I was wandering around Melbourne University on Sunday. Oh, sorry, it’s notMelbourne University, is it. No no, it’s the University Of Melbourne. Yeah. Great.

I had gotten off the train at the Central Station of Melbourne, and caught a tram up the Street of Swanston. I was looking for the South Lawn. It had looked so easy to find on the Melways: get off the tram at Faraday Street, and head west. How hard could it be?

Harder than that, as it turns out. The place is a maze. It’s like an Escher painting, with buildings and corridors and pathways and steps all over the place. But I eventually found what I was looking for, and even had time to duck down a stairwell and take a look at the car park underneath the lawn (a location used in Mad Max). And shortly afterwards the threat of rain vanished along with the grey cloud and the sun came out, revealing a glorious Carlton afternoon to enjoy. All good.

I bring dire news. The Waiters Restaurant seems to be sliding downhill. This has been a regular haunt of mine for over a decade now, and what it lost in cramped surroundings it made up for in atmosphere and the food. Ooh, the food.

But last Thursday night a bunch of us trooped along for a feed and found it sadly lacking. One bloke’s carbonara was lacking in the volume department. Another’s chicken parma smelt more like fish parma. The hot chocolates were closer to warm than hot.

What’s going on? The waitresses appeared to be new, but then, none of us had been there in a few months. We asked, and were told the place hadn’t changed hands. I hope they get their act together, economising on food and service is a false economy. This place thrived on word of mouth, and can just as easily die by it. I’ll give it one more try, and hope for the best.

Thankfully the old stalwarts such as Threshermans, Trotters and others around Lygon Street and the CBD continue to be reliable. And some of the new places at Docklands New Quay are quite impressive. Went to one Italian place the other week that was quite good (though it also suffered from the warm chocolate syndrome). And sampled Mecca Bah last week. Mmm. Scrumptious. It’s obviously a hit, and for good reason.

I’ve started sniffing out the restaurants and takeaways in my local ‘hood, too. Literally, in the case of the chilli place, whose aroma comes wafting out the doorway and floats down the street. Shame it doesn’t seem to be open for dinner. There are a couple of okay fish’n'chips places. The first pizza place I tried not too impressive, but some of the others look more promising, if you can judge the quality of a pizza restaurant by its decor.

There’s an intriguing Armenian restaurant that has to be worth a look - I have no idea what Armenian cuisine might be, but I’m certainly willing to give it a try. And I’m now walking distance to the very fine Korean place I went so many times last year, always a winner. There are lots of others in the vicinity. I guess I’ll just have to try them all as I get the chance.

Do you have a favourite restaurant?

The sun setting behind Melbourne Central last night. Click for the full size image. (Yes, that is the reflection of my hand you can see).

Yesterday I used my car horn in anger. I was merrily driving down the road. The sun was shining, the road was almost clear of traffic; it could have been a car commercial, apart from the fact that my car is 10 years old and has started making that noise again - insert rant about car repairs here.

This woman in a silver Ford was ahead of me, and pulled over to the left. As I went to pass her I noticed her right indicator was on, and before I knew it she’d pulled out in front of me to do a U-turn. Oh, nice one lady.

I braked to avoid a collision, and beeped to make my presence known. Only then (and by this point her car was at the point where I’d have hit her side on if I hadn’t slowed down) did she look around and see me. And you know what she did? Not the reaction of "Oh no, I’ve done a stupid thing!" Not "Hey, whatareyou beeping at me for, I own the road!" No, she smiled and gave me a wave. Bizarre.

I’m firmly of the opinion that car horns are a safety device only. I came to this opinion after putting up with the neighbours at the old place whose friends had a very nasty habit of

(a) pulling up at four o’clock in the fucking morning to go fishing, and using their horn as a substitute for getting out of their car and knocking on the door to say "Hi, we’re here, let’s go"

(b) having parties until the wee small hours, and their friends using their horns to say "goodbye" as they drove off, as if they hadn’t just said "goodbye" anyway.

Okay admittedly maybe my gripe was with my neighbours friends rather than my neighbours. But those neighbours (and their friends) had other bad (non-horn related) habits, so I’m prepared to blame them for having friends like that.

My new crop of neighbours… well, one or two of them do have a horn habit. Though so far never in the middle of the night.

Now I wouldn’t normally mix business with pleasure like this, but I can imagine a lot of Melbourne people will be affected by this. Melbourne Central, in their wisdom, have decided that people getting off trains and going about their business do so far too easily, and they’d like to send them on
a merry dance around through the shops, whether they want to go shopping or not.

First you’ve heard of it? Not surprised, since among all the fabulousnews trumpeted by the centreduring its redevelopment, this seems to have missed getting a mention. Could that be because they know just how pissed off most station users will be? Even the train operator claims it’s happy with the situation, and the government? Well, they approved the plan.

It seems the only people not asked are those tens of thousands who will have to negotiate a maze of corridors andtrudge an extra few hundred metres, twice every day. Community consultation? Apparently pretty much not. So, if you currently arrive at work dead on time, better plan to catch an earlier train from November.

I promise, I tried to get to bed early last night. It had been a long day. I tried. Didn’t quite make it, but I’ve had later bedtimes on work nights, so there you go.

Anyway I was happily snoozing, until I suddenly woke. Outside it was light. I lay there for a minute or two, listening to the birdsong. Damn birds always seem so cheerful, no matter how early it is. How early was it? If it’s possible to stumble while lying horizontal in bed, then I did so, as I turned to look at the clock. 5:something.

Argh. 5:something. There’s only one sensible reason to be up and awake at 5:something. Some people would say it’s having partied all night, but I don’t think I have the energy for that. No, in my book 5:something should involve transcontinental flights and moving between time zones.

Oh how I wanted it to be 7:something, or at least 6:something, so I could at least pretend I’d got a good night’s sleep. But no, it was definitely 5:something.

I rolled over and tried, not entirely successfully, to get some more sleep. The birds kept twittering, but I must have got a little sleep, because the next thing I remember is my alarm clock going off. 6:40. Not actually the time I intended to get up (must have forgotten to reset it after Monday’s early start), but certainly a better time to start the new day.

Yawn. I feel tired just thinking about it. Maybe time for a nap.

Sweating today at work. Damn the air-conditioning for breaking down on a warm day. But it was a good excuse to go out for a walk in the glorious sunshine and get some fresh (well apart from the traffic fumes and the occasional passing smoker, cough, cough) air. If it’s like this tomorrow maybe I’ll take in some bathers and a towel.