On Friday it was hard to concentrate so I updated my desktop using a blue marker and Gimp.

Dippy desktop

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.

Tomato man

The Scream?

More coffee faces at Manchester Press’s Urban Spoon entry.

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.

Pre-emptive thank you

Pallet city

Clothes

Eye exams

Drumkit

Piano

Jewellery

Swarovski fish

Decorative Nut Cracker 1.8 metre

Fridge

Furniture

Shatterproof Christmas ornaments (soccer ball sized)

Mattresses

8kg of kitty litter

Funky LED Open sign

Gazebo

Toilet seat

Diesel generator

Serious tools for serious work

Gym equipment

Previous frozen cooked crab, product of USA

More crab

Cake

More cake (man, what do they do with all this stuff if they don't sell it?)

Toys that speak Spanish

Leon Activo, bilingual lion

Chicken and buffalo wings

Pizza production line (some of the pizzas looked quite good)

15kg laundry detergent (200 washes)

Kayaks

Perfect protein for perfect people (5kg)

Tyres

$2.50 frozen yoghurt (my lunch)

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.

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…’

I was walking to the Monash University engineering department when this shocking sight confronted me.

Rubbish in front of the engineering library

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.

In front of Matheson Library

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.

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.

SSD sticker

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!’