The UberDentist
Yesterday I went for the third of my appointments with the dentist. Actually he’s an ÜberDentist, a gum specialist, who as I’ve remarked before, resembles Uncle Arthur. Though now I think about it, he looks and speaks more like Glenn from Play School.
His office is on the 12th floor of a building in Collins Street, with fantastic views from the chair of the Fitzroy Gardens and out over East Melbourne. The first appointment had been the scouting exercise to see what was going on in my mouth. The second was to clean the top gums. And this time around, the bottom.
When I say "clean", basically his job was to scrape away at my gum line, removing plaque and any other horrible stuff he found there. At first he used a fairly unremarkable electric thing. Then he said "now the hand tool" and got out this fearsome looking shiny metal scraping device. It was scary looking. It reminded me a little of the torture scene in Brazil.
And sure enough, he started scraping away at my teeth. Fortunately it didn’t hurt. Well, not much, though there was a bit of pain when he got to the tooth on the lower left of my mouth. Thankfully half an hour later I was munching on lunch with friends, and the pain was forgotten.
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Another parenting moment
My six-year old, Isaac, just drew on a Magna Doodle on the Magna Doodle.
So I suggested he draw on the Magna Doodle, a picture of the Magna Doodle, with a Magna Doodle drawn on it. He did so, and I told him about recursion, which he seems to like the idea of! This weekend we’re going to try plugging a video camera into the TV and pointing it into the TV!
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Saying goodbye
I’ve spent much of the weekend saying goodbye to my sister Susannah. No, she hasn’t died or anything – she and her husband Adrian have been down in Melbourne saying goodbye to everybody before they go jetting off to England. They’ll be back at Christmas for a visit, but the overall plan is to be gone for a couple of years.
She’s been gone from Melbourne for a couple of years now, living in Sydney. But this is going to be harder. She’ll be so much further away. Different time zone. $2000 and 24 hours travel to visit her, instead of $150 and 2 hours. It’s exciting and I hope she does well over there, but I’m going to miss her.
She asked me to compile a CD of local music – basically a bunch of Paul Kelly, and whatever else I think would be good. I’ve done so. I have a feeling it’s going to leave her so homesick she’ll be crying into her pillow every night. I hope not. Though I suppose it might bring them home sooner!
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A few seconds
Hello to all Sydney Morning Herald readers. My spies informed me that this site got a mention in the "Icon" section a couple of Saturdays ago (thanks Coralie). My sister came back down to Melbourne, and brought a paper copy of it with her… kinda cool to see. So clock up another few seconds towards my fifteen minutes.
![[SMH article]](/images/2001/07smh.gif)
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Democracy festival
![[How to vote card]](/images/2001/07howtovote.jpg) How to vote card. The placement of the picture of the sticker leaves the mildly amusing "Oral division of Aston" wording… |
Well I’m certainly feeling a lot better, though I wouldn’t say I was back at 100% yet. The main feature of the flu that’s still hanging on is the cough, something which when I was back at work late in the week, I noticed has spread to most corners of the office. The kids aren’t too well, either.
Today I felt well enough to head out and join the throngs in the political circus, the Aston by-election. Yes, I was on the hustings, whatever they are. I stood around and handed out How To Vote cards for a few hours. From my observations, there are four kinds of voters:
- those who accept any and all cards and leaflets from anyone. They comment (only half jokingly) about how they’re overwhelmed by all of them, but are prepared to take them all in the interests of democracy. When they get to the polling booth they throw them all away and vote for whoever they intended to vote for all along. Or they vote for whoever they intended to vote for, and bring them back and distribute them back to the campaigners afterwards.
- those who accept some cards, glance at them and actually may use some of the information to decide how they’re voting. One group of four people were actually observed to sit down for a good few minutes and read all of them in-depth. Amazing.
- those who don’t want any cards on principle because it’s all so much of a waste of paper.
