Tag: Victoria

Backpack from North Melbourne


Kiddo wanted a backpack for uni and was looking up some online sites for it a couple of nights ago. She settled on an STM model – STM Convoy laptop backpack – which is olive in colour, holds the MacBook pretty well, has loads of compartments and great features like a waterproof bonnet, and looks well made.

So yesterday morning I did some digging around and found one in North Melbourne – under Maxfixit site. The person on the email was responsive so I drove over to their site to pick it up during lunch. The transaction went okay but dealing with the staff was something else.

When I walked into the office, a young lady was typing away on a computer and barely looked up, face grim and all. A young man from another corner of the room walked across towards me and I mentioned the email exchange earlier. That young girl muttered something about the bag being at the back of the room somewhere and did not greet or look at me. The young man just went and took the bag, took down some details and processed my payment. This all took a quick 10-15 minutes but it all happened without the slightest occurrence of pleasantries.

I got back to the office just a bit after lunch, and emailed kiddo that I got the bag. So the transaction went ok in that we got the bag pretty quickly and at a reasonably ok price. If you don’t mind the sour puss personnel it would be a perfectly good place to get your Mac stuff but if you want a bit of friendly exchange, look around online and wait for the parcel to be delivered FedEx or something like that. Avoid the Maxfixit North Melbourne office.

Kiddo got her backpack and I think she’s happy with that.

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Rockbank Woes


I was sleeping in this morning and caught the 6.30am news on the bedside radio. The news which caught my attention was that somewhere in Melbourne someone has been charged for butchering and selling meat illegally, notably dog meat.

It turned out it was in Rockbank, a suburb on the north west of Melbourne, near Deer Park.

I have to confess I feared the offender being Chinese, but thankfully (hopefully) this seems unlikely. Admittedly the data I looked up was from the 2006 census but there appears to be no Chinese population in this town. Maltese, Italians, English, Kiwis and Cypriots were the major groups.

I hope the offenders get dealt with properly and this sort of thing ceases to be a problem here.

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Wintery Summer’s Day


It was 11 degrees at 5.40 this morning. At the gym people were in trackies and when I got in to the office it was still only 13 deg. As far as the weather goes in Melbourne, the only constant is change. It no longer feels strange to see, in the middle of January, people walking about on the streets with a jumper or coat. At the office this morning I had a meeting with a couple of external IT guys and one came in a jumper and the other, a sports coat.

When we first came here in 2004, the “spread” of temperature through the course of a day was a feature I marveled at. It could be 8 deg in the morning and 30 deg at 3pm. At least today it would remain cool throughout, hitting a top of 19 deg. We were often reminded to keep jackets in the car because you could almost be certain that the weather will change at some point.

We were out at the Tullamarine airport again last night, dropping a mate off with his daughter to resume his holiday and it was cool. It was our fourth trip to Tulla since New Year’s Eve and there will be at least one more this weekend. The first one on NYE was a sweltering night and last night, it was cool – all within a 10 day period.

It has been a mild summer but today feels anything but summery…

See this story on The Age

Winds deliver a dose of winter

Adam Cooper

January 11, 2012 – 9:48AM

 

Parts of Victoria have been buffeted by winds of more than 100km/h as Melbourne’s hot summer conditions give way to an unseasonal wintry blast.

Just a week after Victoria began the new year with a heatwave, high winds were recorded around the city this morning, with gusts of 95km/h felt in Frankston, 83km/h in Fawkner and 74km/h at Melbourne Airport.

The strongest winds were felt at South Channel Fort, in Port Phillip Bay near Sorrento, where a gust of 107km/h was recorded at 8.14am.

The State Emergency Service is monitoring the winds, but says there has been no major damage caused by falling trees.

However commuters on the Pakenham and Cranbourne train lines, in Melbourne’s south-east, will experience a longer trip to work after a tree fell on an overhead power line.

Metro has tweeted that services are suspended on the two lines between Oakleigh and Dandenong stations, with buses ferrying passengers between them.

Metro says outbound trains on the two lines will terminate at Oakleigh until further notice.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Terry Ryan said the high winds were felt around 8am today.

