Last dancing class for a while

We're kind of on count down now until we come back. I'm trying to eat up food in the refrigerator, freezer and cupboard. Some things are going to have to stay in the freezer but they should be OK for a month shouldn't they?

Part of this is that today was my last dance class for 5 weeks. I had a lot of fun, as ever; Ramon said some crazy things, as ever and I realised that I am really going to miss the classes when I come back to the UK. Not this time, when we come back for a month, but when we come back for good. OK, so I work next door to a dance studio, but it doesn't run any good classes at lunch time. (The last time I looked the options were Yoga, Pilates or Salsa. Only one of these counts as dancing and that only just.) Maybe this will have changed by the time I get back. Still the teacher could not be as good as Ramon.

I got a bit bold today and went in the front row when everyone else was straggling backwards to avoid it. This was a mistake. I have got quite good at following other people while looking like I am remembering the moves on my own, but when you're at the front you can't do this! There is a further step I can take and I shall practise this next time: as we dance in front of a mirror you can follow the people behind you. This will be very tricky though and may lead to performing the moves back-to-front.

Our other count-down items are:

• Tomorrow - last end of the week.


• Saturday - Sean's office is coming over (~40 people including children); this is why I need to run the fridge down now.


• Sunday - The new secondees from the UK are coming for lunch.


• Monday - Start thinking we ought to do some packing.


• Tuesday - Wonder why we didn't actually start doing any packing when we thought about it yesterday.

And then we fly! As you can see, we're pretty tight on time so we probably won't post again now until we're back. I sent an email with some dates for meeting up, if you didn't get it - drop me a line.

A good weekend

But then again, when isn't it?

It started with food (as usual). I made a pretty good paella on Friday (key difference: adding paprika rather than Chorizo), followed by a self-saucing chocolate pudding. You know the exiting type where it looks like a chocolate pudding and you find gooey chocolate stuff in the middle.

On Saturday I did something a bit different and went to have some professional photos taken. This was mainly to enter the Miss Backgammon 2007 tournament. I got the chap to take a couple of me and Sean at the end - here is one. Sean complained that he wasn't warned and hadn't had time to wash his hair but I insisted. The photogropher told us that I had to look less happy and Sean had to look more so.



Us

We've also been working on a top secret backgammon project - I can't tell you or I'd have to kill you - which has been fun.

And finally, today we had (inspired by Friday) mussels on the balcony. My first attempt at mussels was really disappointing; they were almost all dead. However of the mussels I bought on Friday only one died (out of 15) and today only a handful from 1.7 kilos. Seafood in the sunshine - that's what Australia is about!

The Copenhagen Consensus

Last month, along with my copy of Gleebooks (the magazine I get from the book club/shop I joined at the writer's festival), I got a flyer advertising some talks at Sydney University described as "Sydney ideas - international public lecture series".

The first of these was a talk given by Bjorn Lomborg on "How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place". This sounded exactly like the sort of thing I was interested in so I booked tickets for Sean and myself.

The talk was run in conjunction with the Centre for Independent Studies a theoretically "independent" but clearly right-wing think tank. I took a copy of their magazine; anyone who has ever engaged with Sean on one of his favourite themes of "how taxis are ripping us off" would have been interested to read an article espousing similar views. Apparently the situation is even worse in Australia.

Bjorn Lomberg was very energetic and enthusiastic. His talk basically outlined the method used at the Copenhagen Consensus to rank a selected list of the worlds greatest problems. The criteria were "How much good can we do per dollar spent?" instead of the more usual question of "What is the biggest problem?". This is a great way of analysing the situation and as Bjorn said, it is a wonder that no-one has done it before.

The list was slightly surprising, although it makes quite a lot of sense if you think about it. At the top (i.e. most good for money spent) was preventing the spread of communicable diseases, namely AIDS followed by Malaria. At the bottom was climate change prevention (expensive, and we can't make much difference).

The talk was aimed a little low for me, but that was OK since I could just buy the book afterwards, which I am now going to read. He took questions at the end but we couldn't stay through all of them as almost everyone asked the same question without listening to or understanding the previous answers. I realise now that this may be because a lot of the people who went were reacting against Bjorn Lomborg's own book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and as such were people with a vested interest.

A typical question was "The results show X (e.g. that putting money into reducing global warming doesn't do much good, or that putting money into preventing corruption doesn't do as much good as we thought it would) but have you considered Y?" to which the answer was to explain the methodology used and how it would take all these things into account etc. etc.

Still, I've got the book now so I can find out all about it.

Injustice

Zoe and I attended the monthly Sunday Sydney Backgammon Tournament yesterday. As some of you will know my record against Zoe in tournaments is not great. Fortunately as the Sydney tournament is a friendly affair Zoe and I are always placed in opposite sides of the draw. Unfortunatey this leaves open the possibility of meeting in the final. Which is what happened.

Now I am not one to whinge about outrageous bad luck and terrible cube decisions. So I will let the facts speak for themselves. Match to 5 points. Zoe is winning 2-1. I have cubed her and she has taken. We have got into a race. Zoe rolls double 6s I roll 21 to leave Zoe with one checker on her three point and one checker on her 4 point. I have one checker on my 4 point. Zoe on roll.

And she cubes!

With 19 missing numbers!

I have a take point of 18%.

Zoe has an initial doubling point of 69%. (risking 40% to gain 18%)

She is winning this game just over 50% of the time.

The decision to cube loses over 10% match winning chances.

So I snatch the cube.

And of course Zoe rolls 54.

And I lose.

Again.