iGoogle therefore iAm

I must admit, I'm quite the fan of Google Earth. 

Exploring the Ordesa Valley randomly back in early 2007 evolved to a more thorough exploration of the Spanish Pyrenees later that year with friends. More discoveries followed that would never have happened were it not for Google Earth's insight into a valley otherwise unheard of, at least by this non-Spanish speaker. 

I've since travelled more roads on Google Earth, ones I travel daily and ones I've never been to and enjoy the 3D generated images... Now with Google Earth on the iphone you can travel to places while you're traveling in other places! You can even follow your GPS plotted location on 3D images on your iphone as you move around with perspective changing as you move the phone... like you're really there... hmmm. 

In this climate of Economic Armageddon iTravel is increasingly enticing, you really can travel without leaving your home. But this is Wild Wednesday, and staying at home is not today's theme. 

Instead hop onto Google Earth and fly to somewhere you've never been. It might be in a land far far away, or just  over the mountain from your place, and make plans to make your way there by hook or by crook in the not too distant future. If you have an iphone - you can download it and iGoogle your way as you make your way.

When you get there - take a photo and send it to me - I want to know where you ended up.

Off Label

Can't find your Diesel Jeans? Scratched up your Versace Sunnies? Got too excited to bother about the buttons on your D&G shirt? 

Good news.

Unlabelled,

home made & 

anything anti-couture is IN.

You can take your labels OFF.

While straight guys are getting increasingly metrosexual and label conscious, it's time to go retro. Back to the time when a label was something stitched on your shirt with your name on it so you didn't lose it. Now going anti-couture doesn't mean you're going to look bad, quite the contrary. A brief survey of Sydney's men this weekend revealed that the most sexy were the ones who had no distracting label on the outside but were in fact their own label. The clothes were something that made you focus on the man, not the label. Oh and the straighter the look, the sexier the man.

Perhaps it's just me, but I'm very ready not to be labelled.

[Semi]Random YouTube Discoveries

A selection of YouTube finds to start the weekend with some variety...

Ivri Lider: Your Soul 4min 33sec

English Version

Sandro & Maykson 3min 51s

equilibrium - featuring prophecy: 4min: 44s

(combo of movie and music - may contain violence)

Continuing with the diving theme...

Eric over at Just Beautiful Men has a new and spectacular post featuring Fabian Hambuechen, the Olympic silver medallist gymnast from Germany. Only this time he's diving. There is a video with slo-mo replays and all - well worth a look. In fact I'd consider it compulsory. While it might be nice to understand German, I think you'll all cope without it.

Click here for the post.

Here is a taste...

Wild Inspiration Wednesday

What is it that inspires us?

Often in life we go through the motions, doing the things that we're used to doing. Not really allowing for change to the routine, not being ready for change. Routine can be comfortable. It can in fact be productive and efficient. But occasionally something or someone will come along to inspire you to look at things from a different perspective. To reassess where you are in your life, and make you think about if it is where you want to be, or if you can make things better, make a difference in the world more than you already do. 

Inspiration can come from all kinds of things. There have been a few people in the past week who have inspired me. Certainly Matthew Mitcham has been a great inspiration in ways he's not been at all aware. But there are others, like some readers who have emailed and told me how various posts here at Superchilled have inspired and strengthened them. That itself inspires me to do more, be better, and make a bigger difference in the world. 

The challenge when you've been inspired, is to actually make something come of it. To change things, or do things that effect the change you are looking for. And that's today's challenge - to make the most of the events that have inspired you, in your own world.

Inspiration can come in all kinds of forms. 

What has inspired you?

But wait, there's more...

There's been a remarkable amount of interest in Matthew Mitcham, so for the budding fan club out there here is a link to his Channel 9 Wide World of Sports interview from Saturday October 18th.

Wide World of Sports : Matthew Mitcham Interview.

And for a Sydney Morning Herald Article from October 8th where he talks about being the only gay in the village and more, click here.

Oh and if there are any people who represent Mini cars out there - can you please email me?

Gold I say, GOLD!

It's not every day you get to meet a superhero, but this weekend I got lucky. Sitting at my right hand side at an intimate dinner party was no less than Matthew Mitcham, who claimed the 10m platform diving Gold in Beijing - as mentioned in my earlier post here. 

The whole experience felt surreal, and the rest of the dinner party was equally engaging, great food, great host, fantastic venue. Matthew is a true delight. Often the reality of meeting someone doesn't meet expectation when there's been so much hype, but in this case - the reality was well beyond expectation. Oh and he speaks fluent French, which just puts mine to shame. 

I see great things ahead for this man and I think he can see them too. 

Trevor the Goldfish?

I have a goldfish named after me!

And no it's not mine.

I arrived for my regular Friday breakfast at diggies at the beach and the manager tapped me on the arm to tell me that they now had a goldfish at the cafe, and that it was named after me! What do you say when you have a goldfish named after you? I was quite surprised, and pleasantly so. When I thought a little more about it I wondered if it was something to do with swimming relentlessly (almost all my posts have a swimming reference, as a reader has pointed out to me recently) or perhaps it's a short term memory thing? But that's not me. I don't quite know how I was chosen, but regardless, it was a nice start to my day, sure it's not a national library, or an Aquatic Centre but it's a living thing, and that can't be all bad.

