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Year View| Summary| Highlights| August 2006 (Month View)

Apr ‘06 | May ‘06 | Jun ‘06 | Jul ‘06 | Aug ‘06 Sep ‘06 | Oct ‘06 | Nov ‘06 | Dec ‘06 |

01.08.2006 – Tuesday 1 August – Late Shift Again

Day

• I nearly missed the City Cat to work again. It’s a bit silly when I can get up at a quarter past five and walk through the icy mist to the first Cat to the city without any problems, but I can barely ride to one on time in the pleasantly sunny afternoon. It seems I’m enjoying working late shift, although I wouldn’t want to for any prolonged period as I can’t do anything in the afternoon—no movies at all. I’m beginning to think rotating shifts might suit me after all.

Night

• It took me just on half an hour to ride home through the city, which seems to be a little faster, although less scenic, than the river route. There are also fewer possums to hit.

02.08.2006 – Wednesday 2 August – Rushing

• I just can’t win. I’m destined to run for public transport. I should be used to it by now, having run for the train every weekday from Joe’s for three years. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do—if I get up at five o’clock in the morning or if I am leaving at three in the afternoon, I still have to run. If I leave late, I have to run to avoid missing the City Cat; if I leave on time, I still have to run to avoid missing the City Cat; and if I leave really early, I get there with tons of time to spare, decide to ride on to Toowong and drop past an ATM to get some cash out, and end up with two minutes to get from Toowong back to the Regatta, nearly missing the City Cat. Sadly, that was both the lowlight, highlight, and in fact, only thing I can remember, of my day.

03.08.2006 – Thursday 3 August – Working & Walking

Morning

• Surprisingly, I nearly missed the City Cat to work.

Night

• I rode to Clint’s after work, and went for a quick night walk, getting home well into the wee hours of the morning.

04.08.2006 – Friday 4 August – Working & Bronwen

• Another sleep in, another late shift. Bronwen dropped by for dinner.

05.08.2006 – Saturday 5 August – Sleeping & Sweeping

• Bronwen went to work. I woke feeling unmotivated. This could have something to do with my self-assigned tasks for the day: cleaning the house and scrubbing the shower. I went back to bed, where I dozed in a rather hilarious, semi-awake state, interspersed with macabre vaudeville renditions of daily events, until two o’clock, when I got up and did some work on the Jianshe site. I then finished off the evening by sweeping the floors.

06.08.2006 – Sunday 6 August – Brick

Morning

• I can’t remember what I did, or didn’t, do this morning—but I can remember what I did this afternoon.

Evening

• Bronwen and I caught a train to Indooroopilly, had a late—and very yummy—lunch, and watched “Brick”, which was quite good.

07.08.2006 – Monday 7 August – The Sentinel

Morning

• This week I’m back to early shifts. Having nearly missing the City Cat when I was starting in the afternoon and taking my bike—which allows me to make up time far faster than walking—I thought I should make a special effort not to miss the City Cat now that I’m getting up at a quarter past five in the morning and am walking. So, I got ready in time, and was about to leave when I noticed that my ADSL had dropped out. One of the downsides to using VoIP phones is that the internet connection becomes fairly vital. This meant that I had to check the modem in case it—being a crap modem—had reset itself to its factory default settings and was not going to fix itself while I was away, which involves switching some network cables around. This, of course, resulting in me having to run through the icy fog to the City Cat, arriving sweaty and hot while everyone else was clammed up in their thick fleeces. Looking on the bright side, the frigid office women all noticed what a hot bloke I am—literally.

Night

• My habit of nearly missing things isn’t confined to catching the City Cat to work. By the time I’d worked out if Clint and Maz were coming to Indooroopilly to see a movie with me, I had three minutes to get to the bus. I live what most people would consider a ten-minute walk from the bus. Still, I figure running is good for m, and by the time I’d got to Indooroopilly, where I met Clint and Maz, I’d cooled down and could breathe again. We all bought one-dollar lolly bags from the lolly shop, which is one of the worst things to do, and saw “The Sentinel”, which was better than I had expected—quite enjoyable but certainly not brilliant. Clint and I went for a short night walk around what must be the poshest suburb I’ve yet come across.

