Archive for the ‘Ma vie’ Category

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Annoying complainy people

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

They’re everywhere and they’ll always find something they don’t like. And if the thing they don’t like gets better, then they’ll complain about the fact that it’s not what it used to be.

Case in point:

I work for a government institution. Everyone that works here has either a government email address or an institution email address. The government addresses work on Outlook; the institution addresses run on some old-ish Novell system, which nobody likes much.

Over the break, the Novell system was switched over to the M1cro$oft Live system. It’s web based; it can be accessed from anywhere; it has 25GB of web space for each user. And lots of other bells/whistles etc.

But new technology is always something to complain about.

I run the facebook page for this institution and made the mistake of asking fans what they thought of the new system. A complainer thought this was a great opportunity to complain.

“It’s terrible,” she said. Then listed why it was terrible.

She has since removed her comments, probably out of embarrassment (and probably after I posted a slightly passive-aggressive comment of Shakespearian proportions on how staff switching over to the new system are pioneers, paving the way and overcoming the hurdles so that others may face the transition easily).

But she wasn’t disappointed with the features of the “terrible” new system, only with the fact that the changeover hadn’t been seamless.
Which is like buying a DVD player, then saying it’s shit because you can’t watch your VHS tapes on it.

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Luxury’s disappointment

Friday, January 15th, 2010

My sister has a new “shack” on the south coast. I use inverted commas because it’s not a shack at all: it’s a brand spanking new house. But because it’s their house away from home by the coast, they use the vernacular and call it a shack. (All the more ironic when you consider their actual home is in a different town on the south coast and probably physically closer to the beach than their “shack” is. But I digress.)

Because the place is new, they chose to furnish it with new stuff. This included new beds, furniture, and appliances like fridge, microwave, dishwasher and TV. And they got a pretty nice 42″ plasma job.

My extended family was invited to spend a couple of nights there in the days after Xmas. And a lovely time was had by all.

On the drive home though, C suddenly made it known she wanted to upgrade our 80 cm CRT TV to a 42″ flat screen model.

Now, I’m as much into new tech and gadgets as anyone but I know that with an 80 cm TV, sitting 4 m away, the detail of the picture is just fine. I’ve never really felt the need to jump on the HD bandwagon. I might have mentioned as much before: so much of what’s on TV is either shit, or I don’t have time to watch it. I don’t need to see Deal or No Deal in stunning HD quality. It’s just overkill.

But, on the drive, home, we stopped in at Colonnades and picked up a 42″ LCD and a surround sound AV receiver.

Later that evening…

We were asking ourselves what we should watch on our new big screen and the choice was naturally a random episode of Gilmore Girls, which we love for the witty banter and esoteric pop-culture references. I think we dived in somewhere in the middle of season three.

But it wasn’t the same.

The picture was so clear, it made the whole show look like it had been shot on home video; there was none of that movie-quality softeness to the picture. It somehow broke down the fourth wall and made the show look not like genuine people in a small town in Connecticut but made it look like we were looking through the camera at actors, acting on a set on a backlot in LA. It ruined the illusion completely.

First step was to desaturate the colour. Then, I took the sharpness right back to as low as it would go (because Lauren and Alexis should be in soft focus) and then I dug through the menu and found this setting that takes the blur out when there’s panning and turned it off to put the blur back in. Save settings.

So now we can watch stuff in HD when what we’re watching lends itself to that. But when it’s more about the story, the characters and the show (as opposed to the technology), we can now apply our own “make it look like shit” user settings.

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Low tech

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

I’m in Port Vincent for New Year’s. It’s a great place to be. On New Year’s Day there is a Gala Day, with street markets, lots of really shitty but tasty food, a big bouncy castle for the kidlets and really really bad entertainment played over an ancient PA.

It’s brilliant.

We’re staying with friends who live on the main street. Which is nice.

Anyway, around this time of year, what with all the colour and summerness of the place, I like to whack a colour film in my Holga and set out to take that quintessential summer photo.

I took the kids to the beach this morning: my two and our friends’ son. He saw the Holga and wanted to know if it was a real camera. My eldest explained to him that it was a Toy Camera that took real photos.

