Visit to Perth

Kings Park, from War Memorial.

I visited Perth recently and paid homage to the statue of ACDC singer Bon Scott, which is near the Fish Markets in Freo. Also, Kings Park for lunch and a visit to the War Memorial.

Govt-wise, Perth is the only State with Liberals (conservatives) in power, and they have all the top former-Howard people there (all top guns, I’ve heard).

Bon Scott statue, Freo

Also, chit chat about the UK and how that’s going. Apparently when Lehman collapsed last year, for six weeks the HM Treasury peeps spent 24/7 at the office, sleeping under their desks and sending people out to buy underwear.

The Queen was FURIOUS and called in the Governor of the Bank of England (first time she’d ever had an audience with him) for a “please explain” meeting on why the ‘brightest minds in the country” had stuffed everything up.
Then she visited the London School of Economics and they showed her diagrams of how everything had gone bad. Theories of “herd” behaviour and “irrational” behaviour had been ignored. Instead, finance people had gone for their own “incentives” and ignored the bigger, global picture. Just looking out for themselves. Also, with derivatives maturing in 5, 10, 15 years, more shocks could be ahead.

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Same Sex marriage rally

Protesters march in George St (Sydney's main street).
Protesters march along George Street (Sydney's main street).

Went to the Same Sex Marriage rally at Sydney Town Hall. One of the speakers, Katrina,  said she’d been warned that the Salt Shakers were there – who hate gay marriage – and they were taking photos to allegedly try and misrepresent the crowd as being smaller than it was. [You can see from the photos on their website that every family is heteronormative. There’s always someone out of the norm, though, that’s life. They must straitjacket all of their family members and friends, trying to squeeze and mask the quirks so they can fit a “normal” definition. I agree with their Cronulla riots analysis, though.]

Just ignore their propaganda, as there was a great turn-up, despite it being stilfing hot. A few speakers, then we marched off to Bathurst St and back in a big square to Town Hall. The police closed off the main street of Sydney, George St, for the march, and the traffic was held up but most motorists were tooting their horns in support, rather than getting stroppy. It was a great atmosphere.

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Advanced marketing course

Did an Advanced Marketing course the past two days, Sydney Uni. Learnt a lot of new terms and jargon. We had to do several team exercises and think up marketing campaigns. The most interesting bits were how to conduct an experiential campaign and the various ways of measuring a campaign’s success. I was very impressed by the quality of the other students. I have a pretty certificate.

Chatted with a lovely lady at the course who used to present “Relationships and Intimacy” courses at Hillsong.

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Pollywaffle to become extinct!

The best chocolate bar ever.
50 grams of scrumpliciousness.

Yum! But no more Pollywaffles. 😦 A favourite Aussie chocolate bar with marshmallow in the centre. They were sold for 62 years here. Nestle is going to stop making them cause Kit Kats are more popular.

This is what happens when a multinational takes over an Aussie company — they don’t bother promoting the Aussie products and then ditch them. Thanks Nestle!