I just figured I’m going to be freaking cold next week

I’m off to Tokyo on Saturday.  Work, not holidays.

I know that the seasons in the northern hemisphere are opposite to here in Australia, so I did realise it would be winter in Japan, but just what that entailed didn’t really hit home for me until the last day or so.

First, I looked up the weather forecast on the web.

Then, on the phone today to colleagues in Tokyo, the fact that it was snowing there got mentioned.

So, better pack the thermals, polar fleece and big warm coat.   Thats a change from the t-shirt and shorts I’ve been getting around in for the last few months (plus I have to suit up for the week in the office in Tokyo … here I mainly work at home).

Rough justice/just desserts

I’m always amused by tales of criminal stupidity, and in particular doing something really dumb while committing their crimes and inadvertently delivering themselves a “do it yourself” punishment.

The latest one occurred on the Gold Coast last night.  Two men, held up a man at knifepoint at the Stockland West Burleigh shopping centre, and stole his car, a Falcon XR6.  The thieves drove on to the Pacific Motorway and headed north towards Nerang, at high speed.  Within 10 minutes, they’d managed to lose control of the car and crash head on into a truck travelling the other way.

Result.  2 thieving scum dead.  Fortunately in administering their own death sentences they didn’t take anyone else with them.

I suppose I should feel some sympathy for the families and friends of the 2 dead men …. but I can’t say I do.  In fact, good riddance to bad rubbish is the sentiment that comes to my mind.

WTF? This has got to be a joke

Shakeel Mirza, a medical student at the University of Queensland, tried to give an 11-year-old boy a penis massage.  The Pakistani-born medical student had been appointed as a mentor to the 11-year-old boy under the Lions Club’s “Aunties and Uncles” program when he tried to force his hands down the youngster’s pants at the family’s Brisbane home.  In court, it was said he had been rubbing the child’s head to relax him when he offered to massage the child’s penis instead because “it would feel better”.  The boy managed to fend off Mirza’s advances.

Mirza escaped with only 12 months probation.  No criminal conviction was formally recorded after his defence lawyers successfully argued that a black mark against his name could prevent Mirza, 27, from getting a government Blue Card - or security clearance - allowing him to treat children in hospital. Mirza’s defence barrister Brad Farr argued that in some cases, shame was enough to deter people from reoffending, and that a jail sentence - even a wholly suspended one - was not warranted.  He also maintained that a criminal conviction would cast a pall over his client’s promising future as a doctor.

What about the fact, entirely within Mirza’s control, that maybe he should have thought about the consequences before trying to grope the boy?

Regardless, the judge bought the defence’s arguments.  Piss weak!  Why not look at the alternate view that Mirza’s actions revealed a character flaw that should disqualify him from being a doctor?  Or anything involving contact with children?

At least in this case, the State has appealed against the inadequacy of the sentence.  Its barrister asked the court to resentence Mirza to 12 months’ jail - albeit wholly suspended - and record a criminal conviction.  Still pretty soft, but better than nothing I suppose … I think he needs at least some jail time to send a message that his behaviour is completely unacceptable.

Why does the legal profession always seek to justify the unjustifiable, mitigate the unmitigatable, defend the indefensible?   Does a client ever get told - “you fucked up, no excuses, front up and cop your medicine”?  And when they get appointed as judges, why do many seem so inclined to accept (often farfetched and lame) excuses for people’s bad behaviour?  Do their standards get distorted by constantly dealing with the scum of the community …. so that compared to the worst criminals, most seem halfway decent and reasonable?

Dumb optimism

I saw yesterday a story about a guy in Melbourne who’d been seen carrying a barbeque on his motorbike.   He has apparently seen the error of his ways and accepted that what he did is pretty dumb.

The same guy recently ferried a couch on his bike from Keilor Downs to his Sydenham flat.

“People say it can’t be done, but I proved them wrong,” he said.

Umm, I think the reason people say that is because its a really stupid thing to do.

The story reminded me of something I saw in Beijing a few years ago.  How’s this for extreme optimism about what can be loaded onto a bicycle?

What was even funnier was just before this there were a bunch of guys there trying to hold the front down so the guy riding the bike could get on.  It didn’t work.  I didn’t stick around to see what their plan B was.

70’s disco music

Is not my special subject. In fact it was an era of music that I tried to ignore when I was growing up.

However, that did me no good tonight. We went to a trivia quiz night at my wife’s church, and the quizmaster was obviously a fan of it ….one of the competitions was to name the songs from a few seconds snippet of each one, and that tragic era was over-represented (in my humble opinion). Our team did ok at this, about 50% in total … but the winning team scored about 75%. Most scored less than us.

We came 3rd … about 3 points off the winners. Pretty decent, but should have studied more. A couple of questions that could have made all the difference:

• who wrote “Gone with the Wind”? (the question was more obscure than that but we knew the book) …. also knew the author was Margaret something - Mitchell is the bit we could  not remember
• who was the first female state premier in Australia? Carmen Lawrence … we said Joan Kirner

But we did have some good gets:

• knowing all the leaders of the USSR/Russia since 1917 - you had to match names and dates with their photos
• who was the Australian test cricketer who announced his retirement on 9 December 2006? Damien Martyn
• knowing the order of release of these James Bond movies: “From Russia With Love”, “The Spy Who Loved Me”, “Moonraker” and “Tomorrow Never Dies”

A couple of funny things:

• what is the term for a castrated rooster? A capon is the correct answer …. we said KFC
• what is the 2nd most popular activity in the American Catholic Church after mass? No, the answer is not paedophilia …. its bingo.

Entrecard - nice little game

I’ve mentioned that I’m using Entrecard to promote my blog before.  You’ll notice that in my sidebar just under the subscribe button I’ve put an extra widget linking to a neat little game Joe Tech is running.  It works just like a poker/slot machine and its a little bit of fun.  I’ve played twice and so far won over 100 credits.

And while on the subject of Entrecard, just after I posted the bit above, Andrew tagged me in the Chain Drop 8 above the fold meme for Entrecarders.  This is actually quite topical as I was thinking earlier on today when doing a run of Entrecard drops how much easier it is to do when the card is “above the fold”.  By “above the fold” I mean visible in the initial screenful of the page on my screen.  That makes it so much easier to find the Entrecard, and means I don’t have to go scrolling down the page, or worse still, having to search for the widget in among 50 other widgets in the sidebar - believe me, the Entrecard can be damn hard to find in some cases.  Yes, having it near the top does suit chain droppers better, and they may not bother reading your blog, but hey thats just a fact of life.  Just because you have it near the bottom of your page doesn’t make the “drop and run” people any more likely to read your content … just harder for them to achieve their mission of getting maximum drops as quickly as possible.

Now for me to tag 8 bloggers with their cards above the fold.  Here goes:

• By The Sea
• About Every Little Thing - StickFigureLis
• A Little Piece of Me - Claire (and Willy) … and if you go there today my card is there (woo!!!)
• Jamaipanese.Com
• Joe Tech - of course, I should mention his cool poker machine game again
• Gorilla Sushi - funny blog, and have advertised on my blog a few times, so I thought I’d throw a link your way
• Tina at Mummifiedx5 - a fellow Aussie blogger
• Andrew at Get a Real Blog - ha, ha, chucking the ball back to you …. now find another 8!!

Now I’m not a great meme person, I usually ignore them, so don’t feel bad if you don’t continue this meme.  I just liked this one, thought it was a bit of fun, and why not spread the link love.