Tag: Non Fiction

The Croods 1 & 2

I hesitate to call this an animated cartoon because I think it’s something else.

But, having said that, whether real like or animation, or whatever the medium is, we were cajoled into seeing these by our youngest grand daughter, who has managed to talk me into endless episodes of Dora the Explorer and Barbie, who has transformed from Princess to Mermaid and everything in between.

The point is she likes these films and so, apparently, do a lot of others.

Oddly, in the cinema for the sequel there were older people than younger which tells me there’s probably more to the story.

Quite often these sorts of films, directed at children, sometimes have a message. This one, perhaps, was that people who are different can get along, and at a time when emotions are running high over the differences between us, it might pour a little cold water on a heated debate.

Or perhaps I’m writing too much into it.

For pure entertainment’s sake, and discounting the fact cave men would not have been so eloquent in speaking English, it was quite good. The first was a bit tedious, the second well, it’s a kids show, what do you expect.

For just under two hours, it held my attention, more than I can say for some other films I’ve seen recently.

Of course my favourite is the sabre tooth tiger. I can see one of those as a house pet, especially after being broken in by our former cat in residence, Chester.

I give this a four out of five stars for pure entertainment value.

I would not want to be a car salesman!

Buying a new car is an experience most of us would regard as a chore at best and a waste of valuable time at worst.

It would be a lot easier if the salespeople actually treated you with the respect you deserved. The problem is, while most of them are polite and affable, underneath that seemingly ‘I’m your best friend’ countenance, is the I’m uttered words ‘ how much can I make from this deal’.

And that’s the truth of it.

It all comes down to money.

How much your willing to pay, and how much they can screw out of you.

Sorry, but after years and years of dealing with these people, I have built up considerable cynicism

But, once again, it’s time to go out into the shady underworld of car sales to get a new car, or as the case will be this time, a new SUV.

We don’t have a lot of money to spend this time, so the choices are going to be limited, and unlike years past when I could used the business to pay for a lease, and therefore watch the salesman load the price of the car to make it seem like we were getting more for our trade in than it was worth, this time it’s a straight cash transaction.

First thing we notice is that all the advertised prices are loaded for people buying with finance. So, we said there’s no trade in, and we’re paying cash, and they say the price is the same.

Liars.

We haven’t event got out of the block, and they’re barefaced lying to us.

We have a short list of three. All three when approached with no trade in, pay by cash deal said it wouldn’t affect the price.

A good enough reason to just walk away, but that had the effect of getting, at the very least, their attention. Never seen a salesman yet who would let a customer just walk away.

OK, So now we know there is some movement on the price. Not much, but it’s a start.

First car is a Honda CRV. In reality there’s really only a few models truly equating to basic, better, best, and top of the range. Prices run from 28000 to 50000 before the dealer starts loading the price with imaginary costs like the ubiquitous dealer delivery charge, otherwise known as guaranteed profit.

Whatever else the salesman can bluff out of the customer adds to his commission and the unwritten profit margin per car that’s been set by the manager.

You can always tell who the manager is, he’s the one all the sales people go to when pretending to discuss any further allowances in the prices to the advantage of the customer.

Its more likely a discussion about the footy picking competition, if it’s winter, or the next cricket match if it’s summer.

Sometimes they’ll find a few dollars or thrown in a freebie, but most times there’s no change.

That’s when you walk.

It’s where you discover that their so-called best prices us nothing like what they can do if it means losing a sale. Or not.

You have to be prepared to walk away, especially if there’s no prospect of a better deal, and even if that’s the car you want. There are other dealers.

There are also other cars. I’ve found it’s not a good idea to get hooked on one particular car. It’s why we have a shortlist of three. I could live with any one of them.

The Honda people are affable, the salesman shows us the car, gives an little talk about the features, and we go for a test drive.

It fits the criteria, and has a few bells and whistles, like the screen, and safety features. The cost to get those bells and whistles might be too much.

We go then to see the Rav4.

First thing we learn, that Toyota is the biggest car company in the world, and the largest seller of vehicles in the world

Relevance?

Well I suppose that’s meant to make us feel better about the car, that Toyota wouldn’t be the biggest and best if they sold crummy cars.

Not buying it. Any car manufacturer can make a lemon, and happily sell it to an unsuspecting purchase.

We get a run down of the car on a large interactive t.v. screen. It certainly had the features were looking for, has the same 4 types of models, and roughly the same pricing.

