The way of the dinosaur

This is interesting: the 2006 Public Transport Challenge. It would have been useful when I was in high school. The first time I took the train by myself was at the end of first year uni, when I got a job based in the city. I remember asking strangers in the CBD where Spencer Street station was.

Hehe. It’s now Southern Cross Station.

I was thinking about this a few days ago. When I have kids, I’ll be able to say things such as:

Back in my day, we had tapes, then CDs. iPods came much later. Actually, and I’m showing my real age here, my first single was a record of It’s a Small World After All.

I remember when the internet was just getting popular. I was one of the first kids with an e-mail address. I used to be afraid of submitting anything on the World Wide Web so for a long time, I would just look at webpages. I was afraid that I would break something!

When mobile phones just came out, they were huge. We used to call them ‘bricks’. They were even bigger than the landline phones you had at home.

My cousin spent almost $1000 on the very first ever Playstation! What are they up to now, Playstation 11, right?

Do you know why the main hard drive is usually called ‘C drive’? There used to be two slots for ‘floppy disks’. ‘A drive’ was for 3.5″ floppies, which held 1.44 MB. I used those all through high school and university. The ‘B drive’ disappeared a long time before ‘A drive’ did. ‘B drives’ were for 5.25″ floppies, which held only [someone tell me, I can’t remember].

There used to be no such thing as unleaded petrol. Everyone used to use leaded petrol, which was bad for the environment.

Did you know that Southern Cross station used to be called ‘Spencer Street’? And way before that, Melbourne Central was called ‘Museum station’.

And they would say, “Wow, mum, you’re so old.”

Hmm. I reckon that I could probably say these things to 10 year olds now and they would say the same thing.

13 comments

  1. vera says:

    5 1/4″ diskettes were 1.2MB. I remember my first computer didn’t have Windows. In fact, I remember when there were no OS’s at all, and you just had to put a floppy in before you booted, and it’d run whatever was on the floppy…

  2. Rohan says:

    That’s funny, I only remember 360KB and 720KB. Although, according to Wikipedia, 1200KB 5.25″ floppies were in fact invented before I was born.

  3. serendipity says:

    oh no, i do NOT want to think of that to happen. I cannot cannot accept the fact that we are evolving into the “older generation”!!!!

  4. Shrapnel says:

    My students were quizzing me about my age a little while ago. The first guess was 32…

    that child failed all subjects for semester one.

    PPS I remember having an extremely old PC which was the size of a small suitcase and had a 4×4″ screen which we used solely for word processing.

  5. Shrapnel says:

    It’s a crappy waste of a lot of money that we’re all trying to repress when we see the poor, homeless people living on the streets surrounding the monostrosity…

    that’s why!

  6. vera says:

    Don’t worry, Ai — they announce it on the train as “Southern Cross on Spencer Street” so you’ll still recognise it!

  7. Winza says:

    Adding more to the list:
    – The site at QV used to be a car park, but then turned into a skateboarding park before it was redeveloped.

    – Metlink used to be The Met and there used to be train conducters on trams before the metcard system

    I am starting to feel old despite the fact I’m only 21…

  8. Daniel says:

    well, back in MY day, we used to play mini golf on the old QV site, next to the women’s centre.

    I even remember the days when the Australian Open was held in Kooyong…

    now I feel old…

  9. joanium says:

    My favourite one is: “Back in my day, we had to get up to change the channels on the television!”

    I actually don’t remember a time without remote controls but I think it’s funny.

  10. ftalk says:

    Had? Ours is still in use. Granted, now it has 3 very modern-looking dvd-recorder/player units sitting on top of it. Talk about anachronistic!

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