Quick update

• Unbelievably lucky with Sydney real estate - check.
• Massive culture shock moving from public service to fiscally profligate private sector - check.
• Wife secures transfer - check.
• Passive aggressive signs at new workplace - check.
• Spend more time commuting in one day than I used to in a week - check.
• Never want to lift another box in my life - check.
• Back in Canberra within 2 weeks for meetings with former colleagues - check.
  
• 3 week wait for internet and phone at new joint (not so good for blogging) - check.

Additional signage

Well, today is my last day here in public service land.

*Feigned sob!*

What better way to mark the occasion than by wasting one last chunk of tax payer dollars by bludging off with a blog post! Stick that in your efficiency dividend, Lindsay Tanner!

Anyrate, this post isn't about that.

Insert seamless segue here

There are some really noble people in this world, dedicating their lives to worthy tasks. Take for example, those at the Office Sign Project.

After I attend to the more trifling and insignificant things on my 'to do' list (ie, moving house, etc), I might submit some examples from my portfolio of office sign photos.

In the meantime, enjoy these additional examples, sent to me by a (very) concerned citizen of public service land.

Wow - such a creative use of font colour and size! Sure to secure compliance!

F*ck - now I'm going to have to run yet another f*cking recruitment process. Knowing the public service, it will take 6 months and an unsuccessful fairy will appeal the decision to the public service commission.

Typical!

PS - While I think of it, thanks for all the suggestions of things to write on the preachy office signs from my previous post. I almost went one better the other day and punched the suspected author of the signs fair in the neck. I was attending to the very important and very work-related task of printing off colour copies of real estate listings when suspected-sign-author sprung me using the colour printer. In keeping with his vigilante-esque commitment to the proper use of office equipment and resources, he reacted as if I'd murdered some puppies or something - "do you absolutely HAVE to print in colour?" Yes, f*ck-face, I do! How else do you expect me to fill in the time in which I could be working and making things easier for my successor?!!?

It's a sign from God!

We've spoken before about the preachy office sign.

And if you haven't already visited passive aggressive notes, well, beware lest I nail your feet to the floor and f*cking force you to (thanks! Have a great day!).

After careful consideration and some evidence-based analysis, I have come to the conclusion that the typical author of the preachy office sign is likely suffering from a kind of God-complex.

Convinced of the righteousness of their view of the world, not only do they deign to share this perspective, they seek to use their godly powers to persuade and control all those around them.

However, as the following evidence from my soon-to-be-ex-workplace attests, righteousness appears to translate all too often into a generally annoying and patronising smarminess:

Don’t get me wrong, I do like to close the fridge door and believe it is a fairly basic function not beyond the majority of the population.

But my reaction to this kind of unbearable smugness, were I to come across the author of this sign, would be to grab the nearest dinner plate, smash it over his head and yell “DERRR!!! Thanks for the tip, Hitler!”

Or, to quote Parker Posey in Best in Show: "What are you, some kind of WIZARD?!"

It must be tough though, to be so much smarter and funnier than everyone else. Always having the burden of pointing out others' flaws and suggesting humourous yet carefully insulting ways they can improve their lot. You just about hear the sighs of the author as he carefully penned this one:

The author was so obviously frustrated that his colleagues continued to shove both volumes of the White Pages into the shredder at once in spite of his previous entreaties, yet still took the time to draft his notice in a way that reminded us all how much less intelligence and wit we all have.

As for this last one:
It kinda makes you want to post your own preachy office sign. Something along the lines of:

"Alas, no amount of sickening pap or obviously unfunny goading has managed to convince your colleagues to conform themselves to your view of the world. Perhaps it is suprising to you but people don't tend to respond well to anonymous notes from patronising pricks, too cowardly to even put their name to their own notes. Now, leave us alone Thatcher!"

I think I'm going to miss the public service.

Just when you think your rut will run forever…

In early December the wife and I finally decided to put our monies where our mouths are (our faces, presumably) and up-sticks back to Sydney, the land of reasonably priced café breakfasts, the Coogee women’s pool, lesbian soccer teams, endless beer gardens and oh, just about everything else I am fond of.

