Not that I want to jinx it with a pre-announcement, but (pending official letter), I’ve just become a provisional Permanent Resident of this sunburnt country. This means that I’m kind of on probation for two years, following that I’ll become an actual Permanent Resident, and they’re stuck with me. I’m celebrating with a Coopers Pale Ale. Cheers!
TPG, probably the best-known, um, “budget” provider of Internet access in Australia, has released one of the coolest information design pieces I’ve seen in a long time. They’ve mapped out all of the telephone exchanges in the country on a Google Map (in itself a useful thing). They’ve overlayed that with the regions the the exchanges service (also quite useful). Then, as the coup de grâce, they’ve used actual data from their DSLAMs in each exchange to show the speeds that their customers in certain areas get.
I live about 5km away from the exchange I’m connected to. There are actually two other exchanges that are physically closer to my house! Turns out, for connection speed, I’m about average. I’m relieved to note that pretty much everyone else in my neighbourhood also gets lousy Internet access.
It’s a tricky concept – living in such a way that minimises one’s impact on the planet, whilst still being able to live a sane and relatively “normal” life. We own a car (an efficient Diesel auto), but I take public transport to work nearly ever day. I support road tolls as a way of discouraging driving in the city. As much as is practical, we buy locally-produced, organic fruit and vegetables. Recycling is okay, but not buying stuff in the first place is better.
Speaking as a geek, I think it’s an extension of the concept of extensibility or perhaps scalability, both talking about planning that takes into account what happens next, in an holistic manner.
Generally, Australia (and Melbn in particular) isn’t so good at this kind of planning. Perhaps it’s a geography thing: there’s nothing stopping Melbn from sprawling endlessly in nearly every direction (much like Los Angeles). I think Vancouver’s planning is better, simply because it can only really sprawl in one direction; the other three are blocked by mountains, water and the USA. Planning for the future in some kind of sensible way is a necessity.
The poor, unsustainable planning in my adopted home of Melbourne really bothers me. One can drive 90 minutes in nearly any direction from the CBD and still be in suburbia – more during the evening rush. New estates are being built huge distances away from where people work, and no new trains are being built to connect them to the city. The existing train network isn’t being used as efficiently as it can be. Very little money has been spent on infrastructure in the past 20 years – while at the same time, we’ve spent $500 million on a new ticketing system that no one wants and is a year overdue, and still has problems. Architecture is just starting to experiment with “greener” buildings, but nothing in the mainstream is going far enough. There’s discussion about a new freeway tunnel under the north bit of the city, which will encourage even more people to get in their cars.
Urban sprawl is not sustainable. Cars are not sustainable (both due to the congestion they create and fuel they consume). Melbourne’s urban planning (or lack thereof), which features a lot of both of these things, is definitely not sustainable.
Blah blah blah. Yeah, I’ve gone on too long about this. This entry was really supposed to just be a link to a single article in The Age about the lack of planning in Melbourne. Please read it – the author is far more coherent than I am, gentle reader.
Going through this whole car-buying thing over the past two weeks has been quite rewarding, actually. Not only did I end up with a nice car at the end of it all, I’ve learnt quite a lot. Being the kind of person that believes that cars are propelled by goblins, I’ve learnt a lot about automobiles in general. Here’s a shocker: There are no goblins in cars. Yes! I was gobsmacked, gentle reader. Also – much like popcorn at the cinema, engines come in different sizes! The bigger the number, the more powerful it is and the more fuel it drinks – er – consumes. No goblins. No goblins. But there’s a trump card! Diesel! Diesel engines use less diesel than petrol engines use petrol. Problem is, without a lot of fancy mucking about, the performance of a diesel engine isn’t so great. Volkswagen has this fancy-arse turbo diesel thing, um, blah blah blah. I’m bored already. I’m not the kind of person who Twitters about my tyre PSI.
As part of this intense learning (and self-congratulatory) process, I got to talk with a large number of Volkswagen owners. Very few other companies generate the same kind of rabid fanboyism that Volkswagen does. I must confess I’m a victim of this as well – I drove a Golf GTI (Mark IV) in Vancouver, and loved it. Sporty, practical and just fun damnit. She was great to drive. My first car was a 1974 SuperBeetle (with a very weird semi-automatic gearshift) When looking for a car here, we didn’t really actively consider anything but another Golf. We thought about Civics, Mazdas, even a cheap Hyundai – but none of them were Golfs. Once you own one, there’s no going back.
I was talking with Rob the other day (a Golf R32 owner: bastard), and he said “I could sit there all day listening to the sound of the door closing”. I agreed readily. There’s a very satisfying thunk when the door’s closed. Nothing like the tinny noise when other car doors are shut.
Another thing I found interesting. Given the (relatively) small market share of Volkswagen, and the similarly small market share Apple has, there’s a surprisingly large correlation between Apple owners and Volkswagen drivers. A lot of people I know who are Mac users have come out of the woodwork and confessed their Volkswagen leanings – and vice versa. What is it about those two companies that creates such fierce loyalty in their customers?
I’ll leave you now, gentle reader, with one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while: VW has a series of ads (aimed at the US market, I think), called Un-Pimp Your Ride. Hilarious. There are at least three of them on YouTube. Here’s the first:
“You got an F.”
(Pending approved credit…)
Volkswagen Golf Mark V 1.9L Turbo Diesel Comfortline. In grey, to match every other bloody Golf on the roads today. I would have rather had a bright colour, but this is an ex-demo, and it comes in any colour I wanted, as long as it was grey.
