It’s the weekend.
The long weekend.
Queen’s Birthday weekend.
Even though it’s not her birthday.
Amusingly, in the UK they don’t get a day off for it.
It’s also the last public holiday until Cup Day in November.
I may not be a monarchist, but fully I intend to make the most of it.
Do I walk a bit funny or something? The heels of the two pairs of shoes I most commonly wear (the Monday to Friday work shoes) are wearing away on the outside edges. Further, one pair is re-developing the same hole which I thought was comprehensively eliminated a year ago. And in the same position of the same shoe. Strange, since the repair bloke fully redeemed it and gave it an entirely new soul.
Since the end of financial year stocktake sales started yesterday, maybe it’s time to go on a shopping spree. Stock up on the stuff I need now at sale prices, rather than later at full price. Off the top of my head, I could do with buying:
Yesterday I ventured into Myer briefly, and fought through the crowds to obtain (at 25% off) the XBox game Halo for a bit of grown up MA blast-the-shit-out-of-aliens action. It got incredibly good reviews: the all-time highest rated game on Metacritic. Had a quick go of it last night, and it appears to live up to the hype. More on that later.
I left the rest of the merchandise in Myer and DJs to the hardcore nutter shoppers. But when I have time in the next day or two, further bargain-hunting will commence.
Guess who left the car window ajar overnight? Yup. Fortunately it didn’t rain much this morning.
On the bright side, I managed to do a bit of time-travelling on the way home today. Something like this:
16:50. Get to Flinders Street, just miss 16:49 Mordialloc train leaving.
16:52. Deftly leap aboard an Alamein train direct to Richmond, to try and beat the Mordialloc train around the loop.
16:55. Change at Richmond. Battle past hordes changing onto platform. Must be some disruption in the loop.
16:57. Get onto Dandenong train express South Yarra to Caulfield. Read book (yes, I’m still going on The Crow Road)
17:03. About the same time as I see us overtaking a Frankston train at Armadale, I get an SMS from Connex to tell me that the 16:59 train I would have caught had I not indulged in all this rigmarole, has been cancelled.
17:05. Roll into Caulfield. Change platforms. One bloke looks very pleased with himself to be reaching the other platform in time.
17:07. Board the train we overtook at Armadale.
17:10. Get to Glenhuntly (which is not my usual stop, but was where I was going on this occasion).
So it was worth all that messing about, not just sitting down at Flinders Street to wait (and wait, and wait). The train after the cancelled one would have got me there about 17:40, so I saved about half an hour. Woo hoo!
Oops. This fine site was down for a couple of hours last night after my web hosting provider pointed out the bill was three weeks overdue. Nothing like downing your site to make you sit up and take notice. I found the errant bill languishing in my e-mail inbox. Full credit to them though, they put the site straight back up when the money went through.
Oh, and last Saturday Marita and I took in Strange Bedfellows, Paul Hogan and Michael Caton’s “not that there’s anything wrong with that” movie. We only really wanted to see it because it was largely filmed in Marita’s grandmother’s house, and for me the most amusing moments were her noises of recognition through the movie, from the shops in Yackandandah to the exclamation during the opening scene of Caton riding his bike, having a conversation with a passing truck driver: “Hey! That’s my uncle’s truck!” As for the rest of the movie, the gaggle of old ladies at the back of the cinema seemed amused enough to keep cackling regularly, but it certainly didn’t grab me. As the MX review said, the real star was the scenery of Yackandandah.
And it was only on at Hoyts at Hoypoint. Noice. When I first sat down I thought I’d fall off the seat — it was wide enough, but seemed to lack depth. A bit like the movie, really.
Plan A for Sunday: Take the kids to the footy, meet up with Tony, Rae and Phoebe and watch the Cats lose.
Plan B for Sunday: Walk down to Dick Smith Powerhouse, buy an XBox game, come home, play it. Maybe have a bounce on the trampoline at some stage.
When these two plans were proferred to the kids, they voted unanimously for Plan B. The footy would have to wait. (And yet the Cats didn’t lose. I know I tipped them, but I wasn’t that confident.)
So, plan B then. First time for a quick bounce on the trampoline. Maybe some children are pack animals. That would explain why they won’t go into the back yard on their own for a bounce, but if I have to go out to hang up some laundry, they follow promptly and end up squabbling for a turn.