The test drive proved that it met our on road requirements. Similar pricing to the Honda, a like the previous dealer, not a lot of room to move on price, surprise surprise, but one more advantage, fixed price servicing that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

The third contender is a Nissan X Trail. The same model structure but with a slight difference, there’s a special on, giving the second top model a little more incentive to buy. Still, at 40000 it’s more than we were expecting to pay.

But..

The first experience with sales is not only disappointing, it was unprofessional. Never have someone on the floor who apparently knows nothing about the products being sold.

I walk out.

My wife doesn’t, mainly because one of the real salesmen had noticed the problem, and wasn’t going to let a sale slip through his fingers.

He does know his stuff, and the sales experience is one of the best we’ve had.

But…

Still can’t get past the first impression.

So after spending about 4 hours on the road in the various cars, it’s time to made a decision.

Or not.

Perhaps it’s time to simply think about it.

My preference was for the Nissan X-trail but it’s remarkable how a bad experience in a car dealership can put you off. Now it’s back to one of the three.

In order to make an informed decision I think we need to look at the basic model and it’s bottom line features.

In that regard, The Rav4 wins hands down.

So, we’re going with the Rav4, and back to the dealership for round two.

Searching for locations: Flinders Street Station, Melbourne, Australia

This is the famous clock tower of the Flinders Street Station (the main train station for suburban trains) in Melbourne.

We were staying in a hotel (The Doubletree) directly opposite to the station and our room overlooked the station and the clock tower.  I took photos of it during the day:

and this one, at night.  It came out better than I thought it would.

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In a word: Stern

It’s what I’d always expected of my teachers, having to stand up the front of the classroom and look like they were in control.

These days, not so much, but back in my day, teachers, and particularly the men, were to be feared, and stern expressions were the features of an effective teacher.

So, in this context, it means a hardness or severity of manner.

Whilst in a sense that was frightening to us kids, another form of the word also can be used to express a forbidding or gloomy appearance.

Grandfathers also have that stern look, but it’s more forbidding, more authoritarian, more severe, more austere, well, you get the picture.  A six-year-old would be trembling in his or her boots.

There again, in facing up to either possibility above, you could stand firm with a stern resolve not to buckle under the pressure.

Of course, not a good idea if you’re facing a tank (with a stern-looking tank master)

Then…

If you’re standing at the end of the boat, not the front, but the rear, you would be standing at the stern of the boat, or ship.

Oddly, when issuing instructions to go in reverse, not something you would say if you were on the bridge, you would instead say, or possibly yell, full speed astern, because you’re about to hit an iceberg.

Or some idiot in a jet ski who likes to think he or she can beat the bullet (or 65,000 tonnes of a ship that has very little mobility).

I should have paid more attention…

When I was back in school in what seems like a lifetime ago, I realise I should have paid more attention.

Why?

Because for some odd reason, we were taught more about American and English history than that of out own country, Australia.

WE cannot use the excuse that we haven’t been around all that long, because we have, something like 1770, which led to settlement by the English in 1788 or so, but the first landing was in 1606 by a Dutchman.

Of course, these are vague memories of a social studies lesson that briefly touched on our origins, but only to re-affirm our allegiances to Britain. While it wasn’t the Empire when I was in school, it was the Commonwealth, and our atlases still had the ‘wherever the map is red is where the British claimed as theirs’, and there were quite a lot red countries.

But, hey, that pales into insignificance the stuff we learned about England, from the time of William the Conqueror in 1066 through to the modern day. I could at one stage of my life relate from memory all of the kings and queens of England.

I know all about the industrial revolution, travel between Australia and England from the days of sail, right through to the Airbus A380.

It’s why I have a preference reading the English classics of Jane Austen and others of that golden era, and watching period TV, recreated so lavishly by the BBC and ITV in England.

And of course, we were brought up on a steady diet of American TV shows, and films, like out country never existed, and was notorious for producing laughable TV shows of the poorest quality, despite the actors who tried very hard to make it seem believable.

I could not name one Australian prime minister, and have trouble telling who is the current prime minister. Well maybe not, this Covid thing has had his face on the TV every day for nearly a year, but he’s the first. I couldn’t tell you who he took over from, nor who the leader of the opposition is.

It’s probably the reason why over the years people have often said we should become one of the states of the US.

Nowadays we’re trying to put a wall between us and them so China might not see us as an outpost of the US, and come in an attack us. The trouble is 28 million people versus 1.6 billion doesn’t give us any leverage. Come to think of it, the 360 million Americans wouldn’t stand a chance against an invasion of 1.6 billion either.

I’m not sure why it matters any more, because we’ll soon be back to the heady heights of the cold war days in the 50s and 60s, where the only deterrant to perceived enemies was the threat of nuclear annihilation.