08.08.2006 – Tuesday 8 August – Late & Omkara

Morning

• I finally missed the City Cat to work. It was only a matter of time really. I actually got up on time—I even got ready with time to spare—but unfortunately, I didn’t leave on time. I really hate running because I’m late, which should be an incentive to be on time, but I’m almost always late for public transport—though I nearly always get where I’m going on time. Fortunately, for reasons inexplicable, the next City Cat runs significantly faster, allowing me to arrive at work only twenty minutes late. Unfortunately I didn’t know this, so I ran to the nearest major bus stop, where I waited for ages as there aren’t any early buses in Brisbane, then walked quickly from a city bus stop to Riverside City Cat terminal, where I caught the same City Cat I could have just waited for at the start.

Night

• I caught a bus to Garden City, waited a little until Bronwen turned up, and went and saw “Omkara” with her. It’s a Hindi retelling of “Othello”, which I didn’t like that much due to it being a sad tragedy, though the movie itself was entertaining and well made.

Comment by Mum – Friday 18 August 2006, 9:59 PM

  Do you know what "Omkara" means? In my Tibetan music CD of "Raising of a Chief" there is a song in which the chant is (what I thought was "OmTara" but on further listening) I think "Omkara" and it is such a beautiful chant/song, that I would like to know what Omkara means.

Comment by Ned – Saturday 19 August 2006, 2:02 PM

  “Omkara” apparently means “the vehicle to cross the ocean of life”

09.08.2006 – Wednesday 9 August – Pizza

• What a sleepy day. Bronwen and I eat pizza in the park for dinner.

10.08.2006 – Thursday 10 August – Work & Winamp

• This morning, I not only got up on time, got ready on time, and left on time; I even got nearly all the way to the City Cat on time! As per usual though, it didn’t quite work out—although rather unexcitingly. As I had so much time, I stopped walking fast once I got to the river and could see the City Cat terminal. I then saw the City Cat coming, and had to run for it, although not as bas as usual. It’s a bit sad that nearly missing the City Cat has been the highlight of my day for the past couple of weeks. I suppose there’s breakfast and lunch—I had a spinach and fetta focaccia for breakfast, and an iced coffee milk. Normally, I have a mini-pizza, but they didn’t have any. For lunch, I had mini chips, potato scallop and chocolate milkshake, as I have every day.

Night

• Yesterday I decided to upgrade to the latest version of Winamp. Bronwen had installed some thing that was supposed to display album art, but didn’t, so I went and had a look at Winamp’s “Now Playing” feature, and found that mine wasn’t working—so I installed the latest version of Winamp. It said I should restart, which I ignored, and it then crashed when I tried to play a song. Today, when I got home, I restarted to see if that fixed it, but it didn’t. I then spent an hour reinstalling, copying and removing various plug-ins, data files from the media library, and generally messing around, before getting it to work again. I’m still not sure if it’s working properly, but it hasn’t crashed in a while so hopefully it is—and I’ve managed to retain my media library information so I know what songs I haven’t listened to yet.

11.08.2006 – Friday 11 August – Jindabyne & On Time

Morning

• I got to the City Cat, without having to run, and without missing it. How nice it was.

Night

• The Bronwen and the Ned embussed to Indooroopilly, where they saw “Jindabyne”, and found that it was very realistic and quite dramatic, but ended poorly. They ate a healthy dinner after the movie, from Hungry Jack’s.

12.08.2006 – Saturday 12 August – Winamp, Bikes & More to Come

Morning

• I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to get Winamp to work, for the third day in a row now, eventually giving up and cleanly installing the latest version without any of my existing plug-ins, or my media library. This worked, but I’ve lost my media library it would seem. I might add it to my backups. Something so small should not be so annoying and broken.

Afternoon

• Bronwen and I fixed Bronwen’s bike. I had planned to do something to mine as well, but there wasn’t much that could be done without one of those big compactor things that squash the cars with the dead bodies in them in the movies—or at least a huge electromagnet. Looking on the bright side, I managed to get my hands attractively black and greasy.

Night

• Bronwen and I went for a walk along the river to West End, where we had a lovely, and very filling, Indian dinner at Bombay Dhaba before walking to the valley and seeing “Lower City” at Palace Centro. The movie didn’t live up to my expectations, sadly, being too raw and undeveloped, but was entertaining nonetheless.

