All aboard

We had a little bit of wind yesterday afternoon down here in sunny Melbourne. As I was heading home I saw this little scenario just down from the Essendon station. The funny thing is that the train will be full of soem very pissed off commuters because it was a V-Line which services regional Victoria so some residents of Bendigo and Catslemaine were going to be very very late getting home...

State of the World

I see that the North Koreans have released the imprisoned American journos after a visit by Bill Clinton to make their case. I think it was Chaz who pointed out on JB's blog that our man Hu in Beijing probably won't get as much sympathy or support here in Australia because he doesn't look like us. It didn't seem to matter much to the yanks that the two journalists were of Asian extraction though, and although it may be ALP "Real Politik', it shouldn't matter to us either.

However which former statesman would we send to Beijing to get Hu released anyway? I can't see John Howard doing the job, now that he is a former PM he doesn't have to pretend anymore about all of that multicultural Australia stuff, Paul Keating would just offend them all over again and Bob Hawke - well I don't think we should bring him up do you? Fraser would just lose his pants again and that only leaves Gough...

Well my money would be on Gough, after all wasn't he the one who did a Richard Nixon and opened up relations with the PRC anyway?

Of course there is always the possibility that the reason that Rudd has been so inactive on this issue is that Hu really is an Australian spy? But I think that would be giving way too much credit to ASIS and too little to Rio Tinto...

Mumbai madness

I recently finished a book called Sacred Games which is all set in Mumbai and is basically an Indian crime novel with some great central characters including depictions of life in that city, the way that crime and policing are carried out and a plot which includes Bollywood movies, gangsters, terrorists and hardboiled detectives. I enjoyed the book and it really gave some slight insight into a culture which is starting to really make its presence felt even on this side of the world.

However tonight I watched the last half of the ABC TV show Four Corners which I would really recommend to be compulsory viewing for you guys out there. It was about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and it was totally chilling, right down to the script which their controllers gave the terrorists to say to the media, that "this attack was only the trailor, the main feature is yet to happen..."

Scary times...