Christmas is coming
So here we are, Christmas Eve. After yesterday’s heat, it was still 30 degrees C overnight. Thankfully it’s cooled down now to 25, and I’ve opened up the house to let it all in — though hopefully not too many flies.
Tomorrow we’ll pile over to my sister’s house for Christmas lunch, but it’s looking like we won’t get to use the pool, as evidently it will be cooler, so not the stinking hot Australian Christmas we sometimes get.
“We can’t replicate an Australian Christmas over here. It’s too cold. Sometimes it snows. You can hear sleigh bells. Nah, it’s not like Christmas at all.” — Lee Tulloch in New York, The Age, 22/12/99
Brighton Beach station
Bourke Street
Little Bourke Street
To all those reading, thanks for all the comments over the year, and have a great Christmas and New Year.
The hidden message in the train seats
Many of Melbourne’s train seats look like this:
Look closely. Those are not all just random shapes designed to hide the dirt.
Anything look familiar?
Read more
Advertising – it’s part of the plan
Massive billboards to remind us about how great the government is? It’s part of the plan.
That’s Richmond Station; there’s others at South Yarra and Malvern and no doubt elsewhere.
Mind you, the first of the new trains apparently hasn’t actually made it into service yet.
It’s a bit like Myki. Lucky they’re not putting up lots of billboards for that… What? Oh. D’oh!
PS. Previously:
- 3/8/2009 – Advertising PT on PT
- 28/4/2009 – Remember, the government delayed expanding the train fleet, despite the warnings
PPS. The photo on page 4 of today’s MX may look quite familiar.
Melbourne becomes a big city
When I first visited London in the 90s I was staggered by the scale of it. Not so much physical size, but the mass of people. I remember being at Piccadilly Circus on a Sunday and there were just swarms of people, heading in all directions.
I felt like a small town hick who had visited the city for the first time.
At the time, Melbourne didn’t have the same sense of “busy” that it does now. The CBD was pretty dead outside working hours, and until shopping hours were liberalised in the mid-90s, it virtually shut down at 1pm on Saturday, with no life again until Monday morning.
That’s changed in the last ten years. The growth of the CBD’s residential population, together with the population growth in suburban Melbourne and the CBD’s 7-day-a-week shopping, eating, events and nightlife have brought it to life.
As Melbourne’s built environment was transformed, so was its sense of self. Suburbanites again flocked into town for the football, or a show, or to eat and drink. Licensing laws were deregulated, transport, venues and parking were improved, quirks such as the city’s jumble of laneways were celebrated; precincts such as Lygon Street, the Queen Victoria Markets and St Kilda were tweaked. Students — local and visiting — became a fixture on the city’s streets.
Apparently Melbourne is now the 89th biggest urban area by population, and if the predictions are right and we’ll be growing to 5 million in the next decade or two, it’s going to get busier. Projections show particular growth not just in 9 to 5 commuters, but in visitors — from overseas, interstate and in particular coming in from the suburbs.
Melbourne’s becoming a big city.
Stealth advertising
Seen on Saturday: Don’t go to Dan Murphy’s for your booze — keep going and come to Winelovers Warehouse instead!
Technically they’re their truck is illegally parked, of course, hanging out of the parking space into No Standing territory. But I wonder how many people were suckered in?
Myki newsflash
This was my favourite Twitter post of the week, which I’m repeating here while it’s still timely:
NEWSFLASH: Govt to change state to the Assyrian Calendar, giving 3 more months to get #Myki right “by the end of the year”
(W00t — Retweets!)
And yes if you’re wondering, I had done some research before posting it. Perhaps appropriately, the end of the Assyrian calendar year is the “Month of evil spirits”, or ܐܕܪ.
(Your computer will need to be configured to display non-Western alphabets to display that properly.)
There is speculation of an imminent launch for Myki in Melbourne, but there’s been those kinds of rumours flying around for the last month or so.
Meanwhile it appears there are still a lot of evil spirits in the system, with scanners responding slowly or not at all, and on Wednesday for the second time I saw a Myki vending machine doing its weirdo update thing in the middle of the evening rush hour.
Legal precinct stereotypes
In the legal precinct (William Street between Little Bourke and Latrobe Streets, for non-Melburnians), there are three distinct groups of people that strike me as common, but whom you don’t see much of in other areas of the CBD:
1. Young men looking uncomfortable in shirts and ties (and sometimes suits) — eg defendants and witnesses… there are women and older men too of course, but they don’t stick out as much. Most of them seem to smoke (at least, most of those standing on the street), and the tattoo count seems to be above that of the general population.
Sometimes they have an entourage who are similarly dressed-up, and sometimes they have an entourage who are in their usual clothing, which makes the defendant stick out even more. None of this demographic knows where to stand on the Flagstaff station escalators.
2. TV crews hanging about the entrance keeping a lookout for some of those defendants, especially in front of the Magistrate’s Court.
3. People in capes and funny wigs (various legal eagles), who in this neck of the woods, don’t raise an eyebrow.
Chickens for phones
Dunno about you, but I’ve got a spare useless mobile phone sitting at home doing nothing. It’s a Nokia 6100 that I got in 2004, then donated to Isaac when I got the 6230i, and he’s just recently upgraded to my less-old 6230i now I’ve got an N95.
The 6100’s buttons are hopeless these days, and it’s time to say goodbye.
Happily, until the end of December, the MobileMuster people will donate a chicken to Oxfam for each old phone recycled, if you print the special Reply Paid label off their web site.
Anybody else got old phones to get rid of?
