Keks

A quick review of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony… Gee I’m glad I didn’t pay to see that, and I bet there are thousands of others thinking the same right now.

Highlights

• Fireworks

Lowlights

• Almost everything else, in particular -
  • Channel 9′s coverage, again… really, this time it was mainly thanks to Ray (thank God they ditched Liz)
  • AFL footballers
  • Dame Edna
  • Casey Donovan… but at least it wasn’t Anthony Callea… at least Casey did a half decent job of miming
  • Bollywood… sorry India, but I just don’t get it… but it’s not just Bollywood though, I’m not a big fan of any movies/shows where they sing the dialogue

Some of the other stuff wasn’t too bad… Paul Kelly was almost a highlight, and John Farnham was almost there too… but they were all a bit meh really… Oh… the David Dixon Award going to Samaresh Jung… like the rest of Australia I thought “who?”, but when it was explained that he was the Indian who won 5 gold, a silver and a bronze, I realised that thanks to Channel 9, I probably hadn’t even heard his name mentioned, hence my ignorance. A good choice I’d say.

Anyway, it all over… all the athletes and officials will pack up and head home now.

In short, I have to say the games were nowhere near as disruptive to life in this city as I expected. In fact they were quite enjoyable.

Stay tuned to a write-up about our Commonwealth Games experience from last Saturday where we saw the triathlons and sampled some of the cultural aspects of the Melbourne 2006 festival. Also, you’re all owed a medal table from me… that’s on it’s way.

On behalf of all of Melbourne (because we all know as a blogger I have the right to speak for us all), I say “Thank you to all the athletes and nations of the Commonwealth for making Melbourne 2006 a great games” (nb: I’d thank everyone else, but they were mentioned in the official speeches).

I had hoped to knock together a Commonwealth Games medal table to rival the one that breaking news have made available, however I was going to make mine a little different in that it would have taken into account the nations GDP etc, much like the table I created in the wake of the Athens Olympics.

There were to problems with me doing this though…

1. The lack of easily accessible GDP information about the each of such England, Scotland and Wales, not to mention the smallerBritish overseas territories that don’t have them all lumped as the United Kingdom… same for some of the other competing nations, such as Norfolk Island, Cook Islands and Niue.
2. I haven’t had the time to do it… always the way.

With any luck I’ll manage to track down some figures and some time to make on at the conclusion of the games… but that may be as successful as that site redesign I was planning.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been four years…

U2 have postponed the Australian leg of their tour because of “illness of an immediate family member of one of the bandââ�¬Â�… how much does that suck!

According to the Lypton Village, the immediate family member is Edgeââ�¬â�¢s daughter, Sian and her illness is leukemia. Now that’s very sad.

While upset about the tour being postponed, our thoughts are with Sian, Edge and Sian’s mother Morleigh. We pray that Sian has a full and speedy recovery.

That said… man I was looking forward to the concert… but one can understand why you’d postone or even cancel a tour in the circumstances… I’d do the same if it was one of my kids… and if I was a world famous rock star in the world’s greated rock band… now they’re some big “if”… but I guess it wouldn’t matter who or that I was, in such a situation I’d drop everything for my family.

I stumbled across Yahoo! Avatars today… and being a bit of an avatar junkie, I just had to see what I could create in the way of a self portrait.

Now, I’m nowhere near as svelte as this, nor do I look as young… however, it’s not too bad a likeness

While I’m posting, I may as well announce that I have some changes planned for this site…

“What!? You’re going to post stuff for a change?”

Ha ha… very funny… well deserved though.

Yes, I hope to post a little more regularly, but I’m planning of a redesign, which will be implimented later this week. That’s the plan anyway! Stay tuned.