Heavy sigh.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

My second week in Sydney and still no running ... perfect weather for it today and a day off work but Murphy left me with an annoyingly persistent headache which left me too grumpy to tackle the hills that surround my new abode.

While running has been disappointing, my new city life is anything but. I'm loving it here and hope to make the move permanent, but that's rather up to my current employer. We'll wait and see. Sydney's population of 4.3 million makes my previous hometown of Hobart, with just on 200,000 pipples seem tiny. Sydney likes to think of itself as the centre of the universe, so it's an exciting, if somewhat pretentious city. It has many great pubs of course, but also a frightening number of coffee shops. So many in fact, that the dreaded Starbucks completely failed to make the expected killing here and just announced it is to close three quarters of its 700 stores around the country - many of them only having been opened in the last 12 months. A rare American failure!

Meanwhile we await the Olympics with impatience and uncertainty. Although I have no doubt China will pull it off with grandiose aplomb, it will interesting to see if the games have any ramifications for Tibet and Chinese human rights in general. I'm hoping that the games will not only be brilliant, but also serve to improve the lot of Chinese and Tibetans ... somehow.