I Feel Your Pain, Chinese Air Passengers

Haven't we ALL felt like doing this after being subjected to some petty outrage by the airlines?

Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said.

The passengers clashed with airport police Tuesday morning, smashing computers and desks, Xinhua said, blaming the melee on China Southern staff's "inappropriate working attitude."

I don't think these Chinese passengers should get in any trouble. Their response is understandable, and they DID after all stop short of burning the airport down or hanging airline employees...

Killer 'Roos

Everybody thinks we've got it easy in Australia. And everybody thinks kangaroos are big cute things like Skippy.

Wrong. Australia is full of dangerous wildlife, various hyper-poisonous beasties. And even kangaroos can be dangerous. One recently attacked an old lady on her ranch in central New South Wales.

Hey, those things are well over 6 feet tall and adults weigh over 200 pounds. And they have big, strong claws that can disembowel a person in short order.

The lady, Rosemary Neal, was saved when her dog charged the irritable kangaroo, who hopped away.

Crikey.

Alas, Yorick Visits Popapalooza

I remember last year during APEC, seeing the signs for "World Youth Day" in Sydney and being glad I wouldn't be here for it.

I was wrong. The Pope is in Sydney, and so am I. Bad timing again, but Something Came Up and I had to be here.

World Youth Day, if you don't know, is a once-every-3-years festival where young Catholics from all over the place gather for masses, conference, flag-waving, and lots of singing. At least, that's how it looks to me.

The Pope arrived in Sydney Thursday and toured the harbor and city by boat and Popemobile, with hundreds of thousands waving. Me, I didn't get to Sydney till after that was over. But today, as I went around town doing my work, and as I walked around this evening seeing what was going on, the pilgrims as they're called were in full force.

The pilgrims paraded down George Street, waving flags, heading to various locations where they were staging the Stations of the Cross. Big crowds all over. Masses here, there and everywhere. Lots of singing, although I personally did not hear "Kumbayah."

Tonight was interesting, walking in central Sydney and seeing the combination of casually (and warmly) dressed, sober, nice, clean-cut, friendly, young (high school & college age) pilgrims and the staggering drunk sharp-dressed self-satisfied young hot shots that work in Sydney's financial district, out for their Friday night piss-up* at trendy bars that have gimmicks like giving you a parka and letting you drink an overpriced vodka in a 23F/-5C chilled room; I am not making that up it's called Minus Five. The two groups in some instances didn't mix all that well - I heard one encounter where some pilgrims apparently asked a drunken Italian-suit-wearing spiky-haired young Aussie business dude something about Jesus, and the guy yelled "I've got your news about Jesus. He doesn't exist!"

Luckily for him, a law preventing people from "annoying" the pilgrims was recently nullified on a technicality.

But on another corner, a young Aussie (not a pilgrim, he wasn't dressed in flags) yelled "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" and right on cue, the group of Malaysian kids yelled back "Oi, oi, oi!" Quick learners, those Malaysians.

I saw lots of dudes in robes - various priests, bishops, and cardinals, out hiking with their flock. And lots of flags - every little group seemed to be waving the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack or the Tricoleur or whatever they call the flags of Korea and Mexico and Argentina and Croatia and Italy and Brazil (disappointingly very very dressed unlike their World Cup fans - a Sydney "winter" must feel cold to somebody from Rio) and Papua New Guinea and Texas and Malaysia and South Africa and Germany and Canada and Quebec and from lots of other places. The places whose flags I don't know. Oh, and lots of Irish, very helpfully dressed head to toe in green so you could identify them. And even the Irish were sober - at least at 3:00 in the afternoon when I encountered them. Lots of guitars too - singing is a big part of this Catholic-a-thon. And of course, lots and lots of Aussies with their flags. And apparently 33 Burmese, who only got their visas late, based on the Australians' suspicion that they would stay illegally and work - the way at least one Russian pilgrim did, according to what one Sidneysider I heard tell another at a coffee stand, allegedly landing a job as a security guard within 48 hours of landing in Sydney.

On Saturday is the big thing, when 500,000 people are supposed to cram into Randwick racetrack to hear the Pope say mass. I'll keep away - crowds that big are a pain, no matter how nicely behaved.

*Night of heavy boozing

Another Battle in the Ongoing Struggle

Our house has tried to injure me with exploding microwaves and shattering light fixtures. It has been nearly flattened by a tree.

And the latest - a mini ice age. Last week I got home from Sydney to find the house very cold - much colder than we keep it. The furnace had gone out. And it was naturally the coldest week so far in Canberra's winter.

Fortunately, the furnace was under warranty and was quickly fixed, after a few frigid days... But it was funny/pathetic to see the cats huddled around the oil heater thingie, noses practically touching it.

A Down-Under Fourth of July

When you're in the diplomatic business, your national day isn't a day off - it's just a different kind of work day. And so it was today for the Fourth of July, down here in cool & breezy Canberra.

First, that is the biggest adjustment to living in the Southern Hemisphere. Not so much a warm Christmas - you can have a hot Christmas without leaving the USA. Nope, what is weird is having a cold and blustery Fourth of July. My memories of the Fourth all involve being hot and sweaty, drenched in the humidity of an American midwestern or eastern summer. Except for those years when the Fourth brought nature's own fireworks, raucous thunderstorms and gully-washing rain squalls that had everybody heading for the hills.

So we did the Fourth here, the embassy community and a few hundred official guests, various Australians and foreign diplomats all packing into the big tent set up in the Ambassador's back yard, to mark our national day - Independence Day. At least there wasn't cold rain like last year, but it was still pretty cool, temperature-wise, as we greeted everybody. A few nice words, a neat performance of the Australian and American national anthems by a fife-and-drum group from the Australian National University and the Australian army. American beer and finger foods, snatched conversations, lots of military guys - US, Australian, and other - in their dress uniforms adding a little brass, spit and polish to the affair.

And thankfully some hot coffee to warm my chilled mitts. Not something I usually associate with the Fourth.