Note to self: Next time you plan 100km round trip photo sortie, make sure the CF memory card is in the camera… not plugged in to the card reader on your desktop, 45 minutes drive away…
And that was time wastin’ Tuesday. How was yours?
you’d already reached the end of the rainbow
…and it was obvious to everyone else but you?
You have probably guessed that I am not one of those leery type, “check out the tits on that!” sort of blokes. While I have mates who span the full range from unashamed pervemasters to “avert your eyes!”, I tend to lean toward the less overt and subtle approach.
A co-worker and friend I regularly take coffee breaks with is of a similar demeanor. In fact, I have never heard him go on about how “such and such is sooooo hot!” - instead he retains a quiet, respectable appreciation of the female form. I appreciate this, and I fairly quickly get bored and irritated in the company of blokes who just can’t stop checking out and rating every chick who walks by.
So last week when we walked in through the building foyer, and both of us suddenly and simultaneously lost the power of speech, it was a most unusual and expected event. There is no doubt that both of us drew the same conclusion at the same moment… but neither of us wanted to appear that shallow to one another. Neither of us seemed capable of acknowledging what we’d seen… and both slightly embarassed that such primal urges could so easily invoked. We are smart, discerning, respectful and enlightened married metrosensual men. Supposedly. This doesn’t happen to us. And even if it did… we have never discussed it. It’s just not something we do.
In awkward silence we strolled into the lift. There was a further pause as I pushed the button for our floor. The doors slid closed, and we turned at exactly the same moment. He was shaking his head and smiling. All I could muster was “goodness me”, and a sheepish look. He stared toward the ceiling, and folded his arms. It was too much. She was too much. Unbelievable.
“best in this building”, he said.
“yup” I replied.
The lift stopped and the doors opened, and we got out. Nothing more was said of it. Nothing more needed to be. It was understood.
It was a guy moment.
Back in the dim, dark, distant past, a time before MySpace, before ADSL, before e-mail, Instant Messenger, even before web browsers… there was Viatel.
In 1985 Telecom Australia launched the first ever portal in Australia. It was before web portals even existed…possibly before the web and internet even existed. While we were perhaps more easily impressed back then, it was still astonishing stuff.
Connecting at blistering speeds of up to 2400bps (!) over a standard telephone line, Viatel promised a wealth of information at your fingertips… 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s hard to imagine a world where this isn’t the case… but back then, this notion seemed all very futuristic. It came as a subscription service that was added to your phone bill ( around $10 an hour at first! ), and in hindsight might look like a glorified Teletext. But the technology behind it was surprisingly advanced, and wouldn’t really be taken up by the mainstream for at least another 10 years. The developers ported a dedicated application to the personal computers of the day - Commadore 64’s, Tandy Z-80’s, and the dreaded IBM AT and its fledgling clones.
I nagged Mum and Dad until they shelled out the money for it, buying a modem out of the Trading Post and spending a weekend getting it all working. I still remember the excitement when I saw the (now laughable) blocky Viatel graphics for the first time, I felt like Matthew Broderick in the movie War Games. I also remember seeing the Qantas Airline logo on the screen the first time when Mum and Dad booked flights to Sydney, and thinking “wooooooooooooooow! You can just book a seat on a plane! Just like that!!”.
But in addition to hook ins to airline reservations, banking, and share prices ( updated every hour! imagine! ), there were also bulletin boards packed with game cracks, shops, and a messenger-like feature. Along with the library catalogues we used to look up and order music cassettes, the ”messenger” was my favourite. My best freind Chris and I would squander hours typing messages to each other that we could convey in seconds with a simple phone call. Sound familliar? Haven’t we come so far in 22 years! Viatel even used a primative form of Hypertext Markup language, and had features like blinking text. I was amazed to find the text blinked even on pages of infomation you saved and looked at after disconnecting.
Not long after, Telecom re-branded Viatel as Discovery, expanding the list of services to justify the outrageous cost of it. Discovery even featured early social networking ideas like “lounges” and “cafes” long before Facebook and MySpace. But it would still be another 10 years before Telstra Internet was launched, and a few years later, renamed Big Pond.
And the outrageous cost remains to this very day.
Wow… yet another one of those days when for the life of me I cannot explain where the time went. Well OK I can explain bits of it… re-writing a buggy open source web app… telling tradesmen how to do their job so it costs ME less… pretending my phone dropped out when the “sydney office” called… twice… and some google archaeology.
But now I have a list of stuff that never got done today in front of me, with a few more items I promised to do for people added to it. Will I ever learn? Yeah… yeah I know…
So that was Time Wastin’ Tuesday.
How was yours?
