Going batty

This entry to my blog was meant to be much more interesting than it is actually going to be. I'm just saying that as a warning. That's all.

First off, a Happy Easter to all. Hope the bunny was good to you.

I went to the Royal Botanic Gardens this morning, camera in hand, to take some pictures of the bats, as I promised that I would. I had no trouble finding them today. They were making lots of noise high in the treetops and a few of them would even get up and fly from tree to tree every once in awhile. It was so fun to watch.

Next I made my way to a nearby cafe where I've discovered they have free wireless internet (if you buy a coffee or something). What should follow is that I then uploaded pictures of the bats to the blog and we all get to ooh and ahh a bit.

But with technology being the great and terrible thing it is, that isn't going to happen today. It seems my new digital camera memory card is fussy and only likes pictures to be downloaded from the camera to my laptop, not from the card directly to the laptop itself. To do this, I need an extra connector cable, which is now resting quietly in the drawer next to my bed at the hostel. It figures, doesn't it? And so, more on bats is still to come!

So then, what else is there to talk about? Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban arrived in Sydney yesterday for a couple of days. Kidman is probably Australia's biggest international star and so she causes quite a stir when in town. Her arrival even made yesterday's nightly news.

The big gossip at the moment seems to be that Kidman is actually pregnant with her first child. This was reported yesterday in British tabloid News of the World, surely the most reputable name in news (ha!). Kidman's "people" have apparently denied the rumour ("As if she would confirm a pregnancy to News of the World," is what her publicist came back with, so says The New Zealand Herald). Ahh, such scandal. Eventually the truth will come out.

What Kidman is really here for anyway is to make a new movie. She will be the star of a movie called Australia, an epic drama set in (you guessed it) Australia. This film by director Baz Luhrmann has great promise, I think. Luhrmann directed Kidman in Moulin Rouge back in 2001 and didn't that turn out just fabulously? Besides the movie also stars another big Aussie star: Hugh Jackman. Set in the 1930s and 40s on the Outback, Australia promises plenty of glorious sunsets, dusty desert towns and "G'day mates" shouted by locals. With a big budget of AUD $130 million (about the same in Canadian dollars) it ought to be at least half decent. Shame that the same can't be said of John Travolta's Battlefield Earth, isn't it?

I had a friend of mine in Vancouver (Hi, Steven!) ask me in email the other day where on earth I find the time to write all the words for this blog. Well, let me just say that working for a newspaper teaches you a trick or two. It may not be glamorous and it may not pay well, but being a reporter teaches you this: a) to type as fast as hell, b) to churn the words out no matter how boring the subject matter or even how little you actually know about it, c) to make it seem like you know a lot and like in fact what you're writing about is really very interesting after all, now isn't that nice?

Next time there will be real pictures of real, creepy, live bats on this blog. You have my word on it.