View from afar

Surprisingly, I came across an article on the Commonwealth Games that isn't all about the site or security fears. Being in London, James Schloeffel is in good position to tell us how much inattention the Games are receiving from the Brits. The cliched description of Australia's disproportionate love of sporting victory is also not altogether empty, but let's hang on a bit here.

What is the disinterest in London being compared with? I don't know when Schloeffel left his hometown, but surely he wouldn't consider his current experience analogous to being in Melbourne four years ago. He's also a long way from the Australia supposedly preparing for lock-down in 2010.

The Games haven't been seen much outside ads from the broadcasters who need to make money out of them. I expect most of us have just laughed at TEN's hyperbolic announcements, and to be fair to them, even they wouldn't be disrupting normal broadcasting so much if the planned revision to the anti-siphoning laws was already in place.

Quite simply, I think it's been quite a while since anyone outside the host country paid too much attention to any Commonwealth Games.

Second opinion?

Paul Roos says "There is no better team in the competition to test yourself against than Geelong, who have been the benchmark in the AFL over the past four years."

I do hope the Swans "take it up to the Cats" more than recent form would suggest, but is any more testing really necessary after last week's meeting (if you could call it that) with Melbourne?

Straight on the plane

I mentioned that my experience with Emirates was mostly good. It was my first ever flight, and the fact that the luggage got delayed in Dubai was perhaps balanced by the fact that they didn't charge us for quite a bit of excess baggage! Apart from that, it was definitely good.

Now I'm having quite a new experience - I'm about to board a plane without a passport or any checked-in luggage. My only previous "domestic" flight was from Beijing to Shanghai with plenty of fuss at both ends. Mind you, this first one within Australia is longer than the flight from London to Geneva, which was the last time my flight was paid for by "work".