1. Birkenhead bridge
Opened in the early 1950’s, the Birkenhead Bridge directly connects the suburbs to Port Adelaide. What’s cool about it is that it’s an opening bridge, lifting up to allow tall shipping down the Port River. If you come upon it just as this happens, it’s hard not to imagine gunning the engine at the last minute and trying to jump it, just like on TV. Naturally, there are boom gates and traffic lights to prevent precisely this happening, but once every few years, some coked up bogan gives it a red hot go. And good on ‘em I say - that’s the sort of spirit that made the Port Adelaide Football Club what is is today.
2. South Eastern Freeway
Perhaps the most evil bend in the road in Adelaide is The Devil’s Elbow. Situated toward the bottom of the Mt. Barker Road, this notorious corner has routinely inverted large trucks ever since large trucks have been silly enough to drive around it faster than a snail’s pace. They took all the fun out if it a few years ago and built twin tunnels to join to the start of the South Eastern Freeway - but you can still go the old way if you want. It’s also worth pulling over and waiting with a camera for a while… a great way to while away a few hours of a rainy Sunday afternoon!
3. Emerson Bridges
Situated on the main southern arterial road, Emerson Crossing was once one of the worst traffic snarls in Adelaide. For decades the Noarlunga Train line brought busy peak hour traffic to a standstill, but in the mid 80’s they finally built a double lane bridge over it. This fantastic achievement conviniently moved the problem 2km north, to the Glenelg tram line crossing. The bridge has a 60km/h speed limit, but it’s almost an Adelaide birth right to speed on the upsides because everyone knows there’s no space for a speed camera there.
4. Hindmarsh Island Bridge
The Hindmarsh Island Bridge might well be the second most infamous bridge in Australia. It became embroiled in a native title claim which alleged, in part, that the area had significance because it resembled female reproductive organs. You can’t really get much of a feel for this likeness as you drive across it, instead, an X-ray machine and a light aeroplane would be required. The High Court ruled this as fairly unlikely given the dreamtime basis of the story, nonetheless, the phrase “secret women’s business” entered the Australian vernacular and has been misappropriated and lampooned ever since.
5. Britannia Roundabout
If you thought the 5 road, two lane junction of Dequeteville Tce, Kensington Road, Fullarton Rd, and Wakefield St. just sounds like an accident waiting to happen, then give yourself three gold sticky stars. The best way to deal with the TanniaBout is as follows:
a) keep your foot hard the gas ( don’t dare brake )
b) do not touch your turn signal (don’t even think about indicating… it’s a sign of weakness )
c) do not make eye contact with other motorists…. look straight ahead
d) chant something of a religous nature as you straddle two lanes
e) try to look a bit pathetic… this often lulls other drivers into a false sense of pity.
Follow these instructions and you might just get through with only minor damage to your vehicle.
6. O-Bahn
Widely regarded as a joke and abandoned by its mother country, Lithuania, the O’Bahn is a true miracle of 1960’s civil engineering. Standard buses are fitted with fast wearing, expensive guides made from an extremely rare rubber tree so they can drive in a cement trough for several kilometers. Convincing the state government that this was somehow more clever and cost effective than just building a separate bus lane, is a milestone con artistry only surpassed by the selling of the Tower Bridge to the Americans. Though technically not a driving wonder, or indeed a road, you’d be surprised how many cars end up on it. There is actually fierce competition among tourists for how far you can drive up the O-bahn drunk. The record, currently held by an Irish backpacker, stands at 7.2km, with a Blood Alcohol reading of 0.154.
7. Southern Expressway
After years of subjecting travellers to Adelaide’s dense southern suburbs to unfortunate displays of working class nudity and heavily tatooed, toothless teen mothers, the state government finally opened the Southern Expressway. Unfortunately, their self congratulation was short lived as they realised southbound traffic would have to cross Northbound traffic’s path to make the exits… and Northbound traffic entering would have to cross the path of southbound traffic. Solution? Announce the road is “one way reversible”, so at 2pm every weekday the road is closed… then re-opened and run in the opposite direction. The times have been carefully chosen to ensure that the Southern Expressway is always running the opposite way to what you want, and it remains closed for 30 minutes each day while they remove the car wrecks and remains of confused pensioners.
A lynchpin of the human condition is the desire to improve one’s life.
It’s more than just a desire of course; it’s also the belief that we can be happier, healthier, or better in some way by changing things. From the first human cave dwellers who lashed palm fronds together to improvise a roof, to the inventors of fire, then steam, then electricity. All were driven by a desire to act locally to improve their world, but in the process, changed everyone’s.
Somewhere along the way we also learnt a few lessons. Eating the green berries will burn your mouth and make you ill ( or worse! ); killing all the wildlife in your immediate surrounds will lead to starvation. We learnt that small changes can have dramatic effects later - a lesson hammered home time and time again, and later named “the butterfly effect” by scientists. We learnt moderation and conservation through observation and derivation.
