News and current affairs
I count myself lucky, given the power chaos yesterday. I got out of the city just before things really got pair pear-shaped (even if the train was an old non-aircon one, at least it was moving, and not too crowded, and we opened all the windows, which helped a bit). Marita was, I think, less ... [More]
Happy New Year! The last one seems to have gone pretty quickly. Must be because I’ve been so busy. Some followups from 2006: After driving a Prius a few weeks ago, I note Bill Shorten in The Age called for the car companies locally to work on hybrid cars. At the start of the Christmas ... [More]
To the readers of my blog, a Merry Christmas to you all! (Moved off the front page so people don’t get the singing when they don’t want it!)
On Monday… Deposited my tax return, which was twice as much as I expected. Work gave me a big basket of Christmas goodies. (Nice change from the Gold Class cinema tickets I never get around to using until the last month before expiry). A new food court is opening in my building. They came through ... [More]
Smoke has descended on Melbourne, from the bushfires elsewhere in the state. Down in the shopping centre this morning, the haze over the street was noticeable. Marita commented on how bad it was. “Yeah”, I replied. “It’s like a mix of smoke and fog… they really should have a word for that.” Later I had ... [More]
It’s Christmas party season. But with increasing numbers of parties and bookings, some of them are creeping backwards into November. My major work function was a full month before Christmas. Apart from the usual dinners and so on, the word on the street is that lawn bowling is the new boat cruise. Perhaps the Crackerjack ... [More]
As I think I mentioned once before, TV news often record a “walking shot” to use for editing purposes. They’ll get you to back away from the camera 10-20 metres, then walk past it, without looking at the camera, and hoping no huge swarm of people comes around the corner and walks in front of ... [More]
The great thing about election day is you can exercise your right to democracy, and have a sausage too. Daniel’s election day sausage tally: 2. PS. Sunday night. Result probably what most people expected. Interesting to see that the ALP misinformation worked — some people were asking Greens helpers if they were preferencing Libs. (They ... [More]
The streets were closed to traffic, the barricades went up. Yes, the Bentleigh festival was on again. But 15km away from the sausage sizzles, roaming families, showbags and Humphrey B Bear, some streets in central Melbourne were blocked-off for the third day, for the G20 meeting. Hearing about the violence in Collins Street on Saturday, ... [More]
Spotted at DJ’s on Friday night: Christmas decorations about to go up.
A survey says Australian children’s top fears are car accidents, bombs, burglars and terrorists. Some of us were talking on Saturday night about our fears when we were growing up in the early 80s. For many it was the fear of nuclear war. I remember lying awake at night thinking about it. Glad I was ... [More]
The grade 5 kids at the school were busy earlier this term building models of the solar system. Like many, Isaac’s was based on a spare hoola hoop, with planets of various sizes and colours hanging off it by fishing-wire. Most of the models came home a few weeks ago, but the best were called ... [More]