Many Canberra residents I know really quite like the place, and wish people (ie, me) would quit whinging and stop comparing it to Sydney. ‘You can’t expect it to be like Sydney’, they say. Well, we don't. We know it never can be Sydney. Which is precisely why we decided to move back.

To be fair, the place has been remarkably good to us, really. To offset the gaining of a translucent complexion and a 'winter coat', I went from a listless university graduate into a not entirely unsuccessful public servant, and did get quite accustomed to a 10-minute commute to work. It also turns out you meet some of the nicest people in Canberra, even if they are from Adelaide or Melbourne originally…

But there has to be more to life than an ability to nip home for a bowl of ice cream and a cat-patting session during my lunch hour, as good as that may be.

We set ourselves a 6-month timeframe for the move, perhaps assuming this would allow us enough time to carefully prise ourselves out of our comfy, comfy rut, without too much of a shock to the system. I sent my resume out to a few contacts and settled back, expecting to be applying for 50 bajillion jobs before anything really happened.

Just to highlight the yawning chasm (is there any other kind of chasm?) between the public sector, where any kind of recruitment action involves a bureaucratic circus of mammoth proportions (again, any other kind?) and takes about as long as human gestation, and the recruitment processes in the private sector, three days later I was asked to go to Sydney for an interview. One day after that, I was offered a job. And that same day, I accepted. And I will be starting in late January.

Shit!

Our plans for a carefully coordinated, blissful and stress-free interstate move are thus looking a little shakey. Plus, this means we’ll have to be doing yet another interstate move in high summer, which, let me tell you from experience, fucking sucks balls.

So our Christmas break has been a little more hectic than usual. Apart from the trifling task the lovely wife faces in finding a new job in about one-sixth of the time we had budgeted, there’s the logistics of finding a place and moving our mountains of crap up north.

I’ve been using the past week to go through the ample storage in our current place, finally facing the hard decisions on those items I had previously just chucked in and quickly slammed the door on, thinking “I’ll decide about that when we next move”.

I’m such a bastard to myself sometimes.

I have also been busily trying to decide which kidney I will sell on ebay as a means of raising the funds for bribing real estate agents. I live in fear of battling the Sydney rental market. It hasn’t helped that the papers have been full of horror stories about the lack of reasonably priced rental properties in Sydney, with people paying $1200 a week for a storage shed in what the real estate agents describe as ‘Newtown locality’ (read Zetland).

But it can’t be worse than my original quest for a rental apartment in Canberra in early 2003, one week after the bushfires. If the 50-strong queues forming outside properties 30 minutes before they opened for inspection weren’t bad enough, the real estate agents seemed to be giving preferences to families recently made homeless by the fires, the shifty bastards.

One of the problems we face is that we really, really like the place we are in now. It has just enough room not to feel small, but is not so big as to feel like we are taking up more than our fair share of the planet. There is plenty of storage (ok, this does encourage a little bit of hoarding, but mostly just piles of motorbike magazines), it is clean and in good shape, it is on a nice quiet street and has a number of nifty mod-cons (air-con, dishwasher, off-street parking, etc).

Suffice to say we have become very accustomed to these trappings of yuppie-dom.

The current thinking is that we are willing to sacrifice some of the mod-cons in exchange for a stereotypically charming renovated terrace/semi in a suitably lesbionic inner-west location. Which, judging from online real estate sites, is probably going to cost me not just a kidney, but half a liver as well.

Better cut down on the beers, maximise the value of the ole’ liver, eh?

So please, be in touch if you know of someone looking for a tenant. Or some vital organs, for that matter.

As for the job itself, well, no more wasting tax-payers money for me! I’m stepping out (or stumbling, whichever you think is most apt) into the ‘real world’ to sample a working life devoted to maximising profits and standing up for what the company owners believe in.

Sounds pretty good to me actually. Much less fraught than attempting to maintain a pretence of impartiality in a public service whose motto is increasingly ‘whatever it takes’.

I’m guessing that this will all mean that das blogging will take a little holiday while I sort out such things as a house, net access and my new employer’s acceptable computer usage policy…

Lucky for youse guys as there is a new season of American Idol coming up soon and I could feel some unnecessarily obsessive Idol posts brewing in the system.

