Books, the Dalai Lama, and how to calm a screaming infant
I’ve been a bit slack at the old blogging over the last couple of weeks. This is mainly due to the Photoshop book I’m co-writing, which is sucking up all my time and energy like a black hole. Who’d have thought a 700-page book would take two people 7 months to write. (Ooh, that’s a cosy 100 pages per month!) Well it’s nearly finished now, so soon my life will return to relative normality.
We did manage to snatch half a day off yesterday, and head into the city – with me carrying Zack in the Hug-a-Bub – to watch the Dalai Lama in the Domain (a big park in Sydney). The rain was coming down in sheets so we weren’t expecting much of a turnout, but it was pretty busy. Nice to see the man in person, even if it was on a big-screen monitor from half a kilometre away! He talked about inner peace, dialogue, 9/11, religion and a lot of other stuff that I couldn’t really hear properly. (The rain pelting on umbrellas didn’t help!) He was asked lots of questions from the audience – some good ones, and some daft ones, such as “What can we do to stop our drought?” To which he replied, “You should know better than me!” and laughed his head off.
Isaac was remarkably good considering we were subjecting him to cold wind, rain, and some old bloke rambling on for an hour and a half, but in the end we were all getting too cold and wet so we decided to grab a hot drink. We zigzagged through Sydney’s rabbit warren of inside malls, using a route known only to Cat and her spider-sense, to the QVB. Catching the lift, we headed up to the tea rooms on the top floor, only to find they were somewhat posher than we expected – hardly the place to breastfeed a squawking baby – with a price tag to match. So we went down a level to a fantastic Japanese cafe, which served chicken teriyaki alongside tea and scones (I have a theory that all cafes in the QVB have to sell tea and scones, no matter what other food they serve). Once again, Zack behaved like a little angel as we drank our hot chocolates.
Suitably knackered, we returned home on the bus, just about avoiding peak hour (though it was still pretty packed). Zack started bawling on the bus, which I still find embarrassing as everyone turns around to look at you (Cat’s more used to this now). Luckily, in the end I managed to settle him with a combination of jogging him up and down and sticking my finger in his gob. Must remember that for next time.
October 17th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Why on earth would the Dalai Lama, who is widely acclaimed as a man of peace, lower himself by shaking hands with the world’s biggest warmonger, war criminal, the Butcher of Baghdad and Fallujah, George W. Bush? I just lost any shred of respect I had for the Dalai Lama.