Mic's Garage

Are Australians the most unimaginative people in the world?

2011-04-01T15:20:00.000+11:00

The other night I was talking to a mate who is wanting to set up a simple website for his own business. He was complaining that while he has an idea of what he wants to put on his website in terms of content, when it comes to graphics and colours and the like, he is at a complete loss. He can not start from a blank page. When he looks at a room, he can not imagine the furniture in any other spot than what it is. When he has a choice of shirts to buy, he can not decide which one would look best when worn. His wife, an Australian with Italian parents, says to him, "You just don't have any imagination, Darl'."

Despite this, he is quite good at Jazz improvisation.

Recently at a child's birthday party, I was talking to this Canadian lady who lives here in Sydney. I was describing to her where our son Jude goes to day-care, and I said, "The place is near the street which runs alongside the train station, Station St, I think."

She replied, "Station St. Hmmph. That is so Australian."

(By the way, I was wrong, Susan. The place is actually on the corner where the Gas Company building used to be. It's called Gas Lane.)

And thinking about it, Susan is right. So many things in this country are labelled with either what they look like, or what they are used for. If not that, then the place is named for some place in the UK or after some person. I blame it mainly on the people who founded this country. They were unimaginative military types, or civil servants toadying to some bigshot back home who could get them off this rock and home to a nice cosy job where they don't have to daily walk past some poor bugger being given 100 lashes for not tipping his hat. Or possibly the poor bugger himself, later on in life when he's gotten off the chain gang and exploring the bush, imagination stunted by senseless beatings and starvation-level diet.

So, a road between Sydney and Bathurst is called "Sydney Road" at the Bathurst end, and "Bathurst Road" at the Sydney end. The big long road that heads north: "The Great Northern Road". The place where some bloke and his party has a nice breakfast while exploring the environs is called "Breakfast Creek". Places named after politicians abound, British Home Secretaries and Secretary of State for Colonies being the favourites: Sydney, Hawkesbury River, Melbourne, Goulburn, Hobart, Camden, Castlereagh River, Liverpool, Bathurst, Huskisson, Murray River, Newcastle to name a few. Or Governors of New South Wales: Hunter Valley and River, Brisbane, The Darling Downs, Fort Dennison, and Gippsland. Phillip, King and Bourke Streets all over the place.

Not William Bligh, though. He understandably doesn't get much of a look in.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie, just named everything after himself.

A beach that happens to be 11.3 kilometres long is called Seven Mile Beach. Numerous Sandy Beaches, and numerous Shelly Beaches (also Shelley Beaches, though. How poetic). A beach that has interesting colours through the sand is Rainbow Beach. The beach where the local indigenous fellahs looked strong and manly is called Manly. And the big long reef that barriers the coast of Queensland (Queen's Land, eh?) from the Pacific Ocean is The Great Barrier Reef.

How many country towns in Australia have this sort of thing? Most streets out of town are named after the town that the road heads to. Church St has a church. The road out to the local stone quarry is called Quarry Road. There'll be a few pubs in town of course, The Commercial near the first bank, the Station Hotel in Station Street near the train station, a Union Hotel near the now non-existent Trade Union Hall, and an Exchange Hotel of course. Everyone has an Exchange, regardless of whether there really was an exchange there or not. There may be a golf course on Links Road. In Memorial Park in the centre of town, there'll be a War Memorial for one or more conflicts. In olden times, you'd probably go shopping in Market St. The athletics field will be located in Sportsground Road. There's a particularly curved road called Boomerang Road. Wharf Road, however, will only be in coastal towns, or those near large bodies of water.

It started even before there was European settlement here when Captain Cook was driving the Endeavour up the east coast. Just about everywhere he put in was named after someone or something obvious. All the way up past Cooktown to where he took possession of the east coast of Australia, on, ahem, Possession Island.

What about New South Wales itself. The place looks a little bit like South Wales (oh really?), and it's new. New. South Wales. Not the old one.

The naming nightmare continues on to this day. The place in Sydney where operas are performed: The Sydney Opera House. An iconic building, a laconic name.

There are many, many exceptions of course. Particularly anything with an Aboriginal name is cool, even if just because it doesn't sound so bland. Cattai, Kurrajong, Mulgoa, for instance, are places in and around Sydney named after the poor fellahs who don't live there anymore. I grew up in Milperra, "meeting place" in the local dialect. Interestingly many of the streets in Milperra are named after World War I battles and towns.

So my solution? Do the Ayers' Rock/Uluru thing. Grab a dictionary of the local Aboriginal dialect (there's a few to choose from), and start renaming things. Make the name be descriptive if possible. Wave Rock could be renamed the local equivalent of "Rock formation shaped like Bob Hawke's hair." The Opera House could be Eora for "Meeting Place of Large Loud Women." Blacktown could simply be renamed by the Dharug equivalent of "Town where the White people live."

Top 100 Books Update

2010-08-10T15:22:00.000+10:00

I am still continuing with my attempt to get through 100 top books before I die, albeit slowly. I may actually make it, as I have now read 71 of the 100 books. Refer to this previous post which should take you through the history.

I've even re-read one of them. Our trip to Japan (see photos here) included Kyoto and a visit to the Gion district, which inspired me to quickly read Memoirs of a Geisha again.

This is the list of latest books read, in order with most recently read at the end.

Wide Sargasso Sea — Jean Rhys. I liked this in the end, but felt it came to a surprisingly quick halt.
Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien. Always love reading this. I might start it again.
David Copperfield — Charles Dickens. Via DailyLit. As mentioned before, I hated this at school (and consequently didn't finish it) but thought it was great this time once I got into it.
Emma — Jane Austen. Not as good as her other one.
Good Omens — Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. (At the risk of not really wanting to use this word in a blog post:) Quirky.
The Woman in White — Wilkie Collins. Through DailyLit. Pretty good.
Dangerous Liaisons — Pierre Choderlos De Laclos. Yeah. I loved the way he was able to switch writing styles in order to switch character. The notes at the end of the book helped enourmously.
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë. I started reading this on DailyLit and then switched to book. What is the go with this story? Am I missing something here? Isn't it supposed to be a great love story? I had trouble with some of the language as well. Are we meant to understand what Joseph is saying, or does everybody who reads this just pretend they understand that gibberish? Does anybody else despise the housekeeper telling the story? It's more a Russian tragedy than an English novel, as just about everybody dies.

DailyLit is the read-by-email service I've mentioned before. I do recommend it, with a few caveats:

reading on-line can be tiring. Especially if reading from your phone;
if you start really getting into the book, it's easier to just grab the PDF or the book rather than continually clicking on the "Get next installment now" link;
there's always a "where was I yesterday?" feeling, but you get that with books as well, just not as frequently;
sometimes you lose emphasis in a medium that doesn't support simple things like bold and italic. Switching to HTML doesn't help, as the text that DailyLit has does not contain the bold and italic either. I found this out when a copy of Wuthering Heights turned up at my place after I'd be reading it on DailyLit; and
if you let the emails pile up in your in-box, it can be a trial to clear them out.

Currently I am reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and Ulysses by James Joyce. The last is a little hard to get into, I've got to say. I hope it gets better, as there is 329 installments of it to go!

A Mother-to-Son communications interface

2010-07-29T09:26:00.000+10:00

Alison has had laryngitis for a few days now.

While many blokes would reckon I am sure that the peace and quiet during this time would be bliss, I can assure you that things like spousal nagging do not necessarily decrease just because she can't speak. It just takes other forms. Also since Jude is just coming up to 18 months old, and has all the energy of a New Years fireworks display, I have been expected to provide the constant verbal discipline that he needs.

And I have also assumed the role of translator between her and Jude. My wife has a new language that involves hand movement, occasional grunts or humming, and head movement amongst other things. Since I am a bit of a linguaphile, I'd like to share just a few examples of this wondrous form of communications.

Alison's non-verbal cues - My verbal response/translation

Pointing at her feet - "Jude. Come here and get your shoes on, mate."
Holding her hand in front of her mouth like a duck bill and opening and closing it - "Jude. Take the book out of your mouth, please."
Pointing at Jude and making a circle around her face - "Jude. Come and get your face cleaned mate."
Grunting and shaking her fist at her son - "Jude. Have you been a bad boy for Mummy?"
Holding her hand in front of her mouth like a duck bill and opening and closing it - "Jude! Sit back down and finish your dinner!"
Using her thumb and forefinger to make spectacles over her eyes - "Jude. Stand back from the telly please, mate."
Tapping her wrist and pointing her thumb over her shoulder - "Jude. Time for your bath!"
Miming two-finger typing - "Jude! Stop pressing buttons on the DVD player!"
Holding her nose - "Jude. Have you done a poo?"
Holding her hand in front of her mouth like a duck bill and opening and closing it - "Jude. Time for your medicine."

Obviously, you'll agree that with a few of these, the context provides the hint to the translation.

Is this a bi-definition?

2010-03-11T14:02:00.000+11:00

I am in the middle of writing an email to colleagues advising that we have regular meetings twice a week, and I think to myself, "Should I use the word biweekly in this case?" As I'm a little unsure, I google the word, and get numerous, dictionary website entries that explain that the word biweekly, means both:

twice a week, and
once every two weeks.

For instance see: http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861590876/biweekly.html

So would someone please explain to me how it is possible to use the word biweekly without it being unclear? The only possible way I could imagine using it is something like this:

"Hi guys. Don't forget our biweekly meeting tomorrow. That is, our meeting that is held every Tuesday and every Friday, that is twice-weekly, and not every second week on Friday."

It's enough to drive a man to drink. Oh. Don't mind if I do.

Weather or not this unit is broken

2010-01-29T10:23:00.000+11:00

For Alison's last birthday, I bought her a weather station. It has two parts to it, the indoor base unit which has its own temperature and barometric pressure sensor, and displays all the information on a LCD display, and a separate little remote outdoor sensor unit, which sends temperature and pressure readings wirelessly to the base unit.

I bought it at Jaycar Electronics in York St in the City; quite a good price and so far it seems OK. However, when we first unpacked it and turned it on, we couldn't get the remote unit to work. The little tell-tale light on the front didn't wink like it was supposed to when sending data, and the base unit did not display any data for the outside.

After what followed though, I don't think it is a huge wonder that the remote sender didn't work...

On the way past Jaycar Electronics a few days later, I dropped in to see about the sensor. I was standing there at the counter waiting, when I heard from behind, "Hey, can I help you Dude?" It's just me I'm sure, but I'm probably a bit old-fashioned in thinking that it is a little unusual to be addressed this way by a sales assistant. A young fellah, thin, relaxed, long hair. I'm sure you know the type.

I explained that I'd bought (pointing to shelf) that weather station and that (indicating unit in hand and taking it out of its protective bubble-wrap pouch) this remote unit didn't seem to work. He couldn't understand why I didn't bring the whole thing in. He said, shaking his head sadly and slowly, "Well I can replace it, but they all work on the same channel." I didn't bother to show him the little switch where you can change the channel on the unit, or bother to reveal my suspicions that the lack of tell-tale light indicated that the remote unit was the bit that was broken and the base station appeared to work perfectly.

Reluctantly, he pulled another box off the shelves, removed the remote unit from that and gave it to me. "Well, look," he said, using his best explain-to-a-four-year-old voice, "you can try this one, but if it doesn't work you'll have to bring the whole thing in." Well thanks. That, at least, is good advice.

After saying that, he took my broken sender unit, placed it in the little bubble-wrap pouch, and put it into the box that he'd taken the new one out of. He then to put the box back on the shelf.

As I was leaving the store, I heard him talking to one of the other sales assistants, "Man, we had another one of these returned the other day."

Oh save me.

Grails - infuriating

2009-11-27T11:23:00.000+11:00

I am doing a bit of work in Grails at the moment. For those who are going: "What??", it's a web framework, which intends to allow a developer to build web applications quicker, or better, or easier.

Overall, it is a bit of fun, easy enough to get off the ground, and you don't seem to have to write a great deal of code to get a great deal of result. But doing anything beyond a simple website it seems to get you into ever increasing layers of complexity and time-consumption.

The things I most dislike about it are:

There does not seem to be a lot of information out there on it that is beyond the simple stuff, airports and flights, books and authors. I find that if you add the words "finally found an answer" to the google search, it leads me more quickly to helpful people who are also trying to do non-simple stuff.
The documentation, particularly the "Guide" is reasonably good and (for a change) well-written, but so many important nuggets of information are buried in it, you find yourself reading and re-reading the same section of doc over and over to try to find answers. You know the answer has to be there somewhere.
The specs seem to change markedly from one version to the next. Little things mainly, of course, but it potentially means that when you think you have found the answer to your question, you have to be careful that the answer is still current to the latest version.
The community seems to contain more than it's fair share of "that's the way it is, deal with it", or "it is simple, you are stupid" people. It certainly doesn't encourage asking questions when you see some bloke get his arse flamed off for asking the same dumb question that you had. No I didn't notice the subtleties in the previous answer, thanks for pointing them out and displaying your obvious superiority.
The Exceptions that are generated when things go wrong in the app are way out there. I guess this is as a result of the way it's built on top of Groovy on top of Java with potential other helper frameworks jammed in. But struth, if it's a database error, then tell me it's a database error and not some other obscure error.
Grails uses Hibernate for database access, and getting it to work with an existing database is a real trial. Days worth of work, trust me. Oh so you DON'T want an intersection table with that simple one-to-many relationship? Well you're doing it wrong then. Whether it's complexity is Hibernate's fault or Grails's is debatable, but cripes, sometimes I wonder whether it's easier for me to write a simple SQL query. Much easier than trying to wade through the Hibernate documentation as well.
And finally, some things just don't seem to work as advertised. Or perhaps I didn't read the fine print in the advert? For example:


    //// A bug? ILike doesn't seem to work here and an exception is thrown.
    //// At least in this case, the exception is meaningful!
    //list = Customer.findAllByNameILike(params.ajaxParam + '%')
    //// The following does work, though.
    def crit = Customer.createCriteria()
    list = crit {
        ilike('name', params.ajaxParam + '%')
    }

I am not giving up on it yet, it will just take me time to learn. I am thinking though, when I compare it to my experience learning Struts, that while I spent a LOT more time writing code to get to a certain level, I spent a lot less time finding out how to do things. With Grails to get to the same level, I spend a LOT more time finding out how to do something, and then writing two or three lines to code it up! The time spent seems to be about the same.

I am also thinking that Grails may not quite be the Holy Grail of webapp development that I originally was hoping for.

Top 100 Books Update

2009-11-17T14:13:00.005+11:00

I'm still continuing with reading my list of Top 100 books. Refer to this article. Over a year since my last update. One thing I am noticing, looking at the dates I have started and completed the books in my little tracking spreadsheet, is that large or hard books slow me right down. While this may seem obvious, it is more than just a simple words-per-minute ratio. Hard books tire me out, and I usually end up having a break from reading, or resorting to familiar, small or kids books immediately afterwards.

These are the latest read in order of finishing:

The Berlin Stories — Christopher Isherwood. A bit different to Cabaret. Really.
The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde. Spooky.
Treasure Island — Robert Louis Stevenson. Rollicking.
One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I really liked this one.
The Thirty-Nine Steps — John Buchan.
The Great Gatsby — F Scott Fitzgerald. Strange. I've read this before and remember it as mainly a "fun" book. How wrong I was.
Lord of the Flies — William Golding.
Frankenstein — Mary Shelley.
Moby-Dick — Herman Melville. I read this via Daily Lit, one page per day.
The Stand — Stephen King. I chose his most recent version, with all the cut out bits added. The ending stretched on and on and on.
Guards! Guards! — Terry Pratchett. Funny.
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee. Not sure if the movie spoiled it for me or not.
The Executioner's Song — Norman Mailer. Creepy. Long and drawn out.
BFG — Roald Dahl. The Queen?
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory — Roald Dahl.
Charlotte's Web — E. B. White. And then I watched the cartoon.
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe — C.S. Lewis. OK. Enough children's books already.
Pilgrim's Progress — John Bunyan. Another Daily Lit read. Tortuous. But I'm sure it is responsible for saving someone's soul.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams.
The Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Salinger. I really don't think this helps me understand John Lennon's killer. Not that I really want to.
Lucky Jim — Kingsley Amis. Amusing.
Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe. Unexpectedly good.
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone — JK Rowling.
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets — JK Rowling.
Matilda — Roald Dahl.
Money — Martin Amis. It took a long, long time for me to get into this one, and then I got into it, and rushed it at the end to finish it. Martin Amis turns out to be Kingsley "Lucky Jim" Amis's son.
Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain. I struggled with the American patois.
The Portrait of a Lady — Henry James. Daily Lit again but in two parts. So just when you finish the first you realise there is a whole second-half of the story to go. Why say two words when you can more eloquently express the fullness of your ideas in a more abundant literary manner.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie — Muriel Spark. Yeah, I liked this. I'm sure it was shocking in it's day.
Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov. I struggled for ages with this. Dare I say: a little bit boring.
The Unknown Terrorist — Richard Flanagan. This is one of those books you read and immediately think it is preposterous, and then it gradually eats into you, and you start closely reading the news for hidden agenda. I rush read it the story was so good. Yea gods, one of the characters in this lives in Panania. Panania. That's the suburb next-door to where I was raised.

My current Daily Lit read is David Copperfield (Part 124 of 447). This is a bit embarassing, because I was supposed to read this for English in High School, but I ended up giving up quickly and reading the Brodie's Notes on it. I must admit I like it better the second time around. The book by the side of my bed is Part 1 of Lord of the Rings, and my read-on-the-bus book is The Wide Sargasso Sea. This latest is a very hard book to read in an environment that is conducive to travel sickness.

