I recently heard the song Little Boxes on the television and reflected the effect it had on my outlook on life. While I imagine it was mean’t to be a humorous song, it was anything but for me. It shaped my views on mediocrity and how I didn’t want to spend my life chasing the same outcomes of leaving school, meeting a girl, engagement, marriage, kids, mortgage, divorce, sell the house and split the proceeds, child support and retirement spent with grandchildren who prefer the other grandparents to you.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is an honourable life aspiration that more than 50% of the population experiences – it just isn’t for me. I learned this song in primary school with the effect on a pre-teenage boy still strong in a mid forties man.

John Mellencamp’s Pink Houses from his uh hah album further reinforced the message and strengthened my desire to lead an alternative lifestyle. I always felt Mellencamp expressed a very poignant view of the current state of America. I thought couldn’t really lead a Bohemian lifestyle as I’m not the arty type. That being said, my choice of weapons is in the form of written words, I do identify with the prose of Maugham, Fitzgerald and Hemingway respecting their timeless work.

Whilst I left school early after just reaching 16, I took the well worn path of a 4 year technical apprenticeship. After finishing a four year commitment, I immediately began saving a deposit for two years and undertook a mortgage at age 22. Whilst undertaking further technical trade studies, the mortgage was repaid in full 6 years later at age 28 and the life free of commitment began. It took a while, but I feel I escaped the little boxes I tried so hard to avoid, but then again, I now own on of those little boxes on the hillside – not so different after all.

I’ve waited a long time for this, nearly 3 decades actually. Bruce Springsteen didn’t tour Australia often, until last year that was. When the occasion arises, if you live on the west coast as I do – you can forget about seeing Bruce play live. That was until now, the long wait is over, its been 29 years but Bruce Springsteen will finally play Perth after his first Australian tour hit our shores back in 1985.

Apparently, the deciding factor in Bruce deciding to visit Perth was he learnt five thousand people had to fly to the eastern states to see his concert last year. We were told at the time that he was soooooo close to touring Perth – of course, nobody believed him as we had heard it all before. You could imagine our surprise when a Perth concert was announced, the tickets sold out very quickly, as I was registered for the pre-sale, I was fortunate enough to secure a single ticket, I fared better than others who, despite trying – missed out altogether.

For the majority of people my age, a bulked up Bruce burst on the scene with his Born in the USA album. As a bunch of young punks at high school, we then learnt that Springsteen had been around for some time with the albums Nebraska, The River, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born to Run. For those of us interested enough, we had the opportunity to build our album collections with Bruce’s previous offerings.

Bruce’s first Australian tour in 1985 brought a level of excitement not seen in my lifetime, I was too young to have seen the Beatles and Rolling Stones tour Australia in the 60s – the pandemonium generated back then was legendary. I can remember being on a school camp when Bruce played Sydney, the concert was not telecast live but the cameras were at the arena with live cross and breaking news flashes interrupting normal transmission. We crowded around a single television to watch the news reports learning that Bruce’s concerts often went into overtime – as the Sydney show did.

Ronald Reagan was the US president, Bob Hawke was the Australian prime minister, Nelson Mandela still had another 5 years in a South African jail, the Vietnam war had been over for nearly a decade, the Berlin Wall divided West and East Germany and the cold war was still at its height with nuclear catastrophe ever present when Bruce first played Australia all those years ago.

Springsteen has aged another 30 years since his Born in the USA tour first kicked off, he is 65 now and I am hoping that his Friday show is going to be worth the three decade wait – as legendary as his concerts are reputed to be. I went from high school, from just turning 16 to almost 45 before I had the opportunity to see Bruce in Perth – that’s a long wait. I had almost given up all hope of seeing The Boss play live – barring a car accident or heart attack, I will be at the Perth Arena Friday night full of energy and enthusiasm.

Every country has its natural catastrophic events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, tornado and cyclones. For Perth, it is bush fires, but this is not a rural area – this is Perth suburbia.

I was at work yesterday and phone calls were coming hard and fast, some of my workmates had to leave to get home to defend their properties. I walked outside of the office and viewed the smoke billowing into the air, fortunately for me, I live in the other direction and didn’t suffer the problems of road blocks, fire trucks and smoke.

I had heard fire trucks driving past earlier in the day with their sirens screaming and lights flashing, I didn’t think much of it as it is a pretty normal event here in summer. Perth has a large professional fire fighting force complete with water bombers, helicopters, command structures and a sizable volunteer bush fire brigade.

Together, these guys worked through the night bringing the fire under control in high temperatures and strong winds. Today, another 37 degree Celsius day is forecast so it was important to get this fire under control as soon as possible. The fire was caused by a flare up of a fire that started on Sunday, as the winds increase during the day, this fire could be out of control threatening homes again.

What makes this fire personal is the number of my colleagues affected, last year, the hills fires last year burnt down peoples homes, another hills bush fire a few weeks back destroyed countless properties, sometimes the number of homes destroyed is in its hundreds. It is amazing, the embers flying through the air land on houses setting them alight but sparing the property next door, in some ways, it is a bit of a lottery. Last Tuesday, I was taking my university examination with the rumbling of low flying helicopters dropping water on the nearby fire, the sound of sirens from fire trucks was not overshadowed by the rattling glass and boom of the turbine of the low flying water bombers.

