when i was a child i had a fleeting glimpse

Sometime on Saturday morning I had an idea for a post. I think it was something about those minuscule (minuscule for me, anyway) opportunities that suddenly appear and you think to yourself, "I could make something of this." These thoughts have been popping up more frequently in recent days...or months, or years.

But the original opportunity fled, leaving me with only the excerpt from Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb that appears as the post heading, and that song has been rattling around in my head ever since. I did get the guitar out to give it a burl yesterday. I need to look up all the verses again...

Over the weekend various other ways of interpreting the idea or carrying on this post occurred to me but without any means of recording them - I really need one of those little digital MP3 recorders at the ready - they also have been lost.

Much of how I view lost opportunities is, regrettably, bound up in things that I wish I could do but can't, for whatever reason. An example: later on Saturday I played a DVD of Jim Croce in concert. Oh for one scintilleenth of his ability to play, to write, to wring an emotional response from the listener.

But comparing yourself to others - even blogfriends whose writing ability far surpasses one's own - is a fruitlessly destructive exercise. Far better to appreciate others for what they can contribute, and look to one's own contribution.

Even if it's hard to identify.

Now, those readers who know me in real life, for example from work, will be rolling around the floor by this stage. Such soul-bearing, what amount of rubbish will I have to endure when I'm next in Brizvegas?

a short interval occurred at this point while we had dinner, watched the appallingly over-contrived Australian Top Gear and did some worky work

so...sometime later

Well I guess this is a post about frustration. The glimpses I, and presumably others, encounter when we see what might be possible if only we were cleverer/more articulate/ wealthier/had more business contacts/were considerably more energetic/diligent/focused.

Ah yes, we have looked into the mirror and weren't particularly enamoured with what looked back out at us.

The other thing - there's always another thing, isn't there - is that this post is turning out nowhere near like I had envisaged it at various times. This is presumably related to the aforementioned lack of focus, or possibly lack of the digital micro-recorder, for the recording of micro-thoughts. Lack of focus is bad.

Um. I don't think it does one good to do too much yearning. A little yearning seems necessary to keep mentally active: call it aspirational if you insist. But as long as tempus fugits, we must grasp our opportunities while we may.

I think you know what I mean.

this old house

Subject to finance, building and pest inspection, act of dog, fire and flood, further economic meltdown, anyone in the Federal Liberal Party able to rise above petty schoolground sniping and bullying (three yays for Ken Henry, I'm surprised he didn't actually get up and bite Abetz and Coonan), Chateau VVB has been sold.

We can confirm that the national/global/intergalactic crisis, be it financial, economic, political or some other species, had its effect on the offers received. In other words, folks, the real economy has been hit. There will be no new Maserati, nor even a Kia. I bought myself a new pair of shoes when last in Brisbane, they will have to do.

Look at the picture. Some of the feedback we got from inspections was that people hated the exposed brick, it was so dated, and they would need to cover it with either cement render or gyprock.

Hey, if you don't like exposed brick, look elsewhere.

Mrs VVB and I, and offspring no two, all loved it. Even the old man, the last of the red hot socialists, loved it even if it was a stinking pile of bourgeois pretension and not near the ocean (holy cow that man was a bundle of contradictions).

Anyway, subject to etc etc etc it will shortly become a part of our past.

Yes, it is kind of sad.

can the can

From here via Ampersand Duck, I give you a steaming great non-fermented vat of vvb idiocy.

house of cards

It's moments like these I wish I had more than two very small molecules of grey matter to rub together. One of my drinking mates from the weekend sent me a link to two pieces by one John Lanchester, whom I feel I should had heard of, but haven't. The pieces are to do with the collapse of the international financial house of cards and, tellingly, were written in January and October.

The October piece, not surprisingly, tracks the fall and fall of markets, mechanisms, and money over the intervening period. Not much of a fall in people is reported, though, apart from the thousands of unfortunates who were sold mortgages they could never afford. The bonuses were paid from taxpayer funds and were still humungous. The unfortunate borrowers? Caveat emptor, I hear you cry. Maybe so, except I suspect many of these people would not have been capable of understanding their situation: one minute they couldn't get a loan, now they could. Interest rate capped for two years. What could possibly go wrong?

The first article spends some time examining the lives of City of London bankers and as such contains quite a few bons mots:

"In an ideal world, one populated by vegetarians and Esperanto speakers..."

But mainly the articles serve to illustrate the immense sums of money - well, actually not money - sloshing around. It explains how the paper empires of derivatives are formed, packaged, on-sold and so on. The regulations that not so much allow as boost this vaporous creation. And, of course, the stupendous sums earned by bankers.

The second article, analysing as it does the more recent events in the financial world, edges towards looking into the future for what kind of policy and regulatory environment might eventuate, once all the proclamations of the death of capitalism/libertarianism/Friedmanism and so on die away.

Other than that, it’s too early to draw general conclusions from this amazing crisis. What will, what must, die is the mystical belief in the power of the markets that has dominated political and economic discourse in most of the Western world for the last several decades. The markets have so manifestly, so flagrantly malfunctioned that we can’t go back to the idea of unfettered liberal capitalism as a talisman, template or magic wand.

The unquestioned Cityphilia I wrote about earlier this year is gone, I hope for ever. Unfortunately, we have no current model of where to go from here, apart from a more heavily regulated form of growth-based liberal capitalism. There will be more intrusive regulation, more proactive interference. There may even be (there should be) a new Bretton Woods to control the global flow of capital. That doesn’t seem enough, but in the absence of another set of ideas about how the world should work, it may turn out to be what we have to settle for.

In the meantime, it’s seatbelt sign on, sickbag to hand, and that deep, bitter, prayerful longing for smooth air.

That seems a rather pessimistic approach, but that house of cards is so far removed from our ability to influence events it's kind of obvious that we should want to pull the pillow over our head until the noise stops.

The House of VVB has observed the power that was wielded by morally vacant but highly numerate 23 year old cocaine sniffing traders. That was before we discovered automatic trades, but the point remains that the world of financial finagling had grown cancerously unlike what was needed to get things built. For all the arguments raised about the value of hedging and leveraging and who knows what else ing, the thousands of arbitrageurs contributed nothing to the real economy.

As much as it kind of grates (don't forget this is a centrist blog, heh yeah well...), we do need the tools that facilitate the real world projects. As always, the issue is where we draw the line: this is useful, that is not.

Like I said, two small molecules.

i wish i was still drinking

Being a short account of the boys' weekend away. Every year at Sydney Motor Show time the three of us catch up and try to act like we're still 21.