But there is one last public service insanity post I am hoping to complete soon. It involves walking around at work shamelessly photographing certain items, so it might not get completed until after I’ve had my final entitlements signed off…

He's gonna get you when you are asleep...

Michael Jackson scares me.

And not just in a ‘general displeasure with the excesses of celebrity and plastic surgery’ kinda way.

But in an ‘I can't stand to look at photos of him’ way.

He has managed to do all the right things to make his facial features inherently disturbing, in the same way that horror film directors design their villains with all-black eyeballs or grotesquely distorted features. The face being such an important visual reference that any kind of distortion instinctively puts a viewer on edge.

Unless of course they are post-its on his face – stuck there to remind him which bits are awful.

The festy season

There are many ‘wrong’ things relating to Christmas and workplaces.

Tinsel draped over the photocopier in early November, motion-activated toys blaring tinny Christmas carols, flashing santa ear-rings, compulsory socialising, etc etc.

But the prize goes to the person in my group who organised our group Christmas lunch – Indian food, in the middle of the day, in 31 degree heat.

VOMIT!

No, literally, vomit.

And no, the fact that I merrily went ahead and ate the food does not transfer any responsibility for the situation to me.

Reasons to be cheerful - post-election series, installment #1

1. Articles like this, make for very happy reading (shahd-n-froi-duh, huh).

A humiliated Karen Chijoff said her husband had left their home and she was no longer speaking to him [...] Another of Mr Howard's closest allies said the Prime Minister was the key problem. "The PM, they were just so over him. He looked old, they were sick of him," he said. "We could just see Howard couldn't win, and I could see that by March."

2. A deliberately barren Deputy PM!

3. Howard won't be appointing the next High Court judge.

4. Certain cretins certain to be removed from the ABC Board.

5. Everything Paul says here (love you Paul).

6. Bye bye Broughy, you really were a very dim operator. My favourite example, your refusal to consider sensible amendments to your NT Emergency Response legislation because you didn't like "complicated processes or amendments to Bills".

7. International headlines such as "Bush loses a friend in Australia"

*Contented sigh*

For any undecided nit-picking voters out there...

From the Liberal Party's policies web page, here's all you need to know in order to decide who to vote for:

Can't even spell Tasmania. What a scandal.

They'd better hope the electors of Braddon and Bass are reasonably open-minded and forgiving types.

Keeping busy

Two things I have decided are ‘not ok in the workplace’ and which I will be raising with Lindsay Tanner and his razor-gang as suitable targets in his planned shake-up of the public-service:

1. Complete strangers (normally in the lift - captive audience, you see) asking “how are you going today?” soley for the purposes of eliciting the polite reciprocation of that question (ie, “fine thanks, how are you?”) so that they can go on and on AND ON at length about their dodgy leg/ankles/heart/frontal lobe.

Not cool!

2. The pairing of a purple skirt-suit and beige crocs (with beige stockings!).

Not cool!

(Not me!)

Heaven07 – my election-themed biking adventure

I guess it is the modern equivalent of the slide-show - foisting my holiday snaps on my unsuspecting readers.

But in this instance, you can simply click yourself away to another exciting intertubes destination. Unlike the slide-shows I remember, which always seem to involve locked doors and hours of lost time...

Anyway, on with the show eh?

As Antony Green tells us, the electorate of Eden-Monaro, currently held by Gary Nairn for the Libs by 3.3% is a varied electorate covering 37,619 sq.km in the south-east corner of NSW. It includes the fishing, holiday and retirement towns of Narooma and Bermagui, rich agricultural areas around Bega, logging towns around Eden and Bombala, Cooma and the NSW snowfields, Queanbeyan and the Canberra overflow, as well as Tumut and Tumburumba in the the upper reaches of the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers. It is also famous for being the classic 'litmus test' seat, Eden-Monaro has fallen to the party that won government at every election since 1972.

But what Antony doesn’t mention are the rich road-based delights it has to offer for the two-wheeled voter. The other week I spent a cumulative three days exploring the best and worst of riding in this ‘litmus test’ seat.

Here's day one:

Started off with a very easy run down to Bateman’s Bay. The run from BB to Bega was in all honesty some of the suckiest riding I’ve ever done. The scenery is pretty magnificent, but in terms of riding, it absolutely sucked balls.

