I'll have what they're having

Full story at Reuters.

A Seoul restaurant (yes, they serve Korean barbecue!!) is basking in fame after being stampeded by 3 rampaging elephants. Say what? Well apparently the Oliphaunts got loose from the zoo and they decided it might be nice to chow down on some carrots (which, by the way, do not improve your vision) at the restaurant.

The owner used the insurance payout to rebuild and rename her restaurant to "Restaurant where elephants have been". Well, it's gotta be a unique drawing card!!

Apparently her new "elephant set" consisting on a whole lot of vegetables (but no elephants) is real popular now too.

So, it just goes to show that ... in every crowd of elephants there is a silver lining. Or something.

Do they really believe Americans can do *that*?

Here's a story that will surprise and amaze.

Russian lake disappears, baffling villagers

Thu May 19, 2005 05:57 PM BST

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian village was left baffled on Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.

NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.

"It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground," said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us," said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.


... well, hmmm. What I am thinking is
a) how did the trees fly under the ground
b) .. and how did he know they did!!
c) ... and why does he think it would be dangerous .. I think the "official" knows more than he is telling!!

Portraiture

Once upon a time there was a garage band ...

Steve and DTM and Karen and I used to jam in Steve's den under his parents' place in Padstow. Steve played guitar and wrote all our songs, DTM played guitar, (some rhythm, some lead), Karen played the drums and I played bass. Nobody sang.

Steve had a 4-track so we recorded our songs for posterity. Recently I dug the tape out and got the songs converted to mp3s so now through the magic of the internet you can all hear our stuff. It's not so bad, though you can tell how we were still pretty inexperienced. And no, none of us has continued playing, so we're still in the land of the non-performing.

Anyway listen and enjoy (right click to save, left click to just listen).

1. conversation

2. for janine

3. mistral

Feel free to leave reviews :)


Edit: Music runs in the family, here is Alex Yu singing "Do the Hot Potato" .... maybe he should have joined our band!!

Mother's Day

We went to Bicentennial Park in Homebush yesterday for Mother's Day (a week late, but that worked out for everyone..)


It was lovely weather!! From L-R, Charles, Stuart, Pop (seated), Nan, Rhoda, Christine, me, Mandy and then Lyndon lying down. DTM is taking the photo (duh!)


Mandy and I prepared a lot of food - yum yum ..


and we even managed to smile some of the time!!


I made a gluten free cheesecake for dessert (and played with picasa - pretty isn't it!)


of course it was all a bit much for some - Lyndon catches a few Z's .. Posted by Hello

It was heaps of fun, and I think the mothers all enjoyed themselves. We didn't have much for dinner though!! :)

Star Wars III opens this week?

Yeah, I know, this Thursday, yada yada. Well, no I'm not in line to see it on May 19, I don't have my tickets yet, whatever. Last night Episode II was on telly and Daniel was watching it with headphones, so I couldn't hear anything - and oh boy Hayden Christensen's acting skills are bottom of the barrel. It shows up even more when you can't hear him.

Anyway I read this review of the screening at Cannes over the weekend. Turns out that Hayden's acting has improved according to the moviegoers, although he was still upstaged by the CGI battle scenes. Well, it'd be pretty hard going to outshine monster effects like those.

I guess I will go and see it, it's one of those things you have to do, after coming all this way with George Lucas I might as well go the rest of the way. And after all that review said it was as good as Empire - which means it might actually be worth the 15 bucks.

We have paving!!!

So for those who knew our side/back yard, we used to have your basic swamp. Now it's paved!!! Yay!! No more wading through the mud to hang the washing!!

Enjoy...


The ex-swamp a.k.a. Path to front door.

Ahh ... a new picnic area. Somewhere for the table to live (you can see it down the end of the garden, yes looks like a big doughnut).


We have garden edging!! Note the scrappy turf, we will update it to some kind of shade-loving variety so maybe it will grow.


... and the clothes won't fall in the mud anymore !!! :) Posted by Hello
Lots of spare pavers just-in-case ..

Now we just have to turf the remainder of the lawn and tidy up the garden beds and we will have a lovely exterior.

Next reno job? oh dear, the bathrooms. *sigh*

Sorry it's been so long!

Yeah I know, you've all been dying for the latest update. Well I hope not literally.

Here's a list of games that you might want to check out while you wait for the next blog update ;)

bored at work?? Try throwing paper into a circular filing cabinet. I suck at this game too. My top score was 6. Yes, a whole 6. Notice how much the paper resembles a ball, hence my spectacular lack of skills here. (thanks to DTM for that one)

How about playing 20 Questions against a learning computer? Kind of an AI .. neural intelligence thing. (yay for BoingBoing and a blogline feed!!)

What about a self-referential multiple choice test? I haven't had the time to actually play this yet, but a quick read of the questions proves that it might be a load of fun. (I think this was also BoingBoing, if not it was LifeHacker)

Or you could always amuse yourself playing that good old standby smack the pingu or other yetisports.

My favourite ever game - spank the monkey - is still there and if you play it with sound it still rocks. Try to get over 200 mph to get the nifty music !!

And if I ever get around to it, my next blog entry will rock. Even more than the music on spank the monkey.

I like this story about women's social networks, and I have nothing else to add to it.

Oh go away, just hit the "next blog" button if you want more interesting things to read!!

I was never any good at P.E. at school ...

In primary school I was one of those kids who was picked second-last for any team sport, I sucked at pretty much any sport involving balls - I mean like football, soccerball, baseball, softball, basketball, netball - you name it, I sucked.

If only they'd had cup stacking at my school. I mighta stood a chance !!!

Of course since then I learnt how to fence and hey - whaddya know, fencing sucks!! No really, it can be slow to watch, probably is boring for the parents hanging round the sides who have to take you home after, makes you incredibly sweaty and you end up with rust *all* over the place... but the only balls are the ones you poke ;)

And of course fencing is featured strongly in the best movie of all time ... The Princess Bride. A cult movie amongst fencers.

And hey, if that weren't enough PB links .. here's an excellent one. PB Chicken jokes. What more could you want!!

Texas considers ban on sexy cheerleaders

Well, I guess they distract from the sport ??

But seriously folks, if it wasn't for the cheerleaders who would go to the sporting events? And the cheerleader thing is such a powerful inspiration for movies - like Bring It On - or Buffy episodes ... and other such wholesome fun.

I was a cheerleader once. In primary school. For about a year. Our school houses were named after the planets, and our favourite cheer was
" Mars, Mars in the bin,
Saturn, Saturn further in,
Venus, Venus on the top,
Jupiter, Jupiter, squash the lot!"

(I was in Jupiter, duh. It was yellow.)

What a pinnacle of literary achievement.

bugs find gaps and other links

Working in Software QA, as I do, I often notice that bugs find gaps. They sneak in all over the place, and sometimes even nibble holes in things that you thought were working. But what I hadn't seen until today was a link to the head of the department's garage band (hence the title of this post). What fun.

Today another random search turned up a lovely blogspot ... the waiter rant. Luvvit.

Or this one, the edible iPod competition.

Chance of more updates here today? Hmm, slim to none. Have a good one.

I"ve visited my blog this many times:

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