“We’ve had very windy weather this morning but conditions will be easing this afternoon as the front moves away and the high slowly moves towards us,” he said.

“The morning will be windy but the wind will back off this afternoon … we’ll have strong winds on the bay, but the real gales will be gone by 10 or 11am.”

Mr Ryan said snow had fallen at Mount Hotham, although it was not settling because the ground was too warm.

He said snow could fall at any time, but it was fairly unusual to record falls in the first two months of the year.

“We’re still recovering from spring, you might say. It’s more a spring event before we launch into the depths of summer,” he said.

A top temperature of 19 degrees has been forecast in Melbourne today, but it will be colder in other parts of Victoria.

Rain and high winds are expected in Ballarat, across Gippsland and on parts of the west coast.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/winds-deliver-a-dose-of-winter-20120111-1pu6s.html#ixzz1j6LIPFyn

 

 

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Cleaning and Waiting


With kiddo away for her version of schoolies Tress and I have been filling our time with stuff that revolves around people in church and food.

Last Wednesday night after my brief appearance in a board meeting at work we went out to a Chinese dumpling place. Then on Thursday we were at an Indian place with a couple o families and on Friday we met with about half a dozen other families in Brian and Doreen’s home for a break up dinner. On Sat it was at Alex and Li Har’s, this time for a farewell for a family who was relocating to WA.

Finally last night another half a dozen or so families came to our home for a roti and curry dinner.

Tress parents are coming to visit in a little over 2 weeks and together with the dinner last night, we had good reasons to go on a cleaning spree over the weekend. Following on from the previous weekend, we continued to sweep, wipe, mop, wash, vacuum and dust. The cool weather helped heaps and kept us going till it was time to get ready to get to Alex and Li Har’s.

We haven’t got anything else lined up for our home the next few weeks. Things have come to a halt now and like someone said to me last night, it would be a really good time of just reflecting on what to do, next year in particular that’s for sure but also from a more general sense, for the next ‘x’ number of years. In a sense, all that cleaning is to be ready for the waiting which must happen now.

This was how it used to be


It’s November but it’s still single digit temperature in the morning and I’m still pulling on a jumper. Some old timers tell me this was the Melbourne they knew before. I spend a lot more time with old timers these days so I have had reasonable sampling sizes when I gauge how old timers feel.

Maybe that’s part of my current problems, few as they may be. In my office on a day like today when the population size increases by 33.3%, the average age is on the wrong side of 50’s. On days when there are just 3 this piece of statistic inches ever more to the wrong side and has a closer look-in on 60. I shudder to think what happens when we take into account the other occupants of this building. It wouldn’t do any harm to my sense that I spend a lot of time with old timers these days.  And they all tell me this was what the old Melbourne was like – cool Spring mornings, even in November.

It’s not just the cool mornings – it’s also the wet. It has been raining, in an almost English sense of the word i.e., the rain never truly stops but it doesn’t bucket down like a tropical torrential downpour either.

So November notwithstanding, summer-like conditions are still only a promise. A bit like the here-but-not-yet eschatological kingdom thingy.

I’ve been in this NFP role for 4 months now. My work is a mish-mash of activities. I go through all in-coming mail, check on rental, mortgage, farmstocks and loans programs on the revenue side and distributions and donations on the disbursements side as well as miscellaneous building and tenancy matters. I also have some legal stuff thrown in, although for the most part it was tax stuff and my contribution was muted at best. The Treasury came up with an “in-Australia” raft of amendments to the tax laws concerning charitable tax exempt status, to which organisations like us made annoyed (and worried) submissions. Then there was the new consumer credit licensing laws which we needed to look to, and which incidentally I had to front up to the Board  tonight to discuss a paper I put up recently. These legal stuff sort of made work a little bit more interesting but professional work satisfaction has long taken a remote back seat. I still get tickled into dipping my toes into possible legal work every now and then but it is still a remote back seat.

What my present work has done is to somehow, show up some sides of faith based organisations which tend to confirm some old prejudices. Maybe it is actually an Australian thing or maybe it is just the circle I have been moving in, but lately, I get this feeling that those who work in Christian organisations somehow are more relaxed and less intense in their day-to-day work activities. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re old just older and wiser and react less to day-to-day situations and take things more in stride. While this doesn’t explain the frequent absences and travels I notice it sort of show work is taken less seriously and people just want to spend more time on people – family especially – and activities they enjoy.

