You wont believe what happened last night !! I am watching pay TV about 9.30 pm and my wife calls out from the bedroom, she is watching TV as well. There is a tsunami on the way here !!!!
I rushed to the computer and looked up the BOM site, our Australian weather bureau, and sure enough there was a tsunami warning for our coast due to an earthquake in New Zealand. Now being a pessimist all my life I straight away thought the worst. I must say though the report from the bureau was pretty serious. Keep away from the waters edge, evacuate low lying areas etc. etc. please notify neighbors etc. I did notify a couple who laughed and said not to worry too much, ha ha !!! well I said to my wife "I am off in the car to a safer place". She was all tucked up in bed and quite relaxed about it. "OK, I will alright as we are on the second story here " !!!!!!!
Well of course I stayed then to face the consequences. It was announced that a new update was coming at 10.08 pm, so I waited anxiously. The new report gave exactly the same warning as the first but as the wave, waves, whatever, was expected to arrive at 10.15 at our point of the coast, I decided to tuff it out with my wife. Nothing happened, luckily, but this morning one of my mates who had a friend that worked stacking supermarket shelves during the night told me the police had evacuated the workers during the night and that the tsunami threat was not withdrawn or updated until 4am this morning. So all is well that ends well but I could not help thinking about how relaxed everyone was about the whole thing. One of my calls advising of the possible situation developing was to our local waterside Yacht club. My phone call was greeted with no concern at all just laughter and advice for me to Google tsunami as all the details would be on the Internet if it was going to happen ? Well it didn't happen, we are all safe and dry, but I cannot help thinking as history has shown what a disaster it would have been had it really developed as predicted.

Bad Habits

One of my bad habits is to quote punchlines at opportune times from movies that I have seen. We all know the old classics such as "Hey punk, make my day" and many young men I am sure have tried to do the Clint Eastwood thing amongst their mates. Well my quotations are not quite so drastic as Clint's but still used at the right time can impress. As I am a Bud Spencer, Terence Hill fan I quite often use their quotations. As I am getting older and dealing with more and more worldly situations, corruption in Governments, broken promises, faulty equipment, efforts to avoid warranties etc. etc. I am certainly growing more and more disappointed with the world. There is a great scene in one of the "trinity boys" movies where Bud Spencer is standing in the middle of a wide span bridge, feeling miserable, and looking out across a vast scene of water, docklands, city landscape partly hidden by smog. A guy walks up to Bud and says, "Excuse me sir but can you please tell me where there is a toilet ? " In typical Bud Spencer style Bud turns around very slowly and stares in silence at the enquiring face for about 20 seconds, then finally Bud replies : "The whole world is a toilet, just one gigantic toilet bowl" I love this quote and every now and then I get the chance to use it too. Somehow it is strangely satisfying for me, is it just a bad habit or am I growing far too cynical ?