Year: 2013

Categories
Australia Politics

I’m Not A Tech Head

So in the end this most predictable of federal elections played out just about the way everyone said it would.

I know I live in a bubble of latte-sipping inner city hipsters, and this is a big old country with lots of odd people in it, but at times the election seemed to be taking place in a parallel universe. There was a bit at the start where they just talked about boat people over and over, with both major parties trying to outdo each other in a race to the bottom to see who could have the most inhumane policies. I continue to find it odd that this is such a big topic for debate, when I can’t imagine it directly affects many people’s daily lives in this country (not to mention the fact that many more asylum seekers arrive by plane than boat every day…) Unless people actually think that boat people are responsible for Sydney traffic congestion? I mean that would be just ridiculous, wouldn’t it?

[Also, as a point of interest, I find it rather odd that no one ever really talks about how our new glorious leader arrived in Australia. Clue: it wasn’t by plane. He wasn’t seeking asylum, of course, but still you’d think someone might have pointed out the irony by now…]

At least the new government have a six one no point plan to deal with it though…

And there was a lot of talk about “cost of living” pressures, and the economy. It doesn’t seem to matter that Australia currently has one of the strongest economies in the world, that it avoided a recession when everything went pear shaped in the rest of developed world, kept its AAA credit rating and that the whole cost of living thing is only really a problem if you’re prepared to ignore all the, um, facts. But then what place do facts have in politics, when you can tell people what they want to hear instead?

So despite all the gaffes, the creepy daughter thing, the “sex appeal” comments, Rupert has got what he wanted.

For anyone who doesn’t know our new glorious leader, he’s a ten minute introduction that tells you just about everything you need to know, including the utterly bizarre footage of that time he just sort of nodded for 30 seconds in an interview like a buffering You Tube video (a sign of what to expect from the shiny new Liberal NBN I suppose…)

Categories
Australia Politics Uncategorized

Civic Duty

I just scraped in. Tomorrow I become an Australian citizen and — thanks to the special provisions that allow new citizens to provisionally enrol to vote — on Saturday I’ll get to exercise my civic duty in the 2013 Australian Federal Election.

I’m taking this seriously, even if I might just be in it for the sausages.

I’ve studied the advice from Dennis the Election Koala, I’ve read the only real guide to the election that anyone could ever need, and listened to the months and months of empty rhetoric, lies, half truths, and outright bullsh*t.

So tonight I fired up belowtheline.org.au/editor/melbourne and had my first crack at putting together my ballot paper.

Back home it’s just an X in a box and you’re done, but with preferential voting here in Australia you have to put them all in order. Yes. All of them.

The House of Representatives is reasonably straightforward, because there’s only 16 to choose from, but the Senate vote is for the whole of Victoria. That’s a whopping 97 candidates to put in order. (I mean you *could* vote “above the line” and let someone else choose for you, but where’s the fun in that?)

Some tough decisions to make, though. Given that I fundamentally disagree with the entire platforms of well over half of the senate ballot paper, how am I supposed to decide which ones are least worst? Family First, One Nation, Rise Up Australia… how do I decide which of these utterly objectionable groups goes last last, and which goes least last?

[Rise Up Australia did provide the most obviously ironic candidate, so maybe they should get points for that. This would be the ultra-nationalist, staunchly anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism party; their candidate for the House of Reps in Melbourne? Joyce Mei Lin Khoo]

Well anyway. I have made my choices, unless I change my mind again, I’ll be the one numbering 113 boxes on Saturday morning…

4th September 2013: Geez That's A Lot Of Boxes

Categories
Australia Media

Schrödinger’s Medicines

So there I was flipping through the paper yesterday when I noticed something a little, um, odd about the massive full page ad on page 6 of The Sunday Age:

Full Page Ad in The Sunday Age

You can’t quite see it from that distance, so lets look a little closer…

Blurry Labels

Yeah. That’s odd. All the labels on those little bottles of Swisse Snake Oil are all blurry. A printing error maybe? Surely not…

I assumed that this would be something to do with the laws in Australia about advertising medicines, but I was curious, so I asked Dr Google. He told me to have a look at the website of the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which confirms that there are of course all sorts of rules and regulations around the advertising of these products in Australia. And the page on Making a complaint about the advertising of a therapeutic product tells me this:

Advertisements for medicines appearing on television or radio, newspapers, consumer magazines, billboards and cinema films are required to be approved before publication.

Advertisements appearing in newspapers and consumer magazines must include the approval number. The approval number is usually in small print and begins with the letters ‘ASMI’ or ‘CHC’ followed by a 5-6 digit number and date code.

