Rainy day in Melbourne, a slow plodding day, it's been a week of reading and writing. Halfway through my second novel this week. Next week will have the buzz of the boys around the house but for now the quiet indoor life is fine. performing tomorrow and back to battle stations. I love my job, the simplicity of the challenge, standing in front of a group of people and making them laugh, the immediacy of its result, its success, its failure. The chance to comment while entertaining. The camaraderie, lately I've been rejoicing in working with people that I've know for a long time, that have known me for a long time. That will still be there after a bad night, not that we've had one of those for a long time. Planning for next year, looking forward to holidays soon, a few good shows left before the end of the year and the sun. Am I getting old? I was in Brisbane recently and relished the warm weather I could feel my bones thawing out after the Melbourne winter.
Footy fever is gripping Melbourne, Perth and Sydney fans can be spotted in the street. Still feels like a foreign language to me football. It's like a distant culture, I know it, I respect it but, essentially, I'm of it. Like a carnival in an exotic country I enjoy the colour and movement.
More tomorrow... The rain smells fresh...

Melbourne is a vibrant, modern, cosmopolitan city located in the state of Victoria on the south coast of Australia. It offers a unique blend of art, culture, great outdoors and a variety of sport and tourism activities. It is known for its international character, demonstrated through a number of international events and festivals held yearly.

Just had a look a round at the other blogs. This is the place I'm talking about though it looks more glamorous here than I have ever seen it.
Just saw a fantastic documentary on TV about a young English guy who got the United Nations to pass a resolution to celebrate a World Peace Day on September the 21st. It's called Peace One Day. It's been a day of inspirational people. The United Nations agreed to celebrated but how you get all the wars around the world to declare a ceasefire for one day is anybody's guess. Anyway Happy Peace One Day day. Cheers

In July I went to Bali with my thirteen-year-old son, we had the most wonderful time and it's a trip that we are both going to remember forever.

What has stayed with me is the beauty of the Balinese people we met. Today I keep thinking about a young girl selling tour packages at the entrance to the Matahari shopping centre in Kuta.

Her pleasant eagerness to sell us a tour. We ended up going with someone else we had already booked but now I wished we had gone with her offer. The bombs that went off in Bali yesterday exploded just meters from her stand, I hope she is all right. My son and I walked past the Raja restaurant countless of times while we were in Bali, we seemed to gravitate to the Matahari shops or walking to the KFC that my son would take me to once too often.

The other bomb went off in Jambaran, for those of you who have never been there, and I hope you go soon, Jambaran beach is lined with some fifty restaurants, it's multicoloured tables facing the glorious sunset. We rode pushbikes there from Kuta; I now find out is nearly thirty kilometres away, no wonder we were tired. My son took a bad wave that dumped him in the sand and scratched his back, after the glorious dinner of fish, prawns and squid we decided to get a ride back to town from the effervescent young waiter, first he found someone with a car too small to fit our bikes than he found us a convertible jeep and we zoomed back to Kuta with the young waiter accompanying us, that's him waving in the photo of the orange jeep.

The second bomb last night exploded in one of those restaurants, I couldn't think of a more idyllic setting for something so disgraceful to happen. To think that someone would place a bomb packed with shrapnel, nails and ball bearings while people are enjoying an evening like that. What saddens me the most is the people of Bali who depend so much on our money, our measly ten dollars which is what a seafood meal would cost on Jambaran beach. John Howard warned Australians not to travel to Bali, I hate that man. The fear that he instils in Australia is exactly what these heartless terrorists want us to feel. Australians will find another cheap holiday destination and the Balinese... well the Balinese will sink even further into their poverty. Candidasa, a dreamy resort town on the east coast of Bali, was a veritable ghost town when we were there, it's street of restaurants empty still recovering from the 2002 bombing.

I've lived in Madrid while the ETA terrorist group was active setting off bombs around us, sometimes blocks away from our apartment, but one thing the Spanish do is they never let the terror get to them. Life continues, if the bomb didn't get you life goes on, don't let them interrupt your life.
My heart goes out to the people who died but also to the people of Bali for it is them who in the end will continue in their life of poverty.

And just for the hell of it.
Although there are hundreds of recipes for paella this is the way I cook it to my taste, you may make it a chicken paella or a seafood paella or both. Or you may replace them with green beans, broad beans and vegetable stock for a vegetarian dish. Which ever way cook it to your taste. You'd never cook a whole paella just for one so it's a great dish for Sunday lunch with friends and family. All the best.
Serves 8
Paella Recipe
1/2 a chicken cut in pieces
1 clove of garlic finely chopped
olive oil
1 onion diced
1 red pepper diced
1green pepper diced
2 tomatoes(ripe) diced
3 cups medium grain rice
saffron colouring
1/2 litre chicken stock
1/2 litre white wine
150 grams calamri rings
200 grams pipis or clams
250 grams black muscles( boil to open first)
150 grams baby octopus
8 banana, tiger or king prawns
8 prawns peeled
2 lemons
salt
Brown the chicken with the garlic in a large flat frying pan or paella dish, not a wok, and move to one side. Stir in onion, green and red pepper and tomato in chicken juices to fry the base. Add in the rice dry and stir all ingredients well with the rice. Add saffron powder (artificial colouring is fine but beware of allergies, you might like to find a non-chemical saffron colouring). Flood the pan with chicken stock and wine. Add salt. Stir well and add calamari rings, baby octopus, pipis and peeled prawns. Mix in well and after this do not stir. Simmer at low heat for ten minutes. Place precooked muscles around the edge of pan and fan whole prawns on top in a star pattern. Simmer for another ten minutes or until most of the stock has been absorbed by the rice.
Turn heat off, cover and let it rest for a few minutes before serving.
Enjoy.

Just finished working and felt bad not putting something in today. The show was fun, the audience laughed in all the right places and managed to improvised a few new gags. Last year I did stand-up in New York and Montreal. I did one try-out night in a club in New York. One thing you notice since the anti-smoking laws have come in is that some of these old clubs without the cigarette smoke... Really stink. They stink of damp, kitchen smells, hell, sometimes you could smell the rubbish in the alley.
Anyway, the thing about New York is that they have these severe time constraints. Five minutes and you're off. I usually do two hours on stage. So you can imagine the talk about missing the red light by this nineteen year old manager. According to her I might never work in New York again. I think in the end I probably ended up doing about twelve minutes and got a good response for my first gig outside of Australia but , Man! The lecture I got. Also I'll never get back the half hour of sitting there to a semi-celebrity doing the worst material I have ever heard. One thing about American audiences they are polite. The same guy in Oz would've had a chair thrown at him. Hell we even boo comedians on national television.
Anyway it turns out that in the States the try-out nights work like this. If you bring in three paying friends, who buy two drinks, you get five minutes on stage. In some clubs if you bring ten friends you get eight minutes. So the place gets filled with the paying friends of the comics and nobody gets paid for the night.