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Axver

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[3 April 2008|11:09 pm]
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[Current Music |'The Twyncyn/Trembling Willows' by Pure Reason Revolution]

Well, April looks like it's going to be considerably busy and stressful. The fact I'm updating LJ rather than writing an essay surely isn't doing me any favours either. However, I feel motivated to update, while I can't say I feel terribly thrilled about rehashing arguments on the Holocaust in Romania in the quest for a mark, so update I shall.

March quite unexpectedly proved to be a rather good month. To tell the truth, it was probably my best month of the fourteen or so I've spent in Melbourne so far. When it started, I can't say I expected that. It was stinking hot, I was feeling fairly lonely, and Mum was not in the best of health at all. But it turns out the Internet is more than just a vehicle for porn and flamewars, and I can largely thank LJ and Interference for such a good March - my mother's all too short visit also significantly contributed. From Interference, the Maj. is not just in one of my courses at university but in the very same tutorial (what are the odds, seriously), while outside of uni I've caught up with Ali and TE/Melissa a few times and went to the National Gallery with them. It's been terribly good actually getting out and doing things, and a group of us are going to the premiere of U2 3D next week. I must admit I really don't care too much about U2 3D - it's a sort of ridiculous concept and only one song in the entire setlist really leaps out at me as worth hearing, but I'm not going to say no to passing the evening with a cool group of people and music I'm sure I'll enjoy despite my skepticism.

Meanwhile, in quite a chance encounter, [info]harmonybear/Kat and I bumped into each other over on [info]melbournemaniac. Would you believe there is another albino railfan roughly my age in Melbourne? No, I didn't either. But I'm not even joking. We've been out railfanning and tramfanning a fair bit the last few weeks. Most of it has just been around the central city, including one day when the routes 3, 64, and 67 tram lines were running via William Street to terminate at Dudley Street - I really wanted (and got!) photos of Z1s and As on a route normally run solely by Z3s and B2s. I've also ridden the Frankston - Stony Point line twice, once by myself and once with Kat; it's the only non-electrified train on the Melbourne commuter network. At the moment, it's operated by an A class diesel locomotive hauling either two or three of four MTH carriages, undoubtedly the most comfortable rolling stock of any suburban train. It's well worth the trip, especially as it's going to be replaced by Sprinter railcars rather soon. Kat and I are planning another trip later this month before the A+MTH are replaced, this time to photograph it between stations and also photograph the Long Island Steel train, which I frustratingly missed by a matter of minutes when we went down last weekend. Assuming I don't get too stressed over the next few days with essay madness, I'll post some of my pictures from my railfan adventures.

On another note, I'm considerably relieved with the very sudden departure of summer. Three weeks ago, Melbourne was melting in 40C weather. Today barely reached 16C. Looks like the coming few days are going to be rather pleasant and comfortable around 20-25C. Tomorrow evening, I hope it's fine as I plan to go out and do some more tramfanning, unfortunately without Kat as she'll be in Adelaide making me jealous by riding Adelaide trains. But it's the last weekday evening before the end of daylight saving and I don't yet have a photo of a 00 tram on the route 55. The 00 trams are return workings of peak hour trams that aren't rostered to actually run the 55 in the counter-peak direction; they are simply returning to Essendon Depot. Since they run in the evening and it will soon be too dark for my camera to produce worthwhile shots when the 00 runs, I'll go park myself somewhere in Royal Park, do readings, and photograph the parade of passing trams in the hope that at least one 00 comes my way when it's still nice and light. I do wonder if any counter-peak 00s run from Essendon Depot to West Coburg in the morning, but I'm never even remotely up that early to find out! I imagine they do, but I'll stick with catching the 00 in the evening for now. I don't think any of the Melburnians on my friends list or Interference would be terribly interested in joining me tomorrow, but if anybody is, let me know! I'm thinking about getting pizza.

And I think that's about it in news from Axverland. I've 3,500 words over two essays due in ten days, of which only 900 words are thus far written, and 4,000 words to do for the Royal Historical Society before the end of April. What fun. Have a good one, everybody.
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[16 March 2008|11:58 pm]
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[Current Mood | hot]
[Current Music |'Hallways Of Enchanted Ebony' by Agalloch]

What a remarkably social weekend. I went out for hours on both days. I would be lying if I said I could remember the last time I did that. It was fantastic too, and I would love more of the same in the coming weekends. I really don't get out much, but I always enjoy myself considerably when I do, and I'm sure I would be a much happier individual if I didn't hide inside my apartment so much. I would also be a much happier individual if the oppressive heat we're experiencing would go away. Today was amazingly uncomfortable. Tomorrow, my favourite tutor is giving the weekly lecture for one of my courses at uni and I really want to go, but unbelievably, the lecture theatre is not air conditioned (what century is this, people?!) and the forecast is for 39C. Ouch. I'll feel terrible if I don't go, but when I went to that theatre in 32C, I nearly passed out. I don't even want to think about what 39C would be like. I have to go in to the Royal Historical Society tomorrow for a meeting in the morning, but thankfully their building is air conditioned.