Approvals are valid for a 2-year period.

So does our ad have an approval number in small print beginning with the letters ASMI or CHC? Er. No.

Well that’s interesting.

It’s at this point that Dr Google suggests I take a look at the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code 2007 in ComLaw.

Under section 3, Compliance with, and application of, the Code, we find this:

(3) Advertisements for therapeutic goods appearing in specified and broadcast media must be approved by the appropriate Advertising Services Manager for compliance with the Code (Appendix 3 refers) prior to publication or broadcast, other than:

…

(b) advertisements for those therapeutic goods that may be advertised and which display only name, picture and/or price and /or point of sale, without therapeutic claims; and …

So it appears there is a loophole. You can advertise therapeutic goods without having to get your ad approved, regardless of what dubious therapeutic claims the goods themselves might make, just so long as you don’t repeat those therapeutic claims in your ad.

Presumably these little bottles of wonder pills are some kind of Schrödinger’s Medicine: they simultaneously are therapeutic goods and also aren’t at the same time, depending on what’s on the label. I suppose that’s kind of appropriate, really. Isn’t that how the placebo effect homoeopathy works…

Then again, they haven’t blurred out some of those labels very well. Even I can see that this one says “Clinically Trialled” on the top line and “Omega-3 Antioxidant” on the bottom line, whatever the hell that means:

Clinically Trialled

Although maybe they should go that little bit further with the blurring–you never know what some of these products might be called by the time the consumer gets to the store. As The ABC’s The Checkout pointed out a few months ago, when the Therapeutic Goods Administration cancelled the registration for Swisse’s Ultiboost Appetite Suppressant, they cunningly evaded the ban by simply changing the name on the label…

Categories
Australia

Oi, Oi, Oi

So this morning I popped into the city to sit the Australian Citizenship Test. It turns out there are some, um, interesting sections of the test material.

To prepare for the test, they give you this book to read — Our Common Bond — and can ask you questions on anything featured in the “testable section”.

While the non testable section does at least acknowledge some of the more questionable aspects of Australia’s recent history (such as the White Australia Policy and the stolen generations), the testable part includes frankly astonishing statements like this:

Australians are proud of the fact that their nation did not emerge through revolution or bloodshed

Um. Really? Are you sure about that?

I think I sort of understand what they were going for, but I can’t help thinking this might come as news to the people who were already living here when the white man arrived. Federation might have happened without bloodshed, but I don’t think you can just quietly forget about 1788 – 1901…

My first question on the test itself was this:

Where did the earliest free settlers to Australia come from:
• Europe
• Great Britain and Ireland
• Torres Strait Islands

Hmm. There’s something missing from that list, isn’t there…

Once again, I know what they mean — and what they wanted me to answer — but I can’t help thinking that the first people to settle in Australia freely might be the ones who were already here when the country was renamed around them…

Other sections of the testable content are just amusing. There’s a whole bit on the apparently uniquely Australian concept of mateship, although I’m not sure which roads the authors have been driving on judging by their example:

Mateship

I don’t think I’ll be trying that in rush hour Melbourne…

Oh. And there’s this. The Union Jack? Really?

20130604-200541.jpg

Anyway. I passed. It took me all of 2 1/2 minutes, out of my allotted 45, to answer all my twenty questions correctly…

Think I prefer this test instead, mind. And I still don’t know the answer to the bring your own meat barbie question…

Categories
Wedding

Matt n’ Sally, Annotated

The Royal Mail Hotel, Dunkeld

For our wedding we asked our good friend Jim, who sadly wasn’t able to make it over from the UK, if he might happen to have something we could use as a reading. And he wrote us this rather wonderful poem.

For the benefit of anyone who might not have got all the references (and for everyone who wouldn’t have seen it written down to appreciate its full double acrostic glory), I present Matt n’ Sally, Married — with footnotes.

Matt n’ Sally, Married

by James Peake

You chose London, Sal, and a handsome pom
Looming above the D.F., [1] loitering by the P.A. [2]
Looking back at you. The End. [3] The night you met.
And from that instant spark, that fun-loving start,
Secret garden picnics [4] or Glasto [5] under English sun, [6]
Not a moment wasted, at galleries or plays, down Dr Who caves, [7]
Trading jokes and gossip over cocktails or Corona [8]
Then detouring for a doner. Matt, a Woody Grill. [9]
And daily a photo for your Flickr project or Facebook wall; [10]
Melbourne’s gain London’s loss, but two hemispheres can now toast, Matt n’ Sally.

