therapy

Television this evening, as I've been busy till late all week and the sawdust from the recent wardrobe reconstruction has somehow tripped my hay fever symptoms suggesting a quiet evening with antihistamines.

Anyway, I was filtering advertisements whilst waiting for the excellent Scottish vignette 'Emo' play about a Uni burnout turned furniture store salesman, complete with Clare Grogan and dues paid to Gregory's Girl.

And spotted the SEAT car ad with its rip of 'this boy needs therapy'. Nowadays I wonder if the real originators of these ideas (in this case, the Avalanches) get any reward whilst the often Dutch reproduction houses can legally copy anything for a fee? Yet perhaps this is even more of a conundrum because the Avalanches sampled widely to make their original recording.

But the other advertisement I noticed was for a supermarket chain and fronted by the short car crash one from Top Gear. Well scripted storyline, but if I hadn't concentrated at the end, I don't think I would have known which chain it was promoting.

Whereas the NTSC redubbed Chevrolet 'unicorn' SUV fantasy ad works well and even helps me remember the brand, but doesn't move me any closer to wanting to buy one.

Have it all.



this boy needs therapy here - please admire 'Frontier Psychiatrist'

getting a buzz

I finished around 2 am last night instead of three and have been slaving away today as well. The only 'non phone' company I've had today was when a couple of inquisitive wasps showed up to smell the coffee. I've noticed before that they seem particularly partial to freshly ground columbian and first they were buzzing around outside the opened window and then snuck in for a look. A third one was hovering around outside doing that fast 'U' shaped flight pattern.

Somebody will know why wasps like the smell of 'real' coffee; I know its something that seems to attract them (or at least the ones around here). After they had a good walk around the mug, I eventually tipped the last of the coffee away and within a couple of minutes they'd both headed back to the window and off into the sky.

(reconstruction): you'll have to imagine the wasp inside the mug

not beijing olympic results service, just wordless wednesday

Working till 3am. Need to listen to some of this

sliding

Some noise today whilst the above space begins its transformation into a wardrobe.

After the lounge sofa adventure last year, when the brown sofa from Italy arrived but was giallo (yellow), and 10 weeks later the replacement arrived but was the wrong shape, then perhaps this episode would all run smoothly.

Indeed, the first part proceeded well until the measuring for the doors took place.

Er.


They are the wrong size.
Van trip required.

Short term airy space until the adjusted doors are ready.

Its almost exactly a year since the yellow sofa was finally replaced.

About time for another domestic furnishings drama.

confiture

Sometimes life is a bowl of cherries and at other times it has to be a single strawberry wrapped in milk and white chocolate decorated to look like a tuxedo.

At the moment I'm imagining the latter as an offset to various worldly complexities.

rapid eye

Sleepy silken dreamstate moments
gate waving to another world.
Soft grass, brilliance and mesmerising skies
or dark spikes punched from a cloudy tower.
Its never easy to predict a dream
sometimes tiptoed by the bed's edge
with gentle feathers and warm breeze.
Or boot-ready scraping full on
shattered roofs and lightning spirals.
But better any of these
than a blank space in the night.

dream analysis

spectacle

Today's press claims 4 billion people watched the 2-3 hour Beijing opening ceremony yesterday.

That's 66% of the world's total population. After removing 10% for, say, 0-4 year old children and making an allowance for TV coverage only being to 89% of the world, then we're at circa 5.3bn 'available viewers'. So now we are at 75% of the available population.

I missed it yesterday, because it was screened around midday in my working UK day and then I was out in the evening. So did the people I was with, for similar reasons.

And these folks in Beijing didn't make it either, because the road was blocked off.

Judging from today's pictures in the UK press, it was quite a spectacle.

There seems to be no end of great photo opportunities from the ceremonies as well as the inevitable photography of the passing politicians such as Mr Bush, who stopped by at the womens' beach volleyball.

Naturally there was some offbeat BBC coverage of smog from their hotel window.

And we mustn't forget the sports photography, which also seemed attracted to early coverage of the same sport as some of the politicians. The Norwegian volleyball team has never been so popular.

Of course, some of the early events were on the beach because of the opening ceremony in the stadium. The Bird's Nest Stadium cost $250m and the $40m opening ceremony was 13 months in preparation. China is reported to have spent $40bn on staging the event in total.

Our UK budget is reputedly $18.5bn for construction and around $4bn to run the Games using 'temporary' stadiums in an East London 'dust bowl' according to Tessa Jowell. I'm not sure that she should be using those words actually. She did say that Beijing would be the last iconic stadium, although the one we are building is predicted to cost twice as much. Admittedly these are also the 2007 estimates, so things might have changed.

At least Great Britain's 313 athletes for the Beijing games will be safe in the knowledge that we've reportedly sent 639 public servants to keep them company and to find out how its all done in time for our turn. Gordon Brown only needs 20 aides and Boris is making do with 13.

