So I haven’t been on here in ages. This is my first chance to bring you all up to speed with my life. So what should I do? What’s traditional on Myspace? That’s right, I’m going to bitch. :D

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Actually I’m going to throw my time and energy into the creation of a short list of advice for Australian motorists, free of charge, because I’m just that nice. Who knows, maybe I can get it added as an appendix to the Road Rules. It could come under the heading:

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A List of Motoring Suggestions Worth Following if You Want to Live to the Next Set of Lights.

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1)      Just because the sun’s out and it’s the middle of the day doesn’t mean that your high-beams are any less bright. They’re still very bright. Very…okay?

2)      Driving is not like the final for Idol. Other people are allowed to know what you’re planning to do. This is what indicators are for. Believe it or not, most drivers don’t actually like surprises when they’re hurtling along in a metal box at 80kmh, surrounded by other people also hurtling along at 80kmh

3)      While we’re talking about indicators:

a.       Try turning them on before you change direction, accidentally hitting the stalk with your hand as you’re turning your wheel is bad

b.      Where possible, try to go in the same direction that you’re indicating. It’s the generally accepted way of doing things.

c.       Once you’ve finished doing what you’re doing, try turning them off again. I know that the ticking noise and that friendly blinking green light on your dashboard are great company on long drives, but it seems a little odd to other people that you might be thinking of turning left off the middle of a highway through a crash barrier at 110kmh

d.      However if you are planning on turning left off the middle of a highway through a crash barrier at 110kmh then please use your indicator, it’ll let the rest of us know to slow down and watch the show

e.       The correct use of an indicator at a roundabout is left if you’re turning left, right if you’re turning right, and left if you’re on the roundabout and want to get off it. Obviously this is only the case if you decide to go the normal way around a roundabout (ie clockwise). Should you decide to go anticlockwise just for the fun of it (and the joyful accompaniment of screeching tyres and horns) then the above directions are reversed.

4)      The intensity of the sun does not in any way, shape or form alter the intensity of your high beams. They’re still really intense….really.

5)      Rain is not something new. It’s been around for quite some time. But just in case you live in central NSW and can’t remember what happens, it’s like this:

a.       Water falls from the sky (I know, strange isn’t it?)

b.      Water lands on things on the ground (like roads)

c.       Landed water makes things wet

d.      Wet things are slippery

e.       SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!!!

6)      You do not need to engage in drafting techniques on a motorway. In fact driving so close behind me that all I see in my rearview mirror is your left eyeball is, surprisingly enough, a BAD thing. If you’re not sure whether you’re too close, try this experiment. Turn on your headlights (LOW BEAM). If the only thing they light is two headlight sized circles on the rear bumper of my car YOU ARE TOO CLOSE!

7)      Speeding is bad it’s true. But you are not the police. Driving 10kmh below the speed limit on the outside lane does NOT make the world a shiny happy place. It’s just really really annoying. Of course if you ARE the police you may ignore this suggestion….in fact you can more or less do whatever you want on the roads at any time you choose to do them, at least that seems to be the case from what I’ve seen.

8)      Here is a definition for the phrase “merging speed”. The opposite of parking in the middle of the damn feeder lane.
In the fight for getting onto a highway, majority rules. It’s unlikely that you’ll get to the end of the feeder lane and find a nice, car shaped gap moving at 40mkh in the middle of a dozen cars doing 80. Of course if the traffic is bumper to bumper it may be necessary to adjust your speed and merging accordingly. Don’t try to wedge yourself into the side of a stopped bus at full speed and then blame me okay?

9)      And on that topic. If you’re lovingly cruising along at 80 in the left lane of an open highway and happen to notice somebody marking time with you in a feeder lane, trying to get in, MOVE THE FUCK OVER!!! They’re not staying there because of the view. It may be funny to watch the many expressions on the variation of ‘fear’ that cross the face of a driver whose lane suddenly starts to disappear out from under them at speed, but you’ll probably be the type of person that can get just as many yucks at home watching a Pauly Shore movie, and that’ll be in private where the rest of the world won’t be able to see how much of a tool you are.

