Thank goodness The Batchelor 3 has finished. Now that was a show that I found seriously boring. I had to sit through it waiting for the Sopranos or Six Feet Under to start. And I don’t actually watch those shows when they’re on - no, I tape them and watch them later in the week. This is a show that I found deadly boring just to fast-forward through. I can’t imagine how mind-numbingly dull it could be to actually watch it. Anyway is it the same Batchelor back for another go at a bevy of women, or some other slick haired dark suited bloke? I can’t tell.

Now Survivor 17: Lost In Studley Park (or something like that) has replaced it. Hopefully it won’t be quite so dull to fast-forward through. I’ve managed to remain almost untainted by reality TV shows in fact. My real life takes up far too much time to waste on them. Though I will confess I have on occasions done late-night ironing while watching The Amazing Race. But I’ll let that one slip through because basically I’m admiring the spectacular European scenery.

Oh, and I admit the promos for Queer Eye For The Straight Guy caught my eye, though I forgot to watch it on Monday night. It’s a fun idea, though of course it’s all based around clichés. I’ve met some straight men with impeccable taste, and some gay men with utterly appalling taste. In fact there’s a parody idea right there.

Meanwhile, the ISP most of my e-mail goes through has been having severe problems. Supposedly there is a huge amount of spam flying around at the moment - up to 50% above the previous levels, which sent their mail server into meltdown mode. They reckoned a few days ago that they’d fixed it by putting in some kind of filtering device. Uh uh.

Whatever their filtering device might do, it’s not up to the job, because we’re back in meltdown again today. Very annoying - I mean, if e-mail is being delayed for hours, how can I send timely replies to my favourite correspondents? This’ll probably be the impetus to finally get me to dump them and change my main e-mail address - something I’ve been meaning to do since it became apparent how much spam it gets bombarded with every day. So anyway if you’ve written to me recently and I’ve apparently ignored you, try again:.

Yesterday another step on the long road to domesticity. Brace yourself for a shock.

My friends will think it’s trick photography: me mowing the grass.

Are you sufficiently braced? Okay.

I did gardening.

After a few subtle hints of the "Hey Daniel, did you mow the lawn yet?" type recently from various people, I finally decided I could no longer ignore how long the grass was getting. It’s now two months since I moved in here, and I’ve come to the conclusion that constantly growing grass is not a problem that will simply go away if left unattended. Eventually - and I admit that perhaps this would be a long way off - the grass would be so overgrown that it would be impossible to get from the street to the front door without a machete.

So, what was the solution? Well to draw a bad analogy with transport, I had three choices.

• I could hire someone to do it. Analogous to hiring a taxi. Requires no effort on my part, apart from the handing over of moderate amounts of cash every time. Burns fossil fuels. I’m not super keen on fossil fuels, really.
• I could go and buy a super dooper revved-up motor mower. Analogous to buying a car. Requires some effort, but a big bunch of money for the initial purchase, fuel and maintenance. And trust me, I know all about engine maintenance - or at least paying for it. Also burns fossil fuels and is quite capable of drowning out the local birdsong.
• Or I could go for the green option, and buy a rotary hand-pushed mower. I used to use one when I was a kid, and to my delight they still make these beasts. I suspect the design hasn’t changed in about 100 years. Analogous to a bicycle. Cheap, low maintenance, burns no fuel, but involves a lot of physical effort to get the job done.

Okay so it was a weak analogy, but what the hell. After wandering aroundBunnings this morning, the kids and I came home with a
basic rotary mower, a rake, and a pair of shears. I was ready for action.

I put the mower together, slipped on the Blunnies, then spent a couple of hours mowing, raking, and shearing in the sunshine. I did the back garden (a minor forest had developed near the back fence), front garden, and not forgetting the nature strip. It was bloody hard work, and while the garden doesn’t exactly look perfect (Peter Cundall I ain’t - I can’t even do the accent), and while I was completely and utterly stuffed afterwards, it all looked heaps better.

The big men fly in the Grand Final. (Pic: ABC News online/Getty Images)

I thought a lot about which team to support in theGrand Final. Eventually I concluded I must by default go for the Brisbane Lions, because I could not support Collingwood for the following reasons:

• firstly and foremost, they are Collingwood. You either barrack for Collingwood or you don’t.
  Steve Bracks’ argument that you should support the local team just doesn’t stack up when it’s Collingwood.
• 
  Eddie McGuire
• I have a kind of fondness for the old poorly done by clubs like Fitzroy, even if they have been gobbled up by the Lions. Yes possibly that’s the flimsiest excuse possible, but it’s still a reason. But most significantly:
• The infamous Mr Speakerphone is a big Collingwood supporter. Since he’s gone, I don’t have to put up with him anymore, but he would come in every Friday with a Magpies shirt on (hey if I was writing the corporate dress code, that wouldn’t pass), and proceed to shout into his speakerphone to whoever was listening about how he had seats in the corporate box at the MCG.

