Categories
Food'n'drink Home life Working life

A few thoughts

Yesterday morning I was car-less, and to make carrying stuff while taking the kids to school on the bus easier, I packed a few things into my day pack. Sits on my back, easy. It was only later when walking to the station to go to work that I realised that with the day pack on, and a tie, white shirt, dark trousers… all I was missing was the name tag and I’d have looked exactly like a Mormon. Well, except that my tie was too cheerful (purple), and my shirt had long sleeves. How do those poor Mormon boys survive the depths of winter in short sleeves, anyway? Maybe they clutch their bibles for warmth.

The car is back. I’m happy to say it’s not making its funny noises anymore. For now. I’m even happier to say that the repairs were once again under warranty, so my wallet is no lighter for it.

The car turned ten years old a couple of months ago. I wonder when it will make the transition from being merely pass� to being a bomb?

Thankfully the wild storm of Tuesday night dodged my suburb completely. No golf-ball-sized hailstones, being rescued by boat, or soggy carpet for me, oh no. Just a moderate amount of rain and some spectacular lightning.

One of my colleagues bought a dozen yabbies at the market this morning. They’ve sat all day in a plastic box full of water by her desk, occasionally splashing and knocking on the sides. She’ll be a bizarre sight on the train home tonight.

It’s Christmas season again, and an almost bewildering number of lunches, drinkies and dinners are arranging themselves in my diary for the month. Catching up with old friends and ex-colleagues is probably the only chance all year I’ll have of getting rid of my never-shrinking stack of business cards, so this morning I dug some out from the box they’ve been hiding in. If the people I give them to are anything like me, they’ll end up in a wallet for a few days, then relegated to a small pile on their desks, then within a month any essential details copied to an address book or into a mobile phone, and the card itself will be thrown in the bin. But hey, at least I’ll be rid of some of them.

In the gent’s toilet at work, one of the soap dispensers has gone missing. Perhaps it’s been stolen by rampaging maruading corporate soap dispenser thieves.

And one final thought for now: I know some women wear runners on the way to work, because their shoes are too glammy to be comfortable to wear while commuting. Fair enough. But blokes wearing runners on the way to work? With suits? That’s just wrong.

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.