Bored and loud.

Knowing that there were vampires involved in this book, I was excited. However, it turned out to be just a mediocre fantasy-murder-mystery, centred around an Egyptian mummy. Easy to follow and very predictable, the book is written in a very simple style but does include some interesting historical points (whether true or not is a whole other matter). I was unaware it was a series until part way through, but quickly noted that all other books would more than likely follow the same formula and have similar subject matter. The story of two cops, a vampire lover and a whole range of fantastical creatures committing crimes – if I read any others, it would be hard to distinguish between them I think.

Don’t get me wrong, despite containing a mummy and a vampire, the story itself was believable enough, but it just didn’t cause enough excitement. There is no build up to major points of the story, and yet they still come out as an anti-climax. I doubt I’ll follow this with any other books from the series.

Coming soon – The Kite Runner and Firesong.

I used to do a lot of sport. I was doing at least 5 sessions a week, plus time in the gym (usually cycling or rowing machines). I had a good level of fitness and muscular strength, and everything was fine. Then I started getting sore hips when I was walking home from school. Then my knees joined in. Then my ankles, not wanting to be left out, also started hurting. After several visits to the doctor, a probable pain-killer addiction and several blood tests for arthritis, I was finally referred to physio. After 2 sessions it was concluded I had weak ankles, weak hamstrings, and weak gluteus medius (the muscle connecting the quads to the gluteus maximus.) Finally with a diagnosis, I was able to start exercises to stop it all hurting. Unfortunately, I was also told that I should stop doing all sports. Really, everything? Yes. I needed rest while I built them up apparently.

I very quickly adjusted to having lots of free time, to lazing around, and started losing fitness and putting on weight. This was my downfall. Since then, I haven’t gone back to doing very much.

However, a couple of years after I did the physio, my aches and pains are back. I’m still doing the exercises, but I’m also trying to start running, very unsuccessfully. After a crippling run 2 nights ago, I’ve decided to go for the low impact, high cardio, high muscular workout of swimming. It seems like my only other option here, as I want a low impact but high cardio workout. Unfortunately, I also wanted a free one. Running covers that, but is high impact. Swimming is low impact, but will cost me money, and lots of it over a long period of time. There is also the problem of my eczema. Despite settling down a bit, I still have it, and no doubt copious amounts of time in a pool will dry my skin out and aggravate it even more. This is my dilemma.

I’m hoping to go for my first swim at the weekend. Fingers crossed eh?

One of two Jamie Oliver biographies I received for Christmas, although I believe they’re both by the same authors. This one covers his early life and first part of his career – until the end of the ‘Naked Chef’ series’. It does so in a glamourised manner, glorifying Jamie Oliver and making him sound so perfect. Don’t get me wrong, I believe he is a talented guy and probably just as nice as he appears on TV, but biographies are supposed to cover all aspects – the good and bad. This is the main reason I didn’t like this book, it was simply to perfect, and written in a similar manner to the celebrity gossip magazines.

I do however, like knowing more about people I admire and as I read this with a pinch of salt, I believe I do now know more about the person and his attitude to cooking. I’ll probably leave the other biography for a little while because it will simply be too overkill and my brain will more than likely disintegrate with lack of use!!

I heard this morning that they’re making a movie of the book ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ by Jodi Picoult. For those that have not read it, it is the story of the second of 2 daughters, who’s been born to help her elder sister who suffers from leukemia. The second daughter sees a lawyer to try and gain legal rights to her own body, so she does not have to help her sister.

Now, as controversial and interesting as this book is, I hate it. It’s written in a similar style as Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’, as in, for a three-year-old. It is ridiculously simple and flows in a ‘and then’ motion. It is also similar to all of the ‘real life stories’ that are popular at the moment, being very depressing – but this one is purposefully, it’s not a true story! After attempting to read two more of her books (I can’t recall which titles, I’ve probably repressed them), I gave up on them and her as they were all so similar. Simply written, depressing and downright boring.