My son and I

2009-11-14T07:31:00.003+11:00

Yesterday I went into the kitchen, and tripped over our son's toys and plates that he'd pulled out of the cupboard. I said a couple of swear words, cleared things up and went out to the loungeroom. It was covered in musical instruments, mostly guitars, sound gear, music stands and music that I had left everywhere.

We're not really that dissimilar.

Reminds me of that great line from Men Behaving Badly (the English version) when Dorothy and Gary are having a baby, and Dorothy laments about now having two flatulent little bastards with a breast fixation.

How to kill Google Chrome (from behind a corporate firewall)

2009-06-12T10:03:00.000+10:00

This is quite annoying. Most annoying is the fact that I do this every single morning without remembering the issue.

Start up Chrome.
Before the proxy sign-in window has a chance to come up, open a new tab.

Stop. You've done enough. From here, you can't seem to do anything, no keypress or mouse-click works, and you have to kill the process and start again. I imagine if you wait long enough, something will time-out, but you know...

Talking on the bus

2009-03-23T11:29:00.000+11:00

It still amazes me how much some people can just, well, talk.

This morning on the bus going to work, a pretty young girl entertained the whole back half of the bus for the full 45 minutes journey. First, it was talking to another young girl, who could hardly get a word in edgewise. The subjects ranged from her boyfriend, to her part-time job babysitting, and to her prospective purchase of a new car. After we had heard at 80% volume that her man is inattentive, her little charges are just gorgeous, and that she is intimidated test-driving cars that are equipped with a manual transmission, her no doubt partially-deafened friend exited the bus at the first city stop. She immediately took out her mobile phone and, at 75% volume, regaled the rest of us and her lucky callee with her hopes and expectations for her upcoming trip to Byron Bay.

Although this may sound strange coming from a man who blogs to the world, which is in itself a form of loud talking on the bus, I wonder whether this girl finds time to herself to just think rather than talk. One of the things she perhaps may think about, if she ever found the time, is how utterly ridiculous she sounds.

After alighting from the bus, I passed her in the street. I was surprised to see that she wasn't still on the phone. Her think-time, perhaps?

A Revelation

2009-03-10T10:19:00.000+11:00

I read this stunningly informative article yesterday on the Sydney Morning Herald website, which reports on the results of a study. Feel free to read it yourself, but don't read it standing up or if you have heart complaints because the shock may cause you to faint to the floor.

Employees wary, unmotivated after sacking
(http://www.smh.com.au/national/employees-wary-unmotivated-after-sackings-20090308-8sh5.html)

My stars, how insightful! Who on earth would have guessed, that after there have been sackings at a company, the remaining employees are less motivated. It is a complete revelation.

I have heard that the Sydney Morning Herald are running these related stories:

Study confirms reducing staff reduces employee costs
Poll results: workers prefer not to be retrenched
Happy staff are more productive

The only, and I mean the ONLY slightly surprising information provided by this "news" item, is the last paragraph, which states that nearly 50% of companies that sack staff need to rehire soon. And being one of those people that was retrenched and then re-hired quite soon after by the same company, it is not nearly so much of a surprise to me. Actually, what is a suprise is that these nearly 50% of companies are willing to admit their incompetence.

What is the greatest surprise is that:

People got paid for the results of the study; and
Someone got paid to write that article.

Inappropriate behaviour

2008-12-04T11:24:00.000+11:00

On Monday night after basketball, the team always goes down to Percy's Bar in North Sydney for a couple of quiet beers. This last Monday was no different.

At some point during the evening I went to the toilet, and standing at the urinal was reading the advertisement on the wall. It was for Tooheys White Stag beer, which promises one-third of the carbs of a regular beer. The ad says the remaining two-thirds of the carbs will be sent to those who need it most -- Americans. Interesting ad, amusing, however, the thing which caught my eye was a QR Code, and the line which went something like: "Point your mobile phone's camera at this QR code, and your phone's browser will pop up and take you to the Toohey's White Stag website."

Now, I may be all on my own here in this opinion, but I am NOT taking my mobile phone out to take pictures of ANYTHING in a pub toilet. The places are scary enough as it is. And I am certainly not going to be browsing the net while standing at the urinal. I mean for starters, my phone is a Palm Treo, and needs two hands to operate.

What on earth were they thinking?

Cultural differences

2008-09-04T15:10:00.000+10:00

I was looking through Kinokuniya in Sydney the other day. A labyrinthine, multi-language bookstore near Town Hall. I wandered from the English language fiction section over to the German langauge fiction section to test out some of my incredibly poor High School German.

I immediately noticed that the printing on the spine of German language books was in the opposite direction to that of English language books. To read through the titles, you have to tilt your head down to the left instead of the right. Cool!

My kids weren't impressed with this revelation. You try to teach children to enjoy the little things in life, but they are Generation Z (maybe Z+1?), and everything is either "mad" or "meh". This was clearly the latter.

15 Things they don't tell you about getting old.

2008-08-12T10:43:00.002+10:00

It's harder to wake up in the morning.
Your metabolism changes. Suddenly, cheesecake for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch and Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner is unacceptably bad for you. You actually eat the salads that come with the main meal.
You can't go out drinking till late, sleep for two hours, and get up and run the City-to-Surf.
You have an obsessive need to check your weight every morning.
The words cholesterol and hypertension don't have to be searched for in the dictionary.
Bad service makes you very cranky.
The acceptable age range for attractive ladies gets wider and wider.
You have to warm up at least 20 minutes for a 40 minute game, and still suffer 2 days of pain. If you don't warm up at all, expect 10 days of injury.
The number of days suffering from the common cold quietly approaches, or even exceeds, the number of days spent without it.
Your hair gets more wirey, and starts appearing in unusual spots, primarily nose and eyebrows.
The antics of the school kids on the morning bus no longer amuse you.
You doze off. Anywhere.
The weekend is for doing nothing, as opposed to doing lots of things other than work.
You still get pimples.
When there is rubbish on television, you turn it off rather than sit vacantly waiting for something better to come on. And isn't there a great deal more rubbish on television nowadays, or is it just me?

Sign of the times

2008-08-07T09:53:00.000+10:00

Taking the girls back home on Sunday night, I found myself stuck behind these two cars going into the entrance of the Lane Cove tunnel. The first was this huge old Big American Car, straight out of the 50's, chugging along at about 40kph (or possibly 25 mph?). The second was a ute and obviously a "chase" car.

Once we got into the tunnel proper, I overtook them and drove on, and quickly lost sight.

About an hour later, on the way back after having dropped the girls off, just before the entrance to the tunnel, I spotted the Big American Car, abandoned by the side of the road. It has obviously only just made it out the tunnel before conking out.

Fairly symbolic, I thought, that the age of the big car is well and truly over.

School House names

2008-06-27T13:08:00.002+10:00

On Wednesday, I was out at Josephine's primary school for a presentation, and hanging up behind the stage were the four house flags. I can't remember what the house names were, other than they were botanical. At my High School the houses were early Australian explorers, Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth and some other intrepid soul. Hume, maybe?

I reckon for a Western Sydney school, you couldn't get better than having the houses named after motorsport people. What about Brabham, Doohan, Gardner, and Webber? Much more interesting than Waratah, Banksia, and the like!

Top 100 Books update

2008-06-23T14:13:00.003+10:00

I'm now up to 32 books read. Refer to this previous article if you are not sure what I'm talking about.

These are the latest read:

As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner. This will either change or confirm your in-built views of back-country Americans. I liked this one very much.

Dune — Frank Herbert. I think this is about the fourth time I have read this one. A favourite.

Neuromancer — William Gibson. I find his narrative confusing in spots; probably a personal problem.

Scoop — Evelyn Waugh. Usually, it takes me a little while to get into a book and then I'm hooked. This was different. I initially thought it hilarious, I cooled on it in the middle, and got back to it in the end.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — John le Carre. OK.

Wind in the Willows, The — Kenneth Grahame. Very English countryside kids story. I'm sure I have read this before, possibly?

And I'm still reading Moby Dick via Daily Lit. Page 100 of 252. Struth! I'll get there in the end.

A car accident

2008-06-18T12:02:00.001+10:00

I was involved in an accident yesterday. No people damage, just to my car. Very annoying, with only this one surreal bright spot.

Tuesdays at petrol stations in Sydney (and possibly elsewhere) are just crazy now, reminding me of the petrol rationing times. Everyone lines up back into the street, blocking traffic, so they can fill up on what is supposedly the cheapest day of the week. Wow, one or two cents a litre, maybe $1.20 you saved for sitting with your car running for 20 minutes. But yesterday morning I was running on fumes only, and had no choice but to stop off at the Speedway Petrol Station on the corner of Falcon and Miller Streets to fill up my Civic. The arrangement of pumps at this station is unusual: since the station has access to both Miller and Falcon, the pumps are at 45 degrees to both roads, sort of cutting the corner if you like. I went round the corner and came back in, squeezing in behind a woman filling up, while a flat-bed tow-truck was filling up at the diesel pump alongside. He spent the whole time filling up on his mobile phone, which I thought unusual enough, seeing as there are always signs to say "Turn off mobile devices!" with the ubiquitous crossed-through red circle with the silhouette of a mobile phone inside. The woman left and I edged up to the front and plugged in.

We finished at the same time, he hopped into the truck still chatting away on the phone, and we both started to head out, him on the right, me on the inside. To get back onto Falcon Street we've both got to come back left at that sharp 45 degree angle. I decided to let him go first as he was edging aggressively into the traffic. But that wasn't enough for him, he had to cut across and he hit me while I was waiting there, ripping the front bumper up and almost off. The car was still driveable, so I headed out into the street, expecting him to stop up ahead. But no, despite my beeping the horn and yelling out, he was off and heading to the Harbour Tunnel turn-off, still talking on the phone! I had to accelerate and jump in front of him to get his attention, and then we went on a merry chase, me following, through the back streets till he pulled up in Ernest Street with his back end sticking into a "No Stopping" zone. One of those nasty red "No Stopping" signs that you know are going to cause no good if a cop comes past no matter what excuse you have. I had no choice but to pull in behind him.

He got out of the truck cabin, came back and spoke these immortal words:

"Hang on a sec', mate. I've got to fart."

The breakdown of society

2008-05-27T12:38:00.000+10:00

One thing that scares me about the possibility of society breaking down, is the knowledge that I may have to use a filthy toilet. I don't handle filthy toilets well. Any occasions where I have to use portable toilets induce constipation. Camping or going away somewhere that doesn't have a proper sit-down are similar. I'm not referring to the stand-up situation but rather the sit-down. Obviously.

Cleaning and eating a feral cat--no problems. Sitting down on a warm seat--uggh.

Just another in a litany of my not-so-deep-down psychological issues.

Wrong route for an upgrade

2008-05-23T11:49:00.003+10:00

I have a DLink DSL-504T DSL router at home connecting me to the internet, and I have got to say, I have never liked this box. It drops off for no apparent reason, and fails to reconnect automatically. The log is less than helpful and invariably shows the time and date as "00:00 Jan 1". The interface to punch holes through the router to me seem incredibly unintuitive. In fact the whole web interface thing is pretty confusing. Three times I have upgraded the firmware on it, and three times the upgrade has failed. Each time I have corrupted the device and it has required the "Corrupted Image" install.

This last time was the most frustrating. Knowing I have had problems in the past I took all the extra precautions I thought were necessary. I downloaded everything I could, manuals, readme files, all versions of the firmware and the little recovery utilities, as nothing is more frustrating than realising that you need information from the internet when you are sitting behind a DSL router that is impersonating a brick. I read as many forums as I could about the process and the troubles that people had with the process. I made sure that I had a Windows XP machine to do the upgrade, since the documents were all XP-centric. They are even XP- and Internet Explorer-centric, which is totally opposed to my Linux and Firefox theology. I disabled the firewall on the PC as instructed. I ensured that the IP address was static and the network parameters were correct.

The instructions, I have to say at this point, vary wildly between being annoyingly vague and confusing to annoyingly simplistic. A lovely little photograph of the back of the unit to show you were the reset button is? A step-by-step that gives a few steps, then just a huge block of text, as if they got sick of the whole step-by-step thing? Instructions that are just plain wrong: "Enter the username and password..." What username? It doesn't ask you for it. Lovely little screenshots of an Interner Explorer login dialog box. Can't I use Firefox?

And after all this, I still stuffed it up. Somehow. I have no idea what caused it to fail this time. I started the firmware upgrade application and it stalled half-way through. I had to run it in "Corrupted Image" mode to get it to install. But eventually it installed and I was able to re-configure it and re-connect to the internet. The log still shows "00:00 Jan 1". '

This is my last Dlink product ever I swear. And don't get me started on the DLink wireless router I have.

An advertisement

2008-05-06T14:19:00.001+10:00

My wife's new online business:

http://www.lalastyle.com.au/

Don't question, just click and find out.

Classic fiction comes to XML

2008-05-01T12:52:00.003+10:00

I was editing a XML datasheet today within Microsoft Excel. Not my preferred choice, but never mind. Excel saved the datasheet in it's own bizarre format, but I don't really care, it is XML in the end.

Afterwards, looking through the XML that it generated, I found this:

<style id="s21">
<span family="Swiss" bold="1">
</style>

I thought to myself that it would be much more appropriate if the Style ID for this one was "Robinson."

Think about it.

Stamina

2008-04-10T14:18:00.002+10:00

I obviously have none. Or only a limited amount.

I enjoy doing Sudoku puzzles, and so most days I get onto http://www.sudoku.org.uk/ and submit my daily sudoku. They keep track of how many you've completed correctly out of the last 350 days. I am approaching the 250 mark with 6 incorrect out of the last 350 days. Looking back through my record, you can see blocks of days where I've gone down to The Farm, or to my brother's place in Melbourne, or on a Footy trip to Brisbane with Fincher or whatever. 250 is alright, I reckon.

And then I look at the list of people who have completed 350. That's every day for the last 350 days they have submitted their entry, correctly, mind you. No piddling little typing errors or mistakes like me — Struth! Two 8's in row 3!.

It makes my feel wildly inadequate. And more than a little curious about the sacrifices that have to be made in order to get your entries in before the daily cut-off. "Sorry sweetheart, I can't engage in sexual intercourse right now as I only have twenty minutes before the Sudoku cut-off time." — or — "No we can't explore the wonders of Kakadu National Park today because I have heard the GPRS coverage is patchy at best."

Reminds me of that fellah, Noah Kalina (Google's just great, isn't it?), who took a photo of himself every day for about six years. (YouTube is pretty good, as well.)

It's occurred to me that this is probably the first time I've used the words sexual intercourse in a blog post. [Have I stepped over some invisible barrier?] It's also occurred to me that I probably should edit the time above. Twenty minutes for sex and a sudoku? There's probably enough remaining time for a beer as well.

26 Down, 74 to Go

2008-04-03T11:22:00.005+11:00

Sometime around mid-September 2006, a mate mentioned that he was reading books from a "Top 100 books of all time" list. I thought that this was a great goal, and decided to do this myself.

The first thing was deciding which list I would consult, as there were at least a half-dozen I could easily find on the net, and additionally, each bookstore chain had its own take on which books made the list. So I decided that I would create my own list. To do this I grabbed about six different lists, placed them in a spreadsheet, and titles which appeared multiple times (Lord of the Rings for instance) automatically went in. This accounted for about half of the books. The rest I picked-and-chose, selecting a mix of ones I had heard about, or ones I had read a long time ago and liked, or ones where the title just intrigued me. I came up with two lists, my Top 100 and my 2nd lot, with 155 titles in the 2nd lot.

I had about 30 titles overall that I had read previously, but decided I would re-read each one of these in addition to those I hadn't read.

Of course, the American lists favoured American authors and the English lists favoured English, and there was hardly any Australian literature at all, even in the Australian lists. What was interesting were the crossovers, where an English list would have an American author or vice versa.

This is what I have read so far:

Animal Farm — George Orwell.
Atonement — Ian McEwan. Coincidentally, I was reading this at the same time the movie came out.
Austerlitz — W. G. Sebald. Exhausting.
Big Sleep, The — Raymond Chandler. Had to see what all the fuss was about.
Brave New World — Aldous Huxley. My favourite at High School.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin — Louis de Bernieres. A little disappointing. In the end, I just couldn't imagine the characters behaving the way they did.
Catch-22 — Joseph Heller.
Clockwork Orange, A — Anthony Burgess. It took about a third of the book to "tune in" to this. But once there, a good story.
Deliverance — James Dickey. Creepy.
Godfather, The — Mario Puzo. I thought that this was a bit patchwork. Sometimes the writing was good, sometimes not so. Story was rollicking, though.
Hobbit, The — JRR Tolkien.
I, Claudius — Robert Graves. Now I just have to read Claudius, The God.
LA Confidential — James Ellroy. I'll have to see the movie now.
Magician — Raymond E Feist. Marathon. This edition had all the bits that he originally had to chuck out when first published. I reckon he could have left some of them out still.
Memoirs Of A Geisha — Arthur Golden. After seeing the movie.
Midnight's Children — Salman Rushdie.
Mort — Terry Pratchett. I may have missed the humour in this one.
Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell. The rats in the cage. Uggh.
Of Mice And Men — John Steinbeck.
On the Road — Jack Kerouac.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — Ken Kesey. Another one where I am going to have to see the movie now.
Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen. I think I must have read this about four times now. Every time I do, I pick up more subtle humour than the previous time.
Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut. I wonder if he took a leaf out of Joseph Heller's book?
Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The — John le Carre.
Trial, The — Franz Kafka. Pretty good for an unfinished book.
Ubik — Philip K. Dick. I found it interesting that this particular work of his was on two lists. Aren't there other, better, Philip K Dick books.