10)  Most drivers don’t understand morse code, and as such surprisingly little information is passable in a few flashes of your headlights. The basic understanding of most drivers when you flash your lights at them is:

a.       There’s a speedtrap ahead

b.      There’s a crash ahead.

c.       I’m a great big doofus who loves attracting attention without in any way, shape, or form passing on anything approaching useful information to the rest of the world

So if you want us to think anything else the best bet is to stop, get out of your car, write down your message in large letters on a highly reflective road sign and then stick it in the ground. If nothing else, it gets you off the road.

11)  We all know that the ‘pinky waving’ ad on tv at the moment is not likely to stop you acting like a moron in your car, especially if you are one of the .0000075% of men in the world that is comfortable with the size of your genitalia (or if you’re a woman). Just be aware however that there’s also not much to be proud of in being A GREAT BIG KNOB!

12)  Headlights on high beam mode are still REALLY FUCKING BRIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY. OKAY?!!!? ARE WE STARTING TO SEE A PATTERN HERE!?!?!?

13)  Believe it or not, blocking the entrance to a car park while you wait for a spot to perhaps free up maybe if you’re lucky won’t actually win you friends. If you’re waiting for somebody to actually pull out of a spot that’s fine. But just parking your ass in the middle of the road in the hopes that maybe something will come available is the motoring equivalent of waving your hands quickly half an inch from somebody’s face and saying “ooooo I’m not touching you I’m not touching you.” In particular I’m looking at all you people that stop at the entrance to the top carpark in front of Krispy Kreme in the Woden Shopping Mall.

14)  You are not the only person on the whole road. Occasionally using your eyes to look around you and be aware of other cars, motorbikes, bicycles, tanks, hovercraft and segways will help make everybody happy. NOTE: Of course this only applies to drivers who can see, apologies if I have offended any blind drivers with this comment

15)  While we’re mentioning cyclists I will say this. MAKE UP YOUR GODDAMN MIND!!! If you’re on the road, follow the road rules. If you don’t want to follow the road rules, get off the road. In particular, TRAFFIC LIGHTS ARE NOT FRIENDLY SUGGESTIONS!!!

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I’m sure more will occur to me as I trundle along our great nations highways and by-ways. But I think that’s enough to be getting on with.

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Have fun.

This past week has been one of discovery (and missed opportunities) for me.

I'll start with the obligatory apology to my sister in law whose 28th birthday I missed due to the foibles of my digestive system. And really we don't need to go any further than that.

However, I have also done a teeny little bit of research and investimigation this week and I feel like sharing just a touch (after all, what are blogs for?). Mind you, this entry kinda slightly has mature themes...so if you really don't want to know more...read no further.

No seriously, this is the kind of stuff people usually start new blogs for.

Okay then.

This week just gone I have pushed back the boundary of exploration and experience just a bit and...well...it was an eye opener.

First I jumped online and finally watched "2 Girls and 1 Cup" to see what all the fuss was about.

Then I got first hand details of a play party that a friend of mine went to (and I was thinking of going to myself but couldn't make in the end) involving the kind of thing normally seen in 'special' websites for the 'discerning' viewer

Then, because it had a reference in the Wikipedia entry, I watched "BME Pain Olympics" to see what all the fuss was about.

And then I rounded off the week watching the latest installment of a BBC doco series by Louis Theroux about the Westbro Baptist Church that (among other things) second their 5 year old children to help them hold banners like "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" outside church services for the fallen American servicemen of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I have to say that just ONE of the above left me sick to the stomach, heartsore and truly horrified at the state of humankind.

Although that damn girls and cups thing was pretty darn bad. :) 

Alright, there's recently been a heap of rants (both half-hearted and extremely heated) on this blog, and extremely little about me, myself and I. It's time to try to remedy that, so here we go...

I can't actually remember what I've said about myself so far in these virtual pages so I'll work on a summary from a while ago that will (hopefully) expand into a bit more wanted detail towards the end.

Around this time last year I finally decided that my time with the Helpdesk was done - when I first wrote this blog there was a bunch here about why but for some reason it's been eaten by Myspace never to see the light of day. Long story short, contract work for crappy pay kinda sucked and since every single other IT contract role with the same quals under the sun offered anywhere between $10 an hour more to twice as much as I was getting I decided to cast my net further afield. At the same time that I grew restless a position opened up in the newly formed National Ops Centre and I applied for and got it.

