Cool web sites

ok, I know the blog is meant to about news etc but check out these websites

• http://www.worldmapper.org Visualising Health Inequalities: world maps of death, disease and unhealthy environments. very cool
• http://www.popconnect.org/ Education and action for a better world. You can buy a great DVD/video on here which shows the growth of the human population since before AD and into the future. It costs $20 but is great and scary.
• http://www.populationmedia.org/ Fantastic site on population control, has a great little count on it that indicates how fast humans are coming in to this world.
• http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html great estimates on where our population is going! nice graphs and predictions on population size
• The equation, Impact= population X Affulence X technology

well I suppose if instead of smaller footprints, less foot prints!

bridgette

Swamp trip

The swamp trip on the weekend was fun. We went out to the swamps in Kent to hunt for the anopheles mosquito the one that transmits malaria. This involved scavenging around in an old bunker with a lot of spiders and fishing larvae out of swamps!

Believe it or not Malaria was common on the UK and Europe up until the beginning of the century. The last outbreak was in Kent when some soldiers infected with malaria were brought back and parked right in the middle of the swamp where the mosquitoes where, oops. For those who might be interested in the history click here and here for more.

We also visited the Rochester Castle which was nice and the Rochester Cathedral which had a very nice door. We then got stuck in a traffic jam as we headed towards Darwin House. Unfortunately the caretakers were very keen to get home and we were a little late so we didn't get to have a look inside.

Bridgette.

Abbey Road + Portobello Market

We spent Sunday walking down to Portobello Markets. The trip took us straight down Abbey road (which our street turns into) which obviously is home to Abbey Road Studios, the recording home of the Beatles classic album of the same name, along with most of their other material. It has been, and continues to be, utilized by a huge number of amazingly successful artists including, Shirley Bassey, Sir George Martin, Pink Floyd, The Police, Kate Bush, Radiohead, Blur, Gomez, Manic Street Preachers, U2 and Coldplay. It is also home to the recording of more movie soundtrack than you can poke a stick at.

I think the best time to have worked in the studio would have been 1967, when the Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in Studio 2, while Studio 1 was home to Pink Floyd were concurrently recording The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Would have been a very interesting 6 months or so indeed.

We also walked past Lords, home of all things cricket, but that has a big fence and grandstands around it so we couldn't take any photos of the cool media centre building there.

Portobello Markets is a fantastic mix of antiques, nic-nacks, fresh produce and prepared food. apparently it is the largest antique market in the world, or so the website says. We had a great falafel from a little Egyptian stand called The Happy Vegetarian, which was absolutely brilliant. Also found a good coffee from a fairtrade cafe, but still nothing on what Melbourne of Hobart have to offer in the coffee stakes.

Gotta run
Pete

overland07 are Local Heroes

We have recently been featured in two publications, in the space of 2 weeks. At this rate we should be the number 1 searched for term on Google in no time.

On February 1st 2007 General Practice South featured us in their bi-monthly newsletter, on page 2! You can read the article here.

The Tasmanian Centre for Global Learning featured us on their website, A Fairer World, on February 15th 2007. Their organisation works with community organisations and individuals to raise awareness of global issues and to promote action for social justice, peace and sustainable development.
The article they wrote classes us as "Local Heroes", hard to believe really
Read the feature for yourself here.

Babel, the heath and sunday newspapers

After a big week of study and work, Sunday we took it easy. We finally got up to Hampstead Heath which is large park near our house. Lovely area with mammoth houses. Nice park, lots of people with dogs, and jogging.

The rest of the day was spent lazing around reading the Sunday Telegraph, which we think is not quite as good as the Sunday Times, with neither rating against the Age for a good read.
Pete dismantled Bridgette's bike and put it back together, not to find a screw left over but a loose back wheel.... mmmm off to the bike shop.

We then decided to head off to see Babel in Camden which we had heard great reviews about. Fantastic, if you get the opportunity go and see it. The Director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, also did Amores Perros and 21 grams which are quite heavy movies. Babel was lighter but still quite provocative.

Bridgette

Study Munchkin

I was off to Liverpool on Thursday night despite the snow. It was an epic 5 hour bus ride which got there at 11pm at night. Why you might say? To complete a pre-exam prep course for the Travel Medicine Exam in Vancouver, which I hope to be doing. It was a full on two days of lectures from the 'expert' in the industry.

I will post the details of the course for those with a special interest in the area and am more than happy to forward any notes. Even between the youth hostel, the hotel where the conference was and the bus station there was an overwhelming Beatles presence. Another epic ride home on Saturday night brought me back to London. The bus might take 5 hours but it was a sixth of the price of the train which takes half the time.

Bridgette

Snow again!

Woke up this morning and found a good 5cm of snow in the drive way, the best part was that it didn't stop falling until about 11am. So you can imagine what the ride into work today was like, cold, slow and slushy.