This heat is awful. It's making me put things off. I'm not going shopping until it cools down. I'm skipping lectures. I'm avoiding absolutely anything that requires me going outside any more than I must, which means I keep delaying having my hair cut. My hair has gotten too long and is a bit uncomfortable in the heat, but the walk to the hairdresser seems even less desirable. I guess I'll be waiting until an anticipated cool change rolls through on Thursday. I'm really not handling the heat well at all. I'm considerably thankful that I am not in Adelaide, which sounds like the very furnaces of Hell.

To summarise, I WANT MY BLOODY AUTUMN.
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[14 March 2008|09:24 pm]
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[Current Mood | hot]
[Current Music |'Veil Of Maya' by Cynic]

God's fortunate that he doesn't exist, otherwise he'd have a lot of explaining to do with regards to Melbourne's boilingly hot weather.

As it is, I merely scowl at the weather systems and wonder where the hell autumn's got to.
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On sweltering weather and vast wastage of money [5 January 2008|09:07 pm]
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[Current Mood | hot]
[Current Music |'Epidemic' by Blackfield]

Well, Melbourne sure has been sweltering this past week. New Year's Eve struck 41 - and was still over 34 at midnight! - followed by 40 on New Year's Day, almost 36 yesterday, and today crept just past the 37 mark. Apparently it's going to be 24 tomorrow though, so make sense of that. For those of you still living in the Dark Ages in the US, 37 is 100 Fahrenheit, and I believe 41 is around 106-odd. Thank goodness this is just a dry heat; it's damn warm but you don't feel like dying, thanks to the absence of the sticky and mightily uncomfortable humidity that typifies Queensland summers. So, Victoria gets points there.

It seems that even in this part of the world, news about the Iowa caucus is rather inescapable. As much as I wish Kucinich were a viable candidate, I am delighted to see Obama emerge victorious and hopefully that will give him the boost he needs to take New Hampshire in a few days. What, however, strikes someone such as myself as truly extraordinary is that this is the first week of January, and yet we won't have a final outcome until early November, and even this time next year, the Dear Shrubbery will still be in power! From afar, the election process to gain the US Presidency is frankly a bit of a curiosity, something peculiar to stare at for a bit and shake your head in wonder. I live in a part of the world where the date of the election is not even announced until six weeks beforehand, and thus the formal campaigning is rather limited in duration. Now, since the date of the election must fall on a Saturday during a particular period roughly three years since the last election, there's naturally some moves being made as the announcement of the date becomes progressively more imminent, but it's more subtle and the floodgates don't open until six weeks prior. What's more, there's none of this jockeying for candidacy as the Prime Minister is simply the head minister of the party that achieves a majority in the House of Representatives. Given all of the campaigning that had already taken place last year, it feels to someone such as myself that the Iowa caucus should have been the US election itself and you almost start wondering why Obama hasn't been sworn in yet.

One other thing absolutely blows my mind, and even more than how drawn out the process is - namely, just how much money is funnelled into this, even into the marginal candidates who don't have a snowball's chance in hell of even competing with the lead candidates, let alone actually gaining the nomination. Once everything's said and done, I'd love to see a comparison of how much Labour's successful Australian election campaign last year cost compared to how much each Democrat and Republican nominee spent simply in campaigning for the primaries. I don't doubt that the latter will cost more than the former. It makes me sad really, that there are people out there with so much money to burn yet so little clue what to do with it. You could probably fund a year's worth of food for an entire small African country! And the wonders this money would do if it were pumped into health or education ...! Instead, all that money is going to waste on campaigning - and barely 15% of the people eligible to vote actually turn up. What a waste. Though given how the US seems to be in a permanent state of somebody campaigning for something, voter burnout would hardly surprise me.
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[1 May 2007|04:08 pm]
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[Current Mood | good]
[Current Music |'And She Slowly Dies' by Wolverine]

Over the last week, I've certainly come to realise how much I love living in Melbourne. Right now, I'm happier here than I was in Brisbane, despite some of the conveniences I had there that I don't have here - especially that in Brisbane, university was a ten minute walk away, whereas here, I have to leave about 30-40 minutes beforehand to arrive on time to class. That factor aside, I am well and truly taken by the trams. I have never felt so independent in my life - I rarely even have to worry about how I'm meant to get somewhere. Plus, the interesting people and experiences I sometimes have on there tend to make commuting just that little bit more interesting.

