September 07, 2006: The lift is still silent.

It’s been immobile since the weekend.
I’m already feeling that tight ‘just had a work out’ feeling in the tops of my thighs.

People are complaining about having to drag the weekly shopping, including slabs of beer up to their apartments.

One woman was tempted to lock her three year old in the car for a week so that she wouldn’t have to carry him.

There was a note taped above the button informing us, that they hope to have it fixed by Saturday, which is when I fly out.

Typical.

On the way down the stairs today I noticed to service techs struggling to manhandle a replacement electric motor up narrow fire escape stair well.

Poor buggers.

September 06, 2006: Funniest thing that happened to me today…

I’m home sick with a cold!

Bloody hilarious!

I’ve had a cough that has been hanging around for a couple of weeks, and I’ve been waiting it out. Last night I was getting pretty pissed off with the wheezing so I decided to ignore my body’s impulses, and just put up with a clenched irritation across the top of my chest.

I woke up today, looked out at the sunny morning spreading across the bay, and had a decent coughing fit.

Bugger.

This was when I decided action was needed, as I fly out on the weekend. I thought that at least knowing what was going on in my lungs would be a good idea.

I told the doctor that I felt fine, apart from a persistent cough (which would be completely normal if I was a smoker.)

He told me that he would decide how well I was!

I’m paraphrasing, but that was the intent.

This is why guys hate going to the Doc. We are never taken seriously unless a limb is pointing in an unnatural direction, or if we’re over forty and the doctor feels the need to poke a finger up our bum.

There are very few things in this world that a guy enjoys travelling the wrong direction up his posterior.

Any who, the Doc takes a tongue depressor (I know! I was surprised that they are still around too,) takes a gander down my gullet, and exclaims ‘oh my god!’

Once again, I’m interpreting the events from my memory, but the reaction was pretty accurate.

He offers me a sick note (I’ve never scored one before, and I’m not going to look a gift horse bearing ‘two official days off work’ in the mouth) which I took, and a prescription for antibiotics.

The crazy thing is, I feel fine! The cold seems to be lurking around deep inside, and occasionally erupts with a spell of hacking.

I go back to work on Friday (which is pub lunch day so the afternoon is mostly a write off.)

September 03, 2006: My gardening nemesis is Basil…

…which is a shame cause I suck down a lot of spag bol. Pretty fond of pesto too.



Aloe Vera on the other hand thrives around me. There are pots of it all over the flat, despite a regular campaign of giving plants away to friends and family.

The original ‘mama’ plant is starting to look like something out of ‘Little Shop O Horrors.’

I’m contemplating getting drunk and cooking over an open flame, so that I can collect a series of burns that need salving. ;-)

A mate reckons I should go into business cause he saw Aloe being peddled for fifteen bucks a plant at the markets.



I was watching the sunset out in the warm spring air last night and I noticed that the lavender bushes and the single lemon tree had suddenly sent out flower buds.

Must be time to start thinking about tomatoes.

September 01, 2006: Ending peace week on a positive note.

Despite sometimes feeling like there a lot of the Christians and Conservative’s, trying to drag us all back to sixteenth century Europe. And that some Muslims want to wind back the clock to the eleventh century. And a goodly chunk of the Jews would like to see the world return to sometime BC.

I honestly feel that humans are slowly improving things for everyone.

We are taking our universe apart to find out how it works. Reading DNA and conquering disease. We have better ways to communicate, and there is greater access to information.

Wealth used to be concentrated with Royalty and the church. Then it spread out to merchants and bankers, then farmers, and finally a degree of comfort (in western countries) is attainable by people all the way down to unskilled workers and such like.

Wealth is concentrated along country boundaries currently, but I feel that it will, and is spreading to places like India, and China, and Vietnam.

When I read about what it used to be like for ‘unskilled’ people, even just a couple of centuries ago in Europe, it’s got to be better these days.

The next step is to get everyone on the planet to at least a basic level of comfort.

If you look at how apathetic the grass roots are in most western countries, what with their basic food, shelter, and entertainment needs met. One would think that if everyone in the world had access to these things, suddenly most conflicts would disappear, cause no one could be bothered attacking anyone else?

I also feel that these amazing networks of communication that are being built (blogs being one) will bring us all closer to understanding, that we are all very similar.
Have a good weekend everyone