The boy was trying to look at the back of it. I could tell why.

“Doesn’t it have a screen?” he asked.

“A screen?” I said. “It doesn’t even have batteries.”

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Posted in Bairn, Ma vie, Photography, Travels | 1 Comment »

You can’t really tell I’m crippled

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Firstly, mind the look of the place. This blog is like most people’s spare room at the moment. Nobody comes in here much, it’s a bit of a mess but there’s definitely a plan to fix the place up a bit. That said, Christmas is coming and with all the weekends pretty much booked out between now and then, I’m not sure when I’ll find the time. But I digress.

Here is something what happened to me the other day.

I was picking Little Miss L up from after-school care. I was walking towards the building when I heard her yell to me from across the yard and come running towards me. She gave me an update as to what she’d been up to and one of her friends showed me a butterfly she’d caught. It was very exciting. The carer looking after them was a young man, I think he was one of the year 12s.

I noticed there was some sporting equipment strewn about the place and as my daughter and friends were talking to me, I picked up a stray volleyball a few feet away.  I told Miss L to go inside and get her gear and as she took off, I threw the ball above my head and set it in the direction of the big green wheely bin the balls go in. I think it hit the edge and bounced away but it was close.

The carer said “So, you used to play a bit of volleyball…?”

!?

“Used to…?”

I’m not in a fucking walking frame just yet, thankyouverymuch.

I’m still in my 30s and when I did play volleyball I played with and against people in their late 40s, possibly 50s. And while I may be retired hurt, you can’t tell just from looking at me: I walk upright and I’m still rather thin.

So while he was technically correct on the fact that I used to play (technically incorrect on the “a bit” part; I used to play a shitload of volleyball), I just didn’t like his assumption.

I guess though, that if I have a shoulder chip, then it’s my inability to play any kind of meaningful sport. My ankle is never going to recover, so that pretty much rules out any sport that involves standing up.

Which is most of them.

So I hate it when I hear people saying “oh, I can’t be arsed going for a jog”, when I’d gladly do it for them.

Posted in Ma vie, Sport | 2 Comments »

Yes, it still hurts

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

And no, I’m not about to launch into some kind of self-indulgent teenage song lyrics (is there any other kind of teenage song lyrics?). My heart isn’t broken, and thank you, I’m over all the nasty stuff that happened in high school. None of it was actually nasty, I was just there with a bunch of teenagers and you know what they’re like.

What I got goin’ on is the traditional, hurty pain that you get when some of your bits are broken or damaged or angry at you for daring to go out and have a bit of a run around after four years of not. “Take that!” my injured bits are saying to me. And I am. Taking it. For four weeks now.

It’s been interesting as the pain has changed from something deep within the joint: something dull and nebulous that I couldn’t quite point to but that made me feel almost nauseous, to something sharp and articulate like wearing an anklet of thorns.

There are a few tried and trusted ways of coping with pain like this.

  • Painkillers. Anything codeine based seems to do the trick for me, though they never completely mask the pain. I mean, it’s an ankle: the pills go into my stomach but the ankle is all the way down there, so far away. I’d prefer having the edge taken off than no relief at all. And I may joke about it but I never mix them with alcohol.
  • Not minding that it hurts. Not as silly as it sounds. The very reason the painkillers don’t work–that the ankle is so remote and distant–also enables me to somehow distance myself from the pain, and observe it as an impartial observer. Like looking at the sun and saying “gosh, that’s bright”, I’m able to look all the way down there at my foot and say “fuck, that’s painful” and just treat it as an arbitrary sensation. It’s very zen and detached, I know. But that’s just how cool I am, I guess.
  • Other distractions. Work is actually good, when you can get into the swing of things and keep the painful bits relatively still. Lying in bed doing nothing on the other hand… not so easy to ignore it. I might try reading a book later and see if that helps it go away.
  • Sex. Hoping to report on this as a method of pain relief sometime in the hopefully-not-too-distant future.

