ocity

Overheard by my workmate on the train.
School student 1: I heard she got an asian fail! Oh, so bad!
Student 2: What’s an asian fail?
Student 1: B

I recently relented and bought a GOCard for my train travel.
The reason I relented is that I have now become an infrequent traveller.

I used to buy a paper monthly ticket. And although I would typically only travel the 10 commuter trips, I still had the option to also travel on the weekends, or more than those 10 commuter trips.
The monthly tickets cost me $108.80. The same price of 4 weekly tickets at $27.20 each. Which worked out to $2.72 per trip. A single ticket (if you buy it each time you travel) is $3.40, or, if you buy a “daily” (which is a “return” in the old terminology) $6.80.

So, even just buying a weekly paper ticket is a HUGE saving over the course of a year. (Assuming one works 48 weeks of the year – a saving of $326.40)

I would buy monthly tickets because even though they were the same price as 4 weekly tickets, you’d get a few more days than 4 weeks.

The benefit of the paper tickets is that you can travel for more than just the 10 commuter trips and the extra trips are effectively free.

You do NOT get that with the GOCard. You pay for -every- trip you take. Yeah, sure, you get 50% off for any trips over the typical 10 commuter trips, but you’re still paying for it! RIP OFF!

Anyway, back to the GOCard stupidness. I needed to top up my GOCard on my last trip into the city. I knew I had only 60 cents left o it. So, I tagged on (that’s the terminology they use in Perth. The terminology they use here “touch on” is just too wrong) and the machine reported that I had $0.60 available. I proceeded to the “top-up” machine. Aside from its bad design, bad user interface, neglect in taking parallax erros into consideration among other things, it lets you add credit to your GOCard.

It asks you to touch your card to the card reader circle. Then select the amount you are going to top it up with, then you have to insert your money, then you have to touch your card to the reader circle again. If you choose to print a reciept, it will have automatically deducted $5 – the maximum amount it will deduct if it thinks you didn’t touch off at the end of your journey. Of course, this disturbed me greatly the first time it happened. I knew what I had done was not wrong, and I kept the receipt in case I needed to dispute the issue. When I tagged off in the city, the available balance was correct, having deducted only $2.72 off my correct card credit.

Why is it, however, that whomever designed and programmed this made the systems do such a BAD thing? They need a good kick in the head and butt. Why were they so lazy?

I vote no. We don’t need it. They were talking about it in the news again. According to a television news poll, 64% of people voted yes to having Daylight Savings again. Idiots. Why do they want it? They claim it makes dealing with the southern states that also have daylight savings easier. Boo-bloody-hoo. Such small minded businesses. I’ve worked for small (in terms of staff numbers) companies who deal with partners and clients in other countries! “oh no! I have to be in the office at 6pm so we can call the client, for whom it will be 7am”

Suck it up, you idiots. That’s the lamest reason I’ve heard of for needing Daylight Saving.

And according to wiki “Although an early goal of DST was to reduce evening usage of incandescent lighting, formerly a primary use of electricity,[7] modern heating and cooling usage patterns differ greatly, and research about how DST currently affects energy use is limited and often contradictory.”

Ms Bligh said they might consider a separate timezone for the SE corner.

That would be because that’s where most of the businesses are that want it, and where most of the idiots who want it live.

There’s no need for it for business reasons, and if it’s for “leisure” reasons, just start work an hour earlier, finish an hour earlier, then go do your leisure stuff and don’t foist your needs on others.

I just had someone call my house phone. A female. A chinese female. From a call centre. ARGH.

I say “Hello?”
She responds with some mandarin – I’m chinese too, and I can tell which is which dialect, but I don’t speak mandarin. And being chinese, with a chinese surname, and on the electorol roll, there’s nothing much stopping people from finding me and calling me. Usually, I’m just not here to answer the phone. That usually works.
I say “HEL-LO?”
Again, she says something in mandarin – I can tell she’s saying something about speaking in chinese.
I say “Hey, we’re in Australia, speak Australian.”
Some response from her in mandarin.
I say “LISTEN, lady! Don’t call again. Do NOT call!”
She replies in that bad chinese accented english – “Oh, okay, sorry, bai bai”.

She’d better not call again. Me cranky!

I really like Oporto’s Bondi Burger. As described on their site : “2 fresh grilled chicken breast fillets, lettuce,cheese and mayo served with our legendary chilli sauce.”
They also have the Norm Burger, which they describe as their Bondi Burger without the heat.

They’ve now opened Oporto stores in the Sunshine State. I ask for a Bondi Burger, and they ask me “would you like chili with that?”. “err, yes, that’s why it’s called a Bondi Burger, it -comes- with chili. Why would I ask for a Bondi Burger if I didn’t want the chili?”

ARGH.

