You're Lower Than Concrete, She Said

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Bondi Beach (pronounced "BOND-eye", or /'bɒndaɪ/) is a popular beach and the name of the surrounding suburb in Sydney, Australia. Bondi Beach is located 7 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Waverley Council, in the Eastern Suburbs. Bondi, North Bondi and Bondi Junction are neighbouring suburbs.

"Bondi" or "Boondi" is an Aboriginal word meaning water breaking over rocks or noise of water breaking over rocks.[2] The Australian Museum records that Bondi means place where a flight of nullas took place.

In 1809, the road builder William Roberts received a grant of land in the area.[3] In 1851, Edward Smith Hall and Francis O'Brien purchased 200 acres (0.81 km2) of the Bondi area that included most of the beach frontage, which was named the "The Bondi Estate." Hall was O'Brien's father-in-law. Between 1855 and 1877 O'Brien purchased his father-in-law's share of the land, renamed the land the "O'Brien Estate," and made the beach and the surrounding land available to the public as a picnic ground and amusement resort. As the beach became increasingly popular, O'Brien threatened to stop public beach access. However, the Municipal Council believed that the Government needed to intervene to make the beach a public reserve. On 9 June 1882, the Bondi Beach became a public beach.[citation needed]

On 6 February 1938, 5 people drowned and over 250 were rescued after a series of large waves struck the beach and pulled people back into the sea, a day that became known as "Black Sunday".[4]

Bondi Beach was a working class suburb throughout most of the twentieth century. Following World War II, Bondi Beach and the Eastern Suburbs became home for Jewish migrants from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Germany, while a steady stream of Jewish immigration continues into the 21st century mainly from South Africa, Russia and Israel, and the area has a number of synagogues, a kosher butcher and the Hakoah Club.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bondi_Beach,_New_South_Wales

You're pissed, she practically shouted, and he looked up startled. He had stood her up after inviting her to the party and he had known the minute he opened his mouth and said Michael's having a party Saturday night that it was a mistake. For a start he shouldn't have invited someone without asking first. They were in their 50s now. The open door policies of the past, the embrace of strangers one and all, was fading into gentility. He had met her down at the Bondi Hotel in that previous era when he had brazenly hit the piss, throwing caution and ill health to the wind and embracing his absolute desire to be normal. He drank and he drank, sometimes in company and sometimes alone; not to excess mind, oh no, not that, well not often, but enough, perhaps, to maintain the illusion of normality.

Joe, a girl he had known at the Sydney Morning Herald in the eighties, was behind the bar. He had always liked her; and was pleased to see a familiar face. Everything had seemed so hostile, even if he hadn't seen her in 20 years. Work, the job he thought was a golden ladder to a better life, had turned into a complete and utter nightmare. He had landed in this backside suburb completely lost. He paced up and down the sand as if he was in a graveyard, and only slowly raised his eyes to take in the ever changing beauty around him. They chatted quickly, happily, she served customers, they came and went interrupting their conversation. He got a potted history of the past 20 years, Brazilian boyfriends, wild times, lost in the mountains of South America with handsome criminals and dangerous bad boys; joining the great chorus of the different and the adventurous. They shared stories of drivelling down the same self destructive whirlpools everyone with any sensitivity or flair for the insane seemed determined to throw themselves down. And suddenly being adults with life passing by. It was all too much; he thought, running his hand across his brow melodramatically.

It was a craven desire to be normal; the well established bloke chatting to an old friend at the bar; worldly wise, friendly, wanting nothing but good company. It was such craven stupidity. I'm going to have to work, the management keep a very close eye, they get upset, Joe said; I've got a friend outside, I'll introduce you; you two would have a lot to talk about; she used to be in the media. So that was how he met Marsha. She was sitting on a high stool at one of the tables outside; the Bondi Hotel was in the middle of renovations and much was at odds with its normal self; just as in his own life everything had been thrown out of kilter and it was simply true to say he was no longer coping; stressed beyond all reason. He climbed mountains everyday and got paid almost nothing. He did the right thing and it simply backfired. He got pissed for no known reason; and every reason; and was happy to settle with a full schooner glass next to someone with an equally full glass; to chat with someone his own age about life, the universe and everything.

They talked all afternoon and he was so sorry about everything he had done. Sit up straight, she remonstrated several times; and he tried to ignore her until she physically bolstered him. I'm psychic, she told him within the first half hour, I sense things, know things. He heard it all, the lesbian daughter, how she had bought the terrace opposite Jamie Packer in the eighties for just over $100,000 and now, with its spectacular views down Australia's most famous beach, would have to be worth millions. He had fallen off the real estate ladder and could do nothing but look on with envy at all those people who had been more sensible than him; how easy it would have been in retrospect. If he had expected to live; which of course he never had. The beer flowed all afternoon and the day turned into evening; he heard about living with Martin Sharp, about Sally Anne Huckstepp, a famous Sydney identity, a prostitute and heroin addict revered for her wild ways; her boyfriend killed in a Chippendale back lane in the 1980s by Sydney's most infamous cop, Roger Rogerson.

