Tom’s Dispatch has a very interesting article on the future emergence of China as a true superpower. While the article starts off documenting recent U.S. and Japanese attempts to rile China, and the potentially disastrous consequences of a Taiwanese secession-bid, it then goes on to give an insight into the deals China is making with many countries around the world, and how it is rapidly becoming the major trading partner with Europe, Iran and Latin America among others. Worth a read.

It’s been a hectic week this week. Mum & Dad arrived last Monday for their first visit to Australia. Met them at the airport, brought them home, then took them on the cliff walk down to Bondi, stopping by Duncan Page Reserve so they could get a great view back over the city. Walked along the beach, then had breakfast in the Tratt.

On Tuesday, we left my place and walked along the cliffs in the opposite direction, down to Watsons Bay where we had fish & chips at Doyles, followed by a ferry ride into the city. It’s the best way to approach the city – great scenery and you pass right by the Opera House. Walked around Circular Quay a bit, then checked out the Opera House for a while, and finished off with a walk through the Botanical Gardens (where we saw all the fruit bats roosting in the trees), up Macquarie St., past Parliament House and down to Martin Place for the train home.

I worked on Wednesday, then we went to see the Sydney Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky at the Opera House. Worked again on Thursday then we played a round of golf in Moore Park with Tom on Friday. I played pretty badly, though there were a few good shots to draw solace from! That evening Mum & Dad got to meet Jacqui’s mum, Denise. Saturday saw us visit Paddington Markets, then we had a barbie back at our place in the afternoon with Jacqui’s family. A great time was had by all and I managed not to poison anyone with my efforts on the BBQ front. Sunday was another family day as myself, Jacqui, Mum, Dad & Denise drove up to Palm Beach, then met up with Mark and his friends for lunch and a swim at Whale Beach. Dad nearly got swept away by the undertow, which was bloody strong if you weren’t used to it, but we made it to shore fairly easily in the end.

They both love the place and can’t get over the fact that the weather is so great and that they sky is a beautiful clear blue every day. I also bought Mum a pedometer to encourage her to get out and exercise, as she’d mentioned one of her friends having one. She was delighted and has been tracking her progress every day. I think you’re supposed to do 10,000 steps per day. As it happens Tuesday was the first day she used it and she racked up 17,000 straight away, though we were pretty much walking almost all day.

Off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow!

Had a good week down in Canberra last week. Matt had organised a work golf day for Friday, so we hit the driving range on Tuesday night to get some practice in. Wednesday night saw myself & Paul bring Daniel out for his first MTB ride, which he enjoyed immensely. I got a puncture right at the end, so had to walk home as, while I had a spare tube, it was for my old bike and didn’t have the right valve to fit through the hole in the rim. Even though Daniel walked with me it still took ages as we wandered the meandering back streets of Canberra in the pitch black. We made it eventually.

I bought new tubes on Thursday, then ended up riding around Majura for 2.5hrs on my own which was great fun. I was bloody exhausted at the end, so a kangarro steak washed down with few Belgian beers in Debacle worked a treat. Friday was the golf day and after getting off to a shocking start with an 11 on the first hole I settled down into relatively normal play, finishing up with a 57 for the 9 holes. Myself and Tom have decided to get some regular driving range practice and round of golf in this year, having hardly played at all last year.

B: 55km (MTB)

Bought my first car today! It’s an automatic 1986 BMW 535i with 192,000kms on the clock, but only 15,000 of those since an engine rebuild. It’s in perfect condition and has been looked after extremely well by its previous owner. Myself and Mark went to check it out this morning and it looked great. Bodywork & engine look great, no rust. The only signs of wear were that the two front seats were a little threadbare and the top of the dash has a crack due to the sun. Other than that, it’s perfect, so agreed a price of $5750, and I’m picking it up next weekend.

