The fish have survived to live another day.

Just now I went out and started my charity collecting. Definitely not something I’m used to. I’ve only done a few houses so far. One person wasn’t home, two people didn’t want to donate, the local vicar put in $5 (thanks Nigel), and an old dear found 25 cents in her handbag. By that point it was getting so dark I couldn’t really see what I was doing on people’s doorsteps, so I opted to stop and continue on another day.

If it hadn’t been for Nigel’s contribution, I’d be seriously considering just donating the wages from an hour’s work, instead. But as he said, it’s a good way to meet the neighbours.

I’m hoping there hasn’t been a case of unintentional fishicide here tonight. When nobody was looking, Jeremy decided it would be helpful to feed the fish. Unfortunately his idea of feeding the fish means dumping a whole bunch of fish food into the tank, as well as (thankfully) all over the floor.

The fish seemed pretty happy about this, unaware of the health risks it entails for them. They were still happily munching away a few minutes later when I forcibly evacuated them out into a big bowl, sans food. They can stay there for the night, so hopefully when they go back in their tank in the morning, there won’t be so much food easily edible in there, and the break from eating will mean it’s not so dangerous.

Bloody delicate species, goldfish. I wonder how they got on in the wild.

I’ve been psyching myself up to do a good deed. CARE Australia managed to convince me to go doorknocking for them. It’s meant to be done sometime this month. It’s only a small range of houses, from my own street, but I can’t say I’ve ever done anything like this before, so I’d been putting it off until yesterday.

I was walking out the door, fully equipped with my little personalised badge thingy, a pen, and a book full of receipts to fill in and hand out to generous donator-type people, when my mobile phone rang. It turned out to be a support call from work, which although it wasn’t the system I work on that had broken down, did take several hours of involvement from home.

At least, it took several hours for me. Stanley, a guy I work with, was foolish enough to let himself be convinced to work all night on it. And I mean all night - he went into the office and worked to 4am doing conference calls and trying to help the guys who had got themselves into this mess, and all sorts of shit he wasn’t responsible for. Then he went home to bed. And then somehow, unaccountably, he was convinced to go back into the office again for another couple of hours, and finally went home again at 6am.

When I heard, I couldn’t believe Stanley had done that. There’s no way I would have - not for a problem:

• that he had no direct control over fixing
• that was not his responsibility
• that (literally) the other guys had caused themselves
• that the other guys should have been able to fix themselves

I’m also staggered that a guy who wasn’t Stanley’s boss, and worked in a completely different area of the company, had the front to convince him to do so. I must make a note to teach Stanley about when the make use of the expression: "It’s not my problem."

So anyhow, I didn’t go doorknocking. Darkness had fallen by the time I had finished the work stuff, and CARE tell you not to do it after dark. I’ve got a few more days to do it. Maybe tomorrow.

Ian, a bloke I’ve known online for about three years, and met in person in Birmingham in 1999, has descended on Melbourne. Sydneysiders will find this hard to believe, but he’s been wanting to come here for years - possibly decades. Unfortunately his arrival yesterday was far from ideal.

The airlines, at least the ones that fly to North America, were already in a state of flux last week after the terrible events in the United States. Things weren’t helped one little bit when on Thursday, one of the domestic airlines, Ansett,stopped flying. Just like that. All operations stopped by their voluntary administrators (who you can bet aren’t actually volunteers, but are pulling in a pile of cash for doing it!), because they were burning too much money.

So, Ian was due to fly on Qantas from Sydney at 1pm, and arrive around 2:30pm. He finally flew around 5:55. They did a quick turnaround of the aircraft, and thus nobody got any food. They started serving drinks, but forgot his part of the plane, until too late, when they were approaching Melbourne. He touched down in Melbourne around 7:15, almost five hours late! And after that he waited over an hour for his luggage. So whereas I had expected to be able to meet up with him around 4pm, it was almost 10pm by the time we finally shook hands outside his hotel in Carlton, before running off to Lygon Street to scoff down some pizza.

Despite having endured the wonders of Australia’s modern, efficient aviation system, he seemed in remarkably good spirits.

I was just about to go to bed last night when my sister e-mailed me:

Tue 11/09/2001 23:16 "Heard about the World Trade Centre!!!! logon to the new (sic), quick!"

I did so. You probably know the rest. Now almost 24 hours later, it’s still a little hard to digest.

Rest assured, anyone reading from the States: The shockwaves from this are being felt around the western world. People here are talking about nothing else. We are truly shocked by this news. You are not alone.

<Movie trailer voice> He did what nobody else would do. What nobody else dared to do. What nobody else knew how to do. </Movie trailer voice>

Okay, I don’t understand. Why is it that I’m the only one in my block who knows how to write "NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS" on an unwanted envelope, and chuck it back in the mail? It’s not rocket science. Has the great work of Elvis, who did a famous awareness campaign for returning unwanted letters, worn off after all these decades?

Everyone else seems to think that if a letter arrives addressed to the mad bloke who used to live in flat 6, that the best solution is to either:

(a) leave it on top of the letter boxes, until it either disintegrates in the rain, or gets blown away down the street, never to be seen again

or (b) put into someone else’s letter box - a different one each day, until everybody’s so sick of it that they leave it on top of the letter boxes, and we go to option (a)

I am amazed at how these letters disintegrate in the rain, actually. Anybody would think it was acid rain or something. I can only presume that the big corporations are saving money by using very thin paper and envelopes nowadays, or they are making them very very biodegradable in order that they look like good corporate citizens.

Seriously, after only a day or two, there are holes peppered right through the letters. Makes them look very weird, and I wonder what the people getting these letters back will think.

Numerous people have written in to suggest it’s snails stopping by for a short meal. That makes sense. Thanks.

Today I almost got flattened by a car reversing at speed along the road. Luckily I had paused before starting to cross, because I’d seen a cyclist (who was on the opposite side of the road to the car, but going the same way). The car in question was apparently delivering blood to the hospital down the street. Lucky it didn’t hit me I suppose - they might have had to give me the blood instead. I think somebody needs to learn how to do U-turns.

This whole VCR destruction thing may come back to haunt me for a while. I was picking Isaac up from school today… and got recognised there by some kids who were at the skateboard park a few weeks ago when Josh and I did the deed. One by one, about 4-5 of them came up and said "did you blow up the VCR?"

"Yeah"

"Cool!!" and then ran off.

Later I saw them talking to their parents… and their parents were staring at me…