We're not, but it's fun to try.

Anyway hanging out at the Sir George Young on George St with Kev, the bloke who balances a guitar on his forehead while strumming another one. We were a few beers into it by this stage, in fact it was our second visit there of the trip. I'd like to say that there's no limit to the quantity of grog one can put away but regrettably, as we age, there is. Don't know what time it was when we folded the tent but all three of us left half full schooners. There was just this moment when we looked at each other, all thinking the same thought at the same time: "can't do this any more."

Damn, and damn again.

The show itself is just an excuse but this year, even though there were far fewer exhibitors and all the brands you'd want to see, ie all the Europeans, weren't there we still spend a fair of time looking (and of course making sarcastic comments where warranted).

The best bits were probably the oldies on show for the next Shannons auction. A black Triumph TR3A with paintwork far in advance of any original even when new. One of us used to own one, so we know what they were like then.

A gorgeous E-type roadster: look at it, who wouldn't want to own one?

I got the opportunity to give the McIntosh stereo which is fitted to the premium versions of the Subaru Liberty a good work-out and can confirm that it is indeed excellent. Thank you Subaru people for leaving me alone while I tested the limits. Kick arse, I would venture, just the right amount of sound pressure levels from the sub-woofers, ie not ultra doof doof but just thumping enough. If we ever get rid of Chateau VVB and there's enough money in the kick we might even be able to stretch to one, maybe 2-3 years old.

The weekend started...well for me it actually started on Thursday night at an awards dinner I attended, then a few beer o'clock coldies with friends on Friday evening which morphed into sharing a bottle of red and some pizza with offspring no 2, a necessary prerequisite to enable me to sleep on a mattress on the floor at her place. Also to dull the after-effects of over an hour and half of dental work that had been done earlier.

Early-ish flight from Brisbane to Sydney but offspring no 2 kindly took me to the airport. So when I hit the hotel room about midday on Saturday, one of the fellers had thoughtfully brought a six-pack (well actually a five pack) of Reschs Pilsener stubbies, got his 12-string Aria out and awaaaay we went. Thence to the Sir George Young for the first of our visits and that brings us back to where we started.

Tell you what: I don't miss big cities. I had one night in a hotel in Brisbane, it had a small balcony which I went out onto in the early morning and there was that city drumbeat: construction noise, traffic noise, just building noise, that incessant hum well it's more than a hum, dunno what you'd call it. But it's always there, no wonder people in big cities go a little rat-in-a-maze crazy.

Anyway that's the story. Now time to catch up on a little sleep before the working week. Ciao for niao.

bathe in entrails

As Kocccchie and mates unload a series of contradictory stories meant to reassure, inform, or terrify us, I decided to retreat to the study to ponder the entrails. I quickly - well, relatively quickly - realised that Koccccccccchie's show couldn't do all three simultaneously. OK, so it was just entertainment, doled up in spades by some weird Pom in classic 1980s banker attire of braces and media-friendly tie. I wish I had some of the drugs he was evidently on and for the first time I regretted that VVB-by-the-sea had at last scaled beyond the 51cm television: this bloke (and his fantastic teeth) seemed likely to explode through the screen and eat the sofa on which I was sitting.

Fortunately, the calm, reassuringly wonkish persona of the PM appeared. However, rather than the usual backdrop of a Parliament House study with sombre, leather-tooled law books and a dozen Australian flags, he was back cast (technical term should be ?) against Parliament House itself. But the camera was pointing slightly up at him which, combined with close-up and his unnaturally large head, made him look like some scary sky-daddy looking down on his subjects and lecturing them about very bad things.

Well maybe he was, but it looked extremely bizarre and made me very glad I hadn't got into the pharmaceutical cabinet in advance. Not that I do that any more, of course...

Anyway, back to the entrails. The first entrails were of one George W Bush, but they include other interesting entrails - the Washington Consensus, known to its close supporters as TINA.

But it looks like there was an alternative after all:

We should have invested more in infrastructure, tightened regulation of the securities markets, and taken additional steps to promote energy conservation. We fell short because of politics and lack of money—and also, frankly, because special interests sometimes shaped the agenda more than they should have.

And the sentence that comes before those:

The global-trade agreements we pushed through were often unfair to developing
countries.

No shit, Sherlock, as they say. The argument in favour: governments get elected to pursue the national interest. The response: even when it's wrong.

As many as 1.7 million Americans are expected to lose their homes in the months
ahead. For many, this will mean the beginning of a downward spiral into poverty.

and...

Globalization means that America’s economy and the rest of the world have become increasingly interwoven. Consider those bad American mortgages. As families default, the owners of the mortgages find themselves holding worthless pieces of paper. The originators of these problem mortgages had already sold them to others, who packaged them, in a non-transparent way, with other assets, and passed them on once again to unidentified others.

When the problems became apparent, global financial markets faced real tremors: it was discovered that billions in bad mortgages were hidden in portfolios in Europe, China, and Australia, and even in star American investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns. Indonesia and other developing countries—innocent bystanders, really—suffered as global risk premiums soared, and investors pulled money out of these emerging markets, looking for safer havens. It will take years to sort out this mess.

The article is (sort of predictably) by former IMF Director Joseph Stiglitz, but it's a nice way to reinforce your beliefs if Joseph's are the sort of beliefs you believe in.

Oh, dinner.

Entrails, I imagine.

(sometime later...)

Well I should be working - I did bring work home - but then I got back to the entrails and the next ones that popped up, if that's indeed what entrails do, were these. Yes, we read that the next generation will the first to suffer a reduced standard of living. This article seems to argue, from a very small sample, that it won't be such a bad thing and anyway no-one will care too much.

That's a rather brave generalisation I think. If America has stopped investing in R&D, as per the earlier linked article, then where will the next i-Pod come from because all the youngies seem to want their i-Pod and similar toys. More to the point, what will be the next invention to have pod in its name (have you noticed how pods are everywhere now)?

Brought up to expect a higher standard of living - actually, I'm not sure what my parents brought me up to expect, now I come to think of it - and then caught up in the consumerist craze of the 80s and since, VVB has been busily acquiring things for a while now. But we still don't have nearly as many things as many other ostensibly similar households and we certainly don't take the overseas and expensive domestic holidays that other people do.

I wish we had some money in the bank so that the PM could come around and personally reassure us that it's safe, but shit, all we have is debt and superannuation.

Like a lot of others.

