Useless information

This is my type of website.  It generates random and useless knowledge:

Unnecessary Knowledge

Have a look and you too may know that a snail can sleep for three years.

Buy Buy Baby

Property. Can't afford to buy it, can't afford not to buy it. Actually that makes no sense but you get my drift. We all need somewhere to live but at the moment everything costs so much that renting seems the better option. Except that costs even more.

Actually the main problem with buying property in Perth at the moment is not the prices so much as dealing with the dickhead real estate agents. What qualifications do you actually need to be one?  They all seem to be either cocky, creepy, shifty or a bit slow.  Or a combination of all of the above.  

I've just been to look at a couple of apartments and the guy showing me around, lets call him Jimmy , was about 12 years old, dressed in a flashy yet cheap suit with no tie but still managed to look down his nose at me when I dared to suggest that $535,000 was a bit much for a two bed apartment in Hay Street.  "Well that is the going price at the moment" he sneered.  Well maybe that's the price you have told the vendor it's worth, but seeing as you told me two sentences ago that the vendor is desperate to sell, and that the place has been on the market for "quite a while now", I would suggest that you are asking too much money. Otherwise it would have already sold you burke. 

This is the problem, in WA the agents have had a few spectacularly good years with prices going up and up, with seemingly no end in sight.  Now however THE MARKET HAS CHANGED.  Can't you get that into your thick head?  It's no good telling people their places are worth thousands more than the buyers are willing to pay just because that's what you've done for the last 5 years. 

It's always amazed me that property values are so vague.  How much is it worth? $500,000 Why? Because the agent said so. But WHY? Because that's what all the others places in the area are on the market for? And who decided that? Well..the agent.

We are always told that it is either a buyers market or a sellers market.  I have to say that it is in fact ALWAYS a buyers market.  If nobody paid the price asked, then it wouldn't be worth the price asked!  It's very lucky that human nature just can't resist peer pressure and mass hysteria.  "I must buy because everyone else is buying and if I don't buy I'll never get anything!".  Well you could just wait a few months when the prices settle and the hysteria finishes.  Or if all the buyers waited a few months in the first place, and weren't sucked into the hysteria by the real estate agents and the media, then we might avoid these boom bust scenarios.

Of course in WA we are totally immune from boom bust cycles, they only happen in that mythical land of the Eastern States.  I know that because I've been told by estate agents in the past that "Perth prices are bound to go up..look at the Eastern States" but when prices in the Eastern States go down I've been told, by the same agents "Oh that won't happen here..we're nothing like the Eastern States".  I admit I'm not an economist, I've too much common sense for that, but it does seem odd to me that we can be like another place when things are good, and completely different when things are bad.  

So what am I going to do?  Wait a few months.  So I can buy when the prices go up.

Quality

Bought an umbrella. Cost $6.95. Used it twice.  Now it's broken.

Bugger.

Classless society

Once upon a time there were different classes on the train, first, second, third, cattle. That's mostly gone and probably a good thing too.  Solidarity and all that.

But I think there is a place for two new classes on urban public transport:

Mad and Non-Mad

It would be a separate carriage for all those types you see on the busses and trains to have their own space, to avoid the stares of the non-mad customers. Or more accurately for the non-mad customers to avoid the mad stares.

A place for the lady in her fifties with big plastic earrings and pigtails and the slightly unnerving twitch.  A place for the Aboriginal lady carefully fiddling with her radio so she can get that static tuned in just right.  A place for the gentleman in shorts and singlet and balaclava to have a nice sit down.  A place for the chap who has carefully, over many years, and with great diligence managed to cultivate a personal body odour that could strip the armour-plating off a battleship.  A place for the bloke in the corner scribbling down notes for his blog posting.  

Oh that's me.

Beelzebub's-ish

Went out last night with Joy, Kristy, Mat, Andrew and Kath to a place called Deville's Pad.

It's a night club in Perth, which should immediately make you nervous, but it was actually pretty cool.  Except of course we almost didn't get in as the dress code prohibits "sneakers".  I, of course, have two issues with that.  Firstly when did Australians start saying "sneakers"?  Trainers almost certainly, sand shoes quite possibly, but NEVER sneakers.  Secondly I think it's a bit of an odd dress code where you can get in wearing $10, plastic brogues from KMart but not Onisuka Tigers that cost considerably more than that (and Andrew's were even more expensive).  But to give the bouncer his due he let us in seeing as we were both wearing suits.  That compensated apparently.