This section (department? office? team?) is responsible for national operations of air traffic control and it's disparate parts. We're still developing ourselves but for now we're responsible for the (Warning: Corporate Speak Statement follows) integration, centralization and dissemination of information and resources from and to the organisation and our key stakeholders. In essence we monitor all the stuff what's happening in the world of flyin' down under and pass that info around to the folks what can use it best to save fuel, prevent delays and manage safety. I could get extremely technical (and in so doing probably tread the fine line of corporate confidentiality), but what you need to know as a non-flying type professional person is that using a combination of cool looking software packages, confusing data capture tools and so many big screens that my new workplace looks something like the briefing room in NCIS we monitor traffic flow throughout Australia and do our best to make sure it flows smoothly, quickly and safely.

One of my first projects involved learning a system currently located in Melbourne with a mind to bringing it back to Canberra and integrating into our ops up here. So I went from being a contract desk monkey to a jet-setting project type person almost overnight, and found myself dividing my time between Canberra and Melbourne. The system is way cool and I find it fascinating (but in a way that I'm sure you lot would all find extremely dull and nerdy and jargon-laden so I'll not go into details) but the relocation proved to be a little more involved than I/we at first thought, so I've been pulled back to Canberra in the short term and we'll regroup and have another go at it in the new year, properly armed and edumacated.

The end result for me personally is that after barely getting used to life in the big city (and what a life it was!) we (myself and November) have yet again returned to the nation's capital. In some ways it's not that bad, her really way cool job ended just a week before I had to leave and although there was another position for her to move into it was much lower down the food chain (and payscale) and was a lot less challenging and satisfying than the semi-managerial role she'd had and loved. My own love of the city itself was becoming a touch tainted by the increasing feeling that I wasn't really much use down there and also the fact that every time I came back here to Canberra to perform the functions of what is really my main role (as the extremely official sounding 'traffic management officer'…at least some people think it sounds impressive…I'm still not convinced it doesn't make me sound like a carpark attendant) I was aware that by being out of the loop changes had occurred that I hadn't been able to keep up with. This meant first that every shift it seems I tend to make a small mistake or two, but secondly that I was starting to feel a little out of it and off to one side. Nothing horrendous you understand, but more like somebody who's joined a dancing class at the same time as everybody else but by missing a few lessons has fallen behind. In fact that's a really good analogy, right now I'm still kinda struggling with having two left feet (system-wise) and I think it'll take a little while before I'm comfortable with where I'm at (all the more so because the procedures and steps change here on an almost daily basis and you only have to miss a week or two to feel more lost than if you'd come in halfway through the second season of Twin Peaks).

The other big event of course is that now I'm once more searching for rental accommodation…I tell you, if I never never never never never move again…it'll still be way too soon. November and I will once more be sharing accommodation (in what has become a friendship so strong and comfortable that I've just stopped even trying to analyse it or explain it to others). Simply we're not together but have so much in common that we've reached a level of co-dependence that's approaching symbiosis. To the point where I'm starting to become convinced that we're sharing some kind of hive-brain. It works, it's great to have a best friend with which you can do so much together, the only down side of course is that whenever we go out for drinks we really should wear t-shirts saying "We're not together".

Recently November had to fill out a Centrelink form that went into all sorts of details about our relationship (last time Centrelink had either of us on their books we were still a couple). She needed to convince them of the fact that we're not a couple (I still don't understand where the fact that you're having sex with somebody in some way reduces the amount of money you need to live…but whatever) and by the time we'd gotten to the end of the forms (one each for the two people that aren't a couple) it was almost farcical. In particular questions like "Do people who know you think you're in a marriage-like relationship?" (my answer: Hell Yes!) and "Would you describe your relationship as marriage-like? Explain your answer" (my answer: Yes. Because we live in the same house, do a lot of things together and have sex with other people) really kind of hammered home just how…well…sitcom-like our arrangement is. I wasn't there but apparently our answers gave the whole office a good laugh when November handed in the forms the next day. Oh and for the record, honesty is the best policy because as far as the government is concerned we are our own people now (yay! validation).

