Archive for April, 2008

So Liz’s having a go at me for something or other (I probably deserved it) and Jack observes but says nothing. I leave the room and he turns to Liz and says, “He’s trying to reach out to you, but you’re pushing him away.”

He heard it in the film Underdog.

Big Day Out …
After much cajoling from both Liz and Jack, it was decreed that we would go to Sydney so Jack could have a bit of fun during his school holidays. The plan was to visit the Wildlife Centre which is situated right next door to the Aquarium in Darling Harbour, and then the Hyde Park Barracks.

Liz managed to get us a great deal online for the Wildlife Centre tickets and discovered that if you park in the nearby Entertainment Centre carpark and get your ticket endorsed by the centre, you can park there all day for $11. Bargain. So Liz booked the tickets online.

My TomTom’s been out of commission since the windscreen mount fell to pieces. When I bought my N95 they gave me a car mount kit which I realised pretty early on was fairly useless to me. So I canabilised the phone mount for the TomTom and the end results (given that I did it) are bloody excellent.

So we parked in the Entertainment Centre carpark and made the short walk into Darling Harbour. Jack and Liz had a spot of breakfast in Starbucks and we all enjoyed watching the harbour traffic coming and going. The weather started to improve and before long I was regretting bringing my hoodie out it was so warm.

Everyone fed or coffee’d up, we wandered over to the Wildlife Centre. When we went inside there was a sign suggesting that we turn the Bluetooth on on our mobile phones, which we did. As you wander about you get sent pictures, ring tones, animations and interesting facts about the animals via Bluetooth message. Very cool too.

The first creatures you encounter are insects – spiders, cockroaches, millipedes, ants … you name it. We all found the spiders very instructive since, despite the fact that we’re surrounded by redbacks, whitetails and funnelwebs – we sometimes have a hard time identifying them. So it was very handy to be able to study them at our leisure. We would have stayed longer, but Liz’s not very keen on spiders.

Next up were lizards and snakes and reptiles in general. Again – very instructive, since some of the centre’s longstay residents are native to our area. Interesting to note that both the most poisonous arachnid and the most poisonous snake in the world were both there (funnelweb and taipan respectively).

After a few dull birds, you move into the sections for mammals. We particularly liked the Bilbys, which spent their time bouncing up and down inside their enclosure much to the enjoyment of Jack. The koalas were doing what koalas do – sleep in their trees.

On the way out, we had a wander around the butterfly enclosure (pretty good because the butterflys are everywhere and land on your head or outstretched arm) and had a close encounter with a python which a staff members was letting people touch. All in all I thought it was well worth the visit – well laid out, instructive and a lot easier to see quickly than Taronga.

We caught the monorail to the CBD and had lunch in the food court under the skytower. I’ve never seen that place less than heaving, but there’s an excellent variety of food stalls to choose from. Then we wandered through Ray Jones and over to Hyde Park to see the convict exhibits in the barracks.

We were very impressed by Hyde Park. It’s set out on three floors and includes exhibits on the barracks itself as well as general displays on convict life. On the upper floor there’s a lot of hammocks strung up so you can try ‘em out for size. I particularly enjoyed the interactive exhibits. One of these enables you to read the original log books listing the inmates. One inmate – a certain John Peters, originally from Bristol, who was convicted in 1829 of highway robbery ran into trouble with the prison authorities for “having beastly connexion with a sow.” Well, you have to get it where you can I guess.

Having spent a very informative 90 minutes in the barracks, we wandered back to the city centre monorail and travelled to the Paddy’s Markets station, which is located right next to the entertainment centre car park. Liz hadn’t been in the markets before, so we had a quick wander around. If you’re in desperate need of the worst kind of tourist tat, be sure to pay it a visit yourself.

Anzacs …
The Easter holidays here include a long weekend around Anzacs day. One of the traditions, above and beyond remembering the war dead at dawn ceremonies – is to play two-up at the pub. Two-up’s a simple game of chance played with coins. There are several variations, but at my local they were playing the simple three coin version.

Before each game starts everyone places their bets on a heads or tails win. Anyone can shout out a bet “20 on heads,” or “50 on tails” and anyone can take them up on that bet. Then three coins are tossed in the air and if two out of three are heads, then it’s a heads win etc. It started off fairly tamely, but before long a good crowd had gathered around the ring and there was plenty of betting (it’s the only day you can legally bet outside).

I watched for a while and then had a punt myself. I lost $20 first time out, but won it straight back. After several more bets I walked away $50 up which was a bit of a result.

End of season …
Lifesaving has officially ended on our beach for the season. We had a good clear-up today and stowed all the gear away in the shed. Later on at the committee meeting, the club secretary read out a letter from the head of surf lifesaving australia, no less.

Turned out that said head honcho had been driving back to Sydney from the south coast and decided to call into Barefoot Bay on his way back. In his letter he said how pleased he’d been to see a perfectly set out beach and that all the patrol members were kitted out correctly and friendly and informative. It was, it turned out, a day that I was on patrol and I remember passing the time of day with an old bloke on the day in question – who, yes, turned out to be the head honcho. Anyway – he said that their organisation often dwelled on the negatives and wanted to get in touch with us to highlight some positives. Made me quite proud that did.

