Archive | May, 2014

want to buy a ….

11 May

Some time ago I made mention of some of the more unusual radio and TV commercials that I was hearing .. adverts for all sorts of crazy things, from burial plots to the funeral plans that help you on your way to them.

BUT  a couple of days ago my (nowhere near 50something) daughter  pointed out that she had been streaming a USA station where she was hearing a non stop run of ads for adoption of real live children. I couldn’t believe it …adoption

I struggle to imagine going about my business and hearing an ad that’s meant to make me think about adopting a child  … and having a spontaneous thought, yeah I think I will do that, right after a get my hair done and pick up the groceries.

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry… but I guess its a reasonable thing to wonder about on Mother’s Day.

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I wonder …..

10 May

Some days I just wonder ….. and some days I wonder a lot … Today is one of those days.

Like many of you I guess… I subscribe to many and varied email alerts… for both work and general interest. But if you look at them in one glance it must be an odd combination….tattooing, dysphonia and hepatitis, ….just to name a few. So when I see the emails jump up, there can be some very odd titles … the funniest one lately though has me scratching my head …

Does song complexity correlate with problem-solving performance in flocks of zebra finches?

mmm I wonder ?????

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high finance…

9 May

Its been a funny kind of day …so many ‘odd moments’, but the silliest of all was my failed attempt to withdraw money from 3 different ATM’s.

Each one cost me a $2 transaction fee; only to tell me that they could not process my transaction at that particular moment!!!  How does THAT work? credit cards

I needed to buy a Japanese newspaper (don’t ask lol) but still had no cash in my wallet.  I decided that a credit card transaction would be a  bit much to ask, for just a paper …. (and they had a $10 limit)… So I proceeded to stock up on a bunch of Japanese goodies that I didn’t really need, just to get close to $10.

Then as the shop assistant was adding up the sales, I asked for the paper …. only to discover that it was FREE!!!

Clearly not my day !!!

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and today is one of those days …

8 May

frustration

…so I might just go to bed instead …

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robo-shoppers…

7 May

I hadn’t been to a K Mart store for ages; that is up until today when I rushed in after work…. and I must say I was  (mostly) very impressed. It was light, bright, fresh and cheap…. I just wish that I was in less of a rush so that I could take it all in.

BUT  when it was time to pay and leave the store ….I couldn’t find the checkouts. I thought to myself how in the hell can you lose a bunch of cash registers and check-out staff ???? Well let me tell you….it’s easy when they don’t exist.self serve 2

Eventually I saw them…. the bank of self serve robots obscured to the side of the shop. No staff, other than the ‘trouble-shooter’ who comes when the robot machine yells at you to ‘bag your item’.  or ‘remove your goods from the bagging area’…..and yep she yelled at me…loud and clear as I fumbled to ‘pack n stack’ my bulky goods, while simultaneously balancing my wallet, phone and glasses… AND swiping my card at the same time.

With nowhere to put things down,  a sense of panic mounts as this monotone machine seems to be stuck on repeat  getting louder and louder each time..

Up until today it had been my mission to avoid self serve systems… (my small and somewhat vain protest against getting rid of humans and saving jobs)…BUT it appeared I had little or no choice in the ‘new look’ K Mart; although I later discover there are a few humans tucked away at a kiosk in the middle of the store….clearly hidden to avoid drawing attention to them….we couldn’t have them busy and showing up the robots now, could we? .

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trainspotting

6 May

Instead of heading to the office today – I set off on the train to the city for a series of meetings. Now, while I know that I would soon get sick of the long daily commute, for the odd change of pace it’s actually quite enjoyable….plenty of reading (or snoozing) time and fantastic for people watching.

On the way in to town, I was entertained by the 45minute telephone conversation of a very loud and self important business man.phone man

I learned all about his  project…who the partners were and which ones were responsible for the delays… their travel plans, AND their strategies to come in on budget…. the only problem was that he got off the train just as it got exciting and he started to discuss the swanky nightclub party to launch it …. Bugga, I would be there for sure… !! 

My return trip was much quieter, but full of visual treats as I peeked into thedog backyards of the suburban homes that line the train tracks. There is something very odd about peering into people’s yards (it’s kind of voyeuristic)…., and it makes me wonder who they are and what their story is.

I can tell you that there will be one very unhappy family who will return to find their bed-sheets torn from the clothesline by their small, furry and very bored puppy …hilarious to watch …. but somehow I don’t think they will be laughing. …I would love to be a fly on the wall for that homecoming….oops.

