The whole separation thing is working out well. The kids are spending weekends with their mum, and she and I are getting on very amicably, and cooperating in making arrangements for her to move back into this area, so she can take the kids for more of the time, which will be good for all of us.

I’ve finally got hold of a copy of Bill Bryson’s latest book, courtesy of one of the Andrew Mitchells I know (the one who drives trams). Yes, I could have just gone out and bought "Down Under", but I have a curious dislike of buying hardback books (because I think they’re too damn big), so when Andrew offered to let me borrow his copy, I jumped at the chance.

So I met up with Andrew at work on Saturday and we had a chat while taking another spin in a tram, from the city to St Kilda and back again. I can see why he enjoys the job, especially when he humiliated the driver of a red-light-running four wheel drive that was about to become another notch on the tram’s bumper bar. I’m sure he’d much rather ding his bell a few times than have a prang and have to fill in a bunch of paperwork.

The book is hilarious, and I started reading it on the way home. Then I spent much of the rest of the weekend in the company of a lovely young lady I’ve been seeing rather a lot of recently (just about all of her in fact).

Back to the grindstone today. But I took a few minutes out of my morning for a spin over to Hawthorn Road to join the crowds watching the Olympic flame go by. Apart from the flame of course, there was the torch containing the flame, the runner holding the torch, and about half a dozen vans of equipment, TV cameras, and officials, several police cars, and large numbers of motorcycle cops. All that for one little flame. Still it was impressive, and I was a bit bummed that I wasn’t there early enough to get a souvenir sponsor’s flag.

This afternoon I went to the regular weekly meeting with the client company I’m currently working for. On the way I passed consumer watchdog DEAD SET LEGEND Alan Fels in Flinders Street. Then during the meeting it became apparent that somewhere in a related part of the client company there is yet another person called Andrew Mitchell. It would seem the world is full of them.

As usual the kids were staying with their mum for the weekend, so yesterday I went for a drive out into the country. I wasn’t really sure exactly where I would go, but I wanted to get out of the concrete jungle, to see some wilderness, even if only from the comfort of my car.

I looked at the map, and decided to head south east for starters. Nar Nar Goon, with its wacky name (and not much else) would be a good spot to aim for. So I headed out on The Freeway Formerly Known As The South Eastern. Soon the wilds of suburbia and the (IMHO) deservedly crumbling edifice of Waverley Park were long behind me.

Welcome to sunny Nar Nar Goon Anybody want to buy a disused cheese factory? Free horse poo in Longwarry… Uhhh… just the Coke and the Wagon Wheel thanks Just another quick stop to breathe in the country air. Out in the middle of nowhere… but still able to listen to Triple J.

I knew I was getting out of the city when I saw the biggest road kill I’ve ever seen: an intact but alas, very dead, kangaroo by the side of the highway. Reaching Nar Nar Goon, and realising that there really was nothing there, I kept on driving, and on a whim took a road descriptively named Nine Mile Road. It had obviously been missed in the switch to metric, which is probably just as well, because the Fourteen Point Four Eight Kilometre Road just doesn’t have the same kind of ring to it, and would also require a rather impractically large street sign.

Cora Lynn looked like a nice place to stop. There wasn’t anything very much there either, apart from a few houses, a General Store (closed) and a disused cheese factory and some cows in a nearby field. But I knew from looking around, and from listening and failing to hear anything other than the wind, that I really was out in the middle of nowhere. Oh, and it had a war memorial, even though it was a tiny place - in fact my memory of geography lessons long past tells me it was most probably a hamlet.

I stopped, breathed in the country air, while trying not to arouse any glares from any locals, who if they saw me might be thinking "huh… look at that, another one down from the city, come to breathe in our air…"

Carrying on down the road, I took a left turn at Bayles, and headed north east, back towards Longwarry. Because most of the land around there is cleared and settled, the roads around that area are all very straight, following the farm boundaries. On a long, straight, clear section of road, I was rather intrigued to see just how fast the car could go. But of course, I’m a sensible P-Plater, not one of those hoons you see doing doughnuts in empty car parks. So I didn’t do anything silly, and if anybody claims they saw me reach 130Km/h, well, it must be just a figment of their imagination and I’m sure they don’t have any proof whatsoever.

At Longwarry a small supermarket beckoned me in, took my money, and in turn provided a refreshing Coke and a Wagon Wheel. I decided to skip the "free horse poo" that was on offer nearby. Looking at the map, I decided that my next target was to take an off-the-beaten-track road up to Gembrook in the Dandenong Ranges. The Bessie Creek Road seemed to be the ticket, and after an hour or two of driving on freeways and almost dead straight roads it was certainly a more interesting drive.