So, they’ve decided to make it into a movie. Young girl actress..who comes to mind? Dakota Fanning, uh oh! Another of my pet hates (apart from in Man on Fire for some reason). Thankfully though, she’s gone very prissy and refused the role because she doesn’t want to shave her head. So we’re saved (only slightly – the movie is still going ahead). I’m dreading this movie being released. I recall at my last job there were 2 women who were reading Picoult’s books like a fish drinks water. They talked about them non-stop: how complex and deep they were, how amazing it was that someone could write about such a controversial issue etc etc. It really made me want to cry. I honestly feel sorry for somebody who believes that such a simple book could be so amazing - they’re missing out on so many good books.

Needless to say, I will not be seeing this movie!!

After having seen the Longnecks so much in the past few weeks, I thought I’d bring up how strangely organised the shows were.

In the past, this name has been used as a secret name for very small shows to be played, only to fans who know or can work out who they were, in order to try out new songs for a new record. It’s worked well in the past, with shows staying mostly secret and the band managing to get feedback on the shows. However, this time around, it was all change. They had a myspace account, and the logo for them was a picture of the band (used in their promotional material), very badly disguised. The shows were posted on both the secret and proper myspace accounts, as well as the band’s forum. So already, we have a huge number of people knowing about them. But if you’re not on the Internet? Well, some stress press and newspapers were listing both names, and venues themselves were warning how quickly the shows would sell out. All up, a handful of shows sold out, but the others were all pretty full anyway. On top of this, they played 2 all-ages festivals, where the MCs kept almost slipping up.

Now, if the plan was to play a secret show, they did very poorly. I’ve spoken to people who only know the real name in passing but had heard they were playing other shows. The picture as logo was a dead giveaway and to be quite honest, I doubt they’ll be able to play many more secret shows in future now that everybody knows they’ve been doing it. The idea of playing secret shows in the first place is a brilliant one, and a good chance to see the band up close and personal, with their new stuff. However when you have a mass of fans pushing you forwards, all shouting for their old songs, it kind of defeats the point. They brought it on themselves though and have no right to give the crowds dirty looks. Having been advertised almost as a show of the real name, pictures and all, the crowd will expect that band to be playing – rather than just the new stuff.

Not that I’m complaining, at $15 for a ticket and free for the festival…

It isn’t too hard to work out who the band is, but I will not post it here out of principal.

Had a busy few weeks! I’ve seen a certain ‘secret’ Melbourne band, known as the Longnecks, 4 times (3 shows plus St Kilda festival), Iron Maiden at Rod Laver Arena due to a spare ticket and Daughters of the Rich.

It all started with Iron Maiden. A friend had a spare ticket, so I accepted it and Thursday evening started with him leaving his car at my place as we walked over to Rod Laver Arena (my house is in a prime location!) The show was phenomenal; easily one of the best live shows I’ve seen. There was pyrotechnics and fireworks, but not overdone; costume changes by Bruce, but quick and simple (usually a jacket change); a changing backdrop and a moving light-frame. Oh, and the 3m tall Eddie. It’s no wonder they needed their own plane with the sheer scale of the show. It was no ordinary metal concert, and to top it off, they played Monty Python’s ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ as we exited.

So Friday dawned far too brightly for my tired eyes, but after a hard day of work, it was back out again! Over to Kim’s place where I’d meet Kristen and Beth for Kristen to drive us all to her home town of Ballarat. The first time I’ve been there, and I saw very little of it bar the venue! A tiny little place, the Karova lounge really went off when the Longnecks came out. Smaller than the venue I saw them at in London, it was steaming hot but just so happy. I really enjoyed it, and managed to catch up on sleep on the way home.

Saturday was a regular morning, I tried to sleep in and failed! However, I rested up and just relaxed as I knew I was going out again that evening. Now, all of my house was meant to be coming out to see the Longnecks at Geelong, but Trav claimed he was sick, and Kat finally resigned to the fact she was too sick to go, so it was just me and Amber on the way out there. Thankfully I managed to make use of one spare ticket by getting Luke to come out – he was slamming the front door shut on the phone to me! By this point I’d been standing for too long and my joints just weren’t accepting it, so I tried to lean or sit for most of the evening. As far as I could tell, it was a really good show though.

