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The
Journal of Alan Howard Sunday - 10th March 2002 -
9:07pm
Of retribution...
I once had a friend
who I related to really, really well. Then she tired of me
and didn't want anything to do with me, but interestingly enough
she still read my journal. I was angry for a while, but
was pleased she was still interested in what was happening in my
life. However, my last entry about blogs and bloggers
seemed to strike some kind of nerve with her for some reason.
She has her own journal, which I visit pretty much on a daily
basis - probably for the same reason she visits mine.
Shortly after I made my entry about blogs and bloggers, she
wrote a very angry entry of her own, mentioning my journal and
providing a link to it, and inviting everyone to see how
pathetic I was for my comments about blogs and bloggers. I
was talking about my opinions of an article I had read on the web, and she
seemed to take it as some kind of personal attack against her,
which surprised me. I was going to write and tell her to
pull her head out of her arse and get on with some sense of
reality in what she perceives or writes, but then it occurred to
me that she must be a blogger, and so my comments about bloggers
were perceived as some kind of attack against herself. Not
much I can do about that, except make a comment to her in this
journal - if you think what I write is so pathetic in terms of
the spirituality and philosophy that I'm exploring in my life,
then why do you bother coming to my site so often to see what
else I've written? Don't take things personally (unless
someone actually spits in your face).
I'm not going to mention names, or provide a link to her
site. She'll know who she is. I'm not interested in
being part of some kind of tit-for-tat 'blog vs. journal war',
even though it sounds strangely alluring... hehehe.
All I'm interested in doing is telling her that I once respected
her, but now I see her as childish and only interested in
proving to the world how wonderful she is and how bad everyone
else is. And I'm sure she's going to make another public
comment in her own journal (blog?), and maybe even provide my
street address so people can send letter bombs if they
like. Unfortunately, the address she has is old...
I've moved. ;-)
People come into our lives for a reason, and then they move on
when the purpose of their visit is over. I know I got a
lot of value from the communications I had with her, and I was
upset for a while about her decision to move on, as I thought
there was still something of value that I could learn from
her. However, I know now that she made the right
choice. There was nothing more I could learn from chatting
with her. I do wish her the best though, as she continues
the exploration of her own life. I hope the pain she
experiences as she grows doesn't overwhelm her, and instead
gives her wisdom and understanding.
I had the greatest time this weekend! It started on Friday
night. There was an annual pub-crawl organised by work,
and since I don't like getting drunk so I opted not to go.
However, once I finished work at 6pm, I went to the bar that
they had started in at 5:30. My plan was that if they had
moved on to the next bar, I'd go home, but if they were still
there, I'd join them for a couple of Friday-night after-work
drinks and then go home. They were there, so I joined them
for a beer. Because of the atmosphere and the amount of
work people there, I decided to take a couple of photos (I take
my camera with me everywhere now, for spontaneous photo
opportunities). The 'official photographer' saw me with my
camera and asked me if I liked taking photos, which I said I
do. So they then handed me the digital camera and told me
I'm the photographer now. Well, the fun of that was
something I couldn't pass up, so I joined the pub crawl as the
'photographer'. In the process of travelling around to
each of the 12 pubs in the tour, I had to have some drinks at
each one. By 11pm, and the 10th pub, I was absolutely
wasted! However, I managed to maintain control of the
camera, and the photos, and even brought it safely home with me
(it's work's camera, which I've borrowed every now and again,
and it's a real good camera... losing it was not an
option). After reviewing today the disks that stored the
photos, I discovered that over 80 photos were taken. I had
a great time with the camera! :-)
By the time I got home, I was on the verge of being sick, and at
one point I was in the toilet because i felt like I wanted to
throw up. I really didn't want to though, so I had the
window open and I was leaning over the toilet with my head out
the window, getting lungfuls of fresh air. It worked, and
the feeling went away and I went and wrote a couple drunken
emails to some friends and then went to bed.
