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Yup, the move to anonymouslefty.wordpress.com has gone better than anyone could've hoped or expected.

It's definitely a much better place to hang around than here. (Looks around in disgust.)

If you missed the call on the weekend - please update your bookmarks/blogroll.

Taxpayer dollars wasted

Honestly, those out of control law-and-order magistrates in NSW, wasting taxpayer dollars with crazy judgments that need to be promptly overturned on appeal, at great public expense:

After all, she had nothing on her criminal record, pleaded guilty straight away and had shown remorse. Judge Hosking took just 10 minutes to overturn the jail term.

"In my view the magistrate was clearly in error in sentencing Ms Back to three months imprisonment and that penalty falls completely outside the range of sentencing options," he said.

As a taxpayer (albeit in another state*), I'm outraged. Why are we* paying for this kind of stupidity?

Bloody conservative judicial activists. I'm sick of 'em.

*You know the rule, a "why am I paying taxes for this outrage" rant should never be held back by minor details like whether the person making the complaint actually is personally paying money to the relevant party or not.

LICK MAH PAW

Well, we were wondering which would be the dominant one of the two cats.



Question answered.

UPDATE: More of the set at Keri's.

Did you know that?

...Many cats don't believe in Saturday morning sleep-ins for their owners?

Here're some cute photos of our little feline friends, taken on their last evening alive.





I miss them so much.

PS No, I didn't even bloody yell at them. I am the worst disciplinarian ever.

UPDATE: Keri has uploaded some shots, too.

"Firm Friends" (an increasingly accurately-named photo series)

From this to this:




I luvs you and when you're not looking I am going to steal your food.

PS Bonus plotting cat photo:


What evil deed shall I perform next?

"Firm Friends" (a misleadingly-named photo series)

Well, they're getting better with each other.

Started out with anger (no claws, please note):



Through wary confrontation:





To a cold war:



To "meh".



And some gratuitous cute photos of the new fellow (and his doting mam) to end:







(More chez Keri.)

Holy crap, my cat's a Nazi

Look at her! She's really getting into it.



She needs the calming influence of a new kitten, stat.

Is mine

This is how a cat shares the space in front of a heater:


You can sit off to the side if you like. Just don't block any of the heat. MY heat.

Reminds me of the old joke - I don't have a cat, but I know one that lets me stay in its house...

Last Days Chez Paris

Enjoying this while we can.


France really has a thing about Arcs, de Triomphe or otherwise.

It's been extraordinary, but the long flight ocean voyage* home starts early tomorrow morning. I hate to leave, but it will also be good to be home. I wonder if Polly will remember me.

See you soon!

*You know what? I can't be bothered going into all the nautical detail I did on the way over. Instead, this time I'm just going to blog as if I were home from Tuesday evening. So far as this site is concerned, it will be as if I had found some much quicker and more realistic method of returning to Australia than sailing across the ocean; I will do my utmost to make it seem as if I have. To be honest, I doubt you're even going to be able to tell that I'm still all at sea.

Even though we all know the truth. It'll be our little secret, okay?

Still here!

France has not been consumed by a rapacious black hole or obliterated by a more localised exploding disaster.

Obviously there's still a negligible but imaginable risk for Europe when more enthusiastic colliding-type tests commence next month, but that's their problem - I'll be back in Australia. Screw you, people of Dijon who laugh at my ridiculous attempts at French! How do you like them pommes! Ha ha ha!

(Nah, just kidding, you've been great. I hope you don't get disintegrated either.)

Soaking it all in

Obviously it takes a great deal of planning and saving to voyage to the opposite side of the world. And a person who's gone to the trouble of doing that would be pretty silly not to take advantage of the opportunity to see and do on their travels all the things they can't see and do at home.

BUT.

There is a limit. And at certain points on a crazy ramble through four countries over six weeks some travellers just might hit it. Several times.

This means that, mystifying though it might seem to those at home who are expecting the distant traveller to pack their days with ancient buildings and various increasingly esoteric historical sites, sometimes they'll just want to veg. To soak up the scenery, to recharge the batteries. They may, not unreasonably, consider their trip also their holiday for the year (or longer).

