Pete Johns (/piːt ʤɒnz/ - he/him/his): Human being; just like you.
One of my favourite sections of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is the Uxbridge English Dictionary, where contestants suggest new meanings for old words.
Not having the book I can’t tell you if the definition I came up with this morning has already been done, but nevertheless I thought I’d share it with the pajLog audience (that’s you, folks!).
Understandable (adjective): a shower spraying water that is neither too hot nor too cold.
You may have heard or read about the terrible incident that happened this morning in Melbourne City Centre. The fact that I’m writing this means that I’m alive and well, Thank God.
I was running late for work this morning as I had a couple of things that I needed to do, so I caught the tram from outside our door. This tram would normally drop me at almost exactly the point where this morning’s shootings took place. Shortly after the tram had left the stop, we were told that we would have to take an alternative route, due to an incident, believed to be a shooting on William Street. I got off at Flinders Street Station and walked along Flinders Street. There was a huge police presence near the Immigration Museum. I continued as I usually do across William St without joining the spectators and took the little lane past the coffee shops to the rear entrance to The Rialto.
A uniformed police officer stopped me from entering the building. He told me I wouldn’t be allowed in this morning unless I was "bullet-proof". He was remarkably jovial. It was then I turned and saw the blue tarpaulin at the corner of Flinders Lane and William Street, where one of the victims lay. As I walked away from the policeman my friend B rang me to see if I was okay. He told me what he had heard on the news and that the gunman was still on the lose. The reality hit me and I felt pretty nauseous. I still do as I type this.
I called K to tell her that I was okay. She hadn’t heard the news and so wasn’t worried at this point! I then followed her advice and made my way home. As I left the area by the Rialto, I saw how people were no longer allowed where I had been. I really was that close to the scene of the crime.
The air was abuzz with helicopters as I walked home, glad that I hadn’t been early for work and that the sequence of traffic lights had not caused me to walk along William Street this morning, as I occasionally do if the pedestrian lights are against me at William Street. I also felt a really deep sadness for those that had been shot. I don’t think I have ever felt so saddened for ‘strangers’ before. We witness so much evil on the television that we become desensitized to it all, I suppose, but this morning was very, very real.
With all the helicopters still buzzing away over the city as I type this, I am guessing that police are yet to catch the gunman. I hope they catch him soon so that no more lives (including his own, too many people have died this morning) are lost. And so that I can go back into work.
Update: the building has been re-opened and I’m back at work.
Wow!
We’re just in from seeing Roger Waters perform The Dark Side of the Moon Live in an arena that hosted the Australian Open finals last weekend and will contain very different waters next month.
I don’t know what to say about the gig. It was fantastic: gave the album at least one new dimension. There were several moments when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, not least during Brain Damage. And I had shivers down my spine during Comfortably Numb. I also had bass envy, but that’s another story. The show was awesome and you should go and see it when it comes within 500 miles of you. K particularly enjoyed the flying pig at the end of the first set!
Must get some sleep now, the 6 nations rugby starts late tomorrow night and there’s talk of going to see one Eric Clapton on Sunday. Two legends in one weekend!
Most of yesterday was spent setting up (virtual) Linux servers, at work. This reminded me that some time ago I published a list of applications that I couldn’t live without on a PC. My list for Linux / Unix is much shorter:
That’s about it.
Tuesdays are bass days and I had my third lesson last night. Now that I’m starting to learn more about music in general, I quite fancy getting another instrument (probably a keyboard) so that I can play around with it and find out how it all works. I’m finding scales a lot more interesting than I thought I would.
I recently signed up for a Ringo account so that I could see some of a cousin’s holiday snaps (and very nice they are, too). Ringo offer a facility (as so many websites do, these days) to see who else in my address-book has an account. It turns out that lots of people did (am I the last person on the planet to hear of this site?). Being a nosey bugger, I pressed the buttons needed to ask my friends if I could see their photos (and they mine) and had lots of (positive) responses back within minutes (presumably because you are all nosey buggers and wanted to see my photos). Amusingly, none of my friends who were on Ringo before me have uploaded any photographs whatsoever, which is fair enough because neither have I (except the standard profile one)! I think I shall be sticking with Flickr for the foreseeable future.
