photo credit: pyjama

If there’s one

thing that I’ve been fortunate enough to have throughout my entire life, it’s amazing friends. My high school buddies, my uni mates, my post-grad colleagues; all of them have been supportive, loving, giving folk whose friendship humbles me whenever I slow down enough to think about it.

But it’s the latter group, my post-grad mates, that I’d like to talk about today. Y’see, yesterday was Australia Day, which generally means a day off full of barbeques, beer, and bitching about who is going to win the Triple J Hottest 100. Things were no different yesterday, with Louise and I heading to her mate Shea’s place (amazing garden, and a beautifully warm swimming pool) in the morning, followed by me popping around to fellow PhD sufferer Zoe’s in the afternoon.

Every year the access roads to the fireworks display are blocked off from an early time. This I knew about. What I didn’t know (having only parked miles away before this year) was that parking on the verge outside Zoe’s place was illegal and punishable by a ridiculously large fine. Apparently they do this every year to raise a bit of money for slow points on rich roads stop people from blocking the road for ambulances. If this is the case, parking on the verge with literally none of your car on the road shouldn’t be much of a problem. Apparently it was, and despite my assurances to the parking officer that I had only been in the house for ten minutes (I really had), and look, there’s a space in the driveway of this house that I just walked out from for me to park my car, he gave me a ticket. A $160 ticket.

This pretty much ruined my Australia Day. $160 is a lot of money for a student living out of home. Nevermind the fact that the signs that proclaimed this prohibited parking were about 3 metres of the ground and attached to telegraph poles that did nothing to attract attention to themselves, or the fact that there was no justifiable reason for me being fined considering I was, as I said, not blocking the road or the footpath. Also don’t even concern yourself with the idea that a person who was responsibly sober the entire day can be fined for being the driver so other people can drink, or that the drunk bogans that were screaming obscenities won’t get even the lightest slap on the wrist for their abominable behaviour. No, don’t worry about that, because when it comes to parking on a verge, South Perth council takes their responsibility to fleece your cash very seriously indeed.

Anyway, enough about the stupidity of local councils and the inflexibility of parking ticket officers and back to my friends. I was bummed the entire day, and they all noticed that. So when I left after the fireworks to pick Louise up, they organised a whip around to pay for my ticket. I got into uni this morning and after my run with Dino, I found a fat envelope full of cash that would, with my addition of $10, fully pay for my ticket.

I was absolutely floored. These guys aren’t much more flush than me, and that sort of generosity deserved a god damn medal. Unfortunately I didn’t have one handy, so instead I decided to pay it forward. So in all of our names, I donated an equivalent sum to the Red Cross Australia Haiti Appeal. Because if there’s one thing that I’d like Australians to be known by, it’d be our honesty and our decency, not our tendency to get drunk and act like dick heads. So if you’re like me and you hate Australia Day and all the faux-nationalism that it inspires, why not show that you’re not like the rest of the drunk bogans and make an example of the generosity that Australians are supposed to be capable of? Get a few friends together, chip in $5 or even $10 and you’ve made a substantial donation already. If you hit up that link you can make a single donation or a subscription, and it’s all tax deductible if that’s something that concerns you.

So thanks to all my mates for organising that, and I hope this inspires at least one person to go and give some of their money to the people in Haiti. Because for all the media circus surrounding it, there are people that have lost all their friends, their family, there houses and their possessions,  and they do seriously need our help. So come on Aussies, show ‘em what we’ve got.

No related posts.

photo credit: gadl

A few of

my friends and I sat down and popped the cherry on my newly gifted Settlers of Catan board game last night. We’ve only recently been exposed to the world of board games beyond Snakes-and-Ladders and Charade-likes, a world that apparently is ruled by ‘ze Germans’. This is not your typical board game, where a strict linear path is followed to victory, no no. This is a board game where your plans may involve the collection of bricks and wood, in order to build a road that can join two settlements, which will result in you collecting the ‘Longest Road’ achievement and net you two of the ten elusive Victory Points required to win. Your opponent, in the meantime, has gladly traded you the bricks which he has a glut of, for coal, which he can now use to upgrade one of his settlements to a city and purchase a wild-card that forces all the other players to, say, hand over all their sheep. He cackles maniacally as he shepherds these illicitly gained lambs into his arms. Previous to last night, there is no board game where I have heard a person cry out ‘YESSSS! You rolled an eight, I’ve finally got wood!’. Settlers of Catan introduces the concept of balancing interaction with the board (which is made out of hexagons–a truly European geometry if ever there was one) with interaction with other players. The former interactions are governed by luck–the role of the die. But the latter are pulled and pushed and twisted by market forces, tainted by personalities, and turned on their head by the various goals of the players. It’s Monopoly on crack cut with sherbet, but with a hard-cap limit on play that removes any chance of leaving the game out for completion at some later, apocalyptic date. In fact, despite us not knowing what the hell was going on for the first few turns, we hit the victory conditions in less than an hour and a half; a perfect time for an afternoon play over beers. Overall I’d give it the best rating for any board game I’ve played on any criteria scale you care to use. Most hobby shops/games places stock it, or you can look for cheaper versions online or for the computer if you prefer clicking, but I don’t think it would carry the same weight of experience as the desktop version.

No related posts.