We all touched, our lives all touched; the great and the famous; the terrible shifting sands, this illusory place. He grandly insisted on shouting schooner after schooner, Boags, the best beer you can get, which of course made it alright. They drank and they smoked, unfashionably, the old party animals who never gave up, could see no reason to give up. Sobriety was for morons and the characterless. Day turned into night and the tourists drifted up and down the concourse. Groups came and went at the surrounding tables. He was in the flow and nothing mattered; a fascinating man, life battered. A story for every occasion. They were firm friends by the end of their drunken communion; having established that they lived in the same street and that both were in desperate need of human comfort. Embarrassing moments followed. They shared Bloody Marys at the Italian cafe on the corner one morning, despite his remonstrations about trying not to drink; taking in the shuttered windows of the beach house of Australia's richest man. One afternoon she tried to make him dance to Van Morrison on her polished wooden boards; clearly showing their age.

Did anyone dance to van Morrison anymore? You're the first man in years I've fantasised about - waking up in your arms. I'm psychic. You know I can help you. Things are changing. I know I'm closely monitored. The cameras from the Packer house purportedly leant some safety. But the wife of the man who had bought the house next door died in allegedly mysterious circumstances; jumping from a bridge in the gorges south of Sydney and falling 300 metres to her death. Two young children were left motherless. She was frightened for her own life. They drank once again; back at The Bondi, uniting, in one of those terrible confessional afternoons when writing themselves off seemed an entirely sensible, almost noble thing to do. Work had only gotten worse. He was even more battered by circcumstance than before. That job's killing you, she said; and that, if nothing else, was true. They shared their conversation with a local on a similar path Marsha knew; and her friend, having settled into a heavy intake of alcohol and nicotine, imparted that blokely Australian wisdom to a fellow in crisis, the same wisdom that had been passed down from the Eureka Stockade; hang in there, the bosses are bastards, be your own man, hold yourself together, don't let the bastards beat you; have another beer, enjoy yourself, life wasn't meant to be an agony. You'll get through this. Change is nothing to be frightened of. He knew inside it was all wrong, the world was a cave of liquid deceit; that this wonderful communion was yet another lie. He would never be able to make such convenient love.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/world/asia/28pstan.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A handful of deadly attacks ravaged parts of Pakistan this weekend and highlighted the multiple security challenges confronting the embattled Islamabad government, from violent vendettas by Taliban militants to sectarian violence against minority Shiites.

The bloodiest attack happened Sunday in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in the north of the country, where a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 80 during a Shiite religious procession. The attack could have been worse, the local authorities said: the bomber had been trying to enter a prayer hall but blew himself up when guards blocked him. Pakistani troops were rushed in to restore order.

More than a dozen people were wounded in Karachi the day before by a small bomb. Both attacks appeared directed at Shiites observing Ashura, which commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in A.D. 680.

The identities of the attackers were not clear, but the country’s Shiites, one-fifth of the population, continue to be the targets of Sunni extremists. Past Shiite holidays have been singled out by sectarian militants, leading Pakistani security forces to deploy tens of thousands to protect Ashura marchers this year.

The Kashmir attack followed the assassination on Sunday of a mid-level political administrator named Sarfaraz Khan and his family in the Kurram tribal area near the Afghan border. Taliban militants detonated a bomb at Mr. Khan’s home, killing him, his wife, and four of his children, the local authorities said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/28/2781346.htm

US President Barack Obama has ordered reviews of airport security and the country's terrorism watch lists after the attempted bombing of a passenger jet as it came in to land at Detroit on Christmas Day.

Twenty-three-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to set off an explosive device sewn to his underwear as the airliner came in to land, but was stopped by passengers and crew.

It appears the lives of the 290 people on board the plane were only saved because the explosives failed to detonate.

Mr Obama wants to know why someone on a terrorism watch list did not set off security concerns and why tight airport security did not discover explosives strapped to the accused bomber's body.

The chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Senator Joe Lieberman, was incredulous to learn that the suspect's father had alerted the US to his son's extreme religious views.

"What happened after this man's father called our embassy in Nigeria? Was there follow up in any way to try to determine where this suspect was?" he said.

"Secondly it appears that he was recently put on a broad terrorism screening list - a database. Why wasn't that database activated?"

There are 500,000 names on the screening list so simply being on it does not prevent anyone from flying into the US.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/aussies-triple-grog-intake-at-christmas-20091228-lgon.html

Australians' weekly average alcohol intake triples during the festive season, new research shows.

December and January are the periods of greatest alcohol consumption, more so than birthdays, work drinks and traditional weekend socialising, a survey conducted by Australian charity FebFast has found.

The organisation, which works to highlight the dangers of drugs and alcohol, has launched a campaign encouraging people to have an alcohol-free February.

The survey quizzed 1006 Australians from all states and territories on their drinking habits.

A quarter of respondents admitted to spending between $200 and $1000 on alcohol during December and January, with seven per cent saying they turned to alcohol in the festive season to help cope with their family.

"There's nothing wrong with enjoying the summer and the season's festivities, but we need to be aware of how much some Australians get carried away and take celebrations to excess," FebFast chief executive Fiona Healy said in a statement.

The survey found most respondents drink one day a week and that during the festive period that increases to three days a week.

One-third of Australians consume more than 10 standard drinks a week during the festive season, the survey found.

Almost half (49 per cent) of people aged 20 to 29 admitted binge drinking during the festive season, with men more likely to drink too much than women, the survey shows.