Mon, 31 Jul 2006
On Sunday, I filled in for Ivan's cricket team who were short a player for their final match in the winter roster. Cricket in winter is against everything I believe in, but at least standing around in a field all day is relatively more pleasant on a bright, sunny winter's day than under the scorching summer sun. Relatively.
I bowled three overs of 'medium pace'. That is, it wasn't spin bowling, and it would be charitable to call my bowling anything rather than slow as. I can't believe how stiff and sore those three overs have made me today. I have the body of an 80 year old, dammit!
My efforts with the bat weren't much better, either.
I spent 40 minutes padded up waiting for the bloke before me to get out.
It took 2 minutes to walk to the crease after he eventually retired on 40 not out.
A further 1 minute was spent lining up the bat with middle stump.
The ball comes down, a reasonable speed. Not terribly quick, I can just block this one away, get my eye in, not much point slogging away first shot.
I got the bat down, missed it completely, and the ball crunched into the stumps behind me.
Clean bowled, first ball. D'oh!
My efforts were inversely proportional to those of the rest of the team, and we ended up winning by 2 wickets with 2 overs to spare.
Despite the winter chill, it was hot under sun all day - I came home hot and sweaty with a headache. Just another reminder I'm not much of an athlete! That's why I like individual sports more - at least if it gets a little tiring or boring you can pack it up and go home!
Since we're off skiing this weekend, I thought it might be a good idea to buy a pair of sunnies to cope with the glare off the snow. I tend to get a massive headache after spending an entire day outdoors in the sun, due to squinting to block out some of the rays.
So I thought I should get some contacts as well, since it'll be easier to wear them with normal sunglasses than have to get prescription sunglasses over my normal glasses.
I haven't worn contacts for over 4 years, but it's amazing the way some thing never change. The way you're instantly able to put them in, despite not having done it for a number of years.
Apparently, recent versions of contacts have been better for people like me, who spend most of the working day staring into a computer screen. I gave up wearing them for mainly two reasons:
- The mild discomfort of putting them in of a morning.
- The major discomfort when they dry out because I don't blink enough when sitting in front of the computer.
I'll see if the new contacts are any better with point 2; I can live with point 1.
Sat, 29 Jul 2006
I've been seeing this ad around town for the last couple of months. I can never remember the name of the company, and I think it has something to do with finance.
Whatever, that stuff is not really important anyway.
The most important thing, in my opinions is this:
Don't you think that this man bears an amazingly identical resemblence to madcap Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad???
Fri, 28 Jul 2006
Last Saturday in Chatswood, we came across this piece of mischief outside Dick Smith:
Is it just me, or has the awful American spelling ass infiltrated the written form in this country, at the expense of the English/Australian arse? It's even more glaring when it's an Australian being quoted with the American spelling - surely no one actually pronounces arse as ass.
Spelling ass is not any less profane, than arse either.
Arse-clowns.
We missed Rodd's 30th on Friday night. The problem was, Kathleen came home from work early. By the time I got home at 6, she was almost asleep in front of the heater watching TV. Didn't want to go out anywhere. And in a pretty grumpy mood, too!
I did what any sane man would do in that situation - let her sleep. I tried waking her after an hour, but she didn't want to get up. So her nap ended up being 2 hours long.
Unfortunately, my night went from bad to worse. When she does wake up from these Friday night sleeps, she tends to decide for some incomprehensible reason that the house is not clean enough. So we end up cleaning the house on a Friday night!
Women!
Tue, 25 Jul 2006
Reading Kris' post about their water usage was interesting. I'm not sure how much water we use per day here at our place (the damn calculator doesn't open in Opera), but I can tell you that we're saving at least 21 litres a week.
That's 21 litres a week, just by saving the water that flows from the bathroom and shower taps when we're waiting for the hot water to start. Now that 21 litres would have just gone straight down the drain and out into the ocean, but now it goes in our washing machine instead.
In the time it takes for the water to run from cold to hot, on average we collect around 1.5L of water, water that otherwise would have been wasted. This happens around twice a day, 7 days a week. That's low-hanging fruit, an easy way to save water.
Also, last night I noticed that the small leak in the kitchen tap was actually worse than I thought. I'd been putting off fixing it myself because I don't know how to take apart a mixer tap, and the leak seemed too small to spend $100+ calling a plumber out. Besides, as long as you turned the tap just right, the leak seemed to stop.
Anyway, as I was saying, last night I came out, and noticed that the plugged sink had almost filled up completely in just over an hour - all due to that 'little leak'. I shudder to think how much water savings from the bathroom has gone straight down the kitchen sink... Luckily, Sydney Water have a discounted plumbing retrofit, for only $22, and organise a plumber to come onsite, fix any leaks, and change the taps to use more water-efficient measures.