Then we headed out down the street, with nary a complaint about the walking. Good exercise, and all part of the learning experience for when the offspring eventually venture out on their own: crossing streets and railway lines, posting letters (thank you to the Australian Electoral Commission for confirming my address, and good luck to you in finding the previous tenant), watching out for cyclists, reading signs along the way, navigating the neighbourhood, all that good stuff.
We got to Dick Smith. A couple of nicotine addicts were standing by the door, dragging the last out of their cigarettes before going in, the lady’s rather pregnant stomach on view to the world below her cropped Madonna-style t-shirt. Poor kid. We dodged the smoke and they stumbled in after us, speech slurred, eyes tired.
The video games are just inside the door. Very cunning marketing. You can picture a parent taking their kids along to buy a diode or a resistor or a metre of wire or something, and being talked into getting Simpsons Hit And Run (RRP $99.95 — argh) as well. But I’d already worked out what we were buying: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Got good reviews, nice movie tie-in, and RRP of $49.95. Not excessively exhorbitant, though as Mr Nicotene remarked as he passed me, “Mate, get yourself a mod-chip. Then the games are only 10 bucks each.”
Uh huh. That may be true, but as someone who writes for fun, and writes software for a living, I’m getting less and less comfortable with the whole intellectual property theft thing. And $10 for a pirated game?… sounds like he’s getting ripped off. But anyway…
Dick Smith’s price for our coveted game? $46.93. With the $5 voucher I got from redeeming bottle rings from juice we would have drunk anyway? $41.93. You beauty. Cheap video games from drinking fruit juice. You can’t beat it.
Oh yes you can. Took it to the check-out, and the lady scanned it. $29.84. What? Yup, $29.84, less the $5, making $24.84. Jeremy, eagle-eyed, exclaimed “I thought it was $46!” Now, I wasn’t about to get into an argument with a Woolworths Corporation drone about the price. It definitely scanned as the right game. So I replied to Jeremy, “maybe it’s on sale?” The checkout chick didn’t seem to care anyway, and happily took my $24.84. Computer error or impromptu discount, whatever it was, it seems us consumers won this time.
We took the game home, via Brumbies and their mini choc-chip muffins. And played for a while. Despite my previous ranting about modern video games, this one is a winner. Gorgeous graphics and fun gameplay. Fun fun fun.
Finally got around to watching Finding Nemo on Friday night. Great stuff. My favourite characters would have to be the seagulls. “Mine!” I think they captured them perfectly.
It made me recall Andrew Bolt’s critique of the movie. It’s a terrific laugh, as Boltie usually is. I always make sure to check out what he’s been ranting about. Whether it’s intentional or not he seems to very nicely fulfil the cliche of the rabid right-wing columnist. I don’t think his piece on Finding Nemo is online anymore, but I’ve dug it out of the marvellous Gulliver public library archive. Enjoy (Note he thought the seagulls say “Mate!” Hmmm).
Can’t wait to see what he has to say about Play School’s “two mummies” segment.
Sunday evening, 6pm. In the supermarket. Two blokes staring up at the bewildering choice of bottles of olive oil.
“How on earth are you meant to choose one?”
“There’s only 5 million up there, I don’t know what the problem is.”
My reply got a chuckle, and I went back to staring up at them all. It’s not like choosing an onion, where you just need the right colour, and not something mushy and going brown.
After pausing to reflect, I remembered the advice once given to me: Choose the one with the most appealing label. The most appealing label on olive oil is the Viva brand, but I got that one last time, and though that bottle has served me well, I got the second most appealing instead.
…and how pictures make a story real.
If there was a Daniel FAQ, these questions would feature in it: Why are you involved in the Public Transport Users Association? What’s in it for you? And can I tell you about how late my train was this morning?
Perhaps another long rambling retrospective is in order.
When I was growing up, we didn’t have a car. The shopping was done with a shopping jeep at the local shops in Balaclava. Most of our friends lived in walking distance. My sister and I walked to school — something that is increasingly rare nowadays, as most parents are loathe to let primary school-aged kids walk the streets on their own. (Note, however, that we didn’t wear coal sacks, and didn’t trudge through the snow for three miles to get there.)
My dad was in the PTUA’s predecessor, the Train Travellers Association, and being a regular user of public transport, I showed an interest in my early teens, but then forgot about it for a while. I joined up again in my early twenties, during a period when I was a rabid anti-car-head. Oil was killing the planet, man. I didn’t have a driver’s licence, refused to get one or buy a car, and firmly believed in the ideal of sustainable transport.