We've found one house I absolutely love (Nova's not actually seen it yet…but she trusts me…the fool mwah ha ha) and there are applications in for it at the moment, but they've done something weird to the listing, dropping the rent amount slightly and specifying a six month lease only…after having explicitly said that the owners are looking for a long lease term (of at least a couple of years)…so I'm not sure what's happening there, all very strange. The return to Canberra's been a bit messy all up really, kinda rushed and a bit random. We did at least manage to say farewell to friends in Melbourne before we left and our stuff is currently in transit, but we don't actually have a home address for it to go to yet and we're currently imposing on the kindness of others (me on my parents, her on a friend) to ensure we have a roof over our heads and heating…a massively important thing for a Canberra winter where there was actually sleet in the air today!! The sooner we find a place the better.

The other thing is that now I've returned to the ops centre proper we've moved into a 24/7 roster. This means that the last couple of days I've been pulling night shifts (known in the trade as 'doggos') and with everything needing to be organised during daylight hours sleep has been for me (at least for the last fortnight) a rather sporadic and rare affair. I've been running mostly on caffeine (thank goodness for an office provided espresso machine) and the stress of moving. It's one of those things, while there's stuff to do and work and home life to organise everything's okay, but I fear that in the near future a big crash is waiting for me, and I can only hope that when it comes I'm living in my own place and can just crawl into bed and shut out the world for a couple of days (no offence and uber love to my parents for their kindness, but sleep tends to be a bit hard to come by when you live in a house with two increasingly hard-of-hearing folks whose television room is on the other side of your bedroom wall…obviously I'm just not exhausted enough ).

Well that's probably enough for now, and I've no doubt that I've missed a few things in the mix there. I'll probably post more once I find out what's going on with this darn house (my big fear is that the last real estate agents we dealt with in Canberra, who managed to make a drunk octopus trying to juggle vibrators look professional and organised, may have cast a black cloud over our rental reputations…but I'll find that out in a few hours), for now I need to get to work and ride through yet another run from the wee hours to dawn.

Have fun.

So I'm trying to be good, I'm trying to save (albeit failing at the moment becaue, as my housemate points out through gritted teeth, you actually have to LOOK at your budget before you can follow it), I'm trying to limit my spending. I have a big trip next year that I'm planning for at the moment (and have already paid my first instalment on. Yay!). I have to relocate (again!!!) interstate in about two weeks and will need to pay for removalists, storage, cleaning and the like. Then at the other end I need to put down bond and deposit (once I've found a place) and pay to get my stuff back out of storage. I currently owe around $5,000 through the combination of a small loan, a credit card and a hire-purchase (fairly minimal in this day and age of vast debt). I earn a decent salary and this amount is going to be easily cleared and the trip won't be a concern (although people may be getting pretty dodgy Christmas presents from me this year).

All of that's fine and workable. I'm happily minding my own business and looking forward to about six months of reduced spending. Then this happens!! It's my dream. It's been my dream since around the time that cars became something more to me than toys to push around (and occasionally taste). It's my Countach, my Vantage, my Bugatti Veyron. It's about half the price I've ever seen for sale in Oz and it's already right hand drive. It's been garaged, looked after, seems to be in pristine condition and is EXACTLY what I've been hoping for all these years. It's registered and a quick call to my insurance agency tells me I could be fully covered for just over $640 per annum!!! (I've seen regular cars cost more than that!!). This kind of thing becomes available about once every ten years (and never at this kind of price), and it's even driving distance from where I live right now.

Okay so the timing isn't perfect (juggling two cars just prior to an interstate move from a place with only one parking lot would be problematic, and if even one more car ends up on the lawn in Chisholm I think my parents' heads might explode). But Oh. My. God. I want this so badly.

The truly tragic thing is that technically I can afford it. Credit checks have shown I could easily borrow the amount from my current bank and keep up with the repayments without too much sweat (I could even just still manage the trip next year). But if I did borrow the money I'd have debt spread over four different places, with all the complications and fee upon fee that that entails. I'd be sweating bullets rather than just scrimping to make sure I can get to America next year and feed myself. Sure I'd be throwing myself pretty deeply into the hole, but given another two or three years and I'm intending to join the great group of the mortgage horde anyway (and let's face it a 50k loan would get swallowed in simple admin fees when I refinance for a 300K homeloan). But I have to keep telling myself not to. I've wanted this for a long time, surely I can wait a little longer. The perfect solution is to go 10K higher. Borrow 60K rather than 50K and use the extra to consolidate existing debts, clear credit cards, and pay for the major part of the trip (roughly around 5k-6k). Put the credit card into limbo until next year and just have a single payment coming out to a single debt. It's actually doable, I've been looking into it pretty much from the moment I saw the ad, but my current bank has a maximum personal loan amount of $50K and the other institutions are (understandably) reluctant to consolidate debt from different locations.

