Waiting for the Aliens

When the Godwin Gretch email story first broke, I sensed disaster for Labor. Swan and Rudd had called it a fake and I thought it was an awful sign.

If it turned out to be legit, and they’d called it fake, then we’d very probably lose one of them (probably Swan). If the email turned out to be fake, then the Libs would turn it on us and say we faked them.

The only possible way we’d not come off bad was - as I said on the weekend - if Gretch turned out to be a closet Liberal or some kind of mole.

And then we get the Canberra Times yesterday running the headline that Gretch was a Liberal mole.

It’s really quite disturbing when I say something far-fetched, and the universe falls into line. It’d be far less disturbing if the stuff I said were less exotic. But less fun I imagine.

Every so often, I read something online which is so good, it deserves sharing. This is one such article.

Personally, I’m indifferent to The Chaser team. Their sense of humour just doesn’t grab me. It’s kind of like cricket batsmen’s strike rates. Some comedians are Michael Bevan, and some are Brendan Julian. Anyway, this was written by Stuart Munckton last week and appeared at Online Opinion. He makes some good points - especially the doctor’s comment. Have a read.

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When I was managing bands in the early noughties, I noticed some behaviours around online shopping. Cyberia might have changed since then, but 8-9 years ago, North Americans will buy from North American websites; Europeans would buy from sites in Europe & North America; and users in the fringe countries of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc would buy from anywhere.

Imagine Cyberia as a giant wheel. The US is in the middle. Canada just outside them. Europe occupies the next ring outward and beyond that, the fringe countries. Consumers only look toward the hub, not toward the rim-ward.

Because this is how things were in the early days of online business, there has evolved a world where the most prominent and well developed online shopping is done via US businesses. As a result, the fluctuations of the two dollars and the costs of shipping/postage become a huge factor in shopping via the web.

Primarily because of these reasons, I’ve never been a big online shopper.

Recently though, I broke out of my own mold and bought my first piece of clothing online, and a few weeks later, some geeky items as well. What did I learn from the experience?
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Chapels have great acoustics. But they’re a bitch to heat.

Today is one of those days Canberra has where very few places in Australia have. The ones where the fog doesn’t lift all day long. It’s only 3 degrees, despite being 2pm. The tops of hills are hidden in fog. It’d be a fair bit warmer if it actually rained. Instead, we have this oppressive cold air that shows no sign of warming up in the next week.

At least the house Loquacia & I are moving to next will have a fireplace. The convent has two (kitchen & chapel) but it’s been barricaded up. It’d be nice if we had a fire going. Reverse cycle air conditioning just doesn’t cut it.

Nine years ago, I gathered some email addresses for the blokes in my Year 12 class, of St Patrick’s College in Goulburn. Back then, there were only a dozen email addresses from a class of 92. We mainly used the list for organising groups to go to the Wallabies Tests in Sydney.

Before last Christmas, the subscribers started discussing what was going to happen for our 20th reunion year, 2009. The tradition at our school (sadly a school that no longer exists, as it has been taken over by a different portion of the Catholic education system) is that the reunions happen on the June long weekend. So we had about six months to organise something.

When I last mentioned this, about a month before the reunion, we looked like getting around 60 classmates along. Soon after that though, we managed to trace a few more people, and the numbers on the weekend were probably around the mid-70s - not bad for a class of 92. Even Alex, the holdout in Moscow I never thought would come arrived. And he convinced another holdout, Dom, who I was very good friends with 20 years ago. We also had Aaron and his wife fly in from Nova Scotia.

I got along to almost all the planned events. And had a very lovely time.

Some things I learnt:

• 20 years isn’t enough time to be unable to recognise people. We could have taken a class of 18 year olds, add some hair-whitener, and voila! Reunion!
• it’s never too late to make friends in your class - I spent quite a bit of the weekend (and the planning months) talking to blokes I barely spoke three words to at school. And not in the “polite conversation you wish you weren’t having” kind of way, but in the chill out, shoot the shit and it’s not an effort kinda way;
• old friendships are terribly easy to slip back into; and
• even those classmates whose life wasn’t in the greatest place at the moment can rejoin the family they were part of so long ago, and find a home for a weekend.

When Caerulia & I bought a house in 1994, we bought a block of land, spoke endlessly to architects and watched the sometimes rapid, sometimes painfully snail-paced process of getting a new home. The more recent process, with Loquacia & I, has been a lot different (because we sought out established houses) and because I’m a lot more of an active participant this time around.

Since this post, where we lost a place we’d made an offer on, we found another house. And before we were meant to inspect it, Loquacia got a call from the agent for the original house - and the offer they’d accepted in preference had fallen through.

Our New Home

So last Friday, Loquacia inspected both houses, and put a deposit down on one. Not the one we’d been rejected for at the beginning of last week.

Thus far, we’re only a few days into the process, and already there’s something I’m pissed off about. Not the house, but part of the process, and the cartels that gouge the homebuyers.

The house we have chosen, which will become our new home, was recently back on the market because a previous buyer had started the purchase process, got building and pest inspections done, and had stumbled at the finance stage, the last hurdle.

When Loquacia put the offer in, had it accepted, paid the deposit, set the finances in motion, we got to the point where we need a building report. One had already been done for the previous buyer. It was only a few weeks old, so was still completely current.

And this building inspection report, which the previous buyer had paid $800 for could be ours for just $495.

What was this inspector going to do for this $495 fee? He changed the name on the first page from the previous buyer to Loquacia’s name. For that, he expected $495.

A fucking rort!

