Blogger Lost My Post

Well shucks, I just spent 30 minutes writing a new entry and it seems to have disappeared. Blogger.com, you're not getting corrupted by google are you?

I wrote a nice summary of the following two things:

1) Climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge: It was awesome. Almost better than the balloon ride.

2) Lou Gerstner's book: Good insights. Could really tell he is a former McKinsey guy. Could have done without the IBM commercials and the "I've been around for a long time so I'm going to bitch about Investment Bankers etc.

Sydney

We've made our way to Sydney. While the weather hasn't impressed, the city definitely has. We're staying with a friend of a friend, who's generously letting us sleep on the floor for free (and put up with Shandelle's constant antics). We do have couch cushions on the floor, but only enough for Shandelle. So, my trip to Sydney so far has been better than a trip to the chiropractor.

The area we're in is called Cooge Bay (pronounced KOO-GEE). It's just another in the huge spread of Sydney suburbs that eminate from the downtown area to fancy beaches on the bay and ocean. As we've only been here for three days, I thought I'd take a moment to recap the idiosyncrasies of this place:

1) The Aussies love to shorten everything. Instead of "biscuit," the word used is "bikkie." Instead of "Australian," it's "Aussie" and so on and on. Everyone also has their name shortened. So, I've taken to calling Shandelle by "Elle" and she's okay with that because it reminds us all of Elle Macpherson.

2) They don't eat bagels here like in the States. I walked about 4 kilometers this morning looking for bagels. And lox? Forget it.

3) Swimming and lifesaving (sports relegated to weirdos and lazy high school students) are the most popular sports here. A lifesaving compeition (where the guys do things like lay on the sand and then sprint to capture a flag) were the main selection of TV for the day.

4)_They play their own version of rugby relative to the rest of the world. So, in that regards they're similar to the Americans because they take normal sports and convulote them for their own needs. What we've done to Cricket in creating baseball, they did to Rugby by creating several versions. To make things more confusing, they also have Australian Rules Football, which was described to us as "aerial pingpong" and we'd better not confuse our little American heads by worrying about that either.

Hopefully, we'll have some more exciting events in the coming days.

Back in Auckland

After another four hours of glorious bus-riding, we're back in Auckland and preparing for our flight out to Australia tomorrow. It's hard to believe that we're already 5 weeks into our trip. It's been terrific so far. Shandelle has written a nice summary of our trip through the Bay of Islands so I won't duplicate that. Highlights of the photos we took can be seen here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Michael_Shandelle_Pacific_Trip_2.

I have found my way back to the Internet cafe to play Battlefield 1942. I think I'm starting to develop a problem, though I can feel myself getting past the "crack-addiction" that comes with first playing a new, great game. As I get back to work, I'm sure the gaming thing will disappear much as it did when I was working at BEA. Of course, I'm on vacation now, so gaming is just fine as a temporary addiction.

Two great books have come across my path recently: The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and some American Psychiatrist and Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky by Noam Chomsky and a couple of editors. If these books seem at opposite ends of the reading spectrum, that's because they are. What has struck me about both is how plain-spoken the men both are, yet speak very powerfully. Chomsky regularly throws the word "bullshit" into his talks (the book is a summary of his Q&A sessions about American media, foreign policy, etc). The Dalai Lama book is focused on really defining the notion of "happiness" and the mental practice surrounding attaining it.

I won't repeat the details of either book here, but what has struck me is the simplicity of the processes both men utilize and describe. I also had much the same realization after reading a few other books on this trip and sailing: that the smartest people have a way of creating simple ways of looking at situations to make things easy. How does sailing tie in? Well, the most interesting thing that our sailing teacher taught us is that "if it's hard to do in sailing, you're doing it wrong." Meaning, if you find that it requires incredible strength to pull in a sail, or turn the boat, or whatever -- you're doing it wrong. The lesson is that there's always a simpler way and don't give up if something seems very hard. Life is a lot like that I think.

Sailing

Sailing has been awesome. We've had decent wind, a decent boat and great scenery. The Bay of Islands, we're we are sailing, is the Caribbean of New Zealand. Amazing warm weather though not so hot as to be sweaty while sleeping. We have some great photos that we'll post after we get to civilization next week. Sadly, we seem to have found the crappiest Internet place in the whole country as they have five (!) computers sharing a single

Back in Auckland

We spent the past four days out in the "boonies" of the Coromandel peninsula, about two hours east of Auckland. Sadly, we seem to have missed all of the good stuff by not having a rental car and picking the wrong town to stay in. While our hostel was great, we basically saw everything there was to see in Coromandel in about 4 hours. After that, much twiddling of thumbs. Shandelle mistakenly booked us on a return bus route that went a bit out of the way returning to Auckland. We then saw what we missed: the beauty, warm beaches, etc of the other side of the Peninsula. Combine that with some hard-core car sickness, we were bummed. But, we're back in Auckland and it's time to do some sailing!