Call it a low-grade drug habit.

every picture tells a story

I don't know why I bother trying to write my semi-uninformed drivel when other people can do so much better with a couple of pencil strokes. A picture is worth, and so on and so on.

As always, Tatsuya Ishida wraps it up at Sinfest, this time the rush to 'socialism' as governments buy up banks, guarantee savings, the whole until-very-recently entirely discredited kit and kaboodle:

the music goes round and round (*)

Around the newspapers today.

The SMH carries this article about political polarisation in the US. When you have participants in rallies apparently calling out for the other candidate to be assassinated, and it doesn't seem like a joke or heat-of-the-moment stuff, that's pretty scary. And not only is the real, suburban, world increasingly partitioned, but the media both mainstream and alternate. Admission: I don't visit blogs I find to be extreme, although I'll trawl some those whose views I don't share. But my living in a self-imposed cocoon isn't good.

Update: It's worse than I thought. Nothing like a mix of ignorance and arrogance to bring forth the worst in human nature. Whay aren't these people at work, one might ask (listen to first clip). Courtesy of Club Troppo.

Irwin Stelzer in today's Courier Mail more than hints that we are moving into a protectionist era. He's sad about this, naturally, but he employs the same glib dismissal of real impacts that I used to read from (Australian) Treasury in the early 1990s, about the same time as Michael Pusey identified the cult of eco-rationalism.

"Defenders of free trade...have failed to develop a defence of the way free trade's benefits have been distributed."

Plasma TVs and cheap t-shirts, is my glib interpretation of Stelzer's answer.

Which he then follows by "Meanwhile, globalisation has increased the opportunities for members of the managerial class: they can spread their talents over larger enterprises. Result: Rising inequality, with trade the apparent villain."

I wonder who the real villain is? When the ratio of American CEO salaries to average weekly incomes has gone up by some phenomenal extent (read it last night, can't find it now, google not helping, must have wrong search terms), I assume the real villains are in hiding.

And, btw, doesn't Pusey still cop it?

Let's be slightly serious for a tick: we have been hearing non-stop for some decades that markets are the answer and anybody who now is seeking to qualify, in any way, what they have been saying over that period is really indulging in a little revisionism. And yes, markets were the answer to a period where structural rigidities in various areas including trade and labour relations indeed stifled growth. So we got real growth, far larger than during the 'long boom' after WW2.


Then, inevitably, some of the unintended (yes, I'm being charitable) consequences started to rear their heads including a widening gap of income. The answer, equally inevitably, has been: reform. Code for: more of the same.


You know that definition of stupidity? The one about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome?

Hmmm.

Finally, the Courier Mail's Paul Syvret relates a letter to the editor from an unrelated paper which in essence blames the prolonged drought - which we didn't use to have when t'writer were a lad - on less moisture in the atmosphere because of one more hour of daylight due to - you guessed it - daylight saving. As Syvret says, "How can you argue with logic like that?"

Enjoy your weekend. I have to go and give the TV a work-out, it's Bathurst weekend. Haven't been there since 1974 but I read about a bloke who's been there annually for 40 years. That's dedication.

(*) In this case, it's the music of the V8!

songs from the south

I ran across an excellent blog - here it is, this is truly brilliant storytelling - and wanted to add it to the blogroll. Except in this new format, when I went to the html template I couldn't find the list of blogs I had laboriously typed in for the previous template.

Apparently they are now contained in a widget. I went to blogger help, I'm not a real man because I actually looked in the manual! I found this:

Widget content is contained in "includable" sections, which have this format: [insert whatever content you want here]
The attributes are as follows:
id: (Required) A unique identifier made up of letters and numbers.
var: (Optional) An identifier made up of letters and numbers, for
referencing data within this section. (See the data section below.)
Each widget must have one includable with id='main'. This will usually contain most or all of the content that will display for this widget, and in many cases it will be all you need.If you make more includables with different IDs, they will not be displayed automatically. However, if you make an includable with id='new', then you can reference it in your main includable with and it will display that way.

and

The 'identifier' part can be any name you choose, and will be used to stand in for each new item in the list, each time through the loop. A common convention is to simply call this "i". The set of data you specify for the values can be any piece of data described in the data tags article as being a list of items. For instance, in the blog posts widget, posts is a list. Code like the following will loop through each post, printing out the title for each one, with header tags around it.

Notice how "i" takes on the value of each post in turn, so you can get the title from
each one.

I hadn't noticed, but then again the entire global financial system is crashing down just outside my window, so arguably I could be excused.

And that's why Laurie is not in the sidebar blogroll. Nor will anyone else ever be, nor will the current list ever be amended.

Oh, and I found Laurie via here (Sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy), another one of those islands of amazing complexity you find in the 'sphere.

Update: Yes he is. Now. I figured it out. Blogger had made it simpler. I was looking for love in all the wrong places.

Comme d'habitude.

something stupid

In a world turned crazy, there's little that can raise eyebrows. Except mine got raised a couple of centimetres today - twice in fact.

The world's leading economic commentator told us on the world's most authoritative TV program that computers, rather than 23-year old cocaine-addicted screen jockeys, manipulate these enormous flows of international capital. Seriously, no wonder we are in such an (emerging) pickle. Pre-set algorithms, sell, buy, fuck 'em right off. How bloody insane is that? Oh sorry, cost of labour, 23 year old screen jockeys cost maximillions more than computers and only do the same job.

We don't need a Rubin tax, we need legislated common sense and capital punishment for deviation.

Second, Scottish schools go into public-private partnerships with consortia that borrow from Icelandic banks. If ever you needed a single example of why simple State-funded debt is not a better and undoubtedly cheaper (by the time everyone takes their cut and shifts the risk on) of raising finance for public infrastructure, then this is it. Ever since 1989 the world has gone into an intellectual void, no one even remarks that the "peace dividend" hasn't passed anyone's lips since 1991, everyone's been too busy "leveraging" everybody else while simultaneously "going forward." Now they're "rolling out" programmes, with two ems and and a superfluous e, everywhere you look.

Shit, that's enough, it's Friday for fuck's sake.

sweet blindness*

I came home from work just thinking that I needed to write something, anything, and then Kevin-oh-seven and ten months pops up on 7.30 Report. I listened for about 30 seconds and then went off to do the dishes. I am so over politicians dodging the questions or responding with "Now Kerry, what I need to tell you.." and so on. According to today's Crikey (subscription only and -disclosure - I'm currently on a freebie) it's called conversational blindness:

Rating political performance. I have a new way of putting interest into those
essentially dull and boring presidential television debates since reading the work of two American academics called Conversational Blindness: Answering the Wrong Question the Right Way. What Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton from Harvard set out to discover is how politicians get away with not answering questions when appearing on television. What happens, they wondered, when people try to "dodge" a question they would rather not answer by answering a different question? They conducted two experiments demonstrated this conversational
blindness - listeners' surprising failure to notice such dodges – and explored the interpersonal consequences of this phenomenon.

