What's strange and foreign for you might just be home for me.

Me and the boy are off to Noo Zulland on Sunday for another frenetic round of family and friends and decent cafe indulging. We decided a few weeks ago that it was time to do it, hopped online, got our tickets and called in the dog-sitter. When we go we will only take hand luggage with (and a few plastic bags for the mountains of my favourite breakfast cereal that will be coming back with us).

But one of the Oztralians from the office is also going there in a month or so, and another Oz mate is there at the moment. The office mate has been planning her week at a conference in Christchurch for months - flight bookings and accommodation through an agent, travel insurance yadda yadda yadda. The mate that is there now emailed me 2 weeks before she left to ask if Noo Zulland has the same power supply and plugs as Oztrailer! (the answer is 'yes you bleeding idiot' BTW).

So that got me thinking in a minimalist non-theoretical way about what is foreign to us - I am off to Vietnam again in late June and have been planning for yonks - travel insurance, travel plugs, guidebooks, visa etc etc etc. But my mate whose family lives there is just as likely to do what I do with Noo Zulland and grab a ticket at short notice and pop over.

Now if I was Hammy or Tezza I would probably start raving about globalisation and shrinking worlds and conceptions of the 'other' and probably some social inequality (if I was Hammy) for good measure.

But I couldn't care less cos' I'm going on holiday!

And what's more, I'm going 'home' - where people pronounce the letter 'H' properly, don't drive like they're on a pedestrian assasination mission, have a decent version of the warehouse instead of the anemic piece of crap they have here and where you would get slapped if you asked for a Chicken Parmigiana in a decent cafe (and they're all decent!).

Rose tinted glasses? Hell yes! But it's my blog and there's nothing you can do about it :-)

See ya in a week!

On the basis that secondary school students would probably not respond to the concept...

This was in today's Noo Zulland Herald and they in turn stole it from a little poxy suburban paper...I wonder if the reporter was able to keep a straight face while writing the last line...
_________________________________________________
Hugging grannies soothe meningococcal jab fears

10.05.05 2.00pm

Coming to a school near you: granny cuddlers armed with a stack of warm hugs.

Red Cross volunteers, or granny cuddlers, have been dishing out a bucket load of cuddles to Northland primary school children as they get their first meningococcal B jabs.

Northland Health vaccinators moved into schools last week to deliver the meningococcal B vaccine. They have been accompanied by Red Cross volunteers on hand to deliver the comfort of a gentle cuddle and to wipe away any tears.

Maureen Moseley, Whangarei's Red Cross service centre manager, said the organisation had been approached at the start of the campaign to assist the programme.

"They asked if Red Cross could provide volunteers who would be able to cuddle a kiddie or allay their fears if they were a bit afraid of getting an injection," Ms Moseley said.

"We call them granny cuddlers and poppa cuddlers. They've had children and grandchildren and the little kids just respond to them."

The granny huggers are only visiting primary schools on the basis that secondary school students would probably not respond to the concept.

- NORTHERN ADVOCATE (WHANGAREI)

Dealing on furniture, plastic.

In the absence of inspiring blogs from Mouse who was meant to hide the fact that I have become even more slack of late, I have decided to plagiarise an email that came through my inbox this morning.

It read as follows:
__________________________________________________________

From: cmiec_group@tlen.pl
Date: Tuesday, 10 May 2005 1:13 AM
To: cmiec_group@tlen.pl
Subject: Work From Home As Our Representative

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am Mr.Liu Peijin ,managinig director of China Metallurgical Import & Export Henan Company (CMIEC HN). we are a company who dealon Furniture,plastic and export into the Canada/America and Europe.

We are searching for representatives who can help us establish a medium of gettingto our costumers in the Canada/America and Europe as well as making payments through you to us.

Please if you are interested in transacting business with us we will be glad.

Please contact us for more information,Subject to your satisfaction you will be given the opportunity to negotiate your mode of which we will pay for your services as our representative in Canada/ America and Europe.

Please if you are interested forward to us your phone number/fax and your full contact addresses.

Thanks in advance
Mr.Liu Peijin
Managing Director
CMIEC HN
WWW.CMIEC.COM
________________________________________________________

"Wow!" I said.

"All my life I have dreamt of becoming a medium ofgetting to costumers in the Canada/America and Europe, but especially for being a money laundering/subsidy service for a dodgy company with a polish email address that purports to be Chinese. How is it possible that all my dreams could have been answered at once?!"

So I clicked through to their VERY impressive website, www.cmiec.com, complete with scrolling pictures of business people, a computer generated building and Chinese language dead links. Sinosteel Trading Company was truly a partner to aspire to!

If anyone else is interested in joining me to do this exciting business venture ofgetting to costumers, simply send me your bank account details, eftpos card, PIN number and home address...oh, and your passport would be handy too :-)

N.B In the spirit of plagiarism I also have to acknowledge the inspiration of Max the uber-time-waster who amused himself by doing this late last year. The saga continued for some weeks and some blog entries - you can seach on fighting talk to see the whole deal if you're really keen.

Back to thesis procrastination.

Another addition to the blogosphere.

I would just like to welcome Mouse - a fiesty friend of long-standing who will brighten up this blog no end - I am looking forward to rants about taiwan, useless boys, shoes, shopping and yes, scooters :-)

Stay tuned for her debut blog!

I am scootergirl, hear me roar!

OK, I promise this hasn't turned into a scooter blog...much. Just let me get it out of my system over the next week or so and we'll move on to more important issues - like THIS.

But I have to do just a leetle rant about last night's excursion, another of those 'holy shit, that was FUN!' experiences that the scooter seems to bring on an almost daily basis.

You see, not content with being tertiary educated nerds on little scooters, Tezza and I decided to join up with other nerds, and whizz around the city in a pack - 14 of us, blatting around Melbourne town and looking seriously silly!

What's more, Tezza and I, complete with L plates hanging off the back, were by far the nerdiest of the nerds - UBER nerds if you will. Not only are we on our 'Ls', but we're also the only ones with 50cc bikes - the rest having 90cc and up. There was only one bit (110kph freeway section) that we wussed out on (and, for the record, it was Tezza doing the wussing - although I have to admit that the plan, which involved 4 people riding abreast behind us to ensure we didn't get mown down didn't sound all that appetising...) and for the rest of the time we more than held our own.

Funny how the sight of 14 scooters riding in convoy makes people stop, stare and then piss themselves laughing. Can't possibly think what might be humorous about that scene. At least it means people see you, and the constant horn honking from cars around us left no doubt that the Melbourne Scooter Club (we even paid our $2 each and bought the official stickers!) were on the loose.

I feel the need for a Tim Allan-type grunt right now but a scootergirl type snigger might be more appropriate - let's not get TOO carried away in the moment ;-)

Not all that goes brooooooooom is made of speed.

I resent the automatic implication that scooter rider = speed freak.

Tezza and I have discussed this many a time and I am proud to stand on my soap box and say that I do not like going fast on my scooter. There, I've said it.

Sure, I like zipping around - but zipping is very different to belting down a freeway at a zillion miles an hour - 60kph is the upper limit of my 'feeling more or less ok about being a moving projectile with very little protection' threshold.

So to all the Goonanism and Flash hoons who are raving about bike racing (yawn, boring!) let it be known that speed is not everything.

Hence the fact that I felt only mildly inferior last night when I found myself burning off a guy on the street near my home.

Why inferior you may ask? Well he won of course, but the fact that he was on a bicycle made it sting just that little bit more.

And on a slower note...

Ok, so cycling is not quite scooting... but I can at least manage 15kph on an uncomfortable seat in the rain. ;-)

Was sent the following. Laughed my tiny ass off. Thought maybe the world wanted to know.

*******************************************************

Cyclists are the biggest sandbaggers and secret trainers around. They'll say anything to soften you up for the kill. Don't let this happen to you. Study this handy rider's phrasebook to find out what they really mean when they say:

"I'm out of shape"
Translation: I ride 400 miles a week and haven't missed a day since the Ford administration. I replace my 11-tooth cog more often than you wash your shorts. My body fat percentage is lower than your mortgage rate.

"I'm not into competition. I'm just riding to stay in shape"
Translation: I will attack until you collapse in the gutter, babbling and whimpering. I will win the line sprint if I have to force you into oncoming traffic. I will crest this hill first if I have to grab your seat post, and spray energy drink in your eyes.

"I'm on my beater bike"
Translation: I had this baby custom-made in Tuscany using titanium blessed by the Pope. I took it to a wind tunnel and it disappeared. It weighs less than a fart and costs more than a divorce.

"It's not that hilly"
Translation: This climb lasts longer than a presidential campaign. Be careful on the steep sections or you'll fall over -- backward. You have a 39x23 low gear? Here's the name of my knee surgeon.

"This is a no-drop ride"
Translation: I'll need an article of your clothing for the search-n-rescue dogs.

"It's not that far"
Translation: Bring your passport

*******************************************************

Love and Hugs
GBFSB

Trucks + rain + scooters = bad and soggy.

In my unfettered enthusiasm to scoot everywhere I go I decided to learn how to scoot in the rain on possibly the most pizzling soggy wet godforsaken day in the history of the universe (slight overstatement but you get the gist).

Having splurged out on scooters last week Tezza and I had decided to be sensible and wait until we got paid before getting some extra bits and pieces for our scoots. Unfortunately one of these 'optional extras' that we were scheduled to buy today was waterproof pants...

Scene 2:

9am Thursday morning, Scootergirl enters postgrad room, dripping happily. Squelches over to Tezza's desk and grins like idiot.

Tezza, having arrived a little earlier (after abandoning his bike somewhere completely inconvenient on the other side of university because he was too wet to scoot any more apparently) is equally wet and quite concerned about his students hassling him for having a visibly damp crotch.

