Yes, yes it has been far too long since I last posted. However, THE most legitimate excuse ever: full time work and full time study SUCKS! I literally have no time to do anything else anymore, and that is terrible. Hence it is 1am on Sunday morning, and I am blogging just to clear out some blog notes. Alas, it is late/early and I will have to fly through this, without giving due thought to everything I wanted to say.
Yes, I will talk more about my accident later, and I will put up the pictures and everything!
Haha, looking back on these blog notes, this is going to be a very sleazy and salacious post, so I apologise in advance - and you youngens, skip on through!
As mentioned in my last post, an annoying guy at work has this amazing girlfriend. She should be starting with us very very soon - I cannot wait!!!
Meetings or discussions on horseshoe arranged tables are terrible!! Of course the meeting is going to get boring, and you can see people opposite you. This killed me in a tax law tutorial when I was at university, as I posted about a girl who wore short short miniskirts and no stockings in summer, and used to sit low in the chair with her legs out, right opposite me. Then in a meeting the other week there was a girl in a miniskirt opposite me, and my mind wandered again, and ahh, sitting through a 90minute meeting with sex on your mind for the whole time is sheer brutality!!! Legs legs legs, gahh!
Then again, there was another meeting - on the bottom of my office there is a commercial cafe, where a LOT of waitresses work. The windows of this meeting room on the bottom floor are mostly frosted, when just a few unglazed bits, so your vision of the outside is pretty obscured. However, I looked up, and all I got was just a face full of cleavage for about 2 minutes! I could have died right there I tell you; this waitress did not move, she stood there, bent over in a low cut top and her breasts were just about to spill out of her top. Of course after the meeting I had to go out there and check her out - yessss, curvy, brunette, busty as hell, and exotic. All the boxes ticked there!
I don't know why, but I've been listening to a lot of Don Henley lately. The guy is a bloody great singer. But one song in particular, the boys of summer. Wow, what a song. It's a great melody, with great atmosphere, but I find it incredibly depressing because of the themes of moving on and shouldering responsibility. I guess this is tied in to my monster diatribe from my last post, but I'll let you read that and form your own conclusions.
Another thing from work - they handed out these flyers to 'lift our spirits' I guess, with statements about our corporate vision and so on. However, one of the pictures is of this ridiculously beautiful goddess - yes typical of me: eurasian, brunette, sophisticated and enter all my other cliches. She is just insanely flawless, and if I ever look at that flyer, I just stare for minutes on end, lost for speech, lost for thought. Needless to say, I have put that flyer next to my monitor, and I have not done a lot of work in the last week, haha!
The other day, I was back at home to see my parents. Since I'm car-less I needed a lift to go shopping and we went to our local shopping centre. So what did I see? 3 people I went to High School with - my morbidly obese year 10 English teacher, and two other guys I wasn't particularly fond of. The English teacher was still huge and in her gym clothes for some obscure reason, and the two idiots were wandering about aimlessly. I was very happy to be out of there and that I've made something of my life. I guess you can always rely on your brain. And stuff you English teacher, one of my degrees is in journalism - you LOSE! Haha, that'll show her to grade me poorly!
That's it for now folks. Joaquin out - God knows how long for...
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Friday, July 02, 2010
The Investments That Failed To Return
I had a less than productive Friday, which was most likely due to all my work being with other parties! I can’t help it if I have no work to do due to other people having to get things back to me! But that’s all good, because I just tended to errands all day, as well as listened to music and typed up the first part of this blog! So you should be happy.
However, one issue I have come across is the lack of remote blog notes! I keep them on my PC at home. I only ever need to access them from outside when I want to add to them. For this purpose I just e-mail myself with my additional blog notes and add them to the master list when I get home. But in the event I want them so I can actually type them up from a remote location, then I am stuffed. It’s times like this that I’m glad there’s things like Dropbox, alas, we cannot access that system from work.
I was reading some news reviews of Toy Story 3 – apparently it is a very emotional story, which has resulted in many grown men crying. I haven’t seen the film; in fact, I haven’t even seen any of them in their entirety, but I know the general premise and know the ending of this last film. I will probably end up watching them all, because I’ve only heard good things. There’s a spoiler coming up so please skip the following until you get to the paragraph starting with “stay with me on this point for a bit”.