[1] D.F. The dancefloor. The scene of many of our greatest moments…

[2] I’m not sure if I actually was loitering by the P.A., but I’ll let that one pass…

[3] The End nightclub, in London’s West End, owned by Mr C off of the Shamen, where we met all those years ago.

[4] The Secret Garden, our favourite little hidden spot in Regent’s Park: tucked away down an unmarked passage lies a beautiful little manicured garden that we got to treat as our own when we lived nearby.

[5] Glastonbury Festival. We were there together in 2007, and 2005, and 2004 and an apparently unphotographed 2003…

[6] I assume the idea of English Sun at Glasto must be some kind of joke…

[7] That would be these caves that we day tripped to in 2008.

[8] No explanation needed, but sort of appropriate given our Mexico plans…

[9] The Woody Grill in Camden. Without question my favourite London Kebab shop. A place so good that I once saw a man drop his kebab on the dirty Camden pavement and then pick it right back up again and carry on eating… **

[10] My Photo Of The Day project. Now, unbelievably in its seventh year.

SallyMatt-161

** This was not me. Honest.

Categories
Central America Mexico Travel

Chichen Itza

After two languid days in Valladolid, it is time to move on again. We rise early and eat our breakfast of huevos rancheros under the shade of the trees in the little garden out the back of the shop. Then we hit the speed bump filled road to Chichen Itza, hoping to arrive early enough to beat the crowds of tour groups that descend on the site in the late morning.

There are a handful of tourists wandering around the site when we arrive, but it is quiet enough for us to take photos of the ruins without anyone getting in the way. On the recommendation of Susanna from Coqui Coqui, we hire a guide to show us around. Most of what he tells us, we later discover, is nonsense, but it is entertaining nonetheless.

3rd March 2013: Chichen Itza

(As a case in point he tells us that the reason that no one is allowed to climb the ruins is because 5 oversized American tourists rolled down to their deaths a few years ago, even though my subsequent internet research proves that this was not exactly what happened. Still, even though he couldn’t get something from 2006 right, I’m sure his comments on things that happened thousands of years ago are just fine…)

After a pleasant few hours wandering the site, we jump back in the car, grab a quick lunch of salbutes in the nearby town of Pisté and hit the road across the Yucatan to the colonial town of Mérida.

Categories
Central America Mexico Travel

A Quite Exclusive Perfumery In An Average Size Mexican Town

In the morning we head back to the food stalls for a quick breakfast salbute and hit the road, driving first along the long grey ugly strip of hotels that make up the zona hotelera. We stop briefly at a shopping mall called Liverpool (slogan: es parte de ma vida, which well I guess it sort of is…) and buy indifferent coffee at Starbucks. It is time to get out.

We drive the cuota — toll road — to Valladolid. It is a long straight highway lined with low vegetation that reminds me a little of Cuba. There are almost no other cars on the road, and there is nothing to see except the occasional signs telling us there’s a service station in 84km — quite some walk if you happen to run out of petrol. This makes for an easy but slightly dull drive. We will later discover that there is a parallel non toll road that the locals prefer. A rather more interesting route, it passes through a number of pueblos along the way. But the price for driving the free road is the need to slow to a crawl in each village, punctuated as they are every few hundred metres by topes, Mexico’s lengendary speedbumps.

Our home in Valladolid for the next two days is a quite exclusive perfumery in an average size Mexican town. It is, quite simply, beautiful. This is a hotel of one room — above the shop — and when Susanna, the manager, leaves for the evening we are left in charge of both shop and hotel. There is a step ladder for accessing our giant raised bed, chiffon curtains that billow like something from a Chanel ad, a huge roof terrace overlooking the town, private plunge pool and a giant vintage bath. I could get used to this.

1st March 2013: Coqui Coqui Valladolid

Downstairs in the shop it feels as if you have stepped back in time. Everything is displayed on vintage cabinets under giant glass bell jars.

Coqui Coqui Valladolid

We split our time between chilling on the roof terrace watching the birds ride the currents above us, exploring the perfectly preserved colonial town on foot, eating salbutes at the market (only 8 pesos!) and taking advantage of Susanna’s restaurant recommendations. It’s tough.

Categories
Central America Mexico Travel

Cancun

It is only when we arrive in Valladolid that it feels like the holiday proper has begun. It is a beautiful, sleepy little place, all colonial architecture, tiny streets and little squares, and couldn’t be more different from the grey concrete jungle of Cancun.

