Thu, 31 Jul 2008
Last night I went to the Sydney Swans trivia night at the supporters club in Kings Cross. My team ended up coming third or fourth last. While we did pretty well on general trivia, what really let us down was the lack of Swans knowledge on the 'Swans question round'.
Unfortunately, questions like "What was the final score in the 2003 preliminary final, and who was it against", or "Who kicked the second goal in the fourth quarter of the Round 14 1987 match against Carlton" (OK, I exaggerate, but only a little) really hurt us.
This morning I got a call from my friend Matt in Melbourne. I hadn't talked to him in a while, so after the preliminary
"Hows the wife and kids", there was a bit of a blank pause while I waited for him to get to the point of the call.
"So, I saw I missed a call from you last night. Around midnight."
"Really? I don't remember making th... oh, hang on, I do, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was I needed to ask you."
So it was a pretty good (if unrememberable after about 11pm) night. I think.
Wed, 23 Jul 2008
The wife came home tonight from her work trip up to Coffs, walking in the door just as I'd just finished cooking dinner and started serving it up.
Food Safari was on TV, with an episode on Singapore food.
And later on, the washing up got done by the cook (i.e. me).
That was a pretty good night for her (though spoiled a little as she watched one of the guest presenters on the show making Hainanese chicken with her diamond wedding rings on - why do people do that?)
Mon, 21 Jul 2008
Our elderly neighbour, Margaret, has the newspapers delivered every day. The weekend papers get delivered just into the front door of the apartment block, while the normal weekday papers come delivered rolled up in glad wrap and thrown on the path outside.
When I saw this morning that both Saturday's and Sunday's papers were still there, I put a mental note to myself to knock on her door when I got home from work that night, just to check she was ok. Sometimes she'll go a day or two without bringing the papers in, but ever since the news articles last year about a number of elderly people dying alone in Sydney apartment blocks and not being found for days or weeks, I've been a little bit uneasy about signs like this.
I found out this afternoon that she'd had a stroke, when Kathleen, who'd just arrived home, rang me as they were bringing our neighbour out in the ambulance. She'd fallen, broken her hip, and fainted. Her brother and sister had been unable to reach her on the phone, so had called a locksmith to get into her apartment.
It was lucky that they got to her quite early, but she was delirious as they brought her out, screaming. This is an old lady who would normally talk in almost a whisper.
So she's up at RNS now, going into surgery tomorrow. At her age, the surgery will be a shock to her system. I hope she'll be ok.
And I would have knocked tonight.
Though, I'm not sure who I would have called if no one had answered.
Sun, 20 Jul 2008
Peking Duck could now be forced into extinction by an EU ban on the ovens traditionally used to prepare it.
Council inspectors have been busily visiting restaurants that use the ovens and sealing them closed with tape because they do not carry a CE (Conformité Européenne) mark certifying that the equipment meets safety standards on carbon-monoxide emissions laid down by Brussels.
...
The clampdown comes despite an admission by council officials that there have been no reported health problems linked to the ovens, which are made in China and are also used to cook Cantonese Duck and suckling pig.
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A council spokesman said: 'If the restaurants want to continue cooking ducks in the traditional manner they will need to get new ovens which will comply with EU standards by having CE marking.
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'We are not aware of a single injury or accident involving these duck ovens but now we are aware of this issue we want to prevent any accidents happening.'
Not aware of a single injury or accident... good to know there's an urgent imperitive behind this, then. Does this strike anybody else as a total waste of time? I guess over in Europe, they don't have A Current Affair to do an expose on 'bungling bureaucrats'. That would put an end to this nonsense quick smart.
Sun, 13 Jul 2008
So we finally got around to replacing our old Sony Trinitron, which we'd had for about five years, having inherited it from Kathleen's brother, who himself had had it a number of years. Recently, it's been emitting a bit of a noticeable high-pitched electronics hum, so Kathleen had been keen on getting it replaced.
We bought a Samsung LCD from Alexandria and it's amazing the difference it's made.
First of all, it's much bigger than our old one.
Second, watching TV in high definition is absolutely amazing, to the point where standard definition is like going back to black and white. We spent fifteen minutes just watching the HDTV demo channel (49 in case you're wondering), which was showing scenes from Richmond.
We're picking up a number of regional channels, from the Illawarra. Mostly they just play what's showing on 7 or 9, though.
Now I just need to get around to replacing the VHS player with a media centre.
Fri, 04 Jul 2008
The Australian editor of Wai Wai, an online column of off-beat, lurid or sordid stories gathered from Japan's tabloids and published by Mainichi newspaper, has gone into hiding:
Since accepting police protection against incensed Japanese patriots last week, the chief editor of the English website of The Mainichi Daily News has been more circumspect.
In the past month the 39-year-old has become one of the most reviled figures in Japan, where thousands of posters have flooded chat sites to decry the "sleazy Australian journalist" whom they feel has deliberately besmirched Japan's image around the world.
Connell's troubles began in May with one of his now infamous WaiWai columns, which cited a Japanese magazine article about a restaurant in the Tokyo district of Roppongi where patrons allegedly have sex with animals before eating them. The piece caught the attention of a blogger called Mozu, whose angry post was soon picked up by 2channel, a massive, fractious web forum popular with Japan's hot-headed conservative element.
While Wai Wai was always an interesting read, nine times out of ten, you'd come away thinking, "Yeah, right, as if." Looks like the editor finally crossed the line...
Thu, 03 Jul 2008
Why is it that plumbing issues always seem to occur late at night?
So I was there last night at 10pm, turning on the hot water tap for a shower. I hear a rumbling in the pipes, then all of a sudden, I'm not getting any water out of the shower head.
"That's strange," I think. I can still hear running water. I turn around, and out from the vanity unit I can see a pool of water spilling out and heading towards the drain.
"Oh, ****".
I open the cupboard doors, and a jet spray of hot water is bursting out of one of the cable hoses, which has blown.
"Oh, ****ity ****".
If there's one question for which the answer is not immediately apparent at 10pm, it's 'where's the master tap to turn off the hot water'?
There is a tap next to the cupboard. I turn it off. No impact - obviously the *cold* water tap.
I'm yelling for Kathleen.
"I have no idea how to turn off the hot water - can you run down and check with the neighbours?"
She's gone what seems like forever as I get a larger bucket, try my best to cope with the spray and empty it in the bathtub.
She comes back - the neighbours don't know either.
"Here, you take the bucket, I'll see if I can find the tap."
Without thinking, I'm running down three flights to the electrical switch room. What the hell? Why would the water to our apartment be here?? Back up to our place.
I take the bucket back off Kathleen, as the hot water starts to go cold, as the hot water heater runs out.
Then I realise the obvious.
And yes, the tap is right next to the hot water cylinder in the laundry. The spray stops as I turn off the tap.
We look at each other in the sudden silence. Water over the bathroom floor (thankfully it all drained out, rather than run into the hallway carpet), dirty water in the tub, and the shower suddenly out of action.
We rang the plumber. "Are you sure it's an emergency? Because the call-out fee will be pretty large," he warned. Yes, we're calling you at 10pm rather than at 9am tomorrow because to us its an emergency.
He was around in an hour. Ten minutes later, we had old flexible hoses replaced. The hardest part was getting the angle with the monkey wrench to unscrew the burst hose.
All up, it cost $450. But at least we had our shower back up and running.