But it’s all fun and games really. I’ve been seeing some lovely doctors, such as my podiatrist. Now, I’m not covered for podiatry; I usually only go twice a year so it’s not really worth the extra in health insurance just to have her re-cover my orthotics. But now I’ve been going a bit more regularly I had to rethink it. And of course, if I were to get a whole new set of orthotics it would actually be cheaper to pay for it outright than it would to pay the extra premium —and I wouldn’t be able to claim the new ones for a year. Gotta love insurance.

Next week I’m booked into a foot/ankle specialist. Someone new. I get to tell another person the whole story and don’t we all love talking about ourselves?

But I’m going to be pleading with him to inject some cortisone into my joint. Now, I know that’s not a very long-term solution but while I’m working out what that might be, I just need some relief in the short term. Because it hurts.

And, for better comfort, I had to wear sneakers to work today and consequently I look like a bit of a dick.

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It ain’t broke (but it ain’t fixed either)

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

This week marked my auspicious return to the volleyball court. I had forgotten which year it was that I last slipped on the knee pads but due to the magic of putting a lot of work into writing a blog since 2003, I can simply go back in time and see that my operation was in December 2005.

Footballers have whole knee reconstructions and are on the field again after six weeks. You’d think that after nearly four years, I might be able to have a bit of a runaround, whack a few balls about the place and generally enjoy myself doing what I love.

And, as things went, I did have a pretty good time. I was very rusty and very out of shape but the rest of the team I was on was just as rusty or maybe less experienced, so I found myself compensating for some of them; encroaching on their space a bit when the other team’s best server came on (well, someone had to get a dig up).

I was really unfit though, and my legs’ transformation to jelly began somewhere around the end of the first set.

But wow. It was really good. The game wasn’t of the best standard but I got a few good hits in, set up a few good points, saved a few points and even blocked on or two.

After the game though, I knew I wasn’t going to be jumping about the place the next day. I even stopped at the supermarket on the way home for a bag of frozen peas: they make great ice packs.

I had taped the ankle, wrapped it in a bandage and put the whole lot in a lace-up brace. I didn’t land on it funny, twist it, roll it or even give it a dirty look all game.

It wasn’t swollen or damaged. But it was angry.

Next day, I couldn’t walk on it. I worked from home but had to go into town for a meeting and had to grab my trusty old walking stick.

There I was with my stubble, untucked shirt and pack of painkillers. If I’d suddenly amassed an incredible knowledge of diagnostic medicine I could have passed for Doctor House. I had the odd urge to send random strangers for a liver biopsy. I even thought of taking all my painkillers out of the blister pack and putting them in one of those little yellowy-orange plastic bottles.

Anyway, long story short, it’s Saturday morning and I still can’t walk properly. The ankle is just too weak. I’ve told the guy who got me on the team that it’s not looking too good. He’s hoping it’ll come good; so am I, of course.

But the writing’s on the wall and the writing says ‘Whatever you do, don’t even think about setting foot on a volleyball court ever again unless you want a life of pain and resemblance to a certain fictional crippled TV doctor’.

In other news

We’re going away today, back Tuesday. Off to the Yorke Peninsula. We usually get out for a drive or other such fun but the weather’s looking like crap for at least the rest of the weekend. I’ll be voting for sticking the kids in front of a DVD, sitting on the verandah with a glass of wine and a good book.

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Posted in Ma vie, Sport, Travels | 1 Comment »

Rush hour

Friday, September 11th, 2009

I used to work in the city.

And yeah, I already mentioned this in a post. It’s just that it weighs so heavily on my mind, I’m hoping that writing about it will be a little cathartic.

Mornings are all go in our house. There are kids to get up and dressed, lunches to pack, kids to ask again to get dressed, cups of tea and breakfasts to make, and “Kids, why can’t you bloody well get dressed when you’re told” to be said, repeated and yelled day after day. Getting out of the door on time means being in the car at 7.45, or 7.50 at the latest. 8 am is doable but it’s a rush.

