The New Australian

Proudly nearly Australian since 2010. "I'm not grumpy, the rest of the world is just unrealistically upbeat"

The New Australian - Proudly nearly Australian since 2010. "I'm not grumpy, the rest of the world is just unrealistically upbeat"

Monthly Archives: March 2011

Time to move

Ok, I’m going to lose a bit of the anonymity of the blog here, un-mask the caped criticiser and partially reveal my secret identity. Well, tell you roughly where I live anyway.

We live in Balmain. It’s a bit faux working class yet nicely affluent. It reminded us of Islington, where we lived in London. Islington has a load a wanky middle-class lefties but also a nice strata of sensible folk who work in the city in proper jobs that don’t involve taxpayer-funded diversity inclusiveness dance festivals and don’t have a hissy fit at the prospect of their children playing sports that involve there being a winner and a loser. The local MP was an unreconstructed Communist called Jeremy Corbyn who wore a dozen right-on badges of support on his commune-knitted tweed jacket and Maoist flat cap, but that aside, the place was pleasant.

We originally felt that Balmain was analogous in the Sydney context. Recently though, as I wander through my fellow Balmainians, I’ve started to feel like the balance was a bit too much on the side of the home-knit/tofu burger/Tommy has two Mummies/whale music and crystal therapy side of the scales.

I had this confirmed this week. Since this week’s state elections (three layers of government here in Australia, remember) has revealed Balmain to be populated by a mix of regular socialists and green socialists and corrupt socialists, that is Labor (sic), Green, Liberal in almost equal quantities. So equal in fact, that we actually don’t have a official representative for the state parliament as there is a recount going on to see whether the postal votes can swing it one way or the other. It’s not quite “hanging chads” in Florida but it’s amusing nonetheless.

I think the most telling part of the local election is that the Green candidate got almost a third of the vote. The Greens didn’t get close to winning a seat anywhere else in NSW but here in Balmain fantasy land we gave him a real opportunity to get elected. Putting aside the fact that the bloke has a face that screams “punch me!”, I’m shocked that my neighbours felt that they could vote Green (i.e. for more taxes for an unproven confidence trick) in the numbers they did. What’s worse, the bloke was born in England. Oh the shame.

So, for this reason and, OK, three or four other better reasons, we’re going to move out in a few month’s time. Northern beaches looks a good option, “the insular peninsula”, as Bondy (pronounce it this way to annoy the locals) seems far too cliquey and everywhere south or west is too grim for words.

Motorhead; veni vedi vici tinnitus

In recent years, Lemmy takes to the stage and introduces the band with the words “Hello, we’re Motorhead and we play rock and roll”. He would have no issues under the Trades Description Act based on that promise.

I first encountered the aural damage that is a Motorhead concert sometime in the late 80′s and, like most of the people at last night’s concert, I’ve been letting them repeat the destruction to my hearing range on a regular basis over the ensuing decades like some pathetic abused partner allowing the batterer back into the family home “for the sake of the bairns”.

They are great though. The band seem to get tighter and definitely louder each time I see them. The last time was only 15 months ago (Hammersmith, London) and they’ve bought even bigger amps since then. I have that ringing sensation in my ears almost 24 hours later and, considering the number of gigs I’ve been to over the years, it’s unlikely that my hearing is still sensitive enough to be damaged further by regular volumes, so they must be way over the top of the sensible range.

Amusingly, there were some at the concert who were clearly a bit confused about what it is they’d signed up for when paying the 90 bucks for the ticket. What I mean is, about 3 songs in, there was a stream of folk walking out of the concert. The pattern seemed to be their dress code; they didn’t really fit into the middle-aged rocker/young punk/dodgy biker demographic and instead, were one of the macho gay/sensitive EMO/soft-rock (Rush t-shirt? Really?) crowd.

Anyway, they were gone way before the 5th song. Fuck ‘em. The rest of us had a crackingly good time.

Two great quotes from Lemmy last night;

“Pathetic. Melbourne made more noise than you cunts” (after asking the crowd to cheer as loud as they can)

“you know I’m going to lose, and gambling’s for fools, but that’s the way I like it baby, I don’t want to live for ever……….. but apparently I am”. (new words to Ace of Spades)

The view from Luna Park

 

Personalised number plates – individual yet common

I only just spotted it this weekend; Sydney is full of cars with personalised number plates.

It snuck up on me in a slow dawning of realisation. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing you seek out in an “oh look, there’s a car with wanky SMS-speak on its arse” kind of way but once you’ve noticed it, you see them everywhere.

First of all, there was a car yesterday at Manly with a plate of “BEEU4Y”, which after some discussion, we agreed probably was meant to spell “Beauty”. Later on we saw “MR DVD”, which presumably will be replaced with “BIT-TORRENT” once the National Pornband Network has made him bankrupt due to everyone in Alice Springs getting their movies ex-copyright.

Once you start looking for them, they are everywhere, really commonplace. I pondered the reason for a while and then I got it; each state has its own Road Traffic Agency which issues state plates. Therefore, every sought-after combination of letters and numbers, put together to form “words” in the crappy way we used to do at school with our first calculator, is available multiple times across Australia.