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hot pants in the burbs ….

5 May

Today I was amused  and puzzled as I followed a couple of posties riding their scooters around the back-blocks of the western ‘burbs’.P1130756

Determined not to be injured on the job… (and no doubt fulfilling the ever increasing occ health and safety requirements of Australia Post) there they were, decked out in high viz jackets, with high viz pannier bags, high viz ‘neckerchiefs’ to protect from the ‘high viz’ suns harmful rays… and they even sported a high viz flag flying atop a flagpole on the back of their scooters.

And then I pulled up beside them at the lights …only to see that one of them was wearing the shortest of short shorts. Bare(but very hairy)  legs emerged from his pants, with oversized steel cap boots dangling on the ends of them. Not a fashion statement by any stretch …and certainly not warm on this crip autumn morning…but it made for very entertaining travel scenery

However, I couldn’t help but wonder how you decide that a sunburned neck would be a bigger concern than having the skin ripped off your legs as you slide along the tar …or as you fend off a hungry dog while delivering the bills… OUCH !IMG_9189

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but it seemed like a good idea at the time …

4 May

Having spend over an hour scrubbing every nook and cranny of George…I ask myself what in the world possessed me to buy him in the first place.

george foreman 2Like lots of kitchen gadgets and appliances that promise the world..(and then deliver nothing but full cupboards and painstaking hours of cleaning),  my George Foreman  was nothing more than ‘a good idea at the time’.

The thought of grilling my lamb chops between non stick surfaces while watching all that fat drip into a tray instead of making its way onto my bum, was clearly appealing ‘way back when’….. BUT that was then !

NOW? …Well, after digging him out of the cupboard yesterday to give him a second chance at life, I discovered that he has lost all of his  teflon coating (which was probably toxic anyway), the fat doesn’t drain into the tray(actually it never really did, it just bypasses the tray to drip all over the kitchen bench), the cupboards are too full to house him…and the damn cord was always too short.

As a kitchen appliance & gadget guru George…, you make an excellent Heavyweight Boxer.

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beaten by the clock

3 May

I’m a little mad with myself!

Those of you who have been on this journey from the start… know that I made a somewhat rash commitment on first of January, to blog about something… anything really (but largely nothing)… every day for a year. It’s kind of my way of showing the world that even without a voice… I wont shut up.deadline

I had not missed a day…even when I struggled to keep my eyes open, was travelling the globe or had nothing to say …I still said something….UNTIL last night !!

You see, I was completely brain dead after all those numbers (do you remember?…1+1=chocolate).  I couldn’t face a screen, let alone write; so I thought I could be sneaky, get up early and squeeze it in this morning  (you see I discovered that WordPress is set to USA time, which effectively buys me a little of the morning to still get it in on the right date) ….but…

I MISSED THE DEADLINE !! … by minutes …

So posting twice today is  my lame attempt to make up for losing 2nd May. Crazy I know … but I told you I was not great with numbers !!

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1+1=chocolate

3 May

As I have mentioned several times …I am a people person. I am interested and fascinated by all the shades of grey in human nature and by what makes us tick ….. but the flip side of THAT is that I hate numbers with a passion.  You know…. the right and the wrong’…  the positive and the negative…. the blackness and the whiteness of number crunching !!…  They are all completely foreign concepts to me (just ask Mr ’50Something’ about our household budgeting).

So you can imagine my abject horror when I needed to spend my entire day in front of a screen juggling several spreadsheets, chokkablock full of values that didn’t add up .  A slow and painful 9 hours of death by numbers.balance

My saving grace was the great company and humour of my work-buddy and partner-in-crime (and the stash of leftover Easter chocolate on my desk). We waded through a year’s worth of ledgers and balance sheets that simply didn’t balance  (not a good thing by anyone’s measure)… punctuated by the occasional bout of hysteria as we looked at each other quizzically and asked “why are we doing this again”? and “what does it all mean”? The truth is that in the current climate of state and national audits, and scrutiny on accountability of the public sector … EVERYTHING needs to add up !!

The good news is that by with tenacity of a dog with a bone…, the curiosity of a good ‘who-done-it’…, and more than a small stroke of good fortune….we left feeling buoyed by the fact that the bottom line is looking good,  and that we wont be joining our ex-premier on the unemployment queue…YET! Phew …

Give me a room full of dysfunctional PEOPLE any day!!

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