That's $5 million dollars in fireworks pissed up against the wall last night, or over Sydney Harbour and it's denizens to be exact. That's 166% more expensive than New Years Eve 2007/8 at $3 M. Apparently it's also about 5 tonnes up so to speak from 3 tonnes.

Maybe the contracts were drawn up and paid for in part when the Global Financial Crisis was still a glint in Madoff's eye? Maybe the politicians really do think it's worth a morale boosting last fling?

It just reminded us of those victims in Gaza ... and much lesser extent Southern Israel, being killed and or intimidated by explosions.

Anyway these days we tend to live by the sun - sleep when it goes down, rise when it does. We trust the sun. We got a bit too much of it yesterday though, cycling to Bondi Beach (and back) visiting our volunteer Carol, the disabled one, and the Roscoe St market under the motel construction. The back derailer stubbornly refused top gear. We got a flat tyre on the way. The glue in our kit was dried out. But a consumer cathedral nearby had more. We trust capitalism's grip on Australia.

Carol gave us a copy of 'About the House' of federal parliament to read. The cover story was about "franchisees". We shared a cup of herbal tea. We discussed tv and international events. She doesn't eat the Tim Tams I bought especially. We trust excessive chocolate to make us feel sick.

Carol normally telephones once every 2 or 3 days but nothing for 10 days. It was a worry but it turns out everything was fine. She'd got into one of her situations and was lying low. You can trust Carol to be sincere and unreliable.

We trust the ocean's constancy too - not least it's capacity for danger.

So we flopped exhausted before the early fireworks display at 9 only to be woken dully aware it was dark already. Should we try and go in and watch the midnight show with "one and a half million" other Sydney siders? Nah, we don't trust the judgement of Sydney siders. Another frivolous light and haze show essentially the same as last year and the year before. The same big media accolades. People boozing sure they are having a riot of a time. Sometimes they even have the riot.

What about the old telescope and a view from the hill in Marrickville. Nah. Get a nice time lapse photo? Nah sleep is the new sex.

We woke up again to a distant thumping, dully aware it was time. Something else was also ringing in our ears - expert Chris Richardson stating 2008 was still "a good year" but "2009 will be a bad one".

If it was just fireworks in Sydney it wouldn't matter, but as an artefact of the international dateline the world tunes into early reportage of our event. This is because we seem to be the first rich country to get to 2009. Sure the politicians reckon that the $5M spent will make $40M in tourism turnover. But we don't trust their dodgy projections.

Nor do we trust our long life light globe which popped a seal yesterday after 12 months use.

But we do trust the Garbos.

You see this year Christmas and New Year Day both fall on a Thursday. It's bins day on Thursday. Do you think the council workers are working? You betcha. Maybe they have mortgages. Maybe they get double time. Whatever it is they came Christmas morning too, probably an easy run because like most others our 5 general and 3 recycling rolly bins (it should be vice versa) weren't even put out. This morning we got ours out a day early.

Ours were crammed full, festering, evil piles of malevalent smells after too much rich food and hot weather. When the garbos came by on Christmas day it was a revelation.

Mind you the neighbours won't thank me putting them out 24 hours early, proudly the only bins in the long long street. You can't trust neighbours. Did the garbos come through with the social contract? You betcha they did at 5 am 1^st January 2009 aka the crack of dawn. (Actually the picture above is a fake because it's from 7th June 2007 because we didn't need to see them do it - we trusted them. You can't really trust bloggers though SAM is more trustworthy by comparision.)

We wanted to publish this paen to the garbos as early as possible but we can't. Possibly due to the GFC our internet server's "remote computer did not respond". Maybe it's maintenance. Or one of those worms. Or cynical shaping of customer usage. This is the company that used to be Telpacific, then Blitz, then Wix and now (and get this) Supernerd, itself a trading name for another entity (generally quite reliable but not today). All in 12 months of debt financing madness. Talk about powerless portability of email address amongst corporates let alone mobile phone numbers. You can't trust the market, business or the web.

But you can trust the sun, the ocean ...... and the garbos.

......................................

Sydney Morning Herald rose tinted coverage today - literally

Posted by editor at 8:17 AM EADT

Updated: Wednesday, 14 January 2009 12:24 PM EADT

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