There's No Such Thing as a Free Hug

Monday was Labour Day here in New South Wales - not Labor Day, you crazy Americans! - which meant that I had a day off work. Having been out on the tear most of the weekend, I took it pretty easy, and spent the day wandering idly around the city.

After meeting with my sister, I went walking home via Pitt Street, one of the main shopping thoroughfares in the CBD. I was just crossing the road, minding my own business, when the old lady beside my suddenly broke into song, and boy, does she have a set of lungs on her! It was so unexpected, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I'm not exactly sure what she was singing, but I think it was opera, and I think it was directed at the traffic. Bizarre!

As I left this wrinkled diva behind me, I was greeted by the next oddity of the afternoon. Standing there in the middle of the pedestrian section of the street were a group of young student types. Each was holding up a sign with, printed in large letters:

FREE HUGS

written across it. Indeed, true to their word, they did seem to be providing hugs to passerbys and asking for nothing in return. I must admit my innate shyness overrode my curiosity here and prevented me from approaching. Therefore, I neither found out why the had suddenly decided to band together to give charity hugs, nor did I receive my complimentary hug.

Which is a shame really, God knows when I'll receive an offer as good as that again.

...

On Monday evening, I was watching and interview with the Foo Fighters, who are doing a short tour in Australia at the moment. They claim the reason fro playing only 3 shows is that their "selfish" - his word - lead-singer wants to get home to his kid. He said that his plan was to play the gigs and then just spend the remainder of the time in his hotel room, resting.

The interviewer, asked if the rock-and-roll era of throwing TV out hotel windows was over? One of the other band members responded:

"We're the kind of people that if we threw a TV out the window, we'd be really pissed, 'cos we couldn't watch TV any more"

...

BTW. The Melbourne Storm (see this post) lost in the finals over the weekend. I guess it must blow that the Storm Season ended so poorly for the Imperfect Storm, the Brisbane Broncos really stole their thunder. Still, don't worry lads, every storm cloud has a silver lining.