Got some good cycling in yesterday. Cycled in and out of work, then met up with a few Transitions people for a couple of laps of Centennial Park. Kept a pretty good pace going and arrived home pretty tired.

Just got back from sqim squad and things are definitely getting tougher. The new fast guy, James, was joined by his equally fast girlfriend, Vicki, so the pace is not going to slow down at all. Turns out they both went to the World Masters Games in Itlay last year ;-)

400 warm up
3 * 400 FS on 6:25 (5:40)
200 FS
2 * {
    2 * 100 IM on 2:00 (1:25)
    2 * 100 BC/FS on 1:45 (1:28)
    2 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:21)
    2 * 100 FS on 1:30 (1:22) }
Total: 3400m

Also cycled 15km in and out of work.

S: 5800m – B: 49km

Got back in the pool at lunch after 10 days off sick. I can still feel the remnants of the cold, with the spark gone from the session. There were two new guys who showed up today, both of whom are faster than me, so that will help push me along in future. The full session was 3600m, but I was exhausted after 2400m and I want to try and go for a jog this eveninf, so I called it quits.

400 warm up
5 * 200 Pull on 3:10 (2:50)
200 BC on 4:00
2 * {
    2 * 100 IM on 1:50 (1:30)
    1 * 100 BC on 1:50 (1:33)
    1 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:25) }
Total: 2400m

S: 2400m

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

Source: USA Today

“Ah, the freedom. Look, we have the gas-line freedom, the looting freedom, the killing freedom, the rape freedom, the hash-smoking freedom. I don’t know what to do with all this freedom.” – Akeel, Iraqi Translator

…for nothing left to lose.

This is hilarious. Book sales are down, and people are reading less. Publishers in the US feel that the reason is text which is too small, making it uncomfortable to read for long periods, and they plan on introducing many more large-print books. Next they’ll be complaining about all the big words and we’ll all be walking around with My First Reader in a few years.

Myself, Kevin, Niall and Billy went up to the Blue Mountains for a bit of mountain bike riding yesterday. I left home at 7.25 and cycled up to Niall’s, got the bikes in the car, waited for Kev to arrive and then left in convoy for Newtown to pick up Billy. After messing around for a bit in the warren of streets that is Newtown, we finally got on the road and drove straight to Blackheath.

As Billy hadn’t been MTBing before we had chosen to do two shorter routes, rather than one long one. It also helped that none of us had been on these rides before. The first of the two was a 14km out-and-back to Hanging Rock (pictured above). As you can see from the picture, the rock (on the right) has almost separated from the main land mass, on the left. There’s a one metre jump to get across onto the rock, which you’d think would be piss easy. However, there’s really only one place to cross, and as you stand there contemplating the jump, about 1.5 metres to your right is a looong drop into the valley below. Basically, if you screw up the jump, you’d probably have time to ring someone and deliver a parting message before you hit the valley floor. It’s amazing how this fact managed to change the perspective on what should be a walk in the park.

You have to walk down a steep track to get to the jump point, and on the way down I was thinking to myself “I’m just going to walk up to it and do it”. However, as I approached the edge, and started noticing the drop my legs started to get the wobbles! It’s quite funny really as it’s obviously your subconcious’s way of saying ’you’re going to kill yourself’. After a bit of hesitation, we all made the jump and hung around for a bit to admire the view before jumping back onto the ‘mainland’ and climbing back up the track to our bikes. Everyone was a little hyper from the adrenaline rush which made the steep climb a little easier. Rode back the car, had some food and then headed for Faulconbridge.

This was another out-and-back route, this time 8km each way, ending in another spectacular lookout. There were no jumps required, just a 270^o view of heavily wooded valleys with a river running through the one at our feet. I keep meaning to bring my camera/video on these trips, but in the early morning rush I usually forget it. Yesterday was one day when I definitely regretted not having it, though I suspect we’ll end up doing those rides again.

PS: I downloaded the photo above from the web, so that’s not one of us sitting right out at the edge. Maybe next time!