It had never been our intention to stay in Cancun, but it’s really the only realistic entry point to this part of Mexico, and with our flight arriving at 5pm, we didn’t think it terribly wise to set off on the road to Valladolid and drive for two hours in the dark. By the time we have obtained our small red motorised metal box from Hertz at Cancun airport and set off for the town, it is already going dark. Half way into town, it begins raining. Hard. Visibility is reduced to a few metres, and, in a scenario that will be repeated throughout Mexico, we cannot find our hotel. The Tom Tom, we later discover, is directing us the wrong way down the right street. We pull over at a farmacia and I run out in the torrential rain to ask the locals if they know where our hotel is. Even though the hotel is on the street we are on, and I am waving a piece of paper with the street address written on it, the staff at the farmacia do not know where our hotel is. They tell me to keep driving in the wrong direction.

Some time later the street becomes a different street and we realise we must be going the wrong way. We stop again. This time I ask a man in a garage who at least directs us back in the direction we came from. At this point I spot for the first time that the piece of paper in my hands also contains some GPS coordinates. We drive back towards the coordinates, and again–briefly–fail to find the hotel, before realising that it is almost where the coordinates say it should be, just on the opposite side of the road. We pull into a parking spot out front and check in.

Eschewing the dubious charms of the zona hotelera, we are staying for our one night in downtown Cancun, in the hope that we might discover some local colour. For dinner, we head to nearby parque las palapas and hit the food stalls: we try salbutes and panuchos — small round tacos cooked fresh to order, topped with your choice of meat, tomato, onion and salsa picante. We quickly decide that salbutes con conchinita pibil (marinated pork) are our street food of choice (slightly softer than the panuchos, which seem to break when you try to fold them over), although for some reason Sal is unable to remember their real name and will call them salt-em-bancos for the rest of the trip.

After filling up at the food stalls for the equivalent of about 7 aussie dollars, we find a couple of bars, chat to one of the owners, drink our first tequilas of the trip, and discover our new favourite Mexican beer–the beautiful chocolatey delight that is Bohemia Obscura–while listening to a band play covers of rock classics in a bar called the “route 666 bikie bar”, just down from our hotel. The bar is full and we are the only gringos there. A waiter asks where we are from and we tell him that we have just arrived from Australia.

“¿Es su primera día? ¿Que te parcece?”

What do I think? It’s pretty good, I tell him, finishing my beer. It’s pretty good.

Bohemia Obscura

Categories
Los Angeles Travel US

Los Angeles

Our trip begins with two very pleasant days in LA. It is our second visit to a city that everyone seems to have nothing but bad words to say about, but once again we have a ball.

Even after a lengthy wait to clear customs and immigration at LAX, we arrive at our hotel in Santa Monica several hours prior to leaving Melbourne (thank you, the international dateline), and head out to explore. We spend our first day wandering in and out of the shops and spending some US$ travellers cheques left over from our 2008 trip to South America–this was our emergency fund, but as we never had an emergency we now have a small present from the us of five years ago.

Every time we produce one of these relics it sends the shop assistant into a spin. “Travellers Cheques? No one uses those anymore”. Each store somehow has a different procedure for cashing them, but one by one they accept them and we leave each store with free stuff, and free US$.

As the sun sets we walk out to the beach–past the wooden Baywatch huts–and down to the end of the pier, past the rickety funfair, past a caricature artist who shouts an offer to “make me smaller” and Sal taller, and a guy dressed as Uncle Sam playing music and pulling funny faces. We stick around to watch the sunset before heading for dinner at the quite excellent Tar & Roses, where we sit at the bar eating beautiful glazed ribs, lamb belly and roasted chicken.

Dinner at Tar and Roses, Santa Monica

Later we retire to a bar called Chloe where we help the barman–an impossibly handsome young man with a floppy fringe that seems as if it is straight out of a daytime soap or some teen pop band–to name a new cocktail, and chat to his girlfriend about her love of Top Gear and her plans to visit the UK to see it being filmed.

On our second day we collect our convertible from the hotel a few blocks away, and set out to drive the city–first to Rodeo Drive, where the shop assistants are all too friendly for us to have the opportunity to say “you work on comission, right? Big mistake…”, and then on into the hills, along Mullholland and Ventura, past the lookout down to the city and the Hollywood Bowl, where we hear a tour guide point out the alleged houses of Meg Ryan and Ice T.

Welcome To Hollywood

We travel on to Sunset, along Hollywood past the Chinese theatre and the stars, before looping back to Venice, to the indie boutiques of Abbot Kinney, which reminded us of Brunswick or Smith Streets. All the while ignoring the Tom Tom’s insistence that we take the shortest route–the freeway–instead choosing the suburban back streets where we admire the large Spanish style houses and manicured lawns. I had been nervous about driving in LA but it turns out to be easy and fun. Having the top down on a sunny day probably doesn’t hurt.

Our Convertible For The Day