It was terrific tonight to watch Ben Knight’s report from the Middle East on the 7.30 Report, ah 7.30. I have a bit of a soft spot for Ben: I remember when he came in to the ABC in Mildura about twenty years ago, first as a work experience student, then as a producer, and then as a presenter. Since then, he’s gone off and got married and had children, and works as an ABC foreign correspondent.
The same is true of Zoe Daniel. Zoe was my producer many years ago on Statewide Drive. She then got a job as a Rural Reporter on the North Coast, worked as a Current Affairs Reporter in Melbourne, got married to a terrific bloke, had some kids, and works now as the ABC’s Correspondent in South East Asia.
Although I don’t know Sally Sara as well, she and I have some connections too. In the late 80s, I worked at 2WEB in Bourke. Sally started work there soon after I left to take up a job at the ABC in Renmark. Soon after I left Renmark to take up a job in Wagga Wagga, Sally followed me from Bourke to Renmark. When they write the history of 2WEB, I suspect she’ll be the station’s most famous former worker.
And then there’s Brigid Glanville. I remember Brigid as a fresh-faced Rural Reporter working for the ABC in Tamworth, and who I met for the first time at The Cattleman’s Bar at the Royal Easter Show.
As I watched television tonight and saw Ben report from the Middle East, I reflected for a moment on the wonderful, talented broadcasters and journalists like Ben, Zoe, Sally and Brigid (and loads of others) who I’ve seen come up through the ranks.
They’re all journos who have done far more “riskier” things than me. I’ve gone down a different, “safer” path in my career. Still hard work. Still challenging, but different. And I’ve never had to put my life on the line :) I admire them all for the personal and professional risks they’ve taken.
And when I see them on television at night reporting from different “hot spots” I am reminded of them as young journalists, and feel proud that I’ve been around long enough to know them when they were young and up and coming.
They stand in stark contrast to what I call the “cut and paste generation”. And by that, I mean the journalists who don’t think there’s a story until there’s a “media release” or it appears in a newspaper. And those people who call themselves journalists, but who really should call themselves comedy writers.
I have only vague memories of eating tripe as a child. Typically, it’s the food people of my age and background describe as the food “my parents made me eat”. I don’t have any such negative memories. I was always a bit of a “garbage guts” who would eat everything that was on offer. Liver? Yes. Kidney? Yes. Peas? Yes. Brains? Yes. Tripe? Sure, why not.
The house in which I grew up was a house where everyone was considerably older than me. I was the only child in a house of “old people”. On one occasion, I recall calculating the average age of the household was 52, and concluding it was only that low because I was 12 at the time. As a result of growing up with people who had grown up, largely, on farms, and who lived through one or two world wars, as well as the great depression, I was brought up with an open mind about food. About the only thing I never really liked was olives, and that all changed a couple of years ago anyway. I still couldn’t come at eating brains from a live monkey (as that’s just cruel, IMHO), but I’m open-minded about most food. Hey, in the midst of the current “horse meat in take-away drama” being played out in the media, I’ve found myself asking “what’s wrong with that?”.
William, Ji-Shen, Kate, James
In that context, I LOVED eating at the Red Chilli Sichuan Restaurant on Sydney’s Glebe Point Road on Wednesday night. A group of us went there after attending the opening night of the Chinese New Year exhibition, Snake, Snake, Snake at Sydney Town Hall, which my friend Kate has curated.
In a three-tabled party of people who were largely Chinese born or Australian born Chinese, it was great to be taken into new areas of food I wouldn’t have otherwise known about. I loved, for example, the cold meat terrine (something I’ve never really associated with Chinese food before). There was a terrific celery soup which on the surface sounds a little bland, but which was very tasty. And in particular, I loved the tripe and beef dish.
“Chinese tripe is a totally different experience”, my friend and colleague Andrea told me today. She grew up in a mixed-race household with a Chinese father and a Dutch mother. She told me today how much she loved tripe prepared in the Chinese style compared with that prepared in the traditional European style, where it’s often served in milk. Having tasted the dish on Wednesday night, I’m inclined to agree.
An early CD errr LP from the Australian television program, Young Talent Time.
There have only been a couple of occasions in my life when I’ve found my musical tastes have matched up with my peers. My earliest and strongest musical influence was probably “Young Talent Time”. I absolutely adored that program and, in particular, had a special place in my heart for Jamie Redfern. In what was undoubtedly a sign of things to come, I discovered many years later that in Kindergarten, I had scrawled “I love Jamie Redfern” on my pencil case. Yes, seriously.