( More reasons why Melbourne rocks. )
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[23 August 2006|02:51 pm]
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[Current Music |'In The Fire' by Neal Morse]

You can tell it's election season in Queensland. Every item of mail I received today was some sort of election campaign leaflet. "Local MP working hard", "local MP can't get the facts right", "Peter Beattie must go", "Liberals/Nationals can't govern themselves, let alone Queensland", and on it goes. Well, I already know who I am going to vote for. When I get my voting slip, I'm going to write across it "give me some decent candidates and I'll give you a decent vote". I seriously considered voting against Peter Beattie just because he's been in power for eight years and I'm sick of him for a good number of reasons, but none of the minor parties inspire anything in me and the Liberals and Nationals are pretty much everything I dislike: socially conservative and economically liberal. To hell with compulsory voting. I don't see why I should vote when not one of the candidates has done anything to earn my vote. I'm not looking forward to next year's federal election. Do I follow this year's state election strategy of demanding a decent candidate, or do I suck it up and bring myself to vote for Labour in the hopes that it gets rid of John Howard? Australian politics is in a terrible state. That said, politics in general has always been in a bad state. There's only one politician I can say I truly like and that would be Julius Vogel, Prime Minister of New Zealand 1873-1875 and again in 1876, a brilliant man well ahead of his time. I do also admire David Lange (NZ PM 1984-1989) in some respects, especially his excellent public speaking ability and his wit; my favourite example would be his comment to the US ambassador, who owned a racehorse named Lacka Reason: "you are the only ambassador in the world to race a horse named after your country's foreign policy."

Now, while it may be obvious that it is election season here, some other seasons aren't quite so obvious. I'm specifically referring to winter, which seems to have packed up its bags and moved south. Today's highest temperature? 26.3 (79.34F)! Yesterday's? 26.9 (80.42)! The lowest daytime temperature all bloody month has been 21.1 (69.98F). This might as well be summertime in Wellington. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that August is the third month of winter, not the third month of Slightly Cooler Than Summer. It shouldn't even be allowed to hit 20 at this time of year. I hate living in Queensland so bloody much. The weather could at least do us a favour and rain. I can't remember the last time I saw green grass.

Now to stop procrastinating and do some work for university. Woo. Hoo.
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[10 July 2006|07:21 pm]
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[Current Music |'The Cry Of Mankind' by My Dying Bride]

You know you live in Queensland when the temperature on a winter's day is 24C (75.2F for the Yanks) and that's considered to be just three above average (69.8F).

I find it interesting that for the last while, John Howard and Peter Costello have maintained that there was no secret deal about a handover of the Liberal Party leadership, but now it has come to light that there appears to have actually been something of the sort. And, of course, Howard is brushing it off as a "conversation". I can't help but suspect he's playing a petty semantics game. It doesn't take much brainpower to realise that any deal would have taken place in a conversation between the two parties. I'm cynical enough to not trust John Howard as far as I could throw him anyway. It's a bit rich that he's spewing forth nonsense about the "good of Australia" when his government hasn't exactly worked for much Australian good. I can't say I'm looking forward to next year's election though, given that I hate the Labour Party, especially Kim Beazley, about as much as I hate the Liberals/Nationals and none of the alternatives exactly set my political world alight either. I feel tempted to run as an independent and see if anyone votes for me.

Moving abroad, the continual cycle of violence in Israel is just ridiculous. Do people just not think, are they such slaves to base desires for revenge that they are incapable of seeing the bigger picture? I have to wonder: don't the Palestinians realise that continual aggression such as suicide bombings, kidnappings, and lobbing missiles over the Gaza border are sure to incur the wrath of one of the world's most formidable armies? And don't the Israelis realise that they're just taking the bait and encouraging even more violent responses from the Palestinians? I cannot fathom why people are so unable or unwilling to live in peace.

Speaking of that, it seems Iraq isn't exactly improving. Now, as much as I oppose the Iraq War, I previously stated that the US and its allies should at least see the job out (though have the decency to formulate some kind of timetable or exit plan!). I'm starting to wonder, which is the lesser of two evils? Is a continued military presence really going to do much good in the long term, or serve as an increasing source of antagonism? Or will the country just implode into this decade's Somalia if there is a removal of forces?

You'd think people would learn from history. Didn't the 20th century teach us anything about the utter futility of warfare? No, of course not, just like the 19th century didn't, nor did the 18th, or the 17th, or the ...
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Four seasons in one day. [4 January 2006|10:18 pm]
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[Current Music |'Only A Matter Of Time' by Dream Theater]

As a follow-up to yesterday's rather disgruntled weather post ...

