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I have come to the conclusion I am going blind. I keep sitting with my face close to the laptop screen and decided that without fail I must get my eyes tested tomorrow, if work permits. I get eyestrain headaches within minutes of sitting down at the computer and currently am sitting pulling my head as far from the screen as possible and not looking at it whilst I type so if there are any typoes its not my fault.. it’s my eyes!
I went to a friend’s flat in South Perth that her dad owns. It’s an entire floor of a building. I’d love to live on an entire floor of a building. M and I took a taxi from our place to South Perth, about 100 meters just past the lights where Wesley College is (if you know South Perth and Mill Point Road then you know where the college is). The taxi overheated. *sigh* so M and I got out, paid and walked up that nice long hill towards the zoo. We got to the top of that hill and thought, “thank god its all downhill from here” and walked down Mill Point Road and finally made it to our destination. Funny thing was, we would have made it faster walking than by taxi - the car in front of the taxi which had been full of flag waving young men to my knowledge was still yet to crest the top of the hill when we turned the corner to continue to our friends flat. My calves are aching this morning.
I had a feeling it was going to be one of those weird nights though. We wandered down to the foreshore, and I haven’t watched the skyshow from the South Perth foreshore before. I’ve watched it at Barrack Street, from Buckland Hill, from some tiny road in the hills near Gooseberry Hill, from McCallum park, and from the River in a nice Yacht, and I would have to say, watching from South Perth is possibly one of the best experiences in a bitter sweet way. The music wasn’t too bad, but to be honest, not many people brought radio’s so we couldn’t hear it. The one disturbing thing was watching the Airforce jet buzzing the river as part of the “entertainment”. I don’t think it was really entertainment, more like a warning.
The group watched it fly around, and P made a comment about playing Halo and how he could see himself in that jet letting loose the guns into the crowds. I commented that it seemed weird that jets like that can and have killed people and seeing how fast they were, i could see how helpless we’d be if they dropped a few rounds on the crowds or a missile or two. There was a bit of a silence and someone else commented how we probably looked like the ideal terrorist target, about 10 - 20% of the Perth population in such a small area. We were silent then, listening to the crowds chatter and kids screaming and playing and watching the light aircraft above flying around in circles.
So instead of Ooohing and ahhhing at the awesome display, I was locked in thought about how similar the explosions of the fireworks shells sounded to the sounds of missiles hitting buildings in Bahgdad on TV when the first attacks went live across the world, and wishing that others could be here to watch with me. The sounds reverberatting off the buildings and water, the way the sky was lit up. Times like these, I wish I was ignorant of the problems of the world, and that I could enjoy simple pleasure of being with my friends and watching the pretty lights rather than thinking how they sounded like bombs from the TV.