And then for a couple of years, I kept up with the charts, with “Explosive Hits 75” being a particular favourite album. Even though it contained popular hits such as Sherbet’s “Summer Love”, I was probably more attracted to Al Martino’s “To The Door Of The Sun” and Gilbert Becaud’s “A Little Love And Understanding”, instantly labelling me to my peers as a musical outsider. I mean, I had the posters of Sherbert (without their shirts on) plastered all over my wall, but I guess (again in hindsight) it may have been for other reasons.
And so I guess it wasn’t until the ABBA explosion of 1975-1976 that my musical tastes actually matched with my peers. Quite vividly I remember bringing along my copies of “Arrival” & “The Best Of ABBA’ to be played on the record player during lunch break, at a time when the world was divided between ABBA fans and “Bay City Rollers” fans. And then, of course, it all went pear-shaped for ABBA in Australia, with just a few of us remaining as ABBA fans.
At about this time I discovered Peter Allen, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minelli and Judy Garland (yeah, the writing was on the wall wasn’t it?), further demonstrating just how out of touch I was with my peers. While they were listening to Sunnyboys & Midnight Oil, I was discovering show tunes and the avante garde pop sounds of Yazoo, Eurythmics and Grace Jones.
And then I went to university and discovered dance music, with the likes of “Dead or Alive”, “Man To Man”, “Paul Lekakis” and various other European disco artists, providing a soundtrack which I could actually share with my peers. Mind you, a fair percentage of my friends at university were also deeply into “The Riptides” (later Ganggajang) and “The Go-Betweens” popular bands at the time.
In the period since then I haven’t really cared about the musical taste of my peers. I’ve just gone through life happily enjoying the music that I do, covering a broad spectrum of genres and artists.
But once again tonight, I was reminded about how out of touch I am with my peers when it comes to music. I’ve just finished watching My Favourite Album and was more than a little disappointed. Unlike last year’s “My Favourite Movie”, it would appear those who voted this year represent a very narrow percentage of the population. I’m guessing most of those who voted were aged 35-45 males. But isn’t that me? Well, yeah, but while I have broad musical tastes and don’t really care what others think, I’m guessing most of those who voted tonight read serious “music magazines” and like “serious rock”.
As Renee Geyer pointed out, there were no Australians, no women (five out of 100 albums had female vocalists) and no black performers in the Top 10. Instead, we had the usual suspects of white American male singer-songwriters and guitar-based rock bands. A boring, predictable list, IMHO.
The view from the sixth floor cafe at Google HQ in Sydney is pretty damn good. Along with about 150 others, I participated today in a “Google 4 Media Day” held there which ended with a couple of glasses of wine. It was a lovely day in Sydney, with a nice breeze, and the perfect end to an interesting day.
Organised by the Media Team at Google here in Sydney, there was an obvious PR element to the day, as we were encouraged to use Youtube, Google+, Hangouts, Earth and other Google products. But there were lots of other interesting things covered which won’t necessarily lead directly to greater profits for one of the world’s largest companies.
“I’d never heard of Google.org until today”, I said to someone over lunch. Google.org is the philanthropic part of Google, where they support non-for-profit organisations, and do “good things” such as Crisis Response. One of the engineers who works on Crisis Response, based here in Sydney, Anthony Baxter (who has a wonderfully dry sense of humour) spoke about their recent work on public transportation in New York around Hurricane Sandy, as an example of how they’re working to create up to date information which can hopefully help people when they need it most.
Souvenier Android Thumb Drive
The first part of the day, however, was spent going through some of the more advanced Google Search features, which I already use including searching by dates. Some time was also spent talking about Google Trends which I had read about, but hadn’t investigated properly. Trends allows you to get an idea of what people are searching for online, with the oft-quoted example of how they’ve been able to track influenza ahead of the game, and share that information with health authorities. “It’s not statistical”, was the common refrain from a number of people over morning tea, to which someone replied “think of it as a tip-off”. It’s just another research tool, I added to the discussion.
There was also a really interesting discussion in the morning about social media and journalism, involving people from Storyful, Mashable and the New York Times (more than half their audience is international, these days, apparently). There were a couple of interesting things which came out of this session, including an observation that, as data networks became congested (or unavailable) during Hurricane Sandy, many people used SMS to post to, and receive information from Twitter. The most interesting panellist, I thought, was David Clinch from Storyful. As I’ve sat down tonight and reviewed my notes, he was the one who said the things I most often quoted. My favourite quote from him, about social media generally, was that you’re not looking for “the wisdom of the crowd” but instead “the wisdom in the crowd”. He also made the argument media companies shouldn’t “waste time and resources on social media, if they aren’t going to directly lead to better content”. The session was conducted as a Google Hangout, and is now available to watch on Youtube.