Once inside it was decked out in the full Haunted House Blood Splashed everywhere motif, with the big boobed statues above much in evidence.  Pretty daggy but kitchy-fab in a way.  There is even a volcano on the dance floor.  What more could you want.  

A pretty good night people watching as the place does seem to attract some, shall we say, interesting types.  As it was ska and calypso night there were a fair number of skanking lads in suits, boots and skinny ties.  There was a  sprinkling of girls in corsets dancing, in my view, very bravely with arms above the head.  It was a wonder of foundation garment engineering that they weren't popping out all over the dance floor.  They didn't, even though I was watching very closely.  In the interest of science obviously.  There were goths (actually goth-lite is a better description, the eyeliner but not the trenchcoat), office types out for a "GIRLS NIGHT OUT!!!!" and slightly unhealthy student types.  You can spot them as they manage to make one beer last all evening.  There was also one young lady on the dance floor who was the absolutely, positively, worst dancer I have ever seen.  And I've been in Rep Club Christmas Shows.  Not at any point was she in time with the music or moving in the same direction as her dance partner, who incidentally looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but there.  Still she was having a great time and the rest of us were enjoying the show so who am I to judge?

There was also a one armed bouncer in the club.  I can't decide if that is really scary ("I lost an arm last time and STILL threw the buggers out") or really implausible ("I say do you mind leaving quietly under your own steam, I can't actually get hold of you to chuck you through the window").  

I didn't try to find out, I was too busy leaving before it got busy.  I am getting so old.

Park and Ride

Or possibly not.   I thought I'd use public transport today.  Way of the future apparently.  So I go along to the "Park and Ride" at Bull Creek Station.  About noon and it is completely full.  Totally full.  People parked on the kerbs, verges and in the drop off only bays.  Luckily there is a nice man there to help you. "It's full" he says.  He informs me that it's always full, you can never park after 8 am.  What exactly is the point of spending spending over $2,000,000,000 (count 'em, that's nine noughts) on a train if you still end up driving into Perth anyway.

Actually you can't drive into Perth as the car park at the station is designed so that when you leave, after not being able to park, you can't actually get back on the freeway north.  Brilliant.  You have to drive towards Willetton and then do a highly illegal u-turn at the lights down the road then drive back towards the station and get on the freeway.

Bus and train then I suppose.  This requires a certain mastery of the dark arts to try and find out which bus you need to catch as none of the bus stops have timetables on them.  Luckily there is always an old lady at any bus stop who can say "Ohh it's the 509 you need.  It doesn't stop here, you need the stop 800 metres down the road".  

So off I go and spend a delightful 20 minutes sitting in a concrete bus shelter with the slightly dribbly asian gentleman.  Finally the bus arrives and I get treated like a moron by the driver for having to ask how the Smartrider card works.  Do I "tag on" now and "tag off" in the City or do you "tag on" now, "tag off" at the station, back "on" at the station then "off" in the City.  I mean how are you meant to know these things unless you've been forced to suffer public transport before?  It the second option by the way.

Coming back was not so bad.  Having got myself a bus timetable I knew which train to catch to connect with the bus.  Again you need the psychic skills to find which platform you need to go to.  Transperth seems to think everyone knows the name of the last station on the line and that this indicates the intermediate stops too.  So I get the train and it connects perfectly with the bus.  Fantastic.  I get off the bus and discover the little thing that no one ever talks about when they are plugging public transport.  The bus doesn't take you to your house.  The last 800 metres have to be covered on foot in the pissing rain.  What fun!  

Anyone want a slightly used Smartrider card?

Hiatus

OK I'm not dead, just slack at posting to this thing.  Better get used to it as I am pretty sure the novelty will wear off sooner or later.

So now I am in Perth having finally waved goodbyeeee to Kalgoorlie.  I suppose the easiest way to catch up is by going a day at a time.

