Mister Brisbane: Settling in
Out with the old, in with the new. And why I hate supermarket self-service.
I took a nap on the couch today: my first on this new piece of furniture in my new abode. It sounds weird, but I think it’s a sign that I’m finally comfortable with the latest of many moves I’ve made in my lifetime. If my calculations are correct — and they often are not — this is the 23rd place I’ve called home. Even to me that seems incredible — and even more so when you consider that I’ve spent about 23 years of my life (i.e. growing up, and then several return stays) in just one house.
I’ve lived in Grovely/Keperra, Toowoomba, back to Grovely, Northgate, Rockhampton, Lilyfield (Sydney), back to Grovely, Lawnton, Eynsham (England), Auchenflower, Discovery Bay (Hong Kong), Ascot, Indooroopilly, Grovely (a different house this time), Stafford Heights, Windsor, Shanghai, Bangkok, Fortitude Valley, Glasgow, Abu Dhabi, another place in Bangkok, Rayong and Pattaya (Thailand), then back to Grovely (the first place) and now to Cannon Hill. (The minimum stay was three months.)
And I know this won’t be my final move.
I don’t know what’s in the future but in the present there’s still a lot to do, including bringing more of my stuff into this flat and sending a lot more of it into storage. These are the things that have spent decades at my parents’ house, and I’ve finally (just about) gathered them together. I’m not prepared to part ways with them, but I have no room — and, dare I say, no use — for them where I am now. And so they’ll go into a box on wheels and be delivered to a facility where they’ll wait for me to make up my mind.
Tune in to the Mister Brisbane radio show on Reading Radio at 1296AM and on DAB+ in Brisbane at 6.30pm on Tuesday nights. It’s also available as a podcast. Just search for “Mister Brisbane” on your favourite player or follow this link.
STREET SCENE
I happened to pull up beside this mural on a brick fence on Newmarket Road just near the intersection with Sandgate Road. I had to take a picture. I like the way the artwork blends in with the foliage. And those eyes follow you as you drive. (Not really, of course, that would be weird.)
Slightly less appealing is this scene on Wynnum Road, approaching Cannon Hill. Another old house is about to give way to apartment towers.
MACHINE LEARNING
I love gadgets and technology in general. If there’s a new thing — such as the new iMac and iPad released by Apple last week — I immediately want it. But there’s one thing I won’t cop — and that’s those self-service machines at supermarkets. It’s not so much that they are putting human beings out of work, which they are (and the poor humans have to encourage us to use them, thus expediting their own demise), it’s mostly because they don’t work properly. Now I don’t think I’m stupid but every time I’ve used one, it’s gone rogue on me and I’ve had to call on a person to help. I normally avoid them but, more and more, I’m finding there is no choice, because the queues at the general checkouts are too long.
GOING POSTAL
There was an outpouring of outrage when it was revealed that Australia Post is now only delivering to households three times a week. Well, I can tell you that that’s not true. They deliver on three days one week and just two the following week, so over my lifetime we’ve gone from deliveries six times weekly to 2.5 times weekly.
On the subject of post, which part of “No junk mail” did the leaflet droppers not understand? Maybe the smiley face rattled them.
BY THE BOOK
Listeners to the Mister Brisbane radio show and podcast will know that it is essentially a reading of this newsletter with some exclusive extra content drawn from my personal archive of newspaper articles. In recent episodes, I’ve been reading stories from the past decade, but I have gone back as the year 2000. Now, I’ve dusted off my really old material. Upcoming episodes will feature material from the 1980s, including some of the first stories I wrote, for the university paper Semper.
FEEDBACK
Thanks to Patty for pointing out that, coinciding with my items last week on internet dating scams, A Current Affair revealed how an Australian real-estate auctioneer, Stu Benson, had his identity stolen by a man who conned a woman in Europe out of thousands of Euros. It’s worth a look. I did a follow up and discovered that the non-person “Mark Taylorward” remains on Facebook (at the time of writing). As I and others have discovered, it turns out that the profile does not contravene Facebook’s “community standards”, which suggests it’s OK to steal someone pictures and use them to lure somebody into a trap. I’m sure Facebook gets lots of complaints, but when a national current-affairs program discovers they are hosting a scam artist you’d think they’d move pretty quickly and decisively — as they did when they pulled the plug on Australian news content for their own reasons.