Posts filed under 'Canberra Stories'
Canberra can be interesting at times. I took these two photos after seeing this rather insane sight and thinking “I don’t know how they managed it, but this needs to be preserved”, and so it is, here, in photo form, for your entertainment.
Firstly, the scenic view, the lamp post is roughly three metres high.
And now, the closeup. Yes, it is three shopping baskets. They are from Woolworths (“The Fresh Food People” is their tagline), and the nearest Woolworths is roughly ten minutes away. There are a number of closer supermarkets so I’m not sure why the Woolworths baskets were chosen.
Needless to say, somebody had too much time on their hands!
Samuel
August 26th, 2005 at 12:21am
In case you are looking for a job, Tree Of Life in the Canberra Centre are advertising for an “Acting Assistant Manager”, yes, you read it correctly, an “Acting Assistant Manager”.
Now, to my mind, somebody who is acting in a role is simply filling the role of somebody who has retired or gone on leave…acting is an internal pseudo-promotion, not an actual job…..I suppose that Tree Of Life could be preparing to produce a film…are they going to pay the “Acting Customers”???
I’ve just found the feedback form on their website, I might ask them what they think an “Acting Assistant Manager” is. Interestingly, none of the other jobs are “acting” positions.
Whilst we are talking about the civic area, tonight a woman was standing outside Supabarn and took a photo of the checkout…a minute later she took a photo of Baker Delight, causing much hysterical laughter amongst the staff there…don’t ask me what the photos were in aid of, it just seemed rather odd to me…and the surrounding people.
In a nearby apartment block, somebody has somehow managed to put a shopping basket on top of a lightpost…I don’t know and I don’t want to know how they did it (well, maybe I’m a little curious), but I would like to know why they did it….maybe they’ll build a shop around it….who knows…
All these things serve one purpose….keep the planet interesting!
Samuel
August 19th, 2005 at 08:17pm
Welcome fellow 2CC listeners, you will find various comments, drawings and photos from myself and others here. Most of it belongs to me, some of the comments belong to others. And my crocodile writings are below.
In case you were listening to my conversation with Mike Jeffreys this morning and you are wondering what this “riot act” thing is that Mike mentioned, clicking here will take you there.
Enjoy!
Samuel
August 19th, 2005 at 09:43am
Quite possibly the answer is yes.
Without a doubt, City News is the worst newspaper in Canberra. In fact, it is hardly fair on the newspaper industry to call City News a newspaper, in truth it is a glorified freely-distributed glossy advertorial nonsense device.
Lets take a look at a typical City News edition. It is divided into three sections, City News, Canberra Review and City Property.
The news section is really just a bunch of press releases and ads that are presented as news stories. It often features an unimportant story about a beauty competition, the colour of the City Hill flagpole or some other related nonsense, which is almost always derived from a press release. The only semi-substantial component of the news section is the editorial by some anonymous person calling themselves “The Whip”, who “Doesn’t necessarily represent the views of the paper” and generally provides a fairly generic semi-relevant rubbishing of the news.
The second section, “The Canberra Review” is a fairly bland commentary on the upcoming artistic events of the week. It is filled with press releases and reviews by people who really don’t seem to know what they are talking about.
The third section is an upside down (literally) section about Canberra real estate. It contains stories about whatever expensive properties are up for sale in Red Hill and surrounds (which seem to be written by the real estate agents), and a bunch of real estate ads. In this case, “bunch” means multiple pages of nothing but real estate ads.
Over time, City News has had a range of dismal columns by exceptionally boring people on topics that don’t matter or don’t appear to interest the writer, they all seem to have failed, possibly because the writer bored themselves, or City News sold the space to advertisers. Either way, it was dismal.
In fairness, the competition aren’t exactly brilliant either. The Canberra Times has gone downhill since Rural Press bought them. Editor Jack Waterford has tried to maintain some credibility, but has ultimately failed. The Canberra Times has really lost the plot, it’s local news is fairly poor, and it’s coverage of national and international news…well…buy The Australian…you won’t find much of use in The Canberra Times.
For a broadsheet, The Canberra Times is fairly disappointing…so much paper, so little content, what a pity.
The Chronicle is the local tabloid weekly and a subsiduary of The Canberra Times, it is distributed to homes all over Canberra and surrounds for free, and is very good at covering major local stories in detail. Unfortunately, it only covers a handful of newsworthy stories, preferring snippets and “Who won gardener of the week!” type stories. The Chronicle manages to fill most pages with ads, gardening tips, and recipes. Good reading when you are bored, not very good for news though.
