thoughts from yestermonth

Ah, the urgent impulses of youth. Flicking through a notebook I used on my trip to Vietnam and Laos in May this year, I found the below. I'm not sure why, somewhere in northern Vietnam on May 5, I was thinking this, but:

May history judge John Howard as a man (not a leader) who fiddled around at the edges of of an economy that was perfectly capable of governing itself; as a man who single-handedly squandered the greatest opportunity our nation ever had to progress technologically, to embrace our human neighbours, and to lay the foundations of a truly great and prosperous nation.

Reading it now, I'd edit it pretty heavily. It's hyperbole, the last bit sounds too nationalistic for my liking, and it could probably be shot down by a well-informed tory, but the sentiment stands.

Off to Beijing tomorrow to hang with AD, SD, BS and EF before scampering headfirst into the world of aerobic rice.