Can we run the pictures and stories?

Question: A man approaches you saying he's the lover of an England football star and he has photographic evidence to prove it. Do you run the the pictures and stories?

My answer: It's the matter of privacy of the person in the pictures that we can't run the pictures and story without his consent. My argument is: we do have the consent of one of the two persons in the pictures. Isn't it enough? Besides, we can consider publishing the pictures depending on their content in case the pictures do not exhibit explicitly intimate scenes. The football star, in the pictures, might expose himself with his boyfriend in public places. Then he is not in his private place. Second thing, that we say the football star is homosexual is a comment basing on the pictures that we have. Then we can stay out of defamation. So, we can run the pictures and stories?

16 December - Goodbye to first semester!

I've really had good times these days. It's been three days I have been drinking so much. Binge drinking, in other words. It's funny I've done a news story on this.

People now are flocking to their homes for Christmas. I am staying. Don't know what will happen next. Let's see!

Confessions of a couch potato

A great weight has been lifted from my shoulders, although not alas from my steadily expanding midriff. Half the nation does no exercise. I am not alone in my guilt. Let us lie back comfortably on our sofas for a few moments and consider why this may be so.

According to the study by Sport England, young, wealthy white men living in the south-east - a demographic that includes me, if you're not too hung up on age or money - are the people most likely to be doing some sort of healthy activity for the recommended 30 minutes, three times a week. But I don't. Why? Simple: I loathe sport and I dread exercise.

Like many people whose fitness report card was marked "disappointing" last week by sports minister Richard Caborn, I don't consider myself a slop or a slouch. I eat fairly carefully, drink moderately, don't smoke and take reasonable care over my general health and appearance. But, as an inveterate gym-dodger, the phrase "recreational exercise" makes no sense to me.

I trace this back to my school days. Playgrounds and sports fields are unforgiving places for uncoordinated, unathletic children. I sharply recall the continual humiliations of team trade-offs on games afternoons, of staring down at the frozen, churned ground alongside four other boys, misfit line-up of asthmam short-sightedness, obesity and bookish ineptitude - while the gods of sixth form weighed up our relative feebleness in front of the assemble year group.

At the time, it riled me that no one ever seemed to explain the rules - anyone worth bothering with, it seemed, picked them up intuitively. It's no wonder that people like me who hated sports and its endless indignities gave them up the minute we were no longer forced to take part in them.

As an adult, I've sustained a solitary swimming habit for short periods. But really - all that changing, and showering, and carting of sopping, chemical-stinking kit. I've joined gyms and wasted hundreds of pounds not going, because the sight of myself running nowhere into a mirrow makes me feel rididculous. For four years I managed a weekly lunch time Pilates class, but a new job broke that habit. I started cycling to work, but the clownish juggling of clothing, locks, lights and fluorescent paraphernalia just became another hurdle to jumb every morning and night.

And this, I think, is the crux of everything: unless you truly love it, sport will always be just another chore to cram into our ever more hectic days, alongside the cooking, cleaning, laundry and other assorted drudgery. Who has time for more of that when there are still five portions of fruit and veg to get through before bedtime?

Satsuma! Japanese food and new friend!

The entire sunday was at the Oxford circus shooting for Thabang, my South African friend. Sunday in christmas time was great. People flocked to the street. They rushed to their places, they browsed the shops, they bought clothes. Only watching them would cost me a whole day. Though I could not do it. It was deadly cold. And, I was holding a camera. Shooting mission impossible! I gave Thabang the piece-to-camera shooting in the middle of the road. She trembled. It was cold, wasn't it? Me too. I was afraid of the cops, who would stop us to interrogate whether we had the license to tape in the street. Thankfully, they failed to do it today. They did not recognise us. It was not because we did good camouflage! Everyone looked at us. 'Oh, I am in the camera!'. A guy passing the Top Shop even took a photo of me with his professional photo camera. He seemed intrigued by a guy with the same image tool to his.

Thabang then picked two random girls on the street. They let us do shooting their conversation with shopping bags.

'Thank you. You'll make famous actresses someday!'

Thabang's story themed on the shopping habit of Brits during Christmas. She picked a friend, who was also from her hometown, and made him a by-way-of actor. He did a great acting job anyway though from time to time we had to play hide-and-seek to find out where he was in the ocean of people. The Director 'Thabang' made him buy a pair of white pointy shoes. It looked great though. But did he spend that much money just for 'Thabang's movie'? Hey, guy, I admired you for this. Later on, I got to know that it was his shopping day anyway.

Thabang did sucessful 'negotiation' with the shop-owner in Oxford Circus so that they let us do shooting inside. Maybe, they saw the potential consumers in us, who knowed? Thabang's friend, Serai, at last did buy that white pointy shoe.