Later ‘taters …

I started my little PC repair business about 7 months ago now. It’s been fairly steady so far, but there are periods when it’s dead on its arse and periods when I’ve got five PCs on the go at once and I’d like to smooth things out a bit. To this end I’ve been out flyering the surrounding towns with a leaflet I designed. The first place I flyered was Broughton and the results were excellent (20+ jobs and 10+ referrals from those jobs), so I’ve started on places like Gilmore, Belfast, Sandy Point and, of couse, my home town of the Bay.

It’s a genuinely enjoyable thing to do if I’m being honest. I can be a very lazy bastard, but I really like getting out and about with my MP3 player on and a bag full of leaflets to deliver. When you walk around neighbourhoods you see them in a whole new light and I heartily recommend it if you really want to get a feel for a place.

Last week I was flyering in Belfast, about 10km down the road from here. It’s a satellite town of Swindon and has a mixture of posho houses and down-at-hells fibros. I was working my way around a new estate, happily lost in my thoughts listening to an audio book on my Sony. As I was walking up the verge I noticed that the posties tracks, which I had been following all afternoon, had sunk down a bit into the grass. The somewhat obvious reason for this did not occur to me and I gayly strolled into a patch of swampy mud and sank up to my ankles in goop. The only up-side to this was that I was wearing Crocs.

The car was a good half a kilometre up the road so, cursing as I went, I squelched up the road. I extracted my Crocs from my feet and put them on the rubber matt in the boot. Then, having wiped the excess mud off my feet on the grass, I drove to the IGA. I bought a large bottle of water and some kitchen towels and then sat in the carpark cleaning up both my Crocs and my feet. Deep joy.

The Last Patrol …
With the temperature falling to British summertime levels and the leaves starting to turn brown, so the surf lifesaving season draws to a close soon. I had my last patrol of the season last Sunday – a gorgeous day, with excellent surf and about 10 punters all day long. For the most part we just sat in the radio room, watching the surfers make the most of a nice south-easterly ground swell that had chugged up the coast from Victoria.

Patrol Captain Richard decided it was a good time to get my IRB skills tweaked and so we did some runs in the boat. He was less than impressed by my technique – in fairness, I do suck – and so we did repeated runs off the beach, out through the surf, round a can and back in again. By the last run something had clicked and I was a lot more comfortable driving the boat.

About 30 minutes before we were due to pack up for the day, an extended family showed up on the beach and I sat on the shoreline on the quad bike watching ‘em until two o’clock. With everything cleaned and stowed away, I headed home and put the red and yellow uniform away for the season.

Cut out the middle man …
I’ve been using a little local printers to produce the flyers for my business. He charges me $90 for 2000 A5 flyers – not the cheapest, but I like to keep it local. Anyway, the other day it occured to me that I would almost certainly be better off printing my own flyers on a laser printer. So I sat down and did the sums and, even taking account of the fact that I’d have to buy a laser printer in the first place, it would still cost me a quarter of what he was charging. I can get my toner cartridges nice and cheap through our distributer ($40 in fact), paper costs bugger all and I get full control over what gets printed when. Serious old markup he had on that print job.

So I nipped down to Harvey Normans after work, knowing they had a winter sale on in their electrical department. They had just the sort of printer I needed – it was a Brother HL-2040, marked at $199. I asked the sales guy what his best price on it was and he came back with $129. Bargain. Said printer is now installed and working brilliantly and I’m busy producing all the flyers I need to continue my global domination.

Scooters …
The other day Liz reversed out of the garage and right over the top of Jack’s scooter. It being her fault (she’d put the scooter there herself), she nipped down to Kmart and bought him a new. Very pleased he was with it too. Unfortunately Jack left it outside the garage the other morning and yours truly reversed over it. Considering it had been twatted by a Toyota Kluger, it wasn’t in too bad shape – unrideable of course, but largely intact. So I have another trip to Kmart to make and Jack has learnt that when daddy says to put something away, it might be useful to listen to him occasionally.

Knackered …
Jack comes back from a day of crazy golf with his little mates yesterday and promptly turns his nose up at the feast Liz had prepared for him. Jack likes his food and it’s usually pretty serious when he’s off it. Sure enough he starts complaining that his tummy hurts. He spends some time in the bog but can’t ‘go’. We tuck him into bed a few hours later.

We went to bed at about one in the morning and I had just dropped off when Jack reappeared crying, saying he felt bad. We got the camperbed and set it up next to ours and armed him with a bucket. Ten minutes later he starts chucking up. He continues puking for the next couple of hours. We all finally get to sleep at about four in the morning. Needless to say we all felt bloody knackered this morning, but there hasn’t been a repeat of the puking, which is good. He didn’t want to go to bed tonight but we mentioned that my parents have offered to take him to the aeroplane museum tommorow if he’s feeling okay and he fair ran down the corridor to his bedroom.

Till next time, later ‘taters …