So basically, the film ends as the owner of the toys (Andy, who was a kid in the first film) turns 17 and goes off to college. He then bids the toys an emotional farewell as he hands them off to a neighbour. This is supposedly the point where the big men start blubbering. I don’t think there’s anything soft about this; I actually think it’s probably the appropriate response.
Stay with me on this point for a bit. I don’t think males (as boys) are ever really prepared for “manhood” or adulthood and all the implied cultural responsibilities that it entails. I don’t know what this is like for females, so I apologise, and just bear with me for a little while. I remember how fun it was just being lost in my world playing with toys and just having such a great time in general. But at one particular point, you are basically forced to give them up and start being more responsible. Growing up mentally isn’t natural at this point, it’s all forced. There’s no more innocence, and you’re left thrust out into a cold uncaring world, but forced to grin and take it on the chin cause ‘you’re a man’. That right there is a traumatic event in itself, so it comes as no surprise to me that all these grown men with families are crying about that part of the film. Their toys are a link to the past, a symbol of that youth and carefree innocence that they were forced to give up well before they were ready. I’m being wildly anecdotal here, but girls aren’t really women till they’re in their early twenties. The shadow of their youth always trails them closely. Boys on the other hand are forced to believe they want to be men right from the get go. It’s always a rush to lose your childhood and immaturity, and general sense of wonder and amazement with the world. Boys as young as 8 are being told to be a man and not cry and so on – obviously a different case to the females.
I’ve been told many a time that women mature faster than men. This could be true, but I guess you can’t blame us for always wanting to recapture our youth. Before you go off on your rant and start labelling me a hypocrite and what else, I’ll admit that I still have my teddy bear from when I was a child. I love it very much, and treat it well. I remember I was young, and my sister told me that we were having the house cleaned and to put my stuff away in the garage so it didn’t get trashed. That night I could not sleep, as my teddy bear (who I’ve slept with every night except when on school trips, or sleepovers), was in the bag in the garage. So I went to the garage and took my bear. After I got back from school the next day, all my stuff was gone, except for my bear; my sister had given it all away. I was relieved. I didn’t care that all my awesome expensive toys had gone and I’d never see them or play with them again. I had my teddy bear and I would be able to hold it and it could go everywhere with me (as long as I was in the house)! If I had lost my bear that day, I cannot even describe how devastated I’d be. I still have the attachment to my bear and I still sleep with it every night tucked under my arm, and walk around the house with it from time to time. I almost treat it like it were real – if I drop it, no big deal, but if someone takes it, or makes fun of its ragged appearance, then I get aggressive. I sometimes wonder what will happen to it after I’m dead. It’s made out of material that will last a long time. Will it just be disposed of and left in some tip or at the back of some storage cupboard somewhere? Will someone else love it care for it like I do? I guess we’ll see what happens.
Principles always need to be expanded and greatly clarified. I don’t know why this is, as it greatly implies that there is no room for common sense in interpretation. Corporate governance, shop guidelines and so on all have principles that can be distilled to about 5 or 6 lines. However that isn’t enough, people are stupid and pedantic so that everything needs to be drilled down to its core components and expanded greatly. If that’s the point, why bother trying to summarise it? It’s already contained in the explanation. That’s something I’ll never understand. Why can’t people just understand them from the outset? People wouldn’t just say them if they meant something different!
