WHY OH WHY DO I DO THIS

For some reason I keep telling myself that going along to watch A League Football is a good idea. Last night I figured it would be extra good as there were two English Premier League sides on display, Fulham and Wolves. Yeah so I thought. LOOK AT THOSE CLOUDS!

The first game, Wolves v Nth Qld, was about as exciting as watching the opening of parliament. But at least the expected rain held off. Then came the second match, Fulham v Perth. A little bit better and we did get to watch Mark Schwarzer do a 40 minute warm up, sort of reminiscent of the warm ups I did back when I was playing........nah honest, I was a demon warmerer upperer, well for about 4 minutes.

Then the rain came down in truckloads and I looked really sad (with what appears to be a huge head - for the record that's the result of a beanie, a hoodie and then a raincoat hoodie), But I think Daves face there in the background sums the night up and Maccas not even watching the game. So we all made a quick exit half way through the second half of the Fulham match and I managed to arrive home soaked to the bone. Man I love football

The news/sports reader from Ch 7 was pretty cute though

FATHER BRIAN MORRISON

I read some sad news today, Father Brian Morrison has copped two types of terminal cancer and probably wont survive the year. Thoughts are that he may have scored a dose of radiation whilst visiting and helping sick children in Chernobyl.

Perth people will know about Father Brian as he's always in the news helping people less fortunate than most, tirelessly helping them in fact. I was lucky enough to be a very small part of his efforts for a few years around 15 or so years ago. I was head chef at Cocos restaurant at the time and every now and then we found ourselves in the position of having too much meat in stock (we did our own butchery there and at times certain cuts would back up) and we needed to do something with it fast. Instead of selling it off cheap we often cooked it up into a brat pan of stew and gave Father Brian a call. He'd whip round in his van as quick as he could and take away tubs of beautifully cooked beef casserole and the like.

I asked him where it was going only once and he answered "Off to the single mothers shelter, it'll feed the mums and their kids, god bless you all for this". Now I'm not a religious guy but I was happy to cop that blessing. What a guy, really he is an awesome guy. I really hope he fights this battle with the same dogged determination that he's used to do all of the great work he's done for so many others.
.

STUFF I'M DIGGIN #3

I'm loving these photos.

LIFE photographer Gjon Mili visited Picasso in 1949. Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark—and Picasso's mind began to race. The series of photographs that follows—Picasso’s light drawings—were made with a small flashlight in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created.

That these Picassos existed for mere seconds makes them all the more cooler in my opinion. A Picasso that nobody can put a ridiculous price to. More at the link above.

.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK

I'm looking forward to a much better week than the previous, so here's a smiley I spotted today to help make yours a good one as well. Awwwwww aren't I awesome.

.

STAY CLASSY PERTH

I revisited Simply Pho last night, it's really so good and so cheap. But last nights highlight wasn't the food, it was the result of this exchange I had with the waiter....

"would you care for an ice bucket for your wine sir?"

"why thank you, yes I would"

....I gotta start going to classier restaurants.

.

OPTIONS

Walking through the top of Northbridge yesterday and I looked up and thought to myself "to some, that's a perfect weekend right there" Yet I never see anyone go in or out of that store. Curious.

.

EKY

Nothing says "I do drugs" to the cops than a number plate like that does it. I'm listing in my head the suburbs of Perth where that would be considered cool. Locals will recognise that he's at least driving in the right direction for that to be so. Oooh did I just get condescending? Possibly.

.

OBERBAUMSTRAßE

This pic was sent to me by part time YeLPar contributor Brian aka The Irishman. He took it in Berlin last week. A quick spin round the web reveals it to be located at the U-bahn overpass at the corner of Oberbaumstraße and Falckensteinstraße in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

Pretty friggen cool huh?

.

IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU PLANET HOP

Last week a bunch of us finally caught the latest Star Trek movie. Wow what a show, edge of the seat effects and just a whole heap of fun. It got me thinking about how awesome it obviously would be to travel through the universe and then I started to imagine just how big it is and then I watched this video....

.

.
I highly recommend you watch it in full screen view

Incredible, how can anything be so big, how can it keep expanding and how can it just exist? I mean we're in the universe, what is the universe in? A never ending entity is just too much for my and possibly your brain to grasp. After watching this and understanding the size and the distances you really have to wonder how we could ever manage to leave our solar system. We really do need to invent an incredible form of propulsion. I think I'll settle for us landing on Mars. I really hope humans manage to visit another planet for the first time in my lifetime. They're saying 2030 so I should still be alive, fingers crossed.

SAVING PRIVATE REMI

Okay....this cheered me up Bahahaha

.

.

