POT SPOT WATCH: Well, the sign said the lease finishes Sunday 9th of March. Sure enough this afternoon there was no sign of movement. Inside it appears than all the stock has gone. So… this could be it. Stay tuned for more developments as they happen.

First stop this morning was one of Isaac’s colleagues’ second birthday party in a park. We foolishly left the house without checking where we were really going, and this being the Garden State and the City Of Far More Parks Than Necessary, we ended up in the wrong park. (Not before we had spotted the inevitable Whitman’s blimp, however). Eventually we found the right place.

This afternoon I headed over to a flat rented by a couple of friends (the ones who got married in December). It’s very near Albert Park, the Grand Prix circuit, so they decided to have a little GP party. It’s not close enough or high enough to watch the race from, but close enough that you can get a glimpse of the tops of the cars whizzing by, and the noise well and truly drowned out the TV. Certainly beats surround sound.

Looking skyward it was amazing there were no aircraft collisions. I counted five helicopters at one stage (and yes, the Whitman’s blimp) as well as an RAAF jet that whooshed through just before the race started. At times it seemed more like a war zone than a sports event.

The race itself was interesting, though confusing. I freely admit I don’t follow Formula 1 enough to really know what was going on, and we couldn’t hear much of the commentary. And every so often a helicopter would fly over low and interrupt the TV reception.

For those of you who watched the race on the telly, I can let you into a little secret: they don’t stop during the commercial breaks.

The laughs came after the race when the Pommy commentators kept proclaiming how much of a "nice chap" the winner was, and one reported that it had been "a cracking race". That of course lead to "Cracking race, Gromit!" done in my best Wallace voice.

The very first thing we saw when we walked out of the house this morning was the Whitman’s blimp, flying directly overhead.

In the afternoon we had a wedding to go to, almost in the middle of Grand Prix territory during a transport strike, a bit of a scary prospect. Would it be Melbourne’s version of REM’s "Everybody Hurts" video? Thankfully it was while the racing was going (well, okay, not the actual racing, the time trials or whatever it is). So as the cab driver expected, the traffic wasn’t really a concern.

The wedding itself was great; last time we ran into problems with Isaac making various screechy and other loud noises in the church. This time the bride had insisted that we would stay for everything, no matter how much noise Isaac made. Actually he was relatively well behaved, a key factor being the number of mini-teddybear biscuits we stuffed into him every time he opened his mouth.

The reception was good too. Seeing the cake being cut reminded me of our own wedding a few years ago. We were about to cut the cake when we found it was rather more solid than we bargained for. L jokingly asked if anyone had a chainsaw. Someone did. He got it from his car, and so we got photos of us holding a chainsaw over the cake.

You may be wondering how my new job’s going. It’s going pretty good. I’m part of a small team of seven that have been thrown together, and we spent most of last week figuring out exactly what we’ll be doing. Which is just as well, because being a very large organisation, they’re taking a bit of time to get such luxuries as phones and PCs sorted out.

But the essentials have been sorted out, such as the location of the nearest Coke machine, the quirks of the bistro, and the location of the three nearest parks. It’s a hangover from working in St Kilda Road, next to Fawkner Park. We had to check out and rate the parks. Park#1 is very nice, but a little too far to walk. Park#2 is closer but, quite plainly, sucks due to factors such as the dust from the nearby quarry and the noise from the freeway. Park#3 is probably the best.

I’m getting a handle on the commute. The urban tribes found on the 624 bus are quite different from those on the train. The schoolkids outnumber the commuters, so they tend to be a good deal more rowdy - in fact they use the kind of language that would probably send your grandmother into shock.

The bus timetable in the morning looks like this:

Have you ever noticed how in the supermarket the check-out chicks/ blokes sometimes have to ask the customer what a fruit is so they can enter the code? Okay, to be fair, I don’t know what half the stuff is, especially those really bizarre fruits like the star shaped ones and the small round hairy ones… but then, it’s not my job to know. Ask me a computer question instead.

They could always put barcode stickers on the fruit, but that would be expensive and potentially very annoying to customers, particularly when they remember the sticker after they’ve eaten the fruit.

I’ve had a better idea. Uh oh, you’re thinking, is this something impractical like last week’s idea of intelligent shopping trolleys? No, I think it might be possible. Genetics has come a long way… what if they genetically alter fruit to include barcodes? Then all the check-out chick would have to do is pass it over the scanner like everything else.

You may be wondering why all this talk of supermarkets. Well, I started my new job today. Working on a project related to Point Of Sale terminals. Nuff said?