I have recently been watching too much day time tv. And with it comes infomercials. And the one that bugs me the most is the one for the Snuggie. “Cut down on your heating costs, and buy a snuggie! The blanket with sleeves, but it’s more than just a blanket with sleeves…” blahblahblah. For heaven’s sake, just put on more clothes! You’ll be warm, and you’ll be able to reach for your cup of coffee, or that tv remote, and you’ll be able to walk to the phone without tripping over the excess amount of blanket. “It’s oversized so it suits everyone in the family, just roll up the sleeves!” Yeah, right. I can see a 5 year old kid rolling up the sleeves on that thing… and probably fit right through the sleeves. Put on a jumper and wear some socks.

And straight after the daytime tv that is filled with infomercials is the mid-morning news. There was an article on it one day about a car crash – it had been smashed into two sections. Quite badly. According to the locals, “it looked like a warzone”. What on earth would they know about what a warzone looks like? Really? They’ve probably only seen the sanitised images we see on tv. It looked more like “a really bad car crash”.

And finally, I just saw advertising for Cottonelle for Kids, “With paw prints so kids know exactly how much to use”. I wanted to know a) how much are kids meant to use, and b) how did Kleenex know this was the right amount? I had a look on their site to find out.

From their FAQ page:

Each segment of paw-prints and Puppy is roughly 5 sheets long. Starting with a first paw print, the child should be instructed to follow the paw prints to the Puppy and then tear at the Puppy. This will provide roughly 5 sheets of toilet paper, an average amount for one wipe. A new segment of toilet paper should be taken for each subsequent wipe.

Ok, 5 sheets? I have questions.
How did they work out that 5 sheets was the right amount?
How many sheets is the right amount? 1? 3? 4? 5? 6?
Should you use the same amount of sheets for a number one, as for a number two?
Does the toilet paper teach the child to fold or scrunch?
Should you fold or scrunch?

I also found these two questions (and answers) on the FAQ…

Why is my toilet paper printed on the inside? How do I fix this?
The good news is that this is an easy fix – the toilet paper isn’t actually printed on the inside. What’s happened is that the two plies have become separated, and the inside ply is wrapped around the outside of your roll (you’ll probably also notice that the perforations on the two plies don’t line up). To fix, first make sure your toilet paper is positioned so that it unrolls from the spindle with the sheets coming over the top. Next, steady the roll so it does not move in the spindle. Take the top ply (make sure you are handling only one ply) and unwrap it behind the roll. The print should now appear on the outside, as intended, and the bottom ply should now be longer than the top ply. Tear off the excess bottom plies (approximately 3) and you are ready to go.

When I tear the toilet paper, the perforations on the two plies do not line up. How do I fix this?

The good news is that this is an easy fix – the perforations on the toilet paper aren’t actually misaligned. What’s happened is that the two plies have become separated, and the inside ply is wrapped around the outside of your roll (you’ll probably also notice that the printing looks faded, as if the toilet paper were printed on the inside). To fix, first make sure your toilet paper is positioned so that it unrolls from the spindle with the sheets coming over the top. Next, steady the roll so it does not move in the spindle. Take the top ply (make sure you are handling only one ply) and unwrap it behind the roll. The print should now appear on the outside and the perforations should now be aligned. The bottom ply should now be longer than the top ply. Tear off the excess bottom plies (approximately 3) and you are ready to go.

I never would have thought these kinds of questions would be asked so often. Is it me, or are people really so dumb as to not understand how to fix their toilet paper? Something that is used at least once a day…

And that leads me to the ever popular question: Over or under?
I say over for a few reasons.
That’s the way the print is (if you get printed paper) – if you hang it under, you are exposing the underside of the paper and, thus, not experiencing the full effect of the print that you often may have paid more money for.
And it makes it easier to get to – if you leave a bit hanging from the roll and it’s over, the paper is away from the wall by the remaining thickness of the roll – plenty of space to get your fingers behind the paper to grasp it easily. If it’s under, the paper is generally always a lot closer to the wall with very little space for you to grab it without touching your fingers against the wall.

Maybe I’m just especially picky.

And a final thing related to toilet paper – flushing the toilet, and should the seat be up or down?

There have been studies that show that you should flush the toilet with the lid down. This means that the seat will be down.

I hope you crash into a concrete fence one day, Bert. I saw you, tailgating me in your tow truck, with rego plate ” A TOW”, in a 60 zone, trying to go faster, then you tried to overtake on the left once the speed limit changed to 70. Then you were unable to stick to your own lane, causing me to have to use my car horn. Then you had to stop at the traffic lights. Ha! You’re a stupidhead.

oh noes! I just saw on a news update that they’re expecting a heatwave in london. of.. wait for it… a huge.. hot… devastatingly high… 32C…

diddums.

so, michael jackson died. it’s a shame. but for goodness sake, do we need -more- tv shows dedicated to it? I was watching Sunrise this morning, and they were talking about farrah fawcett and then the news about michael jackson broke.. and that was all they talked about for the rest of the morning. then all the channels had special extended editions of the news to cover the death. and now I’ve just seen an ad for a special tribute show tonight. enough already! the man is dead, get over it.