13.08.2006 – Sunday 13 August – Sunday Live

• I had a quiet, mostly relaxing, morning. I went shopping in the afternoon, managing to miss the City Cat to Sunday Live and having to ride my bike to the next City Cat in order to get there on time. The concert was quite soothing, putting Raymond to sleep. We stopped past West End for some food on the way home.

Night

• I had planned to go see Miami Vice with Clint, but he unhelpfully managed to be incommunicado—and somewhat rudely so—at all the wrong times, meaning I not only couldn’t find out if he was still planning to go, but I missed the movie myself.

Comment by io – Wednesday 16 August 2006, 4:06 AM

  I disagree with you that the concert put me to sleep - I only entered the slow-wave cycles whilst I was coming off my green-tea euphoria, having not slept for a full 24 hours. I even managed to start the applause for the final piece.
  
  Raymond. :D
  (Also, come bowling next Tuesday: details on my "site".)

14.08.2006 – Monday 14 August – Work

• Unfortunately, being a Monday and all, I have to go to work. Fortunately, I’m on late shift so I don’t start until three o’clock, giving me time to sleep in, have breakfast at McDonald’s with Maz, and drop by his work with my music drive so he could peruse some of my music onto his music drive. Now I’m lazing about—it’s surprisingly hot outside—and listening to Goan trance, wishing I were rich and travelling, rather than preparing for another evening at work. In unrelated news, it seems the latest version of Winamp can’t handle large play lists (there’s 25330 items in there now)—it randomly crashes when moving large numbers of files around the media library.

Night

• I got home a little later than usual—having to stay until half past eleven (which is when I’m supposed to leave anyway, but I usually leave earlier) due to a failure in the hand-over system of the monitoring system itself.

15.08.2006 – Tuesday 15 August – Alone with Ice Cream

• Another evening at work. Nothing of note to report, other than my backup calling in sick so me doing my shift alone, and buying two litres of blue ribbon double chocolate ice cream, as it was much better value than a normal ice cream, and I needed something to sooth what I hope isn’t the onset of the deadly throaty lurgy that has been plaguing sickly residents recently.

Comment by Mum – Friday 18 August 2006, 9:38 PM

  Blue ribbon double chocolate ice cream! Good precursor to onset of deadly throaty lurgy. If you werent one of the "sickly residents" you ought to be by now, after scoffing blue ribbon thingo.

16.08.2006 – Wednesday 16 August – ‘Ekka’ Holiday

• As it’s the Brisbane show holiday, Bronwen isn’t going to work. I, sadly, am. I’d planned to go see Miami Vice in the morning, but circumstances—and Bronwen—intervened, and I ended up having a quiet morning instead. I considered calling in sick, but eventually headed into work in the afternoon, only to find that they’d accidentally double rostered my backup, so it wouldn’t have mattered too much had I not turned up. Then, to make matters worse, not only am I feeling at risk from the deadly throaty flu, but the chip shop was shut, leaving me to the mercy of my one and a half litres of blue ribbon double chocolate ice cream and an unusually oily “mini pizza”. Surprisingly, I survived.

Comment by Mum – Friday 18 August 2006, 9:51 PM

  Am annoyed. Typed a perfectly good 400 word "comment" which got wiped out by my cat, jealous over keyboard. Was a really good "Ma lecture" which would have been greatly enjoyed by Sef (he who is about to be disinher....er ok) and Maz and other decrepits. Thingis, that if you feel onset of ANYTHING, garlic double non ice cream, plentifully sprinkled with lashings of parsley and cayenne pepper is um, well, the go. Mini pizza el oilio verboten. Geez. Some blokes got looks and some got brains. Leave it up to sefmazio et ors to decide which is what and all that. Maringinhansob

Comment by Mum – Friday 18 August 2006, 9:54 PM

  Am needing um email or etc re Corey. Want to contact and cannot. Can you help? Maringinhansob

17.08.2006 – Thursday 17 August – Late Night

Morning

• I began redesigning the bike site to incorporate their new brand.

Evening

• I worked with James (Cuneo), and got a lift back home with him, leaving my bike at work.

Night

• Bronwen spent the night at her parents, which meant I stayed up ridiculously late chatting online.

18.08.2006 – Friday 18 August – Uni, PHP & The Peeing Pool

10:30am

• I bussed to uni and had a chat to Dominic about their PHP problem (and a thick shake from the ice creamery), before bussing to the city and work via home and South Bank, where it’s getting hot enough that people are again swimming and sunbathing in and at the peeing pool.

