Friends

Firstly, my apologies for posting the poor language. I made it one of my rules when I started the blog that I would not use any profane language.

However, this time I had to make an exception.

Being creative with health policy

Before you read on, I can assure you that this isn't a hardcore post about Australian politics. It's all about the link between nutrition and technology, unwittingly being promoted by a bloke who may well become Australia's next Prime Minister...

As the political pontificating begins to take full flight, I am wondering why healthcare hasn't been of a bigger concern? So far, we've only heard a bitty from Tony Abbott yesterday about how he is going to give $400 to women who have had to undergo a mastectomy and require a prosthetic breast. In response, Labor offered their typical 'me too'.

Which leads me to this question:

If Kevin Rudd is instilled as PM, and delivers on his party's plan to provide Australia with a world class national broadband network, what possible benefit will the policy have on the state of the nation's health?? Is there any usefull crossover???

Perhaps the answer is in this YouTube video...(watch Rudd seated on the left)



Yep, K-Rudd will be able to 'wax lyrical' about tips like this - and others - to the kids of Australia at rapid speed!!!

It's my birthday in a four days

...and now it's started. I just received this package from my sister Cass and her boyfriend Cossie. As I mentioned in my thankyou email to them, the package is now sitting on my desk, teasing me like a hamburger just out of a fat kid's reach - I won't be able to open it until Saturday!

Saturday is looking to shape up as an absolute cracker, with an ex-CSU student pub crawl planned by Weens, spanning a number of pubs throughout the Surry Hills region.

By the way, a hefty reward for anyone willing to divulge some valuable intel on what Clare has planned for my birthday this Friday/Saturday.

It's my birthday in a week

Just thought I'd let you know...

One for Angus

A few pics from when Clare and I decided to go for a walk down to Kiribilli for calamari, chips and beer.


Enjoying yet another gorgeous spring day, I couldn't help but notice a busload of Japanese school kids. Strangely, I began to feel this uncanny extra-sensory demand from my Burbery Yoda (who chooses not to blog, might I add) to go down and make relations.

But not the kind of relations Bill Clinton would promote - more like how a 40 year-old woman would mob Aerosmith for his photo, and in the same breath reminisce about good times gone by.

So this is me with Suki and 'Yoko' (I can't remember the second one's name).

They were great - language was a slight problem, but I ended up being a bit of a hit, being asked to pose for many, many more photos with some of the other 400 kids in their group.

They'll probably go home and tell their parents the story about how they got a photo with this weird Aussie guy who insisted they include bunny ears.

And this is an attempted art shot encompassing the best of the day (although Clare isn't in shot).

A day for yolks, folks!

What a time to celebrate! A day of perennial excitement, children across the world are salivating at the thought of omlettes, quiches and mayonaise.

Today, friends, is World Egg Day. A day of protein and nutritional benefit for all!

To celebrate, below are two photos of a poached egg-off Willis and I had last weekend. On the right-hand side of the page, you will find a poll...feel free to vote - left or right - which egg you'd most like to wake up to on a Sunday morning.

The eggs in full form.

Exposing the yolk.

Smashing a ton

Well, it's been emotional. This is my 100th blog post since Hotel Bell's inception back on 4 November 2006!!!!

In January of this year, I set up a Google Analytics account to track what content people are finding most appealing, which randoms are reading my blog and from which countries, as well as to immerse myself in a web-world I've never encountered, from a general education perspective.

In celebration of the 100th, I thought I'd take a stroll through some of the quirky, questionable and quixotic results from my Analytics account:

Basic stats (since 23 Jan 2007)

• 2,166 visits from 660 different computer IPs
• 4,289 pages viewed, averaging 1.98 pages viewed per visit
• Visitors spend an average of 2 minutes and 35 seconds on the site
• Most visits in a day - 32

Languages & countries (in order of usage)

• English, Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Danish, Italian, French, Hungarian
• Australia, UK, US, Ireland, China, Argentina, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, France, Singapore, Thailand, India, Turkey, Malaysia, Japan, Greece, Chile, Hungary, Romania, Brazil, Finland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Uruguay, Austria, Norway, Luxembourg, Peru, Switzerland, Slovakia, Belgium, Egypt, South Korea, Qatar, French Polynesia, Bulgaria and Puerto Rico.

Top 6 traffic sources

• Typed directly into browser
• Aitken's blog
• Beth's blog
• Millgate's blog
• Angus' blog
• Google

Key words/phrases people used in Google to find my blog

• "Anthony Callea"
• "Ben Harper"
• "Only 8 transformers?"
• "pria young" gay
• "ready steady cook" "channel ten" veal
• "rubber hot water bottle" -brand -stamp
• "ship lovers society of victoria"
• "slavic soul party"
• "Australian beers named after reptiles"
• "booty shak'n girls"
• "contiki mykonos sex"
• "how to pick the right transformer?"
• "mr. bean throws a spanner in the works"

...and my favourite:

• "cleaning bat faeces off cars"

I have always set out for Hotel Bell to be like a bi-weekly gift for my friends and family overseas, up the coast or around the corner - in the hope that they can have a bit of a chuckle for at least a couple of minutes of their day.

Looking forward to another 100 posts!

Our new flatmate - Dan

A couple of weeks ago we trialled a new flatmate named Dan. A funny story actually - we found him down on his luck and sitting out the front of our building, left to rot by his previous flatmates.

He passed the trial with flying colours and now resides in our living room. He's a really top bloke - always a cool customer, and whilst not being overly conversational, he's often the first to give you a nice coldy after work.

As the past few weekends have shown, he can also hold his piss remarkably well.