buter's BABY blog

So we've all heard that Britons are no longer drinking quite as much tea, now it seems the colonials are following suit with Australians no longer drinking quite as much beer. In fact according to this article at Reuters, Aussies aged 15 & up are consuming only 109.9 litres of beer per person in 2004, down from 114.6 litres in 2003.

..... waaaaaaaaiiit a minute. 15 and up?? What?!?!? There are underage drinkers who are drinking about 110 litres of beer every year before they are legally allowed to?

Anyway, apparently Aussies are drinking more of the wines and ready mixed spirits-in-a-can than ever before, but we still slog our way through about the same level of regular unmixed spirits-in-a-bottle.

Now I have a couple of things to say about this. (surprise, surprise!)
Firstly, I-don't-drink-beer. So someone, somewhere is drinking 220 litres a year to cover my lack of input.
Secondly, the results come from the Australian Bureau of Sadistics. As in, they come from maybe census data, or possibly from market research commissioned by the ABS and conducted over the phone, so you're talking about results from only those people who actually answered. And generally speaking, lots of people hang up on market research surveys (especially conducted by people from NESB). How do we know that the results aren't skewed by some other socioeconomic force that dictates who actually answers these things? Oh right, we don't.

Which brings me to my final point:
Most people use statistics like a drunk guy uses a lamppost.
As in, for support, not for illumination.
(no, that's not my quote, here's a source)

See you when the mud dries.
(a quote from my mate Pete - apt as it's finally raining)

I might have mentioned sometime before about how I am a regular user of the 131500 trip planner - it helps me sort out going to and from work, visiting people after work, all that stuff. I'm sure most cities have an equivalent, it's just that this one happens to be useful to moi as Miss Piggy would say.

So anyway I went there recently and they are trialling a new site design!! Wow, sez I, let's check this out. I like it!! It's tasteful - and get this - without being gaudy.

So I submitted them some feedback on their little feedback form. Just to say it's tasteful, and to suggest adding another "search" button at the top of the trip planner form for those who are too lazy to scroll down (like me).

Anyway within an hour or so I got a personal response from their webby people who assure me it will go to their IT department for consideration in the eventual rollout.

Neat! Watch-this-space...

(disclaimer: I don't get paid by CityRail, in fact I pay for the privilege of using their service!! And if the trial site goes down it's not my fault so don't tell me about it.)

p.s. It's nice to not be ranting for a change, innit?!

We had a nice time in Melbourne. We had the typical Yu family eat-a-thon, starting from the 3 breakfasts on Sunday (one at the airport, one on the plane, and one when we arrived) through to the 7-course post-funeral dinner on Tuesday night.

Alex set us all a fine example by eating fruit at every meal, and sometimes eating more fruit than everyone else combined .. he polished off two serving plates of fruit at the above mentioned feast.

And here he is with the final piece of watermelon. How many 2-year olds do you know who can say "canteloupe"?



He's so cute. I think I want one.

Yep, as you know by now, I'm heading to Melbourne to see the family and catch up with everyone. It's a bit of a sad time as we are going to farewell the patriarch of the Yu family, my Grandfather.

The last time I saw my Grandfather was September 2004, when most of the clan headed off to Hong Kong for his 90th birthday. Most of us stayed at the Miramar Hotel - although there was also a contingent who squished into the family flat on the 12th floor of 72 Nathan Rd. DTM and I went for about a week and saw some sights, played at Ocean Park, did some shopping, and of course had a bit to do with the big party.

And when I say big - there were over a hundred people at Grandfather's birthday celebrations - family aside, he had a lot to do with the business community of Hong Kong. What was amazing was that throughout all the preparations, Grandfather seemed to be essentially dozing - but when the time came he gave a speech ex tempore which had all these high-level hard nosed Hong Kong corporate types blinking back the tears. I don't understand Cantonese but the gist (as told to me afterwards by my aunt) was that he was talking about how Hong Kong had changed and what things he thought were good and what he thought about the future of business in Hong Kong.

So 4 generations of Yus are gathering in Melbourne over the next few days, together with representatives of the massively extended family - yes, we expect it will be huge, though not quite as huge nor as rowdy as the last time we all got together. It's times like these that you really appreciate family. The Yu family, though scattered round the globe, is still close in spirit and I'm so glad we are all coming together at this time. It's time to say farewell to our beloved father/grandfather/great-grandfather figure. I hope we have made him proud of what his family has become.

Remember to stop and smell the roses, people. Life ends, for all of us. You have to appreciate what you have in front of you right now.

So the vista team went out for dinner last night - which was excellent. We had a 6-course degustation at a fabbo restaurant in Surry Hills called alio. And there was the pub beforehand, some excellent wine during dinner and then the pub again afterwards.

So I'm not exactly hale and hearty this morning - a little fragile - but I'm coping. And hey, just as well we went out on a school night so I can waste a work day feeling fragile as opposed to wasting part of my weekend, right?

I'm so glad I left the other place and came to work here :)

{burgers}

<rant>
Those of you who have been keeping track of me will know that I'm pretty involved with the whole online travel arrangements thing. I've researched our ski trip to NZ (7 weeks to go...!!) online, as well as researching the travel agents themselves online. I've selected and booked a place to stay in the Hunter Valley for the super six weekend away. I've been known to book flights to Melbourne (and we fly to Melbourne a lot!) online as well.