They found that listeners viewed successful question-dodgers as positively as speakers who actually answered the question they are asked, but were not blind to all efforts to dodge: They both noticed – and punished – particularly egregious attempts. More troublingly, listeners preferred speakers who answered the wrong question well over those who answered the right question poorly.

I think it is one of those research papers that everyone interested in politics
should read for it helps those of us who hate politicians dodging the hard
questions from getting angry. Instead you can marvel, like I did yesterday, at
the skill with which Barack Obama employs to take advantage of conversational
blindness. That man has to be one of the best ever at sounding great while
saying absolutely nothing.

Well it may pass other people by but it gets right up my throat. On the other hand I had by this time already remarked to Mrs VVB that Red Kez was giving Kevin a much harder time than John (spit) Howard ever got until the dying months of his reign, and maybe it was time for the ABC Board to be purged of its ultra-conservative stackees.

Then I came back from the kitchen sink to hear Kerry asking about housing affordability and whether house prices will come down and the PM got visibly hot under the collar. Now we never saw this in Howard until close to the end so I have to say it wasn't a good look, but on the other hand it accompanied some straighter responses, in more everyday language, than the PM usually seems capable of managing. Even had a "you betcha" in there, he's obviously been into the reporting about Sarah Palin.

He really needs to dumb down the language just a smidgin though, even on the ABC.

So does

Miz Pants's observation hold? Well, it came before Christmas - in fact it's been coming for a while - but I'm not scorned, just a bit disappointed. But not all out of hope.

And of course, you just have to keep remembering the alternative.

And while I'm here, I guess, a couple of observations on the global financial crisis, about to become a global real economy crisis.

First, and I don't think I ever mentioned it here, America's debt overhang with China has been possibly the major structural imbalance that could not be sustained, regardless of any other factors that have contributed to us beingf where we are ("us" being the world, in this case, ie a very broad us).

And second, regardless of coordinated or individual action taken by governments or up-until-very-recently 'independent' central/reserve banks, the actual action is still in the hands of 23 year old screen jockeys with a very narrow mandate for action and absolutely no understanding, or more importantly duty of care, about the wider societal implications of their actions. That is very wrong and that is why we need regulation.

And an end to neoclassical economic responses to absolutely any and every situation, btw :-)

But it's also why jokes like this are so good at this time:

"What's the difference between a Wall Street banker and a pigeon?"

"A pigeon can still leave a deposit on a BMW."

Boom boom. And no BMWs at this year's Sydney Motor Show, where I'll be next week for the annual three amigos reunion.

On a more domestic note, it's raining, Whacko!

(*) Someone called Laura Nyro, it seems.

natural born woman party

As VVB has more or less disintegrated into a weekly, I was scratching around for something of interest. Something I thought I had noticed over recent weeks and months was that some blogs which I had previously thought either apolitical or only mildly 'conservative' in outlook had seemingly gone ferally rightwards. Australian blogs that barely seemed to mention politics have gone stratospherically supportive of Sarah Palin. Maybe because the liberal/left blogs have gone for her throat?

Then today this comment appeared this arvo at Larvatus Prodeo, about an apparent lowering of the volume at the 'leftist' blogs, because the 'enemy' (John Howard, doncha know) has gone.

There's something to it I think but I always struggle with perception vs reality. The easy way would be to leave a comment and check, but as a lifelong wuss who had regrettably had more aggro in recent months than he cares to think about (not here, another part of my life), I just honestly don't feel up to it. Even though I would hope that an evenly-worded, non-judgemental inquiry should elicit a fair and honest answer.

If it's true, what has brought it on? With the predictable result in WA, the short 'halcyon' period of coast-to-coast Labor governments has come to an undistinguished end. Do the supporters of the 'natural party of government' theory feel so wronged during those periods when the 'natural party' is not in power?

And other questions, such as do they not realise that have any party in power for a long time is a Bad Thing?

At times like this I'm glad that VVB has no academic pretensions beyond its proprietor's meagre intelligence and is simply free to ask the stupid questions.

on the road again

Have just done the Capricorn Coast to Brisbane and return road trip thing. Chateau VVB was up for auction on Saturday, someone needed to be there (so it seemed, anyway). Left after work on Friday, a bit of a bugger really as I'd been in Gladstone anyway, but had to bring a work colleague back and then swap the office car for the yellow Saabmarine, as offspring no 2 calls it. So an extra 280 km or so just for fun.

It being a late departure after a full day, and a few full days before that, I didn't feel up to going all the way (I'd be in Adelaide if I did that, ha ha) so stopped in Maryborough. Still arrived late, after reception had been closed a while, they left the key under the doormat. Cute. I had a small bottle of vino collapso from the well stocked bar and hit the sack.

Awoke early, before reception was operational so I left the cash for the vino on the table, put the key back under the mat and hit the frog and toad.

It was just on 6, the sun was up and it was brilliantly clear. I came out of the 60 km town limit but saw a car coming up over my right shoulder on the Bruce Highway at the 100km mark. Thought briefly, not so good as I wasn't utterly awake but then floored it and pulled out in front of him. Turned up the radio, it was Bob Seger with Hollywood Nights which is a great driving song, so I cranked it up further and awaaaay we went. Life is just extra grouse sometimes, you can't foresee it. The early morning sun on the canefields, the green hills in the background, the open road...ah yup, I was extremely alert and it was all good.

The auction was a damp squib, no registered bidders although the agents (cough spit) had led me to believe we had at least one. So Chateau VVB is still for sale. Amazingly, the original architect turned up to have a look and may in fact be interested in putting in a bid. Had a yarn to him about what we had liked or not about the place. He hadn't seen it since about 1976.

Took it much easier coming home as I knew there would be police everywhere. There were. Just as well I wasn't driving one of these. You'll enjoy Jeremy's take on modern Britain, there are lots of things he doesn't like about modern life, eh?

simply the best

It would be highly inappropriate for a little blog that's been drifting closer to the centre since the departure of the littlest liar to make any comment about the death of capitalism.

So we won't, although you might want to follow that thread for a while if you're interested.

But we were mightily taken by a pronouncement we read over the weekend about Australia's "world-class" system of financial regulation, leading to a reassurance that because we were "word-class", Australians had little to fear for the future of their savings and investments.