Yesterday I mentioned how nice it is to be awoken by rays of golden sunshine, particularly when shortly afterwards you realise that you don’t have to go to work!
This morning I was awake before the alarm clock went off (despite staying up until the small hours of the morning to watch the Chinese Grand Prix). The alarm in question is a clock radio, which we have tuned to ABC Classic FM as I rate by woken up by radio commercials below being woken up by dogs barking. Usually, we find ourselves being eased into the working day by a soothing symphony, but this morning’s wake-up call was a little stranger…
I thought I was hearing things as sounds of a male voice choir filled the bedroom; the words were familiar, but the sound was not. Realisation dawned after a few seconds that what I was listening to was a rendition of the classic Australian hymn, Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport.
This may not be as good a start to the day as discovering that you have an entire day off work, but Rolf Harris never fails to entertain me, so I rate that as a good start to the day.
I’m a big fan of Rolf’s and have been ever since I was a small boy and he was cheerfully drawing cartoon characters on the television with huge, thick marker pens while whistling or humming a tune. I remember seeing his face on the box of the stylophone my parents gave me and thinking wow, that can’t be the same guy. Rolf was also part of a Learn to Swim campaign when I was small. Even them I remember wondering if there was any end to this bloke’s talents when I heard that as a small boy he was the Australian junior backstroke champion. Out of all of the entertainers in the World, Rolf is the only one who I can think of who has entertained me all the way through my life, including the time I saw him perform live.
My favourite Rolf memory (so far) is that he was kind enough to autograph a boomerang that James sent him, which we then gave to Kris as a present, hoping that he would return from his travels to Australia (isn’t it odd that now he and his wife-to-be are living in London and K and I are over here in Melbourne?). I’d like to buy Rolf a beer for that (Rolf, if you’re reading, do pop in and see me next time you’re Down Under)!
After some years of development, Bram Moolenaar has released version seven of Vim. I’ve been beta-testing it for a while now and recommend upgrading to the new version as soon as you can!
I’ve updated my Primitive colour-scheme (should anyone want to use it). I need to do some work on my .vimrc script (which started off life as gjvc’s .vimrc) to iron out a couple of niggles, but you’re more than welcome to use it.
If you like using Vim (or if you just want to help out the kids in Uganda), you can sponsor Vim. Now that Bram’s got himself a job, all of the money goes to charity!
It has been a good day. Not only did I get to watch a very exciting grand prix from just inside turn five (and without having to get up at ludicrous o’clock), but I got to meet a racing legend.
Sir Jack Brabham O.B.E. was in the paddock signing autographs next to his Brabham racing car. Somebody brought him a little chocolate cake as today he celebrates his eightieth birthday, so we all sang Happy Birthday to him as he blew out the candles.
If he wished for his countryman to win his home grand prix, he would have been disappointed, alas. I don’t think that would spoil the race for those of you who are yet to see it. I shall not say too much more on the subject for that reason.
If you have seen the race, or if you don’t care but would like to see some pictures of fast cars, they are now available from my Flickr account. Enjoy!
It’s a good day, I can tell you, when you hear The legendary Murray Walker being interviewed on Australian radio and talking about his "very good friends" Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill winning World Championships!
Sadly, I cannot hear the F1 action from my office, it’s about 14km from Albert Park. K assures me that she can hear "fast cars" from her office. Life is unfair.
On the upside, I get to stroll down to Albert Park on Sunday to watch the race. The official website seems to be under a lot of strain at the moment, so I cannot get on and look up the program of events this lunchtime. Hey-ho, I’m sure it will be excellent, whatever.
On an unrelated note, I’m now running v7.0 (Beta) of Vim, which has some very natty spell-checking. This may or may not improve the quality of my blog entries and emails.
Happy Pancake Day, dear reader. I must say that you are looking fabulous today.
Shrove Tuesday is one of the very best days of the year. Days when pancake consumption (with lemon juice and sugar, naturally) is encouraged are to be celebrated heartily!
Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, which is (rather appropriately) the day that Anti-Smoking laws change here in Victoria. This will mean that smoking at bus or tram stops will be illegal. This may signal the start of long delays on the public transport in Melbourne: as I understand it, the one way of guaranteeing the instant arrival of your bus or tram is to extract a cigarette from its packet, put it between your lips and set it alight. We shall see. I hope this doesn’t cause too many problems from the influx of visitors expected to arrive in a fortnight for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
On the subject of The Games, keep your eyes peeled for us on the television. Yesterday K bought two tickets for the closing ceremony, which I reckon will be pretty fantastic.
I have just changed this paragraph as I have taken a phone call to say that we have been accepted for our second choice of flat, which is a huge relief. It means that we’re not going to be homeless during the upcoming games. According the letting agent, who tells me that she had a choice of three couples, she had to choose us because the agent who conducted the flat inspection said that were the nicest couple! We are due to sign the lease tomorrow and move in a week on Saturday. We are going to chase the agents on our preferred flat as the facilities there are better and at the same rental cost.
On the subject of successful applications, I’m delighted that two of my good friends have emailed me to say that they’ve got exciting new jobs. One is in West Africa involving pyramids of Fererro Rocher. The other is working in the best industry in the world: booze! K and I wish them both all the very best in their new positions.
This time next week, K, herself, will be settled in at her new office overlooking Albert Park and impressing her colleagues with her charm and knowledge of how water works (work).
I have no news to report on my own quest for gainful employment except to say that my résumé has been delivered to a select few mailboxes in the city. I’m being particularly choosy with the positions that I am applying for while I can afford to be, which is good. Thank you for the kind words which have arrived in my own mailbox. I can only apologise for the lack of email coming from me at the moment, but I’m sure you’ll understand that I’m not ignoring you. I look forward to a day when I can sit in our new flat and email you all wirelessly without feeding golden coins into a machine or being bombarded with the most depressing music at volumes that even an iPodful of heavy metal would struggle to drown out!
Update: It’s All Good! We’ve got our first choice of flat. Even better than all that, we can move in TOMORROW! Very chuffed indeed.
The interval betwixt ‘tick’ and ‘tock’ is horrendously long at the moment. We saw an absolutely perfect flat / unit / apartment / whatever on Saturday lunchtime. We both decided that it was the business, so we abandoned the last scheduled viewing and bolted to the real estate agents to sign our lives away for the next four seasons. We filled out every last detail in their scrutinising application forms and handed them over, pleased that we had arrived at the office prior to the crowd of others at the flat. We were asked for a multitude of types of identification as well as past rental history. Sadly, neither of us is in the habit of carrying birth certificates, utility bills or suchlike with us and so we were told that our time would be better spent at home, gathering the required identity-confirming paraphernalia. In any case, applications would not be considered until Monday morning.
We stopped for a bite to eat at the local Subway, during which the skies darkened and the heavens opened. Thunderclaps rocked the building as we ate our lunch and watched the raindrops bounce up inches above the bitumen road outside. As the rain died down, we dashed for the car and drove back through torrential rain back to the hostel. We spent the afternoon gathering the required information and then spent the evening relaxing.
Yesterday was a peaceful day. The most strenuous thing we did was taking a stroll through the Queen Victoria markets where we picked up a few clothes that were more ‘office’ than ‘backpacker’.
After a restless night’s sleep, we were up bright and early and were at the real estate agent’s office when they opened at 0830. We presented them with our carefully-filled-in forms and copious forms of identification. They thanked us and said that they would be in touch.
From there we walked a few hundred metres to another agents and handed them a pair of similar forms (no ID needed) for our second choice of abode. They said that they understood our urgency (remember that we have but a fortnight left to vacate the YHA) and would get back to us as quickly as possible. We walked along Toorak Road in South Yarra to the tram stop feeling confident that today would be the day that we found our new home.
It is now a little after six on the sunny Victorian clock and we are yet to hear an affirmation from either agent. Fingers continue to tap, but a watched telephone never rings.
I did hear by email though that some words that I have written for TNT Magazine, a free antipodean magazine for travellers, would be published in the very next issue. Perhaps I should consider a change in career…