Looking at this list, it seems rather pathetic for eighteen months of reading. I guess I should keep in mind that I am not reading these books exclusively, and I still have to spend an inordinate amount of time reading technical books. One of the titles Pride and Prejudice, I read in an email-per-day format as 149 parts from DailyLit. This service sends you a new part every day, and each email includes a link to send the next part immediately. I ended up reading quite a few of the final parts in one sitting while sick in bed with the laptop. Not the ideal way to read a book, but if you keep at it, you get there in the end. The current title I am reading like this is Moby Dick. Part 19 from 252!

So at current speeds, I'll be finished around October 2012.

The most confusing article ever?

2008-01-31T09:02:00.000+11:00

I'm sure it isn't, but it certainly is very confusing.

I challenge you to read this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, and understand, on the first read, exactly which Beltrame did what and to whom. When the author says "Beltrame" without clarifying it with "Mr" or "Mrs" or "Miss" or even "Romina", do you know whether it is grandfather, mother or daughter easily? Or are you, like me, tracing back through the article to get clues from the surrounding text.

It just became too hard, and I gave up. Surely it would not have been too hard for the author, who I am sure is intimately aware of the details, to add in little hints on each occasion, like the relevant Beltrame's first name or title. Either the author is lazy, or I am just too stupid.

I haven't completely ruled out the second.

Finding fond hearts

2007-12-19T21:56:00.000+11:00

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

What an unmitigated piece of monkey tripe!

Alison has been away now for 9 days - and due to return in another 13 - and I'm not feeling anything except loneliness. What will happen, is when she returns, I will feel so much better than the wretchedness of the previous 22 days, that I will think things are so much better than they were before. I do not need enforced absence to underline to me how much she means to me, I already know it.

It applies the same with my kids. I really miss them when they are not here, which unfortunately is most of the time. I feel great when I see them, but I certainly don't need to be separated to increase my love of them.

I have heard this annoying little platitude at least half-a-dozen times now in the past two weeks, even once from Alison. If I was a murderous man I'd easily have achieved the status of serial killer. Alison would be pretty safe, though.

I think it must only apply to people who are sick of the sight of each other: "Yeah. Go away. How long do you want? Two, three months? OK."

Then, some time into the three months: "Gee, his nose-picking wasn't really all that annoying compared with his ability to take the garbage out. And that pile of garbage is really starting to smell."

>Sigh<

I really miss her. She would enjoy this little rant.

Postal sorting snafu

2007-12-18T09:02:00.000+11:00

Compare these two addresses:

Number 1:


Miss Sarah Jones
Unit 26 14-18 Johnson Street
Campsie NSW 2194

Number 2:


Miss Britney Smith
Unit 26 18 Camptown Road
North Sydney NSW 2060

Now, if you were living with Miss Smith at North Sydney and received the letter addressed to Miss Jones, would you be surprised? Now there are similarities in the street numbering and the name of Miss Jones's suburb is remarkably similar to Miss Smith's street name, and of course they both have the same christian name (Miss), but standing at the letterbox at North Sydney and holding the letter addressed to Miss Jones, you could be forgiven for wondering about the intelligence or otherwise of the postal sorting system.

This is a true story, only the names and addresses have been changed to protect the innocent.

The Wow is gone

2007-12-17T15:27:00.001+11:00

Well the balance of the upgrade from Vista to XP went quite smoothly. Friday afternoon I was still suffering a little bit of the effects of the work Christmas party and Saturday morning I went shopping with the girls. So I didn't get back into it until Saturday afternoon. There was a ton of downloaded software which I installed onto the thing following mostly this guide

Aside from the hours (unattended) copying files, the biggest delay has been searching for the drivers disk for my motherboard. Who would have thought I would keep it in the empty motherboard box stacked on top of the bookcase in the spare room?

And the results?

Initially I was astounded at the difference in speed; XP really flys along compared to Vista. The HP printer driver and Yamaha USB-Midi port drivers installed without any problems. I am yet to install Sibelius, though am confident that it will be successful. When I installed Comodo Personal Firewall it slowed a tad, and little windows kept popping up telling me what was going on, but the whole machine did not stop, and the messages are getting less and less numerous the more I use it.

[Just as a side note, while I could have used the in-built Windows Firewall, I have read a number of reviews which indicate that it is less than effective. ZoneAlarm and Comodo seem to be the best choices (see for instance http://www.consumersearch.com/www/software/firewalls/review.html).]

And to top it all off, this morning I read yet another review of a Vista-to-XP upgrade. This amusing story is written as if the writer is reviewing the "new" XP operating system, and comparing it to the older, slower, Vista. Superb.

Going, Going, Gone.

2007-12-14T12:27:00.000+11:00

In a follow-up to my previous post about upgrading from Vista to XP.

I got home quite late last night after attending Josephine's Presentation Night -- she won the Teacher's Choice award for her class -- so I was in a great mood. I thought I'd continue on by getting started with cleaning up my computer.

I began the task by uninstalling just about everything I could on the computer. I wanted to get it's footprint down small enough that I could just copy the whole disk across to my USB portable disk, and then deal with copying the data back later. I also ran up a few crucial programs and backed up the data where I could - E-Record being the really imporant one. After a number of hours, I managed to get it down to about 40Gb and started to copy across to my USB disk. I had already at this point started to copy the Users directory from drive C: to spare space on (internal) drive E:. To be sure, to be sure...

40Gb seems rather large for a Windows installation, Vista or not. I hunted through the files and removed all the obvious things (an Oracle Vista iso disk image?), and discovered that Alison's iPod software is not content with merely reading the MP3 files off the E: drive, it also has to copy them into her home directory as well into some other format. Hmmmm.

To do the copy I used this great little no-install utility called Unstoppable Copier. It just powers through everything, blat, blat, blat. Superb. I left the copying at 3am (!!) to get some sleep, figuring that it could work on it's own for a little while.

And all copied this morning. Before leaving for work I reformatted the partition and started the XP installation. I ran out of time and will get back to it this evening.

Seems I am not alone in my use of the term "upgrading" when going from from Vista to XP. See here and here for just the tip of the iceberg. Nor does my choice of title seem to be unique.

The Wow stops soon

2007-12-13T13:49:00.000+11:00

I've had it with Vista.

The final straw came on Tuesday when I was helping Alison copy some photos over to her iPod. Three times in the space of two slow, slow minutes it did the black-screen thing and asked me to confirm that I wanted to do this. If the security system can't tell the difference between a user copying files and suspect activity from some virus, then it is not bloody worth it's salt.

So on top of the slowness, the trouble with drivers for the HP printer, the fact that it won't run Sibelius properly, and that it won't share files properly with other PCs on our LAN; the stupid security blackouts have finally done it for me.

So I'm "downgrading" from Vista to XP. I challenge that the terminology is incorrect; in my mind I'm actually upgrading from Vista to XP.

I'll let you know how I go.

Lazy web developers

2007-12-12T13:18:00.000+11:00

Having once booked a flight or hotel through Expedia, I now receive periodic email mailouts from them with their latest offers. This is a snip from the latest I have received.

Here's the email with the images included:

But my email client does not automatically include the images; they are blocked by default. I have to enable them for each individual mail or by sender, and this is the email as I originally saw it:

Note the ALT text descriptions in the space where the right-hand images should be. "Uhhh"? "No time for Description"??

No time for professionalism is more like it.

Always Being Right

2007-11-22T12:12:00.000+11:00

I am right-handed. Exclusively so.

I am slightly envious of people who are left-handed. Most of them seem to be able to work with either hand, and a lot of them seem to be more talented than us regular righties. They are clearly over-represented in sport and the arts. I mean one-half of The Beatles were left-handed, and clearly one-half of the population is not left-handed.

[That's great statistics, isn't it? One sample point used to support my theory. Worthy of being in politics.]

But what annoys me most about being right-handed, is the fact that I am right-eared as well. I have never been able to use my left ear for phone calls. When I am forced to take notes whilst talking on the telephone, I have to do either the juggle-to-the-left-and-back thing, or the squeeze-hard-with-right-shoulder thing. When I am trying to tune my guitar or trombone, I automatically bend or swivel so that my right ear can more easily hear the note I am tuning to. I noticed this last weekend at a gig.

I'm going to be even more annoyed if I start closing my left eye to read things, aren't I?

Stupid Filter

2007-11-22T11:52:00.000+11:00

I have started working as a moderator on the Stupid Filter Project. This project aims to produce an open-source software product that is capable of filtering out "stupid" comments.

By "moderating" I rate random snatches of written comments on a stupidity scale of 1 to 5. These comments are sentences - that is the ones that can be described as sentences - that have appeared as commentary on various websites. YouTube for instance, is a common one.

Now, it is possible that I simply don't spend enough time on the web and am therefore not exposed enough to it. Or possibly that I have some sort of internal filter that automatically ignores rubbish. Or maybe it is just that I am too old. Regardless, I have been absolutely floored by the amount of sheer idiocy that exists out there. Granted, it is possible that some of the correspondents do not speak English as their first language. But a significant portion of the comments do not even qualify as English. In a 160-character SMS it is reasonable to use shortcuts and abbreviations to save space, but on the web all it costs is a extra couple of seconds worth of keystroke. Some people are more happy devoting those extra keystrokes adding letters where they were never intended to be.

Maybe I am getting old. Or perhaps that should be:

"U R soooooo OLDDDD!!"

Struth Part 5 : The Prequel to My Favourite Joke

2007-11-16T15:18:00.000+11:00

[The fifth in a series of commentaries from my old website.]

Hans, the famous Australian adventurer had decided that the next feat he would attempt was to be a solo crossing of the Simpson desert on camel-back. He did all his research and moved to Alice Springs to complete his preparations. He discovered that it takes six days to travel on camel-back from east to west with your average speed of a camel. The best thing, he thought, was to get a camel that could actually travel a lot faster than your average camel. So he asked around and eventually was told of "Marvellous Matt's Camel Mart," who specialised in unusual camel's.

So he took his mate (and Support Team Leader) Bill down to Marvellous Matt's Camel Mart and asked Matt for the fastest came he had. Matt had one camel that moved twice as fast as the normal camel (and of course, cost twice as much). Matt took Hans and Bill to see the camel. They went down the back of the lot and sure enough, there was this ratty-looking camel munching on some grass.

"Doesn't look much to me," says Hans.

"No, I admit he doesn't," says Matt, "But I can assure you he is the fastest camel in Australia. You've just got to treat him right."

"And what would that involve?" asked Hans.

Matt leans over and picks up a pair of house bricks that just happen to be lying on the ground. He enters the corral and walks towards the camel. "What you have to do, " demonstrates Matt, "is to grab a brick in each hand and smash the camel's testicles between the two bricks. Then the camel will take off like a rocket." Matt quickly moves behind the camel and smashes the bricks together on the poor animal's testicles. The camel rears up and takes off like a rocket, running at blinding speed around the corral. The three men retreat.

Hans is a bit taken aback by this direct method, and asks Matt, "Gee, that looks a bit dangerous. Doesn't it hurt?"

Matt replies, "Only if you get your thumbs caught between the bricks."

Struth Part 4: The Mal Partridge Theory of Joke-Telling

2007-11-13T11:04:00.000+11:00

[The fourth in a series of commentaries from my old website. This theory is easily
ten years old now.]

And NOT the Mal Partridge Theory of Telling Jokes.

Mr. Malcolm James Partridge is a little-known Australian philosopher (remember Rule Number One?) and he has formulated a theory of joke-telling which has received some degree of fame. Sadly, this hasn't yet hit the internet.

Since Malcolm is a good friend of mine, I have taken the liberty of debuting his theory and its corollary on the internet. It is high time.

Theory

A joke will get funnier and funnier in the retelling to a male, in an inverse proportion to the amount it gets funnier to a female. For example, a retold joke that doubles in apparent funniness to a bloke, will be exactly half as funny when retold to a woman. This applies if and only if the joke increases in apparent funniness to men. Said joke is referred to as a joke of funniness potential increasing (FPI). FPI need not be linear. There is no corresponding funniness potential decreasing.

Corollary

There is a corollary that states that a retold joke of FPI can be contracted with each retelling, so that the whole joke can be represented by a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase, and in extreme cases, by a single word, with the same results as if the whole joke were told.

Translating German

2007-11-13T10:59:00.000+11:00

Every day I receive in my in-box a "Word Of The Day" email from a translation services company (http://www.transparent.com/). Sometimes what turns up is amusing or interesting. This one, which falls into the latter category, was there this morning:

German: Ja. Gut, dann kauf' ich alle drei. Ja.
English: Yes. Well, then I'll buy all three. Okay.

I just like the use of the the word "Ja". Two different meanings in the one phrase. Cool.

Struth Part 3: Charities that solicit in the street

2007-11-09T10:54:00.000+11:00

[The third in a series of commentaries from my old website. I can't recall when this was written.]

Look. I have given to charities in the past and will do so again. I will NOT give to any charity that tries to solicit me in the street.

[Churlish bastard, wasn't I?]

Has anyone else also noticed how aggressive the charity workers are becoming? I saw in Mount St, North Sydney recently one man pursue two female Japanese tourists. They had to run to get away from the man, and they appeared scared.

I have thought of a way of dealing with them, though, particularly in Mount St. Mall. If I (and possibly about 500 of my friends) write to the store owners in the Mall, saying that I will not shop in their store because of the people soliciting in the street, then maybe the store-owners will approach North Sydney Council and get them moved on.

It probably won't work, though. They'll only just move somewhere else.

Seeing red

2007-11-05T15:51:00.000+11:00

Some pushbike riders are undoubtedly a law unto themselves. They use the law when it suits them and ignore it when it doesn't. Being myself of a minority road-using group -- I am a motorcyclist -- I am sensitive to generalisations and prejudices and clearly do not want to be one of those tar-everyone-with-the-same-brush -type persons. But struth! SOME pushbiker riders are absolute idiots!

This morning while waiting in the car at a set of lights, we watched in fascinated horror as a cyclist ran a red light at high speed and very narrowly missed a schoolboy crossing legally at the pedestrian crossing. Both the boy and the cyclist had to swerve violently to avoid what would've been a very nasty collision. We had the green light, and waited patiently, though in some shock, for the boy to cross in front of us, turned and followed the cyclist down the road.

As we caught him up and were approaching the next intersection, Alison, sensing my mood bless her, asked if I would like the window wound down so I could hurl abuse at the cyclist. An amazing piece of mind-reading. Of course I assented. When we reached the intersection, we were turning off, and he was travelling ahead, and once again, instead of waiting at the red light, he started advancing through it. So I yelled out the window, "Another red light, you bloody idiot?!"

He heard.

While I am an avid anti-regulationist, after seeing this incident, I wondered whether some type of mechanism or control needs to be put on cyclists to make them obey the laws of the road when they are using it. Perhaps a road-rules examination?

I guess the answer to this is that regardless of what controls are in place, a bloody idiot will still behave like a bloody idiot.

[I should perhaps point out that the first draft of this post had the words "bloody idiot" throughout, which I've since replaced with "cyclist". Does my self-censorship have any bounds, I wonder?]

Struth Part 2 : North Sydney Post Office

2007-11-01T15:11:00.000+11:00

[The second in a series of commentaries from my old website. This was written in the Sep/Oct 2004 timeframe.]

The very first time I went into North Sydney Post
Office to pick up a parcel as a North Sydney resident I waited,
clutching my parcel voucher patiently in line for at least 10 minutes.
When I got to the head of the queue, the woman calmly told me that I
didn't need to wait, there is a separate parcels office.

"How was I to know this? Why isn't there a sign up somewhere saying this?"

"There is. On the wall outside the parcels office."

"Presumably I wouldn't have seen the sign unless I previously knew the parcels office existed, and it's location, though."

<grumble><swearword /></grumble>

Struth Part 1: Parking in North Sydney

2007-10-31T11:25:00.001+11:00

[I am in the process of updating my website. I have not touched it in about 3 years. I used to have a mini-blog on the site, but moved to blogger when maintaining it became too irksome. In order to preserve for eternity my loving commentary, I've decided to replicate what I had previously written here on my blog, before blowing away the original. This is the first one, and was written in the Sep/Oct 2004 timeframe.]

OK, we all know how hard it is to find a parking spot in North Sydney. Well, those of us who work there do. But I live here. We live in a three-bedroom unit that has one allocated parking space. But North Sydney Council will not allow me a Resident's Parking Permit because we already have our one allocated space which my girlfriend uses for her four-times-more-expensive car. So I find a free 24×7 space in an adjacent street and park my car there during the week when I'm not using it. Saturday morning 7 August 2004 I went to my car to find a parking ticket under the windscreen wiper, dated the previous day. Sometime between Sunday 1st and Saturday 7th, they've changed the area I parked in from a 24×7 space to a 2-hour only space.

I don't want to read conspiracy in this too much, but it's the Council who approves building applications with inadequate car-parking for the occupants, Council which decides the rules for allocation of parking permits, Council which changes the zoning of existing parking without notifying residents, and Council which takes the revenue from parking fines generated in the re-zoned parking spots.

Very, very annoying. And costly.

Lifelong learning

2007-10-26T10:30:00.000+10:00

When I was Uni in 1984 studying Chemical Engineering (?!?!), all the Engineering undergraduate students were required to take what were known as "General Studies" subjects, in a noble but I suspect generally futile attempt to broaden our minds beyond constructing (or destructing) things and drinking the cheapest beer at the Uni bar.

I mainly took subjects based on either what my current girlfriend was doing or what the chick prospects were. Bizarrely, while I was failing "Chemisty 1B", I was getting High Distinctions in the "Modern Novel", and I certainly enjoyed the change in tempo. I figure my mind was fairly broad already from my music and enjoyment of reading.

I distinctly remember the first lesson in one of the subjects. We went 'round the twelve or so students, each introducing themselves and explaining what they were doing there ("Gday. I'm Mic. This was the best of a bad bunch of General Studies subjects, and I'm trying to get onto Jacquie.")

