Oh well. I suppose I should take heart from the fact that my readership considers that a song whose lyrics begin with “He’s the greatest! He’s fantastic!” should be my theme tune. I’m not sure, however, what that says about me. Or, come to think of it, my readership…
Anyway, we’re back from five day’s holiday on the north coast of NSW, well rested, refreshed, and full of astonishing insights*. Like these ones:
- The president of the Iluka Bowls Club is called Clem. I bet you didn’t know that before. See, I’ve just made you smarter. Use this new-found knowledge to impress young ladies at parties!**
- I met a man sweeping up butterfly wings — no, really, his job was sweeping up butterfly wings. Previously, however, he had worked for Sega of Japan (so he claimed), helping to set up some of their amusement parks, including the Sydney one. Just in case people think that I ask people who sweep up insect arms for a living really obscure questions as a matter of course, I was in fact wearing a Sega shirt (purely coincidentally) at the time, and he raised the matter. It seemed impolite to ask how one goes from working for a major Japanese software/hardware powerhouse to sweeping up bits of dead butterfly, so I didn’t.
- I could watch the guy making honeycomb at Carobana for hours. As long as the free small samples kept appearing, of course. Frankly, it’s something of a minor miracle that I walked out of there without buying an entire slab of the stuff…
- It’s also kind of interesting being stuck with an Optus SIM in a mobile in northern NSW right around the time that the company’s main data pipe (which, for some reason, seems to be in Surfers Paradise) gets clobbered by a backhoe. Interesting, but probably not very good for getting calls. If you were trying to contact me yesterday, you now know why you couldn’t. Of course, being on holiday, I wouldn’t have wanted a lengthy conversation, anyway. Perhaps killing everyone else’s mobile connections for the day was worth it….
- We discovered an odd quirk of nature, and one that seems to centre around the small town of Tucabia, a town otherwise only really notable for featuring on the national public toilet map — yes, your tax dollars are really hard at work there. Anyway, we drove past a field full of cows, which isn’t that unusual, really. Except that every one of these cows had their own personal duck. Really. A duck at the head of each cow. We did notice scattered outbreaks of Duck/Cow hybridism elsewhere along the coast, but Tucabia seemed to be the epicentre. What’s that about? What do the cows get out of it? Why don’t the ducks fly away? I did come up with one theory, however. With the rise in the price of both meat and milk, cows are suddenly worth a lot more money, and thus, somewhat rich by proxy. But your average cow isn’t that good at maths — once you get beyond “Have I chewed this cud once, or have I chewed it twice?”, the average Ermintrude tends to lose interest. That’s where the ducks come in, handling all accounting matters for these dim but lovable bovines. After all, if there’s one thing that ducks are familliar with, it’s bills…
- While much eco-talk centres around teleworking (an idea I would wholeheartedly support, except for the fact that to telework, I’d actually have to leave home to, in fact, work), I think the future should lie in Spa-working. At least, my future should lie in it. Lying in a heated spa, bubbles tickling my feet is an extremely relaxing pastime, and one that invigorated my creativity like nothing else. Well, except for a few other something elses, but most of those can’t be performed in public without getting arrested. Ahem. Anyway, all I need to do is work out a splash and bubble-proof laptop, and affordable wireless broadband. Actually, given the borked state of the data plans for the iPhone, I suspect coming up with a lappy that can survive a dunk into the sauna might be the easy part.
* Insights, may, not, on reflection, be that astonishing.
** Not guaranteed to work. You may also be a young lady, in which case the utility of the factoid is suspect to begin with.