Scootergirl takes shoes, socks, raingear etc off and sits in front of heater in pathetic attempt to dry off, politely suggesting that they go and buy raingear that afternoon before the scoot home. She also warns Tezza that if he ever has occasion to be scooting next to a truck in the pouring rain that keeping the feck away from it is not a bad idea, unless he really wants to be covered in more water than he thought existed in the world.

___________________________________________________________________________________

I love scooting!

Karma at work

Went to an Avril Lavigne concert tonight (long story involving a mate and a free ticket and a spare evening and a need to feel very very old and to hanker after a cup of milo, a jazz album and an early night).

Anyway.

Went with mate, drove in her car to Rod Laver arena, paid twilight robbery price of $9 to park car in secure parking and went to concert. 1 hour and 15 minutes of concert later (the last 20 minutes of which Avril had completely screwed her voice over in - funny how the 'everybody!' bits increased exponentially during this time and at exactly the tricky parts of the songs) and we're walking back to the car. A bumper sticker catches my eye - i'm sure everyone else has seen it but it was the first time for me and I liked it - entertaining on so many levels:

"Your karma ran over my dogma".

Anyway.

Carry on back to the car and my mate stops at the drivers door and says 'oh fuck'. Sure enough her window is wound down and the door is unlocked. Weird thing is, her drumkit (acoustic), drumkit (electronic), industrial grade minidisc recorder, mobile phone, stereo etc are all still there - and there is no damage whatsoever to her car. We can only assume someone disturbed them and they buggered off before nicking anything .... but just maybe they read the same bumper sticker as me on the way there.....

Brrrrrrrooooooooooooooooooooooom!!!! (putt putt putt)

The name of this blog could very well take on a new meaning.

I have just this week purchased a sexy little 50cc scooter and am happily flailing around learning how to avoid trucks, cars, buses, people, other bikes and, yes, trams. Please wish me luck (and lots of it) to ensure that I (or my next of kin) don't end up blogging about literal tram spotting (or scraping spots of alice off the side of a tram).

I have long hankered after a scooter with which to zip around on - I fully expect it to be a short-lived phase i'm going through but i thought, what the hell, you only live once (possibly for a shorter time with the assistance of a motorbike but who's splitting hairs?).

My mate Tezza and I embarked on our scooter odyssey together. Not content with having matching laptops (he was first) and schoolbags (I was the trend setter on that one), we now have identical black Bolwell Jolie scooters, matching jackets and - thank god - different coloured helmets. We are trying to come up with names for our new scooter gang - 'geeks on bikes' sums it up but it's not catchy enough. Does anyone have any suggestions?

So I called my mum and told her I had bought a scooter - her first response was 'darling, did i tell you about my cousin who has been in a coma for the last 15 years because someone opened a car door on her while she was on a scooter?'

Me: "Ummmmm, no, I don't think so, but thanks for that'.

After wobbling around my neighbourhood for a day or so, I took a deep breath and scooted to uni yesterday, a distance of about 4kms as the crow flies. There was minimal trafiic and I took the quietest roads I could think of but I still shat myself whenever I had a car 'coming from behind', so to speak. But my god, what a buzz it was! Got to uni in one piece, grinning like an idiot and buzzing all over the place. The fact that I had hardcore helmet head was a small price to pay. Also got a real buzz out of pulling up at the lights and having another biker (on a real bike) doing the 'eyebrow raise' acknowledgement that I have craved for so long. Now I am truly cool!

Got to uni and was joined a few hours later by Tezza, also grinning like an idiot. He had ended up at uni having 'taken a wrong turn' while testing out his baby, which he got today.

We were standing around our new office (the excitingly named 'postgrad research precinct' - unfortunately its exciting name doesn't really make up for the fact that I have been ejected from my cosy private office into open plan hell) and one of the nicer admin ladies comes in to chat to us - she sees Tezza's helmet and starts happily telling us about the injuries she sustained (splintered femur, 5 months in hospital, bone grafts, walking stick yadda yadda yadda) after being driven into by a car when she was going at 30km. Off the bike, through the windscreen and into another car.....

At this point Tezza and I were considering taking a bus home to our respective houses. She finished her little anecdote by saying that if you ride a bike you just have to accept that you will be injured at some stage.

This story was also pretty consistent with the advice of the dealer who sold me my bike, who said, 'just remember, everyone is out to kill you'.

Thanks for the tip - trying hard to keep my nieve enthusiasm going - maybe it's time for another ride :-)

Look out Siagon Here we come

Time to check the Tortoise and the Hare blog again

http://www.uberflash.blogspot.com

On a wing and a prayer.

Hammy is blogging about the end of the world thanks to climate change and Tezza is blogging about seal clubbing so I thought i'd blog about something equally serious - my friend Wing.

Wing is a singing superstar in Noo Zulland and increasingly overseas as well. I first heard about her a couple of years ago when my fabulous mate nic who is an all-singing all-dancing drama gal told me about hearing her at some of the all-comers concerts that the musical community holds.

At this point in time international attention had not yet been focussed on her and she was working away, financing her own CD recording and production. Little did she know that, in the vein of a predecessor of hers, Florence Foster Jenkins, her perseverance would pay off tenfold with singing immortality.

I urge you to visit her site and sample her free music downloads - 'My favourite things' from her early album 'The sound of music and the prayer - performed by Wing' is one my favourite things.

Ladies and Gentlemen - I give you Wing!

GBFSB - Hanoi Uno

Please check The Tortoise and The Hare for first day update.

Come to think of it, check the same link for day 2 also. :-D

GBFSB

Bonsai Kitten gets Tobyfied!

You've got to love animal cruelty hoax sites. The latest, save toby, is bloody funny in that sort of sick and twisted way that we've all come to know and expect from the internet.

More so because it highlights just what hyppocritical little beggars we all are - most people would happily pay through the nose to have a rabbit meal in a restaurant but the second you see a cute one being ransomed on a website (I love the recipes which include '1x Toby') people go through the roof! This reminds me of the 'vegetarians' who will eat a type of meat UNLESS it resembles the animal it came from. Cute and fluffy = 'bad' but nicely packaged on a plate = fine. I know someone who will happily eat a burger from Maccas or somewhere equally evil but eschews meat in any other form....WTF?!! I'm sorry - but in my book that makes the transition from being principled to spineless - if you're not going to eat meat then it has to be in any form - otherwise, you're just salving your conscience.

Don't get me wrong - I am not on some moral high horse here - I eat meat and dead animals with the best of them - although if I had some more willpower and less of a fondness for meat I might not because i'm not really keen on the whole eating other beings thing...but I have enough trouble making a meal for myself in the evenings, let alone making one sans meat so it's always fallen into the 'to do one day...maybe' basket.

For those dedicated web procrastinators among us, Save Toby brings back fond memories of Bonsai Kitten - a vintage site that is sick yet oh so funny.

It also reminds me of Michael Moore's comment about his first film - Roger and Me. He commented some time afterwards that the inclusion of the infamous 'Pets or Meat' bunny skinning sequence, attracted more negative feedback than any other aspect of the film, which, judging by the response to toby's plight, sounds about right.

And, in case anyone really is falling for Save Toby's premise - visit here, to reassure yourself and chill out. The Age was getting itself worked up about it today - you would have hoped they might do just the tiniest but of web research to check it out first.

As a young Vietnamese acquaintance said in a recent email to me - 'Peace out'.

Beautiful big square. Hard endudring!

Beautiful big square. Hard endudring!
Originally uploaded by wonder geek.

I have long been a fan of sites such as www.engrish.com - so i was surprised to realise that i had missed a lovely example that was right under my nose.

When in Thailand recently, I bought a Thai plug for my laptop. I ended up using part of the packaging as a bookmark and, when it fell on my head last night while reading (i generally know it's time to go to sleep when the whole book falls on my head - the bookmark is a less painful pre-warning system), I looked at it and my evening was brightened up no end.

'SOAV' brand tells you that 'This product be applicable the home appliances'. What's more, it is 'Beautiful big square. Hard endudring' with Usage conveni ence'. What more could a girl ask for?!

Another one bites the Vietnam... ??

OK, GBFSB signing out from America. Next message from the land of bicycles and conical hat (preferably together).

In just a few days we will be on a search for Dalat (no other cyclo will do). If I can figure out how to attach pictures I'll post a few choice shots throughout the trip.

Big hugs everyone. And don't forget to check the Tortoise and the Hare blog (see link to the right under "mates and acquaintances").

Lots of Love
GBSFB

Strike one for academics vs. bureaucracy!

As an occasional staff member and general lackey at my university I am on the staff mailing list for the school - which specialises in communication.

It was thus a little perplexing when all staff recieved this email this morning:
______________________________________

"Good Morning all,

To assist Property Services in the management and use of both Reverse
Osmosis or Deionised Water, could you please give me an indication of
your current and future use of these products.

We will rely on your responses to assist us with the future management
of these services and I would appreciate it if you could supply me with
this information by COB Friday 1 April 2005.

Thanks for your assistance in this matter."

_________________________________________

I had to do my damndest to bite my tongue and not fire off a smart ass reply to everyone - but thankfully someone much higher up did it for me:
__________________________________________

"Reverse osmosis is a preferred pedagogical method of mine. I learn from
my students, and I would be against any university attempt to minimise
its use in classes.

The increase in reverse osmosis has also been one of underlying reasons
for the increased colocation of cognate disciplines - I don't know how
the university can contradict its own strategic directions.

As for deionisation: It can only lead to teaching staff wearing more
crinkled shirts, and in such a competitive environment as tertiary
education, we need every bit of competitive advantage we have - any
potential increase in crinkled shirts is a pressing matter. Ionise,
ionise, ionise, I say."