And they're not evil for wanting to enjoy it. Even if that means they miss out on some stuff they could conceivably have seen if they had raced around the place. Europe, for example, is a big continent, containing big countries, with big cities, full of sights and sites with at least some interest and point to them. But you can't possibly see everything. And the more you see, the less special and unique each individual sight becomes. You can see a few things and ponder them slowly, or you can try to cram everything in and be left with a meaningless blur. Sure, you'd be able to tick all the boxes on the Things You Must See In Europe checklist and impress your more shallow friends (ah yes, I was there! Here's a photograph of me pointing at it!) but so what? Is that really why you spent 22 hours on a plane two weeks at sea?



As for me, I get a lot more pleasure out of wandering random streets in France brutally mangling the language to the horreur of passing French people than I do out of visiting another over-touristy monument.

Some may have a different approach, and that's fine - different strokes for different generations within the same family.* They're not wrong just because they have a different perspective to me. Different people have differing priorities at different stages in their lives; and they have different overall interests as well. The key concept to grasp here is that people are DIFFERENT. And travelling is about having an experience that results from the decisions the individual traveller chooses to make - not one based on simply adopting the approach of other people who've had wonderful experiences and therefore think everyone else should do exactly as they did (or, if they've had bad experiences, exactly the opposite). Far from helping, being constantly prompted to justify an alternative approach would in all likelihood instead have the effect of being a taint on the trip, and is thus a manner of communication many travellers would be wise to avoid.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to assault some innocent patissiers with what I choose to believe is a well-phrased request in French for a strawberry tart but is in reality probably an unbearable affront to the victim's entire culture.

I can't do THAT at home.

*The French don't have a word for "subtle".

Actually, we'll go first

Where would YOU choose to be if an unprecedented potentially catastrophic physics experiment possibly involving the creation of black holes on the surface of the Earth were taking place near Geneva at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, Swiss time?

As an Australian, would you choose to be on the other side of the planet, comparatively safe from all but the most globally-devastating side-effects?

Or would you instead choose to be staying in Dijon, France, a mere 150 kilometres away?



I think you may be wiser than me.

Smokers: suffer in your jocks

I've generally felt quite bad for smokers. Exiled to a pitiful little chamber at the back of restaurants, or forced outside in the cold or heat, they seemed like a miserably oppressed minority, tormented for their addiction and kept away from decent society like so many lepers. I hated seeing them suffer. What had they done to the rest of us, really, that deserved such a cruel punishment?

Having now spent a couple of weeks in lands where there are no smoking restrictions, and being reminded of what life used to be like in Australia, I have no sympathy for the selfish bastards whatsoever. Without being restrained by the heavy hand of the law, left to their own devices, they inflict their foul pollution on others, and force the rest of us to choose between cancer or exile. There's no apology, there's no effort to keep the smoke to a minimum or try to aim it so it doesn't go straight in other people's faces; they simply choose not to give a damn. You don't like my repulsive, deadly fumes? Well stiff cheddar, old cheese. They enjoy not giving a stuff about the people around them, being kings of their own little worlds.

Well, they used to. Australian smokers don't get away with it any more. And Greek smokers have another year of getting away with this before they're going to find out just what it is like for their victims. The general consensus here is that there will be much unhappiness from amongst their ranks.

I find it difficult to feel too sorry for them.

PS The above was written whilst in Greece. Now we're in France it appears that, in the words of Our Nicole in Moulin Rouge, "the French are glad to die, for cigarettes..." as well. Mais le cancerous wracking cough n'est pas sexy, mes amis.

Le francais qui n'est pas completement atroche

Back at school, instead of learning something useful like physics or something educational but pointless like classical history, I attended classes in French and Chinese for a number of years. The latter never really grabbed me (perhaps I'm a little lazy, because whilst I'm happy to learn a different spoken language, a written language that has pretty much nothing to do with the spoken language and involves simply memorising random scratches of lines in large numbers was simply one step too far), but I did enjoy the former. It wasn't ludicrously easy - although, Lexy*, it was a hell of a lot easier than Kev's Chinese, which is why people were more impressed by his efforts than yours - but it was interesting, and even taught me a lot about English and why it works the way it does that I'd never considered. (Studying the germanic Old English - the other half of what evolved into our language - at University was illuminating for a similar reason.)

