Phew, it’s good to be home. Two days away on a business trip/getaway/team building exercise/workshop thingy, out in the sticks. Well, okay, out in Eltham, which used to be the sticks and is now the outer outer suburbs. So not quite a getaway from the city, but almost.

I got a lift with a workmate, and am in the unique position this week of having been in this week’s MORON OF THE WEEK’s car. The award-winning trick was driving through a clearly red light in Williamsons Road, Doncaster on Sunday morning. Quite frankly, this scared the shit out of me. I elected on an alternative mode of transport to get home on Monday. (I’d have quoted the licence plate number but I forgot to write it down. No, honest.)

It was quite a nice little motel place we stayed at, though the Games room was a tad lacking. A radio, a table tennis table, a couple of bats and a ball. No darts. No billiards. A bit sad, to be honest. Should’ve been renamed the Game room.

But the meals were okay. Great, actually. Apart, that is, from the fact that hot chocolate was apparently beyond kitchen staff’s capabilities. And the rooms were very luxurious. Big TV, sofa, nice view, spa… Ah, there’s nothing better than a company-paid room.

Of course, the whole point of getting away is to spend most of the day in a conference room in meetings, which to some extent defeats the effort of going all the way out there in the first place.

I’ve been trying to avoid this, but I don’t think there’s any way around this. I think we have stupid neighbours.

It’s the garbage collection. Granted, it’s not the ideal set-up. For our block of six flats we have:

• A set of six small bins for bottle and can recycling.
• Paper recycling collected from the curb only once a month, so you really need some spare space for a serious pile somewhere if you’re going to bother.
• Three big bins for all the other crap that can’t or won’t get recycled.

But now here comes the masterstroke of logic that probably kept dozens of bureaucrats at the City Of Glen Eira busy giggling into the night. We have another
big bin, also for bottle and can recycling. Nobody knows why. But it has a distinctive red lid so the general garbage collector guy in his truck with the robot arm doesn’t pick it up.

So roaming the streets every Wednesday morning are two sets of bottle and can collectors. Thank goodness merging local councils has made them super lean and efficient.

One or more of our neighbours just can’t fathom this red-lidded bin. Not even after a booklet about it, a special letter, and stickers placed all over the bin saying what should be in it. Every week it shows up on the curb with the other big bins, full of the wrong kind of rubbish.

And every week the collectors ignore it, or add a few more stickers. Hopefully eventually the council will realise what a monumental screw-up they’ve committed by (a) collecting bottles and cans twice every Wednesday, and paper only once a month and (b) entrusting my neighbours with the relatively simple task of putting a particular type of rubbish into a particular bin.

Last Friday morning I was making my sandwich for lunch in the customary manner. I’d forgotten that I wouldn’t actually need one as we at work were all going out for lunch, but that’s another matter.

I decided on my favourite recipe (if you can call it that) of ham, cheese and lettuce. Actually "decided" is probably the wrong word. Ham, cheese and lettuce is the default sandwich, the one I always make if I can’t decide what else to make, can’t bother to think of anything more imaginative, or haven’t got the ingredients for anything else. This accounts for about four days out of five most weeks.

For some reason I always get all the ingredients out of the fridge (or appropriate cupboards) before I start. But they go away as they get used, not all in one go afterwards.

On went the butter, the ham, the cheese. Next, the lettuce. I pulled some out of its plastic bag. On the occasions I buy lettuce, I put it in a bag in the fruit section in the supermarket. The check-out chick then feels compelled to place this bag inside another bag, even if it’s the only item I’m buying. No wonder we all generate too much landfill.

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that I sometimes stop off at the supermarket on the way home from work. For me one of the main benefits of owning a mobile phone is you can check if any groceries are needed on the way home. This causes no end of amusement from my fellow workmates walking with me when I’m heard discussing which of the family’s three kinds of milk need to be bought. L drinks skim, I drink "Rev" and Isaac drinks full cream.

Some of you might remember that recently I was talking about lettuce.

I take some lettuce out of its plastic bag. There’s something on one of the pieces. Eugh. Looks like somebody’s bogie. Some joker in the supermarket has been picking his nose and placing the really gooey ones on the lettuce. Yeuch.

It moves. A worm or slug of some kind.

Ah. This is better. At least, I think it is. I think I’d prefer bonus wildlife on my lettuce to nasal discharge. Though either way I think I’d prefer it not to be on my sandwich.

(Three paragraphs ago I switched to present tense. Apologies to any of my English teachers, should they ever be reading this, for mixing my tenses. I tried to switch it back into past tense like the rest of the piece. But it just didn’t work.)

I think I got the travel bug during our US trip in April. It’s so refreshing to go somewhere different. But for small doses of that kind of experience, perhaps it’s not necessary to go flying off to different continents, and with it the risks of travelling - crashes, hijacks and the most dangerous, airline food.

On Saturday we went scooting up Sydney Road, Brunswick. From a distance it looks like just another bit of Melbourne suburbia. But once you’re off the tram and on the street, in little ways it’s like a different world. At least, compared to Caulfield.

The shops have food you don’t see much over this side of town. Weird looking beans in large quantities. Exotic spices that don’t show up in south-eastern Safeways. Real Turkish Delight, made by real Turks! Lots of signs in Arabic. And believe it or not, we even laid eyes on Ali Baba’s Variety Store.

