Monthly Archives: November 2013

Productivity

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It’s hard to imagine that Australia’s productivity is at an all time high.

I just went for a bike ride from Waterloo to Newtown and all I saw was people skulking around cafes, ‘working’.

Me-thinks the measurement of productivity must be pretty fucked up.

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Angie

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I am sitting in Rocco’s cafe around the corner from my place, as I often do when I wake up early.

It’s a very nice and relaxed environment and, apart from the usual pleasantries, I can get a good hour or so of concentrated work done.

It’s easily my most productive time of the day and not because of later interruptions of a physical nature. Rather, later on, my own brain starts interrupting me.

However, Rocco does have eclectic taste in music. One day it could be Bing Crosby, the next the Velvet Underground or some hip-hop, the next a symphony or some sort.

Right now I am listening to the Rolling Stones’ ‘Angie’ which I haven’t heard for over a decade (I don’t listen to commercial radio at all).

I wasn’t concentrating on the music and it sort of crept into my head. I had this sudden flashback to when I was 17 or so and this was a genuine worm tunnel effort – for a short few seconds I was back there, in love and in turmoil.

It was shocking how much I felt back then. All this emotion and so uncategorised – just a big slopping soup pot of emotion on a pea green boat, which I have subsequently tamed through sheer will power.

All I had to was start reflecting on the weirdness of this time warp feeling and my conscious brain managed to kill the effect.

I found myself quite sad when I flipped back to the de-sensitised present.

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Method hidden

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I was taught at a young age the rigorous scientific method. When new ideas come in the first reaction of a pure scientist is to test that idea rigorously which requires a posture of disbelief.

This is all very good in science but it doesn’t go down so well at home or in the workplace where an openness to the ideas of others is surely part of a successfully strategy in life.

So I have had to curb my scientific method. I now express wonderment at the ideas of others and quietly test the hypothesis in my head.

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The scientific method

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Ok, so here is a new hypothesis – you heard it hear first.

The simplest and cheapest observations or measurements that humans can make are with our born senses – ears, eyes, nose, taste and touch.

Over history, as we attempted to observe things on a smaller and larger scale, typically those measurements have become more expensive. That is we had to first do a lot of R&D and then engineer-up some equipment that could make the measurements.

As example on the small scale would be the microscope which is an expensive little device when it was first made, or a particle accelerator. On the large scale think of a Mars satellite mission.

Science up until the late 20th century was very much focused on explaining observations and less about creating new things. New things occasionally were invented but this wasn’t the primary focus of academic science – they tended to happen by ‘serendipity’.

Initially the observations of interest were of nature, but after a while this transitioned to observation of complex man-made systems.

As the building blocks of scientific knowledge were laid down – starting from the Newtonian human scale and then working into the very small (in distance, say mm, microns, molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles etc) to the very large (meters to the edge of the universe) – we were building up layers upon layers of knowledge and understanding.

By the end of the twentieth century many scientists had switched from ‘explaining observations’ to creating ‘new complex systems’ (petit-engineering or nanotech) and this is because interesting new observations were getting too complex and expensive. Unfortunately most of the science at the more readily understood (and cheaper) scales (in distance, time, whatever) had been well documented and modelled so it wasn’t of much interest.

And this is where my hypothesis comes in – I believe there is an exponentially increasing cost (in time, resources, effort, dollars, whatever) in making scientific observations as the scale departs from the everyday (to both the very small and the very large). So for most scientists it was simply a matter of diminishing returns if they followed the old scientific method. Which is why they switched to Nanotech.

There are a handful of scientists still working away at scales very far removed from the everyday. For example some astrophysicists and particle physicists – and these guys struggle to get the massive funds they need to create the observations they need to progress their modelling. Most people realise they have one life and look at the odds of making a useful contribution in these areas and go elsewhere.

I have another hypothesis and that is that the probability of being able to create useful everyday spin-off technologies from new modelling or observations also decreases exponentially as the scale departs from the everyday (to both the very small and to the very large).

So its a double-whammy – the costs go up exponentially and the probability of useful spin-off technologies go down exponentially as the as the scale departs from the everyday (to both the very small and the very large). No wonder the few remaining pure academic old-school scientific method-type scientists are having such a hard time of it. I expect them to disappear entirely over the next 20 years or so.

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Probabilities

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It is very probable that you will not be able to please all the people all of the time.

In fact there won’t be a single person that won’t be displeased with you some of the time.