Basically my heart is crying out "Yes!" and my head (and my wallet) are crying out "No!"

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I. Hate. Being. A. Grown. Up.

I wish I could just go "Wow shiny! Lend me money" and be done with it, but for some reason I just can't sign on to that much debt and keep a clear conscience. It sucks letting go of your dream, even if only for a while...

***WARNING - The following contains strong opinions (and possibly swearing, we'll see how pent up I get) on a ridiculously small issue***

Okay, so there's been a heap of things happening in my life personally at the moment (mostly work related) and of course a heap of things in the greater world that regular readers and those that know me are probably a bit surprised I haven't commented on sooner (World Youth Day anyone?). Although I promise to eventully get around to thinking about the possibility of considering writing something about them at some point somewhere, this blog is about none of those. It's about something that I've been continually faced with time after time after time and the proverbial straw has finally broken the camel's back , literally (no, for real...I have a small dromedary right here in my apartment and, like me, it's got the hump!)

Ok, here we go, deep breath and....

Macs are NOT better than PCs! Holdens are NOT better than Fords! Nokias do NOT suck. Windows does NOT suck! Americans do NOT suck! Everything you personally feel is crap that is popular or commonly used or [wanky, self-aware voice] "Sooooo 2007" does NOT SUCK!!!

The fact is that it's your opinion that sucks. To blatantly state that something is crap because you like its competitor/alternative/hate-monger is just close minded, factless and opinonated bullshit.

I hate to tell you this but if you buy a Mac instead of a PC you're not supporting hemp growers in Moldavia, you're also buying a product from a global corporation (one that returned one billion dollars US **profit** in THE FIRST QUARTER of 2007 by the way). It may hurt you to know that the majority of XR8s are NOT spontaneously flying into a hundred pieces the second after you speed past them in your Commodore. Nokia phones do NOT vanish into their own small blackhole of shame when someone walks past with a Motorola. Windows is NOT used by the majority of businesses in the modern world because Bill Gates has written every CEO a cheque but because in most cases it DOES WHAT IT'S MEANT TO DO. And if you join the stylish bandwagon of "hehe all Americans are stoopid heads snicker" then YOU ARE A RACIST.

Honestly, if one more person makes some snide comment in my hearing that such and such a product is shit I'm going to go all Wikipedia on their ass and scream "CITATION NEEDED!!" It's such close-minded drivel and normally I'd ignore it with a smiling head-shake, but the scary part is that people I speak to are starting to believe the foul, dribbly, stinking fecal ejaculate spewing from their mouths. In the last few months it feels like every person I've called to task on one of those throw-away comments ("Well of course it's frozen, that's because Windows is shit" - "You're having network issues? That's what you get for having a Nokia" - "Your planet was invaded by Martians? Guess you'll think twice about buying a Panasonic tellie") hasn't just grinned, shaken their heads and laughed it off, they've actually tried to DEFEND themselves.

Let me explain something here, and I'll keep to relatively small words. When you say that I shouldn't be driving a Toyota after I tell you that the alternator's acting up, and then I ask with wide-eyed innocence "Why not?". The correct response is:
a) Well that model that I have myself dealt with on several occasions in my former life as a mechanic has always had alternator trouble and I've had to replace so many of them in my time so I know whereof I speak, or
b) A mechanic I know said "a)", or even
c) Come on, you have to be un-Australian to buy a Toyota Ho Ho Ho. Here have a beer.
A) and B) (no my blog's not case sensitive) are empirically justifiable and C) can be accepted because IT'S A JOKE and I have a (warped it's true) sense of humour.

