Where have you gone Dave Winfield

You can't own property in Canberra. You can only lease it for 99 years. Strangely enough this does not mean that housing prices are lower, in fact, they are quite insane. I'm not sure what the justification is for this legal loophole but after only 8 months I think I am getting to the bottom of the mystery. You can't buy land in Canberra because it is already owned by an insidious cartel of abusive creatures called "magpies".

We are now in the middle of magpie swooping season which means that women, children and 225 lb middle age Canadian men are all in danger of being swooped, pecked and eaten by black and white projectiles flying through the air at breakneck speeds. It is enough to make one leave the house every morning with a 4 iron, but before you even think about it... the Magpie is protected, and believe you me - they know it. There is nothing like the look on a magpies face when then tease over your head, land at you feet, stride over to your toes and glare into your eyes as if to say "just try it".

The survival technique displayed by the non protected species who must live in constant fear of the magpies (humans), is to tie "twist ties" and pipe cleaners to the tops of their hats and helmets, hoping that the dreaded beast will only dive bomb to the very top of the protrusion; thus narrowly missing any vital organs. As a defence mechanism it is brilliant as a fashion statement it is quite ridiculous.

Well I'm off for a quick bike ride. I take my life into my hands, and would like this blog as proof that should I not make it to my destination in one piece, I intend to leave every penny to the magpie protection agency, the master must be served...on second thought where's my tennis racket.

Eldrick

If I was Tiger Woods, I'd start by changing my name. I wonder if he realizes that he has allowed other people to construct his persona, for his entire life. Maybe you don't realize it when you are 3 years old and hitting 3 woods into a net on the Mike Douglas show the extent to which you have been exploited, but come on, "Tiger". Do you ever get to the point in your life when you realize that you have been named after an animal. Maybe I'm naive, but I thought the idea of this whole "life thing" is that we construct ourselves as human beings. We are flawed, we make mistakes, even really big ones, sometimes repeatedly, but we learn and we grow and at some point we emerge as enlightened individuals. I'm not a big believer in happiness, in fact I'm not sure that the search for bliss is the point of all the time we spend waddling around this sphere, instead I think the point is to grow up. And I for one feel that if you have allowed others to name you after a predator and built teams of hangers on around you to live a life of focused execution in pursuit of some silly tin pots then in the words of Malcolm X, you've been had, hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray and run amok. My advice, "Tiger", change back to Eldrick, see if Stanford will take you back and audit a few courses on philosophy or auto mechanics or something and try to figure out who is inside the created facade. As for Golf; let's see if you can be as good a loser as you were a winner? If you can, that is the true legacy you can leave your children. Redemption is never far away, but it starts by looking inside not out. It turns out the manufactured persona led to some fairly significant deficits, and I'm sure constructing one's real character will too; but at the end of the day at least you'll own it.