Now, having said all that, the big water savings to be made are in the industrial and agricultural sectors, not in the residential sector. For example, water-cooled woks are in the way out, thanks to Sydney City Council's efforts to reduce water use in restaurants in the city.
In agriculture, things aren't quite so crash hot:
The Murray is running dry in large part because its tributaries are being tapped to water one of the largest irrigated regions. Rice, sugar and cotton farmers are taking prodigious amounts of water from a river system that drains one-seventh of Australia. A single farm, the Cubbie cotton station in southern Queensland, irrigates 200sqkm, taking 150,000 megalitres each year from the Balonne River, a Murray tributary. The station has a reservoir 27km across, large enough to contain the contents of Sydney Harbour.
Government plans to buy Cubbie station and shut it down, as a water conservation measure, have so far come to nothing.
...
Farming accounts for two-thirds of the water we take from nature worldwide and 85 per cent in Australia.
According to statistics compiled by the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation,, it takes 2000 to 5000 litres of water to grow 1kg of rice. That is more water than many households use in a week for just a bag of rice. It takes 1000 litres, one tonne of water, to grow 1kg of wheat and 500 litres for 1kg of potatoes.
When you start feeding grain to livestock for animal products such as meat and milk, the numbers become yet more startling. It takes 11,000 litres to grow the feed for enough cow to make a hamburger; and 2000 to 4000 litres for that cow to fill its udders with one litre of milk. If you have a sweet tooth, so much the worse. Every teaspoonful of sugar in your coffee requires 50 cups of water to grow it. Which is a lot, but not as much as the 140 litres of water (or 1120 cups) needed to grow the coffee. Prefer alcohol? A glass of wine or a pint of beer requires about another 250 litres and a glass of brandy afterwards takes a staggering 2000 litres.
But while one person, or one household, in isolation can't make a big difference, if everyone starts saving water, then everything compounds. Saving 21 litres of water a week per household translates to saving 31,500,000 litres of water a week over Sydney's 1.5 million households. Which is some serious savings, but only the start of what we as a society and as a country need to do...
Mon, 24 Jul 2006
Yesterday, I bought a new mountain bike. An entry-level Trek 4300 mountain bike from Renegade Cycles in Lane Cove.
I haven't ridden a bike since Japan, where almost everyone owns at least the most basic style of road bike around, and before that since I was living at home in Hobart, almost 8 years ago. I'm sick of walking down hills when I could be going a lot faster!
The first downhill was worth the cost alone!
Between Lane Cove and my place at Wollstonecraft there are about 4 major depressions in the hills, which meant a lot of short sharp uphill bursts followed by downhill stretches. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of heading down to the bottom Gore Hill Creek, which meant an unnecessary backtracking ride to where I started.
Next time I ride, I need to remember to eat lunch first, so I actually have some petrol in the tank for the ride - I got off at home after 30-odd minutes with very weak and wobbly legs. I'm so unfit.
Sun, 23 Jul 2006
Last night, at Steph and Eva's...
Sat, 22 Jul 2006
More on the Russell Peters show we missed out on last week... he's on at the Enmore again in December.
It's sold out already.
Talk about booking early.
Also sold out - Arctic Monkeys, whose album I've started playing almost religiously over the last week at work. Darn. They're playing on a Tuesday and Wednesday night, and to sell out those two days indicates you're doing pretty well as a band. Jen at work managed to score tickets, so I may have to kill her, take the tickets and hide the body.
Shhh.
Fri, 21 Jul 2006
Last night was perfect weather for a warming winter curry:
Winter Curry
Ingredients
- 6 chicken wings
- 1 sliced onion
- 2 large potatoes, diced into small cubes
- 1 heaped tablespoon curry powder
- 1 small teaspoon garlic
- Salt
- Sugar
- Water
Steps
- Brown off the garlic and onion in a pot
- Add the chicken wings, and brown them off
- Add enough water to cover the chicken wings, add the curry powder, and a little salt and sugar
- Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes
- Add the potato
- Simmer for another half-hour to to 45 minutes
- Serve with steamed rice
Easy! Plus I won big brownie points with Kathleen when she came home late from work to find dinner ready and waiting for her on the table, the washing machine going, and the house clean and tidy.
Thu, 20 Jul 2006
You suspect your country might have an image problem when the following paragraph appears on Fark.com:
Drunk man falls 30 metres while trying to relieve himself, is still holding his beer when rescued. If you think he might be Australian - good on ya, mate
And the story Fark.com linked to:
Vancouver fire department Capt. Rick Matsen says it was obvious the man had been drinking until just moments before his fall.
