The Chronicles Of…

Last weekend Dicker and I went to see Pearl Jam play at the Sydney Football Stadium, along with 35000 other folks. We were both going to the concert straight from work, so we had each had fairly full days with our respective employers. We rode there on Dicker’s motorbike, him riding like an experienced motorcyclist, me holding onto the back and feeling less than masculine. We found a ‘parking spot’ fairly close to the entrance and in we went…

…to find that most of the other 35000 people were far more interested in texting, or taking photos of the stage with their phones, that not many of them seemed all that bothered about actually moving to the music or singing along. Apart from a couple of stoned guys, and a small group of Pacific Islanders, we were the only people who actually moved at all. People seemed quite upset with us for wanting to dance around, and this was in the front section of the so called ‘mosh pit’. Rock n’ roll has certainly got a lot tamer over the past decade or so, and I don’t think it’s for the better.

Ed’s voice was fairly shot, as he had a bad case of the flu. He stripped about 5 or 6 songs off the planned setlist, according to some music geek posts on various PJ forums, but even so they played about 27 songs which is impressive. A lot of people were upset that some of the bigger ‘radio’ songs didn’t get an airing, but I was happy with the majority of the song choices. The only downer for me was not hearing Yellow Ledbetter as a closer.

In any case, I enjoyed my eighth PJ live experience, and will definitely see them if they tour again. Hopefully the ‘every three years’ thing will happen, and we’ll be there in 2012.

The place where I work (and where Dicker lives), has a reputation within the organisation as being a bit quiet. It used to be a hotbed of activity that we are paid to deal with, but these days it’s mostly rather minor stuff.

This last week has certainly changed a few people’s opinions on that. We’ve had quite a number of fairly major incidents that have attracted quite a bit of media coverage, and I’ve been privileged to see first hand how experienced people deal with these major incidents.

Having said that, I’m absolutely exhausted now, and also rather disappointed that I missed out on a trip west for Chris’ birthday.

So – tell me what I missed… photos, anyone?

Not so long ago I was at a BBQ for someones birthday from church and was standing around chatting to a couple of guys when one of them comes out with this little gem of a story.

It’s completly true and definately needs to be retold…

He knew this guy that lived in Lithgow who one day took his family down to Taronga Zoo for the day by train, now they had a son with down syndrome who during the day got lost and after 3 hours of searching for him they finally get paged over the loud speaker to come to the front office as he had been found. When they get there they see that he is soaking wet from head to toe and no matter how much they questioned him he wouldn’t tell them where he had been the whole time.

So they decided to hop back on the train and get him home. The whole train ride he wouldn’t say a thing but just sat there clutching his backpack, then when they were getting close to Lithgow they see his bag move by itself!!

So they slowly open it only to find a penguin inside!!

When they got home they had to sheepishly call the zoo and ask them to come pick up their penguin.

I’m not so sure I get it, well I do but I just watched the race, I was a couple of minutes late and it was over within about another 4 minutes. It comes around once every 12 months, lasts for around 6 minutes and more than $140 million dollars is bet on it.

Couldn’t it at least be the best of three races or something? Surely something that has that much money placed on it and with the amount of hype around it could last a decent amount of time. I dunno….