Thursday 17th July

Moved into Trav's place.  It's good to have friends that will put you up with no problems and no issues.  Help him tidy up a bit, not that I thought it was that untidy but there you go.  He does seem to be cornering the market in storage boxes and vacuum bags now.  Which I have to say are GREAT, I could pack stuff and vacuum the air out of it all day, seeing how flat you can get it.  It's a bit like Will It Blend? - will it flatten?  Maybe not quite as destructive though.

Friday 18th July

Went to the Fu Wah Chinese Restaurant and Laminate Flooring Emporium for dinner with Ben, Georgia, Paul, Trav and Rochelle.  That is actually what they sell there now.  A slightly strange combination.  Who orders lemon chicken, special fried rice and 4.8 square metres of arctic tundra floor covering?  It was a pleasant evening, food was, well it was, it was..actually it was OK in a country Chinese restaurant kind of way.  We had deep fried ice cream for desert.  I have to say not as spectacular as I had been led to believe.  Basically it was ice cream in bread-crumbs and fried.  I thought only the English had an obsession with deep frying incongruous items, mind you the deep fried Mars bar is one of the wonders of the world, as long as you have somewhere to have a nice lie down after you eaten one to prevent the fat and cholesterol shooting straight to your coronary arteries.  Deep fried cardiac arrest may be a better name. 

Saturday 19th July

Had my last Barista coffee in the morning.  That's the end of an era.  I used to go down at 8 every Saturday, order a complicated coffee and then sit out the front on Hannan St reading the Miner.  Have to find a new predictable thing to do now.  And have to track down somewhere to buy the Miner in Perth.  I have to get my fix of local news and fat people at parties at least once a week.   It was however absolutely freezing sitting out the front.  I couldn't actually feel my hands after a while and my legs were so cold I was having flash backs to high school PE lessons; standing in the snow, in shorts, playing Rugby while being watched by the PE teacher dressed in an outfit you could trek to the north pole in.  And they wonder why the English are so bad at sport.  It's because we spent our formative years trying to get out of it because of the bloody weather.

We went to the Broad Arrow Tavern for lunch.  For those that don't know it's a pub in the middle of nowhere where you can write on the walls.  Actually I suppose you can write on the walls wherever you go to the pub but at the Broady you are actually allowed to.  As long as you take a pen that works.  Which I forgot to.  So I'm afraid I was not recorded for posterity among the graffiti.  In the evening the Rep Club Committee kindly arranged a bit of a party at the Club to see me off. Apparently that's a life member perk that I didn't know about.  Only available once when you leave town though apparently but a bargain all the same.  It was a very pleasant evening, saw lots of the cool people I have grown to love in my time in Kal and managed not to get totally bladdered, which is a challenge in a place where the beer is $2 a bottle.  The "gang" as I shall henceforth be calling them gave me a fantastic picture and a signed Hi-Viz vest to hang on the wall.  Finally, after spending 9 years of my life in a mining town, I have an article of reflective clothing.

Sunday 20th July

Final day in a place that has really become home.  A bit sad all round but had a nice time having a few drinks at the Tower with the girls from work and the gang.  Even though everyone did arrive in shifts for some reason: 1:30 to 2:30 - Pauline and Tony 2:30 - 3:30 Carita and Truc 3:30 to 5:00 Ton, Cath, Lee, and Sharyn then 5:00 to 6:00 Trav, Tim, Aca, Ben and Andy.  It's all that Fly-in Fly-out affecting everyone's brains.  

Later on Paul and Georgia and Stitch came round and we drank champagne and danced all night under the electric candle light...(sorry channelling the Kinks there for a moment).  We did actually drink Champagne though.  I'd forgotten how nice and delicate real French bubbly wine is, we're so used to drinking Yello for special occasions that it comes as a shock to drink a $100 bottle of fizz.  Better not get used to it though, the less money we give to those frenchies the better.

Monday 21st July

Said farewell to Trav and I'm not ashamed to say I was feeling a little choked up to be going.  After all the months of planning and saying "Oh yeah I'm off to Perth but not for ages yet" the yet finally arrived.

Luckily I managed to get my suitcase and all my stuff in the car and drove to Perth.  The last time for quite a while I'll be doing that trip which bitter sweet.  Actually just sweet as it is just a bit too far.  I decided I'd stop at all the places I'd never stopped at before on the journey and realised why I had never stopped at all the places on the journey that I had never stopped at before.  There's just nothing there.  Southern Cross is moderately pretty but the rest of the towns...blink and you'll miss them.  Mind you if you need to buy a combine harvester then they are the places to go.