I also ran into an old high school colleague while at work Thursday night. Mind you I'm not sure his wife was too happy with the introduction whilst in the middle of her delivering their second child, but it was quite nice to be there for them, in a most unexpected turn of events. It was a girl! All healthy and well in the end.

Oh, and for the compulsory swimming reference, for my morning swim the weather and the pool were both excellent, while I was feeling absolutely weak in the water today. But what is most striking is the increasing cuteness of my fellow swimmers and the increasing number of gaydar pings happening all around. Given my lack of form in the pool, I was happy to have some pleasant distraction.

The weekend is looking to be quite an eventful one. I hope yours is a great one.

Jay Brannan in Sydney

I just discovered that Jay Brannan is performing in Sydney on October 30th. I also just discovered that October 30th is a Thursday and I have 2 work commitments I can't change for that date, which is typical. I don't see a lot of live musical performances, but if I could I would see Jay live - damn it. 

So your job, superchilled readers, is to make sure the first performance is a sell out and that way they might be inclined to offer more performances! That's my vain hope anyway. You can see an example of a performance below for Half Boyfriend. You may recall him from the highly recommended film, Shortbus.

4min 20sec

More details of Jay's concert schedule and how to book online here.

I should be so lucky this Wild Wednesday

lucky lucky lucky

I'm too nice. Nice people are boring. I don't get into enough strife, I don't have enough things go wrong, and I don't complain enough. Boring as hell. 

But hey, I'm lucky, insanely lucky. Life has delivered everything to me on a platter, not had to work for a thing at all, ever. Things just mysteriously go well for me. How lucky is that!? I'm lucky I live somewhere nice, I'm lucky I have The Frenchman, lucky I have a great family - if we exclude those members who aren't. Lucky I drive a nice car, lucky I have a few jobs that I really enjoy and where I'm out and accepted, and sometimes even valued. Very lucky with that. I'm lucky that I'm fit and healthy. Lucky I can take a reasonable photo or two, or perhaps that's more that I'm lucky I have a good camera, because after all, it's the camera you have that makes the photos good ones. Im lucky that I get to travel as often as I do. I'm lucky that I have some great people in my world, people who are always there if I need them, even though I'm so lucky I never actually do need them, but they're there anyway, waiting for the call. Except those who aren't. 

It is after all wild wednesday and the challenge today is to try to figure out what things in your life are really all about luck, good or bad, and what are all about the things you actually make happen yourself (or not happen as the case may be) that result in you being where you are now.

Go on have a think about it. 

Your time starts now.

Lazy Active Retro

A lazy weekend of activity. Impromptu dinner parties, slow cooked breakfasts, trips to the beach, to the Italian deli, hikes in the bush. Close friends visiting, some planned, some spontaneous. Animated conversation flowing from relationships to politics to family planning. Chance meetings of friends at the pool and on the street, and long conversations that follow. Strengthening new and old bonds that will last a lifetime. 

There's nothing quite so refreshing as the freedom from being in the company of people with whom you have the knowledge that you're at home, that you can say and express what you feel, and you're going to be accepted, and listened to, and sometimes challenged. People you know you can trust, who make you feel a warm glow from within.

I was playing this song at one of these slow breakfast mornings on Sunday, and it has the lazy, active, retro feel of the summer I am planning to have.

Paper Aeroplane : Angus & Julia Stone

3min 38s

Shuffle

Random thoughts and events in this superchilled life...

I posted a few weeks ago about dozens of strange Chinese women calling me. Today I got another call. This time they hung up on me.

Our house didn't sell at auction. Well the auction itself didn't happen. Of course a whole financial system melt down right in the middle of our marketing campaign had nothing to do with it. But it's still on the market - and we're still optimistic. 

I had a quiet night at the hospital last night - got to bed at 1am - earlier than most weeks - and despite it all couldn't get to sleep until after 3am... If only they had a lap pool at the hospital. Hmmm perhaps I should speak to the CEO. 

My affinity for water now includes those high pressure water jets at car wash places where you do-it-yourself. I don't think it's an obsessive compulsive cleaning thing, but I don't mind a bit of shine either. 

Dinner this evening was a retirement dinner for a dear secretary at the public hospital. At said dinner one of the nurses decided that my hair needed to be cut, as she played with it forming pony-tails of sorts in front of everyone present. I guess it is getting a bit long now, and I'm kind of flattered that she was playing with my hair - but I'm not good at following orders. So expect no shaven head here any time soon.

At same dinner while the Frenchman was absent, it was pleasant to have all of the people there ask after him. 

London Preppy's activating the ejector-seat on his blog last week made me rethink my own blogging again. I've had so much happening in my world, much of which I've not posted about - not yet anyway - that it's been hard to make time to write here, let alone get everything else done. But I'm not ready to stop, there are more words in these fingers yet. 

