“You saved my life”
Maggie, the station host, noticed a passenger who looked unwell. Really unwell.
She tried to convince her to come into the office to sit down.
The lady didn’t want to. She wanted to catch her train; she was going to see her doctor. Paraphrased:
“Please come in and sit down. You look unwell. I think I’d better call you an ambulance.”
“No no, I’m fine. Really. Okay I’ll come and sit for a moment.”
“Are you sure you don’t want an ambulance?”
“No no, I’m fine.”
“What if I ring your doctor? What’s his number?” Rings.
“Even your doctor says call an ambulance! I’m ringing it now!”
…
“Hello, how are you today?”
“I’m good. Thank you — I was about to have a stroke. You saved my life.”
I may never save a life. But if I’m ever in that position, I hope I have the presence of mind to know what to do.
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Windsor knot
My dad didn’t wear ties during the later part of his working life, and certainly doesn’t now he’s retired. So I was taught to tie a tie by Norm, who worked at Hattams in Elsternwick when we bought my first school uniform for Melbourne High, in summer ‘84-’85.
I’ve been thinking for a while about switching from a Pratt Knot to a Windsor Knot, the latter apparently resulting in a bigger, more symmetrical knot… even if James Bond apparently declared it to be “the mark of a cad”.
I found clear instructions at Tie-a-tie.net and tried them a couple of times last week. The knot itself is pretty easy actually, just a teensy bit more involved than a Pratt knot. As always, it’s the lengths that were troublesome on my initial attempts, so I stuck with my traditional knot.
But Tony laid down the challenge on Sunday, and that’s finally spurred me into action.
Monday: Day one: Gave the thin end almost nothing at all, and it tied okay with the length about right. The knot is arguably aesthetically better, but not terrific, and I wonder if this works better with a tie that’s thicker, and hasn’t been tied the old way for a couple of years.
Tuesday: Day two: With my spiffy new silk tie, it works much better, though it took three attempts to get the length right. A nice, big knot, which doesn’t move around. Not quite as symmetrical as one might hope, but a big improvement over the old method. (Mind you, I found it wasn’t quite aligned right when I did a TV interview at lunchtime, but that may have been because it was blowing a gale at the time.)
Wednesday: Day three Okay, this isn’t too bad. I think I’m getting used to this now.
See the challenges us blokes go through to get a tie looking really nice?
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Busy busy
Been busy on a comparison of public transport fares between Australian mainland cities, which found Melbourne’s the most expensive for most trips: Age story… on the front page no less. Full data/graphs.
The government claims it’s an unfair comparison. But they would say that, wouldn’t they.
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Shimasu!
I pick up catch-phrases from various places.
One is “Shimasu!”, which I use as a kind of Japanese expletive, when struggling to wake up in the morning, or when exerting myself in some extraordinary way.
shimasu.mp3 (MP3 format; 2 seconds; 9Kb)
Said the right way, it sounds like something they might have said on one of those old Japanese torture shows that Clive James used to show clips of, with contestants getting crabs shoved down their trousers or having boiling water run over their tongues or whatever.
Actually it apparently means “to do” in Japanese, but I got it from Dick Smith Electronics — it’s their made-up brandname that they used to give to things to make them sound like they came from Japan.
I suppose almost any word can sound like a Japanese expletive when you say it the right way. Tomato!
tomato.mp3 (MP3 format; 1 second; 6Kb)
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Phone camera pictures
It’s great having a phone with a half-decent camera. It’s nowhere near as good as my “real” camera, but because I almost always have the phone with me, I can snap photos anywhere, almost no matter what I’m doing:
And because a phone doesn’t look like a camera, even dogs of a nervous disposition, such as Maisie and Jake, who believe that cameras can suck out your soul, can be photographed:
Yesterday this scary looking van was parked outside the Westin hotel in Collins Street. The first time I walked past I was pondering if it might be a disaster recovery crew for computer equipment. Like server failure. But the picture on the side made it look like they might deal with more real-world scenarios.
A little later I went down Flinders Lane, which was closed to traffic, and past the other side of the hotel, and found this:
I overheard someone’s conversation which tied in with what I later saw reported on Channel 7… the hotel’s underground carpark was flooded. Whoopsie.
Sometimes the phone camera just doesn’t quite cut it though. This picture might be vaguely amusing if you could read the ACF Fight Climate Change sticker on the back of the 4WD…
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A few things…
Dishwashers: On the subject of water (I think Andrew or somebody mentioned this a while ago) in last Sunday’s Age M magaziney thing, there was an article noting that dishwashers generally use less water than handwashing. Dishwashers are in the 13 to 20 litre per cycle range, whereas handwashing is up around 40 to 60. Yay — for once you can be lazy and environmentally friendly!
What they don’t appear to mention, however, is ensuring the dishwasher is full before using it. To do that, I’ve bought extra crockery and cutlery as appropriate, so I don’t run out of things between running it every couple of days.
