Making Friends With The Neighbours

If you're bored and need someone to laugh at/obsessively watch, then this is the web-cam for you! It's set up in front of the Duke Kahanamoku statue at Waikiki Beach and allows people to stand in front of it and organise for their loved ones to watch them do so. Intriguing to say the very least. When I was there, folk would stand in front of the camera while talking to their girlfriends on their mobile phones; "Can you see me? I'm waving! No, no, I'm in a blue T-shirt..." And if you get bored of this one, then go to the link that takes you to other Honolulu web-cams including the ever interesting 'Live City Council Meetings' camera and 'Traffic Hot Spots'. Hours of fun for everyone!

A few weeks ago, I was in a busy (and expensive!) café in Byron, waiting to meet friends for lunch. I was on my own, but I’d purposely arrived early to have a coffee and write down a couple of things I’d been thinking about. So I pulled out my slightly dog-eared notebook and, pen in hand, scrawled across the pages. The waitress eventually came along with my coffee and, as she put it down on the table, had the unfortunate urge to speak… “Is that ‘Dear Diary’ or are you doing work?” I took a breath and slowly raised my eyes to give her a deeply patronising look over the rim of my glasses. I also raised one eyebrow and pursed my lips. She retreated. The inference that dripped off her tongue (along with the sarcasm) was that one reason for my writing would have been acceptable and the other one, lame. Why exactly? Why would one be better than the other? Why is it ok to work in public but not to write for pleasure? Work, I suppose (and this, I admit, is conject...

Gracious me, I love books! And call me romantic, but I love them even more when they're old and scabby and need to be read again so that their purpose can once more be fulfilled and they can be brought back to life and you can remember why they spoke to you the first time around. "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it is high time to get to the sea as soon as I can." Yo dat , Herman Melville. Yo dat .

I left my place early on Saturday morning, tied my board to the roof and headed towards the ocean. I was feeling shitty and tired and cranky and wanted, nay, needed to find a wave. Any wave. I checked a couple of places on the way down and bumped into a friend who confirmed the tiny swell-status of the day and sent me off to the last bastion - into town... I pulled up at Wategos and silently screamed - my last stop was small, lumpy and on-shore. I sat and stared and stared and decided to go out anyway because there wasn't a single person out there. That's right, empty Wategos, not a soul to be seen. It was crap, but at least I wouldn't be competing for crap. I paddled out and (surprise, surprise ) started to feel better. The water was clear and warm- ish , the sun was beating down and the wind wasn't too bad actually. There was a big pod of dolphins feeding and leaping about and a huge turtle was lurking about underneath me. And, as it happened, I got wave, after...