs alongside or over the beautiful fast-flowing river. People don't just talk about their scores but of the number of balls lost. I feel quite proud that I lost only six. The course is so popular that bookings for the season are filled within a week, and the course marshals keep close ties on how long any group takes on the holes to ensure everyone keeps to the schedule. ...

I'll claim it a sort of farewell for me. Dennis and Robin hosted yet another fabulous party. Only a week late for the Cinco de Mayo (5th of May) celebration, we made up a perfect mole negro , Robin prepared guacamole, bean salad, salsa and a superb turkey-taco green salad. There was way too much to drink. One highlight was the piñata - well two piñata - Robin & Dennis had prepared one and then Kurt & Barbara also arrived with one. We had a ball taking turns to be blindfolded and then try to smash them with a stick. When eventually they collapsed and scattered sweets and toys and, from Dennis & Robin's creation, miniature liquor bottles, everyone dived to the grass to collect the treasures. Very childish... It all went very very late. Sunday, what little remained of it when we got up, was spent very quietly.

Saturday was a great day but the wind was just too temperamental for us learners. We met up at 8:00am at Muller WindSports in Cochran, just North of Calgary, for final briefing, and to practice the basics. I had a chance to inflate the kite and practice basic control manoeuvring and was all set to fly. Unfortunately only a half of the group had a chance to actually leave the ground for their two minute ride 100 metres down and 1.5 Km along. The remainder were to fly the following day. Unfortunately I had plans for that night that didn't involve an early morning rise. Ironically, it rained on Sunday so my truancy didn't matter. Sigh, I'll have to try the flying part when I get back to Australia.

Saturday was yet another fantastic night in Calgary. We started the evening with a simple but delicious meal chez Dennis & Robin, then primed with several beers, wine, and a solid shot of Absinthe, the three of us walked the long four blocks to the Ironwood Stage & Grill . There we took up posts at the bar - the rest of the place was packed - to listen to legendary Canadian composer/ guitarist, Gaye DeLorme . To be honest, I hadn't heard of Gaye DeLorme before but it turns out that he has been nominated for Grammy awards several times and worked for a long time composing and producing music for Columbia Pictures. He is the inspiration for performers like Mark Knopfler and Stevie Ray Vaughn, creating tunes 15 years before these artists appropriated them and made them hits. Gaye started the evening with a classical guitar style version of Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time that made me feel like I was listening to the music of Joe Pattane, an old friend of my father wh...

Posted today at Mother Jones and it made me laugh. I thought I was just avoiding the horrible inanity of American news, but it turns out I'm being educated too. Update! 18 April: I just took a short version of The Pew News IQ Quiz and scored 100% (albeit with only 9 questions.) I'm in the top 4%. Watch the Daily Show? You're Smart. Read Blogs or Watch FOX? Not So Much It's always a treat when studies come out that link how much individuals know with where they get their news. In the following tables, the percentage next to a media outlet's name represents the number of viewers of that outlet that can answer 15 of 23 questions about political and world affairs correctly. Not a particularly high bar. Daily Show/Colbert Report 54% Major Newspapers' Websites 54% NewsHour w/ Jim Lehrer 53% Bill O'Reilly 51% NPR 51% Rush Limbaugh 50% Those are the folks who did well. Here's the group that did just okay. Newsmagazines 48% Local Newspape...

Last Tuesday I went to the Arlo Guthrie concert. Yes, the guy who sang Alice's Restaurant way back in 1967, the son of legendary singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie. Dennis & Robin had a spare ticket and were kind enough to offer it to me. A wonderful night! On stage were members of Arlo's family: son on keyboard and daughter and son-in-law playing guitars and another playing slide-guitar and mandolin. Mercifully the 4-year-old granddaughter didn't come on until the end. It could have been dreadful. Instead it was a fabulous night of funny/ touching/ homespun-country stories about family, politics in the US, Woody Guthrie's life and, of course, dealing with the police and other government types in the tumultuous 60's and 70's. Alice's Restaurant was played of course, with all the joy and humour of the original, even though Arlo reminded us that he's had to sing the song six times a week 10 months of the year, for the last 40 years. But the best so...

Tuesday 20 March. Today is the Vernal Equinox - we have exactly 12 hours daylight, and when we officially start Spring. That's not a big deal in Brisbane where the transition from Summer to Winter is marked not so much by a change in the weather but by a slight reduction in the amount of rain, and that doesn't even apply this year because SE-Qld is suffering a terrible drought. In most of Canada, Spring is marked by a sudden greening of the trees and of the newly exposed grasses. But in Calgary the prairie winds will keep the system confused for another month. Today the city was shrouded in snow cloud and snow was plummeting down at about 10:00am, but by mid-afternoon the sun was out and all of the new snow had sublimated, leaving dry footpaths and roads. I'm told that as much snow will fall this month as in any over the winter, so the spring skiing is something to look forward to. What is interesting is the way the ice is breaking up on the Bow river through the cent...

Another excellent weekend at Cowley Part 1 Arrived with Bob and Kurt on Friday night to meet Susan and Sandy who had prepared gourmet hamburgers for dinner. As usual, great conversation and plans for tomorrow. Relatively early night. Saturday Sandy, Bob, Kurt and I travelled to Castle Mountain Ski Resort for another great day. Bob's expert instruction had me keeping my weight forward with hands forward too so that my shoulders faced down hill and I let the simple weight transfer take care of my turns. This is actually counter-intuitive as one tends to straighten up if things look stressful. It made for more confident, aggressive and speedier skiing. Kurt and I quickly did five 1000ft green runs, plus a couple of blue sections, without mishap. So after a couple of beers and some pizza for lunch we did one more green and then attacked the first serious run on Castle. Again, little problem making our way down the cat-trail, which is supposed to be green, but clearly is a ...