The whole sunday would not end abruptly with finishing shooting. What I didn't tell Thabang was that it was the first time I shot without the tripod and not end up in making shaky images, I hope. I had to hold my breath quite a lot though.

Serai suggested we go to Japanese restaurant and we followed him. Believe me, I am not a fan of Japanese cuisine. I don't really enjoy shushi. The restaurant's name is Satsuam.

I ordered "Tareyaki" (don't know if I make correct spelling). It was chicken with coated sweet sauce. Thabang didn't like it while Serai was very fond of. We chatted while eating. We drank a bit beer.

I was really astonished by the inner-world that dominated Serai's mind. He has a deep abundant emotional world. Sometimes, I was quite taken aback by the way he expressed himself. He looked so contrast from outside to what he talked and felt inside. He wore loose-pants, a kind of pants that even show your bottom crack if they are so loosen. Thabang made fun of it too.

From the conversation with these two South African friends, I realise they are very sophisticated. They have deep feelings. They are mature. And for Serai, believe me, he deserves more for what he feels inside him. Do what you think is right, it's my message for him. It was irritating and disgusting for what had happened to him the other day when he was chased away from the bar and cuffed by the police for doing nothing but for the reason he was black.

We sad goodbye. I went home with Thabang.

I gained a friend.

I remember his name, Serai.

Friday - what to do? News story - that's scary. 'Anatomy of Hell' - Oh my god! I knew the other half of the world better.

Friday - the saddest day of the week as it always is. After Horrie's class, I didn't know what to do. Go home or to the library. I chose the latter. Part of the reason is that when I get home, I just stay put doing nothing. Going to the library, though still playing around, somehow I am not overwhelmed with the feeling of being guilty for not doing anything.

Thanks to Nikhil Inamdar, I picked an idea for my newspackage. It will be about the increasing number of obese teenagers in England. So, what I have to do now is to prepare for interviews and vox pops. To tell the truth, although I have done this hundreds of times, there's always a seemingly reluctance in me. I know it's weird for a journalism student. But I can't lie to myself, I don't really like it.

On the contrary, the time when looking back at the work's completion always fascinates me. I will try all my best for the next news stuff. The good old self-advise!

Finishing all the information searching in the library, I decided to self-award by picking some DVDs in the shelf. This is the main part of my story today.

I chose 'Anatomy of Hell' and 'The Emperor and The Assassin'. The reason seems odd too. The first DVD was portraited with a warning '18'. Did I look like a crook when picking up this DVD? I wondered. Yeah, I went downstair to the check-out machine. I got them and went straight to the Hall when it's goddamn chilli.

Very much to my prediction, the first DVD was about sex. After 1 hour and 15 minutes, I thought about it quite a lot. It was more than sex actually. The director was a french woman and her film only depicted two main characters - the lonely woman vs. a women-ignorant man. This woman went to a gay bar and met this guy when she failed to cut her wrist because of the guy's noticing her in the toilet and took her to the doctor's.

On the way home, she gave him a blowjob and asked him to come to her place 'to watch the unwatchable' given that the man would be well-paid.

The man then turned up at her place to do the 'watching' mission. But if it was all about watching, the movie would never be completed. No part of her body was secret to him. I was really amazed when the camera made a close-shot to the woman's forbidden area. Shocking! The man kind of showed no reaction. However, their conversation was so much literary. I could only comprehend it after a while. She was stark naked in front of him and lecturing him about feminine feeling and sexual liberation.

The mission lasted for four days. The movie's content is just about the observation and action things. Though, there is some shocking scenes that a light-hearted person will easily faint or at least.... throw up. Again, nothing of human is hidden. This, I believe, is the purpose of the director. She wants to peel off every surface thing in a person's sexual life where the woman, according to her, takes the the lead. Men would never understand the deep-end of women. That she chose the gay man as the main character vs. the woman, more or less, serves the purpose. Man serves sex. They are weak. Well, I was from time to time during the movie really embarrassed by this. The man did cry when he couldn't turn himself on when doing that.

In some respect, the movie gave me another stance about women. Every intimate thing that women have is the natural thing that sometimes men fail to admit. And one more thing, French women have an enormously liberated mind on the issue.

The movie, in deed, is not for children under eighteen and for light-hearted people. Though, I would recommnend it to everyone who wants to know more about women, even the most of their physical and mental intimacy.

And it is free to all. You don't have to buy the DVD because, again, it is offered one-week loan by the library.

http://www.madman.com.au/actions/trailer.do?method=view&videogramId=2157