There’s a guy at work who I don’t like. He’s got this air of smugness about him cause he’s a year or two older than I am, and he’s been promoted to managerial level. Well the promotion didn’t make him smug, cause he was smug before that, I assure you! He just goes around like he’s the king of the world with his good looks, toned biceps and skinny jeans and so on and so forth. Anyway, he has a ridiculously hot girlfriend (of course), who also works in the same Department, but in a different area. I’ve seen her around with him before while out walking during lunch and stuff. I got to meet her at our Christmas party last year (I think I might have mentioned her in a post around then). She’s obscenely attractive. Amazing body, eurasian, just sex on legs I tell you. She got majorly drunk at this party and I had the hilarious intention of openly flirting with her in front of him. I pulled this off to great effect and all the physical signs were there. I just recently found out that she is going to be starting a job in our area in the next few weeks. Of course I am going to pull the same thing again! I don’t like him! She’s very attractive! Don’t worry, I’m nasty, not a total bastard, it’s not like I’d do anything with her. I just like to make him squirm. It’ll also be good to finally have some hotness in the workplace again!! I can’t tell you how badly the effect of having no hotness has had on my psyche. Utterly damaging I tell you.
So yes, I know that the Joaquin Rate List (JRL) is still in need of updating! I haven’t had the chance, and there has just been a bevy of insanely beautiful women who seem to have just sprung up overnight. Therefore, it will take some time to do, but don’t fret, I will get to it very soon.
Uni starts up again on Monday – for 18 weeks! That is not good! But at least it’s my last subject. It also means that I am now full time, and I can finally have my student card reflect that. Hello benefits and discounts!!! It’s about bloody time, that’s all I can tell you. The price of basic amenities these days is a fucking joke at full price. Public transport, car parking, movies, it all is seriously bullshit. I cannot wait to save some money on these items. However, I am not looking forward to this hard slog that I have to get through over the coming months. At least it’s all group work, and I have a very good team.
I am an avid watcher of an Australian gaming show called Good Game. While the quality has dipped as of late, they do have a fantastic segment called Pile of Shame. Basically they interview designers and developers about games they’ve never finished. I figured I might as well put in my 2 cents here. This just includes games that I am no longer playing on a regular basis.
Driver 2 – Yes I never finished it and I feel humiliated! And it wasn’t just cause I never bothered, I really effing tried! That last mission is sheer brutality! I couldn’t do it. Perfect driving is required in order to make it to the last checkpoint, because you need to get out of the car and run, and that last run is what kills me. Ahhh this one is a heartbreaker I tell you. WAY harder than the last mission on Driver 1- which the other watched me defeat with no troubles. Though, that Supafly mission with the sports car was pretty tough. I remember trashing that car several times.
Urban Chaos – Absolute SHIT game on the Playstation. I can’t believe I paid full price for this one. Horribly designed, poorly executed, it was just bloody awful. I didn’t get too far due to the silly game mechanics, especially on the driving.
I will continue this as I remember what games I’ve played!
I know I mentioned that I would go into the specifics of my car accident, but I want to post some pics up in the form of diagrams to help you understand, but I haven’t done that yet, so I’ll get around to that fairly shortly too.
Facebook, what an interesting thing really. I’m quite fussy about the friends I add. I typically only accept people who I’ve met in person and am fairly familiar with. So when I’m faced with requests to join the group for my High School reunion, and friend requests from school bullies and other downright nasty people, I definitely ignore them. Time may forgive you, but I won’t! I love how people try to pretend the past never happened and they want to be friends with everyone. Not for me. But on a slight tangent, de-friending someone is becoming an interesting concept for me. I remember my peak amount of friends was about 190-something (before you cringe, no I don’t measure my self worth in the number of friends I have on facebook). However, that number has dwindled to about 180-something now. Some have just left facebook, but others have de-friended me. How do I know? I was trying to search for people in my friend list and they disappeared, but when I searched for them, they came up and we still had mutual friends and all, but the friend request button came up. What the hell? What did I ever do to you? That’s complete bullshit if you ask me.
Facebook is just a way to stay in contact with people, it’s not asking you to make a full on commitment to me and prove your friendship in ways that will push you to the limit of your being! I hate this quote, but I’m going to have to use it – “champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends”. My year 10 formal date de-friended me for no reason! We ran into each other several times a few months ago, and then BAM! I cop this! Another more sinister one was Les Femme Anomaly. From someone I thought I might have loved to being totally ignored and thrown out with the trash, I thought I deserved better. What a bitch, especially after all I had done for her. But I guess it probably had something to do with me no longer being friends with M-Biatch. Incidentally, M-Biatch is now a married woman. Like what the hell?! Where does the time go? I guess we’re all getting old…despite being in our mid 20’s.
