27 January 2010 - 10:08 p.m.

I wrote a complete and well thought-out entry while I was in Greece in an internet cafe. I was in the process of coming up with a name for the entry, and my session timed out. I seriously thought I had a minute left, because that's what the counter seemed to say. It also started out saying I had 29 minutes left at the start of a half-hour session, and maybe therein lies the problem. I am not going to attempt to recreate the entry, as it was more relevant to my stay in Greece.

I don't know how to react to friends of mine being racist in a way that can not be transparently seen as irony. I like to think that my friends and I are not racist, and then there they go proving me wrong. Being a white anglo, I don't get a lot of race discrimination directed towards me. The closest I've come is someone disapprovingly saying "You are not Italian" to my face when I went into an Italian-run shop with a friend whose parents both came from Italy.

Anyway, it really boils my blood when people decide their gene stock is better than someone else's. When they say that non-asian (nationality nonspecific) people should not work in asian restaurants. When they mutter disapprovingly at the radio news about record numbers of immigrants being sworn in on Australia day. When they make a sicky-face over the concept of possibly having a non-white girlfriend. When I find out they said the skin of black people is unnatural and wrong.

At some point in our lives, Clare and I would like to adopt children. They are likely to be from another country. I really hope that these friends are still as willing to come to our house when we raise our kids. If not, I don't think I would consider them to be friends anymore.

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