I was in a meeting all day today, and will be tomorrow and Wednesday as well. There's quite animated discussion about a feature I really don't care about; I wish the interested parties would reach a decision and just tell us what to do.

One of the interesting characters at the meeting is a man who can only be described as a Navy sea-dog. He has the big bushy beard, with brilliant white navy uniform. At 3:30 this afternoon he started getting into the Kool Mints which we had out on the table. Over the next 45 minutes he transformed into a mint eating machine, with barely any gap between each mint that he consumed in rapid succession. In total I counted him eating 23. For some reason he was standing up for most of the time he was eating.

After about 12 mints he sat down for a bit, and started rapidly clicking away with the mouse on the laptop. I don't know for sure what he was doing, but I suspect he was playing Minesweeper. I bet navy sea-dogs enjoy that sort of thing.

Freo

We went down to Fremantle for dinner at Cicerello's last night. They make a good fish and chips. As we were getting there around 6:30 it was interesting to see bits of ash drifting around from the big fires south-east of Perth. I'm surprised that it travels so far. Here's Fishing Boat Harbour - in the background is not cloud but smoke.

Dancing

I'm off shortly for the second installment of lessons for Mr Cha Cha's big ego stroke. I hope it's not as bad as last week, but I suspect it will be. My fiancée has offered to help me. I don't know what that means. After last week's experience I'd like to have a few beers before we start, but having to drive makes that a bit impractical.