Apart from lacking anything really interesting in riding terms, it was packed out with caravans, there were road works every 15 minutes (no one likes sitting in full gear on a 30 degree day in the sun for 30 minutes) and the wind was pure arse-suckery.

Not only was it pushing me regularly onto the wrong side of the road, it almost pushed me off a few times around corners and was blowing grit and leaves into my eyes. Not fun.

So blind, drenched in sweat and physically exhausted from clinging to the bike for 2 hours I collapsed down next to the bike in Bega. Lo and behold, I’d picked up a hitch-hiker in the form of a fairly reasonably sized stick, wedged into my rear suspension and gouging a groove into my rear tyre.

I still can’t believe I hadn’t felt or heard anything. Perhaps if the wind wasn’t howling like a banshee in my helmet I may have heard some kind of rubbing or vibration noise. Who knows how long it had been there.

With the riding being so annoying from then on I lowered my expectations and reverted to sight-seeing mode, which was probably not a bad idea as that part of NSW is exceedingly pretty.

All the beaches seemed to have tropical blue water and with recent rains, the green countryside was a sight for sore eyes in comparison to the brown and grey barren hills around Canberra.

So I started taking little detours and just took it a bit easy and enjoyed myself a lot more.

A friend had recommended I stay overnight in Mallacoota. I previously had no awareness of this part of Victoria, but I recommend it to anyone. A real wildnernessy feeling about it, and for most of the time I spent on the roads after Eden, I barely saw a soul. None of the towns feel overtly touristy and the roads are in very good condition.

The next morning I got away nice and early determined to have a better time of it riding-wise.

Here's day 2:

I was soon at Cann River and the Cann Valley Highway lay before me.

I have found the key to my soul.

Those 80-odd kilometres of pure zen sweepers are the new Buddhism.

Fwoar. The sight-lines go on forever. The road surface is sublime. The scenery is amazing and I probably only saw 2 or 3 other cars.

Bliss.

From then on, things did get a bit slabby and boring (also, riding behind timber trucks sure does suck, with all the splinters and crap blowing up into the helmet and into my eyes). However, all too soon I was back in Canberra and my first ever solo overnight bike adventure was at an end.

I couldn’t stay off the bike for long though, and a day later I was back on the Monaro Highway heading for Cooma, Jindabyne and beyond:

Yes, that is snow.

My first trip down into the snowies and omgwtfbbq! The roads are amazing! Shame I already used up my Buddhism analogy.

Whilst I didn’t have nearly enough time down there, I’d have to say those roads have a few Ben Cousins-like features – easy on the eye, high-performing and somewhat addictive! I spent most of my time on the road out to Khancoban and even though I’d done my planned trip out there once, I got back to Thredbo and had to turn around and do it again!

This meant I got home quite late and was aching all over, but I didn’t care.

I spent most of that evening with a silly looking grin on my face. I don’t know what it was but during that ride everything seemed to click and I was finding myself nailing corners in a way I don’t usually manage on a consistent basis – especially not unfamiliar downhill hairpins!

I’m in no way the world’s best rider, but it felt like easily my best ever riding.

But sigh, back to reality now. All I can do is start planning the next ride!

Things to do differently next time:

• Blow up the Monaro between Canberra and Cooma
• Brown Mountain and Mt Darragh Rd
• Allow myself an overnight stay in the snowies and get all the way around the loop up to Kiandra and Adaminaby.
• Get hard luggage so I don’t have to lug a tank bag everywhere each time I get off the bike
• Avoid buying petrol in Thredbo - $1.55 per litre? Get fugged.

C'mon Matt, take off your jacket...

...so we can play another game of Idol spot-the-difference!



This time between Kisschasy's Spray-on Pants zombies, and your outfit last night!

But no, you had to ruin it didn't you, with that anoraky thingy. But I know you had a stripey t-shirt on underneath. Corr, what a good blog-post that would have made...

And yes, this was the most exciting thing to come out of last night's episode, thanks very much.

PS All credit to the LovelyWife for the cross-cultural observations in this post...

