Archive for the 'Adelaide' Category

Tongue numbing

Published
by
drew
on 16 June 2008
in Adelaide, Featured, Idea v. Reality, Language and Media
.
0 Comments

For any readers outside South Australia, there’s been a recent crisis in this state’s hospital industry, with doctors and other specialists arguing over wage increases. Related story here.

The issue has come to a head and many emergency doctors and staff have not just gone on strike but resigned their positions altogether.

Take that!

I’d like to put out a message to directors of TV and radio outlets now, as it’s timely. I’m mostly a humble guy and don’t like to blow my own trumpet, as it were. I don’t think I’m arrogant or self-righteous and I don’t often judge or condemn people. However, there are times when I believe a base level of competence should go along with certain jobs. So my message is this.

If you’re running a Radio or TV newsroom, please get in touch with me and offer me a job. Why? Well, for starters, I can correctly pronounce the word anaesthetist.

Seriously, I should put this on my résumé.

It’s been an interesting week of watching and listening to various media, hearing them say that word and completely fuck it up in about 90 % of cases.

Another word a lot of journos have trouble with is vulnerable. People, the first l is NOT SILENT.

If you hear a newsreader or reporter this week saying “South Australia’s health industry is in a vulnerable position following the recent mass-resignation of emergency doctors and hospital anaesthetists,” listen for the gurgling sounds that follow as their throats go into spasm and they invariably choke on their tongues.

I once met a med student studying to become an anaesthetist and she couldn’t pronounce it. While I hope she, and other anaesthetists, can successfully pronounce the drugs they’re administering, I’m not going to judge, as long as the right drug goes in the right patient and everyone who’s supposed to be alive, stays alive at the end of the day.

But journalists? They’re supposed to be guardians of the language. They’re the one group of people who are supposed to get this right.  Still, when most people on TV news are either ex-footballers (read: trained monkeys (and even then, I’m not that sure how well trained)) and sexy young uni grads with zero life experience, what hope is there?

Pigfish

Published
by
drew
on 30 May 2008
in Adelaide, Bairn and Food
.
0 Comments

We all went to the Markets tonight and were buying meat from the butcher.

Little Miss M saw the chevapchichis (I have no idea how to spell that) and said “Look at the salami fish fingers!”

They’re so cute when they’re three.

Vague

Published
by
drew
on 28 May 2008
in Adelaide, Australia, Ma vie and Sport
.
0 Comments

So where was I? Yeah, that’s right, I went to Melbourne then came home and sort of just fell asleep.

Melbourne was great. Good to be back in my home state. I don’t know what to make of myself sometimes because I don’t often feel very Australian and despite, or probably because of, my football-filled youth, I can no longer stand the sport, or the constant news coverage it gets, or the nugget fans (nugget fans being a majority sub-species of fans in general; I know there are some quite normal, respectable, educated people who are not nuggets but are, paradoxically, football fans) who can talk about nothing else. Yet I still feel some kind of connection with Victoria. I’m not sure if it’s the landscape, the people, the weather, or the fact that, unlike South Australia, it doesn’t have it’s head stuck up its own arse (just my crude way of saying that South Australia is way too parochial, introspective, isolated (not only geographically) hostile to external influence (especially from Victoria) and has an inflated, ‘we’re as good as the other states’ complex that the other states don’t have because they’re not secretly worried that they aren’t).

So yeah, there’s that.

And I seem to have realised just how deeply entrenched I am in my current rut. Not enjoying the job and have had a sick kiddie, which means waking up at all hours of the night and being generally very tired, which kind of sucks. I’ve never had the SADs (the lack of light thing) but am wondering if there might not be something to it this winter.

And I’ve been shocked to notice how vague I have been of late. Only last night, after a day of staring blankly at a screen, I put in my headphones, stepped outside, and while crossing the road, forgot to look and stepped out in front of a motorbike. Then, as I was getting on the train, I put my ticket in the validator… and forgot to take it out again.

Where the fuck was my brain?

Is this working? (Melbourne edition)

Published
by
drew
on 8 May 2008
in Adelaide and Travels
.
0 Comments

Why can’t I post from my phone?

Later…So after typing a whole post in the departure lounge at Adl airport on my tiny tiny phone keypad in Opera mini, and trying to save it about 20 times and trying to publish it about 20 times and nothing happening, the above was what I actually managed to post in desperation just as my row was being called to board.The gist of the now-forever-gone-into-the-phonoshpere post was that I was nipping over (here) to Melbourne for a few days to attend my brother’s 40th celebrations. I made a joke about the fact that the party was in Melbourne while he lives in Modbury (très rigole, non?) but I’ll never be able to recapture the magic now.

It’s funny how travel helps you mark time in your life. Being at the airport reminded me of the last time I was at the airport, then I got to thinking of all the variations on ‘The last time I…’

  • When was the last time I was at the airport
  • When was the last time I was at the airport to meet someone (because my last time (see above) was for a photo shoot).
  • When was the last time I was at the airport to catch a plane?
  • When was the last time I was at the airport to catch a plane by myself?
  • When was the last time I caught a flight to Melbourne?
  • When was the last time I caught a flight to Melbourne and actually ended up going to Melbourne?

The possibilities are endless.