There was this older student in the class, who looked just a little out of place with the 18- and 19-year-olds. He lived not far from the Uni, and was taking a variety of single subjects rather than trying to complete a course, "one's that interest me". He had retired a long time ago, and I have the memory that he said he was an ex-laywer or barrister, but can't be sure of this. He said he was in his late seventies, and "you're never to old to learn." The class, myself included, actually applauded him after he'd finished.

I still reckon that was pretty cool.

Annoying wet days

2007-10-25T11:41:00.000+10:00

Granted, it is coming down a bit harder now, but this morning, walking down Martin Place, it was little more than a mist. Naturally this meant that the huge, gaudy and pointy umbrellas were out in force, hiding brave men from the ferocious onslaught of the weather.

Getting down to work, I ended up wetter from my perspiration in the humidity than I was from the sparse drops of rain.

Here's a newsflash for you all: It is only water.

Changes in my life since 6 October 2007

2007-10-23T11:36:00.000+10:00

Some changes since the big day:

I no longer have to use that pretentious-sounding word "fiancée"
The older single woman at the bus-stop now talks to me
I have to remember that date forever
I have to remove my ring before playing basketball
I have to remember to replace it after playing basketball
My hand clinks on the bus grab-rail

Bum buttons

2007-10-22T09:03:00.000+10:00

Of all the places on clothing to place a button, the most ridiculous is right on the cheek of the bum. It doesn't matter that the intention of this button is to keep a pocket closed.

I don't think I have a pair of trousers or shorts that have the button intact. All it takes is to scrape your bum cheek against the back of a wooden chair and "rip" off it comes.

Why do they bother?

Oh so alone

2007-10-19T09:12:00.000+10:00

There's not a lot of people in at work today. When it is like this, I often wonder if they know something that I don't, like that is a public holiday, or it is "Work From Home Day".

The other thought that goes through my mind is the rumours you always hear about how airliners that crash always have an inordinate number of people that simply don't take the flight, possibly because of some precognition.

Every little building creaking sound has me worried.

The Oh No Man

2007-07-10T11:56:00.000+10:00

Funny thing in Barrack Street Mall the other day.

It was lunchtime and quite crowded in the mall. A well-dressed man, late thirties possibly, was walking in the opposite direction. His phone rang in his pocket.

At the sound of the ring, he stops short, leans forward slightly and exclaims angrily through clenched teeth, "OH NO!" He frightened a number of people around him with his intensity. Oblivious to all this, he looks at the phone, growls again and then answers it politely, "Hello, this is xxxxx."

Unmentionable

2007-06-22T10:13:00.000+10:00

I just thought of a good catch phrase if they ever do an information campaign about Bowel Cancer:

Watch Your Wipe

One reason the bus is not so good...

2007-06-07T12:57:00.000+10:00

If you try to write some music on the bus, you sometimes get travel sick. Particularly if you sit up the back of the bus.

Donuts

2007-06-07T12:56:00.000+10:00

I saw this sign going past the donut shop:

Avoid the queue, order your donuts online for home delivery.

I thought, "Lazy bastards. If they have queues, why don't they just hire more staff."

An Ungodly Hour

2007-06-01T10:40:00.001+10:00

I was up at about 4am this morning. Too many things on my mind at the moment I reckon. It occurred to me, "Gee Michael, you are up at an ungodly hour."

Then I began wondering about the origin of the term. Obviously, Pagans were getting up in the early mornings to perform their disgusting rituals or something like this.

6-1/2 hours of googling later and still no wiser.

Top 5 reasons why the bus is better than the train

2007-05-29T11:20:00.000+10:00

5. You get a seat. Always.
4. If the bus is late, you can generally see the reason, ie, the traffic is bad.
3. It takes the same amount of time to go to and from work, yet the walking is less.
2. You can actually see the Opera House and Harbour on the way over the bridge. Beautiful.
1. When York St is clogged with traffic, the driver will turn to the bus and say, "If you're in a rush to get to Wynyard, I suggest you get off here."

It's free, man

2007-05-28T11:35:00.000+10:00

My ISP has this concept they call "uncounted period". It is a period of time during the day where downloads do not count against your monthly allowance. This is part of the email I have received from them regarding this:

...the allowance for the period 12 midnight to 12 noon each day will be increased to 40 gb from the current allowance of 40 gb.

Generous, aren't they?

Justin, milk drinker

2007-05-25T08:46:00.000+10:00

This is a (dodgy phone-camera) shot of the side of the Coles Lite Milk carton.

For those with horrid eyesight the caption says:

"Perfect! It's light, refreshing and tasty"

Justin, milk drinker.

Surely I am not the only one who thinks Justin is slightly suspect. So, which do you prefer, the milk or the cow?

Congestion on the pavements of Sydney

2007-05-18T10:57:00.000+10:00

When you are rushing to get to work in the morning, I think that the hardest thing to get past is a tiny lady with a golf umbrella walking slowly. The umbrella framework looks awfully scary when it is close to your eyes.

It's particularly annoying when, although it looks a bit wet out, there is not a drop falling.

Bullies

2007-05-17T11:34:00.000+10:00

There's a lot of talk about bullying going on at the moment, probably because of this story. I don't know any of the details of the case, so can't comment either way on whether the payout is fair or too high or not justified at all, or whether the judgement is correct or incorrect.

I'm sure that everyone gets bullied at school, some more than others. Even the bullies. The über-bullies get bullied by their drunken fathers and so they bully kids at school, who in turn bully weaker kids, who bully yet weaker kids, all the way down to the bottom of the heap to the kids who get picked on by everyone, and so end up torturing cats or abusing their younger siblings.

In Year 7 I was bullied by this bloke, I can't even remember his name now or what exactly was happening. Eventually I cracked one day and just started hitting him back. He belted me good, but then never touched me again. And in Year 9 a similar thing happened - a bloke was pushing and pushing until I eventually cracked and thumped him good and hard on the nose. In the classroom with the teacher present as well. I'll never forget the satisfying look of surprise on his face. After that incident he copped at lot more bullying from his "mates" as well as never bullying me again. I guess he realised that I was actually bigger than him. Also, getting thumped good and hard by one of the "band nerds" has a way of dropping you down the pecking order somewhat. Heh.

Yesterday I was at Josephine's primary school for her open day. I was sitting with her at recess, chatting and eating some of her cookies. A little boy came up to me, obviously thinking I was a teacher. It has happened before - and Josephine's friends tease me about it.

The little boy said, "He just punched me in the stomach," and pointed to another little boy of about the same size. Without thinking too much I replied, "Well punch him back."

Josephine was horrified, "Dad! Be responsible." Of course she was right -- given moral direction by a 9-year-old! Luckily a teacher came along to take charge of affairs for me and I didn't have to save the situation.

There is no other moral to this story, other than my incredibly poor judgement. I just thought it a topical occurrence.

A Bad Mood

2007-04-19T15:32:00.000+10:00

When in an extremely bad mood, the following courses of action hold hope of changing the mood, or, at the very least, of providing some temporary relief.

Punch out the person attempting to get you to donate to the "Save the Siberian Kitten" fund. Not a little love-tap either, but a full-on, sit-you-on-your-arse belt.
Snatch the mobile phone off that person who is sharing their annoying conversation with everyone within a 20-metre radius. Throw that same phone down hard. On the concrete. Enjoy seeing all the little shiny plastic pieces scatter randomly.
Resign on the spot. Walk out. Never return. Not even to retrieve your favourite Dilbert cartoon.
Go to the pub. Buy the foulest-tasting rum in the largest size beer glass and get very, very dog-earred. Get thrown out at closing time.
Catch a train to a random destination. Like Antartica.
Get a permanent tattoo that has a lot of swear words on it.
Buy something really expensive that you've always wanted. Like a Jack Russell Terrier.
Go to KFC and order the largest bucket of chicken. Eat it all, discarding the bones OFF the tray and on the table. Belch loudly throughout, and visit the toilet only to vomit.
Eat an ice-cream. Or possibly two. At 8am.
Stop on the way home to purchase a 1kg bag of potato chips. Eat them while lying on the lounge watching Men Behaving Badly, all six series, beginning to end.
Go to a gay bar or gym and pick a fight with the muscliest bloke there.
Surf for porn movies at work. Play them with the volume turned way up high.

Please note I have purposely removed all those that would cause death or pregnancy to strangers. I suspect perhaps that the difference between myself and someone who is clinically depressed is that I would probably not do any of these. Probably. Not that I actually know anything about clinical depression.

Oh. I left one off the list: Write a morbidly depressing blog entry. There, that's helped, hasn't it?

Someone has messed up

2007-04-18T22:23:00.000+10:00

I think it is interesting the way newspapers, and news sites, indicate foul language.

I was reading an article on the Sydney Morning Herald's AFL website about Adam Selwood being cleared for using offensive language on the field. The actual article is here.. Initially, Selwood is quoted in the usual way, with the first letter of the word showing and the rest of the characters replaced with asterisk signs with the exception of letters to indicate tense. So "Bummer" would appear as "B*****". But "pushed" would appear as "p***ed". You get the picture I'm sure.

But someone obviously forgot this rule in the second half of the article. Read down to the paragraph that starts: "Selwood said there was no other conversation..." Strange that not all instances of that particular word are bleeped.

Of course with my luck lately, it is sure to be sanitised by the time someone reads this blog entry.

An opportunity wasted

2007-04-16T15:36:00.000+10:00

The English language is missing a word. This word describes the intense feeling of satisfaction felt when you see a segment on a current affairs show that covers a story or situation that you previously thought to be an as-yet-to-be-discovered truth.

Naturally I'll illustrate this with an example.

One day recently, once again stuck in Sydney traffic, I looked across at a driver in the next lane who was sitting dejectedly behind the wheel of his gawdily-marked business car. I began wondering just how much the recent road changes and subsequent traffic jams would be costing businesses.

Sure enough, Thursday night, I was watching A Current Affair on Channel 9, against my will I might add, as I really dislike the show, when an item came on discussing this very thing. It is costing businesses big time. Yes! I was right.

This illustrates to me that the blog is king. If I had've blogged about this when I initially thought about it, then I'd be a rich man now either having sold the idea to Channel 9, or suing the bastards for stealing my idea.

Time to start blogging every single little thought, no matter how fleeting or trivial. Be prepared for an onslaught.

Car signs

2007-03-09T13:23:00.000+11:00

For quite a while now I've thought that it'd be great to have a sign, or set of signs, that you could display to other drivers whilst on the road. This would be a more sophisticated aid to communication amongst drivers than the existing horn, blinkers, and hand gestures. If a certain situation arose, you could - "flick" - display the sign, and so communicate your intentions (or other) to other road-users.

I am very much aware of the fact that this tool could lead to the increase of road-rage. Regardless, I press on.

The other day while driving to work, Alison mentioned this to me - it had come to her independently - and we began to discuss the top five signs that we would use. Unfortunately, my drop-off in College St came up too quickly and the conversation was never finished. But two things were clear:

Most were not printable

With one or two notable exceptions, they were generally all a variation of the one theme

Regardless, once again, I press on to present our list of top five signs, in no particular order. I should point out that they would, in practice, contain vastly different text that this list.

I am terribly sorry, my fellow travellers, for the mistake I have just made.

Sir. Your blinkers do not appear to be working, as you have changed lanes many, many times without me seeing them appear. Perhaps I can recommend a mechanic?

I was not aware that the law had been changed to allow [for instance] U-turns across six full lanes of traffic moving at speed. Please forgive my ignorance.

You are travelling with much haste and abandon. Good luck with your wife's childbirth/fireman's duties.

You appear sir, to be travelling quite close, and so obviously wish to be introduced. I apologise for my rudeness in ignoring you.

So what do you reckon?

How light?

2007-02-22T09:04:00.000+11:00

Just something to think about the next time you're having breakfast.

Why does the cereal box of Sanitarium Light 'N' Tasty feel so heavy?

Getting Things Halfway Done

2007-02-21T14:31:00.000+11:00

I'm reading a book at the moment, "How to Get Things Done" by David Allen. Now that is not it's original name. It's generally known as "Getting Things Done", but for some reason, the title was changed for the Australian, and possibly other, markets. Australia was the only one I noticed on Amazon though. All the references in the book have been changed from Getting Things Done to How to Get Things Done.

I have no idea why they changed it, but if they've gone to all the trouble of doing so because of perceived cultural differences between Australians and American, why didn't they change the spelling of, for instance, "organize" to "organise" throughout?

I have no problem with them renaming this book, but it's like they've stopped short.

How people deal with being "stood up"

2007-02-08T14:15:00.000+11:00

Today I did my occasional lunchtime thing, and went to the Sporters Bar at the Menzies Hotel with a magazine. Happily I sat down on my own, with peace and quiet, had a (light) beer and patiently waited for my Vegeburger to turn up.

[Aside: Please don't tell anyone about the Menzies. At lunch it is almost always quiet and unpopulated, smoke-free and friendly staff. Let's just keep it our little secret, shall we.]

Moments after I sat down, a bloke sat down with a glass of white wine and a cola-mixer drink, scotch-and-coke or something like that. It obviously wasn't just straight coke, as it had the tell-tale froth on top. He immediately tucked into the white and put the other drink in front of the seat next to him. Then he took out his phone and rang up someone. I wasn't able (and frankly didn't want) to hear his conversation.

On putting the phone down a short time later, he also put down his wine, picked up the other drink and downed it in three or four quick gulps. He put down the now empty glass and picked the wine up again and similarly finished that in under a minute.

Well, I thought, he obviously was supposed to meet someone, they cancelled at the last minute, and he now has to get on his trap and pony and go. But no, he returned to the bar and bought another white wine and returned, not to the same table, but to a separate table. Once again, he downed his wine in less than a minute, and this time upon finishing, left for good.

My oh my, it must've been an important meeting.

Free Will

2007-02-05T09:47:00.000+11:00

I am an avid reader of New Scientist magazine, and they recently did an article or two on Free Will versus Determinism. It's the sort of topic that's guaranteed to drain your zest for life, regardless of whether you believe that life is basically pretty random, or whether it's all fate and pre-determined, or even a scary combination of the two.

Personally, my philosophy of all this is that it is not the sort of question that we are ever likely, or even really want, to solve. Let's just get on with enjoying this gift called life.

The letters to the editor have been flowing thick and fast on this topic. In a recent issue of the magazine, a cartoonist has drawn a person looking at a sign:

"Ministry of Free Will"

Brilliant. Oh come on I shouldn't have to explain it to you.

How does this bird know?

2007-01-29T13:30:00.000+11:00

Today for lunch I went to the park near Wynyard Station, sat down on a bench, had my lunch and read a magazine. About twenty minutes into it, an Australian Ibis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Ibis) came along and started rummaging around in the debris alongside and behind the bench I was sitting on, looking for something to eat.

This bird was close, within arms-reach, and appeared quite unafraid of me. Even a thing that looks a frightening cross between a chicken and buzzard should be a little scared of a human.

In case you didn't follow the link above and see the pretty photograph, the bird has a long, curved, black beak, this one at least 20cm long. It was hunting around in the collected debris from the trees and rubbish, using the end of it's beak, and eventually turned up a piece of meat from a sandwich or something.

It occurred to me: how does the bird know whether the thing that it has captured in its beak is a morsel of food or not, say, a cigarette butt? Does it have taste buds right down the end of its beak? Looking closely, it seemed to have long nostrils embedded in the upper beak up near its wrinkled, black face. Obviously it can smell the food in the first place, but does the smell determine what gets picked up? Does the tongue stretch all the way down the length of the beak?

How does it do it?

Ouch!

2007-01-29T09:10:00.000+11:00

I always wondered whenever I've seen a person wearing a nose ring what sort of umm, misadventures could happen. Now I've seen one example.

On Saturday afternoon, the girls and I were coming home from North Sydney on the train. We sat down in the end section of the carriage and next to a young bloke with his Aldi shopping. I thought for a second that he had a really, really bad pimple on his left nostril, but when I voyeuristically and surreptitiously looked closer, I realised that it was in fact a wound from where a nose ring or stud had been removed with force, ripping the nose with it. The wound was a half-centimetre red gash from the ring hole down to the nostril, and the whole left outside of his nose was a disgusting red and purple colour.

The girls were oblivious. I was sickened slightly.

[I'm now wondering if voyeuristically is a real adverb or whether I've made it up. Ah well.]

It's about time. But, hang on...

2006-10-14T06:21:00.000+10:00

Finally, finally, they are going to show basketball on free-to-air television. Again. Well, sort of.

Here is the link to the story.

And here's the quote that raised my eyebrows somewhat:

NBL Commissioner Rick Burton said the new agreement with Nine [free-to-air TV station] would greatly complement the existing Philips Championship live coverage on Fox Sports [pay TV].

“This is another major step forward for the Philips Championship and we believe this additional coverage on Channel Nine will help significantly grow interest in basketball across the country” Burton said.

In years gone past, basketball was BIG in Sydney. People all over the place were seen wearing the team's gear, you'd hear of people going to games, you'd go to one or two games during the season yourself, you'd flick on the ABC to watch a game every now and then, you'd talk to others about the results, and at the very least you generally knew how the Kings or the Razorbacks were going in the comp. And the games were packed. I'm certain that at least part of this was due to the coverage on free-to-air television.

Then they made the interesting decision to only show games on pay TV. And coincidentally, the game virtually disappeared into obscurity. Particularly for us poor clods who cannot afford Fox Sports. Oh, are the Kings in the grand-final? Oh, OK, didn't know that.

About 18 months back Ali and I went to a Sydney King's game and it was a little depressing to say the least. Despite being held in the Sydney Entertainment Centre, there were very few people there, and many of the corporate and court-side boxes were empty. A terrorist with a bomb would not consider it a worthwhile target.

