In year 11+12, I studied accounting. It wasn’t the most interesting of subjects to me, but I did very well in it. The teacher was Mr Read, who was a brilliant accounting teacher. He breathed life into what could have been a very dull topic to study. There were always plenty of anecdotes to amuse us as we learnt. For instance at a time when most of the classrooms were being switched from blackboards to whiteboards, he joked that the accounting department would be resisting the switch, as while teachers got chalk on their clothes, they could claim drycleaning as a work expense.

And he imparted his theory of retail, which was that ideally if you sold goods, you’d never have to handle the goods, let alone sink massive amounts of money into running a warehouse to hold it. Instead you’d take the orders and ship the goods directly from the supplier to the customer.

I don’t know where Mr Read is now, but he’d probably be thrilled at the prospect of today’s information industries, where Apple and others can sell a digital copy of a song (plus a licence to own it) and make millions from it.

Of course many industries continue to have to stock their products on shelves, in warehouses, in crates. Sometimes I ponder just how much money is tied up in the stock that shops hold. For supermarkets, they could have millions of dollars of stock just sitting around in a single supermarket. Even a small shop could easily have tens of thousands of dollars.

Makes me ponder if I’ve got enough money on my home contents insurance.

While many of us are thinking about near-trivial day-to-day things like what DVD to hire, or how to make our frequent flyer points go farther, in other less peaceful parts of the world, they’re worrying about just getting through the day alive.

Tony Issa [warning: graphic photos], normally a Melbourne native, is in Lebanon right now, and writes of events there, condemning both sides:

More bombs are falling across Lebanon, more innocent civilians are getting killed. It’s amazing that Israel’s mission was to crush Hizballah, but instead they’re deliberately massacring innocent civilians, leaving Hizballah untouched. Is it because they don’t know where Hizballah is or because Israel is just naturally a ruthless, callous, vicious country that enjoys bathing in the blood of innocent victims?
…

As for Hizballah, they have declared a war on behalf of Lebanon. A war LEBANON DID NOT WANT! And it’s mainly Shiites that are getting slaughtered. Over 100 are dead on this side of the border, as opposed to probably 20 Israelis. NASRALLAH you are not WINNING!

I can’t help but have the utmost sympathy for the ordinary Lebanese and Israelis getting caught up in the fighting. Seems to me both sides are fanning the flames, with help from their friends, while the G8, UN and EU appear to be sitting around doing nothing.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang — A kinda violent-yet-funny Lock Stock/Snatch type comedy-mystery-drama. Very well done, with some nice touches on the narration. Plenty of laughs, very enjoyable.

Broken Flowers — Another of Bill Murray’s refined, old bloke, laid-back movie roles. Very good.

Corpse Bride — Reminded me of one of those 80s/90s afternoon kids’ programmes, like Duckula or the Trapdoor or something. Enjoyable.

Legally Blonde — Caught this movie on TV on Saturday night, as there was nothing else on. Who’d have thought a comedy could have so few laughs? Come to think of it, who’d have thought a whole movie could be as brainless as the lead character was supposed to be?

I’ve been planning some activity for my many frequent flyer points, many tens of thousands of which were earnt over several years of paying for childcare on a credit card several years ago. It adds up, I can tell you.

Firstly I’ll be jaunting down to Hobart for a few days in October with Marita. Then I’ll be taking the kids on a little holiday over the Melbourne Cup long weekend. Their preferred venue? Sydney. Because although they’ve been there before, they want to (again) ride the monorail and the double-decker trains.

Poking around on the Qantas web site, I found tickets were available on points for all those flights. Who’d have thunk? Mind you some of the flights to/from Hobart involved going via Sydney — hardly a logical proposition. I managed to find some direct ones though.

In the small print on the site it mentions government taxes, fees and surcharges, but it gives you no clue as to the magnitude of them. This is only clear when you’ve worked your way through the booking, and I suppose it doesn’t know the precise amounts until you’ve said where you’re flying, but it’d be nice to have a clue early on, because it turned out to add up to about $50 per sector.

So for instance I could fly to Hobart for $49 plus 8000 points. Or alternately I could just book on Jetstar for $79 all-inclusive, if I was willing to put up with a rigidly enforced 30 minute check-in and no free food en-route. Eventually I decided to fly down on Jetstar, and back on Qantas. (And hopefully Marita can book onto the same flight home; she’ll be in Hobart before me on a work-paid conference trip.)

