Every night, Damjan and I go through Mia’s bedtime routine: feed, bath, read a book, sing a lullaby, and into bed by 7:30pm.
Then it’s time for adult conversation, which is a real treat for me after a whole day of ‘Un gah gah’ and ‘A boo’.
Here are the demand and supply curves that Damjan and I drew one night, when we were trying to work out how is it that a regulated minimum wage does not lead to unemployment. Damjan argued that the mechanisms for this effect could probably be shown with conventional demand and supply curves. I wasn’t so sure.
Demand and supply curves for minimum wage employees
Damjan and I have lived the inner city car-free lifestyle for a while now. We wondered if would be possible to continue without a car once Mia arrived.
It’s been five months now and I think the answer is yes. Public transport and walking still gets us almost everywhere we need to in a normal week. Beyond that, car share gets us to the beach, friends in regional towns, Ikea and Bunnings.
We had been thinking about joining a car share scheme for a while and Mia’s impending birth finally brought it to the top of our ‘to do’ list. Being the analytical people that we are, it would not surprise you that we put together a spreadsheet of all the car share options in Melbourne (11 plans from three companies). The spreadsheet allowed us to work out the most cost effective plan for our lifestyle.
The three companies in Melbourne (Flexicar, GreenShareCar and GoGet) have different fee structures (e.g. hourly charges, distance charges, toll administration, insurance). It’s quite tricky to line them up side-by-side unless you have a spreadsheet… which you now can do, my readers, because here is a link to our handiwork.
Our spreadsheet lets you put in scenarios for car use so that you can see which of Melbourne’s 11 car share plans is best for you.
We worked out that we might spend around $1,000 per year. Which is bloody good, considering how much the insurance and registration would be just to own a car for occasional use. Even better, instead of an underused car sitting in our car space, we’re renting the space out and the rent covers all our public transport.
Head over to Damjan’s site for his write up of the spreadsheet.
My first blog post was on June 8, 2004. This is my 1,059th post. I am amazed that this has been going for 10 years.
In the first few years, I wrote every second day or so. Last year, I posted only 15 times. I enjoy blogging as much as ever and am making the effort to write more often. I’ve learned that the more I write, the more ideas I have for posts. Blogging breeds blogging.
When I started my blog, I worried that I would stop writing my diary. Actually what happened was that the blog took the place of long emails to friends.
I am embarrassed by my posts from the first year or so. It took me that long to work out what I was doing with the blog. Like most public internet diarists of the time, I tried to be zany and spent too much time on things that mattered to me and not to my audience. At least I can accurately reflect on how I’ve matured over the last decade. If I ever become famous, though, I am doomed by this blog.
This blog has had five makeovers. In June 2004, I started using a service called mblog, which was shut down in October 2004. Vera rescued my writings from her Temporary Internet Files.
Joanium’s Soapbox (2004). I used to like how clean this looked. How times have changed. There is so much STUFF on this page.
I looked into what other blogging services were around and moved to Blogger before Google bought it. Blogger looked after me from October 2004 to January 2009. This was when I introduced the coconut icon. Back then, my blog was anonymous (no surnames). The coconut was a hint at my surname (Ko Ko nut) and possibly my zaniness. Hilarious.
I might have been violating copyright on that coconut image for the past five years. Perhaps it’s time for me to pay up… if I can work out where the image comes from.
Coconut Joan on Blogger. I kept the orange highlights from my mblog and introduced the coconut.
I think I was procrastinating in January 2009 when a web hosting deal sucked me into buying my domain name and a two year hosting plan. This was the end of my anonymity and when I started using WordPress.
I have used three themes over this time. They’ve all been blue and white and have become increasingly minimal, following wider design trends on the web.
First WordPress design, January 2009 to January 2013Second WordPress design, January 2013 to June 2014. This refresh involved the radical elimination of sidebar cruft and the move to a serif body font. I like serifs, I’m old fashioned that way.Third WordPress design, June 2014. Now with no sidebars and friendly to tiny mobile phone screens. Totally on trend with a big fat serif body font.
In one day, I shared my trips with three oddballs. The first one was on the train. He got on at Collingwood rail station with two boxes of food. I recognised them as Vietnamese beef and red rice with salad, which I love. He loved it too. He would take a bite then cry out, ‘Oh yeah! That’s great’ and ‘Wow, mmm…’ throughout his hurried meal.
The second oddball was on the tram. He was a young man with a Nokia dumbphone, which was blaring out tinny hip hop music. His views on the world were ‘The old ways were the best! Who needs a sh*t smartphone, the old ones were the best!’ and ‘Sisqó, I love it. Not this new music cr*p.’
The third oddball was also on a tram. He was dressed like a working professional. He kept telling everyone, ‘The platform at Flinders Street was packed. The platform at Flinders Street was packed.’
I wonder what happens when one oddball meets another? Do they recognise each other as kindred spirits? Or do they each think, ‘What a weirdo.’
We were changing a very tired baby last night and she started screaming hysterically. It’s not like her at all. Then out of nowhere we heard music.
‘What’s that?’ I thought maybe I was imagining it.
‘Is it your phone?’ said Damjan.
‘Sounds like… lullabies…’ I said, holding down flailing arms as Damjan tried to thread them through the sleeves.
‘Like the cot mobile?’
We stared at the cot mobile, which wasn’t lit up or spinning as it normally is when it’s on. I leaned in to listen.
‘It is from the mobile!’ I was astonished.
‘It must turn on when the baby cries.’
‘That’s crazy! I’m looking that up on the internet.’
Sure enough, the VTech cot mobile I bought for $20 off Gumtree, without instructions, has a sound sensor that turns on soothing music when a baby wakes up and cries.
