Last night I watched the film “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” a film by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter Sellers.
I added this film to our DVD rental queue after watching The Life and Death of Peter Sellers which was my favourite film of 2007. I think watching the Peter Sellers film before watching Dr. Strangelove is definitely a good idea - Peter Sellers is excellent in this film, playing the roles of the President of the United States, an English Group Captain and Dr. Strangelove - an ex-Nazi physicist who has become the President’s scientific advisor but who has tendencies to drop back into his old Nazi ways, calling the President “Mein Führer” on a few occasions, one of his hands also has a mind of its own - doing the Hitler salut whenever he gets excited about something, such as a doomsday event.
Dr. Strangelove
The film is based around a military general that orders a first strike nuclear attack on Russia, without the authority of the President. The “war room” is where a lot of the action takes place and in this short clip the President of the United States (Sellers) has to talk to Dmitri Kissoff, the Russian Premiere on the hotline to tell him what has happened, it is a genius piece of monologue by Sellers and apparently was mostly unscripted apart from the first few sentences -
The bomb Dmitri, the Hydrogen Bomb
The film is very dark and some people might not get the humour, as its mostly not laugh out loud funny at any moment but it dark comedy makes it brilliant, especially for a film which is 44 years old. A few anecdotes about the film -
* It was due to be released on November 22nd 1963 however Kennedy was assasinated that day and a film about a president trying to prevent a nuclear war being released wouldn’t have gone down well in a country which didn’t have one.
* There’s only one female in the entire film but the film is entirely based around sexuality, the general who orders the nuclear strike believes that water flouridation is a communist conspiracy to impurify “bodily fluids”
* One of the crew on the bombers was James Earl Jones who is the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars, it was his first motion picture.
* When Ronald Raegan became President of the United States he asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff where the “war room” was - probably from watching Dr. Strangelove. The war room was fictional at the time.
This winter/summer whatever you want to call it, Amy and me went to Bali for our holidays. Bali is a fairly small island which is part of Indonesia. It is really a tourist mecca but not in the bad way that most European holiday destinations suffer from - Kuta is probably the most effected by that with pubs that serve “ozzie grub” and show rugby based games in the evenings but its very localised so not a problem. We stayed in Seminyak, which is up the road from Kuta but much nicer and relaxed. We stayed in a villa, which had a walled garden and a swimming pool which was big enough to actually swim in on the first six days of our holiday (to clarify: we didn’t eat so much we couldn’t fit in the pool after six days, we just changed hotels).
Amy and me in our Pool in our Garden
The bestest thing about having the pool in the garden was that the two pool beds were never taken. Whenever we wanted breakfast we picked up the phone and then a couple of villa chefs would come over, cook the breakfast for you. Here’s Amy with Chefs from the first day -
Amy with Villa Breakfast Chefs
The funny thing with the villa chefs is that the first day its a real novelty and you watch there every move in delight as they prepare the breakfast meals. After about 4 days of it you start to take it for granted and get a slight superiority complexity - we sooned dropped that after some women complaining at the front desk about a kite that was flying nearby being far too loud and if “something could be done about it”.
Eight Kites in this Picture over Seminyak (can you see them all?)
The Bali Kite Festival is an annual affair. The ATSB, FAA and CAA would go crazy if this happened anywhere else, it basically makes most of Bali unsafe to fly low as some of these kites got very high!
Our first day we headed into Kuta to see what all the fuss was about. Kuta is the main tourist town in Bali and has two starbucks. Being a man of the world our first stop was to get a ice caffe latte from starbucks. If there’s anyway to judge a country its by any suttle differences in a globalized coffee chain. Safe to say we left starbucks on first name basis with all the staff in there (seriously) and got recommendations on where to go in Bali. The people in Bali are probably the friendliest bunch I’ve ever met, even the hawkers with there sunglasses suitcases and various pieces of junk they try to sell are friendly after you tell them “no thanks” or “tiida marakachi” which is Balinese for the same thing.
One of the funniest shops in Bali are the DVD Hypermarkets. These places are like the Virgin Megastore of pirated videos. Every video was a copy and even films like the latest Batman, which isn’t even out in Australia was for sale (no doubt filmed from a seat in the cinema). Loads of tourists in these shops with shopping baskets full of illegal DVDs no doubt helping to fund terrorism. Talking of Terrorism, Bali tourism is still recovering from the 2002 and 2005 bombings (the 2002 accused are potentially about to be executed) - Indonesia and Bali is on the FCO’s and Australia’s “SmartTraveller” “not recommended to visit” list, most drivers we had talked about it telling us they were very happy for us to come etc. the reality is most people are more likely to be killed by the driver crashing whilst he talks to you than in an actual terrorism related bombing.
On one of the days Amy and I got a driver, Mr Harry, recommended to us by Marcy and Chris - we didn’t really have a plan of where to go but that was ok as Mr Harry just took us all over the place. One of the places he took us was the elephant sanctuary, where we had a ride on an elephant called Phoebe. The “driver” of the elephant told us he (yes the elephant is a he and is called Phoebe) is from Sumatra and is on loan by the government and gets retired at 30 to breed. The driver/minder also told us he has to get up every 2 hours in the night to feed the elephant and that he has been with him since birth. That is a tough job!
