Today is a public holiday, although I’m not sure why.  I could probably look it up, but it still wouldn’t change the fact that today is a day off work.  Well, unless you are a police officer or ambulance driver or something.  Or a service station attendant.  Actually, we took our family to the pool today and the lifeguards were working, as were the café staff and the friendly people at the entrance desk.  Come to think of it, it appeard the only people on holiday today were my family.  My wife is 8 months pregnant and not currently employed, and my kids don’t attend school yet, so actually the only person with a day off work was me.  Although, technically, I’m on school holidays anyway as I work in a school.

So, let’s start this post again.  Today is a public holiday.  Nobody has a day off, but at least it reminds us of the importance of… er… why is it holiday today?

The whole public holiday concept has irritated me for a while now.  I like the day off, but feel sorry for those who still have to work.  Before finishing university I worked for a while in a service station.  Public holidays meant double or triple pay or some such good deal, but not usually a day off.  They often meant a day off for the boss, funnily enough, because I guess he found it difficult to pay himself triple rates.  Christmas Day we all took it in turns, just doing a 2 hour shift so nobody had to miss the whole day.  Too bad if your 2 hours was while everybody else ate your turkey, though!

If you are one of the fortunate few to actually get a day off on a public holiday there is, as you will realise, a downside.  As most of the shops are shut you can’t just “pop out” to get something you need, unless of course you go to a service station where you can buy a carton of eggs for about the same price as you’d pay for an entire chicken farm.

Enough!  I have a revolutionary new idea.  Why not roster our public holidays over a few weeks.  Whatever the public holiday today, it could be stretched over the next 3 Mondays, rotating through various areas of work to ensure everybody gets a break but also ensuring there are also sufficient people staffing facilities to make the day off useful.  So today everyone who works in, say, hospitality, tourism, engineering and finance could have a day off.  Next week it could be all maintenance staff, gardiners, roadworkers, shopping centre staff and accountants.  The week after could be everybody else.  It wouldn’t be difficult to keep track of, we could just use a colour code.  All the first group could have their place of work permanently painted purple, the second group could be yellow, and the third could be blue.  Then, on our calendars, you simply state the colour who is having the week off.  You’d see “Queen’s birthday – purple”, followed by “Queens birthday – yellow” etc.

The down side could be that your other family members are stuck working in the blue group, while your job is a yellow career.  This could easily be solved by everyone always wearing a T-shirt that is the colour  of their holiday industry.  Then, when meeting a person for the first time, you can be sure to avoid getting romantically involved with anybody whose holidays don’t match your own.

Simple, yet brilliant.  Keep me in mind when next electing a prime minister, eh?

Everybody has some kind of weird obsession if you look hard enough.  Mine is my hair brush.  Well, maybe it is more accurate to say one of mine is my hairbrush.  I’m not obsessed with having perfect hair, just with the brush itself.

Allow me to explain.  I’m a routine kind of person.  Not on a macro level but more micro routines.  It doesn’t matter to me if I don’t go to bed at exactly the same time each night, or eat pork every Tuesday, but smaller chunks of my day have certain routines.  When I get out of the shower I like to dry myself, brush my hair, apply deoderant, then put on some shaving oil.  I get dressed, then return to do the actual shave once the shaving oil has penetrated and moisturised my skin.  If, for some reason, I can’t find my hairbrush this entire routine is thrown into turmoil and my brain goes into mini-meltdown.  I’m not a morning person, so this disruption can cause psychological disturbance that lingers well up to lunch time.

My wife, on the other hand, loves macro-routines (shopping on Monday, playgroup on Thursday), but is hopeless at micro-routine.  She, therefore, simply grabs the nearest available hairbrush at whatever point in the morning she decides to do her or our daughter’s hair.  I think you begin to see the picture.  I’ve asked her repeatedly to respect my hairbrush fixation, but she always thinks “oh, just this once won’t matter”.  The next morning my mini-routine equilibrium is thrown into chaos, all for want of a hairbrush procedure for my spouce.  I even have a drawer of my own in the vanity cupboard.  Incidentally, this was her idea, but at least once a fortnight the hairbrush-napping still occurs.

