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.
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Zoo, pub, etc
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]
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The best fish’n’chips in town
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]
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Thump your chest
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]
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The traditional country outing
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]
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Messing about in boats
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]
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Polly and the city
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]
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Groovy funky Carlton
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]
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Wow
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]
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27 on the 27th
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]