So as I mentioned previously, the other and I jammed along on one of his tracks, and the result was sheer brilliance. We were using some of his recording software and hardware, and it was pure awesome. There was even a dual guitar solo in there (featuring both of us simultaneously)! It came off perfectly, with the other showing is freakishly uncanny gift for improvising counterpoint lines over my guitar lines.
The (former) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was deposed the other day in a party room vote. This raised questions of the validity of the leadership process in a democratic country such as Australia. People were complaining that such a thing should not be able to happen to a leader, myself among their number. But I read an interesting article from a former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke (who was deposed in a similar fashion in the early 90’s) today. As he rightly pointed out, the people never choose the leader under our system. We only elect the officials who then agree to pick a leader. It’s still sad, but I guess it’s a fact of life in the world of politics.
I received a hilarious phone call the other day from Optus, who is a telecommunications service provider. I have my mobile phone with them, and previously had my internet and landline with them when I was in Sydney. They thanked me for my years of loyalty (I have just been too lazy to change carriers), and offered me a free netbook. I thought this was an awesome score, but figured there must be some sort of catch. Of course the guy said that it came with wireless internet that cost $30 a month which was automatically bundled with it, meaning that you couldn’t separate the two. So therefore, they were giving me something for “free” that I had to pay an ongoing cost for, for the rest of my life! One year? $360. No thank you! I already have the internet at home, and I have a wireless router, why the fuck would I spend more money on something like that? I told him I wasn’t interested and promptly hung up. Fuck you Optus, that is ridiculously misleading.
There is this girl I used to work in my area who is an absolute hoot to converse with over e-mail. She moved to another government department because she wanted to get involved with social policy. However, due to mismanagement on that end, she is being hilariously underutilised, and as a result she is reduced to sending us e-mail forwards, and other notable conversation points. This is good, because whenever I’m bored, I just send her an e-mail with a few words in it, and she’ll reply back with a huge essay, and some brilliant talking points to get into. We had a big discussion on positive body images for women, obesity, genetics, evolution and the internet the other day. It’s awesome, intellectually stimulating conversation.
Speaking of the Department, it’s a silly thing. The piece of legislation that we oversee contains a provision for the Minister to have unfettered discretion with their decision making. This is ridiculously pointless, as we are not allowed to consider political items in our briefs or recommendations, we only objective assess against the provisions of the Act. These recommendations are then promptly ignored when politics may look the Minister look bad, even if the decision is the ‘objectively correct’ one under the Act! What’s more, is that we’re not aware that the Minister has such inclinations on a subject matter until we receive the brief back all rejected, and the Minister’s Office rings up and abuses us for making such recommendations! What the hell? The Minister and their Office is so divorced from the daily grind of Government Departments that it is seriously a joke! We have no idea what they’re thinking, and they have no idea what we’re thinking. This has a major effect on the work we do, and leads to inefficiencies and much time being wasted.
That being said, NO piece of legislation should ever allow a Minister to have unfettered discretion in the decision making process. Such things are not conducive to the democratic process, or notions of fairness and objectivity.
Land and development planning via Government processes are silly. I don’t think the democratic process and medium-long term planning is compatible. Governments are typically only in for 3 years or so, so in the event they get voted out, planning projects get put on hold, revised, scrapped or go ahead with little to no support from the new Government. I think all planning should be done on a short term time frame, with a view to long term process in staggered stages.
Oh wow, that was a long post! Just over three thousand words! Is it the biggest post ever? I’m not sure, but it probably comes close. Very good, especially since I had a fair bit more to go, but I will get into that stuff tomorrow.
That’s it for now folks, have a nice day. Joaquin out.
However, one issue I have come across is the lack of remote blog notes! I keep them on my PC at home. I only ever need to access them from outside when I want to add to them. For this purpose I just e-mail myself with my additional blog notes and add them to the master list when I get home. But in the event I want them so I can actually type them up from a remote location, then I am stuffed. It’s times like this that I’m glad there’s things like Dropbox, alas, we cannot access that system from work.
