So I was going to run some errands in the car, and I thought hey: it’s about time I checked the oil. After all, it’s been a while, and I’m in no hurry for more credit card crippling repairs like last year, caused in part by leaking oil. So I reach under the seat to the bonnet release switch thingy. Pull it. Pop. Go around to the bonnet. It’s not open. Oops, I pulled the fuel door one by mistake. Reach under the seat again and pull the other one. I hear a click. But the bonnet still won’t open.

Why won’t the bonnet open? What did the repair guys to do it last time? Have they jammed it shut somehow? I peek in through the gap underneath the front. Can’t see anything untoward. I get a screwdriver and poke around in there for the catch which you usually unhook with your hand. It moves, but the bonnet still won’t budge.

I give up, and drive off, fuming that I’ll have to take it back to the repair place.

A little way down the road I look in the mirror and notice the boot lid is moving.

Sigh. Maybe I should have stayed in bed today.

Had to laugh when looking through the paper today I found an advert for K-Mart. "Men’s 3/4 length pants" it said: "25% off!" Yup. Makes sense.

My tea mug at work is rather less than spotless. It seems to have various ingrained stains around the inside. Evidently no amount of scrubbing with a soapy brush will rid me of them. I try not to worry about it, since all I drink out of it is tea, and I figure every time I pour boiling water into it, it kills any lurking germs.

On the way home tonight I remembered that due to circumstances too embarrassing to relate, my fridge had been turned off yesterday afternoon and I’d forgotten to turn it back on. When I got home I inspected it, and not willing to risk killing everyone in the house, I rang my mum for advice. ‘Cos she knows about that stuff. On her advice, the frozen food, milk and sandwich meat all got chucked out tonight. Arrgh. Off to the supermarket tomorrow after work then.

I know I said I’d stop talking about this, but it’s too freaky not to mention.

1:15, I said I’d meet them. A couple of friendly journalists,going to a ministerial press conference, wanted to talk to me afterwards. As I walked the two blocks to Treasury Place, I passed office workers coming back from lunch, Asian tourists taking their pictures of themselves outside Parliament House, a gaggle of schoolgirls seeing the sights of Spring Street.

I arrived outside 1 Treasury Place. I stood alone, watching the picnickers in the sea of green that is the Treasury Gardens. I think I’ve only ever passed this way at night or on the weekend before, when the building was all closed up. Bureaucrats wandered in and out of the building. Security guys prowled around. I wondered if they’d nab me for loitering.

My phone rang. A radio station lady wanted comments. As I spoke to her a crowd of people - the techos holding cameras and microphones and dressed in jeans, each with their reporters, better dressed and holding notepads and folders gathered in front of me.

What followed was a surreal experience. A full on press conference. A scrum of journos, me standing in front of four cameras lined up like a firing squad, and a mass of microphones.

I hope I talked sense. I hope I didn’t look too silly (I was initially told to look at one person throughout, but forgot and moved my head around a bit when different people spoke). I hope I sounded sane. I’m glad I wore a nice tie today.

They finished and I had a few quiet words with the Age journalist. I started to walk out back to the street, and passed a guy in a union shirt. Trevor Dobbyn from the RTBU, also going to talk to them. I pondered this, then went back and watched his interview, then introduced myself to him, swapped cards. Networking.

Then I walked back to the office, a nobody again.

I feel exhausted. I need a beer.

Decorative, and safe as well: Condom flowers

As the lines between new media (and I’m specifically talking about the web here) and old media start to blur, one might expect to see some of the attributes of the old starting to sneak through into the new. Like product endorsement, for example.

Could this happen? Quite possibly. Some of the new media have reached quite dizzying heights, becoming major players in their own right, especially in the IT world, where such sites as The Register andCNet have become respected and influential news sources. Even in general media, there are such players as theDrudge Report and uhhh… uhhh… I’m sure there must be others, I just can’t think of them right now.

And then there’s the minor players. The tiny minor titchy players. Like me. Now, I couldn’t claim to be influential or famous. I’ve never been recognised on the train. (Well okay maybeonce.) Could someone trying to get their message across approach me for an endorsement? Would I take on a product or cause, and if I did, would anybody at all notice?

The Burnet Institutecontacted me last week about their work in HIV, and over a hot chocolate gave me a heap of publicity info and some terrific condom flowers, which they use for publicity and fundraising. As you can see from the picture, they look rather stunning in this vase on my bookcase.

