The neighbours downstairs moved out today. Three of us left. I spent some of the day looking at rental properties.

Place#1 - very nicely renovated. With a fridge cavity far too small to fit my humungous fridge into.

Place#2 - not renovated at all. Big and roomy, but cold, damp and dark. Yeuch.

Place#3 - very nice. Great location. Fridge cavity big enough. Great! Oh shit, why did they design the bathroom like that? So I can open the shower door,or I could fit my washing machine in there… but not both. Arrrrgghhh.

This renting game is not quite as easy as I thought.

5:something. I’m awake. Why am I awake? It’s way too early to be awake. Go back to sleep.

7:15. Alarm goes off. I wake again with a start. Damn morning. Shuddup alarm clock. Hit snooze. 9 minutes more.

7:24. Alarm goes off again. Argh. Do I really have to go to work? Eventually. Snooze again.

7:31. Awake now. Better get up. Reach over and turn on mobile phone. Its light shines out in the darkened room. It feels nice and warm here in bed. I bet it’s cold and dark outside. I don’t really want to get up, but I have to. Turn off alarm clock, get up, slippers and dressing gown on.

7:33. Outside getting the newspaper off the driveway. Nobody bothered to bring the recycling bin in, so I grab that too. It’s not as cold or dark as I thought, though car headlights are still on. The neighbours have some very strange sounding music blaring from their radio. I mean, I’m sure it has its place, but at this time of the morning?

7:37. Get some breakfast. Use a less-than-optimal bowl because my favourite blue cereal bowls are both in the sink, unwashed. Along with a lot of other dishes I’ve neglected over the last couple of days. Will do them tonight.

7:39. Read overnight e-mails as I munch on Weeties and sultanas and milk.

7:50. Remember I should logon and check the system at work. It’s been a bit sick the last few weeks. Time and time again we’d deploy a change hoping it would magically solve everything. And time and time again it didn’t. But this week the hardware guys finally figured out it was an issue with the network configuration. Argh. Still, nice to have everything fixed and stable. Which it still is. Touch wood.

7:57. Wander into the bathroom for a shave. At this rate I’ll never get the 8:21 express. Ah well, doesn’t matter, what’s the rush? Find the CDs I need to give to Phil today; put them and the newspaper into my bag.

8:05. SMS on my phone from Ian, this week in Greece. Lucky travelling Euro-bastard. Find towel, have shower, get dressed.

8:19. Brush teeth. I wonder what the dentist will think of my efforts when I visit in a couple of weeks. Really should floss more.

8:22. Fiddling with tie. Damn cheap polyester ties. I really need to complete my tie infrastructure upgrade program and replace them all with woven silk. Much nicer, and not too expensive these days. Then I need to learn to do a Windsor knot. There was something about it in the paper last week. And I saw a guy on the train doing one. It looked complicated as hell, but the tie looked much better when completed.

8:26. Still fiddling with tie. Give up on running for the 8:35 train. The 8:51 will do. What’s the rush? Do I want to switch to another tie? No, this will be okay. Lunch today with the gang, and it’ll probably be Asian food, and me and chopsticks and a nice silk tie is a recipe for disaster. Stick with the cheapie. After I’ve learnt the Windsor knot, maybe I should get lessons in chopstick management?

8:30. Third re-tying. It looks okay now.

8:38. Walk to the station. Quite windy, but not too cold. I think my hair is blowing around a bit. Could be time for a haircut this weekend. I usually consider it time for a haircut when my hair starts to get wavy at the back. Which it is.

8:46. Get to the station. Fumble for ticket and put it into the validator. Get the paper out to read. Someone else has pressed the "green button" so I listen to it. I’m not sure I trust it anymore - twice earlier in the week it claimed trains were running late, but then they turned up on time.

8:51. Train arrives, easily find a seat, as is usual in the post-peak-hour quiet patch. Especially on the 8:51 - it’s only come from five stops away before I get on it. Keep reading paper.