____________________________________________

Sometimes I love academics :-)

The house inspection (wo)man cometh.

My approach to the topic of tidiness in the years following my metamorphosis from a teenaged slug to a semi-adult baboon could perhaps be summed up in the phrase 'messy but hygienic'. There might be crap throughout the house, office etc but the desk and carpet under it will be more or less clean. This has worked well for me thus far and I have even managed to find myself a partner who seems to operate on a similar basis give or take the odd 'right, clean up your shit, i can't find the dog'-type comment when it all gets a bit too much.

My desk at university is the same - technically there are 3 people in my office, but in their regular absences my stuff seems to creep (run?) for freedom to desks where they won't be suffocated by piles of other important but unreachable stuff. Not a good look I know but my junk takes on a life of its own and things just seem to spread out despite my best intentions (no doubt much to the annoyance of my office mates!).

My brother, on the other hand, is a neat freak. When I was 17 I went travelling with him to Europe via Argentina. Unfortunately this involved us sharing a hotel room - sort of like putting Barney from the Simpsons in the same room as Marge (or Joey from Friends in with Monica - funny how it's always the guys that are messy in those stories). But I digress. The short version was that after about 24 hours in Argentina (our first stop on the trip), when I had spread out in my usual fashion, my brother literally drew a dividing line down the middle of the hotel room. He strictly enforced this for the rest of the trip, much to my amusement - I couldn't see why he had a problem with my underwear, books, clothing, CDs, toiletries etc invading his space but clearly there were some unresolved issues that I wasn't going to push too far given that he was paying for the hotel room.

Which brings me to my current dilemma - the house inspection this afternoon. We live in a fabulous rental place in the not too dodgy side of town, but I suspect that the rental agent will not take my word for it that the house is clean - give or take the mountains of shit liberally sprinkled everywhere. So last night and parts of the preceeding week have been spent relocating our crap. I always thought it was a humorous exaggeration when you saw people putting things under the carpet in films but there is now a suspicious 'pile of misc clothes-shaped-lump' under my duvet (and no, dammit, I will NOT say 'doona', no matter how long I live in Oztrailer!).

The house is, as always, hygienic - but I'm just hoping that the agent has at least a smidgeon of my tolerance for mess....

Word of the day.

Just used the word schadenfreude in a reply to a comment from my charming nemesis Jo.

I am sure I have provided a definition for this fabulous word before but I really feel like it is something that does not get enough publicity. Who else but the inventors of sauerkraut could come up with such a marvellous expression to encapsulate so much?!

Just as the Eskimos have given us 256,324,674 words for snow (approximately), the Germans gave us "a malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others", how cool is that?!

Kudos my man!

If I could pick someone to burn down part of my old school it would be this dude. Funny how dreams come true eh?

Even weirder, the dude was in the care of an organisation I used to work for - and I used to work with his support worker!

I LOVE NOO ZULLAND!

Sigh, feeling a little homesick. - This is essential viewing for any Kiwi away from home - and anyone else who might be curious about why we love the land of the long white cloud.

And the moral of the story is...

As a wannabe academic (similar to the wannabe gayboy number that Tezza the pink fonted man is doing over at Project Maya - minus the sense of style), I have a more than passing acquaintance with commas and semicolons. At times it is tedious, nay, even dull, to be so hung up on such small things but this more than demonstrates the importance of spellchecking.

Let this be a lesson to you the next time you think 'she'll be right'.

Why bother?

Walking up from the train station this morning I was unfortunate enough to overhear this complete waste of space and energy. It was one of those inane bollocks 'can't stop because i'm so damn important and busy' conversations so it went like this [verbatim minus stage directions]:

Scene 1: A man and woman cross paths walking in opposite directions.

Woman [walking full speed past man]: 'Hi!'

Man [walking full speed past woman]: 'Hi'

Woman: 'How are you?'

Man: 'Good'

Woman: 'Good'

Man: 'And you?'

Woman: 'Good'

Man: 'Good'.

Man and woman exit stage right and left at full speed.

How NOT to do sponsorship.

In a former life I was a greasy PR consultant. But I'm pretty sure it takes only a basic knowledge of PR to know that this is not a good idea.

I can see the conversation:

Exxon man: "OK so we fucked up the environment good a few years ago but that was a long time ago and everyone has forgotten about it. So how can we promote our new corporate social responsibility?"

Thick-as-pigshit-sponsorship manager: "I know! How about we sponsor something cute and fuzzy that will help people to forget about it and brand it Exxon?"

Exxon man: "That is GENIUS! But I have one better, how about we make the name REALLY clear?"

With no further ado ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Healesville Sanctuary 'Exxon Chemical Rehabilitation Aviary'. No shit.

For my next trick...

Soooooooooo.... [stretches and cracks knuckles].

After the great Tourettes Man comments war of '05 what do you think I should blog about now? Funny how the pickled babies comment didn't get a rise from anyone but tourettes man did (regardless of whether he really is Mr Tourettes or Mr Something Equally Unfortunate But Quite Different Altogether). Maybe I'll ask him when I next seem him to settle it for once and for all.

Have been thinking for a while about changing the general theme of this blog actually. Public transport has been fun for the last year ['and oh what a year' - looks wistfully back while flicking through mental photo album] but not so many things strike me as odd as they used to. Am I turning into a hardened metropolitan commuter? Am I becoming blind to the quirkiness and wonder that is around me? Am I running out of ways to describe a train ride?....perhaps there is a little bit of truth in all of it.

So, for lack of a more imaginative brain, after the 2nd Nam tour of duty that Flash and GBFSB will be undertaking in just a few weeks I hereby declare this a 'GENERAL RANT BLOG'. From then on it wil be no holds barred! no excuses given! no spelling checks made hot and heavy blog on blog action! There will still be the odd bit of PT commentary for old times sake but this will be all new and even more nerdy!

You have been warned!

I have a clone!

Mwoah hah hah! Soon our evil plan to take over the world will be complete...

good likeness eh?

Feeling guilty.

I saw my old friend Mr Tourettes Man today. According to this blog I haven't seen him since May 31 last year when he and I used to share a tram line.

Mr Tourettes, who I am now convinced is actually Mr Schizophrenia or similar, was not having a good day. I heard him about 3 blocks away as I walked up Swanston Street. He was standing on my side of the street in his suit, facing the traffic but not focussing on anyone in particular and going off his nut at someone that I couldn't see. As always, his motions were very slow and controlled - I'm sure he's not a danger to anyone.

You could see the first year uni students who have recently moved from the country to the big smoke crossing to the other side of the road to avoid him and I felt very sorry for him - and more than a little guilty for not talking to him to see if I could snap him out of wherever he was or direct him to somewhere where he was less likely to get arrested...but apathy and a meeting appointment were the winners on the day - and I feel like a heartless rat.

Small town flashback twilight zone

I have lived in Malburne, Oztrailer for over a year now. During this time I have randomly met 2 people from Noo Zulland that I know.

"So?" I hear you say?

Well, I have met these 2 people in the last 4 weeks....at my home stop on my train line...and they're from my high school.

This is not impressive until you take into account that my home town in Noo Zulland had a population of 12,000 people and 28 chickens at the time I lived there, and my school had a total enrollment of 800. The school had years 8-12 in it, of which I knew maybe 50% of about 2 years - not many in other words.

Anyway, this is probably only weird for me. But today's encounter with random NZ chick was truly surreal. We're standing on the packed train after getting on at my stop. We stare at each other blankly for a while as commuters do before we realise we're actually staring at each other. We do the funny eyebrow scrunching mutual recognition thing before I say 'Are you from Cambridge?". Turns out this chick was in the year above me at school.

I'm pretty sure neither of us could remember each other's name but we did the obligatory stuck-on-a-train-making-smalltalk-with-someone-from-your-childhood-until-you-can-get-off thing, which covered the standard topics - my answers to her questions were:

Yes, I live here
I've been here for over a year
I am a post-grad student/lecturer
I live in Flemington
No, I don't miss Cambridge.

In return, I asked her if she lived here, how long she'd been here, what she was doing and where she lived.

Small-talk obligations fulfilled, I asked if she'd been back to our home town recently - she'd been back for xmas. I asked if she found it weird being back there, going to the town's skanky old pub etc - she said 'not really' and commented that all the people we'd gone to school with just got 'taller and hairier' as time went by.

Luckily at this point it was time for me to get off - in fact I might have considered getting off even if it wasn't my stop.

A little extra decoration to help you sleep at night.

A little extra decoration to help you sleep at night
Originally uploaded by wonder geek.

The charming centre tile between the two beds in my Ho Chi Minh City hotel room :-)

Will work for bulk bananas

Will work for bulk bananas
Originally uploaded by wonder geek.

The privilege of catching a lift on one of these incredible animals does come at a price - as many bananas as you can supply.

Once they've got the taste for them their amazingly flexible trunks snake out and relieve you of your banana stash...or if you're brave enough you can deliver them straight to the mouth!

Mad Hatter comes to the photo blogging party a leetle late.

Errrrrr, ok, have just figured out how to post up gratuitous piccys. Have not yet figured out how to put them into old postings (suggestions team?) so you will have to play 'match the random pic to the equally random blog' until i get up to speed. Enjoy!

Introducing a newbie blogger

I've never blogged before. I'm afraid to go out and blog alone. The MadHatter (my younger sibling) has invited me to add this "tramspotting" blog, until I loose my blogging cherry and become wise in the ways of the blog.

Soon, a friend and I will also be travelling to Vietnam (we're not very orginal in my family ;-). My friend has his own blog... I'm so ashamed. In a future installment I'll make you a link to it, if he lets me. We'll be going to both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. You might expect to hear more about cyclo Dalat when I get to HCMC. Until then...

