The theory is that the Melbourne CBD is booming. Retail activity is through the roof, not just on weekdays but also evenings and weekends. Certainly from my point of view as a CBD worker-bee and occasional weekend visitor, it seems like much of the CBD is bustling for most of the time, no doubt helped ... [More]
Here we go, celebrating the mundane yet again… here is my local post box, a couple of streets away. And you get a stop sign and a fire hydrant thrown in for no extra cost — how good is that?! Feel free to post a picture of your local post box… Link in the Trackbacks ... [More]
It’s the last day of my holidays, though perhaps fittingly, I’ve been bombarded with support calls today. Oh the curse of the mobile phone and remote network connection. Some questions that might be resolved by Monday. Or maybe not: I bought some clothes yesterday. Can I actually pull off 3/4 length pants, or will they ... [More]
I just did a load of washing, including a doona cover. Every single other item ended up inside the doona cover. How is this possible? Number of people observed at the mobile blood bank last week who were reading The Da Vinci Code: 2. It’s hot again today. Trying to take cover, keep the house ... [More]
Got my water bill the other day, and along with it was a little card about average water usage. I can’t be bothered re-keying it, so I’ll scan. This is the average number of litres per day, used by households of different sizes (people) and with/without gardens. Me? I’m sitting on 347 litres per day, ... [More]
It started with an observation from one or both of my offspring: “I’ve never been on a sprinter train!” So I thought ah, one more week of holidays for me, I’ll take them on the train down to Geelong. They’re well-versed with travel on the suburban trains (it’s all part of my “Dad’s taxi”-avoidance scheme ... [More]
The Motorcycle Diaries. Perhaps movies are always better when they’re free, but I enjoyed this a lot. Certainly more than Age critic Jim Schembri, who apparently found it dull. I didn’t… I have no Che Guevara t-shirts, posters or other memorabilia, but his transformation from medical student to revolutionary was only part of the story. ... [More]
The other week I was reading some bit of junk mail that came through my post box, and noting that dish washers aren’t quite as exhorbitantly priced as I thought they might be. When I eventually own a house, I’ll be sure to get one, just to save the dish washing effort. But in the ... [More]
Tintin lovers, be sure to tune into SBS on Tuesday at 10pm to catch the acclaimed documentary Tintin & I. I heard of this one a while back, and was watching out for it in film festival programmes and overseas DVD releases, but to no avail… so it’ll be good to finally see it.
My latest Ebay listing: LOTR Two Towers collector’s DVD – box and Gollum only Just the box and the Gollum This is the Australian DVD collector’s gift box of Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers… but WITHOUT the discs… eg it’s just the gift box and the Gollum/Smeagol. Just to emphasise: No discs, no ... [More]
The Triplets of Belleville. French animation, with some very funny moments (especially from Bruno the dog), and some very dark ones too, which possibly make it too dark for kids, despite the PG rating. Keep watching after the credits (I wish we had.) Maybe don’t watch it if you don’t like frogs… Great stuff. Japanese ... [More]
Service call part 1 On Tuesday afternoon I took my sister and her husband to go look at a car in West Footscray Kingsville. Consider it Used-Karma — my sister gave me lifts when years ago I was car-shopping. We got there, and then I locked my keys in my car. Oops. I tried to ... [More]
Here are my New Year’s resolutions. They start off with vague motherhood statements and get into some specifics further down. To be, in alphabetical order, a better boyfriend, brother, parent, son, uncle, world citizen… to be a better person. To keep learning and trying new things. To keep working for or giving to causes I ... [More]
Ate at Subway yesterday with the kids. I am seriously out of my depth there. Must have spent a good couple of minutes staring up at the menu before even daring to approach the counter. Eventually figured out what we wanted to order, and the woman behind the counter started asking the hard questions. Like ... [More]
Was chatting the other day to Tony about radio web casts from across the globe, and I was remembering how much harder it used to be before the age of the Innanet. About 20 years ago I had a rickety old shortwave radio with which I used to listen to the BBC World Service. It ... [More]
With my sister and her husband having returned to Australia after about 3 years of being away (and for my sister, about 5 years away from Melbourne), I find myself explaining the little things that have changed while they’ve been away. Things that are new. They’ve been reading the news from overseas, they know the ... [More]