8:53. A man sitting two seats away is coughing his guts up while trying to read the Herald Sun. He swallows a Soother, which does no good whatsoever. This continues all the way into the city. Glad the train’s not so crowded that he’s in anyone’s face. They must really need him at the office today - if I were in that state I’d go home and spend the day in bed. Hang the deadlines. I exchange glances with another bloke sitting nearby. Yeah, we’re both thinking the same thing.

9:05. We’ve reached South Yarra. He’s still coughing, and takes another Soother. I wonder if I should see if I’ve got a Strepsil I should give him, but I don’t. Yes, it would have made this diary entry more interesting, but I don’t do everything I do just to make my diary more interesting. SARS must be on the decline, both in its spread and in public perception. It’s only hours later that it even crosses my mind.

9:07. Richmond Station. I peer over my newspaper, looking south. Way up on high the clock on the silo doesn’t say eleven degrees.

9:10. Get off train. The old train door is stiff, and I have to give it a good shove to get it open. I suspect the train company neglects these old trains deliberately, so nobody questions why they should be scrapped as the new ones replace them. Shame, the city could do with more trains. They might not be air-conditioned, but that doesn’t matter most of the time.

Turns out a few trams still wear red noses for Red Nose Day. (Picture courtesy of Mal Rowe)

9:12. Outside the fare gates are people selling Red Nose Day SIDS merchandise. Oh, is it Red Nose Day? Why don’t they sell all the nose gear anymore? They’ve diversified into badges and cuddly toys, but I what I really want is a new car red nose. Last year I couldn’t even find a car nose, and the trams don’t wear them anymore. (I heard later that some still do).

9:17. In the foyer are two security guards. Usually there’s only one, checking people’s passes as we go in. One is the slightly scary guy who recently shaved off all his hair - I’m convinced it’s to make him look more intimidating - and one is a semi-undercover security guy in a suit. They’re talking about something security-related. Probably some article in the latest Security Guard Monthly magazine or something.

9:18. Get into the office. Sit down and get to work. There’s test processes to check, e-mails to send.

9:21. Mr Speakerphone is in his office. I hear his phone dial, ring, then he shouts into it about picking up complimentary AFL tickets from somewhere. What comforts me is that it’s been confirmed that he’ll be going in the re-org. Next week I believe. One things for sure, when he and his minions have gone and been replaced by someone else, I will make it clear from the start if they try and use speakerphones with the door open that it’s frowned upon. By me, if nobody else.

9:40. Time for a cup of tea, I think.

11:18. Get the banana out of my bag to eat it. While I’m peeling it, it slips onto the floor. Dammit. It’s a bit bruised anyway, and I don’t trust the cleanliness of the carpet around here, so I bin it. Eat a yoghurt and muesli bar instead.

12:19. Walk down to Swanston Street to meet up with the gang for lunch at the Melbourne Noodle House. It’s raining, and my brolly is safely up at my desk. Ah well.

12:45. Chomping my way through lemon and chilli chicken with rice. Or something like that. Number 21 on the menu, anyway. The waiters here use PDAs. My Vietnamese colleague has refused to let me have chopsticks. Apparently it’s bad Asian restaurant etiquette for this meal. I don’t want to commit an Asian restaurant faux pas, so I don’t object too loudly.

13:28. Walk back to work in the drizzle. Lovely.

15:23. The afternoon is going surprisingly quickly, for a Friday. Maybe it’s time for another cup of tea.

16:09. In an unprecedented security boost at work, we all just got new security ID cards. They’re obviously much more secure as they use the corporate font and they’ve got a superimposed image of a giant fingerprint on them. I don’t think it’s my fingerprint though. One colleague had to leave early for the day and didn’t get hers. I wonder if she’ll find herself bailed up by security on Monday when she tries to come in to work.

16:15. I have a blood nose, for no apparent reason. I’ve had them occasionally for the last year or two. Must talk to the doctor again about it. As usual I could feel it starting, so I didn’t stain my crisp white shirt that I’m wearing, though come to think of it, it would hardly be noticed on the dark red tie.