S: 6600m – B: 88km (30km MTB) – 2 weights/core

Feeling a bit tired now, but got a good day’s exercise in. Cycled in to work via New South Head Road, but the bloody hill through King’s Cross almost killed me; HR peaked at 177. I could have gone through the tunnel but I figured that it’s probably not the safest place to cycle through in rush hour traffic.

The lunchtime swim session was another distance oriented one which was cool. Felt a bit better today than I did on Wednesday, so I reckon I’ve managed to shake off the cold before it got established. However my legs were cramping up again towards the end of the session, so I’ll have to figure out what that’s about. It’s not dehydration, so all I can think of is that it may be caused by me not stretching my legs after riding in in the morning. Something to remember for next week then.

400 warm up
4 * 400 FS on 6:30 (5:39)
3 * 100 BC on 2:00 (1:45)
3 * 100 IM on 2:00 (1:27)
6 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:25)
200 warm down
Total: 3400m

Cycled home via Centennial Park and did some core/weights stuff when I got home. Going to get some ice-cream now ;-)

S: 6600m – B: 58km – 2 * weights/core

Yesterday’s lunchtime swim was a bit of a welcome surprise in that we did some 400s and 200s instead of the usual raft of 100s & 50s. While chatting to the coach afterwards he mentioned that he was going to try to do more distance work in future which I’m very happy about. Unfortunately, I felt very sluggish during the whole session which I figured was the beginnings of a cold caught from Jacqui. Sure enough, she woke up sick this morning and I wasn’t feeling great either.

400 warm up
2 * 400 Pull on 6:20 (5:50)
5 * 200 FS on 3:15 (2:51)
3 * 100 FS on 1.35/1:30/1:30
3 * 100 BC on 1:55 (1:45)
2 * 100 FS on 1:50
200 warm down
Total: 3200m

I cycled in and out of work as well, doing a couple of laps of Centennial Park on the way home for a total of 30.7km, then did a weights/core session when I got home.

S: 3200m – B: 30.7km – 1 weights/core

Myself and Jacqui had a great weekend. Flew to Dubbo on Saturday morning in a small turbojet plane. Flying inland from Sydney, which was in itself unusual, it was surprising to see how green Sydney actually is. The suburbs have plenty of trees – certainly more than I’ve seen in any other city I’ve flow over – and there’s the Royal National Park to the south, Ku-ring-Gai to tne north and the Blue Mountains to the west.

We went straight to the Western Plains Zoo on landing and spent the morning cycling around the zoo. Jacqui was more excited by the fact that she could cycle a bike than with the animals! There were plenty of keeper talks, including one with the Siamang apes at which the two individuals performed an amazing inpromptu territorial song, and another where you could feed the giraffes.

After checking in to our safari-style accommodation, we jumped on the first of our behind the scenes tours, visiting elephants, then giraffes (which we fed again) and finishing up watching a pack of African wild dogs being fed a kangaroo carcass – probably not the best thing to see before sitting down to some lamb rump! The second tour commenced immediately after dinner and this time we called in on the tigers (completely distinterested in us), the wombat (quite happy to stand and allow us to pat/stroke her) and the hippos. We were also able to tickle the Giant Tortoises, one of which promptly farted with pleasure!

That was it for the evening, which was just as well as we were both exhausted. Rising bright and early at 7am, we got the final guided tour with a visit to the White Handed Gibbons, the Siamang apes, a stop to feed a rhino follwed by a visit to the lions. Initially they weren’t interested in our presence at all, but once we walked around to the side of their night enclosure, and they noticed there were two small kids with us, everything changed. Both of them bounded up to the fence and started pacing alongside, keeping a close eye on the child. One tired of this an went to lie down at the far side of the cage as the child had wandered away. A few minutes later the kid returned to the fence area, and turned her back on the cage as she was talking to her Dad; straight away the other lion jumped up, ran over and crouched down ready to pounce on the other side of the fence. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the child was little more than a chicken nugget!