I also really liked the idea of The Lives They Lived, based around one of my favourite parts of the New York Times, their obituary section. I really like their obituaries, as they’re always so well written. But this feature sought to “democratize” the obituaries, and asked their readers to write in about “ordinary people” who they knew who had died in the last year. I guess it’s because I like family history so much, that I think this is such an interesting idea.
There was also a session this morning about Youtube, and I was particularly interested to in CitizenTube which features curated and verified content from “ordinary people” around current news events. One of the most interesting statistics which came out from this session was that Australians were the third most likely, behind the US and Canada, to watch the recent Presidential Debates on Youtube.
A little bit of learning in the men’s toilet at Google HQ in Sydney
Later in the afternoon, we split off into groups where the focus was on practical hands-on use of a number of applications particularly suited to use by media. There was a session on data visualization, one on Google Maps, and the one I attended, the session called “Getting Started with Google+ Hangouts”. Even though I’ve used hangouts (it took about ninety seconds to download the plugin and work out how to use), I was interested to learn more about hangouts. As well as the ability to interact with audiences in new ways, I think they have enormous potential for broadcast, including radio, as they can deliver reasonably good audio from up to ten people simultaneously. I’ve done a little experimentation with them at work, and have concluded that at this stage of the development of the product, and the lack of high quality broadband, they’ll probably work best in a pre-recorded environment. When the NBN rolls out, I suspect they’ll come into their own for broadcasters. Of course, there’s a lot of companies and products competing in this space, but significantly, Hangouts are currently free, whereas multiple person chats on Skype, for example, come at a cost.
Fox Sports uses Google+ Hangouts
I asked a question about which media companies in Australia had been using Google Hangouts. The early use by +Sunrise was mentioned, with specific reference to their multi-camera “behind the scenes” hangout. Having a look at the Sunrise page tonight, I note, their page hasn’t been updated since the end of August when they gained a new, simpler url. Nova was also mentioned, as was Fox Sports who have been conducting viewer hangouts with sports fans. Also on the sporting side of things, Carlton Football Club has been involved in a number of regular hangouts, where fans get to meet players, the coach, and other officials. I quite like their use of an animated gif in their Google+ profile page.
Sport has been a big thing for Google+, as has travel, photographing and cooking. “The best hangouts are those with a practical element to them”, Lucinda Barlow who is Head of Marketing Google Australia & NZ went on to say, showing us examples of cooking glasses, and even yoga glasses which have been conducted using Google Hangouts. A few weeks ago I showed by Swedish teacher how to set up a hangout, as she is interested in connecting with remote students, emphasising the educational possibilities of this platform.
The answer to “how long should a hangout be” is pretty much the same as “how long is a piece of string”. Although the answer to “how long CAN a hangout be” is “four hours”, it was noted author hangouts tend to be about twenty minutes. “That feels about right”,
It was also interesting to learn about the Lower Thirds App which allows you to caption your guests in a hangout.
Although I’m not one for “networking” at these kind of events, I did enjoy catching up with some other “media types” who I hadn’t seen for a while.
Although the big news of the day was the Victorian election, the headline which caught my attention today was the banner headline of the “NT News”: “Woman falls out of paddy wagon”. Isn’t it a story you just WANT to read. Don’t you just know it’s going to be a great yarn? Or could it be quite lame? I don’t know because I never got around to reading today’s “NT News”. Not even as I enjoyed a late breakfast in Darwin ahead of my flight back to Sydney.
The only other things I managed to fit in this morning was a swim in the pool (since the sun covered the pool it was actually quite chilly), a walk around the rememberance shrine for the bombing of Darwin between 1942 and 1945, and buying some new thongs. Yes, my old thongs have been getting a little thin, and so I figured if I was going to buy some new thongs, Darwin was probably the place to do it. And let me tell you, there was lots of choice, and the shop assistants were extremely knowledgeable about what was on offer. In the end, I settled on a simple pair of Havaianas, even though the Lightning Bolts were on sale at two for thirty dollars.
I went to the airport a little earlier than I’d planned, simply because of the air conditioning on offer. Darwin today was pretty bloody humid. Thankfully the plane was pretty empty. That still didn’t stop me finding myself behind the type of aircraft traveller I hate most.