It’s the one option where 360 million people could defeat an enemy of 16. billion.

But … there’s only one small problem …

We’ll all be dead.

AS horrifying as that might sound, there is one other problem than might just do the same but not destroy any infrastructure. A pandemic. A virus that can’t be cured, a virus that can mutate and adapt so there is not effective vaccine.

Dystopian? It’s sure a great idea for a story. There’s been a few, but those always have a few survivors, ready willing an able to get along and rebuild the world having learned the lessons of past failures.

This time? I don’t think the next story will have a happy ending. In it though, the aggressors are not going to be better off than the rest, because they forget to build in a fail safe, or couldn’t. Or it just got out before they finished perfecting it, and synthesizing an antidote.

That’s something else we learned a lot about. Nuclear holocausts, and their effect. It reminds me of the day our class was taken to see a movie about the effects of a nuclear war. Was it to scare us, or prepare us? Back then, a nuclear war was more likely than a change of government in this country.

If it was to educate my generation of people who are now the in the government and positions of power, they failed.

So, if I had my time over, I would insist on leaning about my country, the people who have inhabited for tens of thousands of years, without the need for cars, houses, cigarettes and booze, and definitely without the need for nuclear weapons and ideals of aggression towards other countries.

Now, where’s that pesky time machine…

Searching for locations: A trip to New Jersey

That meant we had to make the journey from New York to New Jersey, by train.  It involved the underground, or as New Yorkers call it, the subway, from Columbus Circle which by any other name was really, 80th street, to 34th street which apparently was the New Jersey jump-off point for us to get overground, well a lot of it was overground. So, were we going uptown or downtown?

Apparently, it was downtown, and to 34th Street on the A train.

You would not think this to be a difficult task, but for people not used to the subway, and where they were going other than some internet derived instructions, but without the help of a man at the station, just getting tickets may have stopped us dead in our tracks.  With his help, we determined the return fare for three of us and then get through the turnstile onto the platform.

We get on the A train, but soon discover it was not stopping at all stations.  There was for a few minutes, a little apprehension we might just simply bypass our station.  Luckily we did not.

Now, finding your way to the New Jersey transit part of Penn station might appear to be easy, on paper, but once there, on the ground, and mingling with the other passengers which all seemed to be purpose going somewhere, it took a few moments to realize we had to follow the New Jersey transit signs.

This led to a booking hall where luckily we realized we needed to buy more tickets, then find the appropriate platform, and then get on the right train, all of which, in the end, was not difficult at all.

Maybe on the return trip, it might be.

At Newark Penn station it was momentarily confusing because the exit was not readily in sight, so it was a case of following the majority of other passengers who’d got off the train.

This led us to exit onto the street under the train tracks.  Luckily, having been before to Prudential Stadium to buy the tickets, we knew what the stadium looked like and roughly where it was, so it was a simple task to walk towards it.

We were early, so it was a case of finding a restaurant to get dinner before the game. So was a great many others, and we passed about 6 different restaurants that looked full to overflowing before we stopped at one called Novelty Burger and Bar.

It looked inviting, and it was not crowded.

It was yet another excuse to have a hamburger and beer, both of which seemed to be a specialty in American.  I could not fault either.

And soon after we arrived, this restaurant too was full to overflowing.  Thankfully there were other Maple Leaf fans there because being in a room full of opposition teams supports can be quite harrowing.

That was yet to come when we finally got to the stadium.  I was not expecting a lot of Maple Leaf fans.
We went to this game with high hopes.  New Jersey Devils were not exactly at the top of the leader board, and coming off the loss in Toronto, this was make or break for whether we would ever go to another game.

It’s remarkable in that all the Ice Hockey stadiums are the same.  Everyone has an excellent view of the game, the sound systems are loud, and the fans passionate. Here it seems to be a thing to ride on the Zambonis.
At the front door they were handing out figurines of a Devil’s past player, and it seems a thing that you get a handout of some sort at each game.  At Toronto we got towels. And, finally, we were in luck.

The Maple Leafs won.

And it was an odd feeling to know that even though their team lost, there did not seem to be any rancor amount the fans and that any expectation of being assaulted by losing fans was totally unfounded, unlike some sporting events I’ve been to.

Perhaps soccer should take a leaf out of the ice hockey playbook.

That also went for taking public transport late at night.  I did not have any fears about doing so, which is more than I can say about traveling at night on our own transport system back home.

Oh, and by the way, there are train conductors who still come to every passenger to collect or stamp their tickets.  No trusting the passenger has paid for his trip here.  And, if you don’t have a ticket, I have it on good authority they throw you off the train and into the swamp.  Good thing then, we had tickets.