I was reading some news reviews of Toy Story 3 – apparently it is a very emotional story, which has resulted in many grown men crying. I haven’t seen the film; in fact, I haven’t even seen any of them in their entirety, but I know the general premise and know the ending of this last film. I will probably end up watching them all, because I’ve only heard good things. There’s a spoiler coming up so please skip the following until you get to the paragraph starting with “stay with me on this point for a bit”.
So basically, the film ends as the owner of the toys (Andy, who was a kid in the first film) turns 17 and goes off to college. He then bids the toys an emotional farewell as he hands them off to a neighbour. This is supposedly the point where the big men start blubbering. I don’t think there’s anything soft about this; I actually think it’s probably the appropriate response.
Stay with me on this point for a bit. I don’t think males (as boys) are ever really prepared for “manhood” or adulthood and all the implied cultural responsibilities that it entails. I don’t know what this is like for females, so I apologise, and just bear with me for a little while. I remember how fun it was just being lost in my world playing with toys and just having such a great time in general. But at one particular point, you are basically forced to give them up and start being more responsible. Growing up mentally isn’t natural at this point, it’s all forced. There’s no more innocence, and you’re left thrust out into a cold uncaring world, but forced to grin and take it on the chin cause ‘you’re a man’. That right there is a traumatic event in itself, so it comes as no surprise to me that all these grown men with families are crying about that part of the film. Their toys are a link to the past, a symbol of that youth and carefree innocence that they were forced to give up well before they were ready. I’m being wildly anecdotal here, but girls aren’t really women till they’re in their early twenties. The shadow of their youth always trails them closely. Boys on the other hand are forced to believe they want to be men right from the get go. It’s always a rush to lose your childhood and immaturity, and general sense of wonder and amazement with the world. Boys as young as 8 are being told to be a man and not cry and so on – obviously a different case to the females.
I’ve been told many a time that women mature faster than men. This could be true, but I guess you can’t blame us for always wanting to recapture our youth. Before you go off on your rant and start labelling me a hypocrite and what else, I’ll admit that I still have my teddy bear from when I was a child. I love it very much, and treat it well. I remember I was young, and my sister told me that we were having the house cleaned and to put my stuff away in the garage so it didn’t get trashed. That night I could not sleep, as my teddy bear (who I’ve slept with every night except when on school trips, or sleepovers), was in the bag in the garage. So I went to the garage and took my bear. After I got back from school the next day, all my stuff was gone, except for my bear; my sister had given it all away. I was relieved. I didn’t care that all my awesome expensive toys had gone and I’d never see them or play with them again. I had my teddy bear and I would be able to hold it and it could go everywhere with me (as long as I was in the house)! If I had lost my bear that day, I cannot even describe how devastated I’d be. I still have the attachment to my bear and I still sleep with it every night tucked under my arm, and walk around the house with it from time to time. I almost treat it like it were real – if I drop it, no big deal, but if someone takes it, or makes fun of its ragged appearance, then I get aggressive. I sometimes wonder what will happen to it after I’m dead. It’s made out of material that will last a long time. Will it just be disposed of and left in some tip or at the back of some storage cupboard somewhere? Will someone else love it care for it like I do? I guess we’ll see what happens.
Principles always need to be expanded and greatly clarified. I don’t know why this is, as it greatly implies that there is no room for common sense in interpretation. Corporate governance, shop guidelines and so on all have principles that can be distilled to about 5 or 6 lines. However that isn’t enough, people are stupid and pedantic so that everything needs to be drilled down to its core components and expanded greatly. If that’s the point, why bother trying to summarise it? It’s already contained in the explanation. That’s something I’ll never understand. Why can’t people just understand them from the outset? People wouldn’t just say them if they meant something different!
