Yeah, Michael really dropped the ball. Laura's collection was better than I was expecting--more variety with her look than I was led to believe. Uli's was fine I guess. Michael's? Some stuff kind of was pretty. I dunno. It was just a very disappointing experience. Don't know if I'll bother with next season. They're getting too close to jumping the shark. I hope Laura goes on to greater things or at least gets her stuff out there. Given an infinite amount of free time I'd like to go through the season and tally up the number of times people were criticized for making something that didn't look like "them" and the number of times they were criticized for making something that looked "predictable." But then I guess when you sign up for a "reality" show you're pretty much asking to be jerked around.

A major reason shoddy and cheap quality products come out of China and other Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Indonesia is because the American companies that go there to manufacture tells the factories the specs and price points they want to hit. No real factory WANTS to put out bad quality products because they pay in chargebacks and returns in the future as well as a bad reputation. Think of it as this. Someone comes up to you and says, can you make this product cheap. My price point is however low and that's what I need in order to get so and so's business. It all starts off some where, and that's with the US companies that want to sell more bulk which makes the vendors have to lower their prices in order to compete. They go to the factories and present projects with super low price points and what can the factory do? Not take the order and have their competitor take it or take up the order and meet the price points by using worse quality material or less material etc. It's a cycle...the US consumers are at the forefront of it...not all but the majority. We want to pay less, we get worse quality. End of story.

I wonder if Matt's going to be singing " Staying Alive"?

Vee, no, I didn't buy any wine there because I mostly buy my wine in Chateau Cardboard 2 litre packs as they last me longer! Also most of the good stuff is available in bottle shops in Perth which saved us from lugging bottles onto the coach. I still have divided bags that I used in the UK to stop my duty frees from clanking when we drove back from the Continent with cheap wines! We did buy some red grapes and they were the best I have ever tasted and have spoiled me for supermarket ones now! Lemonhead..What a good idea to save the crop that way. I noticed that some of the late-pick vines were covered in the vineries. This would stop rain and birds, I imagine. Some of these places are very big and have venues for weddings, one had a lake with a statue of a woman on a pedestal in it, known locally as "the chick on a stick" which reminded me of the James Joyce statue in Dublin with a similar but more derogatory name!