RANDOM IMAGES # 28

Soft cone of happiness

Maybe not so random today as I need cheering up and two cones of soft serve would just about do it me thinks

I mean hey, he sure looks happy
.

ENOUGH

I love my job, I get to do some awesome things and I get to meet some awesome people. But lately one part of my job is not so great. I think I need to write this down just to get it out of my system, I doubt it will work though.

In my job I get to work with a wide variety of people from all over the state and over time I befriend a good portion of them. We don't see each other all the time but they pop into my life every couple of months for two weeks periods over many years. We have some good laughs and we walk some great country, we share some great moments and I get to peek into their culture just that little bit. I get to shake their hands when we say goodbye and give them hugs when times are bad. These people are becoming part of my life and I'm all the richer for it.

Then every now and then I get the awful awful news that another one of them has gone. I wont see them ever again. I know all life comes with this flaw but 24 and 35 is not a life, it hasn't been lived, it's just too fucking short. Today is another of those days and I feel so very saddened by it. We worked together only a few weeks ago, we joked around and I teased him as I always did by mixing up his surname with other guys we both know, this always made him laugh and man he had the best laugh and the best whole face smile and now its just a memory. And that so sucks.

I'm tired of going to funerals, I'm tired of them being 6 lines in a newspaper and I'm tired of never seeing them again.

Enough
.

SLEEP WHY DO YOU TORMENT ME SO

I hate first night back at camp, I can never get to sleep. Add to this my disrupted sleep patterns over the weekend and it all equals me awake at 11.45pm. Man, I have to be up in 6 hours. Hopefully doing this will make me tired, god I hope so.

I snapped a few pics as we approached site this afternoon, the Pilbara always looks stunning from way up there. Pretty awesome at ground level too but when you're up high you really do get to appreciate the vastness of it all.

Still plenty of water in the Fortescue Marsh, we had some good rains this summer so it'll hang around for a while yet.

The Hammersley Range

Look, you just never know when a German is gonna get on board, best be prepared.

This pic really shows how remote we are up here. That's a mining camp in the middle of the picture, not the one I'm at but it's the same deal all over these parts. It's a long way home.
.

LIVING ON MY CEILING

Let's recap

this morning

• 1am: I return home after a few drinks out with macca
• 2am: I still can't sleep because the couple in the apartment above mine are still partying
• 2.30am: fly wire door slams for 10th time, now they're all on the balcony above my spare bedroom which I have moved to in order to try and get some quiet
• 2.31am: I slam my back door shut which gives these idiots the hint that it's time to STFU
• 3am: it starts to quieten down a bit but not before I hear someone pissing off the balcony right near my window
• 9am: I'm wide awake
• 9.05am: I locate Goldie's (Drum and Bass) album on my iTunes and proceed to play it at a moderate level, but as their bedroom is above my office and thus above my iTunes I suspect they'll be awake in minutes.
• 9.06am: I hit the shower
• 9.07am: They start thumping their bedroom floor, my ceiling. I think they want me to be quiet.
• 9.08am: I start laughing
• 9.14am: I stop laughing and leave the shower and get dressed
• 9.20am: I head out to the shops, drum and bass still pumping at just the right level so as to mess with their sleep
• 1030am: I return home
• 10.31am: They start thumping the floor again (pointless as I intend to keep playing music till noon)
• 11.50am: I cut them some slack and shut it down 10 minutes early
• 12 noon: I continue my Internet search for a house to buy

It's time to get out of here, this block of flats used to be the greatest place to live in Perth. My big apartment downstairs and the two smaller ones upstairs. Karks living in the rear one and Pete in the front one. Perry and Annie next door, no fence between the properties so we had a massive back yard. Perry and Annie's rear deck over looking the city hosted a pile of good parties and we all became the best of friends.

Then Perry and Annie sold up and moved, Karks met Marco and moved out, Pete drifted away and I stayed. It's never been the same and now that I have this chick and her blow in loud mouthed whiny American boyfriend in the front flat I really have to get out of here before I go nuts. I think I'm onto a couple of potential purchases too so hopefully sooner than later. I just can't have people living on the ceiling anymore.

.

.

JUNIOR MINTS

For the past few weeks whenever I was in a shop/supermarket I was inundated with boxes of Junior Mints. I think they've kinda been available here in a small way but obviously there's a promotional push on them at the moment. I just have to say how damn good these are, I love em. That is all.

and who could forget the Junior Mints greatest moment

THE HOOD # 87

Spotted this yesterday and then the artist at work on it again this morning. It's at the end of my street on the cnr of Beaufort. I have a sneaking suspicion this dude may be the same one that painted this.

edit: on further reflection and the advice of emma, this is unlikely to be associated with creepy's work on the old red parrot nightclub. I sense some influence though....maybe not.
.