Night

• There are many stupid people in-between the valley and city on a Friday night. Riding through and past them results in a combination of good-natured jeers, people offering to push, running along beside, and the more stupid jumping out in front—who I am sorely tempted to hit.

Comment by io – Sunday 27 August 2006, 4:14 AM

  Yep - as long as you're breathing normally you shouldn't be spooked by anyone trying to surprise you on your bike. Running over them is kind of cool - I've had a few close calls before travelling at not-slow speeds but front brake is great. Also, something that I read on a cycling site which I didn't think of is pothole dodging methods - basically you don't look at the hole or it'll end up being a target for you to run into. Just look around it for where you're supposed to ride.
  
  Wow I wanted to rant on about something else but I've hit the char limit. Say hi to your mum and Bronwen for me.

19.08.2006 – Saturday 19 August – Sadly Average but Looking Forward

• Today has been a sadly average day. I’d wanted to do something a little different, having been too tired to join Clint on his latest death-defying attempt at immortality, but still wanting to do something—but it’s been put off until tomorrow. Instead, I had a quiet—but pleasant—morning, followed by a trip to Woolworth’s with Bronwen to buy groceries and crazy specials, where we bumped into Bronwen’s Dad and subsequently got a lift back. Today’s crazy specials included a large custard tart and quite a lot of pasta salad. Bronwen wouldn’t let me buy a cheap apple pie.

Evening

• Now that I’ve left the ranks of the pleasantly unemployed and joined the legion of fulltime drones propping up the deep end of our service-based economy, I feel it is a good time to reflect on what’s next. Short term, I should get back into reading—I used to read all the time, but since uni, I’ve hardly read at all. I think reading is the simplest way to gain knowledge—someone may spend their entire life writing a book, filling it with all the knowledge they’ve gained, and I can read that in a week, even though I may not understand even a tenth of what they’ve managed to cram into their book. Slightly longer term, I’m tossing up flying over to Perth in time for the air race, showing Bronwen around and visiting my folks, and have applied to volunteer at Woodford again. Longer term again, I’m itching to get out of this conservative and rather repetitive country and travel somewhere different, exciting, and third world—probably South America, as I’ve already seen a little of Asia—so need to figure out the best way to do that from a financial and career perspective. I imagine there’s something important I’ve forgotten, like washing behind my ears, but with three quarters of a custard tart still to go, it’ll have to wait for later.

Night

• Cooking dinner didn’t sound too exciting. Someone mentioned the pancake parlour. It’s a grand old church in the centre of the city, now a twenty-four hour pancake parlour with a bar underneath, where it looks like they would have tortured the witches during the great recession, or whenever it was they did that. Bronwen had nachos. I also had nachos, but without the beef. Never let it be said we’re not adventurous. We then shared two pancakes, topped with cream and ice cream—it is a pancake parlour after all. After this, we were both horrifyingly full, so strolled home very slowly and painfully.

1:30am

• Sleepy. Bedtime.

Comment by io – Sunday 27 August 2006, 4:17 AM

  The waffles & fudge there are also sublime. I've been there about a couple of times now - ironically most of the times were with different choirs I've been in.

20.08.2006 – Sunday 20 August – Riding, Harps, Hussies & Miami Vice

Morning

• I slept in, not as long as I would have liked, but hopefully enough to keep me alive.

Afternoon

• Bronwen and I had planned to get up at eight o’clock and go for a ride, but at eight o’clock, after a week of late shifts and six hour or less sleeps, getting up seemed suicidal. By the time we did get up, get organised, and head off, it was pushing afternoon. Nevertheless, we had a pleasant and not too hot ride along the river, through UQ, across the Indooroopilly Bridge, and back along the wrong side of the river to West End, where I bought a milkshake before heading to the ABC’s Ferry Road Music Centre for Sunday Live.

3pm

• Today’s Sunday Live was an interesting husband-wife harp duet. The harp isn’t my favourite instrument, but it makes a pleasant change from the normal, and in my opinion, rather boring, orchestral instruments usually used in classical music. After the music, Bronwen and I rode to South Bank, getting ‘flashed’ on the way, rather unexpectedly. We were riding down a non-descript road in a non-descript part of South Brisbane—almost an industrial area—and several well-dressed women, in their late twenties or early thirties, were walking up the road, who for some reason thought they should lift their dresses, revealing a pleasing, although unexpected and somewhat shocking, lack of underwear. It seemed a strange place, not particularly near any shops, restaurants, cafés, clubs, or really anything.