But when you have a nett negative pleasure effect on another it’s time to do yourself, and them, a favor.

Behavioural attenuation is all very good, but not at the cost of your soul.

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Parking metier

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You can tell a crap technology by your own feeling of a lack of confidence when approaching it.

For example I never assume a Sydney parking meter will just work.

Especially if you suggest a credit card to the beast.

You will be standing there, punching buttons, squinting and swearing, all before you get a ticket. Or not.

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Rust

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If we import 1.4m bicycles into Australia every year then that means roughly 1 in every 20 people get a new bike very year.

Lets assume half of the population will never ride, then that means the rest of of the population (that might ride) gets a new bike every ten years or so (assuming most of them only have one bike at a time).

Which seems about right. After ten years in the garage doing nothing the thing will look old-school and be pretty rusted.

Circa 95% of sales are vanity sales to people with resolutions, that will probably only use the product once. Its an evil marketer’s wet dream.

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Constitution

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The Australian population grew by 58% between 1986 and 2006 and the daily average number of bicycle trips grew by only 21%, representing a net decline in cycling trips per person. This trend apparently continues to this day.

However last year we imported 1.4m bicycles into Australia continuing a decade long growth of typically 20% per annum.

This implies that there is a lot of resolution out there and fuck all constitution.

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Dance

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Yesterday I had to sit through 3 hours of girls doing contemporary dance because my daughter was in one 4 minute effort out of the three hours.

Ground hog day, 40 dance-lets. Some were great, some were terrible, But 10 would have seen me right for the next lifetime or two.

The oddest effort was by the intermediate contemporary tap girls. It was tap dancing in Scottish kilts with Irish dancing mixed with hip hop and tap. Totally bloody surreal.

It was 100% Eastern Suburbs, 99.5% white-bread anglo girls, no boys, perversely American in flavor and unrelenting in the sexualisation of the girls.

I wisely kept my opinions to myself. I would have been stoned to death by the mothers if I had uttered one single less-than-gushy comment. Some were actually crying during the performances, so moved they were.

Thus the freight train thunders on.

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Offence

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Taking offence is a choice, and, I think, a projection of unresolved fears.

I often find that other people take more offence to minor matters or misunderstandings than I do.

Is it because I care less or because they are more insecure?

Maybe I attract the offensive or readily offendable types because they know that I’ll put up with their shit.

And that is the first time that I have realised that being readily offendable is just as bad as being offensive.

Both require a lack of empathy.

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Cockroaches

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We can buy very toxic and expensive insect sprays but I know that window cleaner is more effective.

I wonder which combo of the ingredients does the job on the cockroaches, and how?

4.0% isopropyl alcohol (a highly volatile solvent)
1% ethylene glycol monobutyl ether (a less volatile solvent),
0.1% sodium lauryl sulfate (a surfactant),
0.01% tetrasodium pyrophosphate (a water softener),
0.05% of 28% ammonium hydroxide,
1% of a dye solution,
0.01% perfume

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Asbestos

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At the end of the street the only house with any real character in the neighborhood is meeting its doom after about 130 years of existence.

It had been re-clad in asbestos cement at some stage in its life, so this had to be removed.

Get this, the guys that removed it put up a fence so no one could see it and then waited for a rainy day so that dust would be less likely to drift, and basically they tore and hammered the asbestos sheet right off the frame.

This process is a little agricultural me-thinks. I could imagine an air-tight tent, like they use in the US for termite chemical spraying. Or a large sprinkler system with a proper drainage system. As it is, the dust they make simple gets to dry out after the rain and annoy the neighbors later.

I don’t think our regulations are tough enough and this is partially because the claims for Asbestosis are being settled by James Hardie and CSR, so the government has a lower than usual incentive to fix this.

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Ugly stick

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The ugly woman wore her ugliness with pride. It was the only way she could deal with the pain of it – overtly.

The odd thing is that I don’t think she is that ugly. Not overtly pretty or anything, but if I met her I wouldn’t think ‘ugly’.

So by defining herself in the negative she is in the same trap as those that define themselves in the positive

I think the real trick is to define oneself by other things such as family, goodness, intelligence, etc. When one excels at these other people won’t and don’t judge one by looks alone, or at all.

It’s that attitude that one takes, i.e what is important to oneself, that people pick up on and run with. If ugliness is your issue, in the positive or the negative, people will focus on that naturally.

We can all naturally sniff the fears and phobias and emotional indolences of others.

