Ottawa - Thanksgiving

Well, it was thanksgiving at the weekend and I was lucky enough to be invited to stay with my flatmate Eric in Chelsea, a suburb just outside Ottawa, to spend Thanksgiving with his family. It was a really relaxing weekend, a large amount of time spent in Eric's spa.

Here are a few random shots from the weekend. Me, Anna (Eric's Sister), Daniel (Eric's brother), Gabrielle, Eric (my flatmate - top bloke), Laura (Eric's sister). The guy taking photo obviously hadn't used a zoom since 1968.
Eric in fade
Panorama of Ottawa
Spider installation and Ottawa Cathedral
Eric and I (if you have seen Devil's Hill you will notice Eric's remarkable likeness to Badge)
Parliament tower
Canadian Parliament
Danial, Laura, Anna, Gabrielle in fade
Canadian memorial to peace-keeping missions

Ottawa cathedral
Eric and his sister Anna

Canadian Wall commemorating service of Canadian forces in peace-keeping missions: Sudan

Autumn arrival: Flame red

Autumn leaves in Ottawa, Canada.

It can be hard being a statue

Photo taken just outside the Canadian Parliament House, Ottawa, Canada.

France beat New Zealand... Seriously.

Well, a couple of hours after posting my last post... life just got a whole lot stranger...

Wallabies Lose

Australia were sent packing from the 2007 Rugby World Cup after losing to England 12-10 this morning in Marseille.

Never have so many played so badly for so long.

It was heart breaking to see Stephen Larkham in tears at the end of the match, knowing that he would never again play for Australia, and that Australia's world cup loss in 2003 had gone unavenged for another four years.

Darker pages in Wallaby history? There are a few, but there's nothing like losing to the Poms. 200 years after England emptied its prisons by sending the dregs of its society to the end of the earth, Australians still hold a special place in their heart for seeing English people lose at sport. It's safe to say that the feeling is reciprocated. (see "World Cup loss 2003", and "Ashes loss 2005", as well as "how to bestow knighthood upon every player in a sporting team")

If you are not Australian, or English, or in to rugby, I can't really explain the shame associated with losing this morning. Not that England didn't deserve to win. In all honesty they were totally the better side.

But, it's just the thought that for the next four years, any English git I meet, will look at me, smile knowingly, flashing a set of gawky geezer teeth and a bad haircut, and say "Those Wallabies didn't go to well in the World Cup did they?"... and I will have to laugh along to keep the vibe of the conversation rolling and prevent myself from getting irrationally patriotic ("Yeah, well thanks for all the help you guys gave us in the Dardanelles! Why don't you just send another 20,000 colonial soldiers to their death!!! What?! That doesn't even make sense?! It's not even historically accurate. Ah who cares, I hate people... and stuff.).

Anyway. At least I will now be able to watch New Zealand play rugby the way it should be played without that tinge of oxymorinic foresight that makes you think, "They play the game so beautifully, I just wish that didn't have to play it so beautifully against us!"

Shaking hands with the devil

Romeo Dallaire was the Canadian General in charge of UNAMIR, the United Nations peacekeeping force that was present in Rwanda during the genocide that broke out in Kigali in 1994. The mission was disastrously ill-equiped, under-manned, and was caught without an appropriate UN mandate to enable them to actively prevent the massacre of Tutsi civilians.

Blaming himself for the failure of the mission, after leaving Rwanda, Dallaire began to spiral into a depression, which culminated in his being rushed to hospital after being found under a park bench in Hull, Quebec. He was intoxicated and suffering from the reaction of alcohol and his prescription anti-depressants, the mixture of which almost put him into a coma. The story gained national headlines and sparked a fierce debate over the rules of engagement forced upon UN peacekeepers.

He subsequently wrote a book about his experiences in Rwanda called, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. It has recently been turned into a film.

To see the trailer go here

78 Saab come out with their new album

Remember the first time you realised that your parents weren't all-knowing prophets, that they weren't unquestionable gods of reason and responsibility? How did we re-align our belief-systems the day we realised that Andrew Johns was just an ordinary guy from the coast who was just as good popping pills as he was at kicking drills? And what about the legendary "funny John" from Playschool doing the tutti frutti? Why, when I recently revisited that Playschool episode as a 24 year-old, was I so disappointed to see how out of tune he was, and how Jemima wasn't really an adventurous dame sailing the high seas as I remembered, but a floppy coffee-stained doll with black wool drooping from its head, being manoeuvred about in a ship made out of an ice cream container and old toilet rolls?

What do we do when our heroes let us down?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, after two albums of pure magic, after stumbling across them as a pizza-faced 18 year old in Sydney's mythic Hopetoun Hotel, 78 Saab -aka: The SAAB, with their new album "The Bells Line", may have managed to disappoint me.