Maybe I’m getting to know a Melbourne that used to be, just like cool November mornings.

 

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School Year-End Horsing Around


There was a young bloke on radio this morning. His name was Nick Langford. He’s the school captain of Melbourne Grammar, and on muck-up day he rode a horse to school and “parked” it on the school oval. Apparently that was one of 3 entitlements a school captain of Melbourne Grammar has. The other 2 were to grow a beard and bring the wife to a school function. I guess a school which screams establishment continues to frown on facial hair generally but even with this exemption he could not grow a decent one within a short period of time, and it must have been a very old rule to have a married high school student.

So Nick Langford exercised the only right he could and rode a horse to school. He had someone bring a horse down from Bendigo, spoke to the deputy principal and executed his triumphal entry.

Yeah – it’s that time of the year again, when school finishes up and kids celebrate. Last night Tress and I were at Kiddo’s Valedictory Night for the MacRob Class of 2011. It was at the San Remo Ballroom in Carlton North. Nicholson Street is a nightmare on most occasions and last night was no different. The usual administrative genius of MacRob school meant a venue was chosen for a function which started at 5pm, right in the middle of peak hour traffic, where public transport was limited (just the Tram No. 96) and car park were either 1 or 2 hour spots. I zipped in and out of adjoining streets and corners and finally found a 4 hour slot, and got in with about 5 minutes to spare. It all finished close to 9pm and by the time I got home I was too bushed (I had gone to work at 7am that morning to make up for an early finish) and could barely read half a page for my exam preps before deciding to just have a glass of red and go to sleep, before waking up to news of Nick Langford’s exploits.

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5 Deg (feels like 2 deg)


Beginning of St Kilda Road, Melbourne, on Prin...
Image via Wikipedia

That’s what my weather app is saying about Forest Hill now. No wonder I’m freezing my watuzi off. Why is it so cold? Or have I just become old?

I was just at Kiddo’s school for an info/briefing session for her trip to the old world. It’s now just over 2 weeks before they leave and everyone is excited now. I had to trek into the city and in this weather, it wasnt fun. The traffic was bad, it was cold and, I’m not the one going to Europe in 2 weeks.A 6pm meeting meant I had to cut across the city circa 5.30pm – the worst possible time to be in the St Kilda Road area. Thankfully a cold night meant there was plenty of parking available so that took some of the pain away. I was a little late and when I approached the theaterette where the talk was being held, the crowd was already there and it had started.

Kiddo reserved a seat just next to her and I sat down and tried to get into the mood of things. Thankfully I managed that.

Apparently it will be hot in Italy this northern summer. What a treat it’d be for kiddo, if even to just get away from this cold and wet winter in Melbourne. It would be a trip she will enjoy and remember very fondly I’m sure. I’m really happy for her. If nothing else, she’d get away from this cold for a few weeks. Why is it so cold? Or am I just old?

 

Day Out


A colleague was working on a case which was potentially curly. The team had wanted to set out a consistent approach in terms of treatment of similar cases but sometimes – often in fact – so much depends on the facts of a particular case. A site visit was thought useful to verify certain factual situations and to put documented facts in perspective.

I was asked to come along for the visit. I guess it is part familiarization with site visit procedures but also good control to have more than just the one person on site visits.

So yesterday this colleague and I set out for the property in question. It was located at the start of the Great Ocean Road and it was going to take us about an hour and a half to get there.

We were at the Finance department early on to pick up the car keys and look for the necessary paper work. We then headed down to the basement where the cars were, and I was pleasantly surprised to note that the Office has a fleet of the Toyota Camry Hybrid. My colleague was even more of a novice in these things than yours truly. He pushed the power button on and then the both of us just sat in the car for a while, wondering if he had done all the right thing, as the car was so quiet we thought nothing was happening.