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Bus, cab & me

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The bus and cab just drifted into each – both went out of their lanes. The bus hit my side, busted the doors and windows.

A lot of noise and panic but no biological damage at all, unless you count the scarring that occurred in my brain.

I wasn’t ready for it since I was drifting off myself, along with the two drivers I suspect – it was late.

It cost me a lot of time because the Indian driver begged me to stay otherwise the cops may assumed he was at fault. I am not sure I knew otherwise but I think I helped him.

He has been driving for a total of six months in his career. He came to Australia as a skilled immigrant with his family but couldn’t find a gig as an engineer.

The bus passengers didn’t hang around, they got the next bus. the bus driver was surly and didn’t speak to me at all.

The police were wonderfully professional and polite but they must have half a tonne of junk around their belts. You have to wonder how they can sit comfortably with all that on.

My only regret was that my camera had run out of battery hours before so no pics of the drama.

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Memo

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I am writing this as a memo to myself.

Venture Capital (for a keyword search).

If you want to partner with a corporate for investment into a start-up you have to work with creators/vendors of technologies and not users of technology.

That is partner with Intel or Google, not Coles, Fairfax, CBA or Westfields.

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Australian pollies

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Individuals are not allowed to represent in the federal parliament if they have been convicted of a crime punishable by a year or more in prison, but that ban is only while they are serving or awaiting sentence.

That seems pretty lenient to me; probably reflecting the fact that we are a federation of formal penal colonies, and it also makes sense since one extra glass of wine before driving makes one a potential criminal; on that basis we would run out of candidates pretty quickly if we banned anyone with a criminal record.

We are pretty short of sane candidates already.

However if anyone is attainted (they mean sentenced) of treason then they are banned for life. Treason is defined below…

You could probably gun down Tony Abbott and claim it as a Humanitarian act and then be free to get elected on the goodwill thus created. Probably call yourself Shooters and Roooters party – that would be a dead cert to get a senate seat or two. Then you could form a coalition with Clive and be set for life financially, so he can get rid of all taxes on mining and make annual attendance at Gold Coast theme parks compulsory for all children.

“A person commits an offence, called treason, if the person:

(a) causes the death of the Sovereign, the heir apparent of the Sovereign, the consort of the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister; or

(b) causes harm to the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister resulting in the death of the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister; or

(c) causes harm to the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister, or imprisons or restrains the Sovereign, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister; or

(d) levies war, or does any act preparatory to levying war, against the Commonwealth; or

(e) engages in conduct that assists by any means whatever, with intent to assist, an enemy:

(i) at war with the Commonwealth, whether or not the existence of a state of war has been declared; and

(ii) specified by Proclamation made for the purpose of this paragraph to be an enemy at war with the Commonwealth; or

(f) engages in conduct that assists by any means whatever, with intent to assist:

(i) another country; or

(ii) an organisation;

that is engaged in armed hostilities against the Australian Defence Force; or

(g) instigates a person who is not an Australian citizen to make an armed invasion of the Commonwealth or a Territory of the Commonwealth; or

(h) forms an intention to do any act referred to in a preceding paragraph and manifests that intention by an overt act.”

A person is not guilty of treason if their assistance or intended assistance is purely humanitarian in nature.”

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Gaawd

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Once or twice a week I get on my bicycle for the 40km round trip to Clovelly to have breakfast with my daughter.

The only time I might be tempted to believe in a god is when the wind is against me both on the way there and on the way back.

Evil prick!

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Lola may

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According to her mum Lola, at ten, is practicing her girly whiny flirty bloody annoying thing on her dad, me.

This is a prelude of things to come, where women torture boys and men with this crap for as long as they can, preferably twenty or thirty years.

Men only put up with it because (a) their dad’s did, (b) they want sex, and (c) they haven’t got to the point of being sick of sex with the woman in question yet.

Of course Lola doesn’t know any of this so I told her to go use the cat as a crash test dummy.

I had hoped that with early intervention I could talk her out of this sort of rubbish but it seems she is right in the middle of girly demographic.

I will keep talking to her though. You never know, one day she might realize that I am right and become one of those rare sane women.

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My niece

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My 19 year old niece borrowed some pants off Joanne and they never came back.

When asked, some time later, to return them, she claimed she didn’t know where they were but that they were probably at Margies (my mother’s).

There was no sign from her that she should take any responsibility in tracking them down or for replacing them.

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Ha

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I just watched the movie Francis Ha. It’s a very good but agonising insight into gen Y mentality. Geez, they have issues.