Being "world-class" is important in Australia. We could debate until the cows returned to whence they came whether it's because we have been so far away from Europe, or some innate convict-mentality writ large, or whatever, but it's always important to be "world-class". I guess I've written the phrase more than once in my work roles over the last decade or so.

Its derivation aside, the phrase does indicate a recognition that effort needs to be put into regulatory structures, or indeed whatever, if we are to compete.

But it struck me as passing strange that at a time when the regulatory mechanisms of the acknowledged world leaders in finance were shown to be somewhat lacking in nearly every respect, that someone would still want to compare us with them, as if this was a good thing.

"We're different, we're better" might have had more clout. Waddaya think?

diamonds are a girl's etc

Etc indeed.

I dunno how much spare time you have to do your blogcrawling, maybe you have the 'ole RSS going so you it that way, maybe you subscribe (?) to delicious and all that stuff, whatever it does.

But you have to visit VVB-the-the-sea to get your Sinfest interpretation of the Wall St meltdown and I can assure you, it's very different to what Commmmmmsec or Kocccchie or Terry McCrann will be telling you, let alone what rubbish Kev'n Mal might decide to spruik, whether bipartisanly or in violent opposition.






There...doesn't that feel better?

Multiple blogger failures yesterday. I had a really nice cheap shot that comprised extract from a letter to the Editor of the Age in which someone, probably a City trader, in the UK seemed to rail against people railing at the financial meltdown (you still with me?), saying just to leave it to the experts, along with a story from Friday's AFR in which a young Sydney trader, over a beer on Thursday night as the financial world imploded, noted that some of his firm's clients had lost a lot of money ("there was blood") but the firm itself had done outstanding business, "best for months" in fact. Wonderful.

So that was the cheap shot. It's because of highly numerate but utterly amoral people - a phrase I've used several times this year, you'll note - that much of what has happened, has happened.

Along with a whole bunch of people with a deep-seated, but irrational, belief in one particular answer to all the world's problems.

I'll leave you to guess what it is, thus avoiding yet another cheap shot.

For something more substantial on financial stuff, I recommend today's Peter Martin.

And for something more substantial again, I give you the JM Toys white metal 1/43 scale model of the Austin A99. The A99, which took the A95's mechanicals and wrapped them in bodywork by Pinin Farina, was a hulking great lump of a thing yet spectacularly well proportioned. A car for the upper middle class who couldn't afford a Daimler.

Hmm, LStg79. What's the current exchange rate? Looks like it's going to cost me $185 plus postage. Might wait awhile.

rarities

I can see where this is going to lead...



No, more obscure videos, you mofos.

underneath the radar

Underneath the radar...that's where Canada mostly flies. We have views of Canada, probably not very well formed: they're mostly like us, they don't like being mistaken for Americans but they have a dependence on their large neighbour as their biggest market. They're pretty much small-l liberal in the views, it's a stable place.

The Canucks I've known while overseas were all good company, particularly because they shared the Aussie fondness for beer (although one older couple were indeed quite conservative and refined, stangely enough they tolerated my crudities and occasional excess enthusiasm). One bloke from Newfoundland exhibited all the extreme behaviourial traits that often distinguish people from remote areas.

So this Slate article, via Bookforum, came as a bit of a shock. Some of this news had penetrated the mainstream media here, but only on rare occasions...it's not a narrative. Hmm, well.

But some of the similarities to Australia are disturbing. The global financial shockwaves seem only to be one element of some kind of widespread unravelling of what we thought to be certainties, or at least solid long term trends.

Canada will bear some watching, I think, over the next few years and may provide some insights into our own little corner.

the times they are

You'll love this here.

No more words nee

Oh all right, it's the best take on the Murkkn election that you'll see for a long time (or the longest time, I believe it is also said).

Courtesy of a commenter at the inimitable Gorilla Bananas.

houses of the holy

In the (well, relatively new) tradition of VVB bringing you blogs you most likely haven't got around to discovering yet, I bring you sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy.

I really wish I understood a lot more of this interwebbby stuff, but the latest post there mixes current affairs commentary with popular music references, rather like a blog not too far from around here which modesty forbids us from mentioning by name.

And I can relate to that, as indeed I can to one comment on the latest post:

Disco Inferno! Can you think of another British indie band from the last 20 years whose music could seriously be used to frame a discussion of this sort? DI have been effectively rescued from critical obscurity over the last few years but it still seems like few people grasp their true import. The fact that those legendary five EPs remain out of print is a crime.

Anyway for those of youse who are interested in the don't mention the sub-prime word current market meltdown, have given up worrying about your disappearing super, don't get apocalytically angry about how the rich/captains of industry types seem to escape from all of this unscathed apart from a yacht or two and just want to get an alternative perspective, I think that SDMYABT might just meet a need. Just look at the blogroll: months of new fun.

Enjoy, as they say.

money (*)

I seem to remember banging on some months ago about the structural weaknesses engendered by unregulated financial flows and the risks associated with the unfettered growth in complex financial instruments that no-one but their creators could understand. And the additional risks because the creators had no interests beyond their carefully constructed mechanisms.

Now it's all unravelling, there'll be the inevitable overcorrection in levels and types of regulation and we'll all be back at square 1-n.

Around these parts, the one thing that Mrs VVB and I always agree on is that you need someone to blame. Looks like we're not Robinson Crusoes.

Rather than fail at matching the bucketloads of analysis and similar codswallop elsewhere, VVB is pleased to bring you Harry Hutton and his friends' take on it all:

Not a bad idea to fatten yourself up before the second Great Depression starts. I never understood what was great about the first one.

Enjoy.

(*) And we also mourn the passing of Richard Wright. What would all we 60s and 70s tragics do at parties without someone to crank out Wish you were here? Or at those parties where the punters never left the 60s, See Emily Play, Interstellar Overdrive and Careful with that axe, Eugene.

silvery moon

That bright dot you can just see in the background is a new rising star for the Liberal Party. Oh all right, it's a moon then. Think of it as a metaphor. It's going to shine light over all it surveys. But being a moon, it'll be reflected light, yes?

So whose light will it reflect?

I really think it's hard to see Malcolm Turnbull as a stalking horse for any others in the Libs: he is his own man (quite apart from all the other things he owns, yeah cheap shot). To all appearances he is ideologically distant from the current eminences grises (extremely grise in the case of Nick Minchin) so how is he going to keep them down on the farm happy? Yeah sorry, it's the other lot who are down on the farm.