- those who don’t want any cards because they already know who they’re voting for, and ain’t no little bit of paper is going to change their minds.
One campaigner was particularly good, having mastered saying in a clear, calm, pleasing voice "Please vote for Chris Whatsisface, Liberal" as he thrust the brochure towards people. Another for the greens would go into a short spiel about what the Greens supported as she handed over the brochure, possibly cynically adding "justice for boat people" when the people looked like they might be immigrants.
During my stint at the second booth, I saw a familiar face arrive, that of Democrats candidate Pierre Harcourt, the guy I went to school with. I’m glad that it’s him who turned out to be the Democrats candidate. At least I know he’s a smart, decent bloke, unlike some of the people I went to school with. I said hello, and we had a good chat about old times.
I found out later chatting to my sister, that not only is he known in my sister’s circle of friends, but my sister also knows the Greens candidate. Which just goes to show, it really is a small world.
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Take 2
That clueless dweeb at PowerQuest got back to me over the weekend with a more intelligent response than last time.
| Dear Daniel,
Due to the high amount of e-mails received we are sorry for the delay in responding. In order for us to check the charges made onto your credit card, we will need for you to provide us with the credit card number. If you do not feel comfortable in e-mailing the card number then you can fax it to 801.437.4064. If you have any further questions please let us know. |
Delay in responding? I don’t remember a delay. The problem last time was that the reply made no sense. But no matter.
I wrote back quoting the credit card number in question, and adding that I had no real problem quoting this in e-mail since it had been cancelled. I’ll be interested to see what happens, though I am by no means holding my breath.
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Aston
Next Saturday will be an interesting day. It’s the day of the Aston by-election, which is interesting to me in two ways.
Firstly, with my member-of-the-Public-Transport-Users’-Association
hat on, I’ve been a little bit involved with the campaign. The PTUA’s campaigning against the Scoresby freeway, which they argue won’t solve congestion problems, and is three times the cost, and much more polluting than the public transport improvements needed to bring the same economic benefits.
So I’ve been doing a little bit of letter box dropping, and writing a little bit of propaganda for them. And this Saturday, provided I’m finished dying from flu, I’ll be out there with them handing out How To Vote cards. I’ll try not to be too annoying – I know I sometimes get annoyed by those people trying to thrust them into my hands.
Secondly, it turns out a guy I went to school with is the Democrats’ candidate for the electorate. Pierre Harcourt has suddenly got his face plastered onto the Democrats web site, and today I saw a picture on the news of some kind of advertising truck with a piccy of him and party leader Natasha Stott-Despoja on it.
Okay, so admittedly I didn’t know him all that well, but I certainly remember him, and from what I recall he was one of the good guys. So it’ll be interesting to see how he does on Saturday.
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Still feeling like crap
I still feel pretty fordinary. Yesterday I thought I was getting much better, and I went out a couple of times. But by last night I felt worse again.
I wonder if it’s how drug addicts feel when they need a fix. I was shivering, almost unable to stand or walk. I lay in front of the heater, my body cold but my head sweating from the heat. Had I been like that earlier, in the supermarket? It seemed like people were staring at me, but was that because I’d forgotten to brush my teeth and was inflicting my terrible morning breath on them?
It was difficult trying to sleep. Every half hour or so I’d wake, my mouth parched. I’d have a sip of water and lie awake, thoughts swimming through my mind. Memories of things I’d seen, read and heard in the past few days. Burnside
chasing a suspect. Harry Potter
confronting Lord Voldemort.
My mind managed to keep the various ideas separate. To mix them up could be interesting.
Burnside: All right Voldemort, you slag! You’re nicked! <pushes Voldemort’s head down Moaning Myrtle’s toilet and flushes>
After a restless night, I finally came to the conclusion that this thing may not go away on its own, and went to the doctor. It’s flu. Not one of your colds, no this is Influenza with a capital I and written in a big font. And of course, it will go away on its own… it will just take its time about it. Sigh.
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