Author: Daniel Bowen

Well, quite amazing, the newspapers have been delivered absolutely immaculately for the past week or so. They’re even put in the mailbox, rather than being thrown all over the driveway. Anybody would think the newsagent had read what I wrote about him!

Well Rugby arrived in Melbourne with a bang this weekend. The Bledisloe Cup – Australia versus New Zealand, played to about 90,000 people last night at the MCG. And all served by three pie sellers, which I thought was impressive. Actually it’s just as well the roving sellers don’t sell beer too. At least people  ... [More]

Last year I wrote, just slightly incredulously, about the Outback Steakhouse that we went to in Phoenix, Arizona. It purported to be Australian culture and food, but while the food was undeniably great, there wasn’t anything especially Australian about it except for the very silly names. Well, today I went to the reverse – The  ... [More]

Given the incredible range of stuff people can own – coats, books, magazines, shoes, everything – it can be quite disconcerting when you spot someone who has an object identical to something you own. This morning sitting opposite me on the train was a woman chuckling her way through precisely the same Bill Bryson book  ... [More]

Surprise surprise, The Australian didn’t show up this morning. So I rang the newsagent as promised (even though I would be walking straight past later on) and got him to bring one out. Okay, so it may cost me 25 cents for the phone call, but it’s a small price to pay for the satisfaction  ... [More]

Got off the train to go home this evening and presto! The blimp is back in town. Hovering over my head again, badgering me to buy Whitman’s chocolates.

It seems like only yesterday that The Pot Spot, a local business, finally shut up shop after holding their closing down sale which lasted well over six months, and through several "we’re really closing!" deadlines. Now, I’m not for one second suggesting that other local businesses would try this. I don’t know if this is  ... [More]

Our newsagent is a moron. We used to have great, friendly newsagents – I’ve mentioned them before – Irene and Hercules, the man with the strength to lift a dozen Saturday Age’s. But they’ve gone, and Mr Moron has taken up residence. We get newspapers delivered three times a week. The Age and Australian on  ... [More]

This morning I noticed the Billy Connolly quote in yesterday’s paper and read it to L: "Marriage is a terrific invention… but then, so is the bicycle repair kit." L asked "so would you rather have a bicycle repair kit?" "No", I replied, "… I don’t even have a bicycle!"

A friend of mine bought the same video capture board as me, but he had some trouble installing his. Why is installing things never as easy as they make out on the box? Maybe they should be more honest… "System requirements: Pentium processor or higher, Windows 95 or NT 4, Super VGA with 256 or  ... [More]

I thought it was foggy yesterday morning when I got to the station and couldn’t see much beyond the end of the platform. No hope of seeing if a train was coming, when it finally did come it was just a few moving lights in the mist before it suddenly glided out of the fog  ... [More]

After watching the news over the weekend, I’ve got a question about the Earth Summit. What the hell is our government doing? Our esteemed Prime Minister John Howard is zipping around the world claiming that somehow we Australians are special and shouldn’t have to be part of legally binding global greenhouse gas reductions?! Oh, terrific.  ... [More]