If we wanted a fresh report from someone else, it’d mean we’d pay $800. But I was almost tempted to fork out the extra $300 just to deny this scam artist his $495 for changing one name on the cover sheet.

But Loquacia is in charge. And additional inspections would take time, and that’d make the cost to us doubly worse. So the building inspector gets his $495, we get our report, and we move closer to a house.

But for the record, if you ever get a chance to deal with IBIS Building Inspections, take your business elsewhere. Just because they deserve some bad karma for the rort they pulled on us.

EDIT: I originally thought the inspector was going to change the name on the cover sheet, and do some photocopying of the original report. Turns out, the report was supplied as a PDF file, so it didn’t even require copying. More of a bloody scam!

A week or so ago, a blogger I often read wrote about how she’d moved to a new city in the last year, and had difficulties making new friends. Understandable. After all, Jerry Seinfeld said that when you are 25, you should look around at your circle of friends and realise “This is it. These are the friends I will have until I die.” Fortunately, that’s not entirely true, but making friends does get harder the older you are. Why? 

In 2002, my marriage broke down. Not entirely surprisingly, I found myself within a few months in a new city. I moved 1300kms to a city where I knew almost noone. How did I meet new people? For the benefit of Lala, who prompted this line of thought, I’ll try and remember what I did.

Screen fades and audience is taken on an imaginary journey to a city far away with a big winding river and too many canetoads

Because I didn’t have to work immediately, I enrolled in a TAFE course, and met some people through that course. And because it was an IT course, the guys I met there (because it was a class exclusively of blokes) were the type of people I’d naturally get along with.

I also joined the local ALP branch. Not much of a surprise there I guess, since I had been on the executive of my ALP branch in Canberra.

Once I did start work, I was working for an accounting firm. Amongst my workmates were some fans of the Brisbane Lions. So when the Swans came to play at the Gabba, we went together to the game. This led to a semi-regular series of games at the Gabba.

Also, prompted by a friend of mine, I started blogging (The Lost Legionary - a name that reflected my mental state post-divorce perhaps?) and fell in with a circle of bloggers. Organising gatherings in cafes with some of the bloggers became a regular social outing, and some friendships came out of that. Including one blogger who was a player for a suburban footy team that I became a fan of - the Wynnum Vikings.

A centurion from Legio VIIII Hispania (Pax Romana)

Brisbane is also a city of festivals. Every weekend. I had plenty of free time on weekends, so I went along to some. At one festival, I encountered a bunch of blokes who spent their time creating Roman soldier uniforms, and putting on public displays (Pax Romana) at festivals. I was soon one of them, their Aquilifer, and escorting the Premier through the New Farm Park during the Italian Festival one year, in full battle uniform. 

In a later job, I worked with Heather, whose son played with the Vikings, who I was still a fan of. Since my friendship with the abovementioned player had faded, I started going to the footy with Heather. She, being the mum of the Vice Captain, was heavily into the social circle at the club, so I met new people and made new friends throughout the club organisation (some even suggested I should be Club President!).

Through someone I met when looking for a share-house to live, I met Squirrel, who was politically active with The Greens. Some disenchantment with Labor, and a wish to help Squirrel get ahead politically saw me defect to the Greens. Because of my ALP experience, my involvement with the Greens was quite extensive quite rapidly. A lot of time meeting new people, making new friends. I began sharing a house with one of Squirrel’s employees, Jim, after I had a falling out with my housemates. Later, Nutella, a backpacker from Italy found my blog, randomly started an email chat with me, and came to live in the big house in the northern suburbs with Jim & I during her six-month stay in Brisbane.

This blog post is rambly. It’s not well structured. But I guess that’s appropriate, because that’s how the friendships I made in Brisbane, my new city, developed. Different paths. Different outcomes. Some friends I will keep for a long time. Some have already faded out. But I guess the answer to Lala’s question is that you make friendships where you find them, and when they come along, follow them up when you think they’re right. Some will be, some wont. But life’s like that. Take a chance. I hope it pays off for you.

(n) that cut off feeling which results from having to leave my beloved homeland many moons ago due to lack of jobs or foresight for like from the powers that be

Definition provided by Marquis, my cousin.

These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be 

(Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits, 1985)

On YouTube

Following this earlier incident, Loquacia sent the landlady a letter, reminding her of the terms of the lease agreement. But, in the last week, Loquacia & I have been making plans to buy a house and leave the Convent. This left a potential problem. The landlady might turn around and enforce the lease on us, making getting our departure quite costly.

What we need, I have been thinking, is for her to breach the lease agreement further, thus giving a fresh claim. Then, when we buy a place, we could turn around and say “Because you breached the lease after we’d advised you not to, we’re leaving without penalty.” 

Hannibal

When the landlady had been given the letter last month, she became very apologetic and withdrew, and we hadn’t seen or heard her much. For this reason, I thought my hope - further breaches from her - might be in vain. That create a potentially very expensive problem: trying to justify premature termination.

This afternoon though, a beautiful sight.

I arrived home, to see her in the back yard, our back yard, raking up leaves.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Despite putting in an offer on the house on Saturday (the one two posts ago, not the one with the dog in the photo!), the sellers sold to someone who made an offer after us. Not sure that’s legit, but I’m assured it is. But it stopped plans in their tracks, and we’re back in the hunt for somewhere to live. It means we’re both spending far too much time on allhomes.com.au, but the plus side is that we’re getting a good idea of the state of the market, factors affecting prices, and how to identify quickly what we’re looking for in a house.

So it’s a learning experience.