After the first initial listens, I feel like a man who has unwittingly stumbled across Audrey Tautou doing coke off a grimy toilet seat at Sydney City RSL. "No! You're Amélie! You don't need that! You enjoy life's simple pleasures! Like dipping your hand in a bag of seeds, piercing the crust of crème brûlée with the tip of a spoon, and skimming stones on Canal St Martin under the rain! Say it ain't so Aude-dog!"

Ben Nash, the lead singer, once said when describing the way he writes songs that he wanted to make people stop for three and a half minutes, take some time out of their hectic lives and just sit back, listen, smile and appreciate. Well, to me, whereas Cross Lines, their last amazingly multi-layered effort, only got better and better with each listen, this album wears out after only a few. The songs are simple without being catchy, and some of the lyrics quite frankly seem a little lazy. Compared with the tracks "Lean on In", "One of These days" and "Messed Up", which seem to have that mystic Saabish juxtaposition of mournful jubilation, of yearning for something just out of reach, the rest of the album seems totally attainable, a little too descriptive.

The beauty of the Saab is their ability to take you to another world. They can make you connect with feelings you know you always had but couldn't explain. They were those crème brulée cracking moments. They could take the ordinary and make it spectacular. Unfortunately, I feel like with this album, they took the ordinary and turned it into banal. Whereas I wanted to skim stones, they took me studying law textbooks.

Anyway, every "Frontline" has their "funky squad".

Sometimes I guess I wish I could just look at Jemima's boat and see past the toilet rolls again.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

... to know we are not alone

CS Lewis supposedly once said, "we read to know we are not alone". Sometimes I think that we do a lot of things to know we are not alone. Write, cry, dance? Do we love to know we are not alone? Life is in many respects a celebration of our ability to connect with others, a celebration of togetherness, of the realisation that others have walked, are walking, and will continue to walk the same paths, paths which to us often seem wholly and utterly alienating and lonesome.

Now in Canada

I'm now in Canada. I'm studying an LLM at McGill University in Montreal, specialising in Public International Law.

Hopefully this year will provide me with a whole lot of new experiences, new inspirations, and new lessons in life.

Time for a new colour, and a new look for the blog.

Hurrah!

Hague Days Over: Back home in Oz

Well, with the termination of the Charles Taylor defence, my days in the Hague were cut brutally short. For those of you still there, I miss you greatly, for those of you in Australia, I'm back home and looking forward to catching up soon.

Leaves against the midnight sky

A series of shots of La Tour Eiffel

Maybe it's touristy, I don't know, but I haven't actually taken any photos of the Eiffel Tower on any of my trips to Paris. My most recent trip, I did indulge. Here are a few of them.



No it's not photoshop. I came across this Australian Flag outside the Australian Embassy in Paris and thought I'd manufacture the theft of a national icon.

Waiting for a train in Bruxelles. Time fades.

Which path do you see most?

Quatres chemins qui s'eloignent

Now go Barry!

For those of you who don't know the mighty Clarke and Dawe, they do a satirical sketch on Australian politics every Thursday on an Australian news program called The 7:30 Report. This sketch is about the new industrial relations reforms that the Liberal Party intends to bring in. It's a bit of a long sketch, but I encourage you to stick it out because the final ten seconds or so is gold. Now go Barry!

To watch the sketch click here.

Charles Taylor Defence

After an emotional farewell party from the Hague There was only one thing I could do... not leave. That's right, after all the good bye hugs and and "keep in touches" I'm back in the Hague. My Hague, Your Hague. The place where you come as strangers, but leave as friends. (this is the motto of the Hague, a motto I feel may hypthetically have been stolen from a Victoria Bitter ad from the 1970s).

Seriously, put on your terri-toweling hat and state of origin silk shorts with the slit up the side and sing along here. The best cold Hague is My Hague. Your Hague. Den Hague. Matter of fact, I got it now!

Aaaaaanyway...

I'm working for three months with the Defence team on the case against Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, who is accused of committing a magnitude of crimes against humanity in relation to the confict in Sierra Leone.
It's an amazing case to be involved in. There is a lot of emotion surrounding the need to convict Charles Taylor and a certain amount of assumed guilt. It's challenging to maintain a open mind in the midst of all this apparent truth. With the world's two major international tribunals, the ICTY (Yugoslavia) and ICTR (Rwanda), coming to a close, with the Cambodian tribunal on the verge of disbanding prematurely, and with the ICC not really up and running yet, International Criminal Law is in a precarious position. Furthermore, with what is seen by most as the utter failure of the Milosevic case (by failure, it is meant that a three year trial of what many regarded as one of the world's most flagrant war criminals failed to produce a transparant, fair and conclusive judgement, one which would enable international criminal law to permanently notch itself into the pages of human history as a respected norm) the Charles Taylor case presents what many believe to be a "second chance" for International Criminal Law to set the records straight. It's going to be an interesting 3 months.