The other aspect to a hairbrush that is immensely personal are the hairballs.  It disturbs me to see little white bunches of fluff at the base and to realise they are from someone else’s head.  I can also tell when she has snuck a secret use of the hairbrush and put it back, as her hair is much longer.  I fear that when I use a hairbrush that has long strands of hair hanging off they may get knotted and tangled in my head, and I will look like I am trying to grow a comb over or a pony tail.  The hairballs from long hair would take over the brush much quicker than my short hair, meaning a much quicker approach of the separation anxiety of throwing it in the bin and buying a new one.

I think it’s time the vanity drawer had a lock, for all our sakes.

We live in a glorious age. What other period in history can boast of such a range of products with which to remove the slimy discharge of one’s nose? My local supermarket has about half an aisle dedicated to tissues. You would be forgiven for thinking there must have been a recent, plague-proportioned outbreak of flu when you look at the sheer quantity available. Of course we don’t really intend to USE all those tissues, but what we do expect these days is choice. I want to decide whether to wipe my nose on a double or triple ply tissue, with or without quilting, perhaps slightly scented, and of course if I am environmentally conscious it is important the tissue is recycled and bleach free. If, however, I’m on day three of a cold and my nose feels like it has been scraped along a cheese grater I probably couldn’t care less about the environment, and want something heavily laced with the soothing properties of aloe-vera.

In our house my wife does the grocery shopping, and it is always a point of excitement for me to see which colour / graphic / design will appear on the week’s tissues. We went through a phase of experimenting with toilet paper in this way, too, but I was worried too much excitement would be bad for my heart. We decided to stick with a regular pattern on the toilet paper, the little blue shells go just right with our tiles. Just when I thought I’d seen it all though (including one earlier this month with either French or Latin phrases floating across a background of oak leaves – very weird), last week she discovered a tissue brand on sale with the weirdest design I’ve seen. The box is covered in kiwi fruit. Now this week I have, incidentally, caught a pretty nasty cold. I’ve been visiting the tissue box quite regularly. Kiwi fruit is a fuzzy, spiky skinned little thing and it is off putting to have to think about such a furry fruit whenever I sneeze. I wipe my red, raw nose and all I can think of is kiwi fruit skin, which isn’t a soothing thought at all. I guess I should be thankful, at least the design isn’t matched on the toilet paper.

Wave your hands more, I can’t hear you!
I wonder if medical science has discovered the nerve that connects our hands to our vocal chords?

Some things are harder to describe “hands free” than others. If you are trying to tell someone how to navigate a series of left, right turns on a curly back-road, for example, a bit of hand action is almost mandatory. What is really funny is watching somebody describe this same route over the phone. The receiver of the directions can obviously not see their hands, and yet the direction-giver will still wave them about. It is even funnier if they try to describe which exit to take at a round-about. At this point the complex hand movements may result in inadvertantly dropping the phone.

The capacity to add meaning to words by swirling gestures is often credited to different nationalities, some more than others. An Italian friend of mine willingly admits his need to talk with his hands. It is almost a badge of honour, a treasured aspect of his heritage. Talking with your hands is something he savours like a good glass of wine. For him, talking without his hands would be like drinking watered down grape juice in comparison. It is a far richer communication experience, as it involves greater depths of physicality. More than hearing is involved but also kinaesthetic aspects of space and time, and the visual processing of movement and scope. Having a conversation where both people wave their hands is a deep and moving experience, about half way between talking and giving each other a big hug.

Basically anything swirly really needs at least one hand free if you want to describe it properly. If you were to tie string across both hands and ask someone to describe a spiral staircase you may find you’ve discovered a new knitting method. Either that or you’d have to free the person using scissors.

Can you imagine a world where everything could be discussed hands free? What a boring place it would be. You could never tell someone the distance between the pegs needs to be “about this big” or to stir the soufflé mix “sort of like this” (see, without my hands, you actually have no idea what I’m talking about!). We could never discuss soft serve ice cream cones, spiral staircases, and definitely not fishing stories. If somebody were to discover the secret nerve responsible for this phenomenon, maybe we could just short-circuit the fishing stories part and keep the rest? Now that would be a scientific discovery worth making.
Posted by A.Ready at 9:03 PM 0 comments
Sunday, January 6, 2008

Who decided shopping malls needed to be the size of a small suburb?