GBFSB

Don't mess with the cyclo man.

Tonight is the first full moon of the new Chinese year and thus an important date for Vietnamese who pay their respects to their ancestors etc. They also flock to the fabulous pagodas that are dotted around HCMC and so I took the opportunity, with the assistance of my trusty cyclo man Dalat, to check out 3 of the pagodas and see how much passive incense smoking I could do in one morning.

The pagodas are amazing - incredibly intricate carvings and decorations with people carrying incense sticks absolutely everywhere. At the first one that I went to the door assistant gently thrust a bunch of incense sticks into my hands as I entered, which I then wandered around with feeling all warm and fuzzy until I copied the others and planted them in various bowls around the pagoda (I skipped the holding the incense to your forehead and bowing at everything in sight bit that came before).

I thought when I first went in that the people who looked like they were crying as they left were simply overcome by religious fervour. Turns out the incense smoke is so thick that your eyes start watering within seconds. The original plan was to visit 5 pagodas but after 3 I looked like I had been bawling for a week so I decided that 3 was enough.

When I left the 2nd pagoda I found my cyclo man in a full-on fist fight with another cyclo dude. This was serious biffo so I wandered down the road a bit and waited for my man to extract himself, which he did after a minute or so more. We carried on and he explained that the other man had mocked him...made mental note to never mock the cyclo man.

After my fit of religious enthusiasm I reverted to a bit of the old ultra-shopping. Hit the An Dong market which is mercifully free of tourists like myself (oh the hypocrasy! (and bad spelling!)) and cheaper again than the tourist areas. Bought a gorgeous wood chopstick box set for the magnificent price of $8 australian - and I was probably being ripped off. It's great to be in a place where even the tourist rip off prices are fantastic!

After that we headed to the Saigon War Surplus Market 'Dan Sinh' to pick up some obligatory American War remnants for my partner who is keen on that sort of thing. The vast bulk of the market comprises very (and some not so very) convincing replicas of war memorabilia ('american GI' zippo lighters that have been beaten up to look old, helmets, bags etc) that you can see the stall holders whipping up with their sewing machines. But if you ask the right questions and look carefully it is still possible to find some original stuff. I picked up 2 medals/badges from North Vietnamese (Viet Cong) and American Marine units as well as 2 American dog tags ($3US each). I am almost certain that the dog tags are real (I was offered both real and replica versions and there is a definite difference) so my partner and I will check their authenticity and maybe see if we can return them to their original owners.

I have been here for just on a week, and am very much in love with Saigon. I have long been in the habit of randomly smiling at people in the street - in Australia this usually results in a blank look but here you are repaid tenfold. Amazing smiles and 'hello's abound, especially off the main tourist strips :-)

I have also had the opportunity to see the extreme other side of Saigon, a world that I think many people don't know exists.

I caught up with a mate from 'Uc' (Australia) who, as it turns out, is one of Saigon's nouveau riche young elite. He picked me up and took me to his mum's place for drinks. For starters this was one of the most opulent private residences I've ever been to - and we're standing on the balcony overlooking the Saigon River when he points out the next house which apparently belongs to Ho Chi Minh City's President. To say that I felt somewhat underdressed in my cargo pants and t-shirt would be a monumental understatament. We then went for dinner with his cousins at a BBQ goat meat restuarant (thankfully not a dog meat one - had one of those, complete with dogs hanging in the window, pointed out to me by my every-helpful cyclo man the other day!) and then we hit the clubs.

The first place, the surreally named 'Apocalypse Now' had pretty good if slightly cheesy music, a mixed western/vietnamese crowd (complete with 2 bored looking 'ladies of the night' dancing with yukky overweight balding western men) and 2 security guards in full military uniform standing guard on the stage. A leetle bit of overkill I thought but you never know when a westerner riot might break out to the accompaniment of the dance remix of 'I will survive'.

At the 2nd place my mate's friends met us at the door and took us past the bouncers (I was the only non-Vietnamese there) and up the stairs to an incredibly plush bar/club. Beautiful young Vietnamese things were lounging around on comfy leather couches and armchairs, drinking diabolically expensive wine and spirits by the bottle. All but one of our party were studying in Australia and were back in HCMC for the holidays and made for very good company. It turns out that rich young vietnamese guys dance as well as gay white men - they were the ones standing up and dragging the girls up to dance! Much fun and drinking was has by all, and, as has happened every time I have been the guest of someone in Saigon, regardless of their income, I wasn't allowed to pay for anything. I think I have a lot of repaying of kindness to do when back in Australia.

So there you have it - one tourist's burblings about a very funky city. Can't wait to get back here later in the year :-)

By bus and boat to the mekong and back.

Ended up going on a Mekong river tour instead of the tunnels and temple, figure the tunnels will still be there when I come back next time but that China's spectacular damming efforts upriver on the Mekong might mean it was not so good later on.

So I went to the appropriately named Sinh Cafe, booked my tour and handed over the princely sum of $7 US for a full day tour, with aircon bus, tour guide, 2 river trips and lunch.

Boarded my bus at 8am in Saigon. Not normally a tour bus kind of girl but there was no way I could have done it cheaper so there you go. The Mancunian midwife on her midlife OE (beginning with an unplanned volunteer stint in Banda Aceh) that I sat next to was more than enough to keep the tour bus blues away.

After an entertaining toilet stop in which all the women piled off the bus and ran for the loos, only to recoil as they realised they were squat toilets (I on the other hand don't leave home without ample supplies of tissues or the ever-handy immodium: 2 of the traveller's best friends!) we carried on to our destination and were loaded on to a dinky authentic rickety tourist boat on a tributary of the Mekong.

From then on it was foreigner hijacking happy hour as we conducted our tour of the nifty rice paper making/coconut sweet making/puffed rice thingy making village while running the gauntlet of postcard sellers and everything else sellers. After tea and a prolonged opportunity to purchase the items we had seen produced it was back on the boat to have a look at a very cool floating vege market. It was pretty amazing to see that all the things you see on the movies are for real. Vietnam outside of the main cities doesn't seem to have changed in hundreds of years (give or take the postcards and the fact that the old wood boats now have outboards on the ends!).

Then it was on to the Mekong proper which is - to put it mildly - fucking massive! Crossing from one side to the other took about 40 minutes but was pretty mindblowing to do. The rivers I know come in smaller packages.

Lunch at a restaurant up one of the tributaries was allright but the monkey chained to a tree at the back for our benefit was not. Nor was the classical Vietnamese music performance given by a woman who worked there with her band. Full points for angst-ridden enthusiasm but I can now see why the overal effect has been compared to cats being strangled.

Back on to the boat after lunch and to the waiting tour bus. A quick whip around a local market and then home made for an exceptionally good way to spend $7 US and a good chance to check out the world outside the HCMC chaos.

My heart will go on....

Music and mobility seem to go together here, just like the bows of ships and the impulse to stand on the railing and spread out your arms.

Highlights include the taxis that play 'happy birthday' as they reverse at you at full speed, the people on push bikes who inexplicably cycle up and down the road clacking some sort of jingly thing, and the bloke who pushes a tall speaker up and down the road blasting out 'my heart will go on' for no apparent reason.

I wondered if it might be a mobile karaoke thingy but I can't see a microphone - a little mystery for me to ponder at night as I lie in bed listening to it wafting through the window :-)


***BREAKING NEWS: It is the next day, I have just stopped the 'My heart will go on' man in the street and asked him what the hell he does for a living. Turns out that fact is even weirder than fiction, the music blaring tall speaker is actually a pay per use mobile height and weight machine...with added music as a bonus. So there you go, measure your height and weight on the street while listening to Celine Dion. Perhaps 'my heart will go on' is some sort of cryptic heart disease message...?

Wheeeeeeee!

So this morning I woke up after 11 hours of what I will generously call sleep. The rock hard bed and brick for pillow were fine but the extremely busy 24/7 street below my window took a little getting used to. Popped into my local dodgy street phramacy first thing and the woman laughed when I asked for earplugs - I suspect it might be a frequent foreigner request.

As my friendly cyclo man was nowhere to be seen (millions of others were of course but I am a loyal customer) I bade farewell to my insurance and hailed (or agreed to be hailed by) a 'Honda Om' motorcycle taxi, which in fact is usually just a bloke who fancies earning some extra cash with his bike. Negotiated a reasonable foreigner rip off price for our 7km journey to the Cholon china town markets and off we went. Not only was it not as scary as I thought it would be (remember that we are talking about literally hundreds of bikes on any one street at any time with no road rules to speak of), it was actually a lot of fun, give or take the layer of grime I was covered in at the end of it).

I'm not sure what overtakes tourists when they're off their home patch but riding pillion on a motorbike in insane conditions with no helmet while wearing shorts and jandals seemed feasible. That said, I will make the distinction between riding a motorbike in Samui, which I wouldn't dream of, and riding in HCMC. The difference (apart from the squillions more bikes in HCMC) is that the traffic never gets above 30/35kph in Saigon whereas in Samui it's what you can get away with. I know perfectly well that your head will split just as easily at 35kph as it will at 100kph but it somehow feels different. Riding in HCMC seems to be more an ongoing negotiation between reasonably civil madmen whereas Saumi is a suicide mission. When I come back here for a few months I may even considering riding myself (WITH helmet and appropriate safety gear), but we'll see about that when I get to it.

Anyway, enough of that. Saigon is a lot of fun. Am just about to book a ridiculously cheap tour to check out the Cu Chi tunnels (aka an e.g of exactly how the Viet Cong kicked the US's ass) and the temple of some mad religious sect or another for tomorrow so I'd better go do that - quite fun being an unadulterated tourist for a few days.