I can’t honestly think of a worse newspaper than City News, it doesn’t seem to have any particular purpose. For local news you have The Chronicle, for national and international news you could buy The Canberra Times, but you would be better off with The Australian. If you want to waste time, well, City News is good for that!
City News is without a doubt the worst newspaper in Canberra, and probably the nation.
Now, somebody is surely going to ask me “If you think all these newspapers are bad, then where do you get your news from?”
I’m glad you asked, I generally have the radio tuned to Talk Radio 2CC at various times throughout the day, which provides me with most of my news, I also get some news from The RiotACT, ABC Online and Google News.
Perhaps one day these newspapers will get better, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Samuel
August 15th, 2005 at 07:15pm
Only Canberra could produce a headline like that, and it is all true, even if slightly exagerated.
This afternoon on my way into Civic I noticed somebody staring at a No Right Turn sign, which was a rather unusual sight. There didn’t appear to be anything unusual about the sign…maybe they hadn’t seen one before.
Also this afternoon, an explosion at the Australian National University.
In the Research School Of Chemistry, probably the result of an experimental accident.
ABC Online says “A laboratory explosion blew out three windows and sparked a fire at the Australian National University’s (ANU) science building this afternoon. The fire is understood to have burned through the roof of the building. It is not clear what caused the explosion, which hit the third floor of the science building at 1:45pm AEST. Ambulance officers assessed four people from nearby buildings but they did not need treatment. The fire brigade says smoke from the blaze was non-toxic. Investigations into the cause are under way, as the clean-up continues.”
This comes just two days after a suspicious package was found at the Jolimont Centre in Civic, sparking a closure of some roads, including Nourthbourne Ave. The police belw up this bag to destroy it, I’m not sure how safe this is when they don’t know what is in the bag, but it turned out to be a forgotten bag of clothing.
Samuel
August 5th, 2005 at 07:40pm
Wayne Berry MLA, Labor member and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly has publicly distanced himself from the Ginninderra fiasco, which is a good thing as it means that not all of our local Labor memebers are loonies.
I don’t think the loopy lady with a silent G is paying any attention though.
Samuel
July 29th, 2005 at 12:43pm
It appears that the ACT Government are finally proving beyond all reasonable doubt that they are loony.
They have decided that it is a good idea to close Ginninderra High School, not that anyone agrees with them or wants it to happen, and they have decided to close it, end of story. However, they plan on replacing it with a Kindergarten through Year 10 “Super School”, and at the same time closing a bunch of other Belconnen area schools so that everyone will get to go there.
So now that you are up to speed with the story, lets have a look at this in more detail.
Firstly, the ACT Government are closing Ginninderra High School, the announcement was a bit late though, it was after the closing date for enrolments, and seeing as it is closing at the end of the year, well, people are just plain stuffed. They chose the school because they thought it would be a good school to choose, and now they have to go around to other schools which are most likely to be further away and find out if there is a vacancy for their child. Why couldn’t they gradually phase out the school by not taking any more new students? Certainly it would take time, but it would avoid this ridiculous mess. And the same can be said for existing students, the enrolment period is over, so it is time to visit the other high schools and check for vacancies.
What about consultation, well they did meet with some P&C members from the surrounding area a few months back, not for consultation, just to say “we like this”, and their was a confidentiality agreement to go with it. The government denied they had conducted this meeting at first, and then when it became obvious that they had occurred they did a backflip and said “Yes, we had a meeting.”
The government claim that Ginninderra high is an ageing dinosaur that needs to be pulled down because it is too large for it’s present number of students, could this be because the government don’t like to spend money on maintaining schools by any chance? The government invented the situation of low population of Ginninderra High by cutting costs and making the place unattractive to potential students, and now they want to take it out on everyone else.
I do have to wonder how Ginninderra High even comes remotely near being old, based on the building style, it was probably built during the 70’s or 80’s, which is, compared to other schools in Canberra, fairly young. My primary school (Ainslie Primary) was built in 1927 and still works just fine. (To be more precise, the original building which is now being used as an arts centre was built in 1927 as a temporary home for the school until the “new” building was built, late 20’s early 30’s).
Of course the plans for the site after they pull down the existing school are even more bizarre. The government want to build a super school catering for students from kindergarten to year 10. Oh what fun and excitement!
Anybody who has been in a playground of a primary school or a high school would know that it isn’t exactly bliss. In my experience, primary schools separate the junior kids from the senior kids due to size and maturity differences. High schools are often warzones at break times. So now we combine all of this, put it on a pretty small playing area, and hope for the best.