In fairness, around half of the £6.8m budget travel budget is for the 437 BBC staff providing Beijing television coverage. So the taxpayers' governmental and police based coverage is only 202 people. But you can get your virtual Beijing rashbre central ticket here.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, beijing, opening, ceremony, birdsnest, stadium, dust+bowl, tessa, jowell, bush, volleyball, norway, china, viewers, television,

mountains

Last week I may have been in the mountains, but this week back at work it has felt as if I was still climbing a few.

Monday was the inevitable email mountain, which took a few hours to clear down to the vital few. I also had the peak of a specific activity to scale, which I'd budgeted to take me most of the week. Inevitably another 'peak' appeared almost the moment I arrived in the office, and I'm only expecting to finish it by late Friday.

Then on Wednesday, another unexpected and urgent one appeared on the scene, so by Wednesday evening I had several work mountains ahead of me in the current range. Like in hill walking, you sometimes can't see the next hill ahead because the current one hides it.

Fortunately by today, Friday, I've managed to put down a couple of summit flags and have only one principle one left before I reach a level area.

So below is an 888 picture (8th August 08) reflective of my home working day.

salmon

Yesterday evening in a fish restaurant with friends catching up on news.

We'd picked a location which seemed highly logical at first and close to where we all used to hang out, because we all expected to be in the area.

In the end, all of us made lengthy special journeys because we'd all had changes to our agendas.

As a once closely knit group, we'd all spun off in different directions, so this was a good chance to bring our gossip up to date and compare notes. A sign of a good evening, the time whizzed past and I found myself getting home rather late.

gasoline

When we stayed in the lodge at the far end of the 100 kilometer dirt track, it was another twenty minute drive to the nearest gas station. I was advised to call ahead if I was making a trip, because they were not always open. So when I arrived alone in the population 43 town, I noticed the only gas station looking deserted. I drove to the pumps, which were chained and saw the note saying that the owner had needed to go out for a a couple of hours.

I checked the map, and the next town was only over the next mountain range and it also had a little 'S' on the map for services which in this case included fuel. So I headed off along another single track, which was also being repaired from the last rock slide.

Another twenty minutes and as I drove in, I was greeted by a large black and white sign saying "Thursday to Saturday". It was right by the second gas station. And it was Monday. This town looked even smaller than the last one and didn't seem to have any people in it at all. The map showed that this road didn't go any further. I wondered if the sign referred to the whole town.

I looked at the fuel gauge. "85 km to E" said the readout. I worked out the next big town with fuel was now around 120 kilometres away. Not enough fuel to make it. I'd have to go back to the last place and wait for the owner to return.

Somewhere along the journey I stuck my cellphone to the sun visor with Scotch tape to make the 90 second video above.

broken china?

A few days before the Olympics kick off and the UK press are now all in place around Beijing and we are beginning to see other stories reported.

The thought that Chinese people would seize the opportunity for peaceful protests to advance other freedom agendas seems to have been mainly quashed. The added special agents and special representatives are supposed to be already monitoring local people for any signs of political actions. If previous times are anything to go by, then suppressive action can be swift and violent.

It will be interesting to see how other world leaders really treat this. Some parts of China are now so intrinsic to the way that global economics operate (eg manufacture of electronics) that there is a delicate balance which could mean that some leaders choose to look the other way.

Sports bodies claim to make the events apolitical, but there's much to question in a society with such a poor human rights history and use of military pressure to quell dissidents. The Chinese version of the military intervention in Tianamen Square seems to have pretty much erased the whole event.

Quite some time ago I set up an experimental web cam feed from a Beijing hotel to rashbre central. It was supposed to be an inquisitive window into the city but then as a side effect exposed the fog levels. A few weeks ago it mysteriously stopped working and then a week or two later was replaced 'their end' with a link to a Chinese newspaper in English which extolls the positive virtues of the Games.

I still have the link working from an obscure page inside this blog and have noticed increased traffic to it over the last 3-4 weeks as increasing numbers of people are trying to get a glimpse of Beijing. For the whole of China I could only locate about a dozen webcams, so its probably not surprising that traffic levels increased. In its own small way it also illustrates the lock down of news flow from China.

Amnesty International has recently updated its assessment on China and still features key areas around the continuing use of the death penalty; abusive forms of administrative detention; the arbitrary detention, imprisonment, ill-treatment and harassment of human rights defenders, including journalists and lawyers; and the censorship of the internet. Needless to say, Amnesty's site is one of those that has been blocked despite the IOC saying originally that they would not accept Internet blocking during the Games.

Part of the point, I seem to remember, when China was awarded the Games, was to use the prestige and world focus to show positive progress in the way that China operates. Current signs are not very convincing.