By the looks of it, the sort of person who thinks it’s a great idea to “personalise” their car is similar to their UK counterpart; an absolute idiot who is to be given a wide berth on the road for fear of collision while they fiddle with the super-charged woofers on their in-car stereo.

I always considered personalised number plates in the UK as the motoring equivalent of stone-cladding a mid-terraced house and it seems that although we may disagree on yeast extract-based spreads for toast, the personalised number plate is a common social reference point between the UK and Australia.

Below are three examples I spotted this weekend. I’m not sure what the last one is all about but it seemed deliberately-spaced as if to infer special meaning so I snapped it anyway.

Right then, off to search to see if “I AM A C2NT” has been allocated in NSW yet….

KD Lang fan? Presumably the plate was too small for "Michell Shocked"?

"Alex DJ", available for school discos, bar mitzvahs and monster truck rallies

No, I've no idea either

Channel Nine – Cricket fail. AGAIN!

Last night saw the 2nd quarter final of the cricket world cup. Australia played India and lost.

There’s no point gloating about this too much as it’s probably England’s turn to go home this weekend when they take on Sri Lanka in their quarter final.

However, there is an opportunity to point out again how crap Channel Nine is. Why? Well, they bought and paid for the domestic TV rights for the cricket world cup and decided to show only half of the Australian quarter final. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies that it was the second half of the match and not the first.

I’m unclear as to the exact terms and conditions of Channel Nine’s purchase for this competition, i.e. was it limited to matches Australia took part in or did they get the rights for all matches? One thing is certain though, there’s little chance of any of the English, Sri Lankan, South African, Kiwi or Pakistani immigrants in Australia watching their teams’ remaining matches in the competition now that the Baggy Greens have been packed off home. It’ll be like the competition has simply ended and the Aussie Rules season neatly segued in like a smooth DJ switching decks in a nightclub.

Cricket? That’s SO last summer.

What has 3 heads and has never had sex?

….and lives on George St. Sydney?

A. The queue for the iPad2 the day before it goes on sale.

I know there are only 2 of them in the picture but the third was too fat to get in the same frame. Be assured that he was also wearing the same black uniform of jogging pants and a long-sleeved top from some obscure band called “death rites” or similar.

Seriously boys, have a shower, meet some girls, there’s more to life than Apple groupie-dom.

According to one female colleague, there’s a man drought in Sydders. You can see why; if the single men are not gay (large percentage are – this is Sydney, remember), they are either thick rugby league fans, CBD fashion bingo victims or hopeless geeks sitting outside the Apple store.

Attention all single blokes; move to Sydney, the competition is insipid.

Sent from my mobile device

 

 

Tony Robbins, religion for Australian atheists

A colleague resigned last week. I hadn’t really got to know her very well (she’s based in Brisbane so I simply assumed she was incompetent, you know, to save time later), but I gave her a call to wish her well and find out what she was moving on to go and do with her life.

Me; So, best wishes for the future. What are you doing next?

Her; I’m going to make a big change in my life.

Me; Wow, really? That’s great! What are you doing, travelling, studying, going to work for a charity or something else?

Her; erm no, I’m erm going to spend some time at home with my daugher.

Me; Oh, that’s fine too, how old is she?

Her; Five.

Me; Doesn’t that mean she’s about to start school?

Her; Yes.

Me; So what will you do when that happens?

Her; erm, I haven’t really thought that far.

 

OK, I suppose we can all make these life choices and we’re a long time dead an’ all that but….. it didn’t really sound like a massive dose of “satori”, the kick in the eye brought on by spiritual enlightenment that I was maybe expecting to hear from her.

It turns out that this “life change” or “intentional unemployment for no apparent reason” as I think I’ll call it, is down to a recent visit to an Anthony Robbins event this month.

I didn’t know who Tony was until this week. Turns out he’s a tall, muscular, good looking, gravel-voiced American with great hair and teeth and the secret to the alchemist’s dream of turning shit into gold. How? By charging gullible fools $1,500 to attend a conference where he tells them stuff they already know because they watched Dr. Phil on the Oprah show last month.

Part of the $1,500 went towards a bag of barbecue coals that were lit and strewn on the floor for folks to “conquer their fear” and walk over barefoot.

Brilliant.

So in summary, my ex-colleague paid a shouty American with a headset microphone to tell her that she didn’t really like her job and that she should do something about it. She translated that into a letter of resignation.

I don’t like working too, but unfortunately my landlord doesn’t like not being paid the rent so we’ve worked out this compromise whereby I work, get paid, hand some of that money over to the landlord and use the rest to do stuff I like in the hours I spend not working. Other than winning the lottery or being born into a fabulously wealthy family, I see few alternatives. I certainly don’t need to spunk fifteen hundred bucks down the urinal to be told that.

Tony Robbins has a bunch of motivational videos on YouTube. Watch one and then watch one of the crazy USA TV evangelists and see if you can spot the difference.

He just doesn’t say God.

Religion for atheists. It’s like Jews for Jesus only more better-er.