Memo to world's biggest loser:

SHUT UP you insufferable disaster!

Four on the floor

Dear Australian Idol,

Whilst this final four does come across as a bit of a joke, I want you to know it is NOT FUNNY ANYMORE.

But, I am prepared to be patient. I just know that any minute now, the real finalists are going to jump out from behind the couch and surprise us all. You know, the finalists who can sing and who are at least partly interesting...

Let's face it, 25% of your final four comprises a one-man tribute band to Michael Buble (who himself, is pretty much a one-man tribute band to original artists - so Carl, you are doubly unoriginal), and as we all know, tribute bands belong at the Revesby Workers Club or the Epping Hotel, and not on national telly!

Quite frankly, I preferred your earlier attempts at humour.

And could you please pass a message on to the work experience hair and make-up TAFE students 'Confidence team' stylists - having the filthiest of the finalists shower in the kitchen sink is likely to score you an 'F' on your final TAFE exam exceedingly inadequate.

The caption reads "Marty skips the shower and gives his hair a quick rinse".

But perhaps that just fits in with this year's theme - 'Australian Idol 2007 - really quite disappointing'.

Yours sincerely

Previously gruntled viewer

While y'all working this week...

Time for me to p1ss off on my bike for a few days.



Ta ta!

I still heart Emily

Tonight's Idol verdict show performance by the Young Divas (-Ricky Lee, +Jessica Mauboy, but still, thankfully, retaining Emily) only served to highlight how hopelessly talentless the current group of godforsaken finalists are.

Not a single finalist from this year's show can sing even half as well as the worst Young Diva on an off night, smoking a cigar and gargling the chorus of 'Achy Breaky Heart' with a mouth full of bourbon.

I think it must be time for another lolCarl.

Fresh thinking my arse

First it was pollies ripping off lolcats.




Now it's pollies ripping off the infinite cat project!



Get your own ideas and stop ripping off teh kittez!

Tax-cuts for all (straight people)

Of all the piss-weak, pathetic excuses trundled out by this Government for its failure to act on legislated discrimination against teh gays, the one that has always annoyed me most is the line that it would be 'too expensive'.

This is the idea that in providing equal access to tax-breaks and superannuation benefits, the revenue foregone would send the country crashing into bankruptcy.

In my admittedly hysterical mind, the revenue we are talking about is roughly equivalent with proceeds of crime. A windfall gain for the government sourced from the deliberate maintenance of unjust measures imposed on its citizens should not be put in the same column as general taxation revenue.

Ie, you f*ckers shouldn't be collecting that money in the first place, so don't start whinging about losing it!

This article reckons the cost to government would be about $2 billion (not clear over how long).

Seems like a lot, huh.

I just know that the boffins in the Department of Finance and Administration (DoFA - or, if you prefer, "Do F*ck All") have searched high and low, desperately trying to find the money to get the government out of this heart-breaking quandry.

But I guess they should have looked in that big barrel of hoarded surplus marked "100% pure pork".

Seems $34 billion is much easier to find than a mere $2 billion, sometimes.

Christmas has come early

A November 24 election equals a six-week election campaign, equals a six-week caretaker period!

On behalf of public servants everywhere, thanks John! Six weeks of filing and long-lunches.

And after all those things I said about you...

Man, I am going to have the tidiest desk.

While I'm here, some sites to satisfy your inner psephite:
Possum
Mumble
Bludger
Oz

Just shut-up and lose already.

Image digitally enhanced. Your PM doesn't actually look this good.

The current fuss is about whether Parliament will sit next week, with K-Rudd blathering on about waste of tax-payers' dollars if the MPs fly in for a week of pointless sittings.

Apparently businesses want it out of the way soon too, so that the hoards are not distracted from the sacred annual ritual of emptying wallets and savings accounts in celebration of the birth of Christ.

My general reaction was "Meh".

But then I learnt that Aussie's (Parliament House 'cafe') doesn't know how much milk to order for next week.

It's clearly time to end the madness and uncertainty.

Just call the bloody thing and let us spank your botty good and proper, John.

Important and complex psephological post

Will Siamese twins get to vote twice at the upcoming election?

This is in really poor taste, isn't it.

Sorry, slow day.