( ... Axver evaluates the seasons! )

With that settled, I shall now kick back and watch the radar as yet another storm approaches. Looks like this one hit some places to the northwest of me and is now dying down, though. I sure hope it stays that way. Storms are not welcome in the world of Axver if there is any need to be using electrical devices (which in the world of Axver is usually all the time).
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[3 January 2006|09:46 pm]
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[Current Mood | blah]
[Current Music |'Oceans Have No Memory' by Porcupine Tree]

Poll #644590
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Is summer the worst season?

View Answers

Yes.
1 (6.7%)

Most definitely.
5 (33.3%)

Certainly.
3 (20.0%)

For sure.
2 (13.3%)

Without a doubt.
4 (26.7%)



Have a guess who's yet again wishing that he lived in a more sensible climate!
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The first fire of this season. [5 October 2005|08:30 pm]
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[Current Music |'To The Quasar' by Ayreon]

A couple of days ago, we had a bit of excitement in the neighbourhood. I was merrily minding my own business at my computer when suddenly a few vehicles with sirens wailing went racing past, though I didn't get up and see where they were going. I figured maybe someone had a medical emergency of some sort. About 10-15 minutes later, my mother came into my room and told me to have a look outside. Well, the second I walked outside, I could hear the rather distinct sound of crackling, trees burning, and up on a nearby hill, there was smoke billowing from behind a house. Mum said that as she was driving home, you could very clearly see the flames rising, but by the time I got outside, the flames weren't visible and the firefighters had it controlled. It wasn't much of a fire, I suppose, but I'm sure it made the occupants of the couple of nearby houses rather jittery!

In any case, I grabbed the digital camera and captured the fire ( in its later stages. )

So that's our first fire of this season. You may remember last fire season when the hills and gully behind my place caught fire and while we didn't have to evacuate, I suffered from some asthma and the houses not far up from the road from me did have to evacuate. As much as it's nice living out of the cramped suburbia that makes up much of the Gold Coast, the threat of fire makes me nervous. If there's one thing I seriously dislike about the natural Australian weather and environment, it's the high likelihood of forest fires - either naturally or caused by idiots and encouraged by the dry conditions. Often, they're idiots with cigarettes, which is one reason of many why I detest smoking. Seriously, if you're stupid enough to throw a cigarette butt out of your car, please make sure it lands in a place where the only house it has a chance of burning down is your own. In other words, if you're going to be an idiot, make sure your idiocy doesn't affect any innocents who may cross your path.

I'm very much hoping this will be the sole fire of the season and I can spend my last months here before I go up to Brisbane in peace. At least UQ isn't sitting beside a patch of fire-prone woodland!
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And in the news today ... [16 September 2005|09:03 pm]
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[Current Music |'She Will Have Her Way' by Neil Finn]

OK, I normally keep my utter hatred of Harry Potter to myself (especially considering I'm outnumbered about Everyone to 2 on the friends list), but for goodness' bloody sakes, a movie preview is not deserving of being on the news, and definitely not deserving of being on one of those 15-second headline update segments they play during ad breaks! In fact, this doesn't just apply to movies I don't like: I don't care if the movie's LOTR, The Passion, or Why Axver's Right About Everything, a simple preview is not even remotely newsworthy. I don't care how insanely popular (re: over-hyped) a fandom is, there's just no excuse for giving something as mundane as a movie preview time on the news while racially-motivated rape and murder in Darfur and child starvation in Niger are thoroughly ignored. Now, if something important relating to the fandom has happened - actor died in mysterious circumstances, box office record was smashed, a street fight broke out between supporters of rival fandoms - then chuck it on the news. But quite frankly, I don't give a flying blue walrus about a preview, and even if you do, I am failing to see any justification for giving it headline or even newsworthy status, unless you're running an entertainment rag. I suppose it's just a ploy to gain viewers and boost ratings, which in my opinion is not what the news is about. I'll take my facts with a side of importance and a glass of relevancy, thanks.

In other, uh, news, 90km/h winds are predicted for tonight (for you Americans, that's not even 60mph). Now, while that seems rather pansytastic compared to some winds I experienced in Windington Wellington - and is, if I remember correctly, 30km/h short of gale force - it has become a source of concern for me. Why? Because after previous bad experiences, I have entirely no trust in the stability of the electrical network or in the ability of Energex to timely rectify any outage. Now, I don't know about you, but I am generorky enough to have a U2 setlist party to attend tomorrow, and anything that dares threaten my electrical and Internet connections is worthy of concern. You really do know you're a generork when you look forward to online setlist parties. Or when you make the icon I'm using with this entry.
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