That was fifteen years ago. And I've never really had the chance to use it. At University I did French for a year - which involved reading Sartre and various French novels in French - but was hopeless in comparison with the kids who'd gone to France after Year 12 and, eventually, gave it up to concentrate on Law and modern history and an eclectic selection of sillier Arts subjects. The French language part of my brain sat there, rarely used, degenerating, impatiently biding its time.

Which is why actually being in France and getting a chance to revive it is so satisfying. Sure, I'll get halfway through a sentence and realise that I have never learned the French for that particular verb or noun, and will have to try to explain it another way. (Try getting to "soap" without using gestures... it's the stuff that you use in the bath on yourself to get clean, oh bugger, what's the French for "clean"?) Or I will have known the word in the past but have to search deep for a fifteen year old memory to find it (I forgot "far" - "loin" - and took a good fifteen seconds to come up with "yesterday" - "hier").** Which might sound irritating, but actually it's a lot of fun. And I haven't really got stuck yet: pretty much everything I've wanted to say - even random conversational observations - I've been able to figure out, at least eventually. I'm enjoying stumbling my way through the language probably more than seeing the sights.

I'm nowhere near competent, of course. My grammar is way off, since I've long since forgotten how to conjugate most verbs, and have completely forgotten the esoteric rules that govern more complicated tense construction. And obviously the percentage of French words used in conversation by Parisians that I understand is much less than ninety percent (probably less than fifty) which is a lot of missed words when someone is talking to you. Even more since they say them so very fast.

But even after only two days here, it really feels like I'm learning something worthwhile. The part of my brain stuffed with previously unused and useless French is singing.

I wish I had more time.

*Has he finally quit whilst I've been away?! Awesome. What else have I missed?
**I probably should have brought a French-English dictionary, but I foolishly (a) thought it would be fun to wing it and (b) forgot.

Paris. It has an Eiffel Tower. And I have photographed it.

See? It's not a global hoax. It really does exist. And HERE IS THE PROOF:


Me at the Eiffel Tower (actual photograph)*

If you're not convinced (reality sometimes looks a little like a strange image of a puppet next to a toy that I've just blatantly stolen from someone's Flickr), here is a computer-generated photoshopped impression of what I might have seen if I had been taking a photograph of the "Tour" (those French, a different word for everything!) at the exact time I was there with a camera yesterday:


Eiffel Tower at Eiffel Tower

And this is what you get if you do a bit of "up-towering".


Phwoar!

It has some SPECTACULAR queues.


So many happy queuing memories; queuing to get to the security station, queuing to buy tickets, queuing to get on the first lift, queuing to get on the second lift, queuing to get to the edge, queuing to get back on the lift again...

And, eventually, some views.


I call this photograph "Completely Original View Of Paris That No-one Has Ever Seen Before"

Also, it has pretty lights. That sparkle.


It really does.

TODAY: Figuring out to which bit of French countryside we will adjourn when we leave Paris tomorrow.

*Pointless lie.

Franglais

Nous sommes en Paris! J'ai collapse avec l'excitement.

Les photographes, apres.

UPDATE:

It's magnificent, but it's not the railway station.

Animal cruelty on Milos

There are some lovely people we met on the Greek island of Milos who run an animal welfare program, through which they try to look after the many stray cats, dogs and other creatures who roam the place.

Their job is greatly complicated by the fact that animal cruelty - serious animal cruelty - does not appear to be taken seriously by the island's administrators at all.

Over the last two years, a local sadist (possibly more than one) has been regularly poisoning the cats at Pollonia, one of the larger towns on Milos. He or she puts snail bait or animal fertiliser in fish and leaves it for the cats to find. On the last occasion over forty cats were killed.