However, the incorrect response is ANYTHING that tries to justify your stance with unprovable claims that everything Toyota have made is shit (which it's not), or that the company is run by vampires (which it's not) or that it's Japanese so of course it sucks (*expletive deleted*).

Don't accept small mindedness folks. Next time somebody tells you that a certain thing (that is commonly used, highly successful and normally performs as expected) is crap then ask them why. Sometimes you'll get a legitimate answer that should be considered, but often they'll start to blather some nonsense about wanky crap, or else assume an air of smugness and treat you like some lowly moron for not believing the same alarmist claptrap that they do. Under those circumstances I understand it is legal to whap them on the back of a head with a rolled up newspaper and call them an idiot. If nothing else, you'll feel a lot better.

...I'm not. But I still have a prediction for you.

I hereby state that, in the fulness of time, it will be revealed that this year's entire Australian Big Brother is a complete con. The ridiculously over the top stereotypes willingly volunteering for treatment bordering on human rights violations (seriously folks, sleep deprivation is a tried and tested method of psychological torture). It's a great big line from beginning to end. You vote out the ones the studio execs want to keep, so they send em back.

It' a money raising endeavour through phoneline subsidisation.

So there you go. Just wanted to put it out there. When they either reveal it on the final night or (more likely) cutting edge Australian journalism uncovers the truth (in perfect soundbite form) I get to say "I told you so". :)

At least I can only hope....

I've done a touch more investigating into the McCafe coffee and it turns out that I may have made a mistake. It's a bit confusing, but it all comes down to the basic veracity of the following two statements:

1 - "Rainforest Alliance Certified^TM coffee is made only from 100% Arabica coffee beans from Rainforest Alliance Certified^TM farms." - this has come from McDonald's in response to an enquiry I sent through asking if only 30% of coffee needed to met RA requirements to receive the certification, and

2 - "Every Coffee served at McCafé® is made only with beans sourced from Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms." - the line currently running on their website.

The trick here is at what point the certification is received. The Rainforest Alliance appears to give its seals in one of two ways. Either to producers/farms that meet the standards of the Sustainable Agricultural Network. Or else to end manufacturers who use a minimum of 30% of RA certified coffe in their products. Basically, if you're a farmer in El Salvador it appears that your bag of beans doesn't get a tree frog stamp unless it's all been produced on a farm that passed the SAN audit. However, if you're a seller of coffee in Australia your cup only gets a tree frog stamp if at least 30% of it is made with previously stamped coffee beans.

So is it the farm or the coffee that's got the stamp in this case? It comes down to which of the two statements is correct.

Statement 1 is not necessarily true. As can be seen by the Yuban brand coffee page on the RA's own site, RA Certified coffee can be made with a minimum of 30% coffee beans from RA Certified farms.

However, if statement 2 is correct then I owe McDonald's an apology. Because whether or not you agree with the RA's individual standards for farm certification, Maccas is at least (I hope) trying to do the right thing in ensuring that all the coffee beans it uses are from certified farms.

The problem is that the two statements, if not actually contradictory, mean very different things. However, as the ad and the site both specify that the coffee is made only with beans from RA certified farms (and not with RA certified coffee) then, unless they're outright lying, then I'm wrong so...

Sorry to McDonald's, feel free to have a cup of their coffee. Just steer clear of their Bald Eagle Burger and Panda Pies.

For the most part I'm proud of my skepticism. I embrace my need to investigate and my refusal to accept some 'fact' just because somebody said something was somehow somewhat that way...some time ago.

But by heck it tends to take the gloss off things at times. Many's a time that I've found myself, if not actively discouraged, certainly a bit bummed at discovering the truth behind a myth (curse you Snopes!!) or learning that so and so isn't in fact a nice person at all but is really an alcohol abusing, arrogant little man (or woman)...(or special effect).

The latest victim to fall foul of my need to know? McDonald's and their claim that if you buy a cappucino from their McCafes then millions of ozones are pumped back into the sky, puppies and kittens float from the heavens and the lands of the world become green and productive and covered in happy workers. In a new series of ads McDonalds is pushing that their coffee is "made only with beans sourced from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms". This is supposed to mean that the beans are farmed using methods that ensure optimum renewability, environmental wonderfulness and that all the workers who pick them are guaranteed to get proper pay, health and education. It sounded great and wonderful and I so wanted to believe it. In fact if I'd just closed my eyes and ears and gone "lalalalalalala" everything could have been fine. However...
NOTE: If you wish to continue drinking your McCafe-latte without pangs of uncertainty then don't read on.

