The Sydney to Melbourne "Express Passenger Train" spanning Australia's most in-demand long distance route has been stationary for an hour only 2 hours into the journey. A level crossing ahead won't close, so we can't traverse it. Like, anywhere else a guard would close the crossing by waving a flag.
The same train two days ago was over an hour late with similarly dumb excuses.
We aren't going to beat climate change this way, folk!
Also, it wasn't that I don't do sports. I was a competive sailer, expert skier, winning race-walker, and hold a lowly Asia-Pacific medal in radio direction-finding (like orienteering, but using DF gear on an unmarked map) competition - I was a reasonable runner in my 50s. I'm just not that interested in team sports, except volleyball
"Arduino Certification". Imagine being proud to be a certified dilettante
Best part of all was that the try I prevented was by a guy a year older than me, who had the same surname. A real prig, who had been bullying me every practice. He got free with the ball and only I could stop him. I brought him down hard into a face full of mud. It was glorious, and he never bullied me again
I only ever played one game of inter-school sport, with a rich school that placed great importance on weekend inter-school competition (I did not fit in culturally or economically). Got to the playing field where I was a reserve on the rugby team, to find the opposing team was two players short. So I played against my own side. Was even successful in defence against them. That episode characterises my entire school experience. My parents paid dearly for 11 years of supervised neglect
The Russian will say "we got screwed again, of course, but we made the buggers suffer deeply for it"
Ask either one "how's business" and an American will say "it's going to go gangbusters, we're killing the competition". An Australian will say "well, we're still here, aren't we?". And that reflects the challenges of the founders...
The Australian ethos is built on the notion of survival. The American, on conquest...
I think a people are formed by their physical environment. In the case of Russia, that is a special kind of brutal. Australia and the USA both have cultures shaped by different kinds of challenges...
Monotheism has lost an entire generation. All three are slugging it out and the world's people have had quite enough of their nonsense. This may well be the final battle leading to the Millennium, when peace and justice rules for a thousand years, instead of religions. Belief in a single truth is so tantalising... but now we understand that because we cannot know it with certainty, no one can claim an exclusive franchise on the truth. We must simply muddle on with people even when we disagree