I had accumulated a whole truckload of snarks for a post tonight, but spending a couple of hours thinking about distributing responsibilities for the big bits ("deliverables", yuk yuk) of the business plan amongst the willing team has torn my poor ole brain to shreds.

John McCain said something diabolically funny, might have been about the US economy. But I think Kevin Rudd said exactly the same thing about the Australian economy today too.

The view of the moon of course comes to you direct from the viewing balcony here at VVB-by-the-sea. Which I might call VVBC in future. Hilarious, isn't it. My neck hurts, too much typing at an inappropriate desk - goodnight.

another side

Well I snarked about the amount of attention being paid to the Sarah Palin phenomenon by Aussie blogs, but I'll definitely now have to eat that particular piece of humble pie flavoured hat.

On the other hand, I bet there aren't too many Aussie blogs bringing you the Sinfest strip version.

Oh, it is to enjoy, nicht war? And I recommend you visit Sinfest regularly - it's outrageously good.

diamond head

A little light entertainment from one of my fave bands ever (more popularly spelt 'evah', I am led to believe): 801, featuring Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera who were also a major part of Roxy Music.

Enjoy:



Knew you would.

even in the quietest moments

I can't recall reading much other comment on the role of credit ratings agencies - apart from breathless reporting of their "warnings" and "announcements" in the mainstream press - than at Possum and here. The link is, to my recollection, the first questioning in the MSM of their modus operandi, role and impact on things.

So it's kind of reassuring to learn that other people are asking the very simple questions that should have been asked yonks ago. The agencies subscribe - at least in public - to the usual 'neoclassical' (you have to be so careful with labels and descriptions) economics: lower public debt, big surpluses in any circumstances, tiny spending on any program that smells of 'social' and even of supposedly desirable expenditure such as hard infrastructure (very blokey, isn't it?). Yet at the same time as they hold themselves up as 'independent', so that governments can point to them and say to the punters "look, we told you, we have to do what these people say", they fall prey to the usual, inbuilt weakness of the market system: if you pay enough, you can get what you want, although the broader outcomes will be decidedly suboptimal.

Surely their role and influence will have to change as this information becomes more widely understood. Too much to hope for? How would you do it? Yes, start up a competitor, a genuine one. Won't help the punters who want governments to spend, though. Unless you could start a triple bottom line ratings agency? Look, I've discovered a market niche!

Meanwhile, without additional commentary from me, one person's reflection on 9 September 2001, popularly known as 9/11.

Then before you can move on, you catch the title and first few lines of his previous post and you just have to read it. AA Gill and co, eat your collective hearts out.

the rascals

Not just Mr Brown. Add Bush, Benanke, Cheney and all those other manipulaters from treasuries around the world who are colluding with rascals from the futures, oil, gold and currency markets!

Could Barclays really not wait a bit longer for their £10 million?

Indeed... a measly ten mill. Why on earth not? What apack of rascals!

Also, what Alistair in Turkmenstan said.

nevermind

So it's a Friday night and after watching a bit of the footy I thought I'd turn the new bigscreen over to Mrs VVB so she can watch whatever it is she watches and I'd come and look at a few blogs. As if this was different to...oh yeah.

Anyway, the 'sphere is alive to the celebration or condemnation, depending on your point of view, of Peter Costello and Sarah Palin. Just remind me, where do we live again?

So, Costello it is, then. Yawn. The AFR today does a fairly respectable deconstruction/ demolition of the Liberal Party "World's Greatest Treasurer" myth. At last, but what a pity it wasn't in the Telegraph. Maybe it was, but buggered if I'm going to go looking.

As for the "will he or won't he" for leader of the Libs: yawn. A confected media light breeze in a thimble. The only thing that gets me going - and no surprises here - is this thing about what a great leader he would have been. A brilliant Parliamentary performer. Well yes, exceptionally good with the snide, the sarcasm, the outrage, the put-down. Just what a nation wants in a PM. Look how useful and relevant to the job in hand the voting public thought those same qualities (only more erudite!) were in Keating. The great unwashed voting public actually do want a broader list of abilities in a PM. Most of them in fact don't watch Question Time. Amazing. Does the paid commentariat not realise this?

Answers on the back of a piece of paper that's been in Ian McLachlan's wallet to Liberal Party HQ, behind the bike sheds, Tuesday after school. And where's that other Costello fellow?

So instead I started fiddling about with the colours on the VVB template, then I started fiddling about with the new (well, new-ish) tools that Blogger has added and before you could say "eejit" I'd lost my old template.

Hence this new look. I think I quite like it, I'd be interested in any views. For those of you who really don't have a life :-)

The picture? That's the paternal grandfather sometime after he emigrated to Australia from Poland, so early 1900s. What a fine fellow he looks, although the stories seemed to indicate something different. Only met him once, I was about 4 or 5.

On which note, it's about time to check the footy scores.

A toute a l'heure.

Oh yeah, the picture. It's Afghanistan. Apparently everyone's going to send more troops to defeat the Taliban/al Qaida/"bad guys" there. I'd really be thinking hard about this, at least as long as the words complete victory figure in the political speeches that presage such actions. The politicians, and we've got 'em in Labor ranks, who make these statements really ought to go and read some history. Yes, times have changed, weaponry and technology is on our side (except for what can be bought on the black market etc etc) but it's a formidable field of battle. Just think twice, then a few more times.

what shall we do with a drunken sailor?

I shouldn't be, but yet I always am, amazed by the inconsistencies that the media, pundits, opinionistas (and opinionistos, I s'pose) exhibit in their attempts to get the rest of us to see things their way.

Today's example is the editorial in the AFR, not on line free. It's about the rotten state of the State of NSW and why it's important to the economic well-being of the rest of the country that NSW get back on its feet. Quite rightly, it focuses on the varied misdeeds of the Carr and Iemma governments and the Labor political machine behind them that is, to all intents and purposes, the actual government. Quite rightly again, it then goes on to argue that the entanglement of half-arsed political jockeys is not necessarily a sustainable basis for good governance, and so on and so on.

Then it decries the fact that NSW hasn't competed for investment, jobs and so on. Now if NSW, rather like some other States we could name, started throwing incentives around like a...oh, I dunno, a drunken sailor...how do you reckon the comments would go? Misuse of taxes, distortion of investment into optimal sectors, crowding out of private investment, and so on and so forth. You can just see it, can't you?

Well? What makes the current environment so different? NSW actually had an agreement with Victoria and SA that they wouldn't compete for investment: after all, the Productivity Commission produces a boilerplate text book each year lambasting precisely this practice. Should be a Good Thing, then, eh?

