Inga’s Neighborhood

Fumes

How's this for an elegant put down of the current plan by the Victorian government to base our future on "Clean Coal" technology.

It has been submitted to a few papers, by Noel, to see if it gets a run.

I'll also be writing a piece myself over the cheapest option for our aging coal plants in the next day or two.

Nice work Noel. Blogging should be your next career advancement. No Editors to get past!!

_Business Opportunity_!

Following the successful promotion of the "Clean Coal" technology study to the Victorian Government, "Oxymorons Inc" is now seeking interested parties to join with us in Phase 2 of the project.

This vertically integrated Phase 2 will be titled "Dry Water".

Our basic business model is to capture and dehydrate the huge water surpluses in the nation's northern river systems, using (of course) solar energy.

We will then refine and package the product in cardboard boxes which can readily be transported by air, rail or road (at minor cost) to Victoria’s brown coal plants It is then just a simple matter of adding tap water to reconstitute and apply the resource.

As a further revenue stream, surplus ‘Dry Water” packages could be sold to the State’s . drought-affected areas.

Applicants with some technical capacities could be useful, but essential skills required will include the abilities to write successful Government grant applications, and to lobby vigorously the progress of same.

N.L.Matthews

1. Australian Hearing Organisation research reveals that
    when older people are fitted with a hearing aid they have
    a 12% better love life.

    Old Gof has a couple of questions;
   
     1.  What is "love life"?   Can someone jog my memory please.
     2. What sort of apparatus was used to measure the 12 percent?

2. "Survival of the fittest must be replaced by survival of the
     wisest"    (Jonas Salk...polio vaccine dude)

3.  Roger Bacon, 13th century English scientist proposed;

     "the breath of young virgins could replenish the vital essence
      of old men, and I recommend spending time in their company".

      Nice try Roger.  But just exactly how did this idea go down with
      Mrs Bacon?

      I can feel a unique scamming business
      opportunity coming on. 
      Would you like to be my new joint venture partner?
 
      We can sell bottled virgin breath.

      You can find the virgins.

      I'll get my hands on all the bottles.

     Yep, you read it right,
     The bottle job will suit me just fine thank you.
     

4. GOF's Human Stupidity Award for the month.

    A Queensland banana grower is planning to package
    individual bananas in specially shaped plastic punnets
    for export. 
    This will replace the standard 13kg biodegradable carton.

    Like the world does not have enough pieces of plastic littering
    the oceans and landfill sites already.
 

Waiting for the taxi to take us to a party. 

Have had a pretty wine red boned corset kicking about in my wardrobe for years now.  Never worn.  Wondered if tonight I might be slim enough for it to look good... it's too big for me.  Am swimming about in it anyway.  I've hurredly taken up the straps so I don't flop out of it entirely.

My shoes don't go with my outfit.

Going to take the children and put them to sleep in the spare room.  A right of passage for a child I think.  Sprog will be given strict instructions to snug down and go to sleep, and will without a doubt end up the kitchen with the cook and his helper, watching cartoons and drinking hot sweet milk like last time.

Wilfie is already asleep (taxi is taking ages) and Sprog is watching Spongesquare Bobpants (she insists) on the portable dvd player.

The party is at one of the Emirates Hills mansions.  The water feature in the entrance hall is the size of my sitting room. 

Where is my taxi?

Little old dears

One day, while going to the store, I passed by a nursing home. On the front lawn were six old ladies lying naked on the grass.

I thought this was a bit unusual, but continued on my way to the store.

On my return trip, I passed the same nursing home with the same six old ladies lying naked on the lawn. This time my curiosity got the best of me, & I went inside to talk to the Nursing Home Administrator.

 
'Do you know there are six ladies lying naked on your front lawn?'

'Yes,' she said. 'They're retired prostitutes, - they're having a garage sale.'

Ugh.  Every day I think this, right now, THIS is the worst this dang falootin cold can possibly make me feel.  I cannot possibly feel any iller or snottier or congested or gross than THIS right now.  And yet still the snot comes.  My face aches.  My bones ache.  My teeth ache.  My hair aches.  My clothes ache.

I am writing this from the swing seat in the garden while Sprog tends to her tomato seedlings and Wilf boings around on the trampoline.  I am mouth breathing, noisily.

I was wondering earlier at what point my children will turn in to people to me.  If they ever do.  Wilfie was sitting on my knee eating grapes.  Smacking and chewing and slurping and globbing and dribbling and chomping and snorting and above all else, sharing.  If I catch  the sound of anyone else so much as politely crunching a Rich Tea I am revolted.  Other people's eating noises.  Shudder.  But the sound of my children  masticating is not just lacking in offensiveness to me.  I actually think it's cute.  I like it.

