Monday 16th March – Back to Samsung
Day
I put the Samsung stock ROM back onto my Galaxy Note—and while I hate to say it (and am actually genuinely surprised, because Samsung are a special kind of bad when it comes to software), but for all the ridiculous bloat and terrible design decisions Samsung makes, they have actually improved the overall experience to the point that the much more modern versions of Android, customised by the crazy folk over at Cyanogenmod, and which are faster, far more configurable, and generally considered better, are actually enough of a step down that I had to go back to Samsung’s slow ugliness, minus as much of it as I could freeze or disable.
Night
In news not related to my phone, Bronwen unofficially found out today that she’s being made redundant. While not exactly unexpected after her previously-Australian company sold out to an evil foreign corporation for a hundred pieces of silver, she was still ruffled by it, so I drove into town to get her.
Tuesday 17th March – Chappie
Day
I worked. Bronwen was officially told she’d be made redundant at the end of next week.
Night
I drove to Southbank, where Bronwen and I saw “Chappie” at the Cineplex there. I had a vanilla choc-top, while Bronwen had a mint. It was actually fairly good—not melted at all, and the cone was still nice and crisp. The movie wasn’t too bad either—certainly not on the same level as “District 9” and a bit immature, but an interesting watch nonetheless.
Wednesday 18th March – Woolworths
Day
I worked again. I dropped Bronwen off in The Valley with her bike, and she started to ride to work just moments before it began pouring down rain. Meanwhile, I wandered to work with my umbrella.
Night
Bronwen and I went to Woolworths, who somehow haven’t been sued for claiming that the more you spend, the more you save—though as Clint pointed out, if Woolworths hadn’t enslaved More, he wouldn’t have to pay to free her, or perhaps More is a cow producing permeate-free milk.
Thursday 19th March – Half Day
Day
Breaking with the recent fashion of only working Tuesday and Wednesday, I went to work again—though as Jamie was away sick, I only worked a half day.
Friday 20th March – Knock-Off
Day
I wasn’t working today, so I pottered around the house trying to get things done, and mostly failing.
Night
I got sick of being at home, so I drove into town and went to “Knock-off”, free comedy at the Powerhouse. Afterwards I picked Bronwen up from her work, had curry from Top in Town in West End, dropped Bronwen home, and went and visited Maz.
Saturday 21st March – Bronwen’s Cyborg Finger
Coolangatta
Bronwen and I got up bright and early-ish, skipped breakfast because we’d run out of milk, and drove over to Maz’s. Then, Maz, Emmi, Bronwen and I drove down to Coolangatta, through gathering rain.
We were nearly killed by the same P-plate ute twice—we had to stop suddenly as all the traffic did its usual “let’s go from 100km/h to stopped all of a sudden for no reason whatsoever” trick and the ute behind locked up its wheels and squealed down upon us, stopping just short of hitting us. The presumably shaken, but obviously dimwitted, driver seemed to have learnt his lesson and kept more distance for a while, and then we had to stop suddenly again, and this time he locked up his wheels and veered left into the lane beside him—fortunately not hitting anyone there—and came even closer. Maz was understandably very angry and made various hand signals out his window to indicate to the driver behind that he should consider a career in dying elsewhere, which he seemed to do by pulling back into the slow lane, driving very fast, and pulling into our lane again further up.
A while later we arrived in Coolangatta, alive and not squashed, and walked to the eleventh story apartment Maz’s parents were renting, and a little while later, down to some nearby rocks on the ocean.
Bronwen’s Cyborg Finger
As it turns out, the Gold Coast is a dangerous place—one minute, it’s pretty little fishies and cute crawling crabs, and the next minute you have a cyborg finger.
Or to put that another way, Bronwen slipped and fell, saving herself with her little finger, which became a funny, non-finger shape, and we had to rush to a nearby life saver, who gave us some ice and told us where the nearest hospital was. We walked back to Maz’s car—the shock stopping what used to be Bronwen’s finger from hurting too much—and drove to The Tweed Hospital, which was a bit like something out of Monty Python.
They had a triage window, with a big sign saying to go there first, so we did. The triage nurse looked at what used to be Bronwen’s finger, and advised her to queue at the next window to sign in, which she did.