Burnet do research and education into HIV, particularly in the third world. In parts of Africa and Asia HIV is already endemic, not only among the homosexual population, but also among heterosexuals. One of Burnet’s primary aims is to help stop it spreading further by the use of education and assisting government programmes in places like Laos, as well as looking at related health issues. A worthwhile cause if ever I heard one.

Apparently you can buy the flowers at Condom Kingdom in Prahran, and Burnet will be holding a fundraiser event later in the year. And if you want to send anybody avirtual bouquet of condom flowers, well, now you can!

Tony Abbott has beenappointed the new head-kicking Minister for Health, and is getting a baptism of fire with the current debate over hospital funding and medical indemnity. So with that in mind, here is a short rant about health insurance from Daniel Bowen, private citizen.

I have private health insurance. Government policy practically makes it unavoidable for someone with my dizzying income level. Well actually my income isn’t really that high, but it’s high enough that if I don’t have health insurance I get stung for an extra bunch of Medicare levy. For a while, I held out, reasoning that the public health system could do with my hard-earned cash. (Or does it all go into consolidated revenue anyway?)

I caved when I realised just how much it was costing me, and when I saw someone close go into hospital, and what a difference it made that she went into a private ward, despite the mountain of paperwork required afterwards to keep the fund happy. I signed up to Medibank Private — my reasoning being that a non-profit company should theoretically be better, as it wasn’t paying out to shareholders. Well, it’s a theory.

Time went on. Medibank kept taking my money via direct debit. Then they announced that the discount for paying by direct debit was being removed. And despite the spin they put on it in the letter explaining this, it was not because of a blowout in claims or anything like that, but because the fund had made bad investment decisions. Was I pissed off? Ho yes.

A few weeks ago I went to the dentist for my regular check-up. Ah, at last, an actual chance to make a claim - to get some money back. So I handed over the insurance card to get the fund’s contribution to the bill, and… wow. They don’t pay much back, do they.

And this is my beef. The health insurance companies are raking it in from members’ contributions. They are raking more in from taxpayers via the government’s 30% rebate scheme. Speaking for myself, I’m getting precious little back. Yes I could look through the fine print in my Extras cover and work out what little bonus things I could claim for, but do I have the time for that? Hell no.

It seems like either everyone is getting ripped off (both personally or as tax payers), or that private health insurance simply isn’t an efficient business. Either way, it seems illogical for the Federal Government to keep subsidising it to this degree. With a rapidly aging population, the Lifetime Health Cover idea (which provides growing subsidies as people get older) in particular seems like the very model of an unsustainable scheme.

If I could avoid getting hit with the extra levy, I’d probably prefer to self-insure. And as for the taxpayer funds paying for all these discounts, well they could be simply be channelled into the public health system instead.

But then, a lot of things would be different if I ran the world.

It’s about a year since, after being refused a Foxtel connection, I decided to patronisePBS-FM for a year by subscribing. Now it’s up for renewal, and I’m considering how I want to spend my minority arts budget this year.

A lot has changed in the past year, and these days I find that at home I’m generally listening to CDs, and in the car, which tragically lacks a CD player, I’m generally listening to the
talk stations, trying to pick up on how the media is working, the art of sound bites, as well as the latest news. And while a PBS subscription gives a warm fuzzy feeling and a handful of discounts at various prestigious institutions, my current thinking is that my $65 will go elsewhere.

These thoughts and more occurred to me last night on the train home, when a busker boarded at Richmond. He asked the carriage if we’d mind if he sang some songs. When nobody replied, he proceeded to play his guitar, and it was with some shock that I came to realise he actually had some talent. Not to the degree of "Hey, why isn’t this guy in a recording studio somewhere", but his guitar was tuned, he could strum a tune, and what’s more… he could sing. Okay, so either the songs were all very obscure, or his own compositions (or both) because I didn’t recognise any of them, but he didn’t stumble over the words at all.

I had boarded the train expecting to stand in the doorway for 15 minutes reading the freebie paper and looking out the window. To my surprise I got live music of a half-decent standard, and he got $2 of my arts patronage budget, as well as similar contributions from many of my fellow commuters. After all, you’ve gotta love a bit of unexpected live music, and a busker who can play is something to be nurtured and encouraged.