A tasty fry-up followed, after which we checked out and wandered around the public side of the zoo checking out the animals we’d missed the previous day, and killing time until the rhino tour, which was an extra not included in the safari package. It was well worth it as we visited three difference species of rhino and were allowed to feed two (Black Rhino & Greater One-horned Rhino) and see a week-old White Rhino (already weighing approx. 80kg!)

We later spent a brief moment in Dubbo itself before jumping on the plane back to Sydney in time for Law & Order ;-) The trip is definitely worth doing, especially since the Parkes Telescope is only an hour away, so you could combine the two. I only found that out while I was already there, which pissed Jacqui off as I’d already admitted not researching the holiday. Oh well, it just means we’ll have to go back some time.

The battle against fundamentalist christians continues in the US. Kansas is battling attempts to have the theory of intelligent design taught alongside evolution in science classrooms:

But the largest applause of the evening was reserved for a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blue blazer. “I have a question: if man comes from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Why do you waste time teaching something in science class that is not scientific?” he thundered.

That quote illustrates the problem quite nicely- we didn’t come from monkeys, we are related to them, meaning we share a common ancestor.

I’ve just got my iPod Shuffle up and running and it’s great! For a start it’s tiny, about the length of my index finger and a third as thick. It took me ages to rebuild my iTunes library from my ‘normal’ iPod after my external HD crashed last week, but once I had I plugged the iShuffle (as I’m calling it) in, and told it to Autofill at random from my ‘non-clubbing’ playlist. That’s when I noticed the one and only issue – USB is bloody slow when you’re used to Firewire. The first song it chose was George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudice which I haven’t heard in years – it sounds fantastic on the headphones, so that’s scotched the rumours that the supplied headphones weren’t that good. Maybe if you’re an audiophile you will notice flaws, but for the average person they’re more than capable. AU$150 gets you a 512Mb iShuffle which is a bargain as far as I’m concerned. Even Dean (our office PC holdout) got one today ;-)

Since we’re in Canberra this week, myself and Tom brought the bikes down so we could get some mountain biking in. On Monday night we headed out with Dean, aiming for Majura Pines. We got to the entrance to the forest when Tom decided he was going back to the hotel as he was still a bit jetlagged and wasn’t feeling too good. Myself and Dean proceeded to ride singletrack for two hours, making it back to the hotel just after dark. We were a bit worried when there was no sign of Tom, or his bike, in the room, thinking that he must have been feeling a bit worse than he thought!

We checked at reception to make sure he hadn’t shown up and were in the garage about to go looking for him when he rang from the room. He’d gotten a puncture just after leaving us, and by the time he’d fixed it he was feeling OK, so he’d gone for a ride after all. Hed’ found himself without a patch, or a spare tube, after a second puncture, so he was forced to walk home, which explained how we’d got home before him despite not passing him on the trails. To be honest, the first place we were planning on looking was Debacle, figuring he’d settled in for some food and a Duvel!

Paul brought us to Kowen Forest, site of the MONT 24hr race, on Tuesday evening. It’s a 17.3km course consisting mainly of singletrack with a few bits of firetrail as joiners. It was raining, but we went anyway as it was still quite warm. I’d given Tom a spare tube, but he was still getting slow punctures, so we’d end up cycling for 10mins, then stopping to pump up his tyre before getting going again. He was getting a bit sick of it by the end of the lap. We opted for the short course as we had no lights and didn’t want to be caught in the middle of an unfamiliar forest after dark, but I’m keen to try the long course the next time we’re down, this time with no slow punctures ;-)

B: 37.3km

Made it to La Perouse on the way home after all, though it was bloody hot. It amazing what a pain in the arse it is to ride in traffic. It was about 33km in total, yet it took over 1.5hrs. As soon as I’d get going I’d have to stop at a bloody traffic light. Got home just in time to shower, have something to eat and head out for the swim, only to have the bus fail to show up so I never got to do it after all.