Because of course part of the structural reason that NSW is in its $1b black hole is that it hasn't privatised its electricity industry, according to the usual neoclassical economics rule book. So Standard and Poors, the people from whom you could until recently buy an investment rating in return for a quick sniff of your sister's underpants, is going to downgrade NSW to AA+? Smells a bit like two bob each way to me, to carry the olfactory metaphor a bridge entirely too far.

Not only that, but this whole story omits the role of the recent federal government, whose leader moved most of the functions of national government from the national capital, where most countries locate theirs, to Sydney, and spent no little effort building up Sydney as Australia's only global city, unquote, financial capital, unquote, and so on. So why would the State government throw money at attracting investment when the Commonwealth (and I do love that word) is doing it perfectly well on its behalf, I ask you?

Finally, is it not truly amazing that, with only a little effort, the blame for any bad thing that has happened anywhere around these realms since the year dot can be ascribed to John Howard? I mean, it's perfectly freaky.

So it must be true.

baby you can drive my car part CMXIV and a half

It's been aeons since a cars-I-have-owned post. So here's another one.

I've had several cars that classified as most unreliable car in the world, a 1976 VW Passat was certainly right up there. It was about 10 years old when I acquired it and it had been subjected to ten years of Burmese mechanicking, which meant that (a) it always got going again but (b) the niceties of the workshop manual would have been honoured only in their absence.

It actually went very well when it was going and did make it up to Mandalay and Maymyo with the whole fambly aboard without mechanical mishap, although I recall we did have a small accident coming back to Rangoon. Sharing a narrow, potholed road with buffalos, ox-carts and sundry other natural wonders made for interesting drives, the like of which we really don't get here in godzone.

It was customary in Rangoon to have domestic staff to help around the house, as much a way of getting some money into the community as to actually help although the houses tended to need a lot of care and maintenance anyway.

We did have a driver for a while and when he left we got a young bloke who seemed too good to be true. Indeed. He had great English and a facility with all sorts of things so, even given the unique nature of the economy under the Burmese Way to Socialism, it seemed odd that he was just a driver for a foreigner.

Anyway the car was so unreliable that he eventually gave that as his reason for leaving us and we really had no reason not to believe him.

semi charmed life

All right, the ennui lasted a day, as it always does, and because I can't be arsed preparing for a workshop tomorrow I thought I'd do a little light skimming.

Just as the fascination of golf is one good shot in a round (*), I just love articles wherein one sentence makes the whole thing jump. Such as:

Footnotes and pages are studded with semiotic -- or, more properly, semi-idiotic -- insights from Foucault, Derrida and like-minded obfuscators.

(*) Unless you can actually play, of course.

kraftwerk

The Business Review Weekly carries an interesting article about how de-industrialisation in some developed countries, Oz included, has led to the 'financialisation' of the economy which is now out of balance because so much wealth, and dependent economic activity, is tied up in residential and commercial property. We make money by selling it to each other. Taking in each other's real washing, so to speak.

Whenever I read arguments against support - of any kind - for manufacturing, I'll now think of this.

It may be economic illiteracy on my part but if as a country we can't make things, we're doomed.

Yes, clever financial people can devise ways of financing things that might not ever get done otherwise. It's a skill and it requires intelligence and effort. Public-private partnerships and so on.

But you still need to make things, because eventually we'll have nothing.

Actually not only doomed, but stupid.

more

So they interviewed this bloke on TV tonight about the fireworks and he said they were "awesome". Then they interviewed this other bloke and he said that they'd put on a free breakfast this morning after the fireworks the night before and the breakfast was "awesome". They showed a picture of the breakfast and it was sausages and eggs and stuff. So all in all I reckon that the description of it being awesome was pretty much spot on.

All this awe about. I'm lost for words.

You know, I skim through the excerpts on OzPolitics but I find myself opening fewer and fewer posts. The intro lines on some would put you right off - hey, no prejudices being jumped to around here, folks (as if...) - and for some all you need is the title.

The gloss appears to have worn off Kevin07 even amongst the true believers, some cling to hope, some detect a deeper strategic vision and it'll all be OK in the long run. Those who never believed are ramping up the snarking. There's academic and semi-academic analysis by the truckload, but somehow I feel that there's a bit more real life outside this new study in Villa VVB that needs to be attended to.

Actually it's not really a villa because it doesn't have a wall around it - that's what's missing. I'll get on to it one of these years.

So I predict a year or so of blogennui as the first Rudd Ministry continues to learn the ropes - and boy, do some of them need to - while we watch the international economy either get itself back into balance or continue to slowly unravel.

Of course so much depends on the US and while I'm not such a political tragic to expend acres of space on analysing the Presidential election (you'd swear we really were the 52nd state by the depths some local blogs get into) the fact remains that the scale and nature of the US's economic relationships with the rest of the world are key to our own economic health. That debt, man, all that debt. All those arcane financial instruments, who's got their hand on the levers? Who's looking at the screens?

Enough of the conspiracy, this is just a cheap stream-of-consciousness substitute way of saying that unless VVB finds something else interesting to write about (and I know I haven't finished all the car stories) we're going to sink into what I did on my holidays.

Except I haven't had any for a really long time and none on the horizon except the annual boys' weekend away at the Sydney Motor Show.

Look out.

horse house with no name

It must be the calming influences of those sea views, but the urge to whinge seems to have totally departed. I mean, you never got considered analysis around these parts so spiteful whingeing seemed just so...I dunno...adequate.

VVB-by-the-sea (I must come up with a shorter and more atmospheric name) at last entered the final bit of the 20th century today by acquiring a large, well large-ish, flat panel TV. It's great, I could almost watch for...minutes.

We did. We watched Riverfire. It was...oh, I dunno, how about awesome? Awesomeness seems to spring up around one nowadays.

We were particularly taken with the Victorian lady who was interviewed. She had come from Victoria to see the fireworks. It gets you wondering, really it does. Don't they have fireworks in Victoria? I mean, back in the gold rush the place was seething with Chinese people - Chinamen in fact. Surely some of them stayed on to become fireworks technicians?

Anyway it was awesome - well the first and last 2 minutes were, the middle 19 were extremely ho-hum. As one might have predicted.

And all the buildings with lights ablaze! What a wonderful night for the electricity generators. Just an awesome way to use some non-renewable resources.

Also, Channel 7's commentary was awesome.