Jetlag, pedal power and hallucinations of pickled babies.

I left England, land of the uninspiring everything what I think was this mornimg, although I've had 2 of those in the last 18 hours as I am now in Vietnam and jetlagged out of my skull.

I think that is how, within 1/2 an hour of making it through the 2 hour long queue at Ho Chi Minh airport and not getting tooooo badly ripped off on the taxi on the way to the guest house (the first offer was $15 US to which I laughed and took my bag back - his next offer was $6 US which I couldn't be bothered haggling down), I found myself perched on a cyclo, weaving through insane Vietnamese traffic with scooters and cars galore and looking at pickled babies.

OK, let me start again. After the taxi ride I got to the guest house which is a leetle dodgy but clean and perfectly acceptable (the dodgyness is mostly only cos of the large centre tile in between the beds which is a modern soft-porn picture (didn't know that the porn industry was expanding into tiling but there you go). The bed is clean, it has aircon and a shower/toilet, costs $9US a night and the only gecko i've seen so far was squished in the sliding shower door. More than any girl could possibly want.

Within half an hour of arriving I was walking round the streets. I literally got about 10 metres down the road before Dalat the cyclo driver pounced and charmed me into hiring him for what turned into the afternoon (funny how that happens). Dalat has an entire book of references from clients (of which I am now one) but it was the lady from Timaru who clinched it for me!

We spent three hours (at the princely sum of $2 US an hour) with him pedalling me round HCMC, dropping me off at attractions, waiting for me and carrying on. My role in this was to dutifully go into the attraction I had been dropped at, look at it and resume my task of looking like a tubby jetlagged western idiot in a cyclo. I think I held my end of the bargain up rather well.

It was V. weird going through massive roundabouts with cars and motorbikes flying past and us just sort of cruising - as a normally paranoid backseat driver of the worst kind it was bizarre not to feel scared at all. But if I thought that was weird, the 1st stop was a doozy. Dalat dropped me off at the war remnants museum (formerly known as the american war atrocities museum or some other equally neutral name). The museum starts you off gentle with photos and historical info then gets progressively more stressful and before you know it you walk around a corner and find yourself face to face with 3 jars containing pickled babies with agent orange deformities sort of tucked into a corner of the room. I wondered, nay hoped, that it was the jetlag kicking in early but instead had to get all serious and emotional for a while before hopping back on my magical mystery cyclo tour.

Next stop was the history museum which was presented lots of very funky ancient cambodian carvings and 3 more preserved bodies! I was starting to get worried about the emerging trend but the jade pagoda temple (next on the list) was just amazing - a working inner city temple with people in suits turning up and praying and burning incense, and a huge moat that is chokka full of turtles that people bring to 'set free' - part of the monks' job is to look after them.

After that we were back where we started, except that we stopped at Dalat's local haunt and had a drink on the street on the traditional Vietnamese children's plastic tables with his mate Ton who is a motorbike taxi man and whose services I may well use in the next few days as well. I shared a drink with them (not without noting that my kid's seat had had another one surreptitiously added for strength!), added a glowing reference to Dalat's book (a 3 hour tour for $7 US including drinks and tip!) and staggered back to my funny old hotel, not a bad start to my week in HCMC at all!

Public transport that goes 'brmmmmmmm'

Have been enjoying trying out some new forms of public transport while in Samui.

Our favourite so far is the equivalent of the local bus service which involves utes with large open-ended hutches on the tray. You just hop onto the back to head to wherever you fancy. There is a buzzer fitted into the ceiling that you press when you want to get off and you just relax, sitting in the tray of the ute with the wind in your hair, admiring the hand-beaten metal work and paintings that decorate the passenger area.

On an island that is 21x25kms total there aren't too many places to go so generally you're on the main ring road, which gives you lots of opportunities to watch the myriad motorcyclists with a death wish hurtling along. It's funny how when people are on holiday they do things they wouldn't dream of at home. So you see Swedes, Fins, Brits etc hooning around on scooters with no helmets and safety clothing that consists of a pair of shorts and jandals (make that thongs or flip flops if you're not from NZ). Clearly death and injury are not concerns when you're on holiday.

The road rules in Samui involves flooring it until you're behind a car or motorbike, at which time you toot twice and swing round them into the oncoming traffic and then duck back in. Woe betide the motorcycle or dog that gets in your way while doing this.

I guess i've lead a sheltered life until now - but I have to admit that seeing entire families on scooters or girls riding sidesaddle still amazes me. Saw a pair of girls today with the one on the back (riding sidesaddle) clearly in charge of indicating and doing so beautifully by pointing her bottle of Singha beer in the approximate direction that they were heading. Another pair were seen at about 80kph with the passenger holding a large silver fish, sort of casually hanging down near the tyres.

Also gave in to tourist temptation today and did an elephant 'trek' (I use inverted commas because 1/2 an hour can hardly be called a trek). Pretty sure the aim is to make the tourists as uncomfortable as possible, heading up exceptionally steep hills and over rocky terrain but I still loved it - albeit silently being grateful for the rope 'seatbelt' that we were tied in with! Any form of transport that runs on bananas and cleans itself has got to be good!

Anyhoo, enough rabbiting on - am off to London tomorrow night where the transport will no doubt be much less exciting and MUCH more expensive - ciao!

Your correspondent decides to test some airborne public transport.

Have decided to undertake a trip that involves hanging around at Bangkok airport in transit for as much time as possible in a 3 week period. The itinerary is Melbourne-Koh Samui (via Bangkok), Koh Samui-London (via Bangkok), London-Vietnam (via Bangkok) and Vietnam-Melbourne...you guessed it, via Bangkok. Bangkok airport is not one of the world's most enticing places and is designed like a rabbit warren...but more of that later.

The flight from Melbourne was reasonably uneventful save for a few highlights which included a harassed mother of 3 at melbourne airport waiting to board that 1.15am flight telling her eldest, who was doing the classic 4 year old 'and then what?' question routine: 'and then you'll get on the plane and sleep for 9 hours without waking up'.

Had the pleasure of meeting the Thai airways air cabin crew on my first Thai airways flight - was especially charmed by the older women who bore haircuts with dead straight fringes that honestly made them look like Vulcans.

So i'm blogging from Koh Samui, Thailand which is a bloody marvellous bit of the world. Samui is on the cusp of surrendering completely to tourism and tackiness but for now, it's just what the doctor ordered. That said, the airport is like some surreal Thai-Disneyland. In a neat bit of monopolistic wangling Bangkok Airways also owns and operates Koh Samui airport - hence they can do what the hell they want with it and also decide who gets to play in their sandpit.

You arrive and get decanted from your plane into disneyland-type tuk tuks that you all sit on looking like jetlagged idiots and get driven about 100 metres to the 'customs area' (aka a large open sided hut - albeit a very classy one) with two rather ineffectual fans lazily swinging around on the ceiling and a lone customs officer in full military regalia who does the most vigorous triplicate passport/visa stamping routine I have ever witnessed), all a reasonably surreal way to start your trip. It was rush hour when I arrived early on a Saturday morning, and the massive queue of 8 people ahead of us meant that our tuk tuk load of people got ushered to wooden seats around the sides while we waited for the jam to clear.

And now I am working hard at shopping, basking on the beach, having daily massages (1 hour for $7 AUD thank you very much!), practising my seriously crap bargaining skills and contemplating trying a 'fried bug' (grasshopper is rather good I hear) from the street vendor near our bungalow. I LOVE being bourgeois!

Over and out.

All priorities are relative.

Sometimes body language is all you need.

I was at the Flinders Street train station and felt the call of nature, so much so that I found myself contemplating the dreaded train station toilets. No matter where you go in the world, they're all the same. It could be the Paris Metro, the London Tube or somewhere in New Delhi, Cairo or New York - regardless of location or wealth, train station toilets all maintain the same exacting standards of putrid filth and dodgyness.

I remember when I was a kid in Noo Zulland, visiting my dad in Auckland. I was waiting to take the train back to my home town and needed the loo. The Auckland train station is in a beautful old building but beauty or no, the trail of blood leading down to the women's toilets convinced me that I could just cross my legs and wait.

Fast-forward a dozen or so years to today and my present dilemma. I thought I could hold on but the accursed train was even later than it usually is (thanks Connex!) so, after much hopping around, I finally gave in and strode purposefully towards the toilets. I had just reached the door to the toilets when a stream of five women ran past me in the other direction, holding handkerchiefs, bags, shirtsleeves or whatever came to hand to their noses.

It's funny how every urgent task is, at the end of the day, relative to your current situation. I may have been desperate for the toilet but in that moment I realised that yes, i could wait just that little bit longer. I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere.

More acolytes for my nerdy cause....

Everyone's getting in on the tramspotting game! :-)

Fridays will do that to you.

It is the time of year when I notice that my various parts are that much rounder or nearer to the ground. I would blame gravity or other scientific anomalies but the fact that I attended nine xmas lunches (but no dinners for some reason) this year MIGHT have something to do with it.

Anyhoo, that's the reason why I was on the late afternoon train last Friday - heading out to a new recreation centre to begin atoning for my deadly xmas sins (gluttony mostly but i'm sure sloth snuck in there somewhere as well) by playing a few rounds of badminton with some equally guilty mates.

We pulled up to the station that I was getting off at and a super laid-back ocker voice comes over the intercomm saying "don't try to get off just yet ladies and gentleman, we're going to back the train up a tad as I appear to have missed the platform by a smidge". Sure enough, the train proceeds to reverse (I didn't know they could do that actually) with us pissing ourselves laughing inside and the people standing on the platform waiting to board looking rather bemused.

The train stops and the voice comes back through the intercom saying "there, now that's better, have a great weekend!"