There’s a guy at work who I don’t like. He’s got this air of smugness about him cause he’s a year or two older than I am, and he’s been promoted to managerial level. Well the promotion didn’t make him smug, cause he was smug before that, I assure you! He just goes around like he’s the king of the world with his good looks, toned biceps and skinny jeans and so on and so forth. Anyway, he has a ridiculously hot girlfriend (of course), who also works in the same Department, but in a different area. I’ve seen her around with him before while out walking during lunch and stuff. I got to meet her at our Christmas party last year (I think I might have mentioned her in a post around then). She’s obscenely attractive. Amazing body, eurasian, just sex on legs I tell you. She got majorly drunk at this party and I had the hilarious intention of openly flirting with her in front of him. I pulled this off to great effect and all the physical signs were there. I just recently found out that she is going to be starting a job in our area in the next few weeks. Of course I am going to pull the same thing again! I don’t like him! She’s very attractive! Don’t worry, I’m nasty, not a total bastard, it’s not like I’d do anything with her. I just like to make him squirm. It’ll also be good to finally have some hotness in the workplace again!! I can’t tell you how badly the effect of having no hotness has had on my psyche. Utterly damaging I tell you.
So yes, I know that the Joaquin Rate List (JRL) is still in need of updating! I haven’t had the chance, and there has just been a bevy of insanely beautiful women who seem to have just sprung up overnight. Therefore, it will take some time to do, but don’t fret, I will get to it very soon.
Uni starts up again on Monday – for 18 weeks! That is not good! But at least it’s my last subject. It also means that I am now full time, and I can finally have my student card reflect that. Hello benefits and discounts!!! It’s about bloody time, that’s all I can tell you. The price of basic amenities these days is a fucking joke at full price. Public transport, car parking, movies, it all is seriously bullshit. I cannot wait to save some money on these items. However, I am not looking forward to this hard slog that I have to get through over the coming months. At least it’s all group work, and I have a very good team.
I am an avid watcher of an Australian gaming show called Good Game. While the quality has dipped as of late, they do have a fantastic segment called Pile of Shame. Basically they interview designers and developers about games they’ve never finished. I figured I might as well put in my 2 cents here. This just includes games that I am no longer playing on a regular basis.
Driver 2 – Yes I never finished it and I feel humiliated! And it wasn’t just cause I never bothered, I really effing tried! That last mission is sheer brutality! I couldn’t do it. Perfect driving is required in order to make it to the last checkpoint, because you need to get out of the car and run, and that last run is what kills me. Ahhh this one is a heartbreaker I tell you. WAY harder than the last mission on Driver 1- which the other watched me defeat with no troubles. Though, that Supafly mission with the sports car was pretty tough. I remember trashing that car several times.
Urban Chaos – Absolute SHIT game on the Playstation. I can’t believe I paid full price for this one. Horribly designed, poorly executed, it was just bloody awful. I didn’t get too far due to the silly game mechanics, especially on the driving.
I will continue this as I remember what games I’ve played!
I know I mentioned that I would go into the specifics of my car accident, but I want to post some pics up in the form of diagrams to help you understand, but I haven’t done that yet, so I’ll get around to that fairly shortly too.
Facebook, what an interesting thing really. I’m quite fussy about the friends I add. I typically only accept people who I’ve met in person and am fairly familiar with. So when I’m faced with requests to join the group for my High School reunion, and friend requests from school bullies and other downright nasty people, I definitely ignore them. Time may forgive you, but I won’t! I love how people try to pretend the past never happened and they want to be friends with everyone. Not for me. But on a slight tangent, de-friending someone is becoming an interesting concept for me. I remember my peak amount of friends was about 190-something (before you cringe, no I don’t measure my self worth in the number of friends I have on facebook). However, that number has dwindled to about 180-something now. Some have just left facebook, but others have de-friended me. How do I know? I was trying to search for people in my friend list and they disappeared, but when I searched for them, they came up and we still had mutual friends and all, but the friend request button came up. What the hell? What did I ever do to you? That’s complete bullshit if you ask me.
