Archive for September, 2002

It’s beer O’clock

Monday, September 30th, 2002

Finally I was able to go on a tour of the Carlton & United Breweries today (along with my brother Tim). My question of the day was “you don’t get the water from the yarra do you?”. It was actually quite exciting, you get taken around the site in a little minibus, although it wasn’t a great distance there is a fair bit of traffic on the site and I spose they are also factoring for the slight chance that someone may turn up on the tour after a few too many beers!

Obviously the best part was at the end when we got to sample the beer. The beers that we sampled were (and in order):

  1. Foster’s LightIce
  2. Carlton Midstrength Bitter (I think?)
  3. Carlton Draught (the one I liked best)
  4. Carlton Black Ale

Foreigners steal the event

Saturday, September 28th, 2002

Well today was the Grand Final. I don’t particurlarly follow football, in fact I don’t even particurlarly like it. I didn’t watch all but two seconds of it. However, I still have to say, how could they let foreigners win OUR Grand Final?

Add alcohol and bowling and what do you get?

Friday, September 27th, 2002

Who’s idea was it to ever combine bar with a 10 pin bowling alley? I’m sure I was aiming straight! But sure it was fun and all in all I was only a little tipsy, so really I wasn’t *that* bad…. and when I mean bad… this fat man next to us managed to land his bowling ball in the 3rd lane from his own and land himself flat on his belly on his own lane. Well now I’m back at my bro’s/his gf’s place and no one seems to be awake so guess I’ll be heading off to bed soon.

A hard day’s work

Saturday, September 21st, 2002

Well I am truely buggered! Helped my brother move house today. Most of the hard work was this morning at Hawthorn before his mates arrived. Well before that I had to actually go and pick him up from Collingwood. I was pretty much buggered by then anyway, finally it wans’t until we got to South Yarra that another mate of his turned up to help. Was just as well as I wasn’t much use by then. I am glad to be home now!

School turned into a film studio

Thursday, September 19th, 2002

Forgot to mention that the BBC has been filming a children’s television series at my school in the past two days. If that tree fell in the right direction it would have destroyed their equipiment, which could have been interesting, although I’m sure they wouldn’t have been too happy. When I first heard the noise I thought it was their equipiment blowing around in the wind and I was glad that I wasn’t outside!

It is a bit bizare (but then again it’s for children)…. I saw a poster that said “Chocolate banned - £6,000 fine” and there’s a vending machine full of fruit and bottled water.

Damn bloody neighbours

Thursday, September 19th, 2002

As our neighbours had some bushy creepery plant that was killing my mum’s plants, she had to get it cut back. A few trees had to be removed as they had been killed by their plant, however they were taken away by the gardiner. There was no room left in the gardiner’s truck for their plant so they had to be thrown over the fence as allowed by law. Obviously it’s not something that would make the neighbours happy, however most would deal with it, unless they aren’t of a sane nature which seems to be the case with ours.

Almost a week had passed since their bushes had been cut, when I was woken up at 6am this morning. I could not tell what the noise was or where it was coming from, so I got up to locate the source of the sound, once I knew where it was I had a look out a window on that side of the house to see what the hell he was doing at this hour! I still couldn’t see what it was so I went outside at which time I could see he was operating a garden mulcher. I approached him (from our verandah) and the machine was so damned noisy that he was wearing earmuffs and he did not see nor hear me coming. It took yelling “Excuse me!” half a dozen times before I got a response.

I asked him politely to stop doing it and explained that it was unlawful, if only I could have quoted the exact laws (which for future references I later found out to be the Environmental Protection Act 1970 [Section 48A] and also the Nuisance Provisions of the Health Act 1958). I told him I could look up the law, he responded “well do that then”, to which I responded firmly “Fine Then! actually would be easier if I called the Police, I’ll just do that”. So back inside I went.

I did accidently call him a f***ing moron, which he demanded an apology for. I told him that I would apologise if he stopped, to which he responded something along the lines of “I would have considered it if you didn’t call me that”, to which I responded “you wouldn’t have stopped anyway!”, to which he had to response to.

The Police arrived relatively quickly compared to how quick the would arrive if someone was actually in danger of getting hurt! He stopped the machine and all I could hear was distant voices. My mum, who’s bedroom was much closer, heard him arguing with the police, apparently at one time the policeman say “It’s people like you who cause disharmony in this world”. I could hear those voices myself for a good 10-15 minutes, so I assume he was arguing all that time! It’s rather odd that someone who supposedly undertakes a professional career would argue with the police.