S: 5200m – B: 82.3km – 3 * core

Got up this morning and did a core session before heading off to work on the bike. I had intended cycling to La Perouse on the way, but didn’t have time so I doubled back at the roundabout at Maroubra Junction. Did a pretty good session in the pool at lunch time, but my legs totally cramped up towards the end of the session, probably because I never didi any stretching after the ride in the morning, and hadn’t really eaten any decent food (a muffin doesn’t count). Must force myself to eat something decent for breakfast in future.

600 Warm Up
2 * {
    100 Single Arm
    100 6 strokes FS/BC } on 3:50 (3:05)
2 * 200 Pull on 3:30 (3:10)
4 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:24)
2 * 100 FS on 1:35 (1:24)
2 * 100 FS on 1:30 (1:24)
3 * 100 IM on 1:50 (1:30)
100 Warm Down
Total: 2600m

I got in to work relatively early, so I might cycle home vis La Perouse. BRATs are holding a 1km sea swim this evening at North Bondi, so I might give that a go as well. I’ll see how I feel after the cycle home.

S: 5200m – B: 47.3km – 3 * core

Yesterday was Australia Day, a public holiday, so myself and Kevin headed off to the Blue Mountains to do a bit of mountain biking. We decided en-route to have a go at the Linden Ridge trail which turned out to be an inspired choice. After a few kms of fire trail we found the start of the singletrack section off to the side. It was a little overgrown, so we were getting scratched and scraped by bushes & small tree branches as we travelled along, crashing through plenty of spider webs (we took turns leading). The terrain was quite varied, alternating between rocky, sandy and leafy, with plenty of puddles from the rain that morning which kept things interesting and fairly challenging. 6.5kms later we got to the end – no expansive views or anything special, just the trail petering out, so we turned around and came back. The return journey seemed quicker, maybe because we knew what to expect and just balsted through most of the puddles as we now knew how deep they were.

On returning to the firetrail we decided to keep going for a few more kms until we found another, shorter, section of singletrack, approximately 1.5km long. Did that too, then decided to turn for home. There was a little more firetrail to go, but it was downhill to a turnaround (with nothing spectacular to see there) and since we’d been riding for almost 3 hours at this stage and were both getting a bit tired, we decided we couldn’t be bothered adding any more climbing to the route. The return journey wasn’t as uphill as we thought it would be, but there were still a couple of big hills which we had to struggle up. By the end we were both exhausted and commented that perhaps we should have turned around a little sooner!

All up it was bloody good fun. After a pint and some wedges we headed home and had an Australia Day barbie at mine with Niall & Mayra. We’de pretty much finished eating before we realised we hadn’t had any lamb so we rectified that by throwing on a few chops. It wouldn’t do to be UnAustralian!

Woke up this morning with scratches & scrapes, a bruised hip from falling over while clipped in on a tricky rocky bit and a nice sunburnt neck. I was also totally exhausted – maybe the beer, wine, wedges & bbq meat was less than optimal refueling nutrition ;-)

The ride is definitely one we’ll do again with the rest of the guys, though maybe with long sleeve shirts!

S: 2600m – B: 29.8km – 2 * core

Got up yesterday morning and did another core session before heading in to work. Got a decent swim in at lunch again.

400 FS Warm Up
8 * {25 K/ 25 FS, 20sec }
3 * {
    200 FS 3:30 (2:32)
    200 FS Easy on 4:00 (3:06) }
6 * 50 FS on 1:00 (38)
300 Warm Down
Total: 2600m

I had planned to go for a run last night, but a sore toe put paid to that. It’s like as if I’d stubbed it on something, but I didn’t. It’s been like that for a week or so and I aggravated it by running on it last Friday. Hopefully it will have calmed down by Wednesday.

S: 2600m – 1 core session