On Friday it was hard to concentrate so I updated my desktop using a blue marker and Gimp.
Month: November 2011
Faces in my coffee
I had one of those Melbourne experiences that people talk about but I’ve never had. That is, someone took me down a dingy alley and there was a rather cool cafe at the end. It had a giant bowling pin in it and assertive coffee.
More coffee faces at Manchester Press’s Urban Spoon entry.
What I saw at Costco
Carlo took us to Costco. We wanted to buy tennis balls.
We came by public transport, carrying our biggest backpacks. We left with lots of stuff (including 30 packs of chewing gum). We didn’t get tennis balls, though, because they came only in packs of 48.
Here are some things I saw.
Child proof gate
I was running late for my 10am meeting. I caught the wrong tram and had to jump off, double back and wait for the right tram.
So I was quite pleased with myself when I managed to get to the unfamiliar office at 10:03am. I was practically on time! Then I spent the next five minutes trying to work out how to open the gate. Was there a doorbell? Another entrance? A lock of some kind?
I looked next door and noticed it was a childcare. Oh! This was probably a child safe gate. It might have one of those ‘high up’ locks.
Sure enough, there was a vertical rod to pull up from the lock at the top of the gate. I struggled to get enough height and leverage through the bars of the gate to do this. This gate was practically Joan proof, as well as child proof.
Finally, I released the gate and rushed in, properly late for the meeting.
Do you like ducks?
It was 5:30pm on Friday and most people had left the office. I was packing up when George came up to my desk.
In a hushed tone he asked, ‘Joan, do you like ducks?’
‘Um, yesss.’ Ducks, I guess they’re cute.
‘What about duck heads and duck wings?’
I thought, ‘I like the whole duck, really. Hmm, I’m confused.’
George continued. ‘I have some, you know. Duck necks, heads and wings. Would you like some? I go to this Chinese restaurant for lunch sometimes and the owners, they know me now. They gave me extra duck necks and wings. At first I was very happy but now I have had too much. Would you like them?’
‘Oh. Yes, I think so,’ I said. Cooking duck would be like cooking chicken, right?
‘Good, good. It’s in the freezer, I’ll show you now.’
I follow after George as he says, ‘It’s easy, do you know 红烧 (hóng shāo)? You can just put it in a pot, cook it with soy sauce…’
Not landfill
I was walking to the Monash University engineering department when this shocking sight confronted me.
Oh no! Someone spilled a rubbish bin and it’s going everywhere! …Hey, wait a second… The bin is half buried in the ground.
Yep, it’s an art installation.
Stranger
I sat at the supermarket, minding all the groceries while Damjan dashed into the store to buy eggs.
A man was walking down the street. He bent down and picked something up. A flash of white — I think it was a cigarette. Why is he picking up a cigarette butt?
He put the scrap in his mouth.
Ah, now I see, he’s a bit scruffy and chewing old cigarettes from the ground. What we have here is a strange person.
He walked straight up to me and stopped.
‘Mumble mumble…’ He peered at me closely.
‘Sorry, what did you say?’ I asked.
‘Do you want a hug?’ he said more distinctly.
‘No, thank you.’
So he shuffled past.
HDD vs SSD
We decided to run our new computer using a solid state drive, which is like having a giant USB disk as a hard drive. This makes the computer faster and quieter, as it doesn’t need a fan to keep it cool.
We got this sticker with the computer parts that we bought.
It’s just like Lego
Damjan: ‘I liked playing with Lego.’
Joan: ‘I liked Lego too. I often made the same thing with my set. It was a fairground with a ferris wheel.’
Damjan: ‘What Lego set did you have?’
Joan: ‘It was just the bricks.’
Damjan: ‘You just had bricks?’
Joan: ‘Yeah, just the normal set.’
Damjan: ‘Oh… I always had the Technics.’
Joan: ‘Were they the ones where you got instructions?’
Damjan: ‘Yeah. I would rush to finish it. I thought the point was to make the toy and play with it.’
Joan: ‘Oh, but the fun would have been in the making of it.’
Damjan: ‘I guess I didn’t appreciate it when I was a kid.’
The next day, Damjan arrived home with a box of computer parts to make our new computer. He started assembling it straight after dinner.
Damjan: ‘It’s so easy and so much fun. It’s just like Lego.’
Joan: ‘But you’re just following the instructions.’
Damjan: ‘Yes! It’s just like Lego!’
What do you call this?