Now they are putting it back on free-to-air to try to undo the damage of the past mistakes and to "significantly grow interest". Grumble, grumble. All this is going on, and meanwhile every time I turn the telly on, I see a commercial from the stations exhorting us to support the stations in their fight against the Pay TV operators and the government to keep "free" sport on free-to-air. See this for a little further commentary.

While I am happy that basketball has returned to free-to-air, I am not happy that it has gone to Channel Nine. It is only a highlights package, and will probably by bumped for other content, particularly cricket or yet another dog-down-a-well-exclusive, at every available opportunity.

Who you gonna call?

2006-10-03T08:55:00.000+10:00

Friends came over on the weekend to watch the big game. (Our team lost, unfortunately.) They brought along their daughter, and one of their daughter's friends, a lovely little girl of about 11.

Her name was Dana. All I could think of was the line from Ghostbusters: "There is no Dana, only Zuul."

[As an aside, Google is just brilliant. I wondered how to actually spell Zuul, so I googled Dana Zuel. It not only told me that I'd mis-spelled Zuul, but took me to this page.]

Now I don't have a problem with people naming their children after famous people they respect or admire. I've met Ellas, Elvises and a couple of Jesuses (Jesus' possibly? I never know how to pluralise), and quite a few Britneys. The last one I am not sure about, particularly the preface "respect and admire." I guess it might not be everyone in the world who will immediately think of a line out of Ghostbusters when they first meet someone. But SURELY the parents had heard of Dana Barrett and thought that people meeting her would think, "But she looks nothing like Sigourney Weaver."

Ah well I shouldn't dwell. It is hard to decide on a child's name. In fact I've touched on this subject before.

Please, people of the world, consider the future for your children.

Collective Names (and NOT Collectivism)

2006-09-27T09:17:00.000+10:00

Last week I read Bill Bryson's very funny book Down Under (called In a Sunburned Country in the US). It embarassed me what this man knows about Australia that I don't. Nullabor is not an aboriginal word, for instance.

One thing that has stuck with me is that he points out that people who live in Sydney are called Sydneysiders, and that this is somewhat unique. Is it that unique? Surely there is another city that calls it inhabitants "-siders"?

Why am I called a Sydneysider? How did this happen? Did some editor of the Sydney Morning Herald wake up one morning after a particularly troubled nights sleep, make his way into work, and send off a memo to all staff? - "...henceforth, this publication will refer to the population of Sydney as Sydneysiders..."

Was it a disparaging term used by Melburnians (or Melbournians - I believe there is some debate)? - "...come on children, stop that. You're behaving like a bunch of Sydneysiders." Or possibly it was used by people from the North Shore of Sydney, referring to the poor people on the south side of the harbour.

For that matter, where does any city inhabitant name come from. Other cities don't seem to follow any pattern: Melburnian, Brisbanite, Canberran, Berliner, Londoner, Parisian, New Yorker, Mancunian, Glaswegian. Where on earth does all this come from? Who invented these?

Personally, I don't even know the terminology for this type of word - a word that refers to the inhabitant of a city. Dweller-nom maybe?

The mystery deepens further when you consider collective names of animals, for which numerous, conflicting lists appear on the internet (though personally I'll stick with wikipedia): a herd of cows, a murder of crows, a flange of babboons, etc.

Someone needs to be held responsible for this mess.

Elevator Observations

2006-09-26T15:19:00.000+10:00

I have a number of theories about people travelling in elevators. Perhaps observations is a better word than theories? See for yourself.

1. When people all exit an elevator, say when it has descended to the ground floor, they generally (but not always!) exit in the reverse order to when they got on. That is, the bloke from Level 2 gets off first, then the bloke from Level 4, then me from Level 8, and then the fellah from Level 11. This is particularly applicable when everyone is male, but less so when there is a mixture of males and females, as there is a tendency to allow females to exit first. Being male, I haven't observed the phenomenom when the elevator is completely female.

Common sense would indicate that of course this is the case, since the person who got on at Level 2 is blocking the exit of people from higher levels. However, I've observed this even when there are very few people on the elevator, say three or four. Even when the last person to get on has moved to the rear wall of the car, they are likely to be the first to leave when the door opens on ground floor.

2. Whether through a basic distrust of the means of transport or otherwise, people tend to balance out when there is a change in the number of people inside, with a slight bias towards the rear of the car. This applies whether the cahnge is people entering, or people exiting the car. With two people in the car, they tend to occupy the rear corners, three people move to the centre of the three non-door walls, four in the four corners, five would add one in the centre, with six there would be two in the centre, evenly spaced about the centre point. Und so weieter. When a new person gets on, or someone gets off, everyone tends to shuffle into their respective "natural" positions.

3. People who face the wrong way, ie, toward the rear of the car, make everyone else in the car feel slightly uncomfortable.

The Wiggles

2006-09-08T08:21:00.000+10:00

I saw the Wiggles this morning. Even Dorothy the Dinosaur was there. Murray's guitar is nice and shiny.

Walking to work through Martin Place, I passed the Channel 7 Sunshine Studios, which is glass-encased so people in the street can look in and see the show being filmed. There was a LARGE crowd of people, many with small children. The thing which drew me over was all the red balloons and the man with the Sydney Swans beanie. I thought the Swans must be in the studio and wandered over to watch. I'm a big fan you know.

But no, it was the Wiggles, the red balloons were for some other cause, the man in the Swans beanie was just keeping warm, and there was no football players anywhere in sight.

The thing which struck me was the size of the crowd, the number of people with small children, at that time of the morning, in that cold, windy, drizzling weather. Obviously people had known that the Wiggles were going to be on the telly, and made their way to the studio. Wow, they must be dedicated fans - it is just incomprehensible.

Mind you, if it had have been the Swans, I'd have been there.

My Daughter's Father's Day Poem

2006-09-07T00:19:00.000+10:00

It was Father's Day in Australia last Sunday (3-Sep-2006) and my children were over my place. Josephine my youngest made a card for me at school, and composed her own poem for it. She's eight years old.

Really, it's hard enough being a weekend Dad and only seeing your children every so often without reading a beautiful poem like this:

Dad,
You are [a] person who is loving and kind
You are always on my mind
You help me whenever I feel down
And you take me to the fun playground
You are one of my very best friends
With you I can have a life that never ends
I am ever so glad
To have the world's best Dad

Beautiful beyond words.

My fellow train passengers

2006-07-24T16:15:00.000+10:00

Two interesting people in my train trip in this morning.

The first was the Close Stander. The train wasn't overly crowded this morning for a change. Plenty of space to stand in the end compartment. This did not stop a well-dressed young Asian man from standing so close to me that every little movement of the carriage made him brush against me ever so slightly. First the arm. Then the leg. Then the shoulder. I looked around at the next nearest person at least two metres away, the empty space unheard of in peak hour, the many, many available grab poles, the vacant seat next to the fat, snoring guy. The Close Stander smiled shyly up at me. Good grief. Sexual advances from a gay man. I turned away, gritted my teeth, and ignored it as best I could.

The second was Sad Dresser. A largish woman was going up the escalators at Wynyard dressed in a pair of trousers and a shirt that had no hope of ever meeting each other. Particularly at the back where I was positioned. Presumably she worked in a job where people couldn't see the bulging pink band of skin around her middle.

Did Sad Dresser know how ridiculous she looked? Thinking on this, I got off the escalator at the top and walked out into the street. I was much distressed upon looking at a reflection of myself in a building window, that owing to me forgetting to comb my hair this morning after leaving the shower, I had a hairstyle that resembled Tin Tin's. I looked quite ridiculous.

Hey! Perhaps the Close Stander thought I was Tin Tin?

And I bet the Sad Dresser was laughing at me.

Swahili

2006-07-18T15:50:00.000+10:00

I know that one day I'm going to be put in jail for not being able to read Swahili. It's really not my fault, I've just never had the time to learn it.

Perhaps you're not completely with me. Swahili is my term for the near incomprehensible "Terms and Conditions" you see everywhere on the web. Even if all you want to do is just buy a shiny new mouse pad on-line, there is almost guaranteed to be a huge box full of Swahili somewhere on or near the final purchase page, just waiting to trip you up.

My issues with Swahili are twofold:

It takes too bloody long to read all the stuff
Once it has been read, you are usually none the wiser

What the Swahili translates into is probably not all difficult to understand, which is undoubtedly the second-most frustrating thing about it. The most frustrating being of course that one day I'll end up in jail because of it. So why don't they just write the simple stuff instead of the Swahili. Are they deliberately trying to confuse us so that we blindly click through and so expose ourselves to jail terms? I'm sure there is a tally board somewhere in some high-rise office block with a couple of blokes standing around it: "Heh heh, another three inside today, Earl."

Some of the simple things it says includes:

What you are doing MAY be illegal.
If you use this software and it breaks something, tough luck.
If you use this software to break something, don't expect us to care or be in any way responsible.
This software is going to send all your private details to our servers. Sorry about that.
Don't expect this software to solve world hunger. It only solves simple calculations in one dimension.
We wrote this software/built this hardware. It is ours not yours. So please don't steal it.
We've got your credit card details now. If we lose them or let some Eastern European hacker obtain them, we apologise for this in advance.

There's probably more things, but I don't want to be writing Swahili myself.

Definition of a certainty is...

2006-07-17T15:13:00.000+10:00

Broken ticket-vending machines at the train station on a Monday morning.

Lost in translation

2006-07-16T13:31:00.000+10:00

I spent some time this week in Bangkok on business. I stayed at the Radisson Hotel which served my purposes quite well. I must say though, the internet connection was just appalling.

On Thursday afternoon, after I'd come back from the office, I needed to write a report and decided rather than holing up in my room for two hours, I would drag my carcass and laptop down to the pub and have a couple of beers while writing the report. In the end, this was a mistake, as the constant "refill-your-glass" service meant that the report was less coherent than it needed to be, and I was already well on the way to inebriation by the time I was picked up to go to dinner.

But in the meantime though, I was happily tapping away and sipping at the cold beer. After a while, the management decided to put a movie on the big screen. It was one I hadn't seen before, and admittedly from the snippets I did pay attention to, it's probably one I won't ever see. It was called Apocalypse or Armageddon or something like that. Starring Beau Bridges as Mr President. (Ok I just found it here on IMDB, it is 10:5 Apocalypse.)

One thing that caught my eye was the subtitling. Now being in Bangkok, I would've expected the subtitles to be in Thai. But they weren't. This English Language movie was subtitled in English. And it was this subtitling which was at least partially responsible for a major part of my distraction. It was atrocious.

One of the characters was named "Brad" or "Brent" - even I have trouble with American accents sometimes. But he was variously titled, Brad or Brent, but most often Brat. Obviously he had a troubled childhood.

Whole words were left out. At one point, it had obviously got too hard for the translator and the translation just stopped mid-sentence. Phrases were completely wrong, not even close. An easy one like: "What's the situation?" might end up: "What is his face on?"

A lot of words were mis-spelled. My favourite was "skeewad", which was (what else?) "squad". This mistake was interesting because it was spelled correctly not 30 seconds later.

But this one was my favourite. They'd just pulled someone from a pile of rubble and the paramedics or whatever they were are crowded round him. One of them says: "I can see him breathing!". This was translated as, "I am see him freaking!"

Reflections on a train

2006-06-28T08:58:00.000+10:00

1. On older carriages, the ceiling in the downstairs is less than 187cm high.
2. Schoolboys have no knowledge of deodourant.
3. You can never tire of looking at Sydney Harbour in the morning.
4. If you get your bag caught between the closing doors of the carriage on the left side of the train at St Leonards, and the train does not stop at Wollstonecraft and Waverton, you do not have a chance to retrieve it before getting off at Wynyard.
5. Other passengers are more likely to enjoy watching you try to force hydraulic doors open rather than help you.
6. The person that eventually helps you force hydraulic doors open will invariably be the roughest and scariest looking person in the carriage.
7. If your head is bent at an angle for about twenty minutes, your neck will get sore.
8. Newer carriages make creaking sounds that are vaguely similar to Space Invader sounds. This is strangely comforting.

The Alternate Spice Girls

2006-05-31T08:41:00.000+10:00

My mate Mal Partridge is a wonderful Philosopher and a good source of good humour. He's responsible for The Mal Partridge Theory of Joke-Telling, an outstanding theory that should raise the interests of sociogists and anthropologists alike.

He told me yesterday about the "Alternate Spice Girls". His mate, Leigh Galvan and he concocted this one, obviously over more than a few beers. It's the name of the five alternate Spice Girls. The absolute only reason I mention it is because after not having heard of them for years, yesterday there was not only Mal's reference to them, but also a question on Temptation about it.

The Alternate Spice Girls are:

Herbs'n

Sugar'n

Pine Lime

Lostin

For those who don't understand the "Pine Lime" reference you might like to check out this link and select Pine Limefrom the drop-down selector.

Most of us would recognise this though:

Malcolm Partridge thank you once again.

I've been very bad

2006-05-22T15:10:00.000+10:00

Today was my first day off the Diet.

For those not in the know, Alison and I have dieting for the past twelve weeks. It's the CSIRO Total Well-Being Diet, and by all accounts, it's quite successful.

Our figures are as follows:


           Alison    Michael
Start       69.40     88.10
Current     62.70     79.10
Loss (kg)    6.70      9.00
Loss (%)     9.65     10.22

Not too bad for twelve weeks. Although we weren't huge heifers in the first place, I for one am glad the extra kilos are off: I'm fitter than I've been for decades, am notching up my belts, and can justify having kept all those old incredibly-skinny clothes.

Now while we haven't been saints on the diet, we have done it fairly strictly, and there's been countless times when I've just wanted to lie in front of the telly, eat a whole kilogram of potato chips, one of those quarter kilo blocks of the cheapest or drink twenty beers in a row.

I knew today was going to be a "release" day though. Here's my tally of the bad stuff, so far:

One mint-cream-filled chocolate cookie (for breakfast)

One original glazed Krispy Kreme donut

One cream-filled chocolate-glazed Krispy Kreme donut

One chili chicken burger with sour cream

One server of fried chips

One creamy pasta salad

One schooner (c. 400mL) of Tooheys New beer

One coffee with two very real sugars

I feel decidely unclean - and just a little bit bloated.

Material Safety Data Sheet

2006-05-08T15:04:00.000+10:00

I just had to share this with someone, and surely at least one of you will understand exactly why I had to share this when you read it.

I have come across Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) before. For those who don't know, they are a brief doc that tells you all the good gumph about the potential hazards associated with a product. I have seen MSDSs for stuff like fibreglass, casting resins, solvents, etc. From these, one can learn, for instance, how hazardous it is to breath in powdered resins, or the correct gloves to wear when handling caustic sodas, just how flammable or explosive something is, or even what to do if you swallow some toluene-based product.

Today, while cleaning my coffee mug at the kitchenette at work, I saw a new one sticky-taped to the cupboard above my head. It was titled:

"Spree Dishwashing Detergent"

It's good to see that my employer is looking after my safety.

The result of the Ferrari?

2006-04-10T21:49:00.000+10:00

Oh yes. I forgot to mention (about this: http://micsgarage.blogspot.com/2006/02/pick-which-one-is-real-ferrari.html). The MJ shoes are lovely on the court. I'll sell them and their sleek Ferrari lines to anyone.

Shouting in the streets of Sydney

2006-04-10T21:11:00.000+10:00

I enjoy working in Sydney, there's always so many interesting people and things to see. Sometimes I wonder though.

I do NOT enjoy the fact that about the only place you can get some peace and quiet to do some reading at lunchtimes is in a dingy pub. Although I love my pubs, especially the dingy ones, I also love my beer, and that is just too much of a temptation for me while I'm on a diet. (Yes I'm on a diet.) Also they frown on you bringing your own little meals in, particularly when said little meals are wholemeal salad sandwiches. "Are you absolutely sure you won't have pie, chips and gravy with that beer, sir?" Steady. Steady...

But I digress.

Today, I went hunting for a pharmacist to buy some contact lens solution, as my left lens felt gritty and needed a clean. A colleague informed me that there is one near the corner of Market and York Streets. So off I go in the mid-afternoon.

As I was waiting at the corner, there came up behind a couple of young ladies, one carrying two half-full garbage bags, and the other pushing a wheeled spectacle display stand, minus the spectacles. I wondered for a second, then let it go, crossed with the traffic lights and went into the pharmacists. Within one minute I had chosen the lens solution and was preparing to pay for it at the counter.

The spectacles stand pusher appeared at the entrance to the store, in my wake:

(shouting loudly at the sales assistants in the store) WHERE ARE THE BLOODY KEYS TO THE BACK DOOR?

Then ensued a LOUD argument over my cringing shoulder about the location of the keys and what the bloody-hell the woman was doing without them anyway and I don't know you must have the bloody things, etc. I meekly went ahead with my purchase and resolved never to return to this particular shop. My resolution was doubled when the assistant attempted to charge me $18.75 for the product when it was clearly marked $15.95. Small amount, big principle. But he may have been distracted by the Third Battle of the Somme going on.

On exiting the store, I crossed back to where I had first met the laden ladies, and there were two older woman discussing in not so flattering terms a work colleague. I didn't deliberately overhear the women. I couldn't help but hear, as they were standing at least five metres apart and shouting the conversation to each other over the traffic noise. It was very, very surreal.

My eyes feel better though.

Pick which one is the real Ferrari

2006-02-13T10:29:00.000+11:00

OK. Examine these two photographs.

First this one:

Now this one:

I gotta admit it is hard to tell. But here's my clue: Ferrari's are usually painted red.

I guess I better explain this.

