NYE
The whole New Year’s Eve debacle saga that I wrote about a few months ago came bubbling back up to the surface today. The trains will run all night, as well as more frequently straight after the fireworks.
- Herald Sun: Trains all night on New Year’s Eve
- The Age: Public transport plan to avert New Year chaos
- ABC: Melbourne trains to run all night on New Year’s Eve
What I find particularly satisfying is not only knowing that the problem looks like it’s been largely fixed, but knowing that two guys with cameras and another giving quotes to the media the next morning were able to bring an event that might have otherwise passed unnoticed firmly into the public consciousness, to bring about change.
“Last year was a disaster but we’ve learned from that” — Irene Goonan, chairperson, NYE Transport Planning Committee.
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Real estate
Ah the joys of real estate listings. It’s always the stuff they don’t mention that catches you out. Here’s a few samples I’ve encountered recently:
A delightful 1950s brick four bedroom family home in a quiet cul de sac location so close to Chadstone Shopping Centre, Phoenix Park & the Malvern Valley Golf Course. — yeah great, but if you look at the map, it’s also a stone’s throw from both the Glen Waverley train line and the Monash freeway! Convenient for transport, but better get some good noise-proofing!
low maintenance garden — that means it’s small, folks.
light and bright spacious L shaped lounge, dining room, kitchen/meals area — this place was nice but tiny. If the lounge is L shaped, then they’ve included the dining room as part of it, and shouldn’t specify it separately. And it wasn’t so much a dining room as a dining alcove: it was tiny. The two-seater table they had displayed almost filled it. If you had a fridge in the kitchen, it couldn’t possibly count as kitchen/meals, unless you like eating off the floor, which personally, I don’t.
Delightful solid brick 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom Period home — it’s semi-detatched. Not that you can tell from the description or the pictures (and not that I’m against the concept of semis; it’s actually very nice). The plan showing a blank wall along one side gives it away. Would it kill them to mention it?
Additionally, I have formed a theory of real estate prices: a place advertised at auction for “X plus” will have a reserve price of around X + 10%. If it passes in, it’ll then be advertised for private sale at X + 20%, knowing there’ll be some haggling involved, and with some room to move if nobody shows any interest.
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Here is my TV (etc)
Here is my TV, and assorted other home entertainment paraphenalia.
Post a picture of your TV etc… Link in the Trackbacks or comments.
- As usual, move your mouse over the picture for descriptions of various bits (note Firefox may abbreviate. Apparently you can fix it with this extension if you turn multi-line tooltips on.)
- Past photos in this series
- Notes on creating the image map/hot spots with text
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Not a snake!
At lunchtime I was at Collins Place waiting for somebody to go to a meeting, when I saw a couple of people walking past me. The man looked familiar.
It was Michael Palin.
He wasn’t doing a silly walk, and he didn’t appear to be filming an expedition up Collins Street.
I didn’t gush over, or say anything. I just gave him a smile. I think he smiled back. Or maybe he was just being generally amiable to the world at large.
My life is complete. I’ve seen a Python in the flesh.
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The new shoes
I got some new shoes last week. I’m terrible at buying shoes, I hate buying shoes, I can’t choose shoes.
Add to this some level of anxiety about my smelly, sweaty feet. I knew I needed shoes, and I knew I’d be going shoe shopping after work, so what did I do? I took an extra pair of socks with me. Changed into them as I left work. After all, it’s not very civilised to try on new shoes with smelly feet, is it?
I had noted a 25% Off Men’s Shoes Sale at Myer. So in I went and after much wandering around the store, found some I liked, got the lady to find the right size (got some. Work shoes. Black. Extremely shiny, at least at the moment. Well, except for one bit on the rim of the sole, which seems to have lost its sheen already. And they show the dust really well.
As invariably seems to be the case with nice looking shoes, I need to wear them in. I’ve survived day 2. Unlike on day 1, I’m at the stage now where I think I could run in them if I had to. I just choose not to.
Oh, and my runners need replacing as well…
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What an evening
It was one of those almost-Vasectomy-on-the-morrow-inspiring evenings when one’s energy is sapped after facing too many hurdles, too many paternal challenges. Specifically, the regression of junior progeny to a point that I thought we’d all got past many years ago. I thought that was all over, gone, passed, accepted, signed-off. I thought I would never again have to face that magnitude of feculence in those sorts of locations again. Deposits on the person (straight after the nightly washing ritual) and then subsequent discovery of more on the underside of the rug. How did that happen? Evidently the comprehension and mastery of this area’s required skills wasn’t entirely completed to satisfaction previously, resulting in a hasty revision lesson and much laundering. And, in the cold light of day, continuing confusion as to how it got where it did. It is destined to remain a mystery.
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Daniel vs Spider
I stood there, facing my eight-legged adversary. It was still, near the top of the fly-wire door. I was armed with my broom.
Wait for it… wait for it.. whack! The door rattled as the broom hit the spider, which took cover under the metal and curled into a tiny ball. It wasn’t a humungous spider, admittedly, but certainly big enough to make me nervous about its presence. I poked at it with the broom a bit more, and it fell to the ground. Whack! Whack! Dead yet? One more whack to be sure.
I swept it off the porch into the garden, then inspected the broom. The metal part holding the bristles onto the stick had cracked. Slithers of plastic had also fallen onto the porch. I cleaned them up, and put away the broom.
Daniel 1. Spider 0. Broom 0.
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Quick movie reviews
Collateral: A very simple premise, but very well (if you’ll pardon the pun) executed. Max, a cab driver in LA starts off his night shift relaxed. Before long he picks up a passenger, Vincent, and gets caught up in a world he’d rather not be caught up in. Along the way you learn a lot about both of them. Thanks to some great acting and dialogue, terrific music and imaginative camera work (use of video somehow made it feel less blockbustery and more real), towards the end it’s very intense, edge-of-the-seat stuff.
Super Size Me: Did it really tell us anything we didn’t already know? That a balanced diet is paramount? But there’s probably a lot of people for whom this message needed to be hammered home, and the fact that most nutritionists recommended little or no fast food in diets was interesting. One underrated point that interested me was the lack of exercise most Americans (and other westerners) get, Spurlock pointing out that most New Yorkers actually do a lot of walking, and for the month of the experiment, he’d be getting driven everywhere instead. In any case, a nice Safran-style balance of serious documentary and funny moments. I enjoyed it a lot.
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