Beinjg a white woman in Dubai is strange.  Being expats we are catagorically second class citizens.  But, being female and white and, importantly, having children, seems to put me at the top of the also-ran tree.  I never have to queue, but am ushered to the front.  This holds particularly true of interminable red-tape government queues.

I was driving through an unfamiliar part of town today and pulled into the 1004 Mart ('All For Asian Needs').  The manager leapt from behind his counter before I was three steps into the shop.  How could he help?  What did Madam need?  I asked him if he had pink milk.  Turning he snarled and shouted at a hapless chap in the shop, who immediately dropped his basket and ran out of the shop.  Madam must wait please, apparently.  A few minutes later, sweating and panting, hapless chap returned with a carton of pink milk he had presumably bought from a shop down the block.  I'd have been just as happy with apple juice.

I was walking through Al Barsha with my friend Jamilla.  She asked why all the taxis were tooting.  Surely they weren't tooting us?  Well, yes they were, because a white woman walking through Al Barsha must surely be some mistake.  The only possible explanation is that I hadn't found a cab yet.  Jamilla Chaudry is from Switzerland and certainly would not have been tramping through the sand pits of Al Barsha had her idiot friend from Yorkshire not suggested it.  In fact when we reached our destination, the tailor's, she phoned her driver to bring us coffee to recover from the arduous (10 minute) walk.

Jamilla is having trouble recruiting a nanny.  All of the ads in Positions Required on Dubizzle are from nannies who specifically have a yearning to work for an English family, or an American one, or French, or German, or Italian, or Scandanavian, or Australian, or Kiwi, or Canadian... any colour at all as long as it is white.

I'm still doing my photos but I always forget to post them. So to the week that was whenever it was.

This is a little bottlebrush that grows in our front yard. Its a pretty little thing. The flowers just curl out of the buds over a day or two.

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Lol. This is something that I think Kimba made for me about 12 years ago. I sent them to pottery classes over one lot of school holidays and now I have all these strange pottery creations about the house. This one sits in the kitchen. Always gives me a smile.

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One day I woke up, turned my calender and found this. It really wasn't enough information to know what I was meant to be doing. I can't remember what it turned out to be.

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Bacon is always good.

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Betty having a nanna nap

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The cook at the old peoples home I volunteer at makes the most beautiful cakes. She has two lucky sons. I think Lloyd would have liked to have grown up in that kitchen.

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And this was yummo. It was a strawberry/kiwi fruit salsa that we had with salmon fillets.

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I am not sure what will be achieved by enforced blogging.  Every day?  Yeesh.

I am sitting on my sofa watching the first 10 minutes of what looks like a very good film.  The Boat That Rocked.  I wish I had bothered to change out of my swimming stuff before flopping down to eat a bun and drink my tea.

I am tired.  My eyes are sore from the chlorine in the pool.  Wilfie is starting to grumble and will soon loudly summon me upstairs to feed him and I doubt I'll make it down again. 

A persistant moth is dive bombing me.

An ant bit me on the bottom today.  Although my bottom is uncomfortable, I can't help but feel more sorry for the ant.

Tomorrow I shall take Sprog to nursery.  On school days she streams into our bedroom before 6, yelling "Get up!!  Wake up everyone!  It's time for breakfast so I can go to Sunshines Class!!" and then body slams her father until he relents and stumbles downstairs to get her a weetabix and put on Charlie & Lola. 

On the way home I shall pop into a tailor in Al Barsha to pick up some clothes I've had to have taken in (hooray!).  I have lost lots of weight and mostly look like a bag lady in clothes at least 2 sizes too big for me. 

Then I might take Wilfie to the pool, or I might pop to the mall and buy something to wear to the party on Friday.

See?  I have nothing to say.  I'll try harder tomorrow.

Have you read it?  It's by thingy, Thornbirds woman (not that I have read Thornbirds.  Should I?)

It is set 20 years after the double wedding of Jane and Lizzie to Messrs Darcy and Bingly.  It follows the story of Mary, the dull, religious sister who sang badly.

At the beginning it seems to be a gentle Austenesque romantic comedy of manners and morals.  Then it goes a bit haywire.  There are madmen and jolly children living in caves and murders and horsepiss.

The whole time I was reading it I thought it fun bit a bit odd.  Now I have finished I