sydney a week ago - 1 (unless I can't replace my charger cord in which case, 1 and only).

Greetings from the East Sydney Hotel a week ago. I like it but it is loud! Also, while I was not unhappy with the small amount of time I got to spend at the state library this evening, I am unhappy that somehow I broke my laptop charger, so I am going to have to waste time and money tomorrow replacing that... 

'Unhappy' is going too far also but to blog is to whinge, I always say, and the other thing that irked me was when I decided to get off the airport train at Mascot to visit a block of flats designed by Harry Seidler in Rosebery, and my phone said 'go to bus stop A' and all I could see was 'D' (with a much bigger B than D on it, but whatever) and no plan anywhere to tell you where 'A' (or B or C) was. 

WHATEVS!

people 54 years ago

I have spent a considerable part of the day scanning and labelling some slides given to me for a paper I'm writing. They're pictures taken by a planning academic who is no longer with us but who was in Tapiola in June 1972 and was interested in the town and some of its features particularly things pertaining to transport. He was especially interested in cycling. 

They're great pictures but something that has entranced me is the people in the background just living their lives, seemingly quite wholesomely. You can't see their faces (usually) but you can see their clothes and the way they carry themselves in public. It's really interesting to me, not necessarily because it's Finland and a place I love, Tapiola, although I suppose that's not a negative. Have a look. 

save public housing protest last saturday

You should have been there! Maybe you were

flook in the perth daily news 2-15 june1952

 1 June 1952 was, you will recall, a Sunday.

Just when you think Fawkes' art can't get any better... not sure about this bizarre storyline though. 

closer to long service leave every day

My LSL starts on 1 July, and it's about two years overdue, in terms of burnout. No need to go into the machinations of that now. I'm looking forward to it though with some trepidation. I seriously suspect I won't get much actual relaxation but also that I don't really need any, just a reset. 

mentalist captions

I don't have a lot to say about The Mentalist, it is what it is, occasional moments of amusingly self-referential brilliance in a big sea of bumpf, but I am interested in the captions in the show, which often include things that aren't actually said, or which differ in minor ways from what is said, in unnecessary ways. That's all. 

Update: that's not all. In the above, the actual words spoken were '...like when your mom died'. 

meandering, meaningless research

I've noticed this taijitu a few times, on a building on the corner of Haines and Macaulay in North Melbourne, and I have wondered whether this indicates that the place itself had some particularly interesting inhabitant at one stage but it looks from my meandering, meaningless research that this is probably unlikely, Or at least... 

This snippet from the Age 12 March 1997 p. 49 relates to the company that used to occupy that building, and they sold the building the following year for a figure that surprised everyone. 

The real surprise if you ask me is that the building hasn't been used for anything (as far as I'm aware) in the last thirty years. 

Well, anyway I'm not going to go into this any further and nor am I going to go into the details of Stokoe Motors though here's their first available advertisement when they were at a different premises and classy. 

Melbourne Argus 1 November 1929 p. 11