And sure enough, I did.

Feeling warm and fuzzy on the #57 tram

Have I mentioned that I like trams?

They rock!

Take today's trip into the city for example. Waiting at my stop with an Asian woman and her young daughter. As the tram pulls up the Aussie driver spots the woman and her daughter and starts waving to the girl. As they get on he proudly says hello in their language and they exchange xmas greetings.

I settle into my seat and watch the hijab-wearing West African woman search in her purse for coins for the fascist coins-only ticket vending machine. She realises she only has a $5 note and starts to panic at which point an elderly Australian woman taps her on arm and points to the old Chinese man who has noticed and is holding out $5 worth of coins. She accepts with a lovely smile, sitting down and then shuffling over to make space as a young pregnant woman gets on.

At the next stop an 'Aussie working bloke' gets on the tram carrying approximately 3 cubic tons of scrap metal, perfect for gouging eyes and piercing lungs when the tram stops suddenly. The driver, having had no response to his 'you can't get on with that mate' warning, comes barreling down the tram and an almighty altercation ensues, with the exceedingly grumpy bloke getting back off after the driver stood his ground with the silent support of the whole tram.

We carry on and the tram gets progressively fuller as more and more xmas shoppers get on, heading towards the city. An elderly woman gets on and gratefully accepts my seat. She rewards me with an entertaining evesdropping conversation with the young pregnant woman about her grandchildren, their ages, schooling, plans for the future etc.

I reluctantly get off at my stop, amply reminded why it is that I love trams.

Ashley who?

"So I was sitting on the train right? And these 3 kids were sitting behind me and one of them was like SUCH a try hard!"

Y'know, one of those girls who has just just got her slappa L-plates and is revelling in the fact that she's a grownup girl now and super proud of her newfound sexual prowess (rrrrroawwwww!). There were 3 of them sitting there but she was the only audible one, sort of excitedly talking and being all grownup, dishing the dirt on exes ("He can't get it up!") and the various bitches who had crossed her ("Just cos' I slept with her boyfriend she gets all seppo!")

A highlight for me was an exchange between the guy she was sitting with where he asked "Ashley who?" and she replied, "You know, the one who looks like me who gave you head who you kissed right after! Remember? I found out and asked you 'how's the sperm?' [cue: maniacal self-satisfied cackling]"

Nothing like a good sperm joke to end the day :-)

Boogie Mamma!

I usually take the train home in the evenings around 7pm - a commuting time now reknowned for its smiling faces and good vibes. A couple of weeks ago though, my partner told me about a passenger he had seen, who sounded like just the solution. Last night I had the pleasure of sharing his company.

I boarded the carriage and found to my delight that a man in workman-type clothes was playing blues on his harmonica - not busking for money mind you - just playing for the love of it. He looked maybe one baguette short of a gourmet picnic but boy could he play.

Initially it was short set-pieces of a few chords (I suspect designed for serenading the passengers or simply announcing his presence) as people boarded at each station. As we pulled away from the city and the train got faster between stops the pieces became longer and more vigorous, incorporating foot stamping and tapping the harmonica case against the back of a seat. At the end of one particularly vigorous piece he yelled out 'Boogie Mamma!' All songs were timed to last the distance between stops so the longer you stayed on, the longer the concert.

I was sitting immediately behind him, facing in the other direction, and it was great to watch all these jaded commuters discretely smiling and looking appreciative (after the initial WTF?! - type response of course), although no one clapped or let on that they did like it.

As I reluctantly got off at my station, I murmured "Have a good night mate" to him (in my best pseudo-ocker accent - notice the cunning placement of the 'mate' for authentic effect). The result was a broad grin and a "You too, merry xmas" from the Boogie Man. Brightened up my journey no end and left me feeling rather warm and fuzzy and just a wee bit seasonal (but don't tell anyone).

Lost in translation?

Chilling out on my usual 10.14am train ride into the city (hardworking student-type that I am) and find myself spending most of the journey staring at a woman's chest.

Now this is not really typical behaviour on my part (honest!) but the chest in question belonged to a middle-aged Vietnamese woman who was dressed in the standard 'tidy-casual mother' attire: exactly the right length blue jeans, black undershirt with black jacket over the top and gold 'Mum Jewellery TM'.

I was staring because the black shirt under the black jacket appeared to be one of those blokey humour t-shirts. You know the kind, "my other car is a porsche', 'if you can read this the bitch fell off' ad infinitum titter titter titter. This one read 'So you're a feminist? How CUTE!'. What's more, the word 'cute' was in those fabulous pink sequin thingys that mums of a certain age are so fond of. Have to admit that it looked a little incongrous emblazoned on the chest of this particular lady but there you go, I guess there's a misogynist (or poor interpreter?) in us all.

no hoWARd

The central train station had a big fire yesterday morning that resulted in us being kicked out a station early and all being late to our respective destinations.

Subsequently, I took the tram home last night, after another marathon essay marking session at uni.

A bloke got on and sat down opposite me, conveniently burying his head in a book, allowing me to stare at him properly for the bulk of the trip (yes, I am the annoying person that does that :-)

He was middle aged, with a colossal multicoloured goatee (if you can call it that - maybe a narrow beard would be a better description) and beautiful plastic multicoloured rings in his ears and nose (I assume they were UV reflective or something), with a large lumberjack type jacket (with a 'save the...' something or another patch on the back), accessorised by a series of badges/pins.

The first badge, inevitably, had a cross through the word homophobia, the second had 'no hoWARd' on it (very clever use of capitalisation for seditious effect) and I can't remember the other one. To top it all off, there was a gorgeous large red woman's handbag with a stylised stick person throwing a nazi swastika into a rubbish bin (culture jamming all the way baby!).

The problem was, that for all this, I could only sit there thinking how much he looked - sans goatee - like a middle aged banker. I guess some people are suited to the non-conformist look and some aren't, which probably implies something about my perspective on conformation in the first place.

Al KeyDa train.

Pulling away from my local station this morning heading towards the city. Everyone in the carriage looks up as this bloke of indeterminate arab origin (almost definitely a terrorist ;-) runs up to the door that has just closed, punches it angrily and then uses some sharp metal object or another to scour the side of the carriage as it passes, making an incredible noise.

Now i've heard of people 'keying' cars, but train carriages? That's taking it to a whole new level!

Tram drivers say the darndest things.

There are only so many ways to entertain yourself when you're stuck in a little metal cage driving a tram that doesn't really need driving, give or take breakneck acceleration and sudden braking. Every now and then you strike a driver who clearly aspires to greater things (often a career in standup comedy).

On a Sunday on the way to badminton it became pretty apparent that I had a live one when the driver used the intercom to announce each stop in an appropriate style. Highlights included "Next stop, exhibition centre and a whole load of trams on my right" and (boxing promoter style), "Crowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn CASINO!!!".

Had another one a few days later who displayed a classic example of the sardonic black humour peculiar to trammies. We were stopped at the lights one stop before the end of the tram route and the driver opens the doors to chat to one of his mates. As they're standing there chatting a woman tries to get off, only to be stopped by the ocker trammie saying "Nah, nah nah, you can't get off there. The paperwork's too much". Full points for innovative enforcement of the rules though.

Greypower

There is a large cohort of grey hairs that take my train line after the morning rush every so often. They seem to know what carriage to take and their numbers progressively increase as the train nears the city, until they have reached critical mass and everyone under the age of 65 has given up their seat.

Now don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with giving up my seat to my elders, in fact one of my pet peeves is when people do not give up their seats, but it fascinates me how the grey hairs (I assume some sort of glee club or 'over x age' social group) flex their collective muscles on these outings. I have watched on a couple of occasions as the train will pull up at a stop and Doreen, Charlie, Shirl and Mavis get on, chirpily greeting the others who are already on board. At this point, woe betide the younger person who is messing up their seating plan. If there are 2 oldies in a seat for 4, the oldies will proceed to smile sweetly but pointedly while their mates stand around looking distressed, until the younger passengers move. This is regardless of whether the train is full or not and you should see them grin and settle into their newly claimed seats once the young uns have been evicted.

It reminds me of some great quotes that I aspire to:

"I hope I grow old disgracefully. That's very important.
Thankfully, the older I get, the sillier I become." Phyllida Law.

"When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we have no money for butter.
And I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth."

And finally, a nice one for anyone foolish enough to be undertaking post-grad study:

"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
George Bernard Shaw.

Amen to that!

Big sister is now watching y'all :-)

In order to maintain the consistently geeky tone of this nerdy corner of cyberspace I have installed a web counter today. Funny how many people pass through - thought there were only about 4 people (myself included) that read it, but turns out that in the last 15 minutes 2 people from the US, 1 from Canada and 3 from Oztrailer have popped by, no doubt intently procrastinating as much as I do when I write it!

"Bitch!"

Heading home on a Friday afternoon, sitting near the front of the tram. The tram pulls up to a stop as usual but screeches to a halt unexpectedly, accompanied by another screech from the driver who yells 'bitch!!!'. The culprit is an elderly Indian woman who had somehow managed to run in front of the tram from behind another tram, appearing from nowhere.

Our tram takes off again, faster than before and we screech to another halt in the middle of a busy intersection, not standard practice for trams at rush hour. The driver, also of indian descent but mid-30s, gets out, stomps round to the front of the tram and twiddles with the tracks with the special track twiddling tool (typical female description eh?) and stomps back to the tram as traffic piles up around us. She stands in the door of the tram, hurling the large metal track twiddling tool back into the driver's area with such force that we all have a clanging noise ringing in our ears for a few minutes after.