I've been complaining about my current basketball shoes for some time now. Everytime I come off the court my ankles are sore and sometimes also my arches. Alison has quickly gotten sick of my whinging and on Saturday she finally cracked. "Alright, we are going to buy you some new shoes!" She hunted around on the net and found a shop which specialises in basketball shoes, so off we went.

At the store, there are at least 30,000 different shoes on the wall, all ugly, all gaudy, many not really recognisable as shoes. Josephine is having a great time picking out the most disgusting ones, "Dad. Dad. DAD! Buy these. Pink and green. They've got little plastic springs on the bottom."

Torn equally between the thought to leave the game altogether for much younger people and the desire to strangle my second-born child, I eventually manage to find a pair that I can stomach, mainly because they have a high back which may help my ankles. Helpfully, they are labelled "Retro", which of course aids in bolstering my self-esteem.

"Can I try a size 11 in these, please." The young bloke alarmingly brings back a 10-½ and some 11's in a different model, same brand. I tried the 11 with my right-foot only (it is a size bigger than my left) — disastrously small. He measures my right foot: "I'll bring you back some 13's."

But they fit, and they are comfortable. Ignoring the feeling that as I get older, my feet really shouldn't be getting bigger, I try a few small jumps in them to get a feel, and it feels very strange. I look at the floorboards suspiciously, thinking that they must be deliberately sprung or something so that the shoes feel more comfortable than they really are, but the young bloke assures me that the shoes have a carbon-fibre base which spreads the impact throughout the foot rather than just concentrating it in the toes. And then he gives his line that he's certain will clinch the sale:

Look at these shoes. They've been modelled after MJ's [Michael Jordan's] Ferrari. See the intake. The shape of the moulding. The same sleak lines as his Ferrari. Beautiful, aren't they?

I must admit I'm speechless. I can't really think of a way of expressing my thoughts without swearing volubly in front of my children.

I ended up buying them regardless. Size 13.

Oh yes, and before you think my girlfriend's just too good to be true, finding the place to go, taking me there, putting up with me spending 30 minutes trying to find shoes that didn't look like grafitti, I should mention this: she bought a pair of shoes herself. Hmmmm.

I'll let you know how the Ferrari's work out.

Shopping habits

2006-01-17T08:02:00.000+11:00

[Yes it has been a long time. I can only blame it on the effectiveness of the previous and current job in ensuring that they occupy my entire brain, leaving little else for me personally. A bit sad, isn't it?]

There is a fundamental difference in the way men and women shop for presents.

Women continually shop for presents throughout the year, even if they are not aware of it. Passing a trinket shop they will automatically file the thought in their brain that that trinket would suit Uncle John or Jan or Jason. Three months later when Christmas comes around, straight to the trinket shop for that present.

Men shop usually at the last minute, and with their pathetic little (though carefully thought about) list in their hand. Most of the presents they can rush around and buy in the space of an hour within the one store, but there will always be one or two that just don't happen. This turns into a last minute panic to desperately think of something else and usually results in buying something not quite right or completely different or generic ("I thought you'd like this apple corer, sweetheart. It's yellow, like your apron.")

Speaking of aprons, and I know how this is going to sound, but I bought Alison a kitchen apron for Christmas. Don't hassle me — It's what she wanted! But going into the stores, you would not believe the crappy selection you have. And trying to find the blasted things?! The only resort is to ask one of those cranky old woman:

"Could you please tell me where the aprons are?"
"Certainly sir you chauvanistic pig. They are over there [pointing] near the tea-towels. Would you like me to point out where the shackles and whips are so you can use them on your poor unfortunate, opressed girlfriend?"

Or something like that. I mean I can't remember the words exactly, but what she said and the looks she was giving me amounted to the above. Sigh.

I have a new combined Palm Pilot/Phone. A lot easier than carrying around two items and I invariably left the old Palm at home for the sake of space in my jeans pocket. I'm going to pretend to be a chick and write down things that I see as I see them.

Maybe... If I remember.

I'll let you know my results January next year.

Mail

2005-10-28T07:43:00.000+10:00

We have a mail/package thief in our building.

A few weeks ago I saw a notice up in the foyer from someone complaining about the fact that his/her Financial Review Paper had been stolen and would the perpetrator please return it.

One bloke has posted a notice in the elevator for the return of an video tape package that has gone missing. Apparently it is a video of him rock-climbing or something of personal interest only like that.

And my Scale Avaiation Modeller International October edition is missing. At least it is two weeks late in arriving.

I'm considering contacting the other two victims and forming a Unit Vigilante Group. I think we're looking for someone who is reasonably well-off, owns his/her own grampons, and has a slight smell of hobby plastic cement on their fingers.

Flower Power

2005-10-13T17:32:00.000+10:00

I am quite awed by the power of the flower.

Yesterday I bought some flowers on the way home from work — that's just the type of guy I am. Not an expensive bunch, but one of those impressive-loooking, space-invading, conical shaped, multi-coloured deals.

Up on the platform I noticed it first. This young woman looked at me, glanced down at the flowers and smiled at me. Exactly the same thing from an older woman walking up the platform. What is going on?

I boarded the train, doing my customary stand-in-the-middle-because-I've-only-got-three-stops thing. As anyone who remembers the weather yesterday it was a wet and muggy day, so crowded in the little vestibule of the carriage, the faint bouquet of the flowers became a stifling, cloying stench. But that didn't stop the women smiling at me uninvited. One older, sharply attractive, power-suited woman squashed in the far corner even combined the look, glance, smile with a affectionate tilt of the head. This is probably a woman who is used to physically biting off the heads of people who oppose her in the boardroom.

So what is going on here? All have obviously made the assumption that, inspired by true love, I've bought the flowers in a spur-of-the-moment fit of passion. Don't any of these women make the assumption that the reason I've bought the flowers is in apology because I've totalled her uninsured car whilst in a drunken swerve attempting to hit a small kitten on the road on the way back from the motel with the most hated girl from her childhood sitting barely-dressed in the passenger seat and after borrowing it without telling her? That's certainly a more likely explanation.

On reflection though, I guess I shouldn't take too much stock in the flower power. I got the same look, glance, smile from the thin, clean fit and mustachioed man in the tiny tight running shorts who was standing on the pavement outside the train station at Waverton. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that the glance down was not at the flowers.

Sketch No 1

2005-09-29T18:31:00.000+10:00

I've had this idea for a while. I don't think I've seen it anywhere. If you want to use it, contact me.

---

Scene: Smart fellow in business suit waiting for an elevator.

There is a ding and the door opens. We now see from his point-of-view as the door opens to reveal the left inside of the elevator with partial smoked mirror walls. Staying with his point-of-view, man enters the elevator heading towards the left side and presses a button. Doors close.

There is a change of point-of-view to see the man left side-on looking from the middle of the elevator. He breathes a huge relaxing sigh. He noisily scratches his under-carriage for an extended period, perhaps with a pause in the middle and then returns to it.

Then he spots a pimple on his nose in the mirror. He moves in close to the mirror to squeeze the pimple satisfactorily. It obviously pops and he wipes a spot of pimple gunk off the mirror.

Scratching his nose, he wrinkles it slightly and then inserts a finger up it. He hunts briefly and it emerges. He inspects the end of his finger and then holds his hand out at the side, flicking his fingers together to get the nose remains of it.

Straightening up, he has a slight look of discomfort. He leans slightly to one side and we hear a loud fart sound. He does a cheeky chuckle and then reacts to the obviously bad smell, waving his hand in front of his nose and the chuckle changing to a subdued, coughing laugh.

The point-of-view is now the outside of the elevator, slightly to the right. We hear a ding and the elevator doors open to reveal the man on the left looking somewhat bewildered as this is not his floor. His look of bewilderment changes to horror as a pretty young woman (that the man obviously did not see till now) quickly emerges from the far right rear of the elevator, running slighlty hunched and with both hands pressed over her nose. She briefly glances back at the man, and when her face returns to the front we see her look of disgust.

---

I swear this didn't happen to me.

Evolution

2005-09-23T07:11:00.000+10:00

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day, so taking advantage of the weather I left the office and went hunting for food. After the kill I decided to sit down in the park to enjoy the sunshine while feasting.

There were pigeons everywhere, and a couple of white chicken-sized things with really long thin curved black beaks that a brief hunt through the internet did not find.

I noticed, watching the pigeons gathered round a pile of crumbs that used to belong to a Lebanese bread roll, that the fattest birds were the most aggressive. Obviously they were fat as a result of their aggressiveness. The other possibility, that they were aggressive because they were fat, is too complicated for me.

It occurred to me that a kind of natural selection was going on here. The aggressive pigeons were getting fat and the submissive pigeons were dying out. Does this mean that over time, pigeon aggressiveness will increase as the 'aggressive' gene is passed from parent to child? Will this mean that eventually, pigeons will be attacking us for food, rather than somewhat meekly gathering at our feet for our leavings? Has this already happened and they are simply biding their time, waiting for the most opportune time to simultaneously attack and remove us all from this world?

I left the park soon after, nervously flicking my head around everytime one of the conniving little bastards flew past.

More addiction

2005-09-21T08:19:00.000+10:00

I have just discovered the answer to something which has been nagging me for weeks since starting this new job.

Lately I've had no drive and energy in the morning. Sometimes this lasts all day. I have heard stories of older friends who have gone through "listless" periods of their life where they don't want to do anything except sit on the lounge and watch the telly. There is no drive in their job and nothing to spur them on. I've been wondering whether I'm suffering the same thing.

But no! The answer is simple. I've discovered that the coffee I've been drinking at work is decaffinated. Yesterday morning in the tea room I overhear one of the blokes telling a new starter, "...that jar is the decaf, and that [huge] tin is the real stuff." AHA! One mug of the "real stuff" and I'm away.

The only bad thing about this is the realisation that I'm a caffeine addict. I guess I just add it to the list and deal with it when I retire?

Our US Trip: Part 8 -New Orleans - The Bell-Toucher

2005-08-04T17:47:00.000+10:00

Friday 10th December

A late start this morning with a touch, just a touch mind you, of hangover. Probably that last Bass Ale in Ryan's Pub was off. We were woken, and not the last time on this trip, by housekeeping. The little "Do Not Disturb" sign just wasn't working its magic for us.

We'd decided that we'd had over a week in the States, it was laundry time. If it hadn't have been for the souvenir shirts boughts in LA, Disneyland, Universal and Vegas we wouldn't have made it this far. So while Ali showered, I hunted through the phone book and found The Washing Well LaunDRYteria on Bourbon Street. It was only a short walk away.

The Washing Well was yet another in those eye-opening experiences we had. The woman running the place was as old and as large as my grandmother (except alive, of course). White, she had an equally old (though slimmer) black woman working for her who she ordered around to the response of, "Yes Maam." We obviously had no clue how the system worked so the old woman took charge of it all without moving one centimetre from her chair behind the counter. Two hours to wait, so we headed off to explore.

We headed down to the Decatur and decided to have some breakfast, despite being closer to lunch, at Cafe Beignet. A beignet is a little bit of a cross between a donut and a croissant, heavily dusted, OK, soaked, with powdered sugar. They were gorgeous. Ali had a more substantial breakfast that included grits. I'd always wanted to know what grits were, and now found out. They seemed to be a sort of tasteless ground oatmeal, a little bit ilke semolina. I heaped on the melted butter and the syrup to get a little taste out of them.

We walked west up Decatur and down to the Riverfront. We were accosted by this bloke, who gave me a ticket for being "too good looking" and demanded $10 off us for the New Orleans cap he had thrust upon us. Interesting sales line. The money was for some charity so we acquiesed and went on our way. The Mississippi is a very dirty river, a bit like the Yarra on a good day. Much wider of course.

While walking along the riverfront we were stopped by a couple of black kids who looked very, very out of it. One of them was the one who had tried to con us the previous night on Canal Street. And he tried the same trick again! Either a very short memory or very very out of it. We danced through the interruption and headed for the French Markets. Well I wasn't that keen, but you know, chicks. After wasting about an hour or so looking at the trinkets and the t-shirts, we thought we heard some music, and so we followed it's siren-like calling.

We ended up in a small bar just off the Markets, where I had a couple of Heineken and Al had something exotic and chicky. The band were very basic, Clarinet, Accoustic Guitar, Trumpet, Tuba. They were playing Trad Jazz, At The Jazz Band Ball, was swinging along. I calculated that it wasn't too early to send an SMS to a friend in Australia (about 7:30am). So I sent a message to Ray saying we were sitting in a bar in New Orleans listening to the standards and got one back moments later complaining that he was in Brisbane airport listening to the rotten muzak. We listened for a while, gave the bar a tip and went on our way.

Back to the Wishing Well to pick up our laundry. We had to fold and sort it, but that was no problem of course. The poor black woman was still being ordered around, and I noticed this time, muttering under her breath as well. We walked the length of Royal to get back to our Hotel and to rest, change and to book that evenings activities. We'd done a fair bit of walking and so were a little tired. We discussed for a bit what we would do the following day, and being a bit tired and niggly, we couldn't make any decision and so decided to make the decision in the morning or later that night.

Dressed in our finest and on our way. Down Canal to Decatur, and then the long walk east to Frenchman's. The restaurant guy was right, even that way was a little scary, New Orleans did really not make an effort to entertain 21st Century street lighting. So up Frenchman's, and we were aware walking along that here were some more contemporary Jazz locations. Snug Harbor, though spelt differently gave us a beautiful and local dinner. While I had the Atlantic Salmon, Ali had the Hush Puppies, which were like corn meal dumplings. A lovely dinner and some nice wine.

Downstairs after dinner to the tiny little entertainment area. We were seated towards the back of the room, but were still close enough to see and hear everything. I sneakily snuck off a few pictures without flash which came out moodily blurred. Delfeayo Marsalis was playing with his quartet. So him on trombone. This freakishly superb musician on Piano and Guitar, a Bass (tree not electric), Tenor Sax and of course, kit. All very, very good musicians. Despite the 30 minute wait for our bottle of red wine, we enjoyed the show. Delfeayo is a great trombone player, easily the best I've seen live. Interestingly, he's a "bell-toucher", which is something every learner trombone player is told NOT to do. When he plays notes in 3rd postion, the slide handle is adjacent to the bell of the horn, and almost every time, one of his fingers flicked out to touch the bell. Even on lightning fast runs up and down the scale; flick out it goes, flick in again. It didn't detract from the performance.

Afterwards we trouped outside. Ali was excited because on exiting through the crowd, Delfeayo had looked at her and thanked her. I mean he did that to twenty other people as he walked through, but it made it special for her of course. She chatted for a little bit with the bar lady, and managed to score a free CD of Snug Harbor recordings. Woohoo!

Across the road was The Spotted Cat which was crowded as buggary, and they had a large, and we both thought, not great, Jazz band playing. There was this old guy propping up the bar despite the crush and as the band played one tune, this old bloke pulled out a trumpet from beneath him and took a turn at a solo! We had one drink each only, but we weren't really in the mood for shitty music after the good stuff we'd heard already that night, so we decided to give it up.

We'd heard about the Beignets place, Cafe Du Monde on Decatur and so we stopped there for coffee and beignets on the way back to the Hotel. The place was crowded as, and we had to fight for a table. The waiter was very attentive, and I think I remember hearing that they don't actually get paid properly by the Cafe, but they make their money from the difference between what the Cafe charges for coffee and what they charge the customers. I could not spot any price boards in the place. I wasn't impressed by the coffee though I must say. Beignet was beautiful of course. This was our last call for the night and we tiredly walked back Decatur and Canal to our Hotel for another sleep.

Gameshow advertising

2005-07-12T08:10:00.000+10:00

One of the few things I like to watch on television, now that is is back on, albeit in a new guise, is Temptation. It's your standard three competitors, trivia and general knowledge questions, races against the clock, most money at the end of the night -type affair. I must admit to not liking the new hosts Ed Philips and Livinia Nixon, he forces his smiles too much and she's, well she's just awful.

I don't know whether it is always been the way with these shows, but twice now I've noticed that they have thrown in questions relating to advertisements that have been aired during the preceding break. A few weeks ago it was a commercial break for Jetstar Airlines, and in the next period of the gameshow, one of the questions had the answer: Jetstar Airlines.

Last night it happened again. Commercial break which included a plug for the musical Fiddler on the Roof, back to the show and there is a question, "What musical tells the story..." The answer: Fiddler on the Roof.

Now I don't have an objection to the need of a show to advertise, I mean, come on, they are providing me with free entertainment for the simple cost of me ignoring the stupid friggin' commercials that happen every six minutes or so. But this sneaky little way of tying in a gameshow question with the advert that preceeded it, I find a little disconcerting. Disconcerting because it works; I don't remember any other commercials that have been on since the show started, and these brand names have stuck in my head now. Disconcerting because I thought I was ignoring the commercials, obviously something has gotten inside my conciousness. Sneaky. Sly. Insidious, even.

Strangely I am reminded of the quote from Goldfinger -- the book by Ian Fleming, not the film: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action." I'm waiting for that third time.

The worst word in the English Language

2005-06-28T16:30:00.000+10:00

[Again I delve into profanity. See this for my last effort on this topic.]

There is no doubt what the foulest word in the English Language is. As a hint: it starts with the letter "C".

I must admit, I have occasion to use this word, usually when behind the wheel of my Honda Civic, when discussing the merits of Channel 9 TV personalities, or when discussing telephone companies. Never in front of the children of course (unlike my mother who used it in front of me). But it is strongly frowned upon when I use it in the home, for whatever reason. When I do let it slip out, I hear the "C-Word signature" cough from my Chick. She does not like hearing it.

It sounds a little like "hup-hrrm", but in a coughy way.

"Gee that Eddie Macguire is a bit of a c..."
"Hup-hrrm!!!"