In Australia, or the UK, or the US, or any number of other countries where humane legislation has passed criminalising animal cruelty*, this would be a serious crime and the police would allocate resources to finding out who did it and making sure they don't do it again. On Milos - not so much. It's "not a priority".

Which is odd, because the Greek islands' cats are quite a tourist drawcard. All the tourist advertising we've seen regarding the area features the feline population quite extensively, and the souvenir shops are full of postcards, calendars, t-shirts and other comically overpriced paraphernalia covered in Greek cats. If we hadn't already massively stocked up on "I Gatti di Roma" stuff in Italy, we'd almost certainly have failed to resist buying unnecessary amounts of it on Milos.


We may possibly have visited these kittehs more than once.

But the island authorities don't give a stuff that there's at least one nutter out there killing the creatures. Poisoning them, so they die in an particularly painful manner. In fact, there are some suspicions that the council itself may be involved.

And while that situation exists, I wouldn't blame any compassionate, humane person from giving this beautiful island a wide berth. Attempting to encourage the island's traders, dependent as they are on tourism, from pressuring the council and police to bloody well enforce the law. And sending any assistance they can to the Milos Friends Of The Animals.

The sooner they can bring an end to the stupid, inhumane slaughter, the sooner Milos will be a place one could recommend visiting.

PS On the last night we were on the island, a dog was found hanged.

*For one thing, the nutters who delight in causing pain to animals tend not to stop at animals.

Milos: pros and cons

CON: No internet. Well, dial-up, but I wasn't that desperate.

PRO:


CON: Mystifyingly confusing signage and surprisingly overpriced seafood.*

PRO:


CON: Some extremely dubious animal treatment practices (see next post, which will be uploaded later this afternoon your time).

PRO:


We're now back in Athens. Next stop (early tomorrow morning): Paris. FREAKING PARIS. C'est difficile de believe je will finalement be la. En France! Ah weell show you ze photos verah soon, mes amis.

*Although the Tania villas at which we stayed were reasonably priced and run by very nice people indeed.

Farewell mainland Greece

We have now pretty much completed our circuit of mainland Greece - driving from Athens to Delphi to Kalampaka to Patra (over the spectacular modern engineering marvel the Charilaos Trikoupis bridge from Rio to Antirio) to Melissi to Mycenae to Epidavros and finally back to Athens. Tomorrow we will disappear for a few days off to a Greek island which probably won't have internet access.* We look forward to staying in the same place for more than one night and never having to drive on the wrong side of the road ever again. (Fun experiences from this morning included overtaking an ambulance with its lights flashing at 120kph** and witnessing other drivers overtake a police car at 40kph over the limit without any reaction whatsoever.)

We've seen some amazing sights that we intended to see, too. The ancient theatre at Ἐπίδαυρος (Epidavros) yesterday, for example, has such perfect acoustics that you can in fact hear a coin drop on the centre of the stage from all the way at the top of the seats. You really can. Similarly, a patriotic "I come from a land downunder" carries further than you'd think.


I call this: Hat Hair At Ancient Epidavros

And the little monastery of Aya Maria high on the cliffs above Ξυλόκαστρο (Xylocastro) occasioned the most spectacularly terrifying drive I've ever experienced. Now I can look at the photos and know that they were not followed by a grisly plummeting-style death, it's something I'm very glad we did.


It was at this inopportune moment that the Scissor Sisters' "I can't decide whether you should live or die" came on the car stereo.

Μυκῆναι (Mycenae) was, it turns out, less worthy of a visit - being, essentially, a pile of old rocks scattered around in the shape of what may conceivably once have been some kind of building. Or not. There's a reason the postcards only show the "Lion Gate", because that's the only thing that isn't a random pile of rocks on the ground...***


Mykenai: rocks and shit we found on a hill, yo, for which you can pay us eight (8!) euros per person (maps and useful directions not included)

As with Stonehenge, the Parthenon (twelve euros and it's still covered with scaffolding?), the Colosseum and numerous other ancient buildings modern Europeans found left behind by their ancestors and thought HEY IF WE BUILD A FENCE AROUND IT WE CAN FVCKING GOUGE THE TOURISTS, it is not entirely certain that your average visitor gets value for money from the deal.**** Still, there's only one of each of these things, so what are you going to do? Come to Athens and NOT climb the Acropolis? Don't be stupid.