So here I am in Perth, staying in Willetton and waiting to go on holiday.  The world awaits.

Pricey Part 2

OK I just found this, apparently this mob have researched the cost of contract parking in various places around the world.  London is the most expensive, no surprise there, but if you look closely Perth is more expensive than New York!

And that is Perth WA, little west coast isolated country town with skyscrapers.

OK, OK that is only downtown NYC, and midtown is more expensive, but I mean what the...?

The world's gone mad.

Looks like I need to move to cheapie old Amsterdam, no parking issues there obviously.

Pricey

Just thought you might like to see what a $5,000 bottle of wine looks like:  OK I'll explain.  

My house settled today (hooray!) and when I dropped the keys off at the Real Estate Agents they gave me a lovely esky bag and the wine up there.  I thought that was lovely and very generous.  Thanked them politely as I was brought up to do.

It was only when I got back here that it occurred to me that I paid them $10,000 to sell my house and that took only 48 hours.  So really the plonk cost quite a bit more than it does in Liquorland.  

It's a bit like the points you get on the credit card.  "Wow! A free dustbuster with only 25,000 points".  That works out as a $25,000 electric dustpan and brush. 

Still it's the thought that counts.

Now I just have to resist spending all that lovely equity I've got in the bank...Aston Martin dealership anyone?

Some Delay

Well my house hasn't settled.  It was meant to happen on Friday and I was hoping to be loaded with cash today.  But there has been a glitch.  Something to do with the buyer waiting for his place to settle and the bank not having the right paperwork and the moon rising in the wrong zodiacal sign and the chicken innards not auguring well.  I think that was the explaination, I may have faded out when they started to explain about accounting and financial requirements.

So it should happen this week sometime.  If not I'll have to decide what to do.  Keep it, resell it etc. etc. etc.

Also found out that Georgia and Paul are off from Kalgoorlie as well.  In the past this has always been the problem living here.  You get to know cool people then they bugger off and you have to make new friends.  However this time I get to bugger off too, so it's not so bad (well not for me anyway, everyone left behind may disagree).

Did you know that 2008 is the International Year of the Potato?  Now that's exciting.  That has to be the best url ever  "www.potato2008.org"  only slightly less brilliant than "www.pencils.com", possibly the greatest pencil sharpening information site on the web.  Really, check it out.

They've just had footage of World Youth Who Seem To Think An 81 Year Old Bloke In A White Dress Is Worth Screaming Over Like The Beatles Day on the telly. What is that all about?  I genuinely don't understand why anyone gets so excited about spending a week with the Catholic Church.  Apart from the fact that groups of "youth" singing happy-clappy songs at the airport seems very un-catholic.  More what you expect to see at Hillsong.  All very evangelical.  There'll be Catholic Rock bands next.  

However the Pope's white frock and red shoes were an interesting fashion choice. That's what comes of being infallible; no-one is going to criticise your dress sense.

Crime and Punishment

Crime.  It's a problem.  Kalgoorlie has some pretty big problems with house breaking and violent assault.  Then there's the amphetamine trade up here, causes a lot of problems.  Violence, poverty, abuse.  

So you'll be glad to hear that the Kalgoorlie police are going all out to stop the skimpies showing their nipples.  Because that's obviously the real problem in town.

To be fair it's actually the licensing department in Perth that's making them do it but still, really, isn't there better uses of resources.

Anyhow to mark the end of an era we decided to go out and do a trip round the 'skimpy pubs' in town.  It started at the Star and Garter for food (no skimpies obviously).  At 6.25 about six people in the place.  At 6.35 about twenty million people in the place as every junior football player in the sate seemed to turn up.  OK that may be an exaggeration but we decided that we'd never get food at that rate.  So after a few beers on an empty stomach we went off to the Hannans Pub.  Food was good, no skimpies.  Next to the Inland City, no skimpies.  Few games of pool.  Me, Tim, Trav and Ben playing badly at doubles; Andy and Owen re-enacting the "Color of Money" on the other table.  Few more beers.  Next to the Exchange; NO SKIMPIES...well one, with a t-shirt on which seemed to defeat the object.  So off to the Federal; NO SKIMPIES, in fact the place was shut.  Finally we went to the Criterion and finally found a skimpy. 

