Albo - 31st Prime Minister of Australia

A lot is happening lately, but the biggest news is that after 3 terms of Coalition government - Labor won the election, and Albo is now PM rather than ScoMo. 

Beneath the surface, the drop in the primary votes for the two major parties suggests there might be a seismic shift coming: the rise of the Independents and the demise of the major parties. I am yet to get my head around how the "preference" affects the outcome of elections but am just glad we probably do live in one of the democracies with the best electoral systems in the world.

The honeymoon period with the new government starts in earnest.

The US Patent and Trademark Office

What do you know about Patents? For me, not much. The New York Times article on this is simply eye opening. The thing is, you might have a very different philosophical view on the role and size of government in a citizen's life to me. But one thing we probably can agree on is, there is a central role for government regulate the market. For this, it seems the current patent system is broken.
 

Madeleine Albright

 

Secretary Albright - she was the first Secretary of State I remembered by name as I was growing up. Her passing is once again a reminder we all die one day, Putin will too! In Western ciricles, she was a defender of the Free World - to the Iraqis, may be not quite, this piece on Aljazeera - not my "go to" media source I might add, is interesting seeing it from the perspective of someone who lived through the sanctions. 

We must remember that there are often, if not always, two sides to a story. We ignore this fact to our peril.

An unthinkable war in 2022

 

This is just unthinkable. In my 40 odd years of existence, I would never imagine a headline like this. We are not in the 1920s, any respectable global powers - a permanent member of the UN Security Council for goodness's sake, wage a war on a country of 44 million?

The world really hasn't been quite right since early 2020... is Putin getting demented? He is 69 now.. Mao Zedong started "The Great Leap Forward" when he was 65.. Xi Jingping is now 68..

2022

 

So, finally. A sense of normality. How long would this last? Hopefully for a quite a while, no, hopefully for ever! No more lockdowns, no more. This is the year to start living normally! Borders will open, with minimal fuss - mark my words.

December 2021

So, we survived. Last day of Year 1 and Year 2 for Elisha and Jonathan respectively. Where has all the time gone??  Where has... the last 2 years gone? The lights went up last week, probably will jazz it up a bit next year but for now, this will do.

And indeed, change is the only constant. An outdoor pre-Christmas celebration tonigth at Church was really quite nice. 

Lastly.. scene of bike accident revisited. Hindsight is always 20/20, look at the slope and the angle of the turn!!! Yes, I was coming down and was going to turn left to under the bridge. I skidded right at the apex of that corner...

Exactly 2 weeks till the end of 2021.... I have a very good feeling about 2022. It again, really can't be worse than 2021 for the majority, if not all of us.

Where is Peng Shuai?

 

If the Russians and North Koreans are famous for poisoning dissenters, then the Chinese, or more correctly the Chinese Community Party, is increasingly famous for making dissenters "disappear" from the public eye.

This is truely embarrassing. We should follow this closely - to seen if WTA is true to its words. To see if the CCP can get away with this, again. I, for one, fully support WTA's stance on this.

Freedom for Melbourne... finally

TWO days before the kids gone back to school from this forever lockdown - I fell off my push bike. Yup, I decided to go for a bike ride before everyone hit the trails... did 40km which was my longest ride so far and 2/3 of the way did this silly thing.

At least nothing is broken, just grazes and bruises. NOT YOUNG ANYMORE is all I have to say. Hope I get over this soon.

The 400th post - Te Urewera & The Daintree rainforest

 

This is the 400th post. I started this blog shortly before I met my wife, and have tried my best to write at least once a month. We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary this year. May this blog lives on for at least a little while longer yet!

Melbourne is still in lockdown - in fact, we went from one of the world's most liveable cities to the most locked down. Yes, apparently no place on earth has endured longer "stay at home" order. The irony of that just has to make you laugh. With the projected number of COVID patients is set to increase over the coming weeks, I don't want to talk about COVID anymore. Yet, let's just see, the modellers might get it wrong, and if so, it won't be the first time as you just can't model human behaviours to the tee, right?

Yet it's just so hard not to relate our everyday life to COVID... If not for COVID, we might just have returned from a day tour of the Daintree rainforest and enjoying sunset in Port Douglas as a family of four, in this second week of Term 3 school holiday. So I'm thrilled to hear the Queensland government struck a deal with the local Aboriginal people to protect Daintree. Clearly a long time coming but at least it's a start. We must go to Daintree when this calamity is over.

Australia, the government and it's people, of course, remains a bit behind the Kiwis in mending their relationship with the First People of the land. The recital of the "Acknowledgement of country" before a meeting still sound hollow and pretentious every time I hear it and is no where near as natural as, for example, hearing someone closing of a speech in NZ with "tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa". But then again, that might just be my kiwi bias.

Lockdown 6.0 - upgraded!

 

Less than a month ago, I wrote the collapse of Afghan's Western backed government was imminent. Well, this photos says it all - inside the Presidential Palace - yesterday.

All forms of governments exist on Earth - from the absolute monarchy of Bhutan, to the constitutional monarchy of the Commonwealth, to the meritocracy free market democracy of the United States, and of course, the faux democratic autocracy of Putin's Russia and Xi's Communist People's Republic of China. To claim one form of government is superior to another will be ill-informed. There is no better, and definitely no "best". Anyone who thinks a little deeper will admit the pros and cons of various forms of governments. 

So, for one country to claim superiority over another is just wrong. I can't help to think how any Western Afghan war veterans will feel right now. They were told that they were on the "right side of history" repeatedly over the last 20 years of American occupation. With literally a stroke of a pen, the Americans are now gone. I don't like to compare the current situation to Vietnam because it is not quite the same. But how do you, and would you, find meaning in all your sacrifices if you are a Afghan veteran?