In Adelaide we have some shopping centres that are larger than many airports. These are not pleasant places to be, yet they seem to pop up at the rate of mushrooms across the urban landscape.

Sailors in years gone by would navigate by the stars. Stars were fixed objects that could be seen from anywhere. The same can now be done during the day by tringulating your position between the nearest three Westfield and Centro monoliths. The advantage of navigating by these structures is that you can do it in the daytime when navigating by the stars is slightly less reliable.

It isn’t just the sheer size of these places that makes a minor shopping expedition akin to hunting down a rare species of mosquito in the jungles of Africa. The real reason these places are so horrible to visit is the simultanous bombardment of evey single one of your body’s senses. Sight, sound, touch, taste and hearing are all working overtime as you try to find your purchase. The mind becomes overstimulated within about seven minutes, causing parts of the brain to begin shutting down. This is actually part of the management’s cunning plan. They realize enough of your brain will be overwhelmed with noise, advertsing banners and food smells that it will no longer be capable of rational thought. This is the point at which you are in danger of buying an automated egg whisk at 3% off, convinced you’ve found the bargain of the decade.

While I understand these methods are obviously working well, I believe more customers could be attracted if they considered some new approaches. I submit these here for your consideration, and suggest if you like them you forward them to the management of whatever super-shopping mega-plex you live closest to.

1. Make it mandatory for every shop to play the same music. I don’t even care how bad the music is, just so long as it is all the same. Listening to Billy Ray Cirus croon out “Achey Brakey Heart” is still better than having to listen to five rubbish songs all at once. I would also take this one step further and suggest that whichever politician promised to legislate single-stream listening material as mandatory for all shopping centres would be guaranteed the majority vote in any election.

2. GPS. These things are pretty advanced now. I want to arrive at the entrance, write “electric frying pan (stainless steel)” into the GPS navigator, and see which stores have them and where these stores are. A zoom function could then show you the exact location within the store so you don’t have to wander through the ladies underwear department looking like a bewildered pervert. Incidentally, why is it that whenever you get lost in a department store you end up in the ladies underware section?

3. Voice recognition boom gates on the carpark. You tell the gate what you want to buy. If your purchase is obviously cumbersome and heavy, such as a bed, you get assigned a car park close to the door. If you’re only buying sunglasses it won’t kill you to park in the spots that are a fifteen minute walk from the door, so long as the management also install drinking fountains along the way.

4. Marked lanes in all walkways. If you are a slow walker or pushing a pram or trolley you could then keep to the left, allowing quicker foot traffic to easily overtake on the right. On my calculations this would reduce the average length of time spent on any shopping mall visit by at least 13 minutes.
Posted by A.Ready at 3:58 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Have you read Part 1 and Part 2?

Errr… does this look right to you? Maybe the instructions are upside-down, but I’m pretty sure the pergola isn’t meant to be attached to the tree like that. What will happen in Autumn when all the leaves fall down? The leafless and therefore lighter branch will not sag so much but spring back higher as it loses weight, pulling the entire structure out of its concrete foundations. As for those enormous diagonal planks, they’re going to make it difficult to fit in an outdoor dining setting. This DIY thing is tougher than it looks…
Posted by A.Ready at 9:56 PM 0 comments
Monday, December 31, 2007

Have you read Part 1?

Having successfully destroyed our old, rotten, decrepit pergola, phase two is preparation for the new one. Yes, despite the ongoing trauma of potential tetanus or broken bones, the DIY project continues. I have roped in a few mates, and am too chicken of the ribbing if I back out now.

Yesterday was spent digging holes. I want the pergola to go up, and yet I was instructed to dig down. These weren’t just little craters, either. Step out our back door and it looks like you’ve arrived at a long-drop toilet factory. Like any easily excitable DIY team, we decided at the onset of the digging to hire a power tool. We got ourselves a massive two-man-post-hole-digger. This doesn’t mean it dug a hole as big as two men holding a post, rather it was such a monster that it took two men to handle it.