16:29. Rang a real estate agent about a couple of rental properties they have listed. One is a house, and I cautiously asked what kind of condition it’s in. "Original" I was told. Ah. "And if you like wallpaper, you’d be ecstatic". Ah. I don’t know about wallpaper. She said she envisaged it being full of uni students. Hmmm. The other is a unit, fully renovated. Even has a dishwasher, which might spoil me. "It’s very nice". Hmm. I think I’ll take a look at them both tomorrow. Given that I’d be planning on renting for only about a year, I might be able to put up with wallpaper, and it would probably have a bigger garden for the kids to play in, which would be good. Yep, I’ll look at both.

16:54. Noted a trophy on a colleague’s desk. Hmm, I didn’t know Tony was a sporting bloke. Look closer at trophy. It’s for footy tipping.

16:57. The buildings nearby have that orange glow they often have at this time of day in winter. And to the west is a spectacular sunset. Might be time to go home soon. There’s too much to do at home to go out tonight.

17:20. Home time. Lonsdale Street is gridlocked, primarily due to a couple of people ignoring the clearway signs and parking. It’s a tow-away zone, but no sign of any tow trucks. Maybe they’re stuck in traffic.

17:33. Got a seat on the train, and I start to read MX. I always say thank you to the bloke who hands them out at the station. He looks remarkably cheerful for what must be a mind-numbingly boring job.

17:44. By Armadale I’m bored with MX, and get out the paper to read instead. Quietly internally guffaw at Jonathon Green’s expos? of McDonalds.

17:57. Home. Last Friday waiting for me in the mailbox were no less than four letters from the bank. A bit over the top. Today there’s a letter from Vodafone for someone who doesn’t live here, some junk mail and a revised guide to renting from the Consumer Affairs people. How timely.

18:03. Flick around the TV news bulletins. Channel 9 are drumming up a furore over Critical Mass’s Burnley Tunnel ride tonight. The Police Minister and the Opposition Leader are outraged. Yawn. Channel 9 had a live cross to the tunnel entrance, where a breathless reporter told us… nothing was happening. Presumably because it wasn’t due to start for another 27 minutes.

18:35. Shun A Current Affair and watch Monday’s Micallef on tape while I eat dinner (my classic lazy day spag bol re-heat). More guffawing ensues.

20:15. Update this whole diary entry, and wonder (a) if this is completely over the top, and (b) if I should turn off the computer and continue on my tidy up/clear out. I suspect the answer to both is: Yes.

21:20. Did the dishes. Okay, I see the appeal of a dishwasher, even though it seems like most of the work involved is in rinsing things off, arranging them just so in the dishwasher, and getting them out again. Spent time alternately tidying up, exchanging e-mails with my sister, searching the real estate sites for other prospective houses, and chatting online to friends.

23:30. Finally manage to get some serious junk-clearing out going, but get diverted onto sorting through my old uni notes. Ah well, there’s a fair bit here I can throw out. There comes a point when you realise that if you haven’t looked at your uni notes in the last ten years, the chances of it being useful at any time in the future are fairly low. However I did find one of my old jokes scribbled on a folder, which seems appropriate at the moment:

I hear houses on the moon are very cheap, but the whole neighbourhood lacks atmosphere.

00:05. Found a folder full of old letters. Letters from my relatives that bring back memories. Letters from my friends that make me chuckle. Letters from girls I used to have crushes on, that make my heart flutter just ever so slightly.

00:36. Far too sleepy. Bedtime.

A gentle knock at the door just after dinner. It was the real estate agent handling the sale of the block to developers. He wondered how my moving out plans were going, if he could be of any assistance, basically quizzing me about when I’d be out so the renovator guys can move in. I said it wouldn’t be for a couple of weeks yet - probably mid-July (I’ve got exactly a month today). And - get this - he said the new owners would pay me $500 cash if I was out within 7 days!

Well much as I’d love to be handed $500, at the moment I doubt I could handle that if I wanted to. No, I’ll be out in due course, but when it’s convenient for me, not them.

(Let’s hope their next step isn’t to call in the heavies.)

The real estate agent called… finally the vendor made a decision on the house. The decision is… no decision. She won’t sell for the amount I offered, and she wants a heap more money. Fat chance. I mean, it’s a nice place, but I think what I offered is possibly stretching what it’s worth. If it was worth more, others would be offering more.