You get the picture. I've worked out that the cough is not because of any liking she has for Eddie Macguire, either.

Today, I got the "C-word signature" cough for another reason. I was in the office/spare room, listening to Mozart whilst working, she's in the loungeroom listening to a Charlie Parker CD. I reckon Charlie is OK, but, waggishly, while returning the Mozart CD to it's rightful place in the bookshelf in the loungeroom, I attempted to get a small rise out of her:

"<big smile>What's this sh*t you're listening to?"
"Hup-hrrm!!!"

I think if you analyze it carefully, you will realise, as I did, that she has used the C-word on me!

Defeat of the Great Green Monster

2005-06-28T07:58:00.000+10:00

WARNING: This post is going to get a bit icky.

This morning was the first since Friday I have not woken up and immediately coughed up or spewed up huge amounts of green glutinous matter.

Yes, I've had the flu.

Last Friday was the worst. I spent all day on the lounge watching crappy daytime telly, with a prime diet of panadol and sudafed, turning paper tissues into soggy green papier mache. To rub salt into the wound, I missed out on going to the Lord Nelson with a bunch of mates. And I love the Lord Nelson.

I guess it is my own fault. I had the sniffles early last week and suspected it was going to turn into a flu, but instead of cutting out the booze and diary products and taking it easy, I pissed up, ate lots of ice-cream, exercised and played a basketball semi-final. The basketball was on the Thursday night and that was just the nail in my (albeit temporary) coffin.

[Oh in case you're interested, we lost the semi-final. Drawn at the final buzzer we played an extra period of 5 minutes, were down by one-point up till less than 1 second before the final buzzer, when our guard threw it up from half-way. Straight through, nothing-but-net, for three points. HUGE cheers! The ONLY person on or off the court who thought that the ball left his hands after the buzzer was one of the referees, who somehow managed to convince the other referee that the points didn't count. The other team congratulated us on our win, and they will now go through to play the final. I guess the best way to lose is knowing that you really truly won.]

[On second thought, no it's a shitty way to lose.]

One thing I have noticed in recent years is the way that the flu knocks me around now, compared to when I was younger. At 20, I'd get the flu and feel a little crook for one day, but usually panadol and sudafed fixed me up. Rarely did I need to take time off school/Uni/work. At 40, I am out for almost a week, with one or two of those days incapable and in bed. No amount of drugs can turn my head from a nauseous constantly-moving spring to normality. Nothing stops the tap dripping at the back of my throat.

So: is it the drugs, the age or the flu? I'm quite willing to accept that it is the age thing. But I suspect that just as much, it is the inadequacy of the drugs and the ferocity of the flu virus. It is not solely the age thing.

Blog Confessions and a solution

2005-06-17T21:56:00.000+10:00

Forgive me BlogGod for I have sinned. It's been 16 days since my last blog...

It is quite difficult to maintain a reasonably regular blog. I think the key must be short entries. Of course the quality would drop...

I have found a partial solution to one of my problems though. The Aust Direct Marketing Assoc. has an "Opt-out" form that you can fill-in on-line to stop receiving their harassing phone calls. I heard an interview/discussion topic on ABC radio last night with this bloke who was telling about how his company does surveys and how they are moving from telephone surveys to on-line surveys. Of course everyone rang up to tell their worst telemarketing experience. At first I felt sorry for the bloke as he was at pains to distance himself from the telemarketers, but then I thought, no, well, they're just as bad. One caller mentioned the ADMA and the opt-opt form. I can't wait the six weeks "take effect period" for the calls to stop.

Of course, the bloke also mentioned random-number dialling from overseas centres, there's nothing you can do about that.

Harassment or marketing?

2005-06-01T22:25:00.000+10:00

So. When does phone marketing become harassment?

When you have received your third call for the evening, and the last one was well after 9:30pm, does that constitute harassment or is that valid marketing??

Bastards!!

Not long to go now

2005-06-01T13:44:00.000+10:00

Firstly : Hello Beefa!. It's not a US trip entry I know, but Part 8 is on it's way, trust me.

Last night, my girlfriend's boss and his wife had their first child - a little baby girl Charlotte Elizabeth Dries. I won't have a crack at them for stealing my own child's name although I'm itching to. In a totally nice, caring and supportive way of course. <cough cough /> Maybe they are just fans of Sex in the City (Mmmm Kristin Davis -- I don't care if she's lesbian). I believe she was late and induced (newborn, not Kristin), not that this makes any difference, Christine was late and induced with our Charlotte. Hmmm do you see a pattern for Charlottes here?

When I was at high school my favourite teacher, a physics teacher who also played the trombone, Derek White, and his wife Wendy had their first child, and they named it Michael. Derek and I were friends outside of school as we both played in Bankstown City Band. I felt a little bit uncomfortable about them naming the child, although I'm certain that they didn't name it after me. More like despite me. I think I was a disappointment to Mr White, as I didn't do as well in my HSC as I was meant to. I haven't seen them in many years. Ah never mind.

Many, many years indeed. It's occurred to me now that (and this is actually quite disturbing) Michael White should be about 23 by now! Wow, am I old.

When Christine and I were deciding on names, we went through a hell of a time. "No we can't call it Jennifer because I know a horrid, slutty girl called Jennifer." That sort of thing, spread over weeks and weeks as a kind of sporadic, drawn out conversation. You know what I mean, we'd be watching The Simpsons or something and I'd offer, "How about Jason for a boy?" She'd respond with something like,"No, wasn't that the killer in Friday the 13th?". And there the conversation would pause until three or four days later while we were in the car driving to the shops when she'd offer, "Well what about Jennifer for a girl?" You get the picture. We got there in the end, obviously.

Aside from the pain of deciding on a name that suits both of you, the worst thing about naming a child is that everyone's taste is just a little bit different, and when you offer up the name of your newborn for the first time, you get all those false smiles from the people who think Charlotte (or Josephine for that matter) is a crappy name. Usually from the same type of people who call their children Cool Modine or something like that. Or from your parents.

I've strayed somewhat from my original brief. Let's get back on track.

My brother and his wife are almost there. Maybe a month to go with their first one. I'm looking forward to it because Mum and Dad will have someone else to focus their grandparenthood onto, rather than just lumping it all onto my narrow shoulders. Hopefully anyway, despite the Sydney/San Francisco distance. I'm actually surprised that Mum hasn't booked a ticket already. Also I guess it is just exciting seeing my little brother become a Dad as well.

What I'm desperately trying not to do, despite my eagerness to hear the current state of play, is to bother Paul and Ros. There are few things more annoying when the baby is due than people continually hassling for information: "Is it born yet? Is it born yet? Is it born yet?" as if they are sitting in the back seat during a long trip. Yes, definitely, they are only asking because they are concerned and interested friends, but it can get very disturbing after a while. And particularly for the Dad-to-be, because he doesn't really do anything other than ensure his mobile phone is always fully charged, and to be ready to speed his car dangerously through traffic to the sounds of a screaming woman in the back seat at a moment's notice. In truth, it is an anxious enough time as it is, without others adding to it, well-meaning as they are.

And in my day, it was pager, not a mobile phone.

Anyway, Charlotte Elizabeth Dries, welcome to the world. Sorry about the state it's in at the moment. We were hoping to clean it up before you got here, but you know how things get put off and put off. We're actually hoping you can do something with it. Maybe paint it up a bit, new curtains possibly?

Our US Trip: Part 7 - Las Vegas to New Orleans - An Epiphany

2005-05-14T14:12:00.000+10:00

Thursday 9th December

In contrast to the previous night, this night's sleep was very poor. I struggled to get up at 7:45 with a sore throat which I explained away as the air-conditioning. The other possibility – that I was coming down with a cold – was too painful to think about. Wake up, clean up, pack up, and then downstairs to dodge the cowboys and slot machines and pay our bill. As we exited to the extremely cold and dreary day, I thought that it must also be a cab-driver's convention at Vegas as well, the number of taxis that were lined up to take us to the airport. The cabbie was your typical strong, silent type, and despite the fact that he drove in the exactly opposite direction before hitting a freeway to the airport, I didn't disturb his solitude.

Check-in was painless and quick. Here was the first place where I noticed people taking off their shoes and belts for the run through the metal detector. Some of the cowboys had belt buckles the size of dinner plates, so it was no wonder. Ali and I didn't remove anything, and weren't asked to, we didn't beep, so everything was jake.

Breakfast was Cinnabon – $15 for a bun and an orange juice! The alternative was (of course) Starbucks, so of course we settled for the sugar. While sitting in the cafe eating, I noticed this bloke from outside the shop come into the shop at least three times and re-fill his paper mug from the soda machine. One of the employees was getting a little tired of it, and she had a word to him. He obviously had some (ummm) developmental problems the poor man, and I'm not sure he understood her.

After breakfast we headed to the departure lounge. Poker machines and cow-persons everywhere. Undoubtedly the NFR was winding up, and people were heading home. Ali just had to try the slots at the airport, and one machine swallowed $2 worth of nickels in the space of two minutes.

Our flight to New Orleans via Fort Worth Dallas left on time. There were more Texans than Australians on this flight I can tell you, and there were a lot more fat, noisy people than thin, quiet ones also. Hmmmm do I dare to draw a parallel here? No I think I'll leave it. We arrived at Dallas around midday, and entered the busiest airport we'd been in yet. A lot of Texans with big hats. A lot of people from the Armed Services, the "Ambassador Club" was where they were all going – unfortunately I'd left my army ID at home.

We eventually squeezed into a two-person booth in a Mexican restaurant called "Chilitos". And here we had the best American food since the Thai food on the first night. A great Nachos shared, Margaritta for the Chicky and a couple of Dos Equis para mí. I didn't know anything about this beer but it was quite OK. My poor Spanish at this stage led me to believe that Dos Equis might actually mean "Two Horses" — OK, the big "X's" on the label should really have given it away to me — and I thought of my beloved Two Dogs beer at home which I missed very much. [Yes I know they aren't dogs, they're Tasmanian Tigers.]

About three hours later and a takeoff delay and we boarded our flight to New Orleans. It was quite full. I had the middle seat, and was next to this big black fellow. He fell asleep during the flight, and had this really attractive bottom-lip droop when he slept. No really, it was just beautiful. We talked a little during the flight. Apparently he'd flown straight in from Bangkok, 27 hours of air-planes and -ports, and was going home to New Orleans. Later that night, despite his obvious exhaustion, we spotted him on Bourbon Street. I guess that's one way to regain energy.

The flight into Louis Armstrong airport was a little scary landing over the lake. I experienced the same tension that I see in other people when I am on a flight landing at Sydney and the trip in is over Botany Bay. I think it's called payback.

A long, long wait for the bags and people where crushing in around that baggage carousel as if getting closer would get their bags quicker. Our friend Kevin had mentioned the Louisiana time that everyone runs on, and I didn't expect the bags in a hurry. After pickup into a cab. The driver made some quick enquiries in a very thick indeterminate accent and then ignored us till he took our money. In fact he spent most of the time on the phone to a friend. Not that we could understand what he was saying — it wasn't English, and it wasn't Spanish, and it wasn't French, so I don't know what it was.

Into the French Quarter, our hotel was the Alexa on Royal St, near the corner of Canal St. Despite having a tidy (and tiny) reception, the passageways to the rooms were labyrinth-like, and it appeared that the Hotel was a number of adjacent buildings tacked together. Where the floors didn't meet up there were stairs, and it was obvious that you had enterd a different building. After meandering for a while, and including one time going through the same intersection in a different direction, we ended up in our narrow, double-height room. You could easily have fitted another room in the space between the top of my head and the ceiling. Ali went in to the bathroom to shower before we went out, and while she was in there I heard a Jazz band startup somewhere in the street downstairs. New Orleans we have arrived!

So out we went, along Royal, up Canal, turn right into Bourbon Street. The band that I had heard was here. Traditional Jazz. Some nice trombone-playing too. Along we went, pushing through the Thursday night crowds. Crowds!! People everywhere. On the street - no car could ever get through here - on the pavement, in the bars and the dodgy sex shops, on the balconies above our heads. People with beads, people mostly drunk, music everywhere, not the Jazz I was expecting but more 80's & 90's rock and pop covers. It was a complete madhouse. We walked along Bourbon till we reached St Peters. Ali wanted to go down and see Preservation Hall, I reluctantly agreed, I mean it was on our ToDo list, might as well tick it off straight away.

Preservation Hall. Wow. I will never forget walking into this place. Some officious and previously (like 30 years previously) attractive woman demanded $15 each off us before we could enter. No problems of course. The first thing I noticed was the plump and fluffy cat curled up on the lounge chair in the corridor outside the Hall. Cute. And we went in.

The Hall was quite small mostly dark wood with a brick and concrete wall on the side. It was only half full, and there in front of us was 6 blokes, Trombone, Kit, Bass, Clarinet, Piano, and the Trumpet/Vocal man. These blokes were not just old, but old old. Three black, three white. When we got in they were standing playing "Tiger Rag" which was coming to it's raucous end. The piano had it's front board off so it was louder. No electronics, no microphones. And then the Vocalist, Gregg Stafford, gave the intro to the next song in this teeny, tiny, Armstrong-like croaky voice. "When You're Smiling."

They started as usual, with a tutti run-through the verse. All sitting down in their hard-backed chairs. Then the vocalist stands up and starts singing/speaking in this almost whisper of a voice that somehow managed to carry over the band and implant itself indelibly in my brain. I was absolutely spellbound. My mouth gaped open, tears welled in eyes. This was the most beautiful music I had heard in my life. I realised that up until that point in my life, I had not, not even come close to understanding traditional Jazz. And he didn't sing at us, he sung to us, highlighting his phrases by looking at individual members of the audience, smiling, singing and looking, holding his free hand out and palm up. It was an incredible, engaging performance.

Each bloke did his turn at the solo, standing up if possible, and at the tutti at the end, all the frontline stood up to do the last run-through. Then onto their last number of the set, which was "Careless Love". They were to break for a while, at least 90 minutes. So we went looking for some dinner.

We found Pere Antoine Restaurant on Royal Street. It was getting close to closing time, there were only four other patrons, but the menu and the price looked OK, so we gave it a go. I had the Snapper Gaige with Crawfish — to me they looked like tiny little prawns — and Ali had Shrimp Creole. The little waiter was quite friendly with an unusual accent. He apologised to us for asking if we were English — I guess he must be aware of the average Australian's reaction to being called a Pom — and launched into us about Australia's War-in-Iraq policies. This was a little bit uncomfortable, because I agreed with the bloke, but you sort of feel honour bound to defend the government you hate because of outside attack. I guess governments have always known this and use it against us, right? As it was in this case, we were both dumbfounded by the suddeness of his tirade, and could only stare back at him. To make it up to us he came around later and advised not only where to go and what to see, but also which way to get there. "Don't walk along this street. If you go to here go directly down Decatur and then up Frenchmans, etc, etc". He knew the phone numbers of the clubs off by heart and wrote them down on a little napkin for us. His "Preservation Hall is just for the tourists" didn't sit well with me, particularly after the experience we'd just had, but OK, we were tourists. But the food and service were excellent otherwise, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to others. Two great meals in the same day, but only three good ones in seven days!

After settling up we went back to Preservation Hall for the next set. It was as entertaining as the partial set we'd seen earlier. On the wall behind the band was a sign which listed the prices for requests. Standards $5, Saints $10. The Jazz equivalent of a brass band's "Colonel Bogey". Someone obviously coughed up the $10, so they played The Saints. At the end of the performance as everyone filed out, Alison gave Greggy a $5 or $10 tip over the cover charge. "Thank you, Darling," in that croaky, southern accent.

We went back up to Bourbon Street, the crowds had multiplied, and we toyed with the idea of going into one of the bars, but it was just too much of a crush. The beads, everyone had beads, and the effect they had on people as they were thrown down from the balconies was as if someone was throwing down some form of currency. Ali was able to score some which she put on — at this stage we didn't understand the significance of them. But we scored our beads and marvelled at the crowds and walked back along Bourbon towards Canal and our Hotel. The brief walk along Canal was very scary, with young drunk black blokes hassling us in the street. And the Hustlers. Their gambit was the old, "If you give me $5, I'll tell you where you got them shoes." Kevin had warned us about this one, so we were wise, brother; I got these shoes on Canal St near the corner of Royal!"

We made a quick toilet stop in our Hotel, and then we went down to Decatur to try to find The House of Blues. We did. The line up to get in wasn't too long, but I soon realised that if we did line up, we would be both the oldest and the whitest people in the line. So we bypassed this and went further up Decatur. We found Ryan's Irish Pub, of course, so Alison (Ryan) felt quite at home, particularly with a Baileys. I had a pint of Bass, so also felt quite comfortable, if not at home. After a couple of these, we decided to call it a night.

Just past the Hotel in Royal Street there was an all-night convenience store, so we stopped in there for some supplies. The store was very-very dodgy, I think even the bloke behind the counter was spaced out. We did not feel safe at all — this would not be the last time we would feel this way in New Orleans — I picked up a six-pack of Heineken to keep me company and Ali picked up a chick drink. It was 1:30am — back to the Hotel for bed and sleep.

New Orleans had blown me away on the first night, and I was wondering if it could be topped. Bourbon Street was not what I imagined it to be; yes the drunken raucousness and crowds, but I'd sort of imagined more Jazz, rather than the overloud pop music that was billowing out the doors of the bars. When our friend Kevin had insisted we go to Preservation Hall I had thought, yeh OK, but we'll do it just to say we've done it. Not that I doubted Kev, he's never steered us wrong yet, but when you travel, you want to make it your own trip, rather than someone elses.