"Well, it just so happens he had a beer with him when he was brought up," he said.
"Still in his hands?" asked a reporter.
"Still in his hands, yup. He held on to it pretty tight, I'm thinking," said Matsen.
Eva, it would have been interesting to find out the percentage of people who'd heard of Russell through that video clip that went around of why Chinese people and Indian people can't get along ("Indian people can't live without a bargain, and Chinese people can't give a bargain!")
I reckon that a lot of the Indian audience just somehow knew an Indian comic was coming along - maybe it's something that's just passed on telepathically through the Indian community, sort of like how news of the Chinese pop stars seems to be big news in Chinatown and not so big in, say, Auburn.
Anyway, if you and Steph are interested, how about we go see Nick Sun, who I've heard good things about.
Wed, 19 Jul 2006
I suppose I should be thankful I have a literate spammer who has, can I just say, excellent taste in books:
From; Pamphilos Greco <greco@afanet.org>
Reply-To; Pamphilos Greco <greco@afanet.org>
X-Mailer; Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106
Date; Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03;00;01 -0700
To: root@andrewandkathleen.com
Subject: fahuhi
In all their talk they came perpetually back to one thing; where was Smaug? They looked West and there was nothing, and East there was nothing, and in the South there was no sign of the dragon, but there was
And that was the entire message - from the chapter Not At Home in The Hobbit.
I wish all spammers had similarly interesting things to say...
I just updated the BIOS on this computer. I am teh 733t! This more than makes up for any geek failings when dealing with the iPod volume control.
The magpies in the street are going off. Every morning they start their... well, it's not chirping, more of a warbling... around 6am. And it goes on and on. A repetitive sound that is just not sufficiently consistently timed to become background noise.
It's been happening since Saturday.
Every. Single. Morning.
I've started to get used to it a little, so it becomes almost like a dream when I do eventually wake up around 7ish.
Must be breeding season.
Tue, 18 Jul 2006
Poor Kathleen's just getting over a cold that's been with her for the last week. It hasn't been helped by a fair bit of work-related stress and some long hours on a project - that is almost completed luckily.
The cold was bad over the weekend - we pretty much stayed at home so she could chill out and try and recover - and this week she's been going to bed at around 9 or 9.30 and sleeping right around the clock to 7 or 7.30! Hopefully she'll be better soon.
Wed, 12 Jul 2006
My sister Nicole swung through Sydney on her way back from a Contiki tour of Europe. She came back with a swag of great photos - as well as being a little bit more worldly.
I took her sightseeing (her last time in Sydney was almost 15 years ago!) in the city, down at the Opera House and Circular Quay, and we caught a ferry over the harbour to Milsons Point before heading home. It's hard for Sydney to compete with some of the famous places she's seen over the last few weeks though!
Reminder to self: during morning peak hour, best route back from the airport to Crows Nest is ED and through the tunnel, NOT down Abercrombie St, and certainly not via George St!
Fri, 07 Jul 2006
My work colleague Suzann was busy going through her email at work the other day.
"That's so strange," she muttered.
"What?"
"I've put my car for sale on carsales.com.au, and I've been getting all these emails from overseas about it. Look."
She showed me one, from what looked to be a throwaway yahoo address. The basic gist was that the sender was a 'business manager' and was organising a car on behalf of his client. The email itself was littered with spelling and grammar mistakes.
Both of these facts alone seemed a bit suspicious.
The business manager was located in the UK.
And the email seemed to be requesting a lot of personal information. Much more than from someone interested in buying a car.
He wasn't interested in knowing any details about the car so much as Suzann's name, address and bank account details.
"Yeah, that looks pretty suspicious all right. I'd delete that email."
"I have five more just like it."
All throwaway Yahoo addresses. All overseas people interested in a car advertised on an Australian user car site. All with atrocious grammar and spelling and representing themselves as 'secretaries' or 'business managers'.
It smelled very fishy.
This looks like an expansion of the Nigerian 419 scam. Interesting that the scammers are moving into online used car sales to try and get personal and bank account details.
Thu, 06 Jul 2006
Wow! Tetsuyas is booked solid until next week, if it's two people wanting to eat on a Friday and Saturday night!
Now THAT is a waiting list.
I'll have to book for a weeknight...
Wed, 05 Jul 2006
After the shame and ignominy of forgetting my mum's birthday last week (Oh, I know, I KNOW!), today I went out and bought myself a year desk planner.
Now I've got no excuse for forgetting someone's birthday. It's about time I got organised, anyway. Just yesterday at work, I agreed to do a project in Canberra for a few weeks, forgetting about two important dates in August that I couldn't be out of town for!