I’m sure the junior primary school kids will stay in their zone, I doubt that the senior primary school kids will stay in their zone, and I would bet that the high school kids will pose a danger to the junior primary school kids, not all of them, but you are always going to have the handful of difficult students.
Would you want every child aged 5-16 from the Belconnen area in your backyard? I didn’t think so. So why do the government want to do the same thing in a slightly larger area? Good question, lets have a look.
One very large super school in an area means all the other schools get to close, meaning the government can sell off the land and make a pretty penny out of it while we sit back and see more high rise apartment blocks appearing where we used to have schools.
The other thing that needs to be taken into account here is the educational standards of a super school. Whilst the super school would have a high concentration of quality teachers, it would also have a very high concentration of students, and you can bet that the government will do all they can to cut costs, eg. Higher class sizes and less funding for new equipment. Shared resources would become an issue, for example, how many computer labs do you put in? How often will you upgrade them? What kind of gym facilities will there be? What about an assembly hall, it would surely be horrible getting every kid aged 5-16 in the Belconnen area into one room, it is hard enough to make it work when you have all the 5-12 year olds from two suburbs.
Then there is the psychological effects this will have.
One of the main working aspects of the transition from primary school to high school, and from high school to college, is the physical change of location. A different location with different rules and a different atmosphere makes it much easier to adapt. How do you suddenly expect 12 & 13 year olds to accept a massive change in how they operate if they are in the same place, with the same staff, and the same atmosphere? It is hardly easy to make them accept that “You are now in year seven and we expect this from you.” It is much easier to say “Here at xyz High School things are different to your old primary school.” And students will accept the latter much more easily than the former.
Of course, it isn’t as if the government are giving us much choice here, they are pulling down Ginninderra High, end of story, but we can stop this new super school and have the money spent on our hospital waiting lists or improving our existing schools.
I really can’t see why the government can’t do what they have done with just about every other school in Canberra and have a “Renovation Program” which will bring it up to the government’s constantly changing standards.
Basically, the government have made an unholy mess, and they are going to try and convince us that is looks good.
The education minister, Ms. Katy Gallagher (the loopy woman with a silent g), is having a baby (I pity him or her), and I can almost guarantee that she will be leaving town when it comes to the time where her child needs to be enrolled in a school. After all, she wouldn’t want her child educated in her mess of an education system would she?
Samuel
July 28th, 2005 at 10:25pm
It is said that Canberra is a well planned city, this may be the case, but it does appear to have gone downhill lately.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking Nattie for a walkies to the GPO in Civic and then for an extended walk home which went up city hill and back through Glebe Park.
Allow me to inform you of the three places along the walk that annoyed me to some extent.
Firstly, we have one of the latest monstrosities to be built in Canberra.
Whatever happened to sensible buildings, why do they all have to have these bizarre “artworks” in front or on top of them. That weird metal structure doesn’t help the building stand up (although if it does then I hope I never have to go inside), it probably increased the cost of the building by some largish amount, and ultimately it looks completely and utterly ridiculous…..I guess it is in line with the exceptional ability some people have for designing and building the most ugly apartment buildings, but it is turning this beautiful garden city of ours into an eye-sore. If you want to see this strange structure for yourself, it is on the corner Bullumbir Street and Petrie Street, Civic.
The second piece of “well thought out” nonsense is up on City Hill. If you travel between Nourthbourne Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue in a southbound direction then you have probably seen this and don’t even notice. That carpark on the left hand side of Vernon Circle southbound is a good little stop off point for tourists who want to see the lovely part of Canberra (and the scenic views) that comprise city hill. Unfortunately, the spot directly opposite the carpark (assuming you can cross the road without being run over) where tourists would be likely to embark on the stroll up city hill is a mini cliff, which effectively makes tourists (and others) have a large stretch of the legs, or walk along the edge of the busy road around to Nourthbourne Avenue where such obstacles don’t exist. Why wasn’t this area brought down to road level like the rest of City Hill?
Needless to say, Queen Dog-Dog Nattie the First was not impressed about this mini cliff.
This was unfortunately, the last photo I was able to take before the batteries died, so you will have to see the other bit of urban planning for yourself.
The third strange thing was in Glebe Park in the location where the playground equipment used to be (many moons ago). I am aware that this “artwork” has been in this particular location for many a year, but it is part of the very annoying habit the ACT Government have of putting Valuable Public Monstrosities in all locations that seem semi-vacant. Whilst they will be happy to inform you that it is “artwork”, I can assure you that these eye-sores are diverting precious funding from our hospitals and schools. About the only thing these VPMs are good for are canine liquid byproducts….Something Nattie would be proud to attest to. She is, after all, the “Twilight Dog” (Twilight being the name of a VPB that glows on Ainslie Avenue at taxpayer expense.)