As we started the 2 hour, 15 minute exam – we had evacuation plans in place. As we sat there at our desks prior to the exam start, the exam supervisor called the faculty to determine if we were to proceed – as I had taken a day off work to attend, I wanted to stay no matter what the distractions. For me, this was a mild inconvenience, sure I had spent a trimester studying the unit but apart from time invested, I had nothing to lose. Here, peoples lives and houses are on the line, yesterday there was six homes damaged and no lives lost – a pretty good outcome really.

People smuggling is a business run by criminal organisations – this despicable business is trafficking human misery for profit. The notion of people smuggling is an emotive and divisive community issue, however, the problem of people smuggling was solved before Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard overturned successful policy allowing the people smuggling cartels to rebuild their business models. The end result, more than 50, 000 people arrive on Australia’s shores by boat, over 1100 deaths at sea and a fortune spent running offshore processing centres.

People, that is, their clients are paying people smuggling cartels to transport them across the sea to Australia – Indonesia is the staging point for the boat trip. How are they actually getting from their country of origin to Indonesia? After all, a plane ticket is a cheaper option into Australia, much cheaper than the people smuggling option – yet people don’t use this option, why? You need a visa to arrive legally by plane to get into Australia, to get into Indonesia, most citizens require a visa, without doubt, they require a valid passport. The question then arises, once in the company of people smugglers, why do their passport and legal documents somehow vanish on route to Australia?

I have a fundamental problem with international criminal organisations dictating Australian immigration policy, it is clear after six years of weak willed policy failures, we now have strong leadership who implement their plans in the best interests of our nation.

I have no problem with immigration, I would not be concerned if we increased out immigration intake, in fact, I believe we should do so in a controlled manner. Furthermore, I believe as a nation we should increase our refugee intake inline with general immigration – the main point is, we run the bloody show, not organised crime cartels. It’s budgie smugglers versus people smugglers – it appears budgie is gaining ascendancy.

Coursera, like many of the massive open online courses provides free university education to the masses worldwide. This is an excellent concept allowing the world’s top universities to share their learning materials online led by the top lecturers at their respective institutions. 

I was bewildered when I learnt the United States government banned online access to courses to selected countries of Cuba, Syria, Sudan and Iran – apparently, Syria has now resumed coverage. I feel this is a short sighted decision, the power of education to transform lives and attitudes providing the United States wonderful opportunity to engage people at a very personal level, some could even argue engaging in soft diplomacy. I fear people from countries who are unable to attend traditional bricks and mortar universities are being severely disadvantaged due to internal turmoil or government ideologues not aligning to American values.

Ironically, I am undertaking a Coursera unit on Critical Perspectives on Management led by a Canadian professor from a Madrid based business school. Being fortunate enough to reside in a rich western country, I have unfettered access to their incredible array of online learning resources.

The US based education provider fell foul of US export law subject to economic sanctions by the state department. Apparently, export controls have been interpreted in such a manner allowing access to controlled markets, one hopes sanity will prevail and students in blocked countries can resume their  learning experience. I understand Coursera is a US based enterprise, it is my hope that the many international universities offering services to Coursera can convince the powers to be to reverse their short sighted decision and return learning to everyone.

Spending Australia Day with my family saw the cork pulled from a 2005 Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1, it was, as expected, a magnificent wine. Unlike most contemporary Australian wines, a cork is still used at Yarra Yering as opposed to a screw cap used by the majority of producers. Then again, since 2005, they may have moved over to screw caps as well – change is constant, I suppose.

Viewing the label of this wine, it looks as if it was produced by a family member on their home computer, the moment the cork is released, you soon realise no costs have been spared in the production of this marvelous wine. The No. 1 is a Bordeaux style claret consisting of cabernet sauvignon blended with merlot, malbec and petit verdot matured in new French oak.

The aroma exhibits herbaceous notes with a slight hint of tobacco, the palate exhibits complex cherry, plum and blackcurrent flavours with vanilla oak overtones, the aftertaste is smooth with fine tannins. With just on 10 years of bottle maturation, the 2005 is drinking well now with further cellaring potential.

James Halliday, from the Wine Companion awarded the 2005 vintage 95 points, the distinct lack of gold, silver and bronze awards plastered over the bottle shows a no nonsense style allowing the reputation of the No.1 blend to talk instead of label marketing. I have a couple of more bottles stashed away, looking forward to more sunny summer days.

Well, the shark cull has not only begun, but the first shark has been caught and destroyed. A three metre tiger shark was caught on a baited line off of Meelup Beach, Dunsborough, Western Australia. The shark was shot four times and taken further out to sea and dumped, this is the dumbest option as the sharks should be loaded aboard the boat, brought ashore and examined by scientists for research purposes. This is in my opinion, a short sighted and ill conceived government policy – an alternative is research, selective shark screening on beaches and shark tagging.