She then gets back into her seat and accelerates head first towards an oncoming car so fast that we are all pretty sure we're going to die. Her technique, no doubt taught as part of tram driver stress relief in trammie school, involves ringing the ineffectual tram bell (no doubt intentionally so: there's only so much road rage you can cause with repeated 'ding ding ding ding's) as much as she can while driving at full speed towards oncoming cars.

It is a small miracle that we avoid being the tram-flavoured meat in a car sandwich and a disproportionate number of passengers get off at the next stop, favouring a small delay over going to their graves with a seriously pissed off trammie.

Not cute.

The inlaws are visiting from Noo Zulland. I have been on my best behaviour and things are going pretty well.

Last night, returning from a very pleasant meal with the inlaws and a good friend (also visiting) we were pleasantly surprised when the tram pulled up and the driver leant out and said 'mind the step'. I thought 'wow, how nice, a tram driver really looking after his passengers' and felt a twang of pride in my adopted city's transport service.

It was only as I stepped up on to the tram and he repeated it louder that I realised he was speaking in transport provider language, that fabulous downplaying language where trains are slightly delayed, planes require minor repairs, taxi drivers are momentarily unsure of where they are heading and women are a bit pregnant.

What our mullet-adorned trammie in fact meant, was 'mind the pile of puke on the step'. Very similar.

We managed to all avoid it (no mean feat in itself) and headed as far away as possible, towards the empty seats at the back of the tram. Upon arrival we realised that they were empty for a reason, whoever had deposited the first pile had been a very busy boy indeed ('scuse the inherent gender bias but you know it was a bloke!).

We hastily retreated to the middle of the tram and spent the rest of the journey trying not to look (or smell) forwards or backwards. Maybe a rental car's not such a bad idea for when the inlaws are next in town.

Sooooooo CUTE!

Standing at the platform waiting for a late afternoon train from the city when a young asian couple catch my eye.

You know the type: young, urban, uber-trendy and probably studying at one of the central universities or language schools. What caught my eye with this pair was that she was perched on his lap, legs crossed with dainty feet enclosed in a diabolically expensive and fashionable version of the Barta-bullet velcro-strap shoes we all lusted after as kids (they helped you walk up walls don't you know).

What's more, she was concentrating on her (no doubt equally trendy) pink knitting as she sat perched there, looking asian-cute and super cool. Not sure that it would work so well if I tried it.

The last train.

Taking the last train from the city on a Friday night is always a bit of a gamble. As Forrest Gump said, you never know what you're gonna get.

We caught the 12.09 from the central station after a great evening out at a super-sexy jazz club, feeling very grown-up and sophisticated. But all it took was a 12-minute train ride for any of those feelings to evaporate like drugs being boiled on a teaspoon.

The star performer in our carriage was a late 20s Australian guy who was amped to the teeth on something quite spectacular. He was pacing like a caged animal from one end of the carriage to the other. When he got to either end, he would smack the wall and pace around the end section like he had been trapped. After 30 seconds or so he would sit down and do his best "who me? paranoid? nooooooo....." look - but this wouldn't last for more than 30 seconds before he was up and pacing back towards us - hands hitting the backs of the seats as he passed. You could actually see everyone cringe and pretend not to be there as he approached. After he had repeated this three times, he opened the door between the carriages (whoever thought allowing passengers to move between the carriages of a moving train was a good idea must have been on something equally strong) and stood, angst-ridden, on that tiny little metal platform between the two carriages for more than 5 minutes, head in hands, staring intently at the tracks. I swear that every single person in that carriage thought he was going to jump off - I have to admit to being quite pleased that I was facing the other way, insensitive wuss that I am. After this, he opened the door to the next carriage and proceeded to repeat the entire pacing, wall-smacking, chair-hitting , between-carriage-standing process in reverse. We all watched, fascinated from afar, secretly glad that we no longer had to avoid eye contact with psycho drug guy.

At this stage, I became aware that two of the people in my carriage were also competing for attention in their own way. Two young Somalian guys were sitting together, 'talking' (and I use that word in an exceptionally understated way) at the loudest volume possible. High-speed and high-volume, the pair looked to the untrained eye (ear?) like they were having a huge argument...I, however, have seen enough testosterone-fuelled young Somali guys to know that they were in fact just discussing the issues of the day. The entire conversation was in pure Somali, with the one exception, somewhere in the middle, of "are you fucking stupid man?!"

English is such a beautiful language that some things simply can't be translated.

I wanna be a tram driver!

Okay, how cool is this?!

Last night 2 people got shot in the suburb down the road from us (no, that's not the cool part) - one of the guys got shot in the lower back and escaped by hailing a tram!!! I have always had idle daydreams about bank robbers and cops doing impossibly slow 'follow that cab!'-type chases on trams but this is just as cool!

The tram he caught is on my line and I know exactly where he got on - I was at badminton at the time and would have caught that tram back about an hour after it happened, had we not won the final (my first ever sporting trophy BTW! - reasonably surprising as i'm not really an elite athlete kind of gal) and decided to hit the town instead, resulting in a helpful mate dropping me home at some decidedly non-tram hour of the morning.

The best part is that the news story ends by saying that paramedics attended the victim on the tram, before taking him to the main hospital...which is also on the tram line. I wonder if they bothered using an ambulance or whether the tram driver just dropped them off?

And who said being a tram driver would be boring?!

Look both ways twice.

My partner saw someone get smooshed by a tram last night.

Not nice.

I am pleased that this is an entry that is not from my direct experience as I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to blood and guts and icky things (although I have to admit that spiders and worms rank even higher on my personal 'ick scale').

Anyone who has seen a tram on the move around any city knows that, especially in the CBD, they ain't no bullet trains. But if you're in a hurry to cross the road and aren't looking where you're going then, yes, it is conceivable that you could get whupped by a tram. The bloke that my partner saw was doing exactly that - a student type in a hurry to get somewhere; crossing the road and walking right into the path of a tram coming from his right. Result: one person bleeding on the ground and one tram driver, no doubt following extremely sensible company policy, staying inside his metal cage in the tram and calling for help on his radio. No one wants a lynch mob on their ass when they're trying to help someone.

Apparently some well-meaning people thought the tramee was in better shape than he was and tried to lift him up - but his legs weren't in the mood for holding up anything and he landed back on the ground. His head was not a pretty sight but hopefully he was ok - living to walk another day, only this time looking both ways twice before crossing the road.

Crouching tiger & the olympic spirit on a Friday night.

Coming back from the cheap movie theatre at the end of the tram line (they make the tickets cheaper in recognition of effort expended in getting there) late on a Friday night.

An impressionable young chap (13ish?), no doubt inspired by the antics of the buff gymnasts on the box at the moment (well, either that or inspired by the urge to be an annoying monkey) decided that the handholds on the tram were perfect for doing flips with. He grabbed one in each hand on either side of the aisle and spent about 5 minutes happily going round and round in circles like the cute olympic boys do, only he was much less cute. His mate who looked much older and more than old enough to know better decided to join in after a short time - and, as we all know when 2 boys play together it is only a matter of time before one sees who can do it faster, higher etc than the other.

On this occasion the only logical progression from going round in circles (not a lot of competition to be had there as the judging panel (themselves) were somewhat less discerning than the olympic judges on matters of technique) was of course to use the handholds to fight each other - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style. Cue: 2 boys swinging from one end of the tram to the other, swinging wildly at each other with their feet looking somewhat less serene and graceful than Chow Yun Fat. The highlight was the associated chop sockey noises they made. Television and film have a lot to answer for.

Vestis virum reddit.

Whoever said that clothes maketh the (wo)man - and i'm pretty sure it was some old latin codger by the name of Quintilianus - was full of crap in some respects and on to it in others. If there is an absolute lack of human substance to begin with then not even the 'queer eye' guys can salvage someone.

Was musing on exactly this as I shared my morning train in to the city with some sulky Avril Lavigne wannabe that had mutated into something much more:

White trendy 'rusty' brand hoodie jumper, black calf length tights with a lime green rock and roll 80s style skirt on top (sarah jessica parker ish?) complete with extremely expensive 'vintage' converse boots and a bizarre Wilma Flintstone-size pink and white beaded necklace.

Now this is all very well and good - I was equally guilty of trying to express my personality through clothing as a kid - but this bird was trying to create a personality through her clothing...because she sure as hell didn't have one otherwise. She had an absolutely blank expression and personality deficit that no amount of clothing or anything else could have compensated for. Maybe i'm being bitchy and old-fashioned but a smile or slightest expression of interest in the world around her would have done miles more for her 'image' than any amount of clothing.

If a man already exists then sure, maybe clothes will enhance the man - but clothes cannot make a man if there is nothing to work with in the first place.

Two bananas

Took the tram again for old time's sake. Tram people are more fun than train people. Different times of the day attract different people. After the morning commuting rush where people look grumpy or asleep and read each other's newspapers while they're crushed in like sardines the next shift takes over. Around mid-morning, public transport is the exclusive domain of oldies, single parents, university students and the unemployed (you may as well count the last two as one). There also a few of that rare and happy breed - the 'flexible hours' worker - the corporate bunnies who have earnt the right to turn up to work when they damn well like it.

On this trip, there wasn't anything hugely unusual - just a really nice mix. The young Somalian mother with unfeasibly large pushchair who got helped on to the tram, the usual oldies (who always seem to travel at least in pairs, usually much bigger posses), uni students, a distinctly unemployed couple (sometimes you can just tell) and some blissfully happy corporate-types.

I watched as one of the oldies stared in confused amazement at the fashionable young female uni student wearing knee-high ugg boots (what is with THAT?!!!) and listened in on the inane conversation between the unemployed couple. An especial treat was the young guy in a suit, who seemed to be travelling to work but was carrying only his tram pass and 2 bananas...given the chronic back problems that my bag containing laptop, books, wallet, mobile, gloves, tissues, scarf, music player etc gives me I was extremely tempted to ask what his secret was...who cares what the job is: if you can perform it with only a suit, a tram ticket and 2 bananas then it's GOT to be all good! :-)

Books and mortar.

