Curve Magazine Pictorial

Curve magazine has some taste. Published by Newsdirect, they took some professional photos at the ninth annual Smales WA Fashion Design Awards that I spoke about in September. They had a two page spread in Issue VI, only $5.50, of some of the clothes on display.

And out of these pics they thought that one of Miky's designs was fabulous enough to put into print. Woohoo!!

Miky's is the white top with green studded pants. It looked spectacular on the catwalk too. I thought that it was fantastic. What ya reckon?

Yu-Jin Must Be Getting Used To Parents In Print

Not that Yu-Jin has seen my photo in the paper too much but he must be getting used to seeing his parents in the media. He's seen my pic on my blog and mum's newspaper spread. Imagine my surprise when he looked at the following part of an ad in the Spring 2004 Perth Homemakers' Sale:



"Is that you, daddy?"

Come on son. Are the ears that similar? I guess they are but he could be a little more observant than that.

Frugal Bastards I Have Known

I shall save his blushes by letting him remain nameless. Let's just call him Alex. **Not his real name (he has a surname as well).

Alex was a fitter who did an adult apprenticeship to become an electrician. He was one of the hardest working blokes you have ever seen. Pretty smart guy. We did our apprenticeships together in Mt Gambier and Alex's family lived in Portland, Victoria. About two hours drive away. On Saturdays he used to play tennis.

Now Alex was a frugal bastard. The doors on his Subaru needed some work so he filled them with concrete. He painted it with some bitumen-type material himself. Alex didn't pay for accommodation. I believe that he used to find a car park and sleep outside on some stretcher-like setting. Then he learnt that CSR Woodpanels owned some houses just outside the factory walls. He offered to stay at one of the houses as it would offer some extra security for the building. Mind you, he didn't stay in the house. No, he parked outside in the driveway and slept outside on his stretcher!!

It didn't end there. At work we had a shower, which he used, and a microwave. If his food couldn't be cooked in a microwave then it wouldn't get cooked at all. Was there no ending to this man's frugality? As he had nowhere to go after Tech finished he would stay after class until about 8pm and then go to his driveway. No wonder he was so smart. He did an extra four hours of learning each day.

One other instance comes to mind, not necessarily frugal by nature. Our boss wanted us to work on the Saturday and only told us late on Friday. Alex was due to play tennis and so wouldn't have been able to. He asked the boss if he could do a double-shift and go home at midnight. That's not too dumb and that's exactly what he did. Still got the whole weekend with his family, played tennis and got paid for working on Saturday. One clever bloke.

Oh yes. He did put tar on his roof in Portland instead of paying someone else to paint it properly. Not a brilliant move as it would have devalued it significantly. Now I hear that he is an operator on a production line earning 60-70K. What did I tell you about this bloke?

Saturday Was Full Of Interesting Happenings

Whilst shopping in the city with Yu-Jin he decided that he needed to go to the toilet - Now! The only place I could find was a pay-per-use toilet. Had to cop the 30 cents entrance fee. Damn it, if I had to pay for him then I was going to go also. It was slightly embarrasing when a man came in to use the urinal and Yu-Jin kept saying, "Look at that man. What's he doing?"

We visited the Perth City Library and I guess I don't take as much notice of kids' needs as I should. I wanted to borrow some books and a DVD for Yu-Jin and he wanted to read books and play games. The pace of life takes all the fun out of it.

Later on I went for a ride on my bike and put Yu-Jin in the carrier seat. He loves being ridden around. Stopped for a rest at the playground near home. Then this eight year old boy, Alexander, who lives across from the park came to join us. We had played together before. He had a pocket knife and was being a bit silly with it, as boys tend to do. Yu-Jin wanted to write some letters in the sand. Alexander wrote "fcuk" and I told him that it meant "French Connection United Kingdom" - a clothing company. He insisted that it was a rude word that his mum had told him and she is almost never wrong. Let's not forget the age of this boy.

Alexander, I guess he uses his full name as he is a Christian and they tend to do that sort of thing (makes his behaviour appear a little unusual), wanted to have honky nut wars. Honky nuts are the very large gumnuts all over the ground from the large gum trees. You throw them at each other. Yu-Jin is only four so Alexander was being a little bit rough for my liking. He hit Yu-Jin quite hard from close range on the hand and I told him off. Everything was ok. At one stage Yu-Jin was chasing him and I lobbed, not ditched (hard throw) a nut just in front of Alexander. It collected him clean on the nose and you should have seen the tears. I didn't mean to hurt him but it was nothing less than he deserved in actual fact.

I wasn't too happy with Alexander telling Yu-Jin to "Piss off" all the time. It was a little bit too early to be teaching him to swear I said. Mind you, my son did pick it up very quickly. It is very important to be able to swear properly. When some arsehole needs to be told off you don't want him to laugh at you because you can't swear properly.

Later on the swing we had one of those moments that you see on the home video shows. I was pushing Yu-Jin and he was furiously kicking his legs when he kicked me in the family jewels. If only someone had been taping it.