Facebook is just a way to stay in contact with people, it’s not asking you to make a full on commitment to me and prove your friendship in ways that will push you to the limit of your being! I hate this quote, but I’m going to have to use it – “champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends”. My year 10 formal date de-friended me for no reason! We ran into each other several times a few months ago, and then BAM! I cop this! Another more sinister one was Les Femme Anomaly. From someone I thought I might have loved to being totally ignored and thrown out with the trash, I thought I deserved better. What a bitch, especially after all I had done for her. But I guess it probably had something to do with me no longer being friends with M-Biatch. Incidentally, M-Biatch is now a married woman. Like what the hell?! Where does the time go? I guess we’re all getting old…despite being in our mid 20’s.
So as I mentioned previously, the other and I jammed along on one of his tracks, and the result was sheer brilliance. We were using some of his recording software and hardware, and it was pure awesome. There was even a dual guitar solo in there (featuring both of us simultaneously)! It came off perfectly, with the other showing is freakishly uncanny gift for improvising counterpoint lines over my guitar lines.
The (former) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was deposed the other day in a party room vote. This raised questions of the validity of the leadership process in a democratic country such as Australia. People were complaining that such a thing should not be able to happen to a leader, myself among their number. But I read an interesting article from a former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke (who was deposed in a similar fashion in the early 90’s) today. As he rightly pointed out, the people never choose the leader under our system. We only elect the officials who then agree to pick a leader. It’s still sad, but I guess it’s a fact of life in the world of politics.
I received a hilarious phone call the other day from Optus, who is a telecommunications service provider. I have my mobile phone with them, and previously had my internet and landline with them when I was in Sydney. They thanked me for my years of loyalty (I have just been too lazy to change carriers), and offered me a free netbook. I thought this was an awesome score, but figured there must be some sort of catch. Of course the guy said that it came with wireless internet that cost $30 a month which was automatically bundled with it, meaning that you couldn’t separate the two. So therefore, they were giving me something for “free” that I had to pay an ongoing cost for, for the rest of my life! One year? $360. No thank you! I already have the internet at home, and I have a wireless router, why the fuck would I spend more money on something like that? I told him I wasn’t interested and promptly hung up. Fuck you Optus, that is ridiculously misleading.
There is this girl I used to work in my area who is an absolute hoot to converse with over e-mail. She moved to another government department because she wanted to get involved with social policy. However, due to mismanagement on that end, she is being hilariously underutilised, and as a result she is reduced to sending us e-mail forwards, and other notable conversation points. This is good, because whenever I’m bored, I just send her an e-mail with a few words in it, and she’ll reply back with a huge essay, and some brilliant talking points to get into. We had a big discussion on positive body images for women, obesity, genetics, evolution and the internet the other day. It’s awesome, intellectually stimulating conversation.
Speaking of the Department, it’s a silly thing. The piece of legislation that we oversee contains a provision for the Minister to have unfettered discretion with their decision making. This is ridiculously pointless, as we are not allowed to consider political items in our briefs or recommendations, we only objective assess against the provisions of the Act. These recommendations are then promptly ignored when politics may look the Minister look bad, even if the decision is the ‘objectively correct’ one under the Act! What’s more, is that we’re not aware that the Minister has such inclinations on a subject matter until we receive the brief back all rejected, and the Minister’s Office rings up and abuses us for making such recommendations! What the hell? The Minister and their Office is so divorced from the daily grind of Government Departments that it is seriously a joke! We have no idea what they’re thinking, and they have no idea what we’re thinking. This has a major effect on the work we do, and leads to inefficiencies and much time being wasted.
That being said, NO piece of legislation should ever allow a Minister to have unfettered discretion in the decision making process. Such things are not conducive to the democratic process, or notions of fairness and objectivity.
Land and development planning via Government processes are silly. I don’t think the democratic process and medium-long term planning is compatible. Governments are typically only in for 3 years or so, so in the event they get voted out, planning projects get put on hold, revised, scrapped or go ahead with little to no support from the new Government. I think all planning should be done on a short term time frame, with a view to long term process in staggered stages.
Oh wow, that was a long post! Just over three thousand words! Is it the biggest post ever? I’m not sure, but it probably comes close. Very good, especially since I had a fair bit more to go, but I will get into that stuff tomorrow.
That’s it for now folks, have a nice day. Joaquin out.
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