Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.
It’s all over the news. The papers, the radio, the TV, the Web… what is it? No, not the Second Car Theory. The El Nino effect. Everybody’s talking about it. But… umm… What exactly is the El Nino effect? Okay, I know it’s some kind of weather anomaly, but none of the numerous stories about ... [More]
Well, I got back to work yesterday to find that my desk had moved. In fact the move had been on the cards for some time, and most of us believed it might never actually happen. Office relocations in big companies have a habit of being permanently on the drawing board, the actual event being ... [More]
Well, today we said goodbye to my brother-in-law Daniel Boren after his two week stay here. Perhaps surprisingly there was no confusion with our names, since I insist on "Daniel", and he is generally known as "Dan". Just as well.
Today our target was to show Dan just a few of the very bizarre animals that inhabit this wild, wide brown land of ours. So we set off for the zoo. We arrived reasonably early, and only had to queue at the gate for a minute or two – a stark contrast from the last ... [More]
Today our target was to eat fish’n’chips. Not much of a target, you might think, but these were no ordinary fish, and certainly no ordinary chips. There is a fish’n’chips shop in Canterbury, a leafy suburb in Melbourne’s east, which according to a survey last year in The Age makes the second best fish’n’chips in ... [More]
Sunday was my most MANLY and BUTCH day in quite some time. Rounding up sheep and footy. Makes me want to beat my chest just thinking about it. Ug. It started out on the farm, Dan and I being invited to help with some sheep. The first step was to move the sheep to a ... [More]
Today we were country bound. A tradition, that we have (okay, so we’ve only done it done twice now, so it’s not much of a tradition), is to take our visiting American relatives up to our friends’ farm near Ballarat. They’re also American, and enjoy having their fellow countrymen to visit. Perhaps they do weird ... [More]
Today our plan was to look at the Vic Market, to eat souvlaki, and to roam wherever we felt like roaming. But first we set out for the city, the first stop being a cruise around the shops in search of a rugby top for Dan. Dan likes rugby tops, and apparently they’re about as ... [More]
On Thursday Dan and I set off for Southbank. Since Dan’s a bit of a boating nut, we thought we’d catch the ferry across the bay to glorious Williamstown, and check out the pier there, and get a look at the Enterprize replica. I remember years ago when there was very little at Southbank, other ... [More]
Today, after buying footy tickets for Sunday through the truly wondrous Ticketmaster/Bass Web site (which proved that high technology can overcome the monotony of queuing outside a ticket box or waiting on the phone for a lifetime – even if it does cost $6 extra per booking), we headed for the Polly Woodside museum. Dan’s ... [More]
It was Dan’s second day here, and we headed into groovy funky Carlton. We jumped out of the train at Museu… errr Melbourne Central and strolled up Swanston Street, along the way pointing out the RMIT students, who at the time had been occupying one of the university’s finance offices for a couple of weeks. ... [More]
From time to time there’s a story so big on the news that it dominates everything else in the western world. Something you’ll remember in decades to come, and tell your offspring exactly where you were when you heard the news. For me it’s been the death of John Lennon (on the telly when I ... [More]
There was something missing when I got into the city today. The City Weekly! It’s a weekly magazine handed out at the station every Thursday morning, but today the hander-outerers were nowhere to be seen. gasp. How would I survive without my Thursday morning fix of city gossip? Without Kate Langbroek’s usually amusing column? Without ... [More]
Today was my birthday. Along with Don Bradman and Mother Teresa. I invited them out for drinks to celebrate, but apparently they were both busy. I think someone else in the office had a birthday too, because I heard people singing it from behind some partitions somewhere. It was just the immediate family doing the ... [More]
It was a pretty crappy weekend as far as the weather goes, so we didn’t get out very much. I spent some of Sunday sorting through all my tax stuff to take to the accountant tonight. (Yes, I have an accountant. Don’t give me shit about it. This isn’t the sleevenotes of Neil’s Heavy Concept ... [More]
Less than twenty-four hours after I posted the above entry online, paper towel had re-appeared in the bathroom at work. Never underestimate the power of the Net! From time to time people ask me "what ever happened about…" If you’ve been wondering about various things I’ve talked about, but haven’t mentioned in some weeks, here’s ... [More]