We finally pulled out of the parking space and made our way past the five floors underground to emerge out of the belly of the complex, onto Bourke Street, after going past 3 boom gates. Soon the wet morning pushed on and it was belting down. While waiting for the lights on Flinders Street, we thought the engine had died on us, so quiet was the thing. It felt like it had powered down to a safe mode of sorts but when my colleague engaged the gear back to drive it took off again. Soon I was fiddling around with the radio and after about 5 minutes of talk back radio on 3AW, I switched channel to an FM music channel – I think it was either Classic Rock on 104.3 or Vega on 91.5. My colleague lighted up noticeably – he must have thought me an old man, what was I doing listening to Neil Mitchell on a drive out to the Great Ocean Road.

We were soon out of the city and on the Westgate, heading towards Geelong and beyond. It was still belting down – the rain was tropical. Still, it beats being cooped up in the office so we enjoyed the ride.

At the property my colleague talked to the clients while I took some pictures. It was a basic Canon SLR model. Thanks to my (very) modest self education on these toys, I could handle the thing ok and my colleague and our boss was fairly pleased with the outcome of my photographic efforts and they sort of spoke the thousands of words the report needed to attend to the clients’ file.

We got back around 1.30pm after stopping in town for coffee and a very good apple and rhubarb cake (it was labeled as a fancy pastry with some French name but it was a cake to me). I told my colleague this morning I think I have an idea for a day trip this coming Easter long weekend. I think he had the same idea.

Regards,Ian

Sent from my iPhinity (and beyond)

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The Worst Ever (Black Saturday bushfires)


Victoria is in shock, I think. From the Premier John Brumby to my colleague across my desk, no one could believe what happened. The bushfires which raged through last Saturday would etch an indelible mark on those of us who lived through the day in this State.

We all waited in trepidation for last Saturday. The forecast had said the maximum temperature would be 44 deg. The actual maximum was 46.4 deg. It was also going to be very dry and windy.

A few of us visited a friend in Kew on Friday night and didn’t get back till late. At home, I couldn’t sleep straight away so I stayed up, had a few drinks and watched tele. 

As a result, I was up late – just after 7.30 – on Sat. Tress and I went to our usual coffee place, in the Chase. Just before 10 we got home and Tress and Kiddo both went to church for some practice and other meetings. I stayed at home and tried to do some work. By about 12 it had got up to about 40 deg so I gave up.

I also decided against attending the church Board meeting which was going ahead that afternoon. I thought if I did I would simply struggle through the 2-3 hour session and neither make any meaningful contribution nor feel any wiser or better for it. It would in fact, send me down a very bad path.

Tress and Kiddo came back just after noon and we decided to hide out in the Chase. They waited in the car and the moment I opened the house door to join them, I felt the heat hit me like the breath of a might dragon. The heat was intense and I never felt anything like it. It must have been at least 45 deg then.

We got to the Chase and I took the opportunity to look for a new pair of runners. My old ones are overdue for replacements. I used to change one every year (at the most).

Admittedly I run less these days but one reason for this has been my runners have been causing me problems. My right sole has been hurting and by all accounts, the shoe is the main culprit. So away with the old and in with the new. Problem was –they didn’t have my size. I use the New Balance 766, meaning it was a 2006 version of the 76x series. The New Balance 769 is the current one but they didn’t have a size 4E, which I need.

So the “shopping” activities went on. Only, we weren’t really shopping – more a case of just whiling away the time to hide from the oppressive heat. We took in some sushi and ice cream.

After about a couple of hours we thought conditions may have improved. We went home, were confronted with the continuing heat and went back to the Chase after less than 20 minutes!

This time, we just sat at the food court. Sharon our neighbour walked past and much to my shame I had to look at her a couple of times before being sure it was her. I think many modern neighbours don’t interact very much and sometimes we aren’t even sure what they look like! Anyway, I was sure it was her so I called out to her and we chatted for a bit.

It was soon just after 6pm and I stepped out of the Chase a bit to check out the conditions. It was cool again…

We went straight home, opened up the doors and windows, turned out the cooler and waited in anticipation for the house to cool down, quickly. I hit the showers and felt, just before 7pm that my weekend had only just started. Little did I know that for many, the nightmare of this enormous disaster has already begun.

 

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