Prague is ace! Thank god it’s not high tourist season. Our first experience was trying to buy bus tickets at the airport. First the woman in the tabak (newsagents) could change our note, so we got change, but apparently the new note was also too big. So we went and got more change, tiny tiny coins, and she didn’t have any tickets.

There’s an older Australian couple one terminal over. He’s standing, and dictating an email that his wife is typing. She has perfect typing school posture. He just dictated, ‘hope all goes well with the fence’. They’re like a blast from Mildura, 1963.

Dutch kid hoaxes FBI, leaves phone number in message, gets caught.

I know it’s a big waste of my valuable life, but I can’t stop reading the bbc condolences:
“The Queen Mother was not ‘one of us’ My Grandmother waited months for a hip operation and subsequently died.”
Gary Wright, UK
“Bye, Ma’am, I’ll miss you, even though I have lived in Australia for 35 years.”
Sonia Morris, Australia

Did I mention that I’m going to Prague tomorrow? Woohoo!

I was trying to find the origin of that ‘Queen Mother Condolences’ email that’s been going around. I liked this guy on the bbc.co.uk site:
“Queen Mother and Princess Margaret lived their lives of luxury off the wealth plundered from impoverished people all over the Earth, as do the remaining Windsors. They are ordinary people in possession of extraordinary wealth, nothing more.
John Connolly, U.S.A, ”
Also, “Can I just say that a lot of people do not care at all as there are more important things happening in the world than some old lady passing away. She had a long life and a very well off life compared to most people, so please stop the overkill.
Disrk Simth, UK ”
One Canadian guy wrote a big sucky entry but ruined it by calling her the ‘QUEEN MOM’ (his caps).
The joke email is full of entries like: “How refreshing to be able to mourn the death of a member of the Royal family without being accused of being homosexual”, J. Fletcher, High Wycombe, and “It is such a loss, God has shat on our heads”, K. O’Neil, Inverness, which makes me imagine god as a giant seagull.

Richard Neville, in The Age, on September 11, etc.

Being a sad-arse, I watched some of the orgy of cooking shows on the BBC on Saturday mornings. I really like the sound of the recipe for pickled cucumber, with fresh and preserved ginger. I’ve been having rice paper roll cravings for months so I’m going to try making them myself.
You’ll never guess the top link from googling ‘”rice paper roll” recipe’: Geoff Jansz at Burke’s Backyard.
For those Australians who don’t remember Geoff Jansz, here are a few pictures. In turn, this lead me to the classic, “Well Known Aussies who Wear Rivers“. Unmissable.
Back to the food, this page has some great dipping sauce recipes for rice paper rolls.

Some boring practical information: these guys do international taxes: http://www.ess.ie/, which is cool, but they charge 16.5% of your Dutch tax refund, which isn’t so cool. It doesn’t say how much they charge for doing Australian tax refunds.
Also, I really should browse the Immigration and Naturalisation Service site for more info on work permits.

So I’m checking my email, decide to check out the footy scores and see how my tips are progressing… there must be a red face at realfooty.com.au, because this is what was in the rhs score box:
AFL
Round 3
Friday April 12
Blues99 d Magpiesaway_score.points
Saturday April 13
Demonsaway_score.points d Tigershome_score.points
Swansaway_score.points d Crowshome_score.points
Catsaway_score.points d Demonshome_score.points
Bombersaway_score.points d Lionshome_score.points
Sunday April 14
Dockersaway_score.points d Hawkshome_score.points
Blues99 d Poweraway_score.points
Bulldogsaway_score.points d Eagleshome_score.points
There’s a huge anti-Israel demonstration going on outside, the crowd stretched as far as I could see in either direction, but you’d never know it in the insulated world that is Easy Everything.