Superman II was on TV last night. Seeing as we watched the first movie two weeks ago we were looking forward to this. There was a scene in the White House and Yu-Jin turned to me and said, "Is that the baddies' house?" Well, the answer to that is yes and no, depending on how you feel about the Bush administration.

Another scene involved Superman standing inside a molecular chamber and being exposed to Krypton's red sun's rays and becoming mortal. His clothes changed to those of Clark Kent. Later he entered the chamber again and his clothes didn't change. Yu-Jin said "What happened to Superman?" Talk about observant plus. He noticed straight away that nothing had changed. I couldn't believe it. Over 95% of people would have been tricked by the switch - I know I was when I first saw it.

Do No Evil and Google Saved His Life

Google have a company motto - "Do no evil". When a search engine can be credited with saving somebody's life, see article, they must be doing a reasonable job of sticking to it.

The story in a nutshell. Aussie reporter in Iraq is kidnapped. Kidnappers, or maybe terrorists, extortionists, etc, charge him with working for the FBI, CIA or US government. He protests his innocence. Kidnappers do a google search on his name and see that he doesn't work for any government agency. They let him go.

Great story.

But what about our lovely Australian Government? Where did they stand on the issue of an Aussie getting kidnapped in Iraq?

Alexander Downer, the prissy Adelaide boy who is almost the complete kow-towing, dimwit, arse-kissing choir boy, says that he was taken from an area he was told not to go to (before we heard of Mr Martinkus's release this is). It's all his fault. Why should the government help him? Blah blah blah.

As soon as Mr Martinkus is released he spills the beans on how he was kidnapped. It happened right outside the hotel where international journalists are staying. Is that allowed Mr Downer?

Shame on Alexander Downer and the Australian government for their flagrant use of propaganda. I'm appalled. Here is a decent article of the incident.

Onya Google.

Bytheway. Google have another lifesaver. It is called the Google Desktop Search. It is brilliant, bloody brilliant. No need to use the search disfunction on Windows anymore. It indexes your emails in Outlook and all of the files on your computer. You can index your Instant Messages and HTTPS Websites but I disabled that at work. I would do the same at home. It makes searching a breeze and provides the details of the search much like a search engine results page. Almost magical.

And it is only in Beta stage.

Evo Bus Is Here

Many moons ago, a good friend of mine in Germany, Markus, informed me that an environmentally friendly bus was making its way to Perth. Markus works for Daimler Chrysler and they manufactured the bus.

Well, I can safely say that it has arrived. I saw one of these buses on Monday night as I was driving to visit my chiropractor. The buses have only been released in 12 cities, 10 of these are in Europe with the others being Shanghai and Perth. They are being tested for their efficiency and acceptance by the public. I hope that they are successful.

Here's an article about the arrival of the bus in Perth. It's rather a pity that the spelling and grammar are so poor in the write up. Bloody government department.

Painful Injury

If only Eddie Maguire could suffer this injury. Whilst training for Australia for the International Rules competition against the Irish, one of Essendon's star players picked up an injury.

Apparently he injured his media ligament. Here's the article. If only, Eddie.

Geek Week On Triple J

Adam and Wil were celebrating Geek Week on Triple J - and they have had some really interesting contenders in a competition. I listened to them on the Net this morning (am I a geek) and they had a Geek-off for a signed Scrabble scorecard from Andrew G and Adam Spencer. There were two main contenders and I would loved to have challenged them. One guy gave a recital of pi to 15 decimal places in morse code and the another guy proofread manuals and notified the publisher of errors, in different languages if necessary. He would go and find someone who spoke French or Korean and ask for their help. No wonder he was the prize geek.

Back in yr 10 Maths my teacher had an excerpt from Mad Magazine that defined people. It said that a nerd was only good if you wanted to know pi to 127 decimal places. I made it my goal in life to learn pi to 127 decimal places. This was used as an icebreaker when meeting people. Not too effectively but somewhat amusingly. Does that beat the geek who could recite pi to 15 decimal places in morse code? Anyway, somebody rang Triple J a short time later and said that the guy had made a mistake in his recital. Who is the bigger geek?

With regards to the manual proofreader - I read the Guinness Book of Records from front to back and catalogued six pages of mistakes and typos and sent it to them. I got my name in the acknowledgment section for my help!! And when I went to England I met the editor - Peter Matthews. I also visited the Guinness World of Records Museum and they offered me a job to stand in a booth with a microphone and let people ask me about any world record. They allowed me to have a look around the museum and afterwards asked me what I thought about the display. I proceeded to tell them all of the mistakes in the museum.

Pity I couldn't join the competition on Triple J. I guess by definition I am a nerd, not a geek. I did send the above information to the Triple J Guestbook. And the moderator allowed it to be posted.

There was another kid who sang a song about the Periodic Table and that was brilliant. That may just inspire me. I used to know the first 80 elements of the Periodic Table.

Miky Is In The Paper!!

Check out the article in the Canning Times Community Newspaper.