My wife and kids get off together at school in the city. To get a park for drop off, we need to be there by 8.15, otherwise we’re doing laps of the block for 10 or 20 minutes. On a good (early) day, I can even get out and take the kids into class and say goodbye. I realise that in a couple of years they won’t want me anywhere near them and all kids probably wish they could take out restraining orders to keep their parents a safe distance from school, so if I get the chance to do classroom activities, I’m fine with that.

If I’m catching the bus, I need to be in the centre of the city by 8.20. I rarely make this and usually end up having to wait till nearly 8.35 for a bus that gets me setting foot in the office around 9.07.

If I’m driving to work I have to be on the road again by about 8.35. Taking the car, I can usually get in the office before or right on 9. See, I like to get to work early. Because if you get to work early, you can leave early. And who doesn’t like leaving early?

I sometimes get all narky if I’m running late: when traffic’s heavy, when there are too many 25 zones, when people don’t know that when the light is green and the red arrow disappears, they’re allowed to turn right. Or if the bus is late, I get annoyed having to sit in Victoria square… waiting in disbelief that the buses can be so early/late/irregular (really, they publish timetables for buses. I can’t think of anything more useless).

I should say I used to get narky. I don’t really now. Not anymore.

I don’t enjoy working out of the city. At least not on the other side of the city from where I live. It’s not that I dislike the north in particular but I am in a rather unattractive corner of the metro area. The first day I caught the bus out here, I knew to get off at stop 18. I dutifully pressed the Next Stop button after stop 17 and stepped off a minute or so later. Turns out it wasn’t stop 18 but stop 17A. Of course. Obviously.

Stop 17A puts you right outside what looks like some disused packing plant. There’s a derelict factory with those really high rail things that you could move stuff on (don’t ask me what). There’s an expanse of overgrown grass and a brick building close to the road. It’s been tagged to the point there’s hardly any brown brick exposed. All the windows have been smashed. Some have been boarded up and subsequently had the boards smashed.

I was stopped in traffic the other day at Light Square. About a billion people wanted to turn right into Currie St and the right hand slip lane had filled up so nobody could get past the right-turners to go straight; they were all in the straight-ahead lane waiting to turn right. I thought “this is gonna make me late. I have to get to…” Then the image of stop 17A popped into my head. And I realised that this—being in the city amid the chaos of morning rush hour—was where I really wanted to be.

The place I work—the suburb, the strip mall, the broken footpaths—is so disconnected from the city in my mind, it’s like I work in another country. When I’m in the city, I can’t believe that it’s possible to get to a place so far away, not in distance but in mood. Of course, I know the way, and whether I’m on the bus or driving, I get here eventually.

And I still want to get here early because the work itself is fine and I want to impress the right people well enough so that I can get another job back in the city. And I still like to leave early.

But the crazy driving, dropoff, driving again. I don’t really get narky anymore. Driving through the city, or waiting in it for a bus… that’s the highlight of my day.

Posted in Adelaide, Idea v. Reality, Ma vie, Work | No Comments »

Back

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Where to begin. Or, where to pick up.

Time is precious and this has always been the project I’ve dabbled at using the time that’s fallen between the cracks of Important Things. I kind of disappeared for a while though. I changed jobs and the way I had structured my time previous to that completely changed and the snippets of spare time spent here just disappeared, and so did I.

But things have changed again. There’s probably a blog post in there somewhere about where I’ve been but that’s for another day. It’s Sunday night and there’s work to be done.

Posted in It's a blog, Ma vie | No Comments »

Hair cut

Monday, December 15th, 2008

I didn’t take a lunch break today, so finished up a little early and used a bit of time at the end of the day to go and have my hair cut.

I changed jobs a few weeks ago, so I’m on the other side of the city, which means the barbers’ shops in proximity to my place of employ are different. I tried a “new” place today.

And when I say new, I mean that this place has obviously been there since 1960, possibly earlier. This was a traditional barber shop, still with the original fit-out which would have looked so sleek and stylish way back when and actually looks quite stylish in a retro way by today’s standards, if a tad faded. It’s large and roomy, has a huge mirror and two chairs.