The funny thing about many digging impliments is that they generally just disturb the dirt, rather than actually removing it. The two-man-post-hole-digger, from now refered to as the 2MPHD, had a massive screw shaped attachment on the bottom that supposedly drilled into the ground. This it did, amidst a cloudy fog of exhaust vapour and a noise that could be heard three neighbourhoods away. Once it had drilled the dirt, though, it all just kind of swirled around in there. As soon as we lifted the 2MPHD out of the ground the dirt all slipped straight back into the hole. I’ve also discovered this phenomenon using a spade, and it seems the deeper the hole is the less dirt will remain on a spade by the time it reaches the top. This is the ground’s natural defense mechanism to discourage civilization from hacking it up too much. It is frustrating to put in so much time and effort for such a little result. This phenomenon has been quantified by Mathematicians with the formula T+E X 0.001 = R. Strangely enough, this is the same formula banks use in working out loan repayments.

The other funny thing about building which amuses me on reflection (although didn’t at the time) is that having spent all day in the sweltering sun digging holes, the next day we returned to fill them up again. Each of the twelve holes now has about fifteen centimeters of concrete in the bottom. This is to sit a post on, which will then have concrete poured around it to fill the rest of the hole. Why not just dig the hole the precise size of the post to start with? Although having room to pour concrete does give an excuse to hire more power tools, bring on the cement mixer!

note the difficulties presented by this hole. We had to hire a small child who could fit under the step to do the work Actually, the step was put there later to prevent small children stepping out the door to disappear forever.
Posted by A.Ready at 7:52 AM 1 comments
Thursday, December 27, 2007

The “Do It Yourself” acronym DIY is a three letter word that should strike fear into my heart, yet sadly it often doesn’t. Not that I’m against the odd spot of manly tool brandishing. I enjoy waving a hammer as well as the next guy, but my “handyman” gene, which is surprisingly strong in my Father, seems to be missing. So although tools are fun, their effectiveness is rarely guaranteed.

I began pulling down a rickety old pergola out the back of our house today. Within the space of just over two hours I had fallen off a ladder and also stepped backward onto a nail that went through my shoe and into my foot. I survived the ladder drop without any damage. Actually, the adrenaline rush I received probably got me through the next two hours of lugging wood and bashing out rusted screws. The nail in the foot has dampened my spirits somewhat though. I sit here writing this with images of gangrenous amputations floating through my brain as I try to avoid remembering the feeling of metal pushing through the fleshy sole of my foot. What is it that drives us to DIY? I am convinced it is a gene; otherwise we wouldn’t still do it. We’d call an expert. If I ever get an infected pancreas I’m not going to remove it myself, I’m going to go to the doctor. When I have a desire to eat roast beef I’m not going to pop out and start slicing up a cow, I’ll visit my local butcher. I shudder to imagine a DIY filling if I ever get tooth decay. If my veranda needs replacing, though, something inside overrides my otherwise fairly stable sense of sanity. All of a sudden, without training or special safety gear, I happily shoot up a ladder and suspend myself precariously above a concrete path.

The DIY appeal may also lie in the allure of saving precious dollars. I mean, really, how hard can it be to pull something apart? Why waste money paying someone to do that? Putting stuff together is a whole different story. I’ve already organised help for the construction of the new pergola. I tried assembling my daughters’ swing set for Christmas and realized when I’d nearly finished that most of the swing assembly was inside out. I also snapped a bolt, and by over-tightening several others bent a major support pole out of shape. My aim was to make it tight to make it safe. Having snapped and warped two integral pieces I think my plan backfired. Back to the money saving then, I’d figured even if I’m not great at putting stuff together I obviously have a knack for wrecking things. Demolition seemed right up my alley. Unfortunately I am well on the way to spending my “savings” on various medical expenses, and also now walk with a limp.

Successful DIY obviously relies on having both the “handyman” gene as well as the “DIY” gene. Otherwise you end up really handy but with no desire to do anything, or the desire to work on a project but a complete lack of skill. Of course, those without either gene are probably the safest. These people cleverly use their spare time selling stuff on Ebay so they can hire someone else to do the dirty work.

Popcorn is fantastic stuff. It must be the only food we deliberately blow up before we eat it. In fact, next time you cook a BBQ try to deliberately make the sausages pop out of their skins and see who wants one. Not a pretty sight. Even if it were hidden in a bun you probably wouldn’t want to eat it. Why the discrepancy here? Popcorn is unique. You don’t just cook it, you destroy it, and then it magically becomes edible. Eating raw popcorn, on the other hand, is to guarantee at least seven hundred and eighty dollars of dental bills.