We spent Sunday wandering around Elwood. I used to live in Elwood, about ten years ago, and it’s surprising how the place has changed. It’s become a lot more trendy than it used to be. There didn’t used to be all those hippy merchandise shops down there selling herbs, incense and other such foul smelling stuff.

And now it seems Elwood is the place to have Sunday lunch. We couldn’t get in at the place on the beach run by Crowded House’s former drummer, so we ended up having lunch at a place frequented by semi-well-known comedians.

Oh, don’t worry, we were very cool about it when Judith Lucy and Anthony Morgan walked in. Didn’t ask for autographs, didn’t say anything, didn’t stare. Well, they’re not exactly mega-stars, are they. Nope. Certainly not worth getting embarrassed over.

(I can tell you now - Judith Lucy’s depressed expression isn’t put on. It’s real. Or maybe she just uses it when reading cafe menus.)

In any case, I have to be cool about celebs. Because (so I’m told) I’m a bit of a net.celebrity. In the minorist of minor ways, of course. Got recognised at a party once. Well, okay, a party full of net.geeks. And actually, anybody who’s been posting publicly online since before 1992 is a net.celebrity.

So in the cafe, we were all relaxed. I got stuck into my bacon, avocado and cheese melt.

Susannah, my sister: "So Daniel, how’s your cholesterol levels?"
Daniel, myself, me: "Thriving, thank you very much!"

Elwood is a lot smaller than I remember it. Individual things aren’t so much smaller, but it’s certainly all closer together. It seems to be the same with all the places I lived or went as a child that I remember well but haven’t been back to in a few years. Things have shrunk together. Oh, and there’s more mobile phone towers.

It’s good to see the Dalai Lama getting a good reception on his current visit to Australia. I wonder anyone will tell him the joke someone said on Good News Week last week, about "Dalai Lamas in Pyjamas"? It has possibilities…

D2: "Are you thinking what I’m thinking, D1?"
D1: "I think I am, D2!"
D1 and D2: "It’s Free Tibet time!"

We just bought a new pram. Oh, sorry, a stroller. It’s so much different from a pram, you know. The old one is on its last legs, that is to say, on its last wheels. Okay, so it’s not quite that far gone, but it’s getting there. We treat our prams rough.

So we splashed out on a pram that will last us for the rest of our pram-using years. The one we should have bought first. Boy, did we splash out. We got the deluxe model. The heavy-duty one. The Emmaljunga "Grizzly", it’s called. From Sweden. This is the Volvo of prams. It’s built like a tank, and is packed full of safety features.

It’s luxurious. And big. Bigger than some small cars, actually. I’ve seen traffic wardens eyeing it. If it were motorised (that’s probably an optional add-on) we could just about pile everyone into it for a spin. There could be complications if we put it on the road, I think we’d need to pay car registration.

And the price? People reading who aren’t parents may not believe how much we splashed out on this super-pram. Parents will know you can spend anything you like on baby equipment. This one cost us a mere A$399. Yup. Believe it. Thankfully they apparently have a pretty good resale value on the second-hand pram market.

From the manual…
"Before using your new stroller, please be sure to review the important safety tips we have included in this detailed manual. You will then be on your way to years of safe and reliable strolling."

Yes indeed. We don’t walk down the street with it. We stroll. We stroll down to the shops. We stroll through the park. Stroll, stroll, stroll, stroll, stroll.

Well, that’s it for now. Must stroll.

With the bulk of people on my project at work departing at the end of the month, a plethora of social activities have been scheduled to make sure we miss each other all the more after September.

Lunches, barbecues, wine tours, cancelled ski weekends… and this week, indoor soccer is scheduled. And when I play, I am going to be very very careful indeed.

Why? Let me explain. It’s been about two years since I played in an indoor soccer game. That was at my last job. The final game of Winter ‘94. And it was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a bloodbath.

From memory, two trips to hospital were made during or after the game. I think perhaps everybody got a tad too enthusiastic. Afterwards, nobody really felt like organising another game. But with a fresh bunch of players, hopefully things will run a little more peacefully this time. Maybe we’d better make sure everyone’s ambulance subscription is paid up before we start.

Clearing out some old uni notes over the weekend I found in a margin this gem of creativity that you might enjoy. Or perhaps not.

"Earless Dead Geriatric Destitute Teenage Mutant
Ninja Bignosed Cowboys Who Need Dental Treatment"

Most of the other scrawlings on my lecture notes seemed to either be related to being extremely bored or be various quotes from my favourite TV shows. One folder has the original concept from which Mr Popsicle, secret agent, developed, and has been retained for historical value.

Most of it is going out, or at least, helping to pile up our recycling to impressive new heights. This has been added the surprisingly small amount of literature picked up at the PC’96 Show last week. The new Melbourne Exhibition Centre, which I haven’t been in before, was very impressive. Unlike the Show itself.

Has nothing happened technology-wise since last year? Nothing caught my eye. Or maybe it was because I wasn’t in a buying mood. But I got the feeling nobody was really as enthusiastic this year as last year.
The fact that I got away without being flooded with literature has to be an indicator. In previous years corporate minions were thrusting papers at me about every product under the sun.

But this year, nothing really shone. Just a few video conferencing displays (yawn), plenty of modems and Internet providers (double-yawn) and colour printers (triple-yawn).