Category: Life and Associated Annoyances

My life has been a bit out of control for the last few weeks, but I’m wrestling things back into line. Overdue emails will be out by the end of the week (once I’ve emptied the bins and finished cleaning the kitchen).

Well yesterday was a fun day. I’m sitting happily (well, sitting at least) at work when I get a phonecall from a woman in some distress who launches into an emotional tirade about how I’m trying to destroy her business, drive her out of town and ruin the livelihoods of numerous indigenous artists. After some confusion I discover that she’s objecting to a photograph I took of her store and posted to my Flickr account along with a wry comment about the pun in her business name (something along the lines that such puns should be outlawed).

(I’m not going to link to the image or name her business, if you’re really interested you can go poking around my Flickr account until you find it yourself).

She also posted a lengthy and similarly enraged comment to said photograph (and sent a very similar email) alleging that I’m some kind of racist who hates Aboriginies and Aboriginal culture.

After getting over the shock of this accusation I carefully wrote a reply explaining my viewpoint on the matter – that a humorously intended comment about puns in store names does not equate to an attack on the store involved, and that race had nothing to do with my comment at all. I also altered the name and description on the photograph to make it less likely to come up in connection with her business and to remove any criticism about the pun – not because I think I was in the wrong, but as a general gesture of good will.

I’m happy to report that she followed this up with an apologetic reply implying that she (or someone at the store) misread my comment and thought that I was saying that stores selling Aboriginal artefacts should be illegal, as opposed to groan-inducing puns (which really shouldn’t be illegal anyway as they give people like me something to complain about, and where would be without that? :). So the whole issue now seems to be laid to rest and everything is good.

It was an interesting few hours though, wondering if my website and personal details were going to end up on some kind of racism watch list. But hey, all’s well that ends well.

What a week.

Katie’s dad’s funeral was on Tuesday, which was… well funerals are never really fun or anything, by definition they’re pretty awful, but as funerals go it was fairly good. Even though we had to hurry off quickly afterwards which made me feel like a right bastard 🙁

We had a big meeting/conference at work on Thursday with a consultant on how to overcome some of the ‘challenges’ the company is facing. It was a good exercise, mostly he just asked us a bunch of questions and wrote down the answers – he’ll be getting back to us with some recommendations shortly. Should be interesting.

Veteran actor Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell passed away. My generation are most familiar with him as ‘Gramps’ in the Late Show’s Charlie the Wonder Dog, but he appeared in over a hundred different productions including Catweazle and Thunderbirds. He’s apparently getting a state funeral, which is richly deserved.

Yesterday we all went to the polls to vote on Daylight Savings. Once again it was roundly defeated, which is a nice kick in the face to the politicians who forced a three year trial on us with the assurance that once we’d experienced it, we’d love it. D’Orazio has commented that he’s very disappointed and that it would have been better if the Government had just brought it in without a referendum – but then he’s always had problems with the concept of ‘Democracy’.

After voting I cycled over to the Belmont Brickworks because I’d heard that a housing estate was being built around them. As it turned out the rumours were somewhat exaggerated – the housing estate is in fact merely being built near them and the works remain in splendid isolation. I took a bunch of photos, which can be seen on my Flickr account, then went on to explore the artificial island at Ascot Waters. Despite it being a mild, sunny day I had the entire place to myself – with the exception of a couple of stray dogs.

Then it was dinner at the Phi Yen with the family and my aunt who’s over from England. The food was excellent as usual but I swear every time we go there it gets louder and louder. We were also visited by a cat that apparently slipped through the door unnoticed when someone when in or out, and wandered from table to table until the staff noticed and evicted it 🙂

So yeah, a busy week all up. Hopefully the one ahead will be a bit more sedate.