Gillard – the tears of a clown

For many years before arriving in Australia, I played contact sport with many Australians. Their attitude is infectious; they play sport in a hard and uncompromising manner but play hard off the pitch too. They are straight-talking and certainly aren’t the kind of people given to saccharine emotions and schmalzy rhetoric.

Or at least how I remember them.

Something seems to have changed since then though.

The line of work I do sometimes involves having to make some pretty tough decisions in a timely manner, and to this end I find that straight-talking and an honest approach is the best method. Often, this goes counter to the corporate culture in which I find myself but I remind myself that this is one of the reasons they are in the mess they are in and why I’ve been hired in the first place.

However, both of my contracts in Australia have a common theme; group-think. What I mean by this is that the tough decisions are being subjected to an unusual level of procrastination and are being referred to committees of “stakeholders” for approval. I’ve seen this before and don’t really mind it as, being paid by the day, a delay to the project just means I earn more. However, it’s a very good indication of a weak corporate culture, one that is afraid to make proper decisions and see them through. i.e. not the Australian culture I was expecting to find.

The second indication that the “tough Australian” is a bit of a modern misnomer is the recent spate of political tears being shed at opportune moments. There have been three blub moments in the last couple of months and they probably occurred in decreasing order of appropriateness; Anna Bligh, the Queensland State Premier during the flood disaster, Prime Minister Julia Gillard in parliament discussing the same crisis and, this week, she had a mini-blub while giving a speech in the American Congress.

This seems to be an infection that has swept through the political classes. Probably the most recent carrier was ex-PM Kevin Rudd and the indication is that he’s passed it on to several of his peers.

Julia Gillard (or “Gill-ARD” as the Americans call her, a bit like Ms. CraBapple in the Simpsons) seems to have broken down in the USA due to an overload of sentiment in a speech that contained little else. In fact, the transcript of the speech looks like a tick list of things to say in a pub when a couple of redneck Americans and Australians are ganging up on you.

If you can’t be bothered to read the transcript of the speech, here is a summary;

Blah blah blah, Second World War, blah blah blah, man on the moon, blah blah blah, Vietnam, blah blah blah, September 11th, blah blah blah Iraq and Afghanistan, blah blah blah, climate change, blah blah blah, man on the moon, sniff.

And now, by way of a contrast, have a look at how it should be done. Churchill 1942.

My big fat Australian wedding

There are some pleasant parks and green spaces in Sydney but the one we sometimes take the kids to for the purposes of tiring them out before bedtime isn’t in the top 10. It sits around the bay underneath the Anzac Bridge and has a fairly industrial view to the North, South and West. It is easy to park the car and the kids’ playground is pretty fun though.

So it wouldn’t really be my first choice of location to have my wedding photos taken at. It seems not everyone feels the same way as me (and that’s not unusual).

First picture; The wedding party assembling for the photos. Note the homeless guy sleeping under the blanket in the foreground. Not exactly the Spanish Steps, is it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second picture; the main mode of transport. Yes, most of the guests arrived in a stretch Hummer.

Now that’s class and breeding that money can’t buy.

An Australian and his money…..

We’re a sophisticated nation when it comes to financial matters here in Australia.

Two pieces of evidence to support this statement;

Exhibit 1. The Commonwealth Bank had a technical glitch this week that put its ATMs into “offline mode”. This is when money can still be drawn from one’s account but the usual account limit cannot be ascertained so the ATM allows you to take what you want, regardless of whether it puts you overdrawn.

Some bright souls out in the Western suburbs thought that this meant that the ATMs were churning out “free” money and so went to multiple branches and max-ed them out. Of course, the ATM keeps a record of the card used and synchronises the transaction details when it goes back online. So the clever chaps out West have now got a huge overdraft and the Commonwealth Bank’s bailiffs are being put on standby to come round and repossess the bright orange Ford Falcon parked in front of their weatherboard and tin-roofed house.

Exhibit 2. An Indian chap called Ahsan Ali Syed popped over to Australia last year and offered to give multi-million dollar loans to all sorts of folk who had otherwise been refused loans; Hotel developers, massive farms, former bankrupts, etc. At a nice interest rate too, comparitively; 5 to 7% depending on risk. Trouble is, the risk was with the borrower as, in a lovely twist on the Nigerian “419″ scam, the prospective borrower had to pay a 1.6% application fee to get the dosh. Guess what happens next……. It would seem that Western Gulf Advisory (Bahrain) Ltd. has taken over $30m in fees and lent, well, not very much if anything at all. Of course, the next step is to call in the financial regulators or fight it out through the courts except, oh, he’s not regulated in Australia. Best of luck with that.

In the meantime in Australia, the general population is quite happy to take out 9 x salary mortgages for property in a country where land isn’t exactly in short supply. Just north of us is the world’s biggest economy currently experiencing the world’s biggest property bubble. If you thought the “ghost” town developments in Ireland was a bad sign, China has “ghost” cities built for no reason.

Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t a kind of financial Darwinism at work in the world.

P.S. I’m deliberately not mentioning the England vs. Ireland cricket result because, well, just fucking because all right?

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