The other day, on my wet and miserable drive to work, I saw somebody I recognised, crossing the road. Not that I knew him personally; he wouldn't know me from a bar of soap. But as soon as I saw him I knew who he was, because I had seen him on TV. Recognition was instant and my mouth dropped open.

I was sorely tempted to grab my camera and take a photo, but the thought also crossed my mind that it would be a little weird, not to mention a complete invasion of privacy, to just roll down the window and point my camera at a total stranger.

Besides, if I'd done it he might have killed me - for you see, he was none other than...

DOCTOR ROBOTNIK!

I swear to God, Doctor Robotnik lives in the Sutherland Shire and walks to the station. He was wearing a red shirt, and he had his huge bushy orange beard all puffed up (he's like a lizard - that's how you know he's angry), and he was even wearing little round black glasses so you couldn't see his scary eyes. And he was bald.

Sydney is full of celebrities like that. Daniel once told me that the Monopoly Man used to catch the same train as him in the mornings.

Anyway, over the weekend we went to the second-hand book store. Daniel wanted to get some books for the trip to the Alps, which is now only a couple of weeks off, but I wanted to look for some books that might help me to learn German. I found a school textbook from 1983, and a novel written in German.

The textbook has been pretty helpful so far, even though it was originally supposed to be accompanied by a tape for some of the listening exercises.

The bookstore is quite big, but every shelf is absolutely packed with books. There are piles on the floor because there's not enough space for all the books on the shelves. I must have tripped over the same pile of books three times by stepping backwards into it whilst trying to get a better look at what was on the shelf.

I was tempted to make these images black and white because I do like the light-and-shade feel of desaturated images, but in the end I left the colours in because it's a vibrant-looking place and the colour is the only way I can do it any justice. For some reason the place makes me think of the Neverending Story.

This week we haven't been getting up and going for a walk to the beach before work. The view from our window upon awakening has been pretty uninspiring, to be honest. All week it's been grim and drab and grey, and to top it off, there are shark alerts all along the NSW coast. Nothing says "back off from the beach for a while, punks" quite like the prospect of being Jaws' breakfast.

This has been my drive home from work all week:

An hour of that, every morning and every afternoon. And these photos are in light traffic, as I wasn't game enough to whip out the camera on the highway where the spray from the cars in front was making it hard to see where other vehicles were.

In high school, maybe in Year 9 or Year 10, my friends and I used to have a game called Bicket. It was a cross between baseball and cricket, you see. The thing about Bicket, though, was that there was no ball. There was just a short stick, which we used as the bat.

I don't think we played Bicket often, but I know we played it more than once because we kept the stick in a special spot so nobody else would find it. It wasn't a serious game, of course; it just kept us amused when we really felt like doing something mindless but entertainingly creative.

Having taken up our fielding positions (there was really only one position - Stand Wherever the Fuck You Like), one person would throw the imaginary ball, and the batsman would try to hit it. Where the ball ended up was entirely up to us, but we always seemed to 'know' where it was, even though it didn't really exist. Once it rolled out into the carpark and we had to fetch it from under a car.

I have a feeling I am going to regret making that public knowledge. The world already knows I'm a dork; why give it more fodder?

This entry has been pretty random, and Daniel just got home. So I'm going to go and get me some human attention. And possibly get permission to publish a gorgeous photo of him that is in our camera.