It is quite amazing how a little bit of snow falls and the world as we know it grinds to and halt as if Armageddon had happened, but we some how managed to all survive. I tell you, people lose all ability to act in a coherent manner once they are surrounded by a bit of fresh powder (a bit of dreaming, it's more like an ice slushy once the first few cars drive over it).
Simple tasks like walking across the road and driving, suddenly become life defining moments with people and cars randomly spread out over the streets as if they were confetti. Cyclists are left to duck and weave between them, trying not to get hit by anything bigger than they are.

Bridgette experienced a bit of mob-attitude on the way to the tube this morning, as she was forced to catch public transport because of a study trip to Liverpool this evening. Pushing and shoving at tube stations is common, but is accentuated by snow, and under threat of the station being closed she decided to catch the bus.
Returning to the bus stop closest to our place there was no trouble getting on, but as the bus was completely full the driver refused to take more passengers from the stop outside the tube station. Obviously this didn't go down too well with the 100's of people unable to get into the tube station, so the bus was bashed by commuters and snow balls were thrown. Londoners!

Short and sweet this time, and no photos unfortunately. Bridgette is away until late Saturday night, so it could be a pretty quiet weekend.

over and out
Pete

Go the Wolf!

It is official, they came, they played, they conquered. Second time round they were rockin!

A full set of their entire album, with a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” thrown in for good measure. They had the crowd pumping from the word go with slick guitar riffs, psychedelic jam interludes and screeching vocals! Anyone would have thought that we were at a gig sometime in the 70’s.

We went with Mignot and Pricilla, who also had a great time, although I was a little unsure of Pri’s immediate response, but she seemed to be bopping along by the end of it.

If there was any criticism, it is that the sound was way too loud. I am sitting here 12 hours later, with my ears still ringing which is probably not a great thing. They obviously don’t have the same legal limits on volume as they do in Australia. I would also say that their sound is almost too big for an indoor venue, we would both love to see them again at an huge outdoor venue, once they have some written some more material.

Couldn’t get over the amount of scalpers outside the venue, cruising about, and afterwards selling £16 merchandise for a fiver. I think somebody lost a load off the back of a truck maybe?

And we have to hand it to the guy who was begging in the tube station before the gig, who we later saw in the concert complaining about how loud it was, and then amazingly was back begging after the gig. Suppose he has to get his cash to afford his ticket for tonight’s gig somehow.

Got to dash,
Pete

100Km to the top floor, what a circus.

Well, another weekend has passed, however this one was pretty jam packed and is definitely going to run into Monday night!

On Friday night we visited the Royal Albert Hall to see a performance of Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria, which was great! Highlights include the trampoline piece, the trapeze and the people who were doing triple back flips with numerous twists being sprung off and landing on a plank of wood (although I’m sure it wasn’t just any plank of wood).
There were also two contortionists who were identical in physique and costume (at least from our cheap seats anyway) who were able to bend their bodies into some very weird, not natural looking positions. They were that good that you actually couldn’t figure out which bits were hands and where the feet were. Bridgette immediately said “connective tissue disorder” and neither of knew whether to clap or say ouch!

Saturday saw us punch out our first 100Km day, with a ride along the Lee Valley cycle way, which is part of the National Cycle Network route 1. We were hoping to make it to a mountain bike track that is in the lonely planet, but by the time we got to Epping it was 3:15 and still about 15Km short of our target. We figured that since it starts getting dark at 4:40 and we still had 50Km’s to ride home we should bust a move and start heading home. A little more research would go a long way next time, as we pretty much rode straight through Epping Forest without even realising. Maps are great things!

We did bump into a couple of dodgy looking guys who were painting the town red. I'm pretty sure they didn't have a liscence to dump their toxic waste right on the side of the river like that though.

After eating ourselves out of house and home we went to the Top Floor to meet some people that Bridgette is studying with. It was a bit of a cabaret show with a solo guy with a guitar sounding great and a two girl pumping out some electro-beats sounding very much like Goldfrapp! Both were excellent, although by the time we paid the cover charge and had 2 drinks each it ended up being a AU $100 night, but that’s London. Great night.

Bridgette’s Auntie came up to London on Sunday, and took us to the Royal Academy. She’s a member so we both got into the two exhibitions for free, which was great, as they weren’t things that we would normally pay to go and see. Citizens and Kings had plenty of portraits and Chola: Sacred Bronzes of Southern India was a series of bronze statues of worship from India, very pretty.

Called into work on the way home and picked up our bike trailers which arrived earlier in the week, finally got them home and I constructed them. They seem very solid and both of us are very excited to finally have them, the last major thing we needed to acquire before embarking on our trip. Looking forward to giving them a go in a couple of weeks, I’ll post some photos and give a report of their handling ability in the future.

Which brings us to Monday.
Tonight we are venturing to the Hammersmith Apollo to see a little Australian band called Wolfmother. Should be excellent the second time round (saw them in Melbourne previously) and hopefully will have a few new tracks on hand, fingers crossed.

Till next time
Pete.