And the Sydney flights? Well I compared the costs of Qantas versus Qantas on points versus Jetstar versus Virgin Blue. Bearing in mind that kids don’t fly for any less money than adults on the cheapest flights, the totals for three passengers on return flights came out at:

• Qantas on points, fees $300
• Qantas on paid tickets $740
• Virgin Blue paid tickets $594
• Jetstar paid tickets $621 (bleuch, flying out of Avalon, what a pain that would be)

So using Frequent Flyer points is far from free, but assuming there isn’t some super-dooper-mega sale later down the track, it’ll still save me about $300 (and with the benefit of free nibblies thrown in), so given how infrequently I fly anywhere, this time round I’ll go with the points.

It’s been a funny weekend for dreams. On Saturday night I had an interesting one involving a bunch of my friends from high school, but set in the current time, riding bikes around late at night. But by far the best of the weekend was on Friday night/Saturday morning:

I was waiting at a kind of railway station, either in Italy (because there were Italian officials around) or Ancient Egypt (because it was decked out in an Ancient Egyptian theme).

Lots of people were waiting, for an official party from somewhere to arrive.

For some reason there was a toilet bowl on the platform, in full public view, and I decided to use it, for sitting-down activities.

I finished my business, and got up. But when I flushed, it became evident it was faulty, and … it send a giant turd flying through the air, which then landed on the platform and slid along before stopping.

Thankfully it missed my bag, which was on the platform, and several other items I had left lying around, including some children’s books, a couple of pairs of socks, and my old grey sneakers with the red laces. With some urgency I warned people not to flush the toilet. “Don’t! It’s not working! Another turd will fly out!”

At this point I had no shoes on, and was trying to find a pair of dry socks so I could put my shoes on, and put the other damp socks in a plastic bag before this official party arrived.

I was also trying to sort out which of the children’s books lying around were mine (hey, those two were given to my kids by my sister, I want to keep them!) and other people’s, which I didn’t want.

At one point I had to climb off the platform and balance on a ledge next to it… by the ledge was water, rather than railway tracks. Still, I hoped the train didn’t arrive and squash me or the Egyptian guy helping me get things back onto the platform.

Got it all organised, and the train arrived, but it wasn’t a train, just a bunch of officials walking along. They turned out to be various government people from different regions of Italy. Everybody stood as they arrived.

I must have been part of the greeting party, as I walked out of the platform area with them. At the front the senior greeting person (a manager from my work) was asking the government people how they had managed to get officially sanctioned political assassinations happening at just the right time to get bonuses for them, and implying that they might be corrupt.

Odd.

Josh (aka the madman) was in the pub again on Friday night. Alas, I didn’t have time to join him for a quick drink.

I like the reflection of the station, opposite, in this picture.

Mighty handy, this phone camera.

“The only thing wrong with public transport is the public.” I’m not sure who said it, but sometimes it rings true.

On my train home last night at about 9:30pm, a crazy woman started screaming at nobody in particular. Just a cry of “You f—ing murderers! Nazis!” every couple of minutes.

As you do.

The train was pretty crowded, and nobody acted with alarm or appeared to feel unsafe, but a couple of people trying to talk amongst themselves or into mobile phones began to move down the carriage.

Then the most amazing thing happened. (more…)

Been too damn busy to think of very much intelligent to blog about.

I did post a long meandering review of my new mobile phone over at geekrant though.

Oh, and I can tell you about this fabulous email I got the other week:

Subject: Your Food Pyramid/Trapezoid presented at food and nutrition seminar

Hello Daniel,

I was at the food industry seminar mentioned in this news story, along with many other academics and professionals from food manufacturing and nutritional health industries: Good in the snack (Herald-Sun, 27 June 2006)

The main theme of the seminar was nutritional trends and eating habits of Australian consumers, now and in the future.

You might be interested to hear that in his presentation, Dr Keast (mentioned in the news story) illustrated actual eating habits vs desired nutritional habits, by showing your Food Pyramid/Trapezoid from the toxiccustard site!

Best Regards,
Kirsten