Our US Trip: Part 6 - Las Vegas - Gob-smacking wealth in the City of Business Cards

2005-05-02T16:24:00.000+10:00

Wednesday 8th December

A fairly restful night in our air-conditioned $69 per night luxury room. Looking back, with the exception of the nights spent at Paul and Roz's place in San Francisco, TI was the cheapest place we stayed. And probably the most luxurious. Our latest morning start yet, as we were up and moving around 11am. The weather was once again cold and overcast, if a little better from the previous day.

First stop was (once again) Starbucks. They seem to catch a lot of flack from people about the fact that there is a Starbucks on every corner, but the coffee is generally very good, and certainly is an order of magnitude better than coffee just about anywhere else in the States. Except Peet's, of course.

And once again we started off south down the Strip to check out all the joints. The cabbie had recommended M&M's World, so we first went in there. We didn't buy much, well I didn't buy much. They have a rainbow selection sold by the pound, so we bought some mixed green and gold peanut M&M's for Paul and Roz to be patriotic.

After this, we lunched at Subway, while looking out at New York New York.
On top of the casino is a roller-coaster, and despite the bitter weather, it was still operational. Well, I guess it wasn't raining. And on we walked, stopping in a souvenir shop on the way to pick up a few presents, and a corner store to buy some supplies. At the corner where the Tropicana is, I got a phone call from home. Greg was asking me whether I'd be playing basketball that night. It must've been Thursday morning back home! Naturally I told him, that while I was keen, I would probably be unable to get there in time.

While at Tropicana, Ali and I had a "Free Spin" on the wheel at the outside of the casino. You "win" a free deck of cards, and to collect, they craftily make you descend into the bowels of the casino to retrieve them. Included in the winnings was a brochure for their entertainment; we noticed that a show was shortly about to start, so we did the poker machine polka to find the place where the show was on: a stage literally placed on top of a bank of poker machines. While waiting Ali pulled $7.50 profit out of a 5 cent machine.

The free show was "Airtime", which featured a couple of very muscly and very gay blokes and a couple of barely-dressed chicks, who did a suspended acrobat type act over the stage. One of the chicks did a hoola-hoop dance with lots of twirling. She was doing the "spotting" thing which ballerinas do to stop getting dizzy, and on her way around I could've sworn she winked at me! Next time around, yep she's winking. Subtle look around, no I'm the only bloke in the area, she's got to be either winking at me or Ali. Ali leans over, "I think she's winking at you," in a very matter-of-fact voice. Then I notice she's not only winking at me, but at a whole bunch of people on her way 'round. It's obviously some showbiz trick to draw you in. After the show ended we left the Tropicana, all the better for the experience.

Further down the Strip we eventually ended up at the pyramid-shaped Luxor . Ali had to ride the lions out the front. Another "sheer-scale-will-amaze-you" type place. We decided to take a peek inside but the photos just do not do it justice. I was actually starting to get sickened by the amount of money that was just floating around in these edifaces. Rooms up inside the pyramid, stone features inside the foyer, uggh, it must've cost tens of millions to build this place. And here I am, an arse-hanging-out-of-my-pants Australian along to have a Captain Cook at the place.

Luxor was our last stop on our walk south, and we'd taken about three hours to get that far. Three hours! So we headed back, looking in at most of the casinos on the way, just for a gawk. Snapped a couple of shots at MGM Grand (and one which I should've shown of the previous day at Paris).

Paul or Roz had recommended we stop in at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. We did, and we were originally intending to stay there for dinner. But it was not to be. After waiting for quite a few minutes at the near-empty bar to be huffily served by the rude barman I returned with our drinks to the table Ali had found. The second round he charged me two dollars more and was even ruder. Obviously I hadn't given him enough tip in the first round and he was trying to make up for it. Which was rubbish because I gave him plenty. Anyway we voted with our feet and left after we had quickly finished up. No need to give them anymore money. I don't recommend Margaritaville.

I snapped one of my most favourite shots here. I just couldn't imagine in Australia that anyone would want to eat in a place called "Fatburger." We didn't enter or taste the food, so it may be my loss. However, I'll stand by my decision.

Back we walked, north to TI, then it was rest, a little bit of telly, a snooze, and room service. We went fairly basic with the room service (hamburgers, etc) but it came to $38 plus tip and I was once again disappointed at the quality of the food. Too much and too disgusting. It was now mid-evening so we organised ourselves for yet another walking trip along the strip.

This time it was north, past the huge shopping-complex that we could see from our room window. It wasn't long before the area got rather grotty. I was keen to see Circus, Circus because of the whole "Diamonds are Forever"-James Bond connection. But it was easily the filthiest casino we'd been in so far. And they had a different hiring policy as well, since all the croupiers were Asian. There was an acrobatic show which we caught briefly, complete with live band which consisted merely of drummer, violin and piano accordian. Interestingly, the acrobats ("Isha and Misha" or something like that) were of some Slavic origin, neither spoke very good English. But after the show had finished, they spent about five minutes on the darkened stage going over a couple of moves that they'd obviously stuffed up. We saw them later that night walking down towards the "rich" end of town, chatting away in their native tongue. We didn't stay long in Circus, Circus, long enough to smell the stale cigar smoke only and then we left back towards TI.

As I said the area was a little dodgy. There was a very drunk couple who were being abusive to people who overtook or walked past them. We avoided conflict by walking into Frontier for a quick piss-stop.

One thing I could not get used to was the people handing out semi-porno business cards intending to attract you to strip clubs. It didn't matter that I was walking arm-in-arm with my chick down the street. Every time, they'd spot us, tap the pack of cards in their hand once or twice and thrust them forward towards us. One bloke was so forceful that Ali had no choice but to accept the card, which she quickly discarded. I will always remember Las Vegas for the piles of fluttering little cards in every gutter on every street.

For the last time, we made it back to TI, and went to the "Centre" Bar for a drink. But no dice, pardner, we couldn't get a drink because we didn't have a table or weren't playing one of those dickey-little bar-side poker machines. You can not only sit and get pissed, but you can also lose money gambling at the same time. How convenient. I was ready for bed, but Ali insisted we get a drink somewhere, so we followed the sound of music and ended up in Kahunaville within the bowels of TI. We scored our 2-for-1 cocktail for $7.50, and drank something completely indescribable. The entertainment was Duelling Pianos with two obviously very talented blokes playing and joking, but I was not impressed at all. The sound was so loud that it was actually hurting me to listen to. The jokes the guys said were just a little too off-colour (or should I say off-color) for my mood, and some of the humour was quite insulting in that insecure stand-up comic sort of way. After three drinks I managed to pry Ali away from there and we went out to the general casino.

After trying out a few machines, we both sat down in front of this 5 cent machine and began playing. And lo and behold, at 12:30am on Thursday 9th December we eventually received the fabled Vegas drink service. We felt a right pair of dicks actually because when the chicky came back with Ali's screwdriver and my bourbon, Ali asked her how much it cost and was told in a deadpan voice, "It's complimentary, M'am." Hee hee hee. All this must have inspired the gambling gods to look kindly on us, for Ali won $45 on the machine from an initial $5 outlay.

After this we were both ready to drop, so it was back up to the room and to open the Twinkies that I'd bought in the corner store earlier that day. They are not easy to find in Australia but I had had them before, and devoured two or three with gusto. Then it was to sleep.

The following day we were to leave Vegas for New Orleans. I could easily have done without the Vegas portion of the trip. The sheer wealth pouring into that place is staggering, and for me, it was just a bit too much of a disgusting display. I wasn't impressed by the "replicas"; quite frankly I'll be happy to see the Eiffel Tower and the Trevi Fountain. But the real one, not some plastercast knock-off (although I doubt that they were actually made of plaster!). I was not enjoying the food either, and with the sole exception of the Thai dinner we'd had the very first night, I was beginning to think that I'd never enjoy a meal in the US.

But Ali enjoyed Vegas, and for that I was happy that we'd come all this way. She came out a little ahead in the gambling stakes as well, so doubly happy as far as that was concerned. No million-dollar bonus win, however.

A new word for the Aussie dictionary

2005-04-12T08:42:00.000+10:00

Schappelle — sha-'pel — noun: An unwitting and innocent victim of a failed drug smuggling attempt. One who has become the mule (c.v.)
for a drug-smuggling ring without realising it, and is caught by authorities.

eg: That one with the boogie board. She's our schappelle.

Schappelled — sha-'peld — verb: 1. To be used as an unwitting accomplice by a drug-smuggling ring, and to be caught in
the process of smuggling drugs.

2. To be the innocent victim of a failed drug-smuggling attempt.

3. To have drugs planted on you by a corrupt official.

eg: Our girl got schappelled at Bali airport. There's 4.5 kilos gone!

Hell, I could be completely wrong, but something just isn't right with this.

That "R" word

2005-04-11T21:34:00.000+10:00

I don't normally delve into obscenties, but I had an email from an American correspondent about my reference to the word "route" and the humour I so obviously gain from using it. (Struth! An American reading about my American trip! I better only say nice things about them.)

OK I know, for all you Aussies, it is spelt "root". Here is a link that'll wise you up maybe a little.

Do you get it now? When you "root, root, root" for the home team, it is not only entertaining and enlightening, but enjoyable as well.

Our US Trip: Part 5 - Las Vegas - Big and Gaudy.

2005-04-11T21:05:00.000+10:00

Tuesday 7th December

Last morning in LA at Manhattan Beach - but missing the waffles for breakfast. Despite this, I'm starting to feel sure that I'm going to come back from home from the US very, very large indeed. A bit of a rush, preliminary farewells to Roz, as Paul is dropping her off at work on the way to the airport. Outside it is overcast and just a little muggy, with the never-ending haze of a normal LA day.

Traffic, despite travelling away from the city south towards Torrance, is terrible. The usual stuff: large break in traffic, accelerate to 60mph, hard break to a full stop, sit and wait, eventually creep on. I question Paul's constant use of the freeways, when we spend so much time on them stopped, surely it'd be quicker on the back streets. I figure afterwards it is his unfamiliarity with the city.

Eventually we arrive at Roz's work; we're seeing them again in less than two weeks, so only a temporary goodbye. Then it's the big turnaround north to get back to LAX. Surprisingly, the traffic back in is not too bad in comparison, though it is possibly the time of day, as it is getting on towards 9:30a. Into LAX, see off Paul, then to United check-in for our flight to Las Vegas.

Uggghh! United check-in. Are they the worst airline in the world? The lines for the check-in were not encouraging. Paul had clued us up about the "Self Check-in" and so we decided to give that a go. Insert a credit card for identification and away it went. Only it didn't. After a while a bloke there took pity on us and gave us a bit of a hand, and after recognising my credit card, a couple of minutes later it did work. So it happily clicked away and told us to wait for someone to complete the process by attaching the stickers to our bags. Only there was no one there to do it. There was a security guard there who frequently advised us and anyone who'd listen that he wasn't allowed to touch the bags at all — it seems United was short-staffed this morning and this guard could see a very humourous side to it all. Eventually one of the two women who were doing normal check-ins broke free and grabbed the bags of us and two or three other people who had self-checked in. Then the security guard picked up the backs and put them on the conveyor. "I'm not really allowed to do this you know." Now, I must admit, I also was seeing the funny side of United's problems. So, "Self Check-in" reduced the check-in time from (say) 30 minutes to about 30 minutes.

Through the bag screening. Ah, not so fast. It seems they didn't like the look of my cigarette lighter and my choice was... none. I could either not board the plane or surrender the lighter. Well maybe a heavily-weighted choice. Luckily it wasn't an engraved lighter or anything, worth about $30. I reckon one of the guard took a liking to it, and it is now lighting his disgusting little tailor-made cigarettes. Up till then my lighter had only either lit my hand-rolled cigs or cigars.

Neither of which I smoked the whole time I was in the US. Ah well.

So they let us go on.

Breakfast at Starbucks, I ordered something better than the "shot" of coffee I'd gotten at Peets, and Ali her normal Cap, and we toddled off to the embarkation area. I did a bit of shop-cruising and picked up a new wallet for $12 to replace my aging Jag one. With all the check-in and security kafuffle we didn't have all that long to wait to board our flight. The flight itself reminded me of my first times flying when I suffered from airsickness quite a bit. I had to actually tell Ali to leave me to myself because all her attention was making me feel more ill. Also driving us both bonkers were the people in the seats in front of us. Quite large people, they talked too loudly and chatted across the aisles and generally made quite a nuisance of themselves to everyone around us.

We landed — at Las Vegas, really only a short flight, and I'd managed to stave off the spewing part of the travel-sickness thankfully. Las Vegas is a bizarre place from the air. It looks like a city picked up from some other place and plonked in this wasteland. And the airport is much closer to the city than any other I'd been to. We exited to plane to see — poker machines inside the terminal. Our mate Ray was right in saying that you cannot walk a straight line in Vegas without walking through poker machines.

The chatty cabby was quite proud to show us billboards proclaiming the "Wonders from Downunder" or something similar. Both male and female version of strippers bought exclusively in from Australia. Hmmm, well I'm glad we're famous for something. He virtually gave us a guided tour of the Strip on the way to our hotel, "...and this one was owned by the same consortium who owns Treasure Island and was built in 1984, blah, blah..." His effort was appreciated though. I was quite frankly too goggle-eyed to pay much attention to the cabbie's spiel. Everything was huge. Hotels, statues, water features, electronic billboards, colours all clashing to compete for your attention and (presumably) the contents of your wallet. And it was also with the cabbie that we first heard those fateful letters "NFR."

It seems this week was the National Finals Rodeo, and there were cowboys everywhere. I mean real blokes walking around in all that wild and crazy cowboy gear as if it were normal to be walking down a city street and knocking people over with the size of your hat brim. And thinking that leather tassels are a great accessory for a shirt. Chaps! No really! There were cowboys everywhere. I have never seen anything like this before in my life.

After a little while we pull up outside Treasure Island, our casino/hotel/home for the next two nights. It is a three-spoked monstrosity, and you can't call it "Treasure Island" — it is "T.I." Check-in was painless. I sort of was expecting to be fighting off bellhops wanting to take our bags upstairs, but everyone was content to handle their own, as was I. The crowds just inside the hotel were simply amazing for the time of day, possibly 1p. The lineup outside the bistro were legendary. Cowboys, cowboys everywhere. So we toddled off on the crooked path to the elevators to our hotel room, dodging cowboys and poker machines with a quickly-learned dexterity.

By the time we'd settled into the room and changed and went back downstairs it was freezing cold and raining, so both tired and me still a little seedy from the flight, we went back upstairs to have a sandwich and a sleep. I took some time to wrestle with the in-room internet access via the television set to check/send emails. Aside from the shockingly bad resolution of the screen, the fingertip joystick on the IR keyboard kept on drifting down, down, so everytime I wanted to click on a button or on a site, it was force the joystick up and hold it up whilst simultaneously pressing the mouse button. Wow. After struggling with this for about 45 minutes and a short read of my book, I joined Ali for a sleep.

We finally emerged, showered, dressed and refreshed around 8:30p! What had happened to the day? The lobby downstairs was noisy, smoky and full of cowboys, so we retreated into the nightclub Tangerines for a couple of hideously-expensive drinks. From there we watched the twice-nightly Pirate show, which, although incredibly cheesy, was amazing for the ship which sails up the lake, and then is sunk by cannon shot — naturally all simulated, but the lake and the people diving into the freezing water were real. And the ship sinks into the lake! Very cool.

After this we made our first excursion outside into the cold night with the hundreds of other people who had watched the show, and we headed south down the strip. One thing which amazed both of us was the sheer size and space of the casinos. For most of the casinos, just to walk from the front door to the street is a huge effort, and I'm certain that it took almost 15 minutes just to walk past the Bellagio. Ali had to get a shot in at the Trevi fountain since she's been to the real thing.

So south along the strip, Mirage, Bellagio, etc. eventually all the way down to New York New York, and it was getting very late and we were very hungry. So we stopped into an Asian buffet to have possibly the worst mixed Asian food of my life. Huge amounts, but dry, tasteless, and spice-free. They even had a Mongolian BBQ set up, but I wasn't game to try it. One of the staff, this piratical-looking bloke with scary tattoos all over his forearms had obviously overheard our accents and came over to talk to us. At first his accent defeated us, but it turned out he was an Indonesian from Surabaya, and wanted to talk about things closer to his home. He had relatives in Darwin. His description of his life certainly furthered the impression of a pirate — we parted wishing him well.

We stopped in at Paris for a quick gamble, well Ali to have a gamble, me to watch. Inside the casino under the legs of the one-third size Eiffel Tower replica, it was like day, there were even clouds painted on the sky blue ceiling. Roz had previously mentioned this tactic of the casinos to fool you into not knowing what time of day it is, and I must say it was very effective. Ali lost about $10 on the "I Love Lucy" poker machine and then we went walking around to perve on the people playing. I was gob-smacked watching these people push bundles of $25 chips around the blackjack tables, and not even showing any interest in the game at all, aside from the mechanics necessary to ensure they weren't absolutely stuffing things up. All the croupiers (or whatever they are called) looked young and bored, and there seemed to be a lot more black people than white working there. Later on up the road at TI, it was the other way around. Do certain casinos have hiring policies?

Eventually we got sick of this and went back to our casino. Ali needed to lose some more money, and the bloke at the prize wheel was quite ready to take $20 off her. I was quite surprised how invisible one becomes when you are merely accompanying gamblers. Gamblers and staff only talk to gamblers, not to others. We stopped in at the "centre" bar for a quick drink. A lot of cowboys were there watching the NFR replays on the telly. I had a brief thought that it was weird that they would spend all day doing it and then go home and watch it, but Ali reminded me that we do exactly the same thing when we film one of our concerts! A couple of drinks later and we'd had enough, it was winding our way through the poker machine maze to show our room keys to the security card at the elevators to prove we weren't terrorists or whatever, and off to bed.

Another day of firsts in the good 'ol US of A.