The central train station is opposite the State Library, a compact but majestic building with the sort of distinguished interior that should have a cameo in all good lawyer movies. At 8.15am this morning I walked out of the station and was a bit disorientated by the sight of more than a hundred men in work clothes and white hard hats mooching around in front of the library. It looked like a scene out of a monty python movie: a gaggle of construction workers. They were standing in approximate groups spread across the lawn and a few of them were wandering around with clipboards.

Sometimes the space is used for political protests but there were no placards to be seen and the men looked quite happy. There is a construction site next door though so I my best guess is that some sort of siren had sounded and the State Library was the agreed meeting place. It made for an interesting juxtaposition - men of action in front of a place of learning, in a funny way it seemed to fit together quite nicely.

Hey, no offence man...

Saturday night: Tram on the way back to the city following dinner at an Italian restaurant with friends.

The tram is waiting at a stop while the light is red. From the adjacent road comes the sort of blood curdling screeching of tyres that can only happen when someone is not only about to run a red light but also take a pedestrian with them.

Everyone rushes to one side of the tram and looks out, including a charming young man with wildly flitting eyes that are beautifully accessorised by the track marks on his arm. A mid-20s guy gets on board (presumably the cause of the screeching tyres) and grins as he says 'it's ok, he missed me'. Everyone chuckles along...except for young Master Track Marks, who says, "hey no offence man but it would have been fucking AWESOME if he hit you!"

Cue: Deafening silence on tram as everyone gapes in disbelief and then shuffles a bit further away from Track Marks.

Track Marks sits down in the seats on the other side of the aisle from us by himself. At the next stop some poor bugger gets on, oblivious to what he is letting himself in for, and sits down opposite him. The bloke must have scratched his head or something because Track Marks picks him as his next target. "Hey man, don't you do no fucking hand signals at me - what's that supposed to mean?!"

He carries on in this manner until we get to the next stop - when anyone within a few seats of him with half a brain either moves or gets off.

A new route.

My partner walks a slightly different route to the train station than me (I?). Last night while out for a walk with our silly sausage dog he took me along his route to show me something that has brightened up his commuting stroll every day for the last few weeks.

There, nestled under a small tree on the footpath outside the local Old People's Home, was an empty box of Viagra.

Beautiful.

Australis Slappicus

I have to admit that, whilst I generously think of myself as a person with reasonably broad general knowledge, I am not at all 'au fait' with the world of cosmetics. Don't get me wrong, I know basic hygiene, but beyond washing, deodorant, moisturiser, perfume and the concealment of any offending blemishes my 'beauty regime' is non-existent.

Not so for one of my companions on my train journey this morning.

I boarded the train at my now usual stop and was greeted with the sight of a glorious specimen of that not so rare or beautiful species known as 'Australis Slappicus'.

Resplendent in the uniform of black bootleg pants and white hoodie cardigan (probably not the trendy way to describe it at all), open to display a bright pink singlet whose main function I suspect was the use of colour to attract attention to cleavage. This sartorial elegance was further enhanced by the tasteful display of a large playboy bunny logo necklace and matching bright pink 'playboy brand' handbag.

Her hair, as is required for all members of this species, was long, straight and bright blonde with gorgeous dark regrowth flourishing at the top.

But enough with descriptions. What caught my eye was that Ms Slappicus was intently focussed on her beauty regime - specifically her eyelashes. I watched, enthralled for the ENTIRETY (I kid you not) of the 15 minute train ride as she, bright pink cut-throat nails delicately clasping her compact mirror, primped and preened her eyelashes. At first I thought, 'fair enough, you're obviously running late' - it's not uncommon to see women hastily doing their makeup as they catch their breath on the train on the way to work. As the minutes ticked by however, and Ms S produced first a black (mascara?) thing and then a white one from her bag, I realised that this was no normal hasty makeup sesh. She would use one then the other, and then repeat the process (forgive me for drawing on my basic knowledge of the colour spectrum but I thought this might have been somewhat pointless - unless grey was her desired result?). About halfway through she produced from her pink bag something that looked like an old-fashioned torture device but which she used to (curl?) her eyelashes. She then started the whole process again - repeating it at least twice more before we arrived in the city.

As she neared her stop, Ms S carefully placed her tools back in her bag, checked her bright pink mobile for text messages (in case she hadn't heard the messages from the hordes of admirers) and then - wait for it - placed her extremely fashionable post-Anastacia/ current-Posh Spice brown and clear sunglasses on....completely covering her eyes with the brown half. Good to see that the youth of today are spending their time on worthwhile pursuits.

(I'm probably just jealous).

Changing allegiances.

Well, I have had to bid farewell to Tourettes Man and the other regulars on Route #59. I moved house on Saturday and am now splitting my public transport loyalties between tram AND train (i'm such a rebel).

It is interesting being able to 'compare and contrast' the two modes - and the accepted social standards on both.

On tram, for example, on an empty booth of 2 lots of 2 seats, many people will rather sit next to each other than have to sit opposite one another and risk - god forbid - eye contact. On the upside, if someone with a pram or trundler gets on, others will move to help them without fail.

On a train, however, people seem to consider it their solemn duty to studiously pretend that no one else in the carriage exists...even when they are busy reading the back of those other people's newspapers - a popular past-time for morning commuters. The increased noise also seems to cover a lot of the 'quirks' of many people - you mostly can't hear them talking to themselves. I have often thought though that people with this tendency could just put a hands-free mobile phone earpiece in their ear and blend right in with the rest of the phone enthusiasts - who i personally think look a damn sight more silly because they are CHOOSING to look like they are talking to themselves.

But enough rambling, I have a lecture to prepare and an early train to catch tomorrow. Goodnight.

That'll learn you!

Rush-hour tram on my way to check out a possible place to rent (on a different tram line from my usual - que horror!). Temperature: approx 8 degrees - feels colder. We stop at a set of traffic lights in town, where a tram employee is doing something official (not sure what) by the side of the tram. The tram bloke, who looks like a nicer version of John Howard, complete with silly hat (doubt that Johnny's have tram company logos on them but you never know...), starts chatting to the driver through the tram door, complaining about the weather.

A mid-20s woman onboard calls out to tram bloke, asking if he remembers her. Apparently she went to school with his daughter. Seems like he doesn't remember her but he happily updates her (and the rest of the tram) about what his daughter is up to - 'finished uni, working in x place, dog, cat, 2.5 kids etc' - finishes on a beautiful note, laughing as he says, "I wish i'd gone to uni now so that I'm not stuck by a tramstop on a freezing night age 56".

Light turns green and we move off,

We all have regrets.

Nice one

8.30pm tram from the city. Just as we're passing the hospital, a young woman wearing a pharmacist's jacket (shirt?) gets off - handing her (what I would assume was 2-hour long) tram ticket to the pleasantly surprised young asian man getting on.

'Innocence TM'

On a major intersection on my tram line there has been, for the last month or so, a large billboard advertising 'Shelly Innocence' and her website. I generally don't pay a lot of attention to billboards but this one stuck out for its spectacular cheesyness and the fact that it had a picture of its covergirl sitting in a field of flowers with the beautifuly obtuse line 'Trust - only believe' on it. It also had a link to the website - www.shellyinnocence.com . For weeks I would idly look at it and wonder if perhaps it was advertising a self-improvement seminar or self-help tapes 'a la Anthony Robbins' or something equivalent.

Turns out its much funnier - 'Shelly' (who, if I had looked closely, I would have realised is not quite all she appears to be) is marketing the real deal - Happiness TM, Trust TM, Risk TM, Truth TM and Innocence TM among others. Unfortunately, Committment TM, Joy TM and some other exciting products have been discontinued, so I had to make do with purchasing Integrity TM (strapline: 'It's not for everyone') instead. Got it on special!

Thoroughly recommend Shelly's products to anyone who is in need of a pick me up.

For every action...

There is a lovely (Indian?) tram driver who often works on my route. Middle-aged, with bushy 70s-style sideburns that remind me of a teacher I had in high school, he seems to take real pride in his profession. Whenever he is driving on my route he is always announcing every stop, making sure that old ladies have enough time to sit down properly before moving off etc.

Today he got on at the tram depot which is about halfway down my line, as a passenger, presumably having finished a shift on another route. He bounced on board, shaking hands with the driver and making jokes. He then spied Tourettes Man (who I was sitting opposite from).

I suspect that most routes have a sort of 'mascot' passenger that the drivers keep an eye on and make sure that they are ok because the driver was exceptionally pleased to see him and shook hands with him before sitting down next to him. He then listened patiently as Tourettes Man enthusiastically lectured him on the finer points of every single budget buffet restaurant in town - providing a sort of cost/benefits analysis, in combination with a laborious but thorough description of every food item offered.

The off-duty tram driver listened, enraptured, helping out every now and then when Tourettes Man got stuck listing food types, until he had to get off to catch his connection, when he shook hands with Tourettes Man and bade him farewell. By choosing to use his tram journey in this manner, the driver had consierably brightened up Tourettes Man's day, and calmed him down a fair bit (he was getting pretty agitated by the time the driver got on) as well. Nice one.

Walking the block from the tram to university, however, I saw a very 'American Beauty'-type scene. Two slightly deflated heart-shaped helium balloons with 'I love you' written on them were fluttering in the wind...attached by long strings to a pretty solid and unromantic-looking municipal rubbish bin. Whoever said that pictures speak a thousand words was on to it - just wish I had a camera with me.