The road twisted and turned up and around the mountains, and soon I was surrounded by thick forest. There were hardly any other cars on the road, and it reminded me of forest section of the Great Ocean Road, until I reached the end of the sealed section, and it became just a narrow dirt and gravel road, which made things even more interesting. 

I found a wide bit of the road where I could stop, and got out of the car to breathe in more of that country air, and to listen to the sounds of the trees blowing in the wind. Until I realised there wasn’t any wind, probably because I and the trees were in a valley. It was very peaceful, very relaxing, and it would have been a nice place to sit and relax for a while, except it was a bit muddy.

After getting most (but not all) the mud off my shoes, I got back in the car and drove on, until I reached a T-junction, with no indication whatsoever of which direction to go to get to Gembrook. I stopped, got out the map, looked confused for a minute or two, then decided that turning right was probably going in the right direction. Sure enough after a few minutes I was in the sleepy town of Gembrook, slightly less sleepy than it was since it is now the terminus for the Puffing Billy Railway.

It was after 4pm by now, and Puffing Billy had gone for the day, so I looked around for the road back to Belgrave, to see if I could beat the train to the trestle bridge, the one in all the postcards. It’s in all the postcards because it’s damn picturesque, and having seen the train there once before, I knew it was even better in real life. When computer-generated virtual reality can stimulate the senses with the sound, smell, vibrations and of course the super smooth visuals provided by seeing a 100 year old steam train rumbling across a wooden trestle bridge high above you in real life, then they might be onto something.

And, I thought, you never know, it might even be my mate Steve driving the train that day.

The drive along more twisting, turning roads was certainly interesting enough, but by the time I reached the bridge the train had gone - I could hear it steaming off towards Belgrave. Not to matter. It was raining, and starting to get dark, so I headed for home, not wanting particularly to tackle unlit country roads in the dark. I got back to home around 6pm, marvelling that on the entire drive, no matter how far into the wilderness I had got, my car radio had still been able to pick up Triple J.

Today and yesterday I zipped into the city on the train at lunchtime to enjoy some good food and a chat with some friends. The train goes express between Malvern and South Yarra, skipping three stations, so just after leaving Malvern I was somewhat bemused to see a guy a few seats ahead of me get up, put his bag on his back and make for the door. I watched him stand right next to the door, as if he was expecting at any minute to be able to get out. Uh uh.

Armadale zoomed past at about 80Km/h and he must have realised his mistake, but acted very coolly, leaning back against a railing, obviously thinking "if I just relax and look nonchalant, nobody’s going to know I thought I could get out at Armadale. They’re just going to think I like getting up from my seat five minutes before the train is going to stop, and standing around in the doorway looking like an idiot…"

But some people, not usually to that extreme, do get up early. They’ll stand at the doorway, fingers on the handle, poised to escape, a good minute or two before the train stops, as if they can’t wait to get out. Maybe they can’t.

Other people leave it until the train has stopped, everyone else has already got on and off, and then they make a mad dash for the door, just passing through as the doors begin to close again. My mate Brian
did this once, chatting for just a bit too long before getting off the train we were all riding on. By the time he’d finished chatting, the train was moving again and he got carried on to the next stop, which I found enormously amusing at the time. Fortunately the trains back were pretty frequent.

And me? I’m in the middle somewhere. I don’t leave it until the last minute. And I don’t hurry to the door to be the first out. Unless I notice a little old lady start to move to the door, in which case I’ll consider getting up and getting to the door first, which could be interpreted as a gallant attempt to assist in opening the door, or alternatively a rather selfish attempt to get off the train without being delayed!

It was a clear night in Melbourne for last night’s lunar eclipse. Messing around with the video camera and the video, I managed to grab some images as the earth’s shadow came across the moon. The most interesting was around 23:00, when something flew past my camera’s field of vision. It was gone in a flash, but checking the tape a few minutes later revealed it:

Just joshin’. If you want to see the real pictures I grabbed, check here. The one taken at 22:53 is the best, I think. The earlier ones are hopelessly out of focus, but still interesting.

Anyway, around 23:30, totality was reached. And it was time for bed.

Chong Quinlem - my grandad, circa 1946.

I feel like I’ve just met my grandfather (on my dad’s side) for the first time. Which is a bit strange, since he died long before I was born. It may be a bit odd, but my dad’s never gone in much for sentimental stuff, and it’s taken this long for me to get a picture of grandad, courtesy of an uncle and my sister.

So for the first time, I’ve seen what he looks like. It’s an eerie feeling, seeing a close relative for the first time, even if the picture is over fifty years old. He’s suddenly an actual human being, rather than just a name I’d heard mentioned a few times over the years.

Sure, there’s photos of other family members that came with this one, but somehow this one really got to me. I think it’s because he looks like he was about the same age as my grandad on my mum’s side, who I have met. Plus it’s something to do with the way he’s looking at the camera. Somehow it seems like he has something he wants to say to me. But of course he can’t.