Evening

• Bronwen and I had a not-so-cheap, but still fairly nasty, takeaway dinner from a greasy place at South Bank with Raymond, before watching “Miami Vice” without Raymond, riding home, and getting to bed worryingly late.

21.08.2006 – Monday 21 August – Early Shift

• Back to getting up early—at 5:30 in the morning, in theory anyway. In reality, the alarm goes off at 5:30, and I doze until a quarter to six, at which point I shower and get ready as fast as I can, before rushing to the train. I’m working back in the Valley, having finished my month at East Brisbane. Work goes remarkably fast, but is fairly uneventful. Today is “pizza day”, so I have pizza for lunch, courtesy of work. In the afternoon, I do some gardening, chopping back the raging nasturtiums, and fix a few problems on my site, leftover from the upgrade to PHP 5.

• I’m now up on level six, in the NOC room. It’s all glass, and as one of the new level 2’s commented when being shown through, “it looks like a CIA control room”.

22.08.2006 – Tuesday 22 August – Pizza

• Being left to my own devices—most of which have flat batteries---when the cook spent the night at her parent’s place also left me with a problem—what to eat for dinner? Cheap Tuesday Pizza was the answer, and it seemed like a good answer until I ate the whole thing in one sitting.

23.08.2006 – Wednesday 23 August – Another Quarter of an Hour

• I’ve managed to hone my morning preparation to such an extent that I can now get up a full quarter of an hour later—at a quarter to six. This leaves me no time for mistakes, and is the day’s most exciting development, which sums today up nicely.

24.08.2006 – Thursday 24 August – Working

• One of the downsides to keeping a daily journal is that quite often, nothing worth writing happens—but I have to write it anyway. Today was one of those days. I got up early, as I have every day this week, caught the train into the city, grabbed a “Six Inch Veggie Delite” from Subway, and ate it while walking to work. I then worked all day, stopping for a morning milkshake, a lunch of hot, greasy chips, and an afternoon caramel slice, and then catching the train home. Once home, I had a rice and Mexican beans dinner, walked Bronwen up to her parent’s place, went to Woolworths for groceries, and slept.

25.08.2006 – Friday 25 August – Swollen Brainstems & Samford Nights

• Another day, another dollar, and what feels like a swollen brainstem, but is probably just a lack of sleep, the onset of the galloping lurgy, some form of mild sinitus—or the sore throat that’s going around at the moment. Rather unrelated—but sinitus is a Swiss trust company. The internet is great. Today was quite busy, with a few unrelated problems causing temporary chaos, which at least makes the day go fast.

Night

• I spent the night at Amanda’s.

26.08.2006 – Saturday 26 August – East Brisbane Late

• Amanda dropped me home, and I headed off to work a late shift over at East Brisbane. Riding home through the city after midnight is fun—there’s very little traffic.

27.08.2006 – Sunday 27 August – Sunday Live

• Sunday Live with Raymond—the Griffith Trio—then town and shopping.

28.08.2006 – Monday 28 August – Work

• Work. Back to doing a nine to five shift in the valley.

29.08.2006 – Tuesday 29 August – Still Working

• Still working.

30.08.2006 – Wednesday 30 August – XXXX Brewery Tour

Day

• Work. Nothing to report.

6pm

• Bronwen and I went on the XXXX Castlemaine Perkin’s brewery tour, which was quite interesting. I was impressed at the extreme efficiency they’ve incorporated into every feature—even using waste beer as a lubricant. I’ve also now drunk ‘XXX’, although to be honest I still feel the same.

31.08.2006 – Thursday 31 August – Fearless

Night

• I walked to the city and met Bronwen. We caught the bus from there to Indooroopilly, where we watched “Fearless”. It’s a great movie. Hungry Jack’s for dinner after.

Apr ‘06 | May ‘06 | Jun ‘06 | Jul ‘06 | Aug ‘06 Sep ‘06 | Oct ‘06 | Nov ‘06 | Dec ‘06 |

Year View| Summary| Highlights| August 2006 (Month View)