this is how we roll

On Sunday 25th July I was graced with Mr Tho Pham's presence for a gentle ride through Melbourne's eastern suburbs. My guest brought his decently-sized bike along in the back of a Corolla. He was well-equipped but didn't have a good concept about gears until fifteen minutes into the ride. I like his bike - it's tall enough for me to extend my leg fully in a normal cadence, which is a lot more than what I can do on my ten-year old MTB.

The Eastern Freeway trail was full of promise since I had used it to get to Mr William Xian's house and found the under-road tunnels quite convenient. However, going in the other direction meant light gravel and traffic lights. At Park Road, Donvale, we had to cross to the other side of the freeway due to a lack of path on the southern side. While crossing we encountered some teenage blonde females who seemed to be a bit too apologetic about being on the footpath when we were [not supposed to be but couldn't be bothered crossing the road to ride on the other side]. It reminded me of an article saying how children in China were taught to salute cars.

I found the sight of boomgates on a freeway quite odd.

The back of Donvale/Mitcham was a really nice whup-whup area. Lots of trees - so many that you can't see the houses on the other side. Eerily quiet. Much more than behind a freeway sound barrier which might be good for a home theatre setup. hmm

Nice smells came from the Taberet near Maroondah Highway. The Heatherdale Hungry Jacks was also visible. Tho nearly stacked when turning a corner on the wrong side of the path. An apology was issued.

An error in navigation was made when I didn't notice the turnoff onto gravel away from the Eastlink trail. This landed us at Burwood Highway x Mountain Highway instead of Bunnings 1km west. Riding on Burwood Highway wasn't too bad. Three lanes were plenty. I disposed of two sealed lead-acid batteries and an assortment of Ni-Cd cells at the Whitehorse Waste Transfer Facility. My pack didn't feel a great deal lighter though. Onwards we encountered a dirtbike facility. The gradients on this section were much more manageable than the hills near the Eastern Freeway.

Climbing up High Street Road westwards was a struggle... for Tho. He dismounted. He was lame. Glucogel was procured at a discount pharmacy on Springvale Road and we proceeded to Urban Burger, due to the reasonably generous two burgers for $15 voucher I had in my possession.

At that stage we had covered 26km and settled for lunch at 3PM. The man was nice enough to cut the voucher out himself. We were joined by a white man and an Asian woman. The guy didn't seem very interested in things. The lady thought we were international students and wanted to help us with directions and all that. She spoke to me in mandarin but her four years experience in Melbourne doesn't really beat my whole life here. There were some misunderstandings along the way owing to my crap aural comprehension but some notable points developed during the course of conversation. She took hold of the fact that I trace my roots to Shantou and that the man's great something-or-other was from there and came to Australia for the gold mines. He was not enthusiastic at all about the point that she was making about how he could be related to me. hehe

Our bikes were still secure so we proceeded back to Box Hill via a sort of plan B. Riding on Springvale Road was almost deadly, so we stuck to the service lanes and footpath. I was getting a bit cold on the way back. In total, 38.5km was covered in that afternoon.

Run Melbourne

Notable occurrences:

• backflab
• female toilet queue on course
• unsanitary Gatorade (people plunge a paper cup into a bin full of the blue stuff and stir it with a large rod)
• congestion
• starting at the back gives you a good feeling from overtaking a lot of people but that gives a false sense of performance
• why no sprinting?

For next time:

• Start in a faster group
• don't waste time with toilets
• adopt a sense of urgency after 15 minutes

On a nicer point, I compared results with my friend who didn't sprint at the end. It seems like I overtook 293 people in 83 seconds.

火气 and other theories

Does anybody have thoughts about 火气 and related theories? The ones that go something like you eat too many fried things then end up with a cough. Then countering that with something 'cool' like herbal teas that come in a convenient cube package.

True/False/Don't Care?

awareness fail

1) The middle-aged asian lady stops her sports 4WD on the side of Station street for a while (she looks kinda small in that car and a bit lost). The road was wet from the rain earlier in the morning. She then decides to head out but stops in the path of a car heading in the outer lane at normal speed. Fun with horns and wet-weather braking.



2) An older asian lady stands at the 291 bus bay but looks at the 293/295 bus in the bay 10 metres away. She also seems lost or deep in thought, calculating the merits of each option. Another asian lady tries to get past her with a shopping trailer, travelling in the same direction as she is facing. She runs over the stationary lady's foot due to a lack of space.  It takes her about 2 seconds to realise that her foot has been run over and she has an annoyed expression on her face.


3) Vehicle 1 has a bunch of young asian female students. Vehicle 2 is a ute. Vehicle 1 hesitates, then turns out when vehicle 2 takes off. I suppose both thought it was somebody else's problem. Vehicle 1 still made it out before vehicle 2 came in.

Timeliness

Today, I got my Health Care Card - two months after applying for it.. FML Well, I thought trading away 26 pages of paperwork for $9 of savings (VPT concession card) might have been worth it. Normally I don't have a HCC so I don't get sick since I would be scared of the price of medications. Plus, some dude said health is an optimum state of being instead of being free of disease. The human body should be able to fix itself up under warranty. But anyway, I ended up doing both VPT and HCC applications.

In those two months I've managed to set aside some time to read about time. I liked the idea in Bertman's Hyperculture about how we might be going very fast to the wrong thing. Also, in Linder's Harried Leisure Class, there's the idea that over-utilisation of self might be like overusing a road... traffic jams and all and results in less efficiency. Or even that "people die an early death from overstrain and insufficient time instead of, as previously, from a shortage of goods. (p.25)" But then again, I haven't really read the other side in favour of a harried life because I don't have the time. ba dumch

Anyway, I think on that day I spent about 50 minutes in a queue at Centrelink (but I had a book which made it alright). George* (could be his real name - I can't remember clearly), a middle-aged man of East-Asian decent migrated from Mauritius where he was... a public servant. He did have an interesting accent which was cool. Also ended up discussing strategies for tax evasion. He was saying how the government in Mauritius offers tax incentives for new companies. The result: companies winding up after 5 years and new ones taking their place with the same owners. For something more local, he said setting up a family trust is popular... well for top earners anyway where company tax is less than personal tax. And then some more about separating the money for children so then it mostly goes at the lower brackets. I might have to pick his brains some other time... could be cheaper and better than the people paid for that kind of advice.

Next matter:- I sent off an email to the electrical department at HKU about course information. I didn't get a reply within a few days so I emailed individual lecturers. Now - two weeks later - I receive an email from 'Polly*' (definitely her name as listed in the email) with everything I needed. But she did spell my surname wrong. Left out the 'h'. gah... kinda feel bad annoying all the Professor Chans et al... hmm Josh could be a Professor Chan soonish...