Wouldn’t it be funny if other foods were cooked to the point of explosion. What if you did the same thing to a banana? Can you imagine planning a quiet night in by saying “I’m just popping out to hire a movie. Why don’t you whack a banana in the microwave until it explodes so we can have something to munch.” Actually, I frequently overcook stuff in the microwave and it splatters everywhere. Rather than thanks for a delicious snack I’m scolded and asked to wipe it out.

I enjoy making popcorn at home, it is really easy, which is why I honestly can’t work out why popcorn is so expensive when you go to the movies. Maybe there is some kind of nuclear core powering those giant red booths. There could be an ultra-performance-nuking device specifically designed to pop corn at its optimum temperature. This would ensure the lightest, fluffiest morsel without risking the burnt flavour that can happen if you keep cooking popcorn too long after it has erupted. There is another one of the mysteries of this food, you destroy it to eat it but then you can actually ruin it by leaving it on the heat too long – there is a fine balance between destroying and ruining. I’m sure there’s a theory in there that could be used by the military if they tried.

Movie popcorn is in a league all its own, simply due to scale. Popcorn produced in the machines there seems to take on a life of its own, like a hive of popcorn that is greater than the sum of the individual kernels. The combined force that has gone into each little explosion, multiplied by the number of popped corns, is a concerning level of energy. Perhaps the expense at these venues is related to the need for extra thick glass to contain the morphous popcorn mass as it writhes and squirms, looking for some way to break free. Probably the attendant that scoops it out needs special training, too, to capture the popcorn in a cardboard tub and remove it from the collective consciousness in order to return it to a safe eating state. I guess in that light a few extra dollars is a small price to pay.
Posted by A.Ready at 10:42 PM 0 comments

Does capsicum make anybody else suspicious? It just doesn’t seem right that the same vegetable can come in so many different colours. Oh, I know, there are yellow tomatoes and different coloured chillies, but they’re not exactly high frequency veggies, more the fare of “gourmet” types. But capsicum regularly turns up in salads or stir fries, and between the red, yellow and green slivers essentially transfers a green salad into something resembling a shattered traffic light.

Truth be know, I’ve always had a fair degree of suspicion of veggies in general. The majority of them have the decency to be what they appear (if a carrot isn’t orange, pointy at one end, and fat at the other, it’s probably a sweet potato), however there are enough who do things on the sly to taint the upright and honest decency of the rest. This is sad, but true. How, for example, can zucchini get away with looking so much like a cucumber? A weird, mushy, bland vegetable masquerading as a cool, sweet, refreshing salad addition. As a kid I was always reluctant to take cucumber on a salad, just in case some “gourmet” adult had decided it would be nice to use zucchini instead. I knew I’d have to eat what was on my plate and although I enjoyed cucumber it just wasn’t worth the risk.

Zucchini is one of those particularly funny vegetables that are often used because they take on the flavour of the other ingredients in the recipe. If this is the reason for using it, why not just use more of the other ingredients? Why humour this uninventive, flavourless impersonator who not only looks like something else but doesn’t even have its own taste? I often eat zucchini in dishes, I’m not a bigot or anything, but I must say I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand it. Suspicious flavour behaviour is another reason not to trust your average vegetable too far. Raw onion has a smell that can peel paint, and a flavour that will clear your sinuses for a week. Cook it though, and it becomes sweet and syrupy. Roast onion is one of my favourite tastes, as is the delicious flavour of onions of a BBQ. Why can’t it just taste that good to start with and save us all that mucking around?

Of course, the ultimate vegetable funny business is not actually performed by a vegetable at all, but a fruit: the lime! Most fruit has the decency to start life green, then gradually change colour to let you know it is ripe. Not the lime, it spends its whole life looking unripe. So suspicious am I of the lime that I am considering researching a theory that lime is not a distinct fruit at all, but simply a lemon whose development has been stalled through clever genetic engineering. I’m convinced that if one were to try eating a lemon that was not yet ripe, it would taste suspiciously lime like. Of course, if I’m wrong, it would probably taste even more disgusting that a mouthful of fully ripened lemon, which is why I’m a bit hesitant to test my theory. Meanwhile, the conspiracy lives on…