Sunday..a day of rest, surely. Well, a little. In fact, I was headed out to St Kilda (for the first time in daylight!) to attend St Kilda Festival and see both the Longnecks and The Currency. So I caught the tram down with Toni, as the day warmed up much more than I’d planned – regretting the jacket now! After some food, a quick walk around and our first and last warm beer of the day, we found a spot to watch the Longnecks. Another great show, even if it was a bit shorter than the others. This time, being all ages (well, not in theory), the crowd was even more excitable and many more hung around afterward to try and spot the band. We headed off and found some ice cream and cold drinks before settling to watch The Currency. We caught the end of a gyspy-folk-odd band..it was very good. The Currency put on a very tight show, despite recently losing the accordion and tin whistle. Great fun for all, and stayed around for a chat.

Finally, I could go home and sleep, and sleep I did. Ready for work on Monday!

At the end of that week (Friday just past), I caught Daughter’s of the Rich at Pony, which was really good. Having had trouble sleeping, it was a bit hard to keep my eyes open after, but I managed to get home and into bed safely. Saturday brought a friend’s birthday meal and my last Longnecks show. Saturday afternoon and I had to go into the city to meet a friend on a flying visit from Cairns. Met fine and headed out to North Fitzroy on the tram (her first tram trip!) The meal was at a delightful restaurant called Red Olive – fantastic food and beautiful interior. After that, a group of us headed back into the city for the rest of the festivities. It was ridiculously hot (only one fan that I saw) and very much sold out, but it really went off! Had a quick chat to them afterward, before heading outside to meet another friend. After dithering around for a short time about what to do, said friend drove us all home (thanks again) and I tried to get some sleep.

Sunday morning, 8.45am. Alarm goes off. Having had carpet cleaning booked for a couple weeks, at $60 it was a bargain I wasn’t going to miss and this was the only appointment available. Together we moved the furniture out the lounge and woke up a little bit more for the cleaners. 9.45am, no sign of them so I call up. I’m told they’re on their way, probably just held up somewhere. 10.30am, still no sign, everyone else has gone back to bed. I call again and find out that there was emergency flood damage and a double-booking problem, so they won’t come until 1.30pm. After all that, I try to have a nap and can’t, so I drag a dining chair into the lounge – which is looking very forlorn – and watch some TV. The others start emerge (minus Trav of course), and finally the carpet cleaner turns up. He did a very good job, and it looks much better, but after having so little sleep, I was just a little cranky!

And so dawned another week. No big plans – that was a big fortnight for me! I’m planning to go to Adelaide in the week of the 10th of March, to visit an old friend and my grandma, that should be good. I’ve just ordered myself a new laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1720 with a top spec. I’m still waiting for a hard drive and casing to come from another site. I’m also looking at a new digital camera (just a compact) to replace my recently deceased Canon Powershot A550 – at the moment considering the A720 IS, or a G7 or G9. However with all that money spent, I’m not sure when that will be purchased – or paid off!!

From the blurb, this story sounded like many others that have been published – Nazi’s discriminating against a group of people, that person’s fight through it and obviously their survival to tell the tale. However, upon starting it, I realised that it just wasn’t that great. The book is written in small chapters, just 2-3 pages each, and each chapter is about a person that was in the ghetto with the author. It is effectively a book made up of very short stories. However, knowing that this person had obviously survived, I was interested in reading what had happened to him, how he survived, how he interacted with others. Unfortunately, throughout the book, there is very little story to follow; it is broken up so much that it becomes hard to follow and quite disappointing.

Having read many other books of this subject, I thought that it would be another interesting read. What I found was a very disappointing and uninformative book, with so little information about what had happened and what their lives were like, that I actually became very bored while reading it. There are many other stories about this period of time that are much better.

I quite enjoyed this story, although am a little embarrassed to admit it. It is fairly generic love story set in China, involving several generations of families, as well as a war. I found it to be similar to the story of ‘Falling Leaves’ by Adeline Yen Mah, about a neglected and unloved daughter, as it involved many aspects of cruelty toward daughters, and it followed through generations. The love stories involved were passionate and untouchable, but I felt the author left out many aspects of characters, and I found it hard to understand how certain couples came to love each other at all due to this!