It was, all in all, a really great day.

Memories of the conversations with my cat – 91

As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.

Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.

For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1

These are the memories of our time together…

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This is Chester.

We’re having an interesting time in the quest for self-isolation.

It seems he doesn’t like the idea that we are still going out, and coming back, potentially bringing the virus back.

This, of course, despite the fact that there are no confirmed cases of the virus attacking cats.

That doesn’t mean that Chester might be the first cat that does.

Out of curiosity, and perhaps against my better judgment, I have to ask what his reasoning is.

Old age, he says.  If you are telling me the truth then I’m about 18 cat years old, which means it’s about 126 of your years.

I can see where this is going.  It’s my fault because I’ve left the running count of Coronavirus patients worldwide on one of my computer screens.

As of this morning, there are 393,000 cases worldwide.  He was sitting next to me when I  was looking at the statistical data on the various ages and pre-existing conditions.

For him, apparently, there was only one statistic that mattered.  Anyone over 90 in human years had little chance of surviving.

I reiterate the virus doesn’t attack cats.

I also tell him that I have no intention of getting the virus.  But it raises a point I hadn’t considered.

Going out anywhere always has a risk, whether to the supermarket or the pharmacy which are basically the only places I go.  Then there is the situation of my wife, who is still working and has to go to work.  That is a bigger risk considering one of the staff will be coming back from overseas.

How successful the self-isolation rule is, and whether everyone complies, is a matter of conjecture, and one has to wonder if 14 days in isolation is long enough.

Chester has raised a legitimate point, not necessarily in relation to himself.

Perhaps he might be worried about us.

And if that is the case, will the specter of this virus finally become the catalyst for a change in the relationship between cats and people, where they might realize we are more important to them than they currently believe.

Let’s see what happens.

In a word: well

At first, you would think this word has something to do with your health.

You’d be right.  “Are you well?” or “Are you well enough?”

Of course, it can cause some confusion, because how do you measure degrees of wellness.

Reasonably well, very well, not well, or just well.  Not a good descriptive word for the state of your health, maybe.

How about what if the team played well.  Not health this time, but a standard.

There’s ordinary, mediocre, as a team, brilliantly, and then there’s well.

It seems it can be used to describe an outcome.

Well, well.

Hang on, that’s something else again.

What about, then, we use the word to describe a hole in the ground with water at the bottom.

Or not if it is a drought.

A lot of people get water from a well, in fact in the olden days that was a common sight in a village.

What about those environment destroyers, oilmen.  They have oil wells, don’t they?

And when I went to school, there were ink wells on every desk.

Messy too, because I was once the ink monitor.

But if the well’s dried up?

It becomes a metaphor for a whole new bunch of stuff.

OR what about a stairwell?

And at the complexity of it all, for such a small word, tears well up in my eyes.

In a word: Pad

Here is another of those three letter words that can have so many meanings that it is nigh on impossible to pin it down.

You have to use it in a sentence which all but explains it.

For instance,

A pad might be a writing pad, or a note pad, something on which you can write, notes, stories, anything really, even doodles.

Cats, dogs, a lot of animals have padded feet.  I’d say, for a cat, those pads would be like shock absorbers.

You can pad an expense account with false expenditure in an accounting sense, I’m sure a lot of people are tempted to do so.

I know places, where a single man might live, is called a bachelor pad.  So many men like to think they may have one, but it takes money to buy the accouterments of seduction.

Then there’s a medical dressing, a square of gauze called a pad, usually absorbent and soaked in disinfectant to help protect and repair a wound.

Shoulder pads, for broader shoulders

KInee pads, for when crashing off a bike

Shin pads for soccer, and ice hockey players

A helipad which is for helicopter landings and takeoffs, much the same as a launch pad for rockets.  Unfortunately, rockets do not generally have a tendency to land, not unless they are bombs, like the V1 and V2 rockets of WW2.

It could also be someone walking around a house in socks, the man stealthily approached the thief, padding silently in his socks so he wouldn’t be heard.

And lastly,

A place for frogs to hang out, ie, the flat leaves of a water Lilly.

Any more?

I’m sure there is, just let me know.

 

Searching for locations: A small part of London, England

We were in London in Summer, it was a fine afternoon, going into the evening and we decided to get on the London Eye.  As you can see from the clock it was near 7:00 pm.

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This photo was taken as we were coming down.

Those long evenings were quite remarkable, not in the least going to a pub and sinking a few pints!  There was one such pub not far from Charing Cross Station

The pub was called ‘The Princess of Wales’

And still be light enough to find your way home.