Thursday, November 30, 2006

Wake Me Up, When Movember Ends

Last night was the gala party for all of the Movember participants here in Sydney. It was held at Luna Park, the amusement complex underneath the harbour bridge on the picturesque waterfront. In our office, we had six or seven 'mo-bros' who participated in fund-raising, to be accompanied by 'mo-sisters' and general hangers on. The whole campaign was centered around fighting men's depression and prostate cancer.

I had rendez-vous with a friend from school, with whom I was going to go over to the Gala party with. I didn't know, however, that he had a pledge offer him $200 if he dyed his mo blue. This whole laborious process of bleaching, re-bleaching and dying took about 3 hours. So, instead of arriving the Mo Gala at its' peak, we caught the decline.

Nonetheless, never underestimate Australians' ability to drink mid-week. By the time we arrived at 11pm, there were still 6,000 people there. All this on a Wednesday night.

The crowd was the 24-35 most likely to get belligerent demographic. Although Halloween was passed over by this society, Movember is a strong second. I saw mo-bros dressed as Ron Jeremey, Borat, The Mario Bros. and Anchorman Ron Burgundy. The remainder were dressed as porn stars or construction workers. The party under the big top was absolutely raging, even up until midnight when they closed down. Danicng, DJs and mo-bros with mo-sistas in tow. As a collective group, they were certainly doing their best to fight (or at least temporarily repress through alcohol) men's depression. Bugger all about prostate cancer.

In reflection with my friend Rob (pictured), I noted that this country is akin to a teenager their freshman year in college. Young, brash, supremely confident, more than a bit naive and supericial, but with a profound love of life. This is fantastic, unless your life focus is somewhere else. But maybe that 'somewhere else' has not yet become clear, giving one no comparison point in which to make judgements against. Nonetheless, wherever the focus, it is going to be extremely hard to leave. I can't imagine anywhere in the states where, on a Wednesday night you could find such spontanity, save Vegas. Oh, the humanity of it all.

posted by ncawthon at 7:46 PM

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Waving Goodbye

It has been a few weeks now, but the Waverley Waves baseball team has shut down operations for the season. The rift between players and coaches was too severe to overcome. The Korean insurgency which became evident a few weeks ago was too much of an obstacle to overcome. Truancy was rampant, players were forced to claim devotion to one coach or the other and we tended to suck pretty bad when it came to actually playing baseball. Good riddance, in some ways. Gives me the weekends free to travel a bit and see the rest of the greater New South Wales. There will be a little league team for me to help coach when I return, so no big deal. I just hope the on-field shoving matches between players and coaches is kept to a minimum.

posted by ncawthon at 12:57 PM

Monday, November 27, 2006

Dropping the Deuce

Celebrating the two hundreth posting! Given that we've been here in Oz about 16 months, that puts the rate of writing at about once every four or five days. The repetition isn't the hard part, it is trying to remember what I was going to post about.

Our friend the orangutan here was a recent rescue from Thailand. His keepers had been training him and a fellow orang to kickbox in the classic Mui Thai style. The would mimic all of the classic Thai pre-match stanzas, then pretend to duke it out in the ring. One guy would pretend to get knocked out while the referee would count to ten.

It is hard to believe that these gangly creatures could really hurt one another, except in the wild. In looking at our fine friend here on the right, this whole thing must have been an act. Nonetheless, the SPCA, or whomever the Thai's have for animal protection, came in and stopped the practice. I guess if the orangs are made to do this several times a day in squalid conditions would it be looked at as unfair. I was hoping to catch some animals imitating human activities on our trip there, always good for photo opportunities. Elephant soccer? Turtle rugby?

UPDATE: OK, after some further googling, I now feel bad for the Orangs. Although, they dressed them up as doctors and ring girls as well, further adding to the cruel humour.

posted by ncawthon at 8:04 AM