What would he say if he were here now? I don’t know - I don’t think he even spoke a lot of English. And even I understood Cantonese, he’d probably be looking in bewilderment at the computer I’m typing on, and asking what the heck is it.

His name was Chong Quinlem. Family legend has it that his name was meant to be the other way around, but it got mixed up by a government department. The fact that it never got changed back probably indicates where I got my "Ooh, can I really be bothered? No stuff it, that will do" attitude from.

In fact, I was a Quinlem for a while. It was good in that anybody could find you easily in the phone book, but bad in that nobody but nobody could spell it (which in turn lessened the likelihood of being found in the phone book). The change from Quinlem to Bowen is a long (well, medium length at least) story involving parents divorcing and my mother taking back her maiden name, and us kids following suit.

Okay, it was actually quite a short story.

Anyway, so now people can’t find me in the phone book. But at least they can spell my name.

I have reached a point in my life that I never quite expected to reach. I know two people with the same name, that is, the same given name and the same surname. I suppose it’s the kind of thing that can happen sometimes - for instance, I’ve worked with an awful lot of people called John. In my time I’ve worked with a John A, B (x2), D, H, L, M, and P. That’s a lot of Johns. And I bet I’ve missed a couple.

Through the practice of EgoSurfing, I’ve known for some time that there are a number of Daniel Bowens on the web. But although I’ve got in contact with one or two, I’ve never actually met any of them, and I don’t know them as such. One of these days I will start an exclusive club for people called Daniel Bowen - perhaps do up a list on a web page of them all, or maybe even get a convention together! Just think - we could all wear nametags. We could get someone to page Daniel Bowen then all go up in a group to answer it. We could set up an Internet company called DanielBowen.com. It could be cool, or on the other hand, it could be incredibly sad and pathetic.

Anyway, now I’ve got to the point where I know two people called Andrew Mitchell. They are quite distinct people of course, they look different, sound different, and probably even smell different, though I’m in no hurry to find out. And they do different things for a living: one does Internetty computery stuff, the other is a tram driver.

Today I met up with the latter Andrew (who curiously, is the one who has a
personal web page). He was working, and we went for a spin up and down Flinders Street to the MCG a few times in the tram. It was a bit like going for a spin with a mate in his car, except it was a lot bigger, he wouldn’t let me drive it, and it costs about two million dollars.

Now, I wonder if Andrew Mitchell will ever meet Andrew Mitchell… 

I spent Wednesday morning as sick as a dog, that is, as sick as a very sick dog. In fact, as sick as a dog that’s spewing up everything it’s eaten in the previous day, and has truly revolting stuff coming out of its bottom. (Oh dear, is that too much detail?)

I think it was some kind of stomach bug. One thing’s for certain, it wasn’t not pleasant. When something like that hits, it’s a bit like the body has called a stop-work meeting. Everything is cleared out and a picket line is in place to prevent any more food or drink being accepted. And anything that does get in is thrown out again.

Eventually things settled down, and the customary sick diet of a glass of lemonade and a Sao
was deemed acceptable enough to be permitted to remain on the premises. By Thursday I felt as right as rain.

The peaceful town of Wallan… newsagency… Internet… butcher… I always wanted to be a tram driver…

Today I went on a nostalgia trip to somewhere I’d never been before. The
tramway museum at Bylands. When I was a kid, we never had a car, and I used to travel by tram a lot. These days tram travel isn’t half as cool - the trams are for wimps, with heating, doors, and no chance of enjoying a ride on the running board and getting yourself killed by falling off it like in days of yore. Ah well.

It’s far enough out of Melbourne that the speed limit reaches 110 for a while, which is fun. And further on I was rather amused to drive through Wallan, which just near the only set of traffic lights, between the old style country newsagency and the butchers, is an Internet shop. Hmmm.

Anyway I almost missed the turn-off for the museum, but eventually found it and paid my $5 for entry plus a ride on an old tram, and a quick tour of the sheds. The ride was interesting, with the driver having to slow to down and ring the bell to get the sheep off the line. That’s something that rarely happens on St Kilda Road.

Then I pottered around for a little while, reminiscing, climbing into cabs, turning destination rolls, dinging bells, pulling the cord twice - a forbidden activity you could never do in a real tram if you weren’t the conductor. Although one conductor only a few years ago on route 75 instead of pulling the cord twice just used to shout to the driver "ding ding!"

After that I had to head back into Melbourne to pick up the kids from their mum, so I scraped just a little of the mud off my shoes and got back in the car, zooming off back down the Northern Highway, now apparently better known by its far less friendly name, the B75.

That was something I noticed during the drive - a lot of signs only tell you the number of the road, not the name. We’d be in real trouble if VicRoads took the road names off the signs in Melbourne, since nobody navigates by the numbers.