APEC

Asia Pacific Economic Corporation.  Or as the Chaser puts it, A Pointless Expensive Crock.

APEC is in town.  Its held in Sydney, the largest city in Australia, and the city I now work in.  The meeting starts officially today and goes all weekend, but visitors have been turning up all week.

This means that our Prime Minister and Dubya, and the Chinese head of state and every other leader in the asia pacific region is in town.  Which means that Australia is seeing the biggest security (read civil rights invasion force) that has ever been staged here.  Most of it because Dubya's here. {sigh}

At my Uni we are well away from the section of the city that has been cordoned off.  So my travel was not disrupted this week.  Getting to work early and leaving late meant that I missed most of the traffic congestion caused by motorcades coming in from the airport etc etc.

Also as the meeting officially starts today, anyone working in the metropolitan part of Sydney (including my Uni) got a free public holiday today.  Translation, stay the heck out of Sydney and get paid for doing so.  Fine by me!

Speaking of the Chaser - some of those boys got arrested yesterday. Full story here. And to full understand the Aussie opinion on it all, read the comments below the article!

I think it was a pretty good stunt they pulled.  Unfortunately as they weren't stopped at any of the regular checkpoints, they actually got to within 10 metres of the hotel where Dubya is staying before they revealed themselves (one dressed as Osama) before any of the security people cottoned on as to what was happening.  All the official sources are saying that the boys went too far with this stunt - but frankly what does it say about all of this security if they can get that far in and then had to draw attention to themselves to get noticed.

I think they mainly got arrested for flamboyantly exposing holes in the security.  I don't think even the Chaser guys expected the security to be so bad!  I think they just expected to get a few laughs out of chatting up the guys at the outermost checkpoint - but they just kept being allowed through and then the next one and then the next one until they were right outside Dubya's hotel .....

Sometimes I love working at a University.  All week all the commercial establishments such as cafes and restaurants and the student run activities have all been playing protest songs all day.  Everything from Pink's Please Mr President (which I have as the background on my main page) to Green Day's American Idiot to various Midnight Oil songs.

Only bad spot of the week was on my way out to one of these coffee shops a student ran full tilt into me, knocking me down and smashing my Ziltoid mug!  And the A-hole didn't even slow down, just kept running!

I'm more peeved over the loss of my mug - I love Ziltoid and bought that mug especially from the Devin Townsend site and got it shipped over from the States!  Grrrrrrr!

Other than that, I'm off to do some more present buying and then coffee with a friend and then P will probably be over this afternoon.  Hope I can find some time to get some stitching done :)

Today's pic is one Paul took after work a couple of months ago - this is how Trub and I usually stitch and in my usual stitching position.  Only difference is she's getting annoyed with the camera flash and looking over instead of curling her head inside and going back to sleep.  I remember that night because P left me there to stitch and unwind while he made dinner :)