Yesterday was almost a write-off. I had a damn huge
hangover, and didn't want to get up at all! I was supposed
to go pick Wakana up and go out somewhere, but I sent her an
email saying it just wasn't going to happen. So she called
me and came over and looked after me... it was
lovely. So the day turned out not so bad after
all...
Today was even nicer. We went to this place outside
Wellington called Kaitoke Country Gardens. They have great
food there and really nice gardens to walk around. We had
lunch there and then walked around, and I experimented with
close-up (macro) photography with my coolie new camera that I
bought coming back from Australia in December. I
discovered that I can get up to about 9 inches from something
and still have it within a focus range, so I was taking
close-ups of bees, butterflies, flowers, cicadas and weird
spider webs. It was great fun! I went through one
and a half rolls of film on stuff I've never done before, and
had a ball.
Then Wakana and I came back home. On the way, we got a
video. She wanted to watch Pearl Harbour. She's
Japanese, so I asked her if she was sure. She was. I
explained it's pro-American, and she said she knows the history,
and she wants to see what it was like. So we got it.
It was an interesting experience for me to watch it (for the
second time) with someone whose people, 50+ years ago, was the
mortal enemy of the western world. Afterwards, we talked
about it. I'm unable to understand what it must be like to
live in a country like Japan, where their history is about being
the 'evil empire' that the western world fought so hard to
contain. I try to understand, but I know there's no way I
can appreciate what it's like growing up with that
history. She's very much into history. She's been to
Hawaii and went to the Pearl Harbour memorial, with the USS
Arizona, etc. I learnt today that the cities of Nagasaki
and Hiroshima (that the atomic bombs were dropped on, in case
you didn't know) were chosen by the US because they were 5th and
6th in a list of sizeable cities. Tokyo and Kyoto were 1st
and 2nd. They didn't want to destroy Tokyo because that
would eliminate the central command of Japan, including the
Emperor. Without them, the Japanese would have likely
continued fighting to extinction. Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were considered sizeable enough to be devastating, but not
important enough for the Japanese to commit to continuing the
war. Unfortunately, the Japanese were expecting attacks on
their largest cities, and so many of the population were
evacuated outside of those cities. The evacuated ended up
in cities that included Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so many more
were killed than the US expected.
I wondered how Australians would be living today if we had lost
the war that we thought was right, and we had become subjugated
to the Japanese, as they had become to the US. It's
mind-boggling, and one can only be thankful that we didn't
experience what they did.
I also wondered about the comment in the film, made by the
Japanese General at the end. "I fear we have only
awoken a sleeping giant." I have been involved in
various debates with some of my friends back in Canberra, via a
mailing list, about the US attacks against the Taliban etc, in
Afghanistan. Today, I wondered if the attacks on the World
Trade Centre has again awoken a sleeping giant.
In the past, since Vietnam, America has not wanted casualties
when it gets involved in armed conflicts. And so, they
have been completely gung ho but only up to the point that they
begin losing soldiers, and then they withdraw from the
conflict. Pearl Harbour's devastation and loss of life
galvanised the Americans into doing something about it.
World War 2 saw millions of men mobilised, with hundreds of
thousands dead in single battles (eg. Battle
of the Bulge: "More than a million men fought in this
battle including some 600,000 Germans, 500,000 Americans, and
55,000 British... At the conclusion of the battle the
casualties were as follows: 81,000 U.S. with 19,000 killed, 1400
British with 200 killed, and 100,000 Germans killed, wounded or
captured..."). I wonder if the devastation of the
World Trade Centre will galvanise America again, into committing
to the end-goal of destroying terrorism. Will they
persevere through the casualties that will occur? I don't
know, but if they repeat the history of their involvement in
WW2, then maybe. However, I'm afraid of the possibilities
that may result from what they're doing now.
This is why I am afraid...
WASHINGTON:
Citing a classified Pentagon report, the Los Angeles Times
reported yesterday that The Bush administration has told the
Defence Department to prepare, on a contingency basis, plans to
use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries.
I hope that never happens, and that sanity prevails.
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