Elderly Woman vs. Tram. Who wins?

Answer: The Tram.

Today on the tram on my way from uni to the train station it was dinging along nicely, then suddenly... Bang! The tram hit an elderly lady who was crossing the road. It was quite a thud and the driver slammed on the brakes. He jumped out and ran down the side of the tram to the woman. She was conscious but didn't look too good. Everyone got off the tram and I walked to the train station. Two cop cars and the paramedics hooned past me as I walked.

I have 3 days until next week starts, and I have 3 days of work. Yay! No weekend. Partytime! So, after basically no sleep last night working on an assignment, I am going to get a good nights sleep tonight so I am prepared for 3 three closes. Also, I posted myself a package from the east coast of america when I was there in January, and after 8 weeks of waiting I had come to the conclusion that it was lost, or some guy had it in his house. I thought that this guy was wearing my beautiful parisian coat that I had worn all through winter. So anyway, since I had sent it i'd sent another from the west coast, returned to Australia, posted something to the US that had already arrived. Then finally today my package arrived. About 10 weeks after I sent it. It turns out it was in quarantine for a week in Australia and they forgot to tell me. I think it must of got stuck somewhere else as well. So today I was able to give my sister her 21st present and my dad his birthday present, and the notes that I'd written them saying that I was looking forward to seeing them in a month. Yay. T44

Explosions

I left home early for work today in order to arrive with enough time to relax with a coffee, read the paper, and change for work, but it didn't go as planned. I walked to the train station and my timing was perfect. I would arrive 4 minutes before the express Train, so there were only 3 stops til I arrived at work, instead of 7. But as I got closer to the station I saw many people standing around in groups, then I saw some firemen, then I saw the police. There was this pungent smell in the air but I didn't take any notice of it because the visuals were more important to my brain. I walked to the train station but there was police tape everywhere. The policewoman standing there told me it was closed and there were no trains or trams for the next 2 hours. I asked her what had happened and she replied, "can't you smell it?" It was the unmistakable smell of Natural Gas.

"The crash began when a truck suffered a tyre blow-out and pulled into the tunnel's left-hand lane. The tunnel does not have an emergency lane.

Two cars caught behind the truck tried to merge right. They were struck from behind by a semi-trailer, throwing one against the wall and one into the back of the stationary truck.

A third car was hit from the side by the same semi-trailer, then struck by a third truck."

"Explosions rocked the tunnel, motorists told of a huge wall of flames and temperatures soared above 1000 degrees. Police Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby said some of the crash vehicles had turned into "balls of molten metal". Investigators had still not identified the make of some of the cars."

The crash happened in the Burnley tunnel which is about 7 kilometres from my station, so the amount of gas must have been immense to travel all that distance from the crash site.

However, it turns out that what I smelt was just a regular gas leak, and had nothing to do with the incident in the Burnley Tunnel. The gas leak just brought trains to a standstill and screwed up the public transport network during peak hour. A bit of a busy day for emergency services.

In other news, at 9:53pm this evening, as I crossed Victoria Parade and headed down Nicholson St, after a long 8.5 hour shift, some ripped guy in a tight white bonds top punched me in my left shoulder. I was walking along eating a wrap and feeling tired and the guy who was walking to the left of me, coming in my direction, just turned and smacked me in the arm. I turned and said, "what the...", then he turned and with huge fierce eyes, raised his arm to hit me again. I told him I'd just finished work and I just wanted to go home. I then turned and started walking, and thankfully he didn't do anything then continued to walk in the opposite direction. It was a bit strange, but the muggy windy weather does that to some people. They go crazy.

My New Site! L.A.N.T.E.D.

I'm just getting my new site going, please go and check it out. I always find myself looking up facts and interests each day on random things, so I figured I should chuck what I learn on a website in a quick, easy, readable fashion. And here it is: 'Learn A New Thing Every Day' - LANTED. So far I have written about Thor's Magical Goats, the Hawaiian Flag, Bananas, Leprechauns, Ferrari's Prancing Horse, and Lake Eyre. Please go check it out and sign up for the daily feed.

Summer

Its been a long time between drinks for these posts lately so i apologise to those who regularly make the effort to check if I've added any new posts. I haven't been posting recently because I was thinking that there wasn't really anything to say but I have been thinking this afternoon and plenty has been happening in my life. I'm not sure if any of it is interesting but there is still stuff to say.

Saturday was my sister's 21st birthday party. It was a fun night and I think she classified it a success. There were plenty of her friends there and non of them got too drunk or started fights or anything. It was a masquerade formal dress party. I went in a tux with a bat mask. The bat mask was chosen as an homage to my favourite super hero - Batman. It was not a regular bat mask, but slightly nicer quality. I also blacked around my eyes under the mask to add to the effect. If you watch all the Batman movies closely, Batman has his eye-lids etc painted black. Some of the interesting aspects of the party was the marketing of my sister. She is a modest girl with lots of friends but with a certain creative flair, particularly with pandering her name and face around. At the party she gave out free badges with her face on them and everyone was wearing them. But the pièce de résistance was the cake. Instead of a big ice-cream cake, she made 120 small 50 cent sized cakes, all from ice-cream with a thin, edible rice-paper photo of her on the top of each one. To make it even more special each of the photos was unique, not one of them was repeated.