Five pubs, one skimpy.  Truly the end of an era.  

iPhone - madness

So two things pissed me off today.

Firstly I've been hanging out for an iPhone.  Not just because I am a tragic Apple fanboy but because my old Motorola RAZR is just about on it's last legs (not a problem unless the word you want to type has a T, U or V in it or a number 8).  

So I got an email from Telstra today "explaining" all about the phone.  It's pathetic but I was excited.  Unfortunately they didn't include any information about the ACTUAL cost of the plans or the amount of data you might get included.  It looks like their idea is you queue up at the Telstra shop tomorrow, fight for a phone and then be glad that Telstra has allowed you to sign up for one of their plans.  Want to know the cost?  How dare you.  

Vodafone also emailed today, their plans are nothing short of usurious.  The cheapest is $69 and includes 250MB of data.  250MB!  Has anyone explained to these dicks that the whole point of the iPhone is it's web surfing ability?  Seeing as I use 5GB a month at home on my laptop I can't imagine that 250 MB is going to last that long, especially going on line all the time to check information so that I can win arguments with my mates (they know who they are).  I also can't quite understand why I can buy a Vodafone USB dongle and get 5GB  for $39 a month.  How come that when I want to do the same thing on my phone it costs so much?

Bizarrely Optus prepaid seems to be the best deal.  OK the phone costs a bloody fortune but a $50 recharge gets you 500MB of data (still not enough but better).  Plus you can unlock the handset, go straight to Hutchison 3 and tell the big telcos to get stuffed.  So that's the way to go then.

One slight problem...no Optus shop in Kalgoorlie.  So there you go, looks like all my SMSs will be spelled slighly nsally for he ime being.

Secondly I heard on the SBS and ABC news that Iran is test firing long range missiles, Israel has not ruled out a preemptive strike, the USA has vowed to defend Israel and the Iranians have stated that their finger is always on the trigger.  

So the first item on the Channel 9 news?  

The West Coast Eagles have a new coach.  Thank god for that.  That'll make those nuclear armed nutters think twice.

Homeless

Time to start this blog in earnest, even though I know that A.U. is the only one reading.  I am actually a rambling man now as I have finally moved out of my house.  That makes me rambling physically.  Have to see if I ramble conversationally too.

It was a bit weird going back to Collins St today after all the furniture was taken away yesterday.  It's surprising how much there is to clean in just one house.  A bit of advice - don't buy a place with two and a half bathrooms as it gives you a shit load of toilets to clean.  (BTW 2.5 bathrooms is a spectacularly real-estate-ese phrase for two bathrooms and a downstairs lavvy).  Still it's all done now and the house is empty.  What happens if your empty house get burgled when you aren't there and there's nothing to steal?  Anyone know?  You know if I thought anyone was reading this I'd be more concerned about letting you know the house was empty and unguarded.

I got Trav to help me take some stuff to the tip. We had to go down into a new pit they'd dug, all step sided and enclosed.  I decided all it needed was a purple sky and some bad seventies video effects to make a perfect Dr Who set.  There were even 'phone boxes there; sadly Telstra not Police though.  Which makes me wonder how Telstra can say they aren't removing phone boxes when there are five at the Kalgoorlie tip.  I smell a conspiracy (well, after all, this is the internet, hopefully now if anyone searches for Telstra and conspiracy I'll get more visitors).  Trav thought it would be better with the same effects but with a guy in a clown suit being followed by a bulldozer.  Any excuse to reference a Bowie song is good by me.

So now I am house sitting in MacDonald street.  It's great but a bit odd to be in someone else's place, especially one as spotlessly clean as Pauline keeps this.  Paranoia is setting in;  I daren't touch the fridge - it's stainless steel...do you have ANY idea how hard that is to clean?  Why does every one have SS appliances now?  They are just a bugger to look after and cost more.  Actually can you imagine real SS appliances?  "You haf failed to vipe down ze cooktop ..for zat you vill be SHOT!"

Hmmmm, I just read that back.  Definitely rambling.