January 23, 2003

  • ON THE WEB

    The nominees for the 2003 Bloggies are up – no doubt voted by die-hard webloggers with lots of time on their hands. We don’t really know these ones, but…

    Some regularly-updated sites and interesting blogs we do visit daily, are:

    There are many others but most don’t get updated daily and are a bit hit or miss. Some recently discovered travel-blogs I wish I had more time to read:

    • Belly Button - This is what the owner, Wayan, has to say about Sydney:

    A quasi-socialist/capitalist economy, with high taxes on the rich and high benefits for the poor, Australia is not the pure capitalism I am used to. It’s not capitalism with a few rules of America, or capitalism without rules of Russia, or capitalism only in cities of China. Australia has taken its own path to industrialization, a middle path between capitalism a socialism, which has effected the entire country.

    I’ve yet to see the stressed out consumer culture so obvious in America. When the going gets tough in Oz, they head to the beach. Everyone is relaxed because they would be taxed if they tried to hard and given a pillow if they didn’t try hard enough. So they float along, making enough to stay happy in this warm worker’s paradise.

    One thing that is missing though is any sense of freneticism. I had expected something of the kind of rush you get in London or New York. Or even Paris or San Francisco. But there’s not a bit of it: Sydney is positively sleepy and does have a funny end of the earth feeling to it. As Andrew says, it may be the (de facto) capital, but it’s still the capital of nowhere.

    I am looking forward to reading the South American and Easter Island entries…This guy, like Wayan, has been everywhere…and it’s hard not to disagree with these descriptions of Sydney as a laid-back sort of nowheresville in the bigger picture. But we wouldn’t know - WE are busy all the time… (and we always have the travel bug)

    You will notice the little ‘Aussie blogs’ link on the top left of this page - this fwak! blog is now part of the Australian weblogs ring. Which means each time this page is updated, the Aussie Blogs site will keep track. Click on the link and you will be directed to other local blogs… let us know if there are any worth checking out!