“DANIEL Bowen you are so dumped. We are like so over. I’m not even going to send you a text or an email. You can just work it out for yourself. You’re finished.”
– Virginia Haussegger in The Canberra Times. No, really.
Go read it. My thoughts later. My thoughts here.
The memorial service for the victims of the Kerang disaster was this afternoon. One can only hope that it provided some solace to their friends and family.
Life for the rest of us goes on. It’s been interesting to read the thoughts of some of those close to the scene.
Katrina, a Kerang local writes from China of her initial response to hearing of the crash from far away.
Michael Harry, an Adelaide journalist writes about how the story broke.
Scottie B, from the local Kerang newspaper, spent an exhausting couple of days at the crash site immediately after the crash, had some things to say about visiting journos, and also writes of life getting back to normal.
Rob tries to imagine the grief for those involved… and gets a comment from a reader who experienced the Queen Street massacre twenty years ago, and how these memories come flooding back whenever a similar incident occurs.
“Lad Litter” remembers seeing a similar accident at Heyfield in 1975, involving a car that tried to race a train, but hit it instead.
“Snappz” notes with sadness that the name Kerang is destined to be remembered for the crash.
One event, but many perspectives, in so many people’s thoughts.
After signing up weeks ago, my box of green goodies from Origin Energy finally arrived. That is, a card from the post office arrived, and I went down to collect it on Tuesday.
As the lady dug around behind the counter to find it, I looked across. There must have been 7 or 8 Origin Green Energy boxes piled up; obviously a few people are going green this week, which is good to see.
I got it home and we opened it up. As promised, half-a-dozen CFL globes (don’t believe the stuff about them being deadly from the mercury, it’s a beat-up), a water-saving shower head, a mini-football, drink bottle and backpack.
Though I have to say, despite trying, we haven’t managed to pump up the football. And the backpack is very pathetic-looking, made out of the same sort of flimsy stuff as green shopping bags. So I reckon those two are duds.
The rest will be welcome though. I’ll put the CFLs on my remaining lights that don’t have them, and install the shower head on the weekend.
TV reminder: Doctor Who — The Runaway Bride, tonight 8:30pm on ABC. Series 3 begins on Saturday at 7:30pm.
So, John Laws is retiring. I liked Matthew Ricketson’s report, which talked about “a conga line of” praising politicians — surely referencing Mark Latham’s “conga line of suckholes”.
Lawsy might air on 71 radio stations around the country, but that doesn’t include any in Melbourne. I’d like to think we’re a bit more cynical (particularly after the Cash For Comment affair), and I’m not impressed at all by the conga line of Federal politicians who lined up to praise him on Monday. I suppose it was asking too much for any of them to tell the truth: on an estimated $8 million income, he’s not “everyman”, and the only reason the pollies suck up to him is the audience he commands.
Of all those who commented in The Age story, I agreed with 3AW talk host Neil Mitchell the most: “He has been quite brilliant in some ways, and quite frightening in other ways … The cash-for-comment time was a very bad era for talk radio.”
Recycled tissues are back in the mainstream supermarkets, if my local is any judge. Naturale 100% recycled. I’ll stock up.
Sadly the Continental brand chicken sauce I (and the kids) like seems to have vanished completely. It seems to have morphed from two jars into one, and adopted the dodgy-sounding brand name Indian Tonight.
Last night On Sunday night (after finding my precious recycled tissues) I was queuing with my roughly 25 items and my trolley at the normal checkout. A supermarket lady said I could go over to the Express Lane. The “8 items and less” lane. The no trolleys lane.
I must have sounded doubtful. “OK, if you’re sure…”
She was.
Great. So there I was clogging up the Express Lane with a hulking great trolley. I could feel the glares on my back from those people with 8 items and less and in a basket. I felt like turning around and imploring them not to judge me. “Please… I didn’t want to bring my trolley down the Express Chicane… they told me to do it… Honestly!”
No words were exchanged. Maybe they glared, maybe they didn’t. I probably would have. Maybe I’ll know better next time.
The Choir of Hard Knocks, made up entirely of homeless or disadvantaged people, played the Town Hall last night.
But on Friday night they were singing in the Campbell Arcade (Degraves Street Subway), evidently opening an exhibit down there of portraits of the choir members. You could barely see or hear them amongst the big crowd that turned up to see them (or, like us, happened to come past to catch a train and stayed for a bit).
You might have missed the singing, but like many exhibitions in the arcade, the pictures are well worth taking a look at.
What a week.
I already mentioned a colleague’s mother-in-law and an ex-colleague of mine passing away last weekend. I went to the latter funeral today. The family are understandably very upset at his unexpected death at 63. They had a nice booklet with a eulogy that talked in detail about his life. Nice touch.
Just before the funeral I got some health news about someone, which I won’t divulge just now.
Then when I got back home after the funeral I got the news that a guy I know was hit by a tram this morning in Victoria Parade. He’s off the critical list now, and is stable, though there’s some risk of brain damage.
Definitely one of those weeks.
Most days I take my own lunch into work. But if I’ve forgotten or not had time, and I’m not going out to lunch with anybody else, I’ll buy something. Sometimes it’ll be a burger. But most of the other times, I’ll go to a place in the Australia On Collins foodcourt which makes rather nice rolls, with roast chicken, lamb, or pork.
On Monday I went and got one. I found the people had all changed, as had much of the signage. The chicken roll had less avocado than before, the lettuce was rather sloppily placed, part of the tomato had fallen out, and the chicken was less plentiful and bits of it were a little tough.
I’m not sure, but I wonder if the people that used to run the place may have sold up and left. Let me theorise for a moment: they worked out how to run their business, got it running, built up goodwill… then decided to sell the business in its entirety: the shop lease, the equipment, and most of all, the methodology: recipes, customer service, the full bit. It’s only the implementation by the new people that hasn’t quite worked.
I hope they made a lot of money, and I’ll give the new owners another go, but it’s not what it was. Or maybe I’m completely wrong and they just happened to have different — sloppier — people working there that day.
Let me segue into my theory on how to get rich.
The easiest way to get rich is not to work yourself to the bone, but to have other people working for you — or at least helping themselves to your stuff for money.
And the easiest way to have other people working for you is to have good ideas.
The good idea might be a design for a thing, a way of working/running a business, a great artwork, or something else that’s highly marketable and preferably easily duplicated (but protected by law against unauthorised copying). It might be something you thought of yourself, or that you acquired somehow.
I wish I had such an idea. I’ll keep working on it. But brains, not brawn, is the answer.
In the mean time, I’ve been putting Google ads on my various pages. It hasn’t pulled in much money, just a little bit. But given my personal blog gets more visitors than just about any of my other sites, I might try it here too.