A satisfactory performance by Sidney Poitier but in my opinion he was outclassed by the superb Rod Steiger as Chief Gillespie.

An enjoyable flick but hardly more than a 7/10.

In The Heat Of The Night (1967)

Frederick Frankenstein is the grandson of Dr Victor von Frankenstein who dabbled in reanimating dead bodies. Frederick has spent his whole life trying to sever ties to the family name even going so far as to change the pronunciation. The will of Victor prompts Frederick to visit his grandfathers castle where he stumbles upon his notes and laboratory. The notes intrigue him enough to attempt an experiment himself and with the help of his beautiful assistant and weird butler (who has a hunchback that changes from his left shoulder to the right) they dig up a body and steal a brain. Only the brain was mixed up and their experiment did not go as planned. Their creation is reanimated but turns into a monster. Eventually the villagers are scared enough to form a lynch mob. Dr Frankenstein will attempt anything to save his creature and as you do in movies, he does.

The whole movie was rather like remembering a favourite dish that your grandmother used to make. You try to make it years later and as much as you want to like it it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The ending was rather poor as well. It’s like getting food poisoning after you made that favourite dish of yours. I gave it a 4/10.

Today I was feeling a little bit more adventurous so I threw the bike in the car and drove down to Tarren Point for a longer ride around Captain Cook Drive. It’s mostly flat with safe shoulders and low on traffic. I was able to get into the swing of things very quickly and before I knew it I finished my 25km route in 1:07. That’s an average of 22km/h which is ok for a newbie who’s rather unfit if I’m being honest. At one stage a roadie was following me for about 2km’s. I was rather proud of myself leading the way when he flew past me like I was standing still. His legs were pumping away and instead of a deflated ego I just watched him disappear and promised myself I’d be that guy one day. Map of the ride here.

It’s not out on Australia TV just yet but it will be here soon so look out for it on Channel 10.

Silly sticky plugin!

I found a lot of them interesting and I thought I’d share two of them with you.

So I was about this young and my grandfather took me on my first fishing trip. He made a fishing pole out of a stick with some string on it and a metal hook at the end. You would never have guessed it but I caught a fish with it and I do clearly recall the memory of catching my first ever fish. It was a tiny fish, nearly as small as the hook actually but that didn’t matter. Of course the fish was placed there by my grandfather pictured next to me. I’ve no idea where he got the fish but he pulled it off and gave me a memory that stayed with me.

As I grew older I often recalled the memory and eventually came to the conclusion that I didn’t catch the fish. The hook was simply too big and there was no bait on it to begin with.

You can imagine my surprise when I came across this photo. It gave me a really warm loving feeling. They say that most people will run for their family photos first in the case of a house fire. I don’t blame them and in fact I will be doing the same.

The other photo is a really old family portrait. They are all from my grandfathers side in their village, Kumanovo in Northern Macedonia. I just love the composition, the way they are arranged in height order and the proud look of the man of the house on his tractor.

Today is the very last day of my 6 week holiday in Europe. So, is there anything to tell? Probably. But I don’t want to get carried away so I’ll just spew out a few sentences for now.

It was just a visit-the-relatives-overseas type of holiday. I don’t want to make it sound dull though. I did have a fantastic time. My cousins over here are fabulous and I loved getting to know them better. I went to Croatia for 7 nights which was fantastic. I did get sun burnt pretty badly on the second day but that didn’t stop me from enjoying all the history and scenery around. I’ll have a few photos to show at my photo-blog over the next few weeks.

Most of the time was spent in Macedonia. I was born there and have lots of family. It was great seeing them. Last I saw most of them was 13 years ago… The country itself is in better shape. That is to say it’s improving but still has a long long way to go. I would class it as third world. I could complain about the lack of systems around daily life, bad roads, poor health care, extremely high unemployment rates and low wages… but I will bore you I fear. The country has a lot to sort out and they are making slow progress.

The social/networking side of things is great though. It seems that everyone knows everyone and even if they are poor they still manage to go out to restaurants and cafes and generally enjoy themselves every single damned night of the week. I swear I’ve gone out to dinner at around 10pm every night for the past 5 weeks. It truly is an experience.

Alas, the trip is over and I’m coming home. My flight leaves Macedonia from Skopje Airport in 16 hours. I am looking forward to seeing everyone I left behind including half of my immediate family and all my friends. My dog my car, bed and shower, job and cameras and every single materialistic thing Sydney life is good for. I’ve no illusions, I am a slave to materialistic things and I do miss my life there.

Just one more thing…

On a day tour a couple of weeks ago we drove up this mountain to see some historical monuments where we ran into some paragliders launching off a hill. It looked interesting so we stopped for a picture and a look see.

They would carelessly launch off the hill and float up and up just like a feather in a cool breeze. It looked like so much fun. It stayed with me all day.

The following day I had to find a net cafe to read up on the sport. After a few days wasting too much valuable holiday time I decided to try my hand at hang gliding. As it turns out us Aussies seem to be at the centre of the sport and there’s even a popular site close to home: Stanwell.

I’m actually a little surprised I haven’t previously looked into the sport. I’ve done a few solo sky dives and I was always a little different in the fact that I preferred the canopy ride to the free fall which is what attracts most people. It only seems natural to take that canopy ride and extend the experience. Here’s to another little adventure in my life…

Apart from the fun stuff at work I’ve not done much else. My photography has slowed down but my enthusiasm hasn’t. A mate and I just purchased a bunch of film for experimenting and I’ve shot a couple of rolls already. One of those I completed in 5 minutes earlier tonight and boy was it fun. My little brother was rocking away on the drums while I got creative and experimental with a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 shot at 1600. The Olympus OM-1 I was using only goes up to 1600 unfortunately. To be honest even if none of those shots works out I trully did have a blast taking them. Next roll in the camera is an Ilford HP5.