Tell me something new and exciting...

So each day at around 4.30, my brain shuts down for the day, only to be reactivated by Facebook or Blogspot. Quite often I'm known to spin around in my chair and shout at random passers by "tell me something new and exciting!"

Over the past few weeks this has turned into something of a competition with daily recognition for 'best individual team member contribution' and also a weekly nomination for 'outstandingly exciting new information'.

It's often a mixed bag. Solly Pombo, the fabulous English accented Spanish 'chick' I'm lucky enough to sit next to (hey I ain't moved to the US yet - chick is totally acceptable here -didn't I say I was stuck in a 50's time-warp?), has entered the following over the last week or so:

1. I'm going to see Miss Saigon - OK, it was new in that I didn't know, but I told her 'nil points' - with Eurovision accent - for exciting. Miss Saigon should be consigned to it's tragic 20th Century past.
2. Hed Kandi is coming to Australia - New AND exciting - she won that day.
3. I'm having my eyeballs lasered - New, exciting and kinda kookilly intriguing on the process front - she would have won except Silvia beat her to it that night with her only entry...

Which was..?

• I'm going Sky Diving. Silvia is often out of the office explaining her lack of entries, however she won that day and has yet to be beaten in the overall contest which runs until I leave in August.

Current second place for the overall prize of 'most new and exciting individual ever' is held by Yudit, my boss. She is having her mid-back-length hair chopped Edward Scissorhands stylee on Friday with a shrug and a "I'm bored, do what you like Mr Hairdresser" attitude. I like her new and exciting style.

But hey, I wanna open this up to the masses for the possibility of a 'viewers prize'. Simply tell me something New AND Exciting for your chance to win the title of 'New and Exciting Outsider'. Send you answers to the comments board on a stamped addressed envelope.

Leaving on a jetplane..!

Well the decision has been made - finally!
I am off to Chicago as of late August - typically a date has yet to be set, but at least I know roughly when lol

Here's to the land of Oprah, Ferris and The Chicago Bears (both sorts).

The next few weeks will be hectic - you forget when you relocate that there's the packing, endless rounds of catch-ups and coffees, packing, tossing out of old things you haven't seen/used in years, packing, setting up of new bank accounts, gathering of paperwork for social security numbers, unpacking to find the one thing you can't wait until you arrive there for, re-packing and teary goodbyes to go through.

I can't wait.
Err Dan, about that flight to London I booked...

Starting to fear

'S funny but until now I'd been able to shrug off the war on terror as being something 'they' dreamed up to keep us afraid. While terrorists were car-bombers in foreign cities or young militants raging against a world they'd yet become part of I was able to believe that the fabric of our western society would remain firm.
When I heard that the 2005 London tube bombings were perpetrated by a home-grown cell I believed that these young men had been led astray by militant peers, that they weren't representative of the Muslim Majority and that the British Public would see this. After all did we walk around scowling at every Irishman in the 80's and 90's? No. I went to a mostly Irish Catholic school and it never crossed my mind that my classmates parents for all their singing of Irish Republican folk songs, might be making car bombs for an evening's entertainment.
Talking to my Aussie counterparts I was able to laugh at Sydney being on 'high alert' during Summer 2004 - the Harbour Bridge and city with it's lights turned off at night as a deterrent.
Yet now I'm not laughing. The current wave of near miss attacks were perpetrated by Doctors. Was there ever a more likely representative for the assimilated emigre than that of the doctor - educated, intellectual, rational and middle class. If any person was more likely to be perceived as buying into our western values surely this was it. Of course this complacency becomes a weakness waiting to be exploited.
While not home grown, this new cell raises the greatest threat to our society - that suddenly everyone is a potential threat - as long as they have a certain skin tone: Suddenly class, social standing and profession no-longer exclude from suspicion. Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as society, and yet for all her efforts, she was largely unable to dissolve it from the remnants of our medieval consciousness - the last ten years have seen a return to society focused values, despite any remnants of that 'me and mine' era. And yet slowly but surely, the boundaries of our societies draw closer, smaller and we begin to exclude people from our circles of trust.
Yes, the threat is real enough; not that our society will be torn apart by bombs, but by the idea that we are no longer a cohesive whole, rather a collection of fragmented groups with no shared concept of values and no shared future.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2730423.ece