On the other hand, covering many generations meant that you could see where certain influences came from and what had caused people to act in different ways. This part I liked. Although it covered close to 100 years, it seemed short and focused on the main parts of the story that the reader needed to know. It was a relatively easy read, no challenging style or language was used.

I originally thought that this was a comedic look at the world and the different people encountered but much to my disappointment, it is a self-help book! Despite realising this quite soon after starting it, I continued read simply out of curiosity.

It offers odd descriptions of different kinds of people you will encounter, particularly those preventing you from becoming a ‘polar bear pirate’ (someone who has achieved their goals, become who they want to be). Although attempting to be funny, it seems to just be patronising and annoying. I most definitely did not enjoy reading this.

So Friday evening saw me popping my MCG cherry. At around 7.30pm , myself and Toni headed down the 3 blocks from my house to attend the Twenty20 cricket between India and Australia . Now I’m not going to turn this into a big rant about how Twenty20 cricket isn’t a test match and shouldn’t be considered real cricket or anything, but all I have to say is that it’s good for what it is – a quick, relaxed version of the game.

So by the time we got into the ground, 2 of India ’s wickets had dropped, and soon after, the rest came tumbling after! At only 74 runs, it wasn’t going to be a long night or a challenging game. Being in General Admission, I honestly believed there was a potential for trouble in response to the recent Harbhajan ruling, but the crowd was relatively well behaved. There was one point where a group of around 10 young white Australian yobbos were making rude comments toward a couple of guys of Indian-Asian appearance. However, these 2 guys were wearing Australia shirts and were actually from Sri Lanka . Just goes to show how stupid and unobservant some people are. There was predictable booing and taunts when Harbhajan was announced, but thanks to extra police, nothing kicked off and it was a quick, but rather enjoyable night. Watching some highlights, I realised that it wasn’t actually an exciting game – which just goes to show how much the atmosphere can make it!

Hopefully I’ll be able to go to many more football, rugby and cricket matches in the future. In my diary, I’ve already penciled in a game for the rugby league world cup in November – Australia vs England , in Melbourne . I can’t wait!

Now before I had even got home on Friday night, I had received an SMS from a friend I used to know in England , Kayleigh. She is on a gap year and had been in Sydney for a couple of weeks with the intention of coming to Melbourne . The message I got said that she was coming down tomorrow (Saturday) and was I free. Being the lovely person I am, I had already offered her a place to stay, and not having any other plans set in stone, I was looking forward to see her again! I met her at Spencer Street and brought her back to the Crapshack so she could drop her bags, then we went out to St Kilda, where a couple of the people she had flown out with were having drinks and whatnot. A few hit-and-miss bars and being far too tired to properly enjoy ourselves, we all headed home – me and Kayleigh going via McDonalds!

Sunday turned into a fantastically lazy day, spent watching DVDs, eating junk food and just relaxing. Kayleigh needed it because she’s been on the go since she got here, and I needed it because, well, I just wanted a lazy day. We went out for dinner at Mexicali Rose in Richmond , which is turning into a regular eaterie for us all – the food and drinks are fantastic – and then Amber was kind enough to drive her to the airport. After a little trouble finding the hidden and quite shabby terminal 4, she was in time for checking in and on an adventure to Darwin .

So, to go off on a tangent at this point, I’d like to sing the praises of our first online home-shop from Safeway. After an initial problem of not being delivered when requested (was done a day later instead), it arrived on time and the first one of the time slot. While we checked the items, we found that, despite my asking for ‘no substitutes’ of items not in stock, we were provided with alternatives – but better ones. For example, we ordered 2L homebrand tomato sauce. Instead, we were given 4x 600ml Heinz tomato sauce. Now I’m not sure if this was just as an apology for the delivery screw up or because it was our first order (we also get free delivery for our first order), but at least we got the food – and it was the same rather than a completely alternative product as it was once at Coles when we forgot to tick that magic box. So I’ll be doing another online shop tonight, and we’ll soon find out if the quality can keep on going!