I took it for a spin this afternoon, absolutely fantastic. When I got in, the trip computer told me that I was to expect about 500km of travel on this half-tank of diesel fuel. Golly. If it wasn’t for the slightly pokey starts, I wouldn’t know this was a diesel. None of that small-truck noise, smooth as anything to drive, and an astonishing amount of power. Coming from an old Honda, where if we wanted to go up a hill we’d have to turn off the air conditioning, having that much torque in such a small car was fantastic. I wanted to find a broken tram someplace and pull it up a hill.
It’s nice to be in a Volkswagen again. We’ll be picking it up on Tuesday or Wednesday. Hurrah!
This weekend has been a horrible one, transportation-wise. Everything from a broken car to a non-operational travelator-rampy thing.
Mica had to go down to Koonwarra to teach a couple of chocolate classes – it’s a 2-hour drive. We got up early Saturday morning, and she left in good time.
Then the phone rang. It was Mica. The car made a bad ticking noise, then, just after she pulled off the road, lots and lots of thick black smoke started pouring out of the hood. She wisely decided to get out of the car and ring me and the RACV.
The RACV showed up, brought Mica and the car to Koo Wee Rup, and one of the cooking school people came along to pick her up and take her the rest of the way to the school. She was 45 minutes late, but everyone was understanding.
So, our car is about an hour’s drive away, in a town with a silly name, and with a blown gasket. Mica’s two hours away in another town with another silly name, with no car. I had to somehow get to Koonwarra and pick up Mica. Then we had to do something about the car. Luckily, Mica had been planning to be there overnight anyway, so I didn’t have to run down there at night and get her.
The RACV arranged for a hire car, and all I had to do was go to St Kilda and pick it up. One of the tram lines that goes near the house wasn’t working well (overhead wire work) and the schedule was shot to hell. I missed three trams on three other lines. Finally, I got a tram to take me to the right place.
The Europcar person was very nice, and gave me a horrible car. But at least it runs, and has air conditioning. Did I mention it’s 33c today? Maybe I skipped that bit.
Unfortunately, I left my credit card there. Whoops. I only discovered this later on in the day when I went to pay for something. I had to ring the bank and have them cancel the card, just in case.
The trip to Koonwarra and back was rather uneventful. Thank goodness.
Back home, we had to go to Safeway. Our local Safeway is in Malvern Central, a shopping centre with parking in the basement. To get to Safeway, we have to go up two levels of moving sidewalk rampy things called “travelators”. They’ve been working on the shopping centre lately, adding more floor space – they’re nearing completion, and making one heck of a mess. Unfortunately, the mess is currently all over the travelators, and they’re not working this evening. At least the elevator’s running.
The situation now? We’re all home, we have groceries, a crappy rental car, and a lonely Honda Civic sitting in Koo Wee Rup with a blown gasket. The ball is in our court, but I don’t really want to leave the house.
I think I might have latent hamster desires. When I stumbled across this Zorb thing while planning our New Zealand trip, I immediately wanted to do it. It’s described as a huge, human-sized hamster ball. I think I must see myself as a large, human-sized hamster because I can easily see myself rolling down a gentle hill inside one of those things. Since it’s up on the North Island, and we’ll be down in the South Island, we can’t check it out this time. However, there’s always hope for next time…
Melbn’s The Age newspaper produces a monthly glossy magazine sporting the quite unruly name of theage(melbourne)magazine. Despite the wanky name, it is really quite an excellent and well-balanced generalist magazine.
One of the articles in this month’s edition is about one of the patron saints of Melbn, Paul Kelly. I think every great city needs someone to tell its stories. For example, New York has Lou Reed or Paul Auster, Vancouver has Douglas Coupland, other cities have other people. These are people who write and sing about their cities as if they were actual characters in their songs and stories. These storytellers are special because they tell their stories in the style of the city they’re from.
Paul Kelly sings songs about Melbn. By and large, these songs are excellent. Truly magnificent pieces of storytelling, full of subtlety and grace; making a point without seeming preachy or trite. His simple words are inexorably linked to bits and pieces of Melbn: the MCG, the St Kilda foreshore, the Nylex clock. One day, when I leave here for some other place, I know I’ll be able to come back whenever I want to, simply by clicking on his name in iTunes. Right now, I know I can go to Vancouver whenever I want, just by reading some Coupland. He writes about Save-on-Foods, about that crap Chinese restaurant on the right side of Nancy Greene Way, on the way up to Grouse Mountain. He writes about Yaletown.
I’ve always said that Melbn is somewhat up itself, and has a massive inferiority complex. In some ways, this is justified, because it will never be as naturally pretty as Sydney or even Adelaide – but that shouldn’t matter. Melbn keeps comparing itself to other places and finding little things that it does better, smugly assured that because it’s done this, everyone will start liking it. That behaviour reminds me, in many ways, of an insecure person, always trying to make other people like them, because they crave that kind of validation. Melbn isn’t good enough for Melbn to like it. Melbn has to always prove itself in the eyes of its citizens, and the rest of the world (read “Sydney”).
So there’s this article about Paul Kelly. He doesn’t interview much, apparently, but he was full of gems for this one. Now here’s my point, the reason to write all these words. He’s managed to explain my feelings for this place. Here it is:
“The thing I don’t like about Melbourne is the way it worries about itself so much: all this constantly wondering whether it’s doing things world’s best practice … and this mania for having events here. There’s a boosterism here that I don’t like. Sydney people are not like that. They’re not always worrying about whether they’re better than Melbourne. They just like the place where they live and get on with it. So, yeah, I like Melbourne, It’s my home, but I love other cities too.”
Thank you, Paul. That’s it in a nutshell. I suppose it takes someone who’s lived elsewhere to see it.