After I sat down, my suspicions on the age of the place were confirmed: there was a faded, picture with telltale fuzzy focus, of a fresh, young Italian man standing in front of a barber shop. This barber shop. With the same signage, the same fit out, the same man that was here putting a hand-towel around my neck. Seeing his young face in the the photo and his old face, decades later, sizing up my head, was one of those moments when you think “fuck, life goes so fast”. And then I noticed another 70s postcard that had boobs on it and kind of got distracted.

I’ve been choosing to go to older Italian barbers pretty much my whole life. One of my best friends in high school was italian and his dad, Joe, was a barber, so there was never any question that I’d go anywhere else, really. When I moved away, I sought other such barbers not only because they were inexpensive but because there was just something so reassuring, honest and unpretentious about them; and as one not inclined to pretentiousness, this appealed to me.

My most previous barber in Bank St was great. He was even called Joe, though a bit taller than my friend’s dad. But he did a good cut: consistent and efficient. He didn’t mess about and he always had the easy-listening AM station on the radio (which, I kid you not, seemed to play Sailing by Christopher Cross every time I went in for a cut). I’m quite convinced he never really remembered me from the previous time, always asking “Medium cut?” to which I’d always reply “Uh, quite short, actually”. He took 15 minutes, max to do a cut, starting with the clippers around the back and sides, scissors on the top, loosen the bib/shawl thing, clippers with no comb around the back of the neck, then he’d use the cutthroat razor around the sideburns, back of the neck and then a quick comb and sometimes a bit more snipping. Then, talc in the brush and a quick sweep around the collar, ears and forehead to remove any stray offcuts, and done, $16, see you in six weeks.

The guy I went to today had much the same procedure. But it wasn’t the efficient, no nonsense cut I’d become accustomed to. This guy seemed to think that use of the clippers was two-fold: firstly, to cut hair and secondly, where it missed cutting, to flatten the hair. I conclude this from how hard he was pressing with the damn thing. I would have thought the best way to get the cut shorter, would be to use a shorter comb but he seem to think my skull was somehow flexible enough to give him a bit of leeway if my hair wasn’t as short as he’d like. It was like he wasn’t so much trying to cut my hair as force the clippers into my brain through whatever crack in my scalp he may have been fortunate enough to find. I had visions of my head breaking like an easter egg and the clippers buzzing away as my chocolate brain oozed out over his leather chair.

By the time he got to the back of my neck, he’d had the damn things turned on so long, it was like being branded it was so hot. The end result isn’t too bad, but what an ordeal! My other guy is close enough to the railway station I think I’ll just have to keep going back there.

He’s $3 cheaper.

Posted in Adelaide, Ma vie | 3 Comments »

Taking care of business

Friday, December 5th, 2008

So I had lunch at the Central Markets today. I’d been drinking a lot of water at work though after having a few beers last night and feeling strangely hungover today, despite the “few” only numbering three (weird, I go for a session at the pub and wake up feeling nothing worse than a little hoarse but I go out to a show and to dinner and wake up with my head in a vice). What I’m getting at is that no sooner did I lob up to the markets, than I needed, well, to go. I went to the gents in the southern market arcade walkway, near that stand where the guy sells the old records; near the back door of the pub in there. So I go in.

There’s an old Chinese man huddled in the corner and at the other end, there’s just some guy, wearing a bad polo shirt with horizontal stripes and cargo shorts. I assume my position in the middle, when the guy to my right starts talking.

“Hey, thanks for calling back… you’re probably one of the few bankers that isn’t out playing golf at the moment”

Yeah, he was talking on the phone while he was standing there and, y’know… let’s just say he had both hands full.

“So I looked at the proposal and… yeah, I know… well this had all been checked with Kevin, so… um yeah, actually… Can you hang on a minute? I… I’ve just gotta do something…”

I’m not sure where he put the phone while he was doing it but I’m sure the guy at the other end was wondering what our man was doing standing in the kitchen and why it was so important that he squeeze that lemon juice into the sink rather than talk about the proposal. I finished up and went to wash my hands while he was, well, squeezing lemons.

And the next thing I heard was his voice trailling off as the door closed behind him.

So very wrong…

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