Ah well, so at least I know now. So with just over a month until I have to move, I’m officially back on the rental bandwagon. I’m not too shattered. Over the past week or two I’d wondered if it really was the right place for me. Fairly small garden… body corporate stuff… could mean hassles later. I’ll save more dosh and try again in 6-12 months, and probably find something much better that’s really worth getting into astronomical debt for.

And now for something completely different.

A few days ago I was having a conversation with someone about how I don’t talk about my bodily functions in my diary. Well, except vomiting of course. Vomit gets good coverage (ugh).

Well I’m about to. Not vomit - talk about bodily functions. So feel free to skip the rest of this if you’re my mother, or if you think it’ll make you queasy.

I write this with some trepidation as I feel certain that after reading this, you’ll think I’m a bit strange. But then you probably thought that anyway.

My toilet doesn’t work very well. It’s another nail in the coffin for my flat - if I didn’t have to move out next month, I’d be planning to move out this year anyway. While the flush is generally successful, frequently some paper is left behind. This of course is not very pleasant, which is why when I am expecting visitors I will often give it a couple of extra flushes to get all traces of anything thoroughly dispatched down the S-bend. Under normal circumstances however I just try to ignore it, after all, there is a water shortage on, and I’ll be moving out soon.

Yesterday afternoon I went to use the toilet, and being a bloke and not needing to do Number Twos on this occasion, I stood. Down in the toilet bowl was some toilet paper. Not much, but totally sodden, and floating at or near the surface of the water. I started, and decided to aim for the toilet paper. To my surprise, my pee ripped through it, chopping it neatly in half, like some kind of laser beam cutting through the wing of a stranded aeroplane trapped at the bottom of the ocean being rescued byThunderbird 4.

Momentarily I had a sense of awesome power. Until I remembered it was just sodden toilet paper I was chopping through.

There, told you you’d think I’m a bit strange.

Wednesday night was the blog meetup, at Kookoo. Interesting venue, I haven’t been there before. In fact it’s through these meetups that I’m seeing a few different night spots around town. No more will I be confined to the Lounge, Hairy Canary, Spleen and that mysterious place on Swanston Street that I don’t even know the name of that is impossible to find if you don’t know where it is because it’s an unmarked doorway somewhere between Tech Books and Little Lonsdale Street. Actually it’s great to see all these places (and more) thriving - it seems like the whole CBD is thriving, and it’s the little places that are cleaning up.
Viva la small business!

I didn’t stay for the really heavy drinking, but was there long enough to chat to a few of the Melbourne Blogeratti. There were a couple I didn’t utter more than a few words to, but hopefully next time. Naturally the conversation wasn’t solely confined to blogs and diaries and things. No no, we talked about domain names too. Uhh, and a bunch of other stuff as it happens.

As I stumbled out back onto Swanston Street, I encountered that kind of slow falling gentle rain, flowing down from the night sky between the streetlights. I walked briskly through the raindrops back to the station.

After seeing a bloke on the train yesterday morning reading a Superman comic, I won’t feel ashamed for watching the kids’Thunderbirds DVDs anymore. Speaking of which, I discovered the other day that episode 6 of this series "The Mighty Atom" features a nuclear accident in Australia, and for a time it looks as though Melbourne will have to be evacuated. Thankfully favourable weather conditions prevail, the nuclear cloud is blown elsewhere, and the "Melbourne Herald" (which was a real newspaper until about 1990) trumpets "Melbourne Saved!" So that’s something of a relief, I can tell you.

Any other Thunderbirds devotees might want to snap up the DVDs now that they’re available for less than $10 each at places like JB’s. The remixed sound of Thunderbirds one and two taking off is particularly impressive if you pump up the volume.

A week or two back in a conversation the topic turned to authors of note. Someone
talked about Jonathan Franzen, and I spent a minute or two silently listening to others’ comments, as to pipe in on a discussion about an author I know nothing about would be to declare my ignorance to the world. Or at least, the people in the room. Sounds like I’ve been missing out. From what I’ve heard, it would be well worth my while to dip into some of his stuff. It sounds terribly… well, intelligent.

