Daniel the subversive
Letter, today’s Age.
![[Letter in Age]](/images/2002/02ageletter.jpg)
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Alert! Alert!
I was in the Melbourne Central food court yesterday at lunchtime, pondering food court etiquette. The cleaners there seem to be very quick in leaping into action to clear and wipe tables. So should I take my tray away myself? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
They also seemed to be equipped with radios. Very handy, cleaners having two way radios. You can imagine the messages they get.
"Attention all cleaning operatives! Table 43A is sticky!"
"Alert! Alert! Vomit emergency in sector 12!"
I walked back through Chinatown. Number 146 Little Bourke Street is undergoing renovations, getting fitted out. A sign in the window proclaimed "Coming soon: Asian restaurant!"
NO! WOW! INCREDIBLE! Jeez, there aren’t any of them around Chinatown!… they could corner the market!
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My 17 inch is back
3pm. A while back I took the bigger of my two monitors to be repaired. It had been playing up – spontaneously turning itself off, then on again. So I looked at my various monitor-related bits of paper and discovered it was still under warranty, and that a mob in Hawthorn were authorised service type people.
Since then I’ve been surviving with 2 PCs and one monitor (and VNC
– God bless VNC). Today I rang up to check on repair progress and apparently it’s been ready for pickup for the last 12 days! They reckon someone was told that by phone on the 8th! Bloody hell. Who answered my phone when I wasn’t looking?!
Weird thing is, same thing happened in December with my camera. The people claimed they’d called to say it was repaired, but I never got the call.
8pm. It’s nice to have the monitor back, but…. D’oh! It’s still damn well doing it! Argh. Now I’m pissed off. Have to take it back pronto.
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Esher
Years and years ago, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd put out a book called The Meaning Of Liff. Later on they updated it as The Deeper Meaning Of Liff. There’s a (possibly unintentional) reference to it in the opening titles of Monty Python’s Meaning Of Life.
The book itself is a list of made up words – all taken from place names – about things that happen in life that don’t currently have words. Here is an example:
Esher (n.) One of those push taps installed in public washrooms enabling the user to wash their trousers without actually getting into the basin.
Why is this relevant? Only because when I was out for drinks on Friday night, I experienced one of these. The damn tap in the toilet was on full thrust, and sure enough I got covered in water.
Thankfully the person with me didn’t notice, or if so, she didn’t mention it. My face is red enough when drinking alcohol anyway – I don’t need to add embarrassment into the mix.
On Saturday I had a very funny conversation talking to Nat about meanings of the word piss. She’s compiling a list for her Czech boyfriend, and wanted as complete a list as possible. A while ago I did a list for the Toxic Custarpedia (a work in dire need of an update), but missed quite a few of the meanings. A scan through the Macquarie dictionary (including their slang dictionary) found a lot more. Overall there are probably upwards of two dozen ways to use piss.
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RIP Number 2
Another goldfish died yesterday. I found in the morning, not moving at all. It wasn’t actually floating on top of the water like the last one had. I dunno – maybe it drowned? So now we’re left with a single, very lonely goldfish. Will have to see about re-populating the tank, I think. Isaac says he wants to maintain an even number of goldfish. Presumably it provides goldfish equilibrium.
The spooky thing is one of Danielle’s goldfish also died yesterday. It must have been International Goldfish Death Day or something.
We have new neighbours. The bloke in flat 3 moved out last week, obviously fed up with having to listen to the couple in flat 4 having noisy sex, often while an owl or some other kind of bird life hoots in the background. Presumably the bird is in the garden, but it’s still rather disturbing.
This week a blonde girl called Lisa with a suspected English accent moved in with her hitherto invisible flatmate/boyfriend/girlfriend/whoever. I wouldn’t bother mentioning this normally, but last night I found her taking out the garbage bins. Wow. A neighbour who actually bothers to take the bins out, who knows what night they go out, and who knows what the recycle bin does. Truly amazing.