But we also got a glimpse of an element that is inexorably linked to these things - chance.
We learnt that planting all the barley in the world was useless if it didn’t rain. We discovered the rollercoaster ride of stockmarket speculation, and learnt the hard way how quickly and inexplicably it can turn. We jumped motorbikes over double decker buses and prayed the wind and the landing ramp would allow us a safe landing, subsequent fame, and loads of money.
When humans take risks, they weigh up the chances of success or failure. Sometimes the factors and influences are complex, other times they are simple - yet we behave exactly the same way when faced with either scenario. Compare “If my parachute doesn’t open I will die” to “If I buy the Nokia might I later regret not getting the Motorolla?”. The differences in worst-case outcomes may be poles apart ( one resulting in certain death, the other resulting in a mild case of buyer’s remorse ), but in the end, we close our eyes and point our finger in one direction or t’other. We buy the Nokia and fill it with dumb MP3’s. We jump out of the plane and scream all the way down. We surrender choice to a higher power and go with it.
In the grander scheme of things though, how much difference do our decisions really make?
Parents may ask themselves “if I send my child to a private college are they less likely to end up overdosing on drugs?”, lovers may ask “will I be happy forever with this person?”, Forty-something men may ask themselves “should I take up running so I might be healthier and fitter, and live longer?”. As we face the worst climatic threat since the Ice Age, we are all made to choose what we think will save us. “Should I spend more and buy the Toyota Prius and reduce my Carbon emissions?”, “should I wash out all my dog food cans to reduce landfill and aid recycling”, “Should I ride a bike to work?”.
So your kid gets sold bad e’s from a Magistrate’s Son. You don’t marry your lover and break up a year later, wondering. The forty-something man collapses and dies of a heart attack, and his family curses his “health kick”. And it turns out the Prius created millions more tonnes of carbon during its manufacture than it will ever save. The water you used to wash the dogfood cans went down the drain, and contributed to the drought. You rode to work every day, but after 5 years the toxic car exhaust fumes gave you cancer. All these choices are offered with no money back guarantee.
We make these decisions every day, in the hope they will make our lives better, and improve the lot of our fellow man, and maybe, just maybe save the planet.
But in the end, there is no such thing as the right decision. All we can do is blow on the dice for luck as we roll them.
You’ll be pleased to know I managed a good degree of time wastin’ today, traversing all quarters of the time wasting quadrant. For starters I got 3 overdue BAS statements off to the Tax Orifice, then rewarded myself by floating out in the sun for 90 minutes waiting for tiny, infrequent waves to roll through.
I also found a weird anomoly in my bank transactions, and suspecting it was a swifty pulled by a well known but utterly fraudulent online business, worked myself up and prepared for battle. 20 minutes and three phone calls later it was resolved, leaving me somewhat deflated.
You will also notice I have been dicking around with my template, and plugging in various thingamebobs and gizmos. The scope for timewastin there is almost limitless!
So now I am catching up on some of your wonderful blogs, a process I actually started yesterday. To top it off, I also wrote a brand spanking new post. But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see it!
That was Time wastin’ Tuesday. How was yours?
Often on the long dreary drive from out in the sticks to visit my Granny in the city, Ma and Pa Geeb would stop at Hungry Jack’s ( that’s the Aussie Burger King for my offshore readers… whoever you are! ) for some dinner. It was a sure fire antidote to stop our never ending whining, and the mere suggestion that we might not stop if we weren’t quiet was enough to render me and my sis stony silent for minutes at a time.
I was never into burgers ( still not ), but the one thing on the Hungry’s menu that could always put a smile on my face was their hot dogs. In hindsight, they were bland, artificial, with meat most likely composed largely of horse testicles and hog anus - but I adored them.
At the 2/3 point of one long drive we stopped, and I bounded up to the counter. Mum didn’t even have to ask me what I wanted… there was no question. “One hot dog, one large Fries, a large Coke, and a strawberry sunday” she rattled off automatically. The girl at the counter looked at her blankly, and beckoned toward the menu. “Sorry”, she announced in her finest teenage monotone, “… we don’t do Hot Dogs anymore”. And I never ate another Hungry Jack’s hotdog ever again.
And I was devastated.
Footnote: I have met one other person in my whole life that remembers Hungry Jacks Hot Dogs. Hi Cass, wherever you are… 
So is it just me, or does everyone find it a bit of a trial shopping for theme party apparel, where the only way to get to said party is to drive one’s self, miles and miles into the suburbs, and back again, thereby ruling out drinking, and thereby forcing one to cope with several people from one’s work one really doesn’t have a great deal of time for stone cold sober?
So, ummmm, yeah… that was time wastin’ Tuesday. How was yours?