A Farewell Party

Had a farewell party at Bram and my house, 329a Obrechtstraat. It was a lot of fun. Everyone seemed to be in a good party mood and by the state of the place the following morning, people had fun. Everyone came to say goodbye, even the police. I made a Pavlova. It wasn't very impressive, but it was the best I could do without electric beaters, and let's face it, it tastes the same- there's not too many ways to ruin egg white and sugar mixed ina bowl. Anyway, here are a few select shots from the night, just to keep you interested. I know you only look at the photos anyway. I mean I could write anything right know, like, you're a real tool. You're not even reading. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. (For those easily offended, this is a quote from a movie, wayne's world, and does not in any way represent the opinion of James Pender).

My Swedish mate Daniel (pronounced Dawn-yell).
Bente (Norway) and Jerome (French - Marsaille. I play guitar with him Monday nights)
Acadia from Boston. May we both find a job we like one day.
Megan from Melbourne.
Bram de Man, my Belgian flatmate. Yes, he is taller than me. Bastard.
It's become somewhat of a tradition for Bram and I to re-enact the lift from Dirty Dancing every time Nhu (Vietnam/America) arrives at a party. What can I say. She's so tiny, she's just asking to be lifted above your head.
Megan (america) and Tones (Australia- oi oi oi)
Daniel, Namita and Chelsea (Swede, Yank, Yank).
David, Marie, Namita and Claire (Yank Frenchie, Yanke Frenchie).

Anzac Day in The Hague

The War Cemetary in the Hague. You can see a little Aussie flag in front of the Australian graves. A nice touch I thought.
War Grave of A Sergeant, member of the Royal Australian Air Force, shot down over Holland in 1941.
The Dutch Guard surround the cenetaph. The Australian and New Zealand Ambassadors, as well as officials from many other countries, including Canada, US, Britain, Belgium and France laid wreaths to mark the occasion. I though the most touching wreath was from the Australian Woman's Association. Two old Australian ladies stepped forward to lay the wreaths. I don't know how or why they ended up in the Hague, but it was nice to see them.


It wasn't exactly a dawn service, but it was pretty close to it. 7am saw a group of puffy eyed Australian and New Zealanders pile onto a bus at the Central station in the Hague. As the bus rolled out on the 45 minute journey to the Hague's War Cemetary, those on board turned to each other to exchange pleasantries. I always thought Australia lacked an identity, a real "culture" so to speak, but the more I travel the more I notice the difference when I'm just talking to Australians/New Zealanders with no other nationalities present. There's a easiness to it. A common understanding and an understated optimism. "G'day, I'm Paul. I'm from Perth and I work for Shell. Bloody hell it's early isn't it."

We arrived at the Cemetary. There were lots of forein notables there. Lots of ambassadors, army officials etc. We sang the national anthems of Australia, New Zealand and Holland as well as a traditional mouri song. Then they read the ode and played the last post (at triple speed - not sure it translates into Dutch). It was a very touching service, I guess, made all the more touching by the fact that we, like those soldiers all that time ago, were a long way from home ourselves, and you start to get a feeling of how scared and lonely these guys and girls must have been, to travel half way around the world, to fight in a war they knew very little about. After the ceremony, we headed to the New Zealand Ambassador's residence for brekkie. Sure enough, Anzac biscuits were on the menu. I took about fifteen.

Touch Footy in The Hague

Been meaning to get some photos up of the old touch footy for a few weeks now. We play every wednesday night and Sunday arvos. It's a great way to wind down after a day of war criminals. These photos were taken at about 8:45 at night so as you can see, the sun goes down pretty late, which makes for a nice twilight session.

Un diner sur le trottoir.

A sign of the times in the Hague. As the weather gets better and better people will do anything to remain outdoors for as long as possible to enjoy the sunshine. Bram and I had some people over for dinner and Bram suggested we eat outside. Not having a nice little courtyard out the back, we decided to go out the front. So this was the result. Us, having a romantic dinner with Daniel (Swede) and Aurelie (French - my previous flatmate at the crazy Croatian lady's house) and Bram, eating out in the street. Lots of Dutch people passed us by and although I could tell they were slightly miffed that someone had so flagrantly broken the rules of Dutch social etiquete, I could tell they were also a little jealous that they had not done the same thing themselves.