Samuel
July 15th, 2005 at 12:31am
I got my new ACTION School Term bus ticket yesterday, which will be used for term three.
If the ACTION School Term bus tickets’ serial numbers are issued & printed in order then my new term ticket is the 2297th term ticket issued since the last one I got.
By now you probably think I am completely out of my mind, why do I care and why did I bother to check?…well, I’m glad you asked!
I was sitting down in the lounge room and noticed that my new term ticket was on the seat next to me, as was my St. George Bank card holder (which holds my bus ticket), and so I thought that it would be a good time to take out the old one and put in the new one. At that stage I noticed a similarity, the serial number both started the same way and seemed to have a lot of numbers in common (I gathered that from a quick glance at them near each other), this made me think “How similar are these numbers?” and so I checked.
The old ticket has serial number 05 -270704- 02522
The new ticket has serial number 05 -270704- 04819 which make my new ticket the 2297th ACTION Term Ticket issued since my last ticket.
ACTION School Term bus tickets sell for $55 which means that ACTION have made $126,335 in term tickets sales since my last term ticket.
Now, my new ticket goes into my card holder, and my old ticket goes into my bus ticket collection. (It is a bigish collection, it contains most of my bus tickets from the last 5-10 years.) Actually, to be more precise, the collection has a main pile of credit card size reusable* bus tickets, and a seperate collection of small paper single ride only tickets.
*Reusable tickets are only reusable as per the terms of purchase
Samuel
July 8th, 2005 at 09:59pm
This photo appeared on the ActewAGL webcams at 11:10am 8th May 2004, it appears to be a giant fish attacking the National Museum.
OK, well maybe it wasn’t a fish…the picture from 10 minutes beforehand shows that it was just a flag….but I like the fish tale.
Samuel
June 13th, 2005 at 07:33pm
Ah yes, a very busy day indeed.
I got to Dickson College just after 9am and had Maths, at 10am I started on the organisational stuff I had to do for the open night, then went and fixed up the screensaver script on a Linux computer in the library.
The Linux computer runs a screensaver which receives text input from an application (in this case a simple echoing script) and displays it on the screen with effects. The script it runs is called screensaver.sh and contains a number of messages about the library and the college. It was considered to be a good idea to have a special set of messages running on open night, so I made a backup copy of screensaver.sh which I named screensaver_old.sh
I then went and wrote a set of open night messages and named it screensaver_open_night.sh
I also needed a screensaver script that didn’t advertise the open night, which would become the script after the open night, this was named screensaver_normal.sh
A cron job was then used to automatically copy screensaver_open_night.sh to screensaver.sh at 6pm (This made the open night script the active screensaver script) and another line in the crontab file copied screensaver_new.sh to screensaver.sh at 9:30pm so that the new normal screensaver would be back in operation when people come in tommorow. I still have to clean off the excess files by hand, but I felt it was better to leave them all there just in case something went wrong…which it didn’t.
Having all of this automated not only impressed and excited the library staff, it also meant that I didn’t have to change scripts before and after the open night.
After this I went and checked in with my boss to remind him that I was busy with open night preparations, he understood and spent a few minutes outlining the work he wants us to do over the next few weeks.
I then went to find one of the deputy principals to confirm what time he wanted the laptop and projector setup in the hall…he was however on class at the time, so I went back down to the library where I was informed that the screensaver was spitting out “Unexpected EOF” messages…It then occured to me that I forgot to fix the missing quotation marks I had spotted earlier, five minutes later it was fixed.
I then went around to media to arrange a time to set all their wallpaper to the same one (preferably a custom made Dickson College Media wallpaper), we arranged to do that after I had finished in the hall with setting up and having a practice run of the speeches.
Then I had class for an hour and then went and saw one of the deputy principals and arranged to do the hall setup and practice after Lunch. After this I was about to have lunch when an occasional colleague showed up, this took up half an hour after which I was able to have Lunch.
At 2pm it was time to setup the hall, a laptop, a projector, and couple extension leads and…whoops, another extension lead to make the required length, then some audio problems and finally the pratice run of the speeches.
By the time this was over it was close to 4pm and I felt that it was a good idea to have my afternoon tea, and then have an early dinner as I wouldn’t have time later…so I sat down outside with my thermos, my mug and my radio and had afternoon tea, and then walked to Dickson and had an early dinner.
