Time Flies

Time
This past weekend daylight savings started in Sydney and ended in New York. I've always had a hard time understanding why daylight savings starts when the amount of daylight increases. Shouldn't there be more of a need to save it when there is less? Then again, I was up Saturday morning for a conference call at 5AM and it was light out. Then next day, after daylight savings had started, I was enjoying a pint of critters at the Aussie and it was still light at 7PM. I won't complain anymore. Some people have a hard time getting why DST ends in the Northern Hemisphere when it starts in the Southern. It's because the sun starts to spend a lot more time on one side of the equator than the other. Six months later that fickle sun winds back up North, favouring Europe and North America.

Flies
Most of Australia is full of flies all year round. This is why the fly is the national bird of Australia and why waving a hand in front of your face is called the Aussie Salute. While visiting the Northern Territory I learned ventriloquy for need of speaking with my mouth closed. Us occupants of Sydney are lucky and are subject to overwhelming quantities only during a yearly "plague". We are in the middle of it at the moment. This video clip explains where the flies come from: shit in Queensland. It seems they hatch in feces and then get blown all the way down to Sydney. We only have about two more weeks of it... thanks to the dung beetles.