Boomers: Saturday’s Age A2 section (which I’ve only just got around to reading) notes it’s ten years since Mark Davis wrote Gangland, a book I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time. Davis writes now:
Somewhere deep in the fabric of Australian cultural life it is forever 1974. The Whitlam government is still in office. This Day Tonight is still on television. Patrick White has recently won the Nobel Prize. The last fading bars of Eagle Rock echo from the Sunbury stage.
…
Many of the figures who stood out in 1997 as playing a disproportionate role in Australian cultural life by and large continue to do so. Kerry O’Brien, Robert Manne, Peter Craven, Phillip Adams, Christopher Pearson, Anne Summers, Helen Garner, Richard Neville, Keith Windschuttle, Ray Martin, Clive James, P. P. McGuinness, Germaine Greer, Piers Akerman, John Laws, Michelle Grattan, Laurie Oakes, Alan Jones, Gerard Henderson and George Negus are still out there, setting agendas, demarcating standards, creating much of the intellectual and cultural climate. Whatever they breathe out becomes the oxygen of Australian cultural life.
– Turf war; Mark Davis. The Age. Melbourne, Vic.: May 19, 2007. ; p. 12
I know what he means, though he misses the one I like to take potshots at, Barry Humphries. Maybe ‘cos Humphries too old to be a Boomer, born in 1934. Or maybe it’s not the type of cultural influence Davis is looking at.
But it’s a very interesting read, even if I don’t totally agree with all of it. I can’t find it publically online, probably as it’s due to be republished in fuller form in Overland, though it is available in Gulliver/ProQuest.
Parking: I’m not trying to dob people in, but I reckon the local council should send parking inspectors around to schools at morning drop-off time. People parking across driveways; people parking too close to corners; people backing up around corners; people parking (and leaving their cars) in “set-down only” areas. They’d make a fortune.
Crude: ABC TV, tonight 8:30pm.
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The magnet
A fridge magnet arrived in the mail. They’re always useful for sticking things to the fridge, and this one includes emergency numbers, which if could be potentially useful if there was ever an emergency in the house and I happened to be near the fridge and in the heat of the moment had forgotten that the emergency number is “000″.
The catch? The magnet also has the picture and name of my local Federal Member, Andrew Robb. Frankly I’m not that keen of sticking any politician’s mug peering at me when I go to get a snack.
So I did a little trimming with a pair of scissors.
Voila!
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Winter and water
Winter has arrived. The heating’s back in use, and I’ve started wearing jackets to work again, after some time of managing to avoid it. (Normally if the forecast high is at 20 degrees or higher, it’s not worth taking a jacket, since I only end up sweating on the walk from the station, and at work it’s usually warm.)
If we weren’t in times of drought, people would be bitching about the rain, but instead they’re welcoming getting drenched on the way to work. “Oh yes, well, we really need it, don’t we.” It reminds me of the memo from The Games from Sydney 2000:
If it rains during the period of September 15 to October 1, say: “Goodness me. How tremendous. A benediction for Australia’s rich farmlands”. If it hails, go inside or you might get killed.
One can only hope that some of it is falling in the catchments. I know my garden is getting a fair bit, since after many months of the back garden grass gradually withering and dying, it’s sprung back, to the point where I’ve had to mow it twice in the last few weeks. (Andy comes sometimes to mow, but his time is better spent on keeping the hedges under control.)
Recent calls (in Queensland) for people to aim for 140 litres of water per person per day seem like a good idea to me. The Melbourne average is 162.6 litres, so evidently we can do better — though arguably better savings can be had in industry and agriculture.
By my calculations, the water consumption in our household is 133 litres per person per day (up slightly from the figure in 2006, which was 129 litres). I’m not yet rigidly watching the clock during showers, and I haven’t yet fitted the water-saving shower head (it arrives soon, part of the Origin Energy green power deal), so I know we can do better.
What I have done is stopped buying Australian-made rice. Rice (and some other foods) use enormous amounts of water to grow, so I figure we’re all better off buying our rice from elsewhere. There’s plenty grown in Southeast-Asia, where (hopefully) they have plenty of rain.
And yesterday’s article in The Age comparing water consumption for different foods was interesting too. Tea-drinkers may be amused to know that at 25 litres for a cuppa, we’re using less water than the 140 litres required to produce a cup of coffee.
Perhaps we should all just drink plain water. After all, it only takes a litre of water to make a litre of water.
Despite countries like China consuming a lot of rice, they’re still below western countries in water consumption, because of the huge amounts required for livestock.
All up, it takes almost 16,000 litres of water to produce a single kilogram of beef.
Almost enough to make one switch to vegetarianism.
In total, China uses around 702,000 litres per person per year; Australia is at 1,393,000 litres. Canada is 50% higher again, and the USA is almost double.
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