jeremy.id.au

This time five years ago (17/12/2002), the following letter appeared in The Age newspaper, the author being myself. It is interesting to note that although not a great deal has changed since then (a lot of Melbourne’s public transport is still fairly limited to the hours of 9am to 5pm), they have finally ditched the Summer holiday timetable for the train network. Well hoorah for that, though hopefully they fix the many other problems. Also buses and trams will still run to a limited timetable. The only logical reason for this would be that the operators can’t resist the pressure of drivers seeking to take holiday leave. It’s not like people go out less, just because they’re on holidays. Although public transport workers certainly deserve holidays like the rest of us, their holidays should be staggered so that the system remains functional.

It’s 2002, minister

The comments made by state Transport Minister Peter Batchelor’s spokesman regarding summer holiday timetables (The Age, 14/12) are astounding and lack common sense. The 21st-century lifestyles that people live are not restricted to the hours of 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday and four-week holidays over Christmas-New Year. Furthermore, people no longer go to bed at 8pm and those who do take time off don’t stay home all the time.

The government obviously thinks we are still living in the 1950s. Public transport needs to provide a uniformly high level of service to ensure everyone is catered for.
Jeremy Lunn, Box Hill

The other day I was getting a box of Christmas decorations out of the garage, something fell onto my head and I brushed it off quickly thinking it was a spider. Though my sister thought it was a lizard. I wondered how a little skink could get up there in the rafters, well perhaps now that becomes clearer.

This evening I walked into the kitchen and through the corner of my eye I thought I saw a huntsman creeping across the wall. Nope, it was a gecko. Most people think of geckos as little green things, but no this one was brown; most likely a Southern Marbled Gecko. I never really would have thought there would be geckos in Melbourne, though these things are apparently quite common. However, they are apparently nocturnal creatures and as such, quite shy of the light.

Even if it is a bit creepy, at least it’s keeping the spider population down. In fact it’s probably feasting on some right now.

Edit: After all the rain and storms we’ve had, it may well have been looking for somewhere dry rather than being a regular inhabitant of our kitchen.

Update (27th Dec 2007): Our gecko friend was spotted again last night, above the same cupboards that he retreated towards last time. So seems he has made his home there! Being incredibly shy of the light, he only comes out when the lights are out and if the lights are turned on, he retreats back to his hiding place behind the cupboards. I suspect he also feasts on the introduced American Cockroach, which is at least nice to think.

Yeah I know, this blog has faced a bit of neglect over the last couple of months. Though now that I have a little more time, hopefully it’ll get some attention over the summer.

Speaking of summer, we decided to get a couple of portable air conditioners. One for my bedroom and another for the living room. However, these portable air conditioners come with a giant hose (or ‘elephant trunk’) in order to vent the hot air out through a window. Unfortunately the brackets they come with are no good with wind out windows (rather, they are designed for sliding windows) and it takes a lot of messing around to fill in the holes. Obviously they figure it’s too hard to have one size that fits all with these wind out windows, even though these windows probably make up 50% of household windows these days.

After a lot of messing around, we finally found a solution; Perspex. After getting a couple of sheets cut to size (one for each room), my brother cut out some holes with the jigsaw to match the bracket on the vent hose and lined the edges with an adhesive seal. The perspex just slots in place where the fly screen normally goes. As you can see in the photo below, you can hardly see it’s there, except for the trunk hanging from nowhere. While there may be some minor gaps around the edges, it’s not significant enough to pose any problem. Though if it is a concern, you could jam something in to seal up the gap completely.