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Hell on earth
There’s only one thing more like hell on earth than kids running around like maniacs in an indoor playground during a kid’s birthday party. And that’s kids running around like maniacs in your house during a kid’s birthday party.
Jeremy’s fourth birthday party had been scheduled for a local park. Parks are a good place for birthday parties. You only have to keep your picnic table (or whatever) tidy, and you can send the kids off to play on the playground equipment to keep them occupied.
The problem with this plan was the weather. Sunday morning it poured down rain, making it impossible to have the party in the park after all. So we moved it to my place. With eight kids running around like maniacs (well, most of them were – some were comparatively calm and sensible) the place was soon a tip.
One kid behaved like a complete little shit. Not his first time behaving badly at a party, either. I could previously have given him the benefit of the doubt, but now he’s ensured himself a lifetime ban on future events.
The parents helped me tidy up afterwards, which made it rather less painful than it might have been. Not sure what I’m going to do with all the left over balloons, honey joys, chocolate thingies (that might not be the official name), and not to mention the bits of cake rammed into the carpet. Maybe I’ll just eat them all. Except the bits of cake. And the balloons.
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Stand clear please
On Tuesday, I was working at home. My workmate Stanley needed to get some CDs off me. So I gave him instructions for getting to my local station, and said I’d meet him there. Good plan? Nothing simpler, right?
Stanley had never been on a train before. Never. Trams yes, but not trains. Oh what a sheltered life he must lead. He seemed worried about it, but I told him which train to catch, and which stop to get off at. He called to say he was on his way, and I went down to meet him.
The train came. The train left. No Stanley.
Where could he be? Had he caught the wrong train? I rang his mobile. Switched off. I rang another colleague, thinking she’d know if he’d really left the office. Stanley answered it. It didn’t quite register with me just then, but he was carrying her phone. Later I’d found out he had left his at home that day. Of course.
He’d missed the stop. Not because he wasn’t paying attention to the station names, you understand. But because the doors didn’t open for him.
For those of you from elsewhere on the planet, it should be made clear that Melbourne train doors do not open by themselves. There’s a sticker telling you to open them by hand when the tone sounds to indicate you can. There’s a handily placed handle to grasp when opening the door. It all works rather well for most people.
 This will be the desktop wallpaper on Stanley’s desk tomorrow morning. (Umm.. but a tad bigger.) |
Stanley had been gazing at the map intently, not paying much attention to anything else, such as the sticker or the myriad of people getting on and off the train – and presumably happily opening the doors for themselves – at previous stops. When the train got to his stop, he apparently presumed that since the doors didn’t open, he couldn’t get off. He rode to the next stop, and snuck out a door which somebody else opened ahead of him.
Amazing.
And this man is a highly paid computer professional in his mid-30s.
When I found out what happened, rather than risk him getting on another train, I went back home, got my car and drove down to the next station to meet him. I gave him the CDs and steered him onto another train back to the city, and verified later that he had made it back okay.
So, the conclusion? I’ve done the only sensible thing. On my way out tonight to give blood I did some gunzelling with my camera, and grabbed me a shot of one of those door stickers, with the appropriate bit of text highlighted. I will place it on Stanley’s computer desktop wallpaper tomorrow morning. Never let it be said that I won’t work hard for a piss-take.
If I don’t make it home alive tomorrow night, you’ll know he didn’t think it was all that funny.
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Vroom vroom again
This morning a good Samaritan leapt out of her car at an intersection to tell me I had no brake lights. Well, at least that they weren’t working. This put me into something of a panic, as of all the lights on a car, the brake lights are some of the most important. Screw keeping the clock illuminated, I’d like people driving behind me to be able to tell when I’m stopping.
I said thanks, and checked it out as soon as I could. In fact the light in the back window was still working, which was something, but the main ones weren’t. So I rang and then drove over to the car repair place to get them to take a look. Two bulbs gone, which they changed. I should probably check my lights more often.
They only stung me for $6.60, which doesn’t seem too bad given they were able to fix the problem on the spot. Of course, considering the size of the bulbs, maybe it was a bit steep. Hmm. Oh well.
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