Summer officially ended at the end of February but thankfully the weather is still very much stuck in Summer. It is pleasant every day. I love it. I hope it doesn't change for a while cos I am enjoying wearing shorts and flip-flops and feeling the sun warm my face as I walk to the train station. The other day I was at Fed Square and there was a public performance, I believe, advertising the Swimming Championships. It was a crowd sitting in a part of a stadium all watching something, but it was just a trick. They were simply watching us. Then everyone looks at them, then turns to see what they are looking at.

I went to the Melbourne Motor Show the other day, which is always pretty interesting and fun. Its a little dry and family friendly for my liking, but somewhat entertaining. They could do with some cars actually running. The sound of an actual motor could be quite a nice touch.



At the moment I am concentrating on managing my studies and fit in some exercise somewhere. I think the trick is a regular sleeping pattern. If I go to bed at a good time I will better use my time in the day and then be able to make time for some exercise. It is also difficult cos I have uni everyday then i am working on both days of the weekend.

Another 365 days...

Happy Birthday Tristan! Thanks. Time is a crazy thing. The last year feels like it has gone in a flash but simultaneously feels like it took forever and I have done so much. This time last year I had deferred my studies and was preparing for a year away. This time this year, I am preparing my studies and looking forward to a productive two years of university. In the last year I have celebrated my birthday and going away, travelled to Bangkok, London, Brighton, Paris, Le Havre, Normandy, Munich, Dresden, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, Krakow, Warsaw, Stockholm, Vasteras, Uppsala, New York, Boston, Durham, Washington DC, Chicago, Denver, Reno, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Honolulu and back to Melbourne. I have covered 54,291 kilometres. I have experienced Christmas time in Sweden, New Years in Paris, had salmonella poisoning in Krakow, drank at Oktoberfest, danced at Love Parade, been stuck on a Train in the Nevada desert, been hit on by Hooters girls in Boston, been punched in the face and mugged in Paris, worked in a hostel, lived in two beautiful Parisian neighbourhoods. I've met heaps of people and made some wonderful friendships which will last my lifetime. I've spoken French and Australian, and tried my hand and learnt a few words in Swedish, German, Spanish, Italian, American, Canadian, Japanese, Polish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Hungarian. But after all this it is my friends that I am thankful for the most. My friends have been both the best thing and the hardest thing about this trip. And forever I will never be truly happy because now I live in this never ending Catch22 situation. To return to my friends in Melbourne, I had to say goodbye to my friends in Paris and America, and to return to my friends there, I must leave my friends in Melbourne. From this time forward I will forever have two homes and it can be really hard. However, I wouldn't swap it 'for the world' because that is what I have and I love it.

Anthesteria & Vikings

I'm doing two history subjects this semester and I am very excited about each of them. The first is Classical Athens and obviously deals with Ancient Greece and particular the nation-state of Athens. In the first lecture I learnt about one of the festivals that would be taking place now, that is, at this time of the year in Ancient Greece. The Ancient Athens calendar was related to the lunar calendar, and this particular festival goes for three days and started yesterday on February 28. The festival is called Anthesteria and is related to Dionysus, the god of drinking and merriment. Its basically a wine festival and a 'respect the dead' festival and each day has a special theme. Day One, Pithoigia, literally the 'opening of the casks', was a day when everyone, including slaves and children, drank the wine which had been fermenting for a year. Day Two, Choës, the feast of the beakers, was another day of merrimaking, when people would dress up and meet with friends and drink more. Drinking clubs met to organize drink-off matches, the winner being he who drained his cup most rapidly. And the wife of the archon basileus (like the Mayor) went through a ceremony of marriage to the wine god, in which she was assisted by fourteen Athenian matrons, called geraerae, chosen by the basileus and sworn to secrecy. Day Three, Chytroi, was a festival of the dead, when cooked pulse was offered to Hermes Chthonios, Hermes in his capacity of a god of the lower world, and to the souls of the dead, who were then bidden to depart. Funky. So today we are on Day Two and I'm having a glass of wine to celebrate. The stories about some of the Ancient Greek gods is even more interesting.

The other history subject is called Viking Studies and deals with the people of Scandinavia roughly around the Middle Ages. This is a really interesting subject because a major component of the studies is studying the old language of Old Norse. In class yesterday we studied a nursery rhyme in Old Norse, the first line of which is reproduced here. Litla, gula hænan fann fræ, þat var hveitifræ. I'm pretty excited and I think its pretty cool, although somewhat useless. But there are plenty of other things I know and do which could be considered just as useless, so its silly to think like that. Some interesting things to note about Vikings:
1. They didn't have horns on their helmets.
2. The term 'viking' at the time only referred to those who went off pillaging.
3. They could roll their longboats across land in order to travel between rivers.
4. They were well kept and not barbarians like many people believe.
5. There are no written contemporary sources (except for runestones) so our knowledge of Vikings is very much shaped by the opinions of those they attacked.