Andrew’s Blog

1) The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others.

2) The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.

3) Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.

4) Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.

5) Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying.

6) Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Cicero.

V and I attended a Brisbane production of Phantom of the Opera starring Anthony Warlow tonight.

Inspiring.

I’m a fan of the story now having watched the video and listened to the soundtrack a hundred times but this is the first time I have seen it in person, we were both very impressed. I’m not sure what the rules are for singing along to the music but I venture the practice is frowned upon.

If you haven’t seen it already, you should. I’m interested in attending again to see another actor perform the phantom’s role for some contrast.

We have just spent a few days in the Lamington National Park staying at O’Reilly’s.

Nothing like a bit of mountain air and an absence of mobile phone and internet coverage to refresh the mind.

I’ve just spent ten minutes trying to find a telephone number to contact my DSL provider, on their website they do everything possible to bury the numbers many clicks deep and funnel you into filling out some web form where they ‘guarantee to respond within 7 days’.. Once you have passed the first stupidity test and have actually struck gold you can phone the number to talk to a computer who attempts to divert you from actually reaching a human being once more. If you pass the crappy voice recognition bot with an annoying voice you get to listen to some canned promotional music spliced in with how much ‘your call is valued, and how you will be attended to as soon as possible’ needless to say I have written this entire post while holding.

Once you get to talk to a human you can be talking to someone on the other side of the globe who is payed a fraction of the wage they would have to pay someone in your own country, because they ‘value your business and apologize that you are still waiting to speak to someone’.

Then they can’t even solve your problem.. Which was simply to have the final two billing days of a month charged as excess usage and not shaped for a DSL connection, apparently that doesn’t fit in neatly with one of their predefined plan boxes…

Brilliant.

V misses the taste of Lithuanian food, there’s something about the food you grow up with that makes it’s mark. Anyway we went to a local deli to source some quality European smoked ham, which we found. The price tag was $75/kilo, which worked out at $10 for 6 slices…

It was delicious I’m told, I’m not touching the stuff again until I talk to the bank manager about financing.

I’m still around.

Been a busy few months for us, might up the post rate a tad for the rest of March, I have a series of photo’s I will queue at one point.