(I sent an emergency bunch of flowers down, plus made a grovelling phone call last night. Thanks Lisa for reminding me. Personally, I blame my other sister Nicole. If she hadn't been away on her European adventure, she would've been around to remind me!)
Mon, 03 Jul 2006
Kathleen got discounted entry tickets to Taronga Zoo through her work, so on Sunday we headed along. It's the first time I've been in probably 15 years.
Of course, we saw all the favourites. The seals, the monkeys, the lions and tigers. It was worth the admission for the bird show, where a massive (trained!) eagle flew so close over Kathleen's head! And you know how she feels about poultry.
We didn't see the leopard cubs, but we did see the baby monkeys, which are just as cute. Those monkeys looked pretty bummed out, though. It'd suck to be locked up in a yard all day, every day, for the rest of your life... glad it's not me.
That place is too big to get around in an afternoon, though - we really needed an entire day. Our feet disagreed - they definitely didn't feel like walking around for 7 hours! 4 is bad enough!
On Sunday, I got a call from a survey company inviting comments on CityRail. Given the slant of their questions, presumably it was on behalf of the incompetent Labor government. What was particularly galling about the survey was the fact that their three alternatives of 'most preferred' options, namely, on-time running, speed of travel, and cost efficiency were all exclusive choices.
Hey, you idiots running CityRail! It is possible to have all three - not just one! Tokyo, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, London, Singapore, they all crap over what you clowns can come up with!
The Labor buffoons are, of course, worried about the negative publicity on the trains possibly (god, how we hope!) getting them turfed out of government. This is the party that, worried about the fact that most of the trains were consistently late, reduced the definition of on-time running, and padded so much fat into a timetable (and, at the same time, cutting off-peak services by up to 50%) that trains now have sufficient time to idle at stations for up to a minute. Trips that used to take 40 minutes have lengthened by up to 10 minutes! Can you believe the nerve of these numbnuts?
On Monday morning, bright and earlier, the Liberal candidate (and let me tell you, it'd be a cold day in hell before I vote for the party that spawned the lying rodent) for the North Shore electorate is out electioneering at Wollstonecraft train station, handing out her pamphlet on how crap the rail system is.
There's an election in the wind!
Last Thursday, I picked up a DVD writer from a computer shop in town for $80. I still can't believe how cheap hardware is becoming. I also can't believe it's taken me this long to buy a DVD writer... but anyway, I've now joined the 21st century.
On Saturday, I burnt 2.5 Gb of digital photos, which covers the last year's worth of photos, to DVD.
It's incredibly liberating to know that I now have a backup of irreplaceable digital photos. A sigh of pure, blessed relief!
Sun, 02 Jul 2006
It's times like these that I wish I was in Japan again, if only so I could see how a story like this was presented on the Japanese evening news.
Inside, his hair waving, body crouched over a make-believe guitar and sunglasses perched on his nose, an ageing rocker cavorted around the Jungle Room, riffing the opening bars of Love Me Tender to a hand-picked audience including Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie, and widow, Priscilla.
Then Junichiro Koizumi - who, besides being a huge Elvis fan, is the Prime Minister of Japan - broke off his routine to laugh with his host, US President George Bush.
"I want you, I love you," added Mr Koizumi, strumming his air guitar to a few more Elvis tunes as he draped his arm around Lisa Marie. "Hold me close, hold me tight."
Shine on, Japan, you crazy, crazy diamond.
Occasionally, I get the urge to redesign the layout of this website.
Then, I realise that it's probably going to be an exercise in futility:
I've given up on the task represented in bright yellow in the graph above. You crazy, masochistic IE users are just going to have to get what you're given (and what you deserve!).
Sat, 01 Jul 2006
I haven't had any coffee today, and I'm feeling it.
Over the last couple of days, I've been averaging two or three per day, one in the morning when I arrive at work, and once at lunch. That's a little high for me, and mostly because there've been free vouchers for the coffee place downstairs from the training centre where I'm instructing a course. Training is draining, so I feel the need to have a caffeine jolt around lunchtime to keep going.
I'm not sure whether it's just general tiredness or the effects of caffeine withdrawal, but I'm coming down with a headache to go with the lethargy I've felt all day. Caffeine withdrawal is officially a disorder. Maybe it is the coffee.
Maybe it's time to start winding back my caffeine habit, to 0, for good. I'm not sure it's worth the money that seems to seep out of my wallet each month (do I really need to spend $20 bucks a week on it?!), nor the possible effects on my body.
The Rocks Coffee Festival is on later this month. Do you think it might be a good idea to go cold turkey until then, and then go out in one last, caffeine-induced, jittery, heart-stopping hurrah?
