The Station Agent — A train spotter with dwarfism… and he’s probably the most normal character in it. I found the attitudes of some of the passers-by towards him a little strange, and at odds to the way I’ve seen people react to short people. But a very enjoyable film; quite amusing in parts, thankfully bereft of Hollywood stars, but with quirky dialogue, and engaging characters. A slightly abrupt ending I thought, but well worth while.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou — I found this much funnier than the previous Wes Anderson films I’ve seen (Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore). This was freakin’ hilarious. I want to see it again.

RoboRally — Not a movie, a board game. I’ve heard about this for ages, and finally got to play it on Saturday. Great fun for a group, as you program robots to race around a board filled with obstacles.

During the continuing clearout of junk, today I came across my first tax return, from 1988-1989.

The highlights:

• I had a HECS debt of $900
• Income was $3167 from Austudy, and $2368 from my part time job
• The only other money earnt was a mighty $1.57 in bank account interest
• Total income a huge $5536, with $42 deducted in tax
• $5 donated to the Salvos and $28 in self-education expenses made up my tax deductions for the year

Reminds me, should do this year’s soon.

(See also: my review of the first half of the season.)

8. Father’s Day — Like almost every episode of the series, this turned out to be much better than the trailer would have had us believe. It takes a sci-fi element — travelling back to when Rose’s father was still alive, and saving his life - and explores what happens, how the other characters react when they realise what’s happened, and what happens (including freaky black monsters, why not) when a small part of history has been changed. I know I wasn’t the only one to get something in my eye towards the end there — this episode was not primarily sci-fi (something which narked some of the diehard fans), but was first rate drama.

9. The Empty Child/10. The Doctor Dances — Absolutely appalling ABC promotion for this story, but I thought it was the best of the whole season. The Empty Child got the top scare rating from the BBC’s panel of kids, and it worked on the adults too, the chilling gas masks, and a suitable amount of mystery over why it was occurring.

11. Boom Town — Groan, not the Slitheens again. After three strong episodes, this one was a bit of a let-down. Most of the episodes have had a strong idea to explore, and in this case it was capital punishment. But it dragged on too long (compare for instance to the topic being dealt with in Genesis of the Daleks, way back in 1975). And the Deus ex machina ending was a bit weak. But happily, the preview for the next episode grabbed me.
(more…)

Blargh. I have a cold. I could feel it coming on yesterday afternoon… the tell-tale throat (itchy, then sore), the sneezing, the lack of energy. It took hold last night.

So another day off work. Jeremy was sick on Tuesday; Isaac and I today. I’m sure it would be economically better for me if everyone in the house got sick at once.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be very pleasant living in the House of Pestilence. We’d need to get a pole and fly the quarantine flag.

Update 4:15pm. Pseudoephedrine and tissues with aloe vera are my friends…

I was told there was a good article in this week’s Big Issue. So I went looking for it this morning on the way to work. Normally I pass at least two sellers on Collins Street, plus another at the Parliament station exit. Do you think I saw any of them today? Nope, not a one.

The great clear-out of junk has commenced, with my filing cabinet being trimmed of fat. Accordingly, I decided to borrow my mum’s shredder to make sure that no bits of paper I’m chucking out will fall into the wrong hands. I’ve tried to avoid getting paranoid about such things in the past, but with the recent cases of identity fraud, it probably pays to be wary.

Tax records have to be kept for 7 years. Just about everything else that’s older than about a year, I’m chucking, with anything sensitive thrown in the shredder first. The amount of paperwork sent by the bank in particular is staggering, but it’s been interesting to re-read my bank records from years gone by. Around 1990 I seemed to make an awful lot of stops past JB Hifi for CDs and video tapes (both things now also subject to the clear-out).

So, I now have a cardboard box full of shredded paper, a bunch of other papers in the recycling bin, and a much neater filing cabinet. The great cull of ‘05 continues.

(This post backdated to the date it happened, not the date I wrote it.)

Not much to day 3, but during breakfast a rather impressive hot air balloon sailed by not too far away. We caught a cab to the airport, the only notable thing about the trip back being that tea strainers bought on Friday and packed in the hand luggage attracted the attention of the security scanning people. As did Marita’s boots. And her handbag, which had a nail file in it. Then they decided she was worthy of a random explosives scan. Hmmm. Maybe I have a dangerous girlfriend.

We got back into Melbourne on time about 11:10, and Marita and Justine headed for Trentham to get their dog, while I caught the Skybus then and a train home.

All in all, a great weekend away. There’s lots more of Canberra to see, and I look forward to getting back there soon.

(This post backdated to the date it happened, not the date I wrote it.)

It might have been a negative-something night outside, but the bed was lovely and warm. We awoke, had breakfast and showers, and …

Wait, I should mention the shower. Everything in the serviced apartment we stayed in was great. Except the shower. It was designed by sadists.