By this stage I felt like calling 2CC’s Mike Frame and voicing my objections to this new arboretum that is planned for Canberra (see www.the-riotact.com for more details…or stay tuned, I’ll have more details in a future post), rather than wasting mobile credit, I fed a pay phone and found that Telstra have made it possible to send text messages from them, not that I cared, I just wanted to make a call, which I did.
After this I went back to the college (It was around 5pm) and found a job I could do…I sat down and answered the numerous phone calls regarding what time the open night begins, one of these callers seemed to recognise me, perhaps as a 2CC caller, or perhaps from here…I don’t know, it is a mystery. I also had other receptionist duties during this time.
At 6:30pm (after having a cup of Milo) I went around to the Hall and turned on the projector and laptop, I then started the first slideshow, which was a looping set of various pictures of the college and it’s events. I then went back to the front office and continued my phone answering and receptionist duties.
At 7pm I went back to the hall and took my seat at the table with the laptop and projector (I also unofficially declared myself to be the “Technical Producer” of the speeches). I spent the next 10 minutes looking through the script for the main speech, and pretending to cross reference it with the other papers I had, which I thought made me look much more busy and important. At about 7:10 I was quite annoyed with the loud music from the Jazz band playing in my ear, they were good, but they were far to close to me, so I pretended to find a note on the desk, busily and frantically checked other papers, got up, took some paper with me and escaped the hall for a couple minutes and then came back in and continued to examine the papers.
By this stage I was doing plenty of watch checks as we were supposed to start the speeches at 7:15pm, and eventually got the nod from one of the deputy principals and changed to the main overhead presentation, which I ran as the speeches went on.
After the speeches (and a public thankyou from one of the deputy prinicpals) I packed up the laptop and projector and took them back to their locations, I also moved a TV & DVD on a trolley which were playing some footage from a dance class into the main congregation area. I spent the rest of the night assisting in various places (and confirming that my screensaver scripts were behaving…which they were…It’s Linux, it just works). I then got a lift home with a teacher who lives near me (hooray, no Action FlexiChaos), checked my email, got a cup of coffee, sat down and watched Stargate Atlantis.
Unfortunately, Steppy the pedometer is slightly clunky and I really didn’t have time or space to take him with me today, and as such, there is no stepometer for today….it would have been right off the scale anyway, their was barely any time when I wasn’t walking today.
Samuel
June 9th, 2005 at 11:38pm
If you have some amazing desire to meet me, then by all means come along to the Dickson College open night, 7PM Thursday (9th June 2005)…I’ll be there, not quite sure where though.
I do know that I will start off in the hall with everybody else, but as the night goes on I may be at the VET (Vocational Education and Training) stand in the canteen, or I might be up in the IT corridor, or perhaps down in the library…if you want to come and need help recognising me, print a copy of my photo on my blogger.com profile
Anyway, it should be a great night, whether you are deciding on a college, seeing what this college thing is all about or just want to meet me…
For a tiny bit more detail about the open night see http://www.dicksonc.act.edu.au/events.html
For a map of where the college is (and directions from your location to the college) see http://www.whereis.com/whereis/mapping/geocodeAddress.do?advertiserId=&streetNumber=&streetName=Phillip&poiType=&suburb=Dickson&state=Australian+Capital+Territory&x=27&y=10
Samuel
June 7th, 2005 at 05:08pm
Well, according to the latest crazy person I have heard from (they were babbling and I was nearby) it is quite possible to feed yourself in India for $4 per week.
I don’t know what this miracle food is or where to buy it, but it could be the answer to world hunger….so the challenge is on, invent the miracle “$4 per week” food.
Samuel
June 7th, 2005 at 05:05pm
ACTEW Corporation are planning on creating electricity from effluent leaving their waste water treatment plant, the power generated will be used to power the Lower Molongolo treatment plant, which uses roughly the same amount of power as 240 homes.
Samuel
May 22nd, 2005 at 12:06am
666 ABC Canberra are advertising their breakfast program during prime time on commercial television….These people can get as much free advertising as they want on ABC TV, but they spend taxpayers money on this…I can’t see how it benefits them, it’s not as if ratings are important to them, after all they don’t have advertisers who crave ratings, and they aren’t funded on a per rating point basis, and The Friends Of The ABC certainly wouldn’t let the federal government close down an ABC radio station because of ratings.
Of course, not only are the ads appearing during expensive hours, but they also look fairly expensive…All this money going to the TV stations and not the hospitals…To quote Mr John Stanley “Oh Dear”.
I think I’ll give them a piece of my mind tomorrow morning, and time permitting, bring it up on the better breakfast program (2CC Mike Jefferys).
Samuel
May 17th, 2005 at 10:13pm
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