In all that I've found some pretty damn fine travel agents/comparison tools. Like the NZ holiday cost generator (pity it only works for the one company, but fine nonetheless). That's a very neat one. Also I've used Air New Zealand, Qantas, and Virgin Blue's online trip planners. And speaking of trip planners where would I be without the excellent CityRail trip planner (well I'd probably be right here still, but it's made life much easier!) And for comparing prices I've tried zuji, webjet, and travel.com.au. And using the comparisonators is so much easier than investigating each individual airline!!

About those last - a quick review. Zuji is tedious as it's international based and far too busy with extraneous flash movies playing all over the place.
I like webjet but it is very slooooooow to load/search/respond.
travel.com.au seems lovely - as it's fast to load and search but I had major problems with things that shouldn't have been an issue!!

Here's why I'm not using travel.com.au any more:

1. after registering, if you close the page, when you reopen it there's no place to login!! Nope, not at all, not until after you run a whole new flight search - then the login comes up.


2. I stupidly messed up the credit card details (though I'm sure there was something funny going on there) and they sent me an email telling me it was all bad - fine - and telling me to fix it ... so back to the website (try to login -see point 1 - argh!) but can't find anywhere to update the credit card details for an existing booking - so go to call them...


3. heeeey, the number to call isn't in the email they sent me!! ... back to the *&$^!%# website to find out their contact number.


4. ring them and they say "oh no, of course you can't do that - but I can update it for you.."


5. fine, so they fix it - apparently. She said they would send the e-ticket straight away.
   ... and 5 hours later the e-ticket hadn't arrived
   
   
   
   • So I emailed them. Again.
     


6. Eventually they emailed me 2 copies of the e-ticket. (what's that, in case I lose one?)
   

oh man!!

How lovely does it look!! Coronet Peak, sunrise, today .. it's beautiful. This is the M1 view - the bit that I'm skiing down as soon as we get there. Only 7 weeks to go and we'll be on the plane heading over to Queenstown .... wheeeEEEeeee!!


Check out the rest of the snow cams at SnowCo

p.s. ... it's currently -2 in Queenstown - brrr!!!

Well, I wasn't chewing my cud on the train exactly, but I did have one of those excellent foam cups from my morning coffee so while munching on that I was thinking about .. well .. stuff ...

Firstly, the best ever name for nail polish - which I happened to apply during the weekend - is Posh Trash. Now it looks like a lovely mushroomy colour, kinda shiny and stuff, and while not exactly trashy I wouldn't call it Posh. So it's got a perfectly inapplicable name.

At this point I was going to go on and on about names, or something, but I've got nothing original to add right now. So too bad.

But other things I'm ruminating about are .. trying to get to Melbourne to see my grandfather (who's just contracted pneumonia), sorting out my credit card changeover (farewell ANZ, hello HSBC), exactly what kind of MP3 player I should get (should I go for one over $300 to get the tax back when we go to NZ or should I just get a cheaper one?), oh and where the super six are going to stay in July. And wondering if the unlucky couple who has to sleep in the sofa bed in the loungeroom will have to curtail any nightly rumpy pumpy action or if the other two couples will just join in. I think about lots of weird stuff (TM) on the train.

Edit : the super six weekend has moved to a place with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, thank goodness. I chose this place for the bedrooms, despite the incredibly overengineered inefficient bandwidth-hogging website. Click the link if you dare!

Further ruminating at this stage was cut short by wondering if I should change trains at West Ryde to get the express. {yes all that previous thinking took place between Eastwood and West Ryde - I have a busy brain, so - meh!} So I got up, then there was an announcement saying the express was late, so I wandered down and found a different seat. So then I had no more excuses and had to open my bag and encounter Economics.

Oh boy that was fun. A rumination killer if ever there was one. NPVs, FVs, IRR, B/C ratios and now I have to apply it to business planning.

erg!

oh and btw - if you're worried about any potential toxic side effects of munching the foam cup - it's ok, I checked it out.

Returning from the land of apathy is a funny thing.

I had this massive assignment to do, so I was spending a lot of time doing that. And then when it was finally over, I couldn't be less interested in sitting in front of the puter writing anything -let alone blogging about my insignificant little life. I mean really, what do I do that's so different, how am I adding to the world of thoughts and ideas that is the internet.

Anyway after a prolonged bout of apathy/indifference/disinclination to share anything with my loyal subscribers .. I'm back.

Here's some lessons for you:
1. finishing a big project that has been taking all your heart and soul for a period of time, is likely to lead to apathy
2. if it doesn't lead to apathy it will probably lead to illness of some kind (another reason I've been disinclined to post - my head was hurting!!)
3. apathy and illness, combined, are a powerful force for darkness.

I spent most of my time off work (I was sick, remember?) lying on the lounge under a doona, drinking tea, snoozing, or watching Season 2 of Buffy. I particularly enjoyed watching Innocence with the commentary by Joss Whedon. Someone told me that his commentaries are hilarious - and they are!! So that was fun. Then my head hurted again (yes that is a word) and I slept.

Things are less hurty now. That's a good thing. I have an exam on 17th June, that's a bad thing, but then only -one-more-subject- and I'm finished my degree!! I think I'll stop studying for a while after that. What am I going to do with all my free time?

Feel free to post suggestions :)