I am glad I watched it in a cinema because I would have never made it through otherwise.

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Work Comms 101

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For newly minted leaders in any job where there are lifts and/or cubicles and/or gypsum ceiling tiles and/or windows that don’t open and/or instant coffee in a tea room.

When communicating anything with anyone junior or peer-like in the workplace, first think about what you are about to say.

Then distil it to the core message in your brain.

And then decide if you still want to say it

If so, make it as simple and short as possible so as to avoid misinterpretation.

Communicating upwards to anyone senior is very simple; just ask questions and only offer opinions in writing.

You can still talk non-work stuff, off the cuff, but make sure people know that you aren’t communicating in code when you do so. Sometimes you have to be very explicit about this because people see communists under every rock, or tea leaves in every cup.

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Ned

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Last year, wandering around the Victorian country side I had the pleasure of attending Ned Kelly’s official funeral.

I just accidentally landed in Greta at same time that his descendants had scheduled the funeral after finally getting his body out of a pauper’s grave, 133 years after he was hanged.

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Simpson Desert

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If you had a quarter acre block in the middle of the Simpson Desert I doubt that you could give it away, especially if the new owner had to pay rates on it.

This is a way of saying that real estate is only worth what people are prepared to pay for it. That is the value of real estate is entirely subject to supply and demand factors.

In Sydney right now a 300-1000 square meter block of land within 15 km of the CBD is worth at least $0.8-1.5m. Given that the average cost of building or replacing a house is $0.3-0.5m, this means that working professional couples spend $1-2m on a block of land and a house.

These working couples are prepared to mortgage themselves to the hilt whilst interest rates are low, and roughly speaking $2m seems to be the natural limit of affordability for two professional incomes. Low interest, interest repayments only, 30 year terms, up to 70% of all income on loan repayments; it’s all very tenuous. And they then become asset/loan rich and cash poor.

They don’t want to go too far out from the CBD because that would mean excessive travel times and hence the focus on that 15km range where there actually is public transport or other feasible options.

Its odd, if you get to $3m you often get more than twice the ‘value’ of a $2m house and land, i.e. more than twice the area of land and house. At $3m you are in a much less competitive market.

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360 madness

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When I was in my last corporate role the organization hired professional HR psychologists who put us all through 360 degree reviews.

I was interviewed about how I thought others (i.e. my boss, my peers and my direct reports) all perceived me. In other interviews the ‘others’ were all asked how they perceived me.

The differences in these perceived perceptions was startling and very depressing. The overall feeling I got was that everyone hated me.

Of course we are all naturally very sensitive to the things about ourselves that other people don’t like. Human nature made me focus on the negatives and under-weight the positives.

After time, and a little counseling I got these results out of this process:

1. I stopped worrying so much about what I thought other people thought about me (just through sheer desensitization to the pain of it all). That is, I hardened up.

2. I started playing my inter-people relationships with a ‘straighter bat’ and stopped do anything that could be construed as trying to ‘manipulate’ other’s perception of me. This included telling stories to make people feel temporarily better about things.

3. I started addressing my weaknesses which in my case was a poor effort at reporting up. This showed up as a category that I was weak on, although I did allow for experimental bias (bosses being more likely to say what they thought even in a blind survey).

4. I recognized that leadership is a lonely business and that I better get used to this. There is no use trying to be everyone’s best mate because this just made the intermittent tough messages or decisions all that much harder to deliver.

5. Whilst constant and comprehensive communication to the workforce is a desirable thing, it can be time consuming and often counter-productive at times. People hear what they want to hear and often misconstrue communications in order to confirm their internal biases. The message must be simple and intermittent in order to have impact.

6. Eventually I left the corporation because I realized that part of the issue was that I was in a workplace that depressed me. Simply stated it was a large organization where many senior people spent more time worrying about their status and income, rather than the quality of their outcomes or the satisfaction of a job well done. Hence the shit atmosphere and the need for 360 degree reviews.

I have a rule of thumb now as to what I need in order to be happy in my workplace:

1. I need to be the boss or a consultant
2. If I am the boss then the organization needs to be no more than 20-30 people strong. After this its hard to keep a lid on the BS.
3. Also I practice all the six useful outcomes as described above.
4. And I have to be inherently interested in the outcomes of the business or work activity; I won’t just do things for money or for keeping busy.

