Australian Election, John Butler, and Inception

The Australian public went to the polls on August 21^st to elect their representatives in their electorates to government office.  I have been learning a lot about Australian politics because I only get to watch a couple channels at home which are mostly news, and the elections have been dominating the news cycles for the past month.  They have a really different system on all levels: preferential voting, compulsory voting, constitutional monarchy (still under British rule), the queen is the executive power etc...  

What resulted from the election was a “hung parliament,” which means there is no government formed because the election has not resulted in one party having a majority of the seats.  There must be a majority to “form government” here.  Only after two weeks did the former Prime Minister (Julia Gillard) finally form a ‘minority government.’  It’s probably too hard to explain, but I wanted to mention the election because it has absolutely funny to observe and it makes me appreciate the American political system A LOT more, even though it often seems frustrating.

So I’ve been hanging out with my good buddy Kurt Nehrenz from Norman, Oklahoma for the past couple weeks.  I went to school with Kurt’s younger brother, Mark, for about 10 years.  His mom also works for my family’s dentist, so she connected us before he came over here.  Kurt moved to Sydney about a month after me because he’s been transferred here by his company.  He lives on the other side of the harbor from me.  

We went and saw INCEPTION on IMAX.  That movie was so intelligent and so thrilling that it’s now one of my favorite all-time movies.  Just the 45min ending or whatever that had like 4 different climaxes at the same time (if you haven’t seen it, you don’t understand, but you will once you see it), and I’m so happy that Hollywood was confident in the American audience being sophisticated enough to like this sort of film.  Kurt and I also saw the John Butler Trio in concert a week ago.  

John Butler is an Australian guy who started out as a ‘busker’ and has recently released a badass album.  We had awesome spots, only about 15 people back from the stage.  Here is something to hook you on the music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VAkOhXIsI0.  He played a different type of guitar on every song.  Instead of using a guitar pick, he plays with his long fingernails, which makes him insanely fast.  I’ll try and post some of the videos I took on Facebook as well.