The shower head was at about the level of my nose, so I had to crouch down to get my hair wet. A sign extolled the virtues of short showers, but surely that’s not the type of short shower the water authority had had in mind.

Worse, the taps had pointy handles, so as I was crouching, I kept stabbing myself in the back. I don’t think I’m making too much of it by saying that a special place in hell should be reserved for whoever designed that shower.

So, after showering we headed out to (new) Parliament House on foot.

We walked up Canberra Way Avenue and found the back end of Parliament House, including the loading bay and garbage collection area. Very nice. As I snapped a picture of it, Justine backed away in case any security personnel were about to burst out of the bushes and wrestle me to the ground.

Around to the front for the obligatory photos of the big wire coat of arms, through the security check and into the building itself. My, but it’s big. Very damn big. And given how big it is, there didn’t seem to be huge numbers of tourists moving through, though there were a couple of overseas tour groups. It had me wondering why the insides of foreign countries’ parliaments would be interesting to people. It’s not like they’d often see the inside of our parliament on the news or anything.

We found the House of Representatives. The attendant was handing out maps of where each MP sat. Not that it was in session of course, but I managed to spot my local MP’s seat. Similarly in the Senate, they had a map so I could find my state’s senators.

A lift was available to go up to the roof, a big grassed area with the humungous flagpole in the middle (prompting the Get Smart variant joke: “That’s the second biggest flagpole I’ve ever seen”. There was a terrific view over the city from the top.

The roof itself isn’t really that high up off the ground — part of the grassed area actually slopes gently down to nearby the entrance, but it’s fenced off for security reasons. So the building, while huge, is largely underground. Now I’m wondering if it inspired the Teletubbies house.

As we walked down to Old Parliament House, a procession of WW2 jeeps, trucks and motorbikes was coming up the driveway, as preparation for the following days’ VP anniversary events.

After a hot chocolate at Old Parliament House, and a quick look for the famed John and Jeanette Howard postcards (such a sickly thing; perfect for sending to relatives, but alas I could only find John) we got a lift from one friend to another’s house in Florey, a suburb in the North East.

Tangent: transport and urban form in Canberra

This just re-inforced to me how spread out Canberra is. Some naysayers claim that Melbourne is too widely dispersed, too low density to support viable public transport. To that I now say pah, if you want low density, look at Canberra. It’s undoubtedly very green, but everything is so spaced-out so as to make any trip (but particularly on foot) a long one.

There are big gaps of bushland between the activity centres, with not-quite-freeway roads linking them. While the traffic isn’t too bad, so it would be theoretically possible to cycle on the roads, I reckon you’d have to be super-fit to handle the distances.

And there are big gaps between the government buildings in the Parliament House area… for the most part huge carparks that fill with the cars from workers during the week, but leave a concrete and ashphalt desert on the weekend. This makes the entrances to some of the buildings (such as the National Gallery) quite unfriendly for pedestrian tourists. A stark contrast to the National Gallery of Victoria, for instance.

So it does seem that all of Canberra is car-dependent. There are buses, but most of them don’t seem to run particularly often (perhaps every 20 minutes at best), and not many run late at night. Consequently few people seem to use them. The level of traffic isn’t terrible, probably because the population is under half a million. One wonders what the anticipated growth is, and what kind of planning has gone into it, as when and if it reaches a million, there could be dire problems (even beyond the current ones of total car/petrol dependence in an environment of spiralling petrol prices; job catchment and social issues for isolated youth and the poor; and the usual batch of issues associated with the road deficit).

Interestingly, the subject of impending road expansion came up several times in conversations with the locals. One major road project is held up in the courts at the moment, but some (completely unprompted from me) raised the topic of public transport alternatives. Light rail in particular has a lot of backers, but the ACT government seems to have no stomach for it, apparently failing to realise the effects of induced traffic following road expansion.

Back to the travelogue

We had lunch at Marita’s friends’ place, then afternoon tea with my friend Merlin, one of a handful of people I’ve known since primary school. His two and a half year-old son Kai was going gangbusters, which was amusing to watch. Merlin and his family face a similar situation to mine: currently renting in a cold depressing house they don’t like, but light is at the end of the tunnel, as they’re buying and will move in the next few months.

Merlin gave us a lift back to Kingston. We watched the TV news for a bit, trying to find the AFL scores, but eventually gave up and checked them via SMS/PocketNews. Canberra’s TV stations are more focussed on rugby. In fact on Friday night we’d found that with a combination of free-to-air and the hotel’s hobbled Foxtel options, we’d had two channels of rugby, two of cricket, a handful of crap movies, and frustratingly, no AFL.

Then via cab we headed out for the birthday party that had brought us to Canberra in the first place, in a suburb I can’t recall, somewhere around the back of the rather imposing Black Mountain and its viewing/communications tower.