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NZ wars

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The UN says “By 2025 the number of nations experiencing “water scarcity,” which is when each person has access to less than 1,000 cubic meters of water for an entire year, will nearly double to 30 compared to 18 in 1990. This issue is predicted to be most prevalent cause of all international armed conflicts.”

The World Health Organisation estimates that “depression will be the number one health concern in both the developed and developing nations by 2030.”

Yeah and I will be fucking depressed when there is no water and we are at war with New Zealand over the same.

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Insane Australia II

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The Black Dog Institute says:

“Depression has a high lifetime prevalence – one in seven Australians will experience depression in their lifetime…The World Health Organisation estimates that depression will be the number one health concern in both the developed and developing nations by 2030”

Well, firstly they must be measuring depression quite differently to Sane Australia which says 1-in-4 have depression at any time. So you have to wonder if there are different categories of depression?

I mean there is obviously very bad depression that can lead to suicide or significant medical issues, but then there is the response to the external environment which is supposed to act as a stimulus to change things. That is, a natural and sensible part of human behaviour.

My guess is that, between now and 2030, we are all going to get quite depressed while the do-gooders, scammers and the medical industry ram depression down our collective throats to ensure that we part with as much money as is humanly possible, in order to get rid of our depression.

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Insane Australia

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Sane Australia released this nugget today;

“Almost 50% of Australian workers who had taken time off work because of depression kept the reason hidden from their employer according to a large scale national study released today by SANE Australia involving more than 1000 workers.”

Sane Australia is confused by these results since in Europe only half as many people kept Depression hidden from their employees.

Maybe, just maybe, the reason is that the cause of Depression is the workplace itself!

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Darra

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The entire history of Darra (QLD) according to Wikipedia:

“In 1954, the Darra RSL Memorial Hall was opened. Sumner was known as Darra until 1969 when it became a separate suburb. Vietnamese refugees began to settle in the area in 1975”

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Pain too

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My pain threshold has certainly changed over the years.

Watching my daughter react to sunburn, bindi-eyes, mildly hot asphalt, dried salty skin, sand in her bed and cracked lips; I recall that these things used to hurt me, or at the very least annoy me. Now they hardly register a blip.

My guess is that as we age our brain decides to attenuate the signal resulting from the processing of nerve responses. When we are young the brain has yet to determine whether these signals are from life threatening events, but later on it knows that they are not.

Also, once we have reproduced maybe the brain thinks the outcomes are less important and then we can choose to give ourselves a break. I don’t think this choice is conscious and clearly not everyone makes it.

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Oculist

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In the Gatsby there was a large billboard, an old advertisement with a pair of large optical glasses watching the carrying-ons, which represented a higher spirit observing and maybe judging, but not acting.

Back in the day an optometrist was called, not called an optician but an oculist. Not to be confused with a occultist

One wonders when and why the name change? Maybe they were sick of being accused of dabbling in the eye arts.

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Nostradamus

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Dreams usually slip away from me unless I happen to recall them just after I wake up, which only occurs if I tell myself to do so whilst in my dream. And this only occurs if I think the dream is novel enough to warrant recall.

Even so, last night I got the message and I don’t know why.

The dream involved me being some sort of government agent and heading to Finland where a nuclear reactor had gone critical and then into melt-down. I was over there doing god knows what.

I checked and Finland has two nuclear plants with four reactors. If something does happen you heard it here first.

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F. Scott

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Last night I was forced to watch Luhrmann’s take on the Great Gatsby.

It’s a book I haven’t read since I was at school. But as it was a key book in one year of high school I must have read it at least three times and I studied it deeply, wrote essays on it, etc. So I know it well.

About the movie, it does demonstrate that purveyors of video clips don’t do ‘subtle’ very well. Every emotion in the movie was verbalised and the whole thing was over-acted.

The book was written ‘off-beat’; the real story was slyly hiding in the barely noticed percussion and not where it was expected. Also the book created an overwhelming feeling of an other-world story, re-told in an almost dream-like narrative fashion.

The movie did not create any of these feelings probably because the director never felt them in the first place.

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Cholesterol

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I am writing a summary article on blood cholesterol for Chemistry in Australia.

This subject is the ultimate rabbit hole. The further I look into it the weirder it gets.

A quick summary is that for some people with a genetic weakness the use of drugs probably makes sense but for many it does not.

Even for those for which it is does make sense a better treatment is a nuts, vege, fruit and meat diet…but who would do that when there a pill?

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Focus up

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Despite what the optometrist tells me I can’t help feeling that using reading glasses accelerates the dependence upon them.

