Well, Howard’s finally done it and called the election. About time frankly. He’s been holding off as long as possible in the hopes he can pull a rabbit out of his hat and reverse the polls – consistantly indicating a crushing defeat for the Coalition – which means we’ve already had to put up with three months or so of a phoney election campaign. Now we’ve got six weeks of an actual campaign to put up with, but at least there’s an end in sight. And with any luck an end of the Coalition as well.
On the railway front the works are finished, and everything’s back to normal. I gave up on the 98 bus on Thursday last week because two hours a day of sitting on a cramped bus was driving me spare (my daily commute is two hours a day anyway, but it involves trains, buses and walking, so I guess there’s more variety). I did my normal commute on Thurday and Friday, getting the rail replacement bus between the city and Subi, which wasn’t too bad. It was actually the trains that messed me up…
I’d had a particularly hard day at work on Thursday, and had a splitting headache when I caught the train at Perth. Thankfully I managed to get a seat, but then as we got underway some idiot a few seats down started loudly playing what I can only presume is some kind of viral video on their mobile phone. I have no idea of the visual content, but the audio was a parody of the ‘Hi-Ho’ song from Snow White, seemingly performed by someone impersonating the Chipmunks.
“Hi-ho! Ho-ho! It’s on the web we go! [something something] see some tits! Hi-ho! Hi-ho-hi-ho!”
This teeth grinding insanity went for a full three verses with a big piano finale. Bad enough you might think, but then the idiot played it again. And again. And again. My entire trip home was accompanied by the tinny shrill of chipmunk Disney music, to the point where if the train hadn’t been so crowded I would have walked over, grabbed the phone from their hands and stomped it to pieces.
Anyway that was Thursday. On Friday my attempts to get into work early were foiled by someone getting themselves killed by the Prospector just outside Bayswater station, resulting in the Midland line being shut down, and requiring more sitting on decrepit old rail replacement buses.
But it’s all over now, and the brand new underground station is open in the city. I’ll have to go and check it out this weekend, maybe take a trip down to the Esplanade station just for the heck of it (they’ve opened the line with only two stations actually operational, and those only a five minute walk apart. But hey! It’s an underground train! 🙂
Finally Simon Pegg has been cast as Mr Scott in the new Star Trek movie. A bit out of left field, but I can see him working quite well. Now all they have to do is get Gary Sinise to play Doctor McCoy and they’ll be set (c’mon, the resemblance is frightening!)
More on the Star Trek angle tomorrow! 🙂