But I must say that having spent a good deal of my 20-somethingityness coming and going from all sorts of airports, rail stations and bus termini, I’m not half bad at it by now. I had everything timed to perfection. The J1 passes right outside my work building. I was there waiting for it five minutes early. It dropped us at the airport and I was straight into the check-in line. I had no luggage to check in, so that was a breeze. I got through the X-rays and had 20 minutes to kill before I had to be at the departure gate and I thought “Shit, I’m good at this.”

Cos, I am.

Slow down time

Published
by
drew
on 1 April 2008
in Adelaide and Ma vie
.
0 Comments

I love the train ride home: that brief period of being able to sit and just be. That time between the busy-ness of work and the seagull persistence of young kids. Time to slow down (which, let’s face it, is something the Adelaide rail network has perfected).

Things are hectic but in a good way, and it’s possible that the change I was hoping would come this year may be imminent. (Yes, that’s right… I’m switching to decaf.)

Twang

Published
by
drew
on 19 March 2008
in Adelaide, Events and Music
.
0 Comments

Fucking heatwave has warped the neck of my guitar.

That’s it, I’m checking the insurance policy.

Heatwaves suck arse

Published
by
drew
on 14 March 2008
in Adelaide and Ma vie
.
1 Comment

Posted by mobile phone:
I got up an hour ago. Not just because of the heat either.

Too much rubbish floating around in my head; there needs to be some kind of vacuum attachment that goes right up your nose to suck all those festering thoughts out.

Oh, there goes the alarm… And of course now I feel sleepy.

Hey, nice grass

Published
by
drew
on 8 March 2008
in Adelaide and Events
.
1 Comment

I was involved in a wedding today. While the nuptials part of it is largely irrelevant, it did involve pre-dinner drinks at, and on, the Adelaide oval.

There were a bunch of private-school boys involved as well.

Honestly, if I’d heard the words “hallowed turf” one more time, I was going to glass someone.

Are those sirens?

Published
by
drew
on 17 January 2008
in Adelaide and Ma vie
.
2 Comments

That bushfire down the road is a little bit worrying. Sure, it’s a few kms away and headed in the opposite direction. But it’s just down the road.

Action stations… I’m going to pack a few bags, just in case.

Later…

22.52
Well, I never thought we’d have to flee and luckily I was right. The fire never made it up the hill. I admit I did get a bit nervy though when the choppers flew directly overhead with their payload of water, and the warnings on TV were flashing up the names of streets we take every day on our way to and from the city.

I loaded all the photos into a suitcase and threw some clothes together for all of us. I took the side off the PC as well and had a screwdriver ready to take out the hard drive because that’s where most of my photos are (not to mention a lot of my life).

C came home early just in case, and we even warned Mum and Dad that if there was a freak wind change we might come down for a visit.

Oh, and I rang the insurance company and upped the value of the house and contents just to be on the safe side.

Clone

Published
by
drew
on 11 January 2008
in Adelaide, Featured, Film and Idea v. Reality
.
2 Comments

I saw an ad for that new Will Smith movie, where he’s literally the last man left on earth. At least, he is in the ads; he probably meets someone else about halfway through so the movie has some kind of plot. It’d be pretty dull otherwise: get up, eat canned food for breakfast, go to video store, take anything you want, go home, canned food for lunch; watch DVDs (entire collection of 007 movies/Woody Allen catalogue/Þ0rn), read, do a supermarket run (more canned food), pick up some new clothes at department store, home, read some more, eat more canned food, go to bed listening to any CD you like, taken from the local CD store.

I’m not sure if he has electricity though - he’d have to raid the supermarkets for batteries also.

In fact, it would get harder and harder to eat as you’d have to go further and further for food. He’d have to find a semi-trailer and make a round trip to whatever supermarket is closest, take all the canned food, soap, batteries, can openers (obv) and bottled water he could carry, then head home again. In fact, I’d advocate a more nomadic existence under the circs, just taking a car and heading to the next town till I’d eaten out their supermarkets, finding another car and hitting the road again. I think I’d find a nice camera too and take lots of pictures. (I was going to say steal but there’s be nobody else to steal from, so it’s not really stealing at all.)

I got to thinking though, what if you, or Will Smith, or me, being the last person on earth, met someone of the opposite sex and decided to attempt to restart the human race. How would you go about it? Well, after shagging like bunnies and popping out one or two or ten (picking up supplies at whatever baby store you could find), how would you have them recreate? It goes into rather unsavoury territory, what with the whole incest thing, but how would you do it? Brothers and sisters would have to procreate, then cousins, and then there’d only be 2 or 3 generations that are doing what we regard as a little off.

My mind then went off on a tangent about what could happen in such a shallow gene pool. If you were, for example, a man, and if you weren’t limited by age, if you could mate with a female, then have a female offspring with 50% of your genes. If you mated with her, having another female offspring, that child would have 75% of your genes. Go again, and the next child would have 87.5% of your genes. Then 93.75%, 96.875%, and within a couple of generations, the child would have more than 99% of your genes.

So then, if you had a boy, he’d basically be a clone of you. Someone with a better grasp of genetics should feel free to correct me if I’m forgetting some kind of dominant/recessive factor.

The other thing about that movie is how NYC looked with nobody in it. Smith said it was disconcerting to have an empty New York street, devoid of any human life. It would feel eerie, no doubt.

That kind of thing happens in Adelaide all the time, especially around Easter. The only people you see is the odd tourist wandering around, dazed and confused, looking for signs of life in the shops and dodging the tumbleweed.