It’s hard to verify this hypothesis since I only have one of me.

I suppose I could have used a reading monocle and compared my eyes. Too late now but I would have, you know.

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Pain

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My massage therapists tells me that I have a high pain threshold.

I always suspected so. The only time I complain is at the dentist and there it’s not the pain I complain about but the discomfort. A different thing.

He, the massage guy, was telling me, as he was releasing my Achilles-related strips and straps, that some people can’t handle the pain of this process. I was completely perplexed and said ‘what pain?’.

Shortly after I fell asleep. Caught myself snoring…

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Knee bone

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Uncorrelated symptoms noted and simply lived with; sore Achilles especially in the morning, one leg 7 mm longer than the other, very stiff neck at times especially when turning to the right, and sore lower back.

Variously treated and independently diagnosed as (in order); tight calf muscles and hammies (stretches from physio), shoe inserts as part of sore arch treatment (podiatrist), wholly untreated, bulging disc (initially treated unsuccessfully by physio and then mostly sorted by gym work).

The untreated stiff neck led me to a genius remedial massage/osteo/physio, who diagnosed the whole thing as one incident, a former shoulder reconstruction.

Even the leg length as measured by x-ray is an artifact of hip rotation which has now been fixed. The Achilles was fixed entirely in two sessions. The neck needs one more session. Even the lower back gets a look in.

The basic chain of events; shoulder reconstruction led to me protecting it, which led to muscle imbalance around the neck rotator joints or some-such. That ended up putting stress on one side of the spinal muscles which exacerbated that back problem, which led to a shortening of the muscle joining the lower rib and the hip which caused the rotation which led to the artifact of leg measurement, which pulled up on the leg causing more pronation which led to the achilles issues.

Starting with the fascia on the feet, my guy has been moving up my body undoing all of this. He is halfway through, and only two sessions in and I am already pain and niggle-free.

Who woulda guessed?

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Momentum junkies

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Having traveled in many third world and developing countries I know this; the basic rule of the road in these countries is ‘might is right’.

That is, the larger and heavier vehicle, of a clutch, does what the fuck it wants and the rest get out of the way.

The lowest in the pecking order of vehicles are the pedestrians and cyclists, who are well advised to keep alert and be prepared to duck left or right at any moment when a larger vehicles decides to occupy their space, for convenience sake.

Trouble occurs when drivers trained in this simplistic system arrive in Sydney as skilled migrants (doctors, engineers and the like) but end up driving cabs.

They generally treat cyclists as they did at home and this can cause issues. In truth they have trouble even perceiving cyclists and often get quite confused when the cyclist in their cross-hairs doesn’t magically disappear.

Cyclists are very good at demanding their equal rights on the road often at the expense of their own safety. They can also get awfully angry when someone applies the ‘might is right’ rule against them. As they did to me this morning.

Oddly thought the self-same cyclists, when it suits them, have no compunction about breaking many other road rules for the sake of maintaining momentum. Hypocrites or super-sized pedestrians? I know not which but guess both.

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Compartmentalise

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Stop distracting me
For fuck’s sake
I wonder if the chair
is leather
I will soldier
ad nauseum
Then with questions
when we twine together
But instead I wonder
if your eyes are still blue
You are the pirate
I club you in review
How to compartmentalise
You never wondered too?

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Evolution

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I wonder if evolution cares if we all look different to each other? That is, is there an advantage to the species of each of us being unique to look at?

It’s possible that our differences are a by-product of other evolutionary requirements.

Or that natural selection is actually trying to homogenize us. Come back in a million years and we might all be sneetches.

Just possibly we are a species of train-spotters. To dogs we might already look like sneetches.

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Six meters

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Does this sign mean that drivers of vehicles over 6 metres can park any way they want?

And what happens if you park exactly at 4pm. Do you have you leave by 6, 8 or 10 pm?

And why didn’t they replace “4P 6 pm -10 pm” with “14P 6pm – 8 am”?

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Rear end

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The idea of rear-to-kerb parking makes sense on a busy road, sort of.

But getting a ticket in a quiet back street, for accidentally ignoring a partially hidden sign proclaiming the same, is madness.

I told the parking officer so.

“Mate, the rules are the rules”

And with that, Australia checked out for good.

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Christmas

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It’s November in Surry Hills and that means the start of Christmas get-togethers.

People are drunk at lunch time. Cabs are harder to get. Pubs are full after work. Skirts are getting shorter. And work is all about survival for many.

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