For a number of years, shark spotting planes have flown over Perth beaches during the summer months in a bid to identify sharks approaching, the water is cleared of swimmers and surfers until the shark leaves the area. Electronic buoys have been deployed where tagged sharks approaching the vicinity register on the system and once again, swimmers and surfers can take a rest on the beach until the shark leaves the area.

Shark culling is a populist option that gives the public the appearance that the problem is being addressed. The community opinion, seen through my eyes is anti-culling but I am sure there is also community support – seen mostly through the surfing fraternity that sharks are killers and murders of the ocean and must be eradicated. They see shark numbers sky rocketing and a danger to all water users lobbying government in an emotive manner, the local Perth media play on this illogical fear in a brazen manner to enrich their own news coverage increasing advertising revenue in the process.      

On a trip to Bali’s east coast, we were driving up a valley for the wonderful views looking down the valley towards the sea. We noticed a large ring of men jostling for position and decided to investigate. As we drew closer, it was apparent a cockfight was taking place.

I have spent a fair amount of time in parts of Asia/Pacific over the years and was invited to many cockfights. I always declined as this sport is cruel and barbaric, it is, of course not a sport but a fight to the death with a razor sharp knife strapped to the left leg of the bird. I had always thought the knife was strapped to the right leg but since this was the first time I had seen a live fight, I stand corrected.

I have viewed cockfights on television when I have been in the Philippines, yes, a cockfight is really televised there – I kid you not. Now apart from the fact that this is really boring, there are plenty of people getting excited about this with a whole ritual taking place with standing the cocks up straight, getting them aggressive, pecking at each other before they are launched into the contest.

The aftermath is the death or severe wounding of a bird, they may break them up and relaunch at each other until the loser is incapacitated. The loser, if still alive is put to the side flapping around with severe injuries in a cruel and callous manner.

There is betting going on, cockfighting is all about gambling – this is the cruel reality of gambling, this is really a disgrace. 

I purchased a new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 after owning an older generation 7.0; well one of the original devices actually. While I wasn’t so upset with my older device, it had a number of issues that caused me grief, that is, the software wasn’t up-gradable and couldn’t run certain (newer) programs. That being said, the device is only a few years old and I kind expect better. This post was written on the said device while on holidays overseas, pretty much why I purchased it.

My old 7.0 cost me $336 when I purchased it overseas a couple of years back; my 10.1 gave me change from $350 and I’m pretty happy with that, substantially lower when first units hit the market. There are a number of different versions including the Tab 3 or Note, my choice being the Tab 3.

A friend had an iPad and I seriously considered switching to Apple, the iPad has some great functionality not suffering from compatibility issues that some Android devices may have. After spending a fair amount of time on an iPad 2, I have to admit to liking the device. I do however have a number of ethical issues with Apple products and seek alternate devices as a result.

 Apple is overpriced and I notice international price maintenance, more commonly known as price fixing going on. Apple tried their hardest to keep Samsung off the shelves, successful in California, but lets face it, this is the home of the legal system assisting OJ Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton, no one worldwide takes American courts seriously. Lets face it, they wouldn’t need Guantanamo Bay otherwise.

The British court system while denying Samsung’s claim against the iPad required Apple to publish a disclaimer on its website and general media stating that Samsung did not copy the iPad. Likewise, while the German courts initially granted Apple an injunction against the 10.1; this was rescinded after evidence tampering was claimed by Samsung. Furthermore, Apple was fined in Australia for deliberately misleading consumers in regards to their 4G capability. I will stick with Samsung – excellent products and even better pricing.

That fool Kevin Rudd has aspirations of becoming Secretary General of the United Nations after current Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is up for re-election in 2016. We knew him as Rudd the dud, he talked himself up, failing to deliver any tangible benefits at any stage, in short – he is totally useless and pretty much everyone knows it.

 

Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia swept to power in 2007 only to be displaced in the top job during his first term by his own party. Hated by those closest to him, the dysfunction, waste and infighting of the government he led is now history. On his dismissal, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard described this as “a government that had lost its way”, yet, only one person was removed – ouch.

 

After undermining his successor, Gillard’s own failures as leader saw the rise of Rudd again to the top job despite losing a few leadership challenges along the way. Her poor performance forged a path for Rudd’s return. Not that this was a bad thing, that gave us, the people of Australia the opportunity to vote this wanker out.

His political party, the Australian Labor Party was so roundly beaten at the 2013 federal election, the ALP recorded their lowest primary vote in their history. The legacy of six years of ALP government includes record government debt, the budget surplus he inherited at the start of his government is now a record deficit

 To keep his loss in perspective, before the 2013 election, the ALP held 72 seats – level with the Coalition, yet after the election, the ALP formed a minority government with the help of the Greens and independents. The ALP currently holds 55 seats while the Coalition holds 90 seats. Retirements for the ALP after their humiliating defeat include 16 members in addition to the 17 seats lost during the election (including Rudd the dud himself).

Not that Julia Gillard was much better as Prime Minister, however, the whole time, Rudd undermined her efforts at every opportunity until he was returned to the Prime Minister’s position. Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Malcom Fraser and Gough Whitlam are all worthy candidates for the title of worst prime minister of Australia, now this imbecile wants to go and weave his magic on the United Nations – god help us all.