Saturday, January 21, 2006
Let's be calm!
Okay, I'm calm, I'm rested, I've been away for months, I am not going to let a few little hitches get me down. So, instead of my usual rant, I'll just give you a list of the things that have 'needed attention' since my return.
1. My car air conditioner doesn't work. The first available appointment was Friday. I take it in and am told we'll ring you and tell you what we find. All day I wait. No call. I go in just on closing time. " You know we are waiting for parts, don't you," says the customer service guy. "No," say I,"How would I know, you never rang me"...etc. The rest of this interchange led to the conclusion that the mysterious 'parts' (sounds like most of the components of the air conditioner) have been placed on Friday's order, which should be sent off Saturday, or maybe Monday, and would I like to leave the car there or take it away and bring it back? The parts shouldn't be 'too long' as they 'think they are in Australia'. THANK YOU Darwin Mitsubishi but I will take the car home with me if you don't mind rather than leave it sitting in your yard for an open-ended period of time which doesn't look like being anything less than a week while myself using shanks's pony or catching a bus!
2. My microwave has died, necessitating disposal of the old clunker and purchase of a sleek and tiny new white plastic model for the very reasonable price of $68.
3. The door seal on the dishwasher has disintegrated requiring difficult and time consuming replacement.
4. The loungeroom air conditioner's remote control has died. New batteries didn't fix the problem. This means I have to climb on a chair and lift the cover to use the emergency button to turn it on and there's no possible adjustment of temperature or air flow.
5. Only the freezer section of my fridge is working - yet another repair person needed.
6. At work, I spent a week moving about 100 heavy boxes of brochures and promotional material into my new air-conditioned storeroom, sorting and stacking them onto shelves. It seemed kind of warm in there. When I thought to mention to the building supervisor that he might need to get the air conditioning in there looked at I was informed that this is the only storeroom out of three that is not air conditioned and if it was a problem I could move everything back to another storeroom - no fair, I was promised it would be air conditioned and just assumed the promise had been honoured. There's no way I'm lugging all that stuff back again. I told him he'd better organise for it to get air conditioned in a hurry before all the promotional gear grew mould.... grrr!
Ah the joys of tropical living! If I ever leave Darwin again for a protracted period I will not be coming back!
Goodnight.
1. My car air conditioner doesn't work. The first available appointment was Friday. I take it in and am told we'll ring you and tell you what we find. All day I wait. No call. I go in just on closing time. " You know we are waiting for parts, don't you," says the customer service guy. "No," say I,"How would I know, you never rang me"...etc. The rest of this interchange led to the conclusion that the mysterious 'parts' (sounds like most of the components of the air conditioner) have been placed on Friday's order, which should be sent off Saturday, or maybe Monday, and would I like to leave the car there or take it away and bring it back? The parts shouldn't be 'too long' as they 'think they are in Australia'. THANK YOU Darwin Mitsubishi but I will take the car home with me if you don't mind rather than leave it sitting in your yard for an open-ended period of time which doesn't look like being anything less than a week while myself using shanks's pony or catching a bus!
2. My microwave has died, necessitating disposal of the old clunker and purchase of a sleek and tiny new white plastic model for the very reasonable price of $68.
3. The door seal on the dishwasher has disintegrated requiring difficult and time consuming replacement.
4. The loungeroom air conditioner's remote control has died. New batteries didn't fix the problem. This means I have to climb on a chair and lift the cover to use the emergency button to turn it on and there's no possible adjustment of temperature or air flow.
5. Only the freezer section of my fridge is working - yet another repair person needed.
6. At work, I spent a week moving about 100 heavy boxes of brochures and promotional material into my new air-conditioned storeroom, sorting and stacking them onto shelves. It seemed kind of warm in there. When I thought to mention to the building supervisor that he might need to get the air conditioning in there looked at I was informed that this is the only storeroom out of three that is not air conditioned and if it was a problem I could move everything back to another storeroom - no fair, I was promised it would be air conditioned and just assumed the promise had been honoured. There's no way I'm lugging all that stuff back again. I told him he'd better organise for it to get air conditioned in a hurry before all the promotional gear grew mould.... grrr!
Ah the joys of tropical living! If I ever leave Darwin again for a protracted period I will not be coming back!