Anyway, we came, we paid, we saw, and it was pretty cool. Now we're going to spend a few days doing the relaxing kind of travelling, before things ramp up again in Paris at the end of the week. See you at the next wireless access point.

*Perhaps not the first thing the guidebooks note, but important to some.

**This was in fact the speed limit, and for some unfathomable reason the ambulance was puttering along 20kph under it.

***Alright, that's not entirely fair: some of the rocks are in fact stacked on other rocks in a way you can imagine is wall-like. If you squint.

****Although if you ARE going to be gouged for something the gougers didn't build and don't intend to do anything for, make it the theatre at Epidavros - that one's both spectacular AND still works.

Differences

Other countries obviously do a few, some or many things somewhat differently to what a traveller may be used to back home. Indeed, it is often pointed out that seeing these alternative approaches is one of the major reasons to visit other countries. (Unless you're one of those pitifully one-eyed tourists who are solely interested in pretty scenery and famous landmarks and view their location in other countries as little more than an inconvenience.) And sometimes these different ways of doing things will be improvements which you'll wish could be brought back home with you; and sometimes they'll be things which make you appreciate the better way they're done at home.

Consequently, I'm bound to mention these differences whilst writing about this trip - sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, depending on the difference in question. Please note that this is not a value judgment about the decency or worth of the people living with these differences - it is commentary purely on aspects of their lives imposed on them by the particular good or poor decisions made by either the country's bureaucracy or, possibly, other citizens. It should not in any way be taken as some kind of smug mockery in the "oh how quaint" or "silly foreigners" vein.

I don't want anyone thinking that whenever I describe less than enthusiastically the laissez-faire nature of the Greek road laws or the, frankly, and I hope you won't be offended by me saying this, batshit insane behaviour of many of the drivers here that appears to be a direct result, that I am not enjoying my time with the people of Greece, or that I do not appreciate many of the wonderfully varied ways they look at the world from the background of their unique history and their place on the Earth's surface. If I mention how sick I am of restaurants and hotels regularly trying to rip us off by sneaking in extra charges (such as for bread we didn't order) and pretending not to understand when next time we try to determine the price of the meal before eating, that's an indictment on those particular institutions or particular individuals (which undoubtedly have equally corrupt and dishonest equivalents at home as well) and not the country in which they happen to be located.


This is not a carpark, this is a road we had to navigate.

Likewise I'm not going to tar Italians in general with being like the Roman taxi driver who took us to the airport AT 160KPH (in a 100 zone) whilst driving with one hand and texting on his mobile phone with the other and checking himself out in the mirror.

Because you get those sorts of people everywhere.

Now, I might in certain circumstances disagree with, and think should be changed, the government policies which have led to some of these differences - the decision not to have stricter road rules that would curb dangerous driving behaviour and take maniacs off the road, for example* - but I disagree with, and think should be changed, many policies at home as well, so that can hardly be a big surprise. I'm an opinionated bastard**. And my "disagreement" here is only relevant to this blog of opinion, since, obviously, this is not my country and I neither live nor vote here. It's not that these different laws or systems are Greek, or Italian, or Australian, it's that [what I think is] a good idea is a good idea, and [what I think is] a bad idea is a bad idea, wherever it happens to be enacted.

But as to the people - there have been lots of lovely, kind people in every country we've visited, and they have far outweighed the dodgy bastards that you find anywhere in the world.

I am loving being here - and not just for the scenery.

*Pity we can't have a happy medium between Victoria's draconian road laws and the ridiculously inflexible enforcement of same, and the perhaps a little TOO flexible approach of the southern European authorities, isn't it?

**As you might conceivably have noticed by now.

TODAY: Off to a little mountain village above Ξυλόκαστρο (Xylocastro), and perhaps pottering down to Κόρινθος (Corinth) to see the canal.