Fortunately—as the shock and adrenaline were starting to wear off and it was beginning to hurt a lot—there were only two people in front of us at the next window. Once we got there, the same nurse gave Bronwen some Panadol, and we answered many, many questions. Do we own any chickens? Oh, good. What colour are they? Etcetera etcetera. A very long time later we had finished all the questions, and were told to take a seat.
A little while after this, we went down to X-Ray, who told Bronwen to take a seat, and then immediately she had sat down, told her to go and have an X-Ray instead—by far the quickest of any hospital I’ve been to. After the X-Ray we went back to the triage nurse, who told us to take a seat again, and then a while later a doctor turned up and took us to a put-people-back-together room and explained that what used to be Bronwen’s finger was, in fact, still her finger—but that, like the lost tribes of Israel, it had been dislocated.
He then proceeded to poke a needle right through Bronwen’s finger—and I do mean right through, it actually came out the other side at one point (no pun intended). According to Bronwen’s facial expressions, this was painful—though as we all know from those stupid posters unintelligent people keep posting on Facebook, the human body can withstand up to 45 del (an entirely fictitious unit of pain presumably designed to distinguish the stupid from those slightly less so), yet at the time of birth a mother feels up to 57 del, which is similar to 20 bones being simultaneously fractured—so from this, we can draw two conclusions: firstly, that it’s not possible to give birth and we are, in fact, extinct; and secondly, that Bronwen must have been experiencing around 3 del of pain.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, the doctor put in lots of pain killer, popped the finger back in (which took quite literally no time (figuratively speaking)), dug bits of rock out the wounds, wrapped it up in some stuff, and bent an aluminium stick around it and taped it on. He also told us that they sometimes get two or three snakebite victims a day (though this would be considered a very busy day), that oyster cuts are bad, and that he should be wearing green scrubs but he went and bought black ones instead.
After that we walked back into town and bought some felafel kebabs, before meeting up with Maz and Emmi again, walking back to the unit, chatting to Maz’s family, and driving back to Brisbane.
Brisbane
It was rainy and stormy in Brisbane, and Bronwen’s finger was sore but not terribly so, so we went and got Subway (where I trod in a large puddle).
Sunday 22nd March – Halim’s Indian Taj
Day
Bronwen and I had a quiet day at home.
Night
We drove into Rosalie and met Maz and Emmi at Halim’s Indian Taj, where we had a delicious curry before heading up to Bronwen’s parents’ place—who are still away—where we found that Bronwen hadn’t put the worm farm lid on properly last time she’d been there, so many worms had got out and were “walking” around everywhere. Worms are not very pleasant to begin with. Escaping worms everywhere are even less pleasant.
After capturing as many of the escaped worms as possible, Bronwen went to bed there, and I drove home to go to bed and see if I’d have nightmares about worms—but instead I stayed up half the night tweaking the lightbox on my website.
Monday 23rd March – Purling Brook Falls
Morning
I got up late, having stayed up late last night, and found that it was raining.
Afternoon
After much procrastinating, looking at the sky, and reading the weather report, we decided it wouldn’t rain and we should go for a bushwalk, so I drove over to Maz’s, and from there Maz, Emmi and I drove down to Springbrook and went to the modestly named “Best of All Lookout”.
However, by the time we got there visibility was poor—or to put that another way, we were walking through the middle of the clouds, and couldn’t see more than thirty metres in front of us. It began to rain just as we got back to the car from the lookout—which is good timing I suppose—and stopped again just as we got to Purling Brook Falls. However, by this time, we figured that it was too late to do the two-hour-ish walk to the bottom and back, so we went for a bit of a wander around to some nearby lookouts and looked-out at the clouds, mist and fog.
On the way back Maz’s car inexplicably (or possibly related to the huge hole we drove over) developed severe shuddering, which—fortunately, as we weren’t sure how we’d go on the highway—went away as inexplicably as it started.
Night
We stopped in at Nandos on the way home for dinner, though as Bronwen hadn’t come and couldn’t cook for herself, I rushed home afterwards to save her from starvation. We ended up driving over to her parents’ place—who had just got home—where she had dinner and spent the night.