“Excuse me. Excuse me. Can you please not lean back so far. Can you straighten your seat”, I said to the man in front of me on the aircraft. Although he gave me a “fuck off” look, and said nothing, he respected my wishes. You just know when you’re going to get one of “those” passengers in front of you. As a general rule, I’ve noticed they come in with lots of bags, they tend to walk down the aisle taking up lots of room, and almost instantly, as soon as they sit down, they immediately put their seat into recline. The fact that this bloke looked like “Comic Book Guy” from “The Simpsons” adds a little to the image I’m hoping to describe of the flight back from Darwin to Sydney. For years I would sit and suffer with these selfish people who, without turning around to look if you’ve got a computer or a meal or something on the tray table, they click the button, and suddenly the aircraft seat is their chez lounge. Having suffered for years , I now challenge people. The nice ones – like myself – who look around and check, and ask “do you mind if I recline the seat” are fine. It’s those bastards who don’t look and, frankly, don’t care that shit me.
Anyway, having chastened him, I enjoyed the flight back to Sydney. And tonight’s just been an evening of election watching. Like the cricket, however, I went with silent visuals from the television and radio commentary from the ABC.
What do you think is more interesting: standing in a park waiting for a building to collapse, or standing in a park watching people waiting for a building to collapse?
I think it’s the latter, simply because there’s more to watch. I guess it’s a bit like watching cricket in some ways: you stand there watching, waiting for something exciting to happen, without any guarantee that it actually will.
And so you find yourself chatting to the people nearby and then guess what? You suddenly realise you can add the words “amateur structural engineer” to your portfolio.
Crown Street is closed and there’s a crowd of 200-300 people (plus an extra 100 from the media) standing in the park next to the Clock Hotel (the view from the upstairs verandah bar must be terrific) watching, waiting for the imminent collapse of the “Indian Chili Restaurant”.
Building Collapse
As the restaurant is located next to what was the Surry Hills Library, which has been a construction site for about twelve months, a lot of people in the park are blaming the imminent collapse on the big hole in the ground.
Collapsed Building
“How long have you been here for?”, I said to a colleague who is covering the story for television news. “Since 10 o’clock this morning”, he told me with a wry grin. All of the television stations (except SBS) seem to have crews there. We love a building collapse in Sydney, don’t we?
Overhead, there are more helicopters in the area than we had during APEC. And although I can’t imagine there would be a significant danger from its collapse, a police line has been established in the park, forcing the crowd back behind the children’s play equipment.
In the midst of all this rubber-necking, I feel sorry for the owners. Not only are they losing a terrific takeaway (the food was excellent), but I read in one of the papers they’re not insured.
“I have this feeling we’ve met each other before”, the young woman said to me tonight at Sydney’s 4A Gallery. We had been introduced by my friend Kate at the annual Members Exhibition of the Sydney gallery which specialises in Asian-Australian Art. It’s a gallery which I like very much, and which I support through their Edition Series, and through generous bar “donations” at their regular opening nights. In what was less than six degrees of separation, the young woman and I quickly established we had been to the same “group dinner” in Beijing just over two years ago. She’s an Australian born woman with Chinese parents who had spent the last four years living in Beijing, and who had recently returned to live in Australia, and who actually knows some people I work with. What are the odds?
4a Members Exhibition
I was there visiting Kate who lives and works on-and-off in Beijing. On my final night in town, however, she needed to make a visit to Hong Kong to renew her Visa. Thus, I spent the night with a friend of hers who has lived in China for over twenty years and who works in the arts and a former colleague (and friend) of mine who had previously lived in Beijing, and who just happened to be back in town at the time. What are the odds?
The night started off with a very lovely dinner at a restaurant. Don’t ask me where it was as I don’t remember, not because I was drunk or anything, but because I simply didn’t know my way around Beijing to remember. “There were two tables of people, weren’t there?”, the woman tonight asked, adding “Didn’t you guys end up going to Destination?”, she asked, a reference to one of the better known gay bars or “exotic bars” as they’re known locally in Beijing. “Yes”, I told her, adding we had also ended up in a rather nameless, seedy bar in the middle of nowhere where a group of young women didn’t seem to mind we were gay, showed incredible interest in dancing with us, and generally hanging out. “Blame it on the baijiu“, I told her.
Baijiu? As I wrote at the time…
And so when it was suggested that we purchase a bottle of the Chinese high spirit alcohol, I was a little nervous. “What does the smell and flavour remind you of?’, a friend asked me. “Amyl nitrate”, I replied.
What are the odds, though, of being at the same table as someone two years ago at a restaurant in Beijing, and meeting them again tonight at an art gallery in Sydney? Would that be 23-million-to-one?
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Endorsed. They are invaluable. Ben has been first class.
Endorsed. They are invaluable. Ben has been first class.
I noticed that Sally Sara got a gong in the Australia Day awards.