Sunday couldn't have been better. The temperature at Lake Louise was around +5c but the snow was still light and dry. Dennis was taking step-son, Myles, to the snow for the day and they very kindly invited me along. I'm starting to get the hang of this skiing caper - keeping my weight forward, smooth transitions. It all makes for ability to handle steeper and rougher sections, more confidence, and ... a great deal less fatigue! Apart from about 45 minutes for lunch, we skied from 9:30 to 3:30. I did 11 long runs while Dennis and Myles, who go for the steeper and faster runs, did at least 13. Myles spent the whole day testing himself on the moguls - magnificent to watch. Dennis skis like he's standing and watching the scenery, except that he's moving straight downhill at about 80Kph - annoying to watch. I'm still very much on the green (and sometimes blue) slopes - probably very sad to watch. Only one little adventure when I took a trail down to where I coul...

Reading Week is supposed to be a week for students to catch up with readings and to prepare for the meaty part of the semester. However, like Spring Break for the Americans, it is actually an opportunity to take a week off partying in Mexico, or Banff, or anywhere where there isn't a textbook. Here's the result of an exchange I had with one clever student... Hello Hume This is Kenneth H** from team stud (fist pump). Looking at my schedule for the up coming week I am not sure that I will have enough time to give the assignment a quality effort. I am currently working on a project for The Social Exchange (a student club here in Haskayne) that involves an awful lot of video filming and even more editing for a charity event that we are currently working on. Basically I am asking if I can have an extension until after reading week on the project. I tried to pop by today and discuss it in person to no avail, if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me either b...

click for photo album At last I attended the Ice Climbing course offered through the U. Calgary Outdoor Centre . Quite a day. First task was a wonderful walk through the King's Creek gorge off Highway 40, just before the gate where the highway is closed for the winter. The gorge is probably on 20 metres at its widest spot with very steep snowy slopes up either side. A beautiful creek runs through the gorge. It's mostly covered with ice and snow of course right now. Water on my boots quickly turned to ice and fixed my laces in place. About 20 minutes walk from the road we came to where a spring from high up the canyon had formed a huge ice butte - our learning site. Crampons are big steel spikes clipped to the boots. The purpose of the toe spikes is to grip the ice when kicked hard into the ice wall. The purpose of the heel spikes is to gouge pieces out of your calf muscles when you stumble on a slope. (I didn't succeed at that part, but I did ruin a go...

I had a relatively quiet day today. I had a fairly late night just round the corner at the King Henry VIII pub on 8th Avenue - a little reward for myself for completing all my assignment grading yesterday. So I got up late and then had to collect a pair of mountaineering boots from the outdoor centre on campus. Mid-afternoon I walked East down 9th Avenue to the IronWood Stage & Grill , about 10 blocks from my place, for the fortnightly Blues Jam session.  My new friends, Bob and Susan have a daughter, Jaime, who is the head chef at the IronWood.   I meant to go two weeks ago, but never made it.  Jaime told me I had to try the steak sandwich.  It was more than pub grub - a truly excellent piece of rare meat with garlic Portobello mushrooms and onion and chipped potato and a wonderful Mexican black-bean soup.  The owner, Patrick, wasn't in this afternoon. Patrick used tobe the manager at King Henry's. Now he apples his decade of experience booking bands and running a b...

It's -20c outside right now. It seems that's quite normal in many parts of Canada at this time of year. I'm surprised that I'm handling it quite well. At least for the little time I have to be on the street. It's only about two blocks from my apartment block to the c-train, and another 100 metres from the University station to my office. It was a little more brisk this evening walking the four blocks from Verne's Bar to the apartment block. I met with my new friend, Kurt Norlen, for a drink at Verne's this evening. Verne's is owned by three guys, Ian, Trent, Clint. Ian is a consumate host - he seems to know everyone in the hospitality trade in Calgary. Ian was at the dinner party at Dennis & Robyn's house a couple of weeks ago. He started in the bar trade as a barman in the Canadian building at Expo'88 in Brisbane. Trent is a blues/country guitar player and song-writer who spends most of his time making contact with visiting/traveling mins...

The view from my apartment balcony at 9:00am. It's snowing again today in Calgary. Nothing unusual in that, except that the humidity is unusually high at 85% or more. Typically it's in the low 50s - very dry. This humidity is making it icy on the roads. A dozen accidents were reported this morning. The morning TV news showed a wonderful scene of a large 4WD spinning slowly along the street bouncing off cars parked along the side. Nothing the driver could do. Luckily I take the c-train in to campus.

From Cowley14Jan2007 Just returned in few minutes ago from a fabulous weekend South near the Castle Mountain ski resort. We didn't go anywhere near the resort - we wre on the castle river in a lovely house overlooking the Rocky's to the West and the Montana's to the South-West. A walk on the frozen lake first thing in the morning and we saw a family of coyote crossing the ice, and mink tracks in the snow. And of course deer were wandering by all day. Just a lovely place to sit and watch the mountains and drink beer and enjoy the barbeque. I'll post pictures of Bob Susan Andrew's house to the blog later. powered by performancing firefox

This appeared in today's ZDNET newsletter about the new iPhone from Apple. I wonder if SD will be intersted in buying one when/if it appears in Australia. Personally I'd wait for version II when all of the bugs have been ironed out. iPhone blows away expectations by ZDNet 's Ed Burnette -- Once in a while, the truth can be wilder than the rumors. Such was the case today at MacWorld 2007, where Steve Jobs unveiled the long awaited iPhone.