Unfortunately, considering it wasn’t till about 6:30am when I managed to call the police it wasn’t long before he could start up the machine again in a more legal time (after 7am). There was no chance there to catch more sleep.

In other news, I was in the school library yesterday when a huge gust of wind blew past. I heard a huge lot of noise of tin crashing around, then looked out the window and saw a huge pine tree crash to the ground. The area surrending the tree was all closed off and the pine tree remained lying there today.

Partying hard

Saturday, September 14th, 2002

Went to Chantelle’s 18th last night. Got into that usual dilemma if not knowing whether to drive but not drink, stay the night at someone’s house (but where?) or catch the night rider bus home but miss half a night’s sleep as a result. So I ended up catching a taxi home which costed an arm and a leg ($36.80), but at least it only took about 20-30 minutes. I guess the fact hat it was on the otherside of Melbourne doesn’t help!

Somebody dared this chic named Natalie to come dressed in school uniform. She wasn’t bad looking either. I believe she got $61 for that! Technically I was in my school cloths as well, since my school hasn’t got a uniform. Someone asked if I went to a Rip Curl school.

Junk mail that’s useful

Monday, September 9th, 2002

Today was, well uneventful. Although I got a free pen in the mail which had “AUS TUX” written on it, unfortunately it’s meant to be one word!

Alston out of touch

Wednesday, September 4th, 2002

Looks like the official jogger is still down. Good thing I installed this one!

Today when I was at school in the library, I was reading yesterday’s The Age newspaper when I came across this letter to the editor that I wrote:

Alston out of touch

Once again Senator Alston has totally missed the point.

In an interview on ABC television he explained that pornography is responsible for the take-up of broadband. I’ve had broadband for a year and a half and never even dreamt of looking up porn. I use it for communication and research.

After deciding that I wanted broadband in 1997, it was a three-year wait until I could get it. By which time I had moved houses in hope of getting cable, only to discover that Optus@Home didn’t service townhouses/apartments. Telstra wasn’t even trying to compete, with its measly 400kbps cap and its pricing. Eventually we found that we could get ADSL at twice the price of Optus and a fraction of the speed. That didn’t last long, with iPrimus essentially dropping out of the broadband game. Finally I was able to get Optus@Home at a different house, only to find 12 months later that I am about to go back on a Telstra-style cap.

Senator Alston later makes out that competition is the only solution. I don’t know where Senator Alston expects this competition to come from since he has let a big monster by the name of Telstra loose to do what it wants. The only solution is to split Telstra into two but he fails to see that.

What a week!

Sunday, September 1st, 2002

Well guess I had to install my own jogger sometime since the old one was down so much that I could never update it! My old jogger is still available for historic reasons (Edit: posts have been merged into this database).

Well the good people at Triple M did end up sending me two CDs so I am no longer jigged. While one of the CDs was taxiride who may not be my favourite band there was an MTV Best of Unplugged CD which was alright, although I never needed to be reminded of Kiss From a Rose by Seal again!

It’s been a busy week. Tuesday I had a double driving lesson, Wednesday I went to a Public Transport First meeting and Thursday I went to the RMIT comedy night with my brother Tim (as he is a student there), his girlfriend Effie and my sister Catherine. Two well known Melbourne comedians, Dave O’Neil and Darren Casey were there.

Finally on Friday I went and got my driver license! I passed the practically test pretty easily. The hazard perception test on the computer was a bitch of a thing but I passed 20% above the pass rate. It probably sounds ironic how I went to a PT First meeting one day then to get a driver license another! While I do prefer to use PT, the system we have isn’t perfect and there will always be minority trips that would be better off driving. I didn’t really desperately need a license but it’s one thing less to worry about the day I ever may need one. Only problem is that I’ve now gotta drive every so often to keep up the practise.

And finally today is my grandmother’s 92nd birthday. My cousin Nick took me down to Geelong along with his wife Naomi for lunch. We went out so that my uncle could buy her a computer and then we set it up so she needed a bit of teaching. We didn’t end up leaving until about 5pm.

Well what a week it has been, this jogger entry is huge!