Goodnight.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
riding the monsoon
Hydee hodee everbody... as a famous Australian game show host used to say... I've arrived back in the green land of torrential rain and dancing frill-necked lizards. Yes friends I'm back in beautiful Darwin and the monsoons are in full spate. Everything is lush and every shade of green imaginable.
My brother took me to the airport and being the nice guy he is, insisted on dragging my largest suitcase to the check-in and depositing it on the baggage conveyor - whereupon he declared it was officially the heaviest bag ever in the history of the world - but that's only because he didn't carry it to the airport when I took it from Sydney to Canberra - when it weighed 45 kilos - this time is was only 32 kilos.
I had two other bags as well and, although one was small enough to carry onto the plane, I needed to pay excess baggage charges for the other. The girl who booked me in was a real sourpuss but the excess baggage man was much nicer. "Oh I'll give you a better seat," he says. "You are way down the back of the plane, there's a spare window seat in the first couple of rows you can have." He proceeds to change my seat allocation. "How nice," I think, until I get on the plane and see my seating companion, a man well over 6ft in height and at least twice the width of the seat. This meant my 4.5 hour flight was spent trying to bend myself around his arms and legs which were taking up about 1/3 of my seating space. At least he was pleasant and didn't smell. Once before I got sat next to a man of similar proportions. You have to picture that I'm only 5 ft 4 inches tall and my head therefore is on the level of these guys' armpits, which can be really bad news when they are not close friends with a deodorant.
Fortunately a kind friend met me at the airport and carried my bags up to my first floor unit, otherwise I'd have been unpacking at the bottom of the stairs and relaying the contents up by the armfull! Sigh... one of my goals in life is to learn how to pack light!
Checked out both my local markets at the weekend to reacquaint myself with the delights of Darwin and pretty much spent the rest of the weekend cleaning and unpacking, then off to work on Monday.
It's been great to have a break and a change and I hope I'm invigorated for the challenges of the year ahead.
My new year's resolution last year was to be less serious about life and learn to laugh more - this year's is to become enigmatic. I'm still working on last year's and don't expect this year's to be any more successful - guess you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse in just 12 months!
Hope I still have a reader or two left. If I get back into this blogging, I might have to have a membership drive - any ideas out there?
Wishing you all a 2006 that sees at least one of your dearest wishes come true.
My brother took me to the airport and being the nice guy he is, insisted on dragging my largest suitcase to the check-in and depositing it on the baggage conveyor - whereupon he declared it was officially the heaviest bag ever in the history of the world - but that's only because he didn't carry it to the airport when I took it from Sydney to Canberra - when it weighed 45 kilos - this time is was only 32 kilos.
I had two other bags as well and, although one was small enough to carry onto the plane, I needed to pay excess baggage charges for the other. The girl who booked me in was a real sourpuss but the excess baggage man was much nicer. "Oh I'll give you a better seat," he says. "You are way down the back of the plane, there's a spare window seat in the first couple of rows you can have." He proceeds to change my seat allocation. "How nice," I think, until I get on the plane and see my seating companion, a man well over 6ft in height and at least twice the width of the seat. This meant my 4.5 hour flight was spent trying to bend myself around his arms and legs which were taking up about 1/3 of my seating space. At least he was pleasant and didn't smell. Once before I got sat next to a man of similar proportions. You have to picture that I'm only 5 ft 4 inches tall and my head therefore is on the level of these guys' armpits, which can be really bad news when they are not close friends with a deodorant.
Fortunately a kind friend met me at the airport and carried my bags up to my first floor unit, otherwise I'd have been unpacking at the bottom of the stairs and relaying the contents up by the armfull! Sigh... one of my goals in life is to learn how to pack light!
Checked out both my local markets at the weekend to reacquaint myself with the delights of Darwin and pretty much spent the rest of the weekend cleaning and unpacking, then off to work on Monday.
It's been great to have a break and a change and I hope I'm invigorated for the challenges of the year ahead.
My new year's resolution last year was to be less serious about life and learn to laugh more - this year's is to become enigmatic. I'm still working on last year's and don't expect this year's to be any more successful - guess you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse in just 12 months!
Hope I still have a reader or two left. If I get back into this blogging, I might have to have a membership drive - any ideas out there?
Wishing you all a 2006 that sees at least one of your dearest wishes come true.