Amy Me and Phoebe
Afterwards we went to Monkey Forest, which was as it name suggests, a forest full of monkeys. Mr Harry told us we should buy some bannanas to feed the monkeys as they were “friendly”. I had a monkey fully climbing on my face at one point which didn’t hurt but wasn’t exactly the safest I’d felt in a while. We’d managed to avoid “Bali Belly” up to then and I didn’t want to catch some disease from our second closest ancestors. Amy got off lightly with a bit of skirt pulling -
Amy vs. Monkey
Mr Harry also took us to a few tourist shops with stuff we didn’t need to buy but that seemed to be the same with all drivers. After the elephant tour we went to Uluwatu, via Dreamland. I wanted to see Dreamland for its marvellous beach and surf. I had read on Aquabumps that it recently had been ruined by overdevelopment and it wasn’t wrong -
Dreamland?
The only good thing about that building was that when you looked out to see you couldn’t see it - and what a beach that was -
Dreamland Shoulders Fishing Boat in the Background
The surf in Bali was relentless, I never actually got out as there was some serious waves. You look at to sea and it looks flat then 10 seconds later there are some 6-8ft bombs rolling in so a little bit unpredictable.
After that night we went to Pura Luhur Uluwatu which is a temple that had a show in the evening with traditional Bali music and people dressed as monkeys kicking straw on fire about, it was fantastic. In the evenings a few nights we met up with Amy’s work collegue and wife who were also over there at the same time for a few drinks at KU DE TA in Seminyak which is on the beach and fanstatic. We also went to Sarong restaurant which was one of my favourite food nights as it was delicious and we drank good champagne. For my birthday we went to a bar on the sixth floor of a building next door to the Sofitel in Seminyak, at six floors high it was one of the tallest buildings in Seminyak and had fantastic views of the surf, it was a great night!
The second part of our holiday was in Ubud, which was inland. We stayed at a resort called Maya which was huge and had swimming, golf and tennis. We played golf and Amy beat me. A lot of the time in Ubud was spent going around all the little shops which mostly all sell the same thing but every now and then there would be a few gems and a few t-shirts could be picked up for as little as $5 each. Amy was in her element at the market -
Amy and lots of bags at the Ubud Markets
Bali has a few volcanoes and I’d never seen one before so we took that opportunity to go and visit one. We got a great driver who took us (via some art and wood shops) to Mount Batur which is an active volcano at the centre of two concentric calderas - you can see the wall of the caldera on the picture below as the sort of cliff that surrounds the volcano and the lake on the right hand side. It looked absolutely fantastic, probably one of the best views I’ve ever seen, the pictures don’t really do it justice, you have to be there but here it is anyway -
Mount Batur - Active Volcano in a Caldera
Bali is mostly Hindu which means we visited a lot of temples and had to wear little robes when we got to them which was fun.
Amy and me at Temple in robes
My favourite photo that will remind me of Bali is the one below, an old lady working in a rice field who although probably has a very hard life is as happy as all the rest of the people in Bali are -
Happy Lady in Paddy Field in Ubud
If you ever get the chance to go to Bali I really recommend it. It rained for a total of 3 minutes for the 10 days we were there. The temperature was a consistent 30 degrees C every day which isn’t too hot and isn’t too cold. Everything is cheap (taxi costs $2 to go anywhere locally) the food is good (we didn’t get “Bali Belly”) and the people are super friendly. It also has fantastic surf for the brave and you can do anything you want (relax on the beach, relax at the pool, go shopping in Seminyak, visit a Volcano, ride a Elephant etc..) and the fact that it is so cheap means that the credit card bill doesn’t mean 3 months of poverty when you get home. Which is really good news because the car won’t start, the rego is due, the insurance is due and the video camera is broken.
We will definetly go back providing the words peak and oil aren’t used in the same sentence in news and financial circles in the next few years.
At around 2pm today a broker somewhere decided that the value of QBE shares was $0.01 rather than $22.90, a decision which meant the companies market cap would have totalled around $8 million rather than the $20.19 billion that it was previously. Checkout the ASX 100 Dip at around 2pm thanks to a company practically disappearing off the stock market -
Source: Google
My mate Matt in England tells me this is called ‘Fat Finger’ in financial circles or more commonly known as a Typrographical Error! Nice one that guy - more info here.
You may be wondering where the Bali story is, well it is coming, I need a full evening to write that entry and it needs to be the highest of quality to make it into the Best Posts Category.
We are having a wonderful time in Bali so far we have been to some fantastic beaches and sights. Yesterday we had a ride on an elephant called Phoebe and I had a brush with Ebola as a monkey climbed onto my face at monkey forest in Ubud. Today we are at double six in Seminyak, Amy is helping to keep the Indonesian economy afloat by buying lots of nice dresses.
As I am writing these entries on the iPhone I will keep them short and do a proper story when we get back.