Actually, no it wasn't. It was - like virtually everything else that 7 now does - tedious, amateurish, laden with cross-promotion and over-exposure of its stable of awesome stars and slightly forgettable.

As I may or may not have explained previously, VVB switched from 9 to 7 when Steve "Judas" Leibmann took John Howard's 30 pieces of silver and appeared on TV, all serious and businesslike, to warn us about all the terrorists in our midst who were hell-bent on destroying all the things we hold dear like freedom, democracy and liberty and all those things.

They weren't, of course, but it cruelled for me that carefully nurtured persona of Steve Liebmann as reassuring man of the news. And it pretty much paralleled the decline of 9 and rise of 7 although I suspect this is more correlation than causation. Except in our case, of course.

And then the nation got terrorism fever and we got Border Fucking Security whose popularity was hung on the perceptions of evil terrorists infiltrating our grfeat nation but in fact was more about dodgy visa-evaders, smugglers of exotic African diseases and general flim-flam men.

Anyway channel 7 has had several years of well deserved popularity and mega ratings - awesome ratings, in fact - which has inevitably ended with it believing its own popularity and that of David Koch, who has passed awesomeness into ubiquity. So ubiquitous in fact that I fully expect to see him in Bunnings on a Saturday.

So this has not been so much of a whinge - hmmm, well maybe just a little - as a reflection on how awesome everything is. In pursuit of which, here is a photo of a minor alteration to the horizon courtesy of the people who dig stuff up to sell. This is the bit that they don't.

Big, isn't it?

I hope you agree.


Anyway, back to names for the new Chateau VVB. Is it a bungalow? Could be. Is it a villa? Potentially, nearly everything is nowadays. Is it a ranch house? Hmm, probably not.

So we'll have to go with what sounds best. Villa VVB has a nice alliterative feel, we should go with that, yes?

i do like to be beside the seaside

It has no waves worthy of the name and it doesn't smell very salty, but it is the sea.

And this is what you see of it from VVB-by-the-sea.

I can't see us ever tiring of it.

australiana

I think I'll be glad to get back to regular blogging, eventually. The arrival our dedicated line got me all a little, er, thing.

It's also because things are starting to annoy me again. Having a whinge to no-one in particular seems, to me, to be one of the greatest benefits that blogs confer on their proprietors.

I got annoyed a few days ago about the usage of "pinkie" for little finger. And today I read in the paper that the government's otherwise admirable, if a little misguided, series of advertisements in which ladies wave their little fingers at blokes to admonish them for being speed fiends, is known as the "pinkie" advertisement. I should have have known it.

I'm not even sure that an advertisement should have a name, but as episodes of TV shows seem to have them, why not?

I think the ads are misguided, most genuine speed freaks would simply...well, drive on by, I suspect.

That'll also be other speed fiends, too, just to be clear.

I bought a doover in a shop yesterday. I can't quite remember what it was, hence a doover. But the packaging got me going, in a slightly understated way. It said that the doover was made by a "wholly owned Australian company."

I found this oddly reassuring. The last thing we need are little orphan companies, especially Australian companies, wandering around all alone because they have no owners. All incorporated entities need a mummy and daddy, for sure.

Now, whether the wording meant to imply that the company was Australian owned, is a whole other kettle of fish. I certainly hope that the wording was inadvertently poorly constructed, rather than - as I suspect - a deliberate attempt to mislead.

Anyway if you go into a K-mart and look at the rack of doovers you use to connect telephonic devices with other telephonic devices, you'll see what I mean.

We're big on made in Australia in VVB-by-the-sea (well, sort of). Offspring no 1 has the symbol tattooed on one shoulder blade. It's rather misleading advertising in its own right because, as anyone with a passing acquaintance with human biology and a calendar could figure out, while he was born here he certainly wasn't made here.

We rest our case.

Because it's tired.

i got rhythm

I also got connection. We got the box, we got the cables, we got the cables trailing from the hallway to the study, we got the old Pakistani rug over the cables so we don't trip over them, we got the intermodal gizmos, we have liftoff.

You can go to the post office before opening time and they will give you the stuff that is waiting for you. Who says the regions lack services? (CP, a comment is required on this, you can't read for free forever you know).

I was worried about the photos posted to date because they are on the old pooter, not flickr (because I once tried to set up a Picasa account, I think Picasa is like flickr, but having set the account up I failed to actually figure out how to use the flamin' thing) but the old pooter - well it's actually newer than this one - is coming soon.

How all these different hosting variations affect bandwidth usage is something else I've never been able to work out.

I like wheels and gears and ratchets and things you can see so you can figure out how they work. Bloody sad it is.

So Ms Pants will have to wait for a picture of VVB-by-the-sea. And even then she'll get a picture looking out, not in.

music from big pink

Actually, little pink. Sometime over the last decade, we stopped referring to our little fingers as...little fingers, and they became "pinkies". Little toes, I read at the weekend, are now pinkie toes.

What I want to know is why.

Similar to an ad on radio every morning as I drive to work, which says if you buy a bed from a local shop you will soon be pushing up "zees". All delivered in a perfectly standard Aussie accent.

Dog help us.

This exercise in tired reflexive anti-Americanism brought to you courtesy of VVB-by-the-sea which, because its inhabitants haven't really understood the consumer world since since the word "pinkie" was unknown in Australia, signed up for a new Tesltra broadband service at a Telstra shopfront, thus condemning us to getting our modem delivered by Australia Post who course expects us to come to the post office to collect it, which will be difficult given new workloads and so on. Because we didn't know you could go into a shop, a Harvey Norman for example which wishes to help you push up "zees", and buy a bloody modem and sign up for a bloody account and go home and get operational i-bloody-mmediately.

I wonder how we manage to get by at all, sometimes. We is out of touch, to be sure.

The next hurdle will be how to maintain access to Blogger and VVB after our e-mail address changes. I'm sure it's doable, but then I also once tried to get RSS feeds going.

That's another story.

I'd say watch this space but it'd be more realistic to suggest you go and watch grass grow.

oliver

We are in the house. The cat is settled.

I'm busier than a one-armed paperhanger.

Oliver Sudden blogging doesn't seem quite so...necessary.

I'm not sure whether this is a Good Thing or whether working an extra four hours a day is actually good for me.

the move

Is done. We are all in house, with cat.

I like looking at the sea and find myself on the balfalcony quite frequently doing just that. It's a longer hike to the shops than at Chateau VVB and it's a harder climb back up, so we won't be doing that as frequently as we useter.

Now I just have to organise my working life so I can enjoy more of VVB-by-the-sea.