Apparently if you accidentally cut in front of someone who is rounding a bend at 50km/h and they honk you, and then they perform a near-crash manouver to try cut in front of you again and you honk them, it instantly makes you a blint part of the female anatomy and also a procreating homosexual. Not exactly in those terms of course.
In any case, stay away from VHY-785 and it’s red-P Lebanese driver.
One of the youth from church has been asking for work experience ideas lately, and one of my suggestions was working for a computer manufacturer, much like I did back in year 10. But what computer maker would willingly take on a year 10 kid that they didn’t know? So I decided to look up the maker that I worked for back then, PC Club in Rhodes, because I knew the owner’s family.
Little did I expect, when I googled “PC Club Australia”, the first results that popped up were big headlines screaming “Microsoft wins $1.3m in piracy case”. After clicking around the articles (e.g. SMH and Microsoft), a sinking feeling came over me.
Maybe I should remove this reference from my CV…
Up in Katoomba last weekend with the youth group from church at KYCKstart, a conference aimed at high-schoolers. It was my first KYCK, and it was absolutely gobsmacking to see a couple of thousand youth and their leaders meeting in a big tin shed in the Mountains singing, learning and praying together. Apart from the main session talks, the free time we had with the youth from 180 was just so fantastic for getting to know them better and for everyone to gel.
Unfortunately no photos from me since I only took the video camera (which I subsequently got busted for since you’re apparently not meant to film anything at the conference). But I’ll steal some photos from friends and post some up - thanks Susie!
Highlights include:
Popped down to Canberra for a few days to help train the Aussie biology olympiad team. Feels almost surreal, since I spend quite a bit of time down there with the olympiads. Driving is always fun - I find that I need at least 8 hours sleep to not microsleep on the road. A bottle of V and some Disney songs help.
Lots of dodgy drivers on the interstate roads. Here’s a red P-plater tailgating another car, only 1 car-length behind, at 110km/h.
The weather on the way down wasn’t fantastic, but despite this, skydivers were still in the skies around Picton. This one (on the right) was tumbling pretty fast though and appeared to be spinning out of control. Would have had quite a crash landing I imagine…
And finally what the trip to Canberra was for: the Australian Biology Olympiad Team for 2007, competing in Canada in July against 40-odd teams from countries all around the world. They’re still in Canberra at ANU working hard preparing for the competition. We had a team dinner on Tuesday night with some program staff, a bunch of people from the office, and a good friend and long-time supporter of the biology program, and then drove up Black Mountain after some late-night dessert. Standing next to Telstra Tower in hoodies looking down at a metallic device beeping on the ground probably wasn’t the best thing to do. But how else do you take a nice team photo with auto-timer?
I blogged too early, it seems. My submission was published in today’s SMH Heckler. Cool.
What I find sad, though, is that my first published work isn’t about Christian topics, and not even about biology, but rather a whinge.
Ah, science…
This idea was no doubt unbeknownst to those in Chinatown on Saturday night since all lights were blaring from 7:30 to 8:30pm. No change from the usual. At least the Energy Australia building was blacked out though - that would have hit the front pages on a slow news Sunday if it hadn’t.
Not much difference in the city night skyline according to SMH photos, which wasn’t surprising I guess.
What I want to know is if it actually made a difference. Or was the carbon dioxide emitted by combusting all those candles far greater than the total coal energy saved by turning very few of the city lights off for an hour on a Saturday? Perhaps it made a difference in terms of media exposure or raising awareness. But perhaps the thinktanks behind these genius ideas can come up with more useful and practical ways to save energy next time.