Amy and me at Echo Beach Cangu
We are having a fantastic time nice weather nice people and some seriously big waves! We are enjoying a cold drink in a little bar off the main beach right now.
This is a fantastic animation of Jerry Levitan’s conversation with John Lennon that has won a lot of prizes for best animation at various film festivals. Here’s the trailer for it -
What the full version at YouTube (click high resolution to see it in better quality). From the website I Met the Walrus via DoobyBrain.
Thursday night was BhangLassi’s Organge EP Launch Party. It was a fantastic night with the biggest turn out ever. I was pleased to go as I scored a copy of the EP, my favourite tracks are “Four Degrees” (watch live version in High Definition) and “The Brotherhood’s Gone” (MP3 Download from TripleJ Unearthed).
BhangLassi at the EP Launch Party (Photo Credit: Nancy)
They played a couple of new tracks and one cover on the night which were really good and I imagine will be on their album which will hopefully be out later this year or early next year.
BhangLassi Orange EP - Email info@bhanglassi.com if you want a copy ($10 AUD)
This weekend we had two 30th birthday parties on the same night, which invariably lead to having a super hang over, mostly thanks to a Dry Gin Martini I thought I’d try.
The first 30th party was one of Amy’s work mates. It was on a boat that sailed to a nice cove with a fantastic view of the Sydney skyline -
It was a great idea for a party and was great when we moored up into this position as we were out of the wind. Here’s Amy, Danielle, PH and JZ having a great time as we set off sailing -
Afterwards we had a quick drink at the Loft Bar on King Street Wharf and then jumped into the taxi to the second 30th of the night which was at Boronia House in Mosman for Andrea’s 30th which was fantastic, my battery ran out before we got there so no pictures from that event.
Tonight we are still recovering from our hangovers, we visited the cinema and watched The Happening by M. Night Shyamalan which probably wouldn’t be everyones cup of tea as its not the most action packed or interesting films but I was absolutely terrified of trees by the end of the film which is a pretty clever situation for a film director to get you in.
Last weekend for the Queens Birthday we went to Brisvegas and the Gold Coast for Cooper’s 2nd Birthday. We visited Burleigh Heads and stayed at Amy’s parents beach unit there. The sea was very calm but the coastal erosion from the week before was very bad, with the giant rocks on the beach that you get in Manly when the similar sort of thing happens. We also visited some new Burleigh apartments called “Ambience” but the first floor apartment was on the market for $1.7 million. As house prices are falling faster than they did in the 1930s “Great Depression”, I was thinking of putting in an offer of $0.3 mill.
Erosion on Burleigh Beach
Taryn and Wade came down with Zara for luncheon, which was on the ground floor of the 1.7 mil apartment block and was very nice, here’s a picture of me with baby Zara -
Baby Zara and Me
We headed back to Brisbane for a party at Simone’s parent’s house. Simone lived around the corner from Amy when they were grewing up and they were there at the same time as us. We even ended up getting the same flight out of Sydney and sat a couple of rows apart from each other! I recorded a short video clip of Stu standing outside the toilets on the plane which I’ve uploaded to youtube. That was good fun and we ended up (well I started off) drinking Simones dad’s homebrew beer which was very good.
The next day we were up early and over to Cooper’s parents house for the birthday party with lots of kids running around -
Amy and Cooper in the Garden
It wasn’t just a trip for Cooper’s Birthday, we had not seen the new baby Sister Ali -
Amy and Baby Ali
It was a fantastic trip and a very nice weekend. This weekend, after discussions with Justin about coffee makers and getting recommended one that was far from my price range and tasting the delights of Elliots lattes in Brisbane we have purchased an expresso maker in the Myer end of year stock take sale (just one of the sales that Myer has than seems to span the entire year). It is a entry level device as I’m not sure if I’m cut out for the mean machines with 400 bar pressure yet.
Cappucino Supremo
I’ve watched the DVD that came with the machine, practiced ‘Tamping‘ and have bought all the accessories I’ll ever need. I can’t tell now though if the coffee is any good because I’ve made about 30 cups and drank about one mouthful from each but feel like I’ve drunk way too much milk. The device is really a cost saver as it costs about 55c to make a cappucino and shops normally charge around $3 for a regular, then add another 80c if you want decaf or soy milk.
I want to give a shout out to Marcy’s blog (Marcy and Chris’ Blogaroo) who are some friends from San Francisco who are enjoying the Sydney life (check the blog to see what they’ve been doing).
A lot of time at University was spent playing around with Unix, reading UNIX Network Programming Volumes One AND Two. I still have those books, they pretty much taught me how the internet really works and still believe anyone who hasn’t read them still wouldn’t really understand or appreciate it.
A command that I used a lot back in those days was kill. It is used to send signals to processes and was particularly useful for killing processes that wouldn’t die (programming error or otherwise). The command kill -9 sends a non-blocking signal to a process telling it to die, here’s a screenshot of me killing an apache instance for no particular reason other than to show it in action -
Anyway, a rapper named ‘Monzy’ has created this song about it which is about as geeky as you can get, other than my fsck t-shirt -