And then I was asked: Who did I look up to in the literary (or otherwise creative) world? Brain, quick, into gear, who fits the bill? Think of someone, anyone! All I could come up with was Ben Elton. I’ve long admired Ben’s work, from his early TV such as The Young Ones, to his stand-up (which frequently causes me to bust a gut) to his oh-so-close-to-home novels.

His books really are incredible insights into modern society. Gridlock
is something of a bible for public transport advocates. In one section he writes about a transport minister’s media stunt on a bicycle:

Corker had specifically asked the press office to invite some cameras, in order that her first bustling day as Minister for Transport might be duly recorded… Just around the corner from the Ministry, Corker had her driver stop the car and remove from the boot a collapsible bicycle. "Have you got the yellow reflector sash?" Corker whispered. "Yes, Madam, here you are." The driver handed it over and Corker pushed off. "Ching ching," went her bell. "Shifto you chaps, I’ve a department to run," she shouted cheerily, wobbling towards the hack pack on her unaccustomed steed.
– Ben Elton "Gridlock", 1991

Pah, you claim. Sure, it’s funny, but how unlikely!

…the Premier had farewelled dull care to cycle across an Eltham Rugby pitch in close formation with the Lycra-clad Minister for Transport. The bike helmets came off for the benefit of the assembled press, revealing Mr Batchelor’s well-elevated hat hair and the Premier’s usual impreccably plastered astroturf. There was no shortness of breath as the policy statements were delivered, but don’t be too impressed. The government car with the bike rack had parked just across the oval.
– Jonathon Green reporting in The Age, 22/11/2002

Similarly, it’s becoming more apparent with every week of Big Brother 3 thatDead Famous is a stunningly accurate portrayal of the genre.

Elton is clever, no doubt. But is he in the same intellectual league as Franzen? Dunno. Perhaps I’ll give Franzen a go and judge for myself, though also vying for my literary attention at the moment are a pile of David Koch books my dad has offered to lend me. Knowing dad they’re probably personally signed by the author, but I’ll give them a look - while they may notinclude any familiar characters like Year Of Living Dangerously, they will surely give me an additional topic of conversation when chatting to dad, something that would definitely be a help at the moment.

11pm. I got home tonight to find to my surprise that most of my block of flats was painted while I was out today, to a kind of sandy colour.

In my little bit of the train home this afternoon, two of us were reading the paper, one was asleep, and one bloke was trying unsuccessfully not to be noticed reading "Melbourne Kink Scene", which appeared to have a picture of a (clothed) woman in leather gear on the front. Hmm… hokay… fair enough…

So apart from Sunday’s Big Clearout Episode I, what else did I do over the weekend?

I swear, I was going to go for a nice long bike ride. But, uhh, it was raining.

Actually I got caught in the rain on my bike last weekend, and it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t pouring down, but raining enough to get me moderately drenched. I was riding along towards home, wondering if the passing car drivers were looking on in awe thinking how butch I looked. I doubt it somehow… they were probably looking on in pity, thinking "poor stupid sod, why’s he out riding in the rain?"

I did do some shopping. Got a couple of new ties to add to my collection, to help balance the old ones I was purging. On sale too, woo hoo - gotta love the stocktake sale season! A year ago, I was working in the office three-ish days a week… now it’s five days a week, so I figure I need a reasonable variety of nice ties to wear. They may be the most functionally useless clothing item ever devised by humankind, but that’s no excuse for wearing a shabby tie.

And I did the usual supermarket run, cloth bag at the ready. One thing you have to watch out for with the cloth bags is the inexperienced checkout chick (or bloke). Come to think of it this applies whatever kind of bag you use. The inexperienced checkout operative person will try and pack the fruit at the bottom, tragically thrusting your fresh produce into the realm of squishiness. And they fail to pack the square stuff first and together, resulting in less than optimum use of available bag capacity. Oh dear.

Ah well, the bananas were only slightly squished.