There is a problem. The basic statement "made only with beans sourced from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms" is, if not an outright lie, then at least largely disingenuous. The fact is that McDonald's coffee now carries the Rainforest Alliance Certification and there is an important difference. If you export coffee and want to get the RAC stamp of approval you only need a maximum of 30% of your coffee beans to have been produced under the much lauded environmental, renewable and employment conditions. This means that even if every last bean of Macca's Joe comes only from hand-woven bags with a big tree-frog stamp on them there's no guarantee that any more than a third of them are shiny happy beans. Any (and indeed all) of the remaining two thirds can be shrivelled, chemical laden nubs of caffeine that have been prised from the jaundiced fingers of a six year old child with a permanent stoop and no knowledge of what a full tummy feels like.

Overstatement? Maybe. But I think the point is still a valid one. As soon as you start to push how wonderful and eco-friendly you are you really need to make sure that the facts match the claims. Now I'm not saying that getting the seal is necessarily a bad thing. For all I know, prior to getting it 100% of all Macca's coffee was the aforementioned slave-traded beans of nastiness. However vaunting your coffee with happy faced workers and green farmlands, especially when you're a multi-national corporation with a great big mantle of 'evil empire' across your shoulders is probably going to get people asking questions. If I was even more cynical than I am I might pay attention to certain economics and ethics studies which suggest that an RAC seal is an attempt to tap into the eco-aware market and also that the public is often willing to pay more than they normally would for a product that claims to be better for people and the environment (how much did a McCafe latte cost before May 28?).

Even if we assume that every bean is indeed from an RA certified farm this doesn't always mean much to the workers. The Rainforest Alliance doesn't set agreed prices for it's coffee producers, meaning the farms are subject to the whims of trade and that (as happened in 2003) if the worldwide price of coffee drops they may end up receiving less money per weight than it costs to produce. Also, although the RA does set minimum requirements for housing and sanitation; and although they do provide training advice (not actual training you understand), they do not require that farm workers receive anything more than the national minimum wage (which can be an average of 45 cents US per hour in some of the countries the RA sources its beans from). FairTrade rules in contrast require that coffee crops are pre-financed, a guarantee which at the moment means the man (or woman) on the ground in El-Salvador for example receives in the order of 15-18% less income under RA requirements. Basically the result is that back home an organisation can appear to be doing a bit for the environment and the workers without actually paying the kind of real premium that genuine action in these areas would require.

Now none of this should come as a massive surprise to me, and certainly not from an organisation as famously globally recalcitrant as Maccas. The real fact of the matter is that on a daily basis I normally think about the plight of the Colombian coffee-bean picker slightly less often than I worry about the pending extinction of the Fine-rayed Pigtoe Pearly Mussell. Does this mean I'm an evil person? Who knows. I like to think not, that if I really concentrated on every tragedy both humane and environmental in the world I'd never come out from under the bed (or else stress myself to pieces in a day and a half writing a million protest letters, organising marches, forming blockades and chaining myself to trees, prisoners, whales and the ozone layer). I could even come over all righteous now and claim that through my discovery of the truth about McCafe coffee's unearned claim to goodness I refuse to drink a single cup of their coffee. But the fact is that I refuse to drink a single cup of their coffee because it tastes godawful, and even then I only "refuse" to drink it until the moment I really, really need a caffeine hit and the all improved golden arches is the only provider around.

The point is that I was told something that I refused to believe on face value and the bare minimum of investigation has showed me that the odds are extremely good that what I was told was misleading at least, and a downright lie at worst. As such I've gone from never really thinking about something to being at least as informed as I need to be to now form an opinion. In this day and age of international communications and freely available information (at least to some parts of the world) there's no real reason to not at least look into things a bit before choosing to accept them. Don't believe everything you're told people...in fact, don't believe anything you're told (even by me...that's why the links are there). Take it on board, do a little checking and at least satisfy yourself (if nobody else) of its veracity.