Most at the barbecue also had their reasons for not supporting Collingwood. It became apparent by halfway through the second quarter (even to those of us watchingTony &Rae’s fancy big widescreen TV from the optimum viewing position of outside through a window) that the Pies were in deep trouble. This trend continued for most of the rest of the game, until a time in the last quarter when I commented jokingly that they could still win if they kicked a goal every minute. This was their cue to kick three goals in a row, which left most of us laughing our heads off. But it was all downhill for them after that.

By the time the final siren sounded, with Collingwood having received a 50 point drubbing by Brisbane, I was quietly grinning to myself as I imagined Mr Speakerphone sitting in a corporate box at the MCG, the smile finally wiped off his face.

Last night I trudged home from the station in the darkness about 7pm. As I passed a house, I heard a strange sound from the garden. Without slowing down I glanced around, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear I made out the shape of a man was standing next to the fence, and from the sounds of it, he was urinating into the flowerbed. Now, I assume that he either lives there or owns the place or quite possibly both, in which case he has a perfect right to urinate into the flowerbed. All I’m saying is it’s not something I do.

I have given up, for the moment, reading To The Lighthouse. It’s a fabulous book, but really needs way more attention than I feel I can give it right now. It’s not the sort of book for skimming through, or grabbing a few minutes here and there on the train with. It needs the kind of dedicated reading time I simply don’t have at the moment because I am SO DAMN BUSY, so I have cut my losses (a $2.20 library fine, to be precise) and returned it. For now.

Today the city was awash with footy fans, for the Grand Final parade. Okay, so maybe I have the misfortune to go for a teamthat seems to give up about halfway through the season the last few years, but the atmosphere is great around this time of year, especially with all the Brisbane fans visiting from interstate, wandering around not knowing where anything is, blocking the footpaths. Luckily the rain held off until after the parade had finished, anyway. Going to a Grand Final BBQ atTony &Rae’s place tomorrow - hopefully it won’t rain and we can make plenty of noise in their backyard and annoy their
neighbours.

And amazing news tonight. Doctor Who is coming back. Like, really coming back. Like, new episodes.On the telly. Really. Truly. Wow.

Yesterday an unexpected diversion at work: a fire drill.

This theoretically consists of an initial "alert tone" alarm, whereupon John, our cheerful floor warden, dons his yellow hard hat and stands by the emergency intercom and awaits instructions, followed by an evacuation tone, whereupon we calmly walk to the designated fire exit, walk down the stairs out of the building to the nearby gardens and gather.

So what happened in practice? Well the initial alarm went off, and John our cheerful floor warden sprinted off to the intercom (sans yellow hard hat). Some of my cunning workmates decided that this meant an evacuation was imminent, and decided that they couldn’t be bothered walking down twenty-eight floors, so they went and jammed themselves into the lifts (with all the other people who had had the same idea), which were still running at that point, and went and got a coffee.

The rest of us stayed put, deciding to keep in the spirit of things, thinking that either it was a false alarm, in which case we could just get on with our work (of which there was plenty), or a drill, in which case it wouldn’t hurt at all to practice evacuating the building, so that we knew the procedure well, and so that the building emergency people would have a better idea of how it would all run in a real emergency.

Of course, we didn’t know exactly what was going on. With theevents in the world the last few years, you never know - it could be for real. But that was something we tried not to think about.

So we waited for either John our floor warden to let us know what we should do, or for an evacuation signal to sound. For quite a few minutes, neither came, and one bloke talking on the phone to a colleague on another floor reckoned we should be getting out. Uhh yeah that’s a good idea - just evacuate without being told to. Not sure I like that as a concept, running blindly.

Finally John, now complete with his yellow hard hat re-appeared and told us to evacuate via one of the emergency staircases. We did so, and wondering why no evacuation signal had sounded on our floor, began trudging down the twenty-eight floors to the ground floor.

Twenty-eight floors. It’s a long way down. Down and down and round and round. It takes long enough to do it in the express lift, let alone the stairs.

But each floor goes pretty fast, and while we were cursing our wimpy colleagues who had escaped in the lift, at least we were getting exercise. It took about fifteen minutes to reach ground level, the stairs full of people by then. But calm, cheerful people for the most part. We all piled over into the gardens, found our floor groups and stood chatting in the sunshine for about half an hour while more people continued to stream out of the building. Our wimpy colleagues, still clutching their coffees, found us in the gardens.

Eventually just before lunchtime the all clear was given, and we all headed back. Yes, it was just a drill. There wasn’t a fire. There wasn’t a suspicious package. No gas leak (though there was a suspect smell coming from someone’s long-forgotten food in the 28th floor fridge). The building didn’t fall down. None of the accountants on the 41st floor tragically fell to their deaths. Hopefully the people running the show got a good idea of how well things would go in a real emergency.

As for me, I discovered how long it takes to evacuate the building. I got to get away from my desk for about an hour. I got a good aerobic workout, and to get out into the fresh air and the sunshine. And all on company time. So I’m not complaining.

07:08. Mobile phone +61 4 ## ### ### turned on. Phone provider: Telstra. Owner: DANIEL BOWEN. Location: Carnegie.

07:10. Computer active from IP address 203.113.###.###. ISP: Netspace ADSL. User: DANIEL BOWEN. E-mail, web traffic.