While I was washing my car at the hydrophilic car wash station, the music on late night radio was courtesy of a Dance music DJ and I realised how long it is since I've been out dancing the night away. I was dancing around in the remoteness of the late night, water jet in hand, and it was a lot of fun. I think I'm going to have to gather a few revellers together to make an event of it very soon. 

And finally, we have an international blogger visiting us Saturday - and I'm very much looking forward to it. O Canada!

The Frenchman Celebrates

There are a few classic features/favourites of The Frenchman in this photo, and hence my choice of it for this birthday post. Can anyone figure out what they are?

Have a great day babe.

Modelling Opinion

What is our fascination with celebrities? In the US presidential campaign there are endless celebrities supporting one or other candidate, but very few other more educated / experienced people promoted as supporting candidates. Why is it we are  more interested and more swayed by a celebrity's opinion than someone who really does know better?

Sure there are some celebrities who know their stuff and whose opinion is well respected, but the others? Why do they get the limelight? Why do we buy the magazines they fill and follow their relationships / pregnancies / diets so avidly? If a supermodel votes for one party - why should that make me want to vote for them? If a rock star calls their child 'Cherry-pie' should I call mine the same too?

It's not just about elections, it's life in general. We select the beautiful people all too often to be the ones who choose our directions. 

I guess we all want to look beautiful. We see the Abercrombie models looking great in (and out of) various clothes and we want to buy that lifestyle. The clothes are a step towards that, and perhaps following what they do will make us more like them... or at least the image of them. We want to be liked in the way it seems the celebrities are liked, and so we emulate them, do what they do, or at least what they say they do.

Of course if we look at the paths of celebrities, shown in detail in the popular press and the reality TV, we see that the image of them is frequently not the reality. Perhaps we take comfort in that, relish the fall of these 'gods', to see that we're all human after all. So why do we bother following their lives in the first place? Let's lead our own lives. Find our own paths, and be directed by those who can better guide us than the winner of the latest MTV music video award.

Life is the people we spend it with. It's talking about things that are important and funny, and mean something to us. Embarking on new adventures, sharing times and meals, of arguing the point and realising we're wrong. Being the person we want to be, in the clothes we feel comfortable in. Determining our goals and making our way towards them. Helping out the people who need us when we least can afford them the time. Above all it's about being who we are and sharing more of ourselves with those in our own worlds. 

Models and movies stars may be good for styling cues, but it's time for a wider diversity of guidance for the important parts of our lives. 

Thursday Friday

Let's go back to Thursday, where I wake up and it's morning - I've not overslept on my morning off for a change. They predict 33 degrees today and I feel that they're going to be right. I want to take advantage of this weather and not sleep it away, so after about 6 hours rest I'm up, breakfasting, and getting ready to go to the beach. I'm not a big fan of the sun, but I love the water and the energy and at the same time the relaxed feel I have being somewhere without electronic communication. Reading things written on paper, listening to the waves in the dappled shade behind the beach. Life is good, and the men are getting cuter. I wonder how they'll be looking after 6 months of warmth and exercise. The future is looking good. I'm chilled out and a world away. 

Work in the afternoon at the surgery is a lot of fun, and I get fantastic feedback about my photos hanging there, though nobody has bought anything yet. At the hospital I arrive and within minutes am at the delivery of twin boys. Then there are a further 4 deliveries that follow where I am required. The dads faces expressing emotions from extreme excitement to shock and disbelief - I think one is about to cry or fall over or something, but he seems to remain in complete shock well after the baby's wrapped and given to him. I wonder if he knows how to change a nappy. He soon will.

The father of twins now has 5 kids. He looks like he knows how it all works. But he's still thrilled. 

Breakfast Friday at diggies and there is a new menu. I think I prefer the old menu, but they've brought back an old fave, so it's not all bad. The day is again superb, sunny, way too hot for spring and it gets to 39 degrees (102.2F) at various points in my travels. I really don't feel like working, and all the homes I visit with air-conditioning have it turned off, but it's a dry heat and they're a lot sicker than I am. They're saving the planet even if they are killing themselves to do it. 

My last house call is to a patient I've seen a few times now - relatively young and dying from melanoma. He and his wife are coming to terms with the whole process of dying, and it hits me harder than most patients I see because I relate to them more than most. At times during the consultation I wonder if I'm really any good at this job, but they surprise me by telling me at the end how many and varied sources have told them how good I am, and I'm quite frankly surprised. My eyes start to tear a little, just a little, and I know that I've actually helped them today by the time I leave. I spent about 30 min more than I had planned, but it was worth it, they needed it. The compliments are icing. The reward is in knowing they feel secure in what they're doing.

I head back to the pool after work. It's too hot to go running, and I swim so fast it's like I've actually had a proper sleep and haven't worked all day. I'm happy about this. And then just to go for complete exhaustion I go to gym, and before I know it, it's the weekend, and I'm hungry. 

Wild Wednesday

Get your creative boots on, today is the day to be artistic. How you choose to create is up to you. Take some unusual photographs with your mobile phone's camera, draw a sketch of a work colleague, paint a picture, redecorate a room. I decided to do some artwork a friend asked me to do for his coaching sessions. One of which is below. 

Take a minute or 10 out of your day and take yourself away from it all.