Of course it's easy to disbelieve the good intentions of "big, bad" companies. It's cool to mistrust Maccas or Microsoft. We almost want the worst to be true (after all, how else will Michael Moore keep making movies?). Don't forget though that McDonald's does put a tonne of money into charitable organisations, that Bill Gates donates more than a million dollars a year towards childhood vaccinations and HIV research; and on the flipside of that, you wouldn't believe some of the dirt on Mother Teresa!

At the end of the day, it can suck sometimes to have so much information at hand. Things you so desperately want to be true can often turn out not to be, and things you really wouldn't want to believe can sometimes be fact. But just because you don't want to know the truth is no excuse for choosing to stick your head in the sand. Wilful ignorance is about the worst thing in the world (after double-standards and Pauly Shore movies). Do the right thing or do the wrong thing, just don't try to delude yourself or others that it is what it isn't.

But I really wish that the rocket-powered car thing was real!

So I've come to the second biggest (possibly the biggest) city in Australia from Canberra. I've had my first weekend to myself that hasn't involved travelling back home and the urban landscape has been open and willing to my explorations. I've left an oversized town of wide green spaces and sparsely spread buildings and landed in a sprawling concrete jungle of shopping centres, strip malls, back alleys and restaurant lanes. So what do I do?

That's right, I visit the botanic gardens. :)

But seriously it was a great day. I left the apartment mid-morning with no real plans and the low budget of an off-pay week precluding any massively financial forays into the city. I *could* have trundled through the Queen Vic markets, eyeing the wares and maybe returning with a stray orange or apple in my bag. I could have sauntered up Lygon street and handed over the dosh for a latte, or wandered around the city shops - fingering the merch with no real intention of purchasing, torturing both myself and the patrons with the empty promise of transaction.

Instead I just threw a book into my camera bag and left my place with the only intention being to spend little to no money and see what the city could offer to the fiscally challenged (or at least the fiscally tight-as-a-fish's-asshole :) ). And she didn't disappoint.

It's weird to have come from a place where twenty minutes driving puts you into native bush, into an area where a wide stretch of green is valued and special. Well...not really...with the drought going hell for leather at the moment green stretches are just as valued and rare in Canberra as well...but you know what I mean. There's something strange about an enforced, protected parkland in the middle of a city. I can only assume that it's the same in places like central park in New York, they're made more precious by the fact that they're deliberate settings aside of extremely valuable real-estate purely for the sake of growing a bit of grass and a few trees.

So with backpack hoisted into place over my leather jacket, and black dunlop volleys in place of hiking boots I performed the urban equivalent of a walk in the woods. Honestly I left my building with no real aim beyond a vague notion that I might cruise past the Vic Art Centre and see if there were any interesting exhibitions (there weren't...at least nothing they felt like advertising). Quickly however I found myself on the skirts of the Botanic Gardens and all its secrets, and the lure of green in a world of brick-brown and concrete-grey proved too much. At first I followed paths like the rest of the Sunday crowds, but an attractive glade called me (feeling a touch sinful) from the path and onto the lawn, and then another, and another. Before I knew it I'd found a large glade, protected on all sides by rows of conifers and oak trees, leading down to an ornamental lake before hoiking steeply up the other side, over more lawns, to a wall of spruce. It wasn't completely secluded, benches scattered here and there revealed that this was a regular spot for people to take the weight off, and the widespread turf areas were obviously the location of many a picnic-blanket landing, like the lunar missions - random, satisfying and black and white (well the first two anyway). Even so, I managed to seat myself in a nicely shaded place, back against a tree beyond my sparse botanical lexicon, and read a chapter or two of my book as the midday sun (so rarely seen at the moment) wandered over the sky.

In essence, I found a nice spot under a tree and read a book for an hour or so during the midday heat. It was grand. :)

I also took in the shrine of remembrance and the observatory grounds (although my desire to avoid screaming hordes of ankle-biters precluded me actually going into the visitor's centre...maybe next time). Afterwards I wandered into the city (though not too far), back along southbank where buskers and parkourists provided a few minutes pleasant distraction, before I finally returned to my apartment. Sitting here now I can turn to my left and take in with one glance nearly half of the area I traversed. It seemed a lot larger from the ground (but doesn't it always?).

It was a great day, and I can't wait to do it again. :)