08:27. Mobile phone detected moving: Carnegie, Ormond, Bentleigh, Moorabbin, Hampton, Brighton. Stopped for 6 minutes in Moorabbin.

08:58. Train ticket validated, Brighton Beach station platform 2. Ticket number 018 1101 06018945, Monthly zone 1 adult ticket, purchased 09:27 11 Sep 2003 by EFTPOS. Card number 560279 ######### ##, cheque account. Cardholder: MR DANIEL F BOWEN.

09:01. Mobile phone detected moving. Brighton, Elsternwick, St Kilda, Prahran, South Yarra, Richmond, City east. Stopped for 3 minutes at Richmond; signal lost for 2 minutes 09:26-09:28 between Richmond and Parliament.

09:30. Train ticket used at Parliament station north exit.

09:34. Electronic key used 28th floor of building ###. Key number 464####. Allocated to: BOWEN, DANIEL F.

09:35. Logged onto computer ###.###.28.219, user BOWEN, DANIEL F.

09:38. Web proxy activity logged (and sporadically throughout the day until approx 16:18).

10:03. Mobile phone call received from +61 3 9626 ####. Originated in vicinity of Southbank. Length 4 minutes.

11:01-16. Mobile phone signal lost. Computer activity ceased.

11:21. Mobile phone detected moving: City north-east.

12:04. Electronic key used 28th floor.

12:20. Mobile phone call received from +61 3 9818 ####. Originated in vicinity of Hawthorn. Length 7 minutes.

12:37. Electronic key used 28th floor.

13:12. Mobile phone call received from +61 3 9626 ####. Originated in vicinity of Southbank. Length 1 minute.

13:43. 2 x SMSs received from computer system alarm. User BOWEN, DANIEL F logged onto 3 servers at data centre for approx 15 mins each.

14:44. Logged into internet banking. Paid bill via BPay to Australian Tax Office. Transaction number 529295812309. ATO reference number: ##### ### ### ####.

16:16. Electronic key used 28th floor.

16:21. Logged off PC.

16:28. Withdrawal $90 from ATM terminal 302301, 123 Lonsdale Street, savings account.

16:31. Train ticket validated, Parliament station north entrance.

16:33. Mobile phone detected moving: City east, Richmond, South Yarra, Prahran, St Kilda, Elsternwick, Brighton, Hampton, Moorabbin.

17:16. Mobile phone call received from +61 3 9626 ####. Originated in vicinity of Southbank. Length 1 minute.

17:42. Mobile phone detected moving: Moorabbin, Bentleigh, Ormond, Carnegie.

17:58. Computer active from IP address 203.113.###.###. Various activity over following 5 hours: web, e-mail, NNTP.

20:19. Logged onto ICQ from 203.113.###.###.

22:50. Mobile phone signal lost.

22:51. Computer logged off ISP.

Ate fish’n'chips / Walked to Chadstone / Tidied up / Pondered if EVIL BASTARD NEWSPAPER THIEVES are more likely to strike when one’s car is not in the driveway and one fails to go looking for the newspaper until after midday / Discovered how great drying washing on a sunny day is / Went for one of my occasional bike rides / Made a mushroom and capsicum quiche / Ate it / Started re-watching myUltraviolet DVDs - what a tops show / Went to bed way too late / Paid late bills / Ate an appalling amount of chocolate / Walked, basked and snoozed in the sunshine.

It’s something I’d have never expected. A miracle. If I were a Catholic, I’d be shouting for someone involved to be beatified.

My car is in for repair. And it’s not going to cost me a cent.

It’s been making a nunga-nunga-nunga sound for a while now. I finally waited until my credit card was clear enough that I could stomach yet another repair bill, then took it to get it looked at. The repair bloke rang me to tell me it was a fault in the wotsit and affecting the thingamajig. O no! Not the thingamajig! O woe is me!

But then he said the words that were magic to my ears: "Because you just had a new engine put in, it’s covered under warranty".

I couldn’t believe it. Was it my lucky day or what?

Well I wanted the car last night, so I picked it up, then dropped it off again with them today. The engine place were going to haul it down to some godforsaken spot in Clayton and work on it today, and all being well I’ll pick it up tomorrow. And it’ll cost me zilch. Wow.

Obviously this chain of events has left me in something of a state of shock, because after dropping the car off this morning, as I walked to the station to go to work, I realised I didn’t have my wallet. I’d left it somewhere at home. Oops. I suddenly felt very flustered. My normal wallet pocket didn’t feel right.

Once upon a time
I had a mental checklist that I used to reel off every time I left the house going to work. Diary, phone, hankie, wallet, lunch… that kind of thing. Maybe I need to do something like that again.

Thankfully I had $3 with me, enough to buy a $2.70 ticket to get me either to work on the train or back to home on the bus to find my wallet. But diverting via home would mean another hour or so before I got to work. And while I have fairly flexible working hours, it was already 9:20 - to roll up to work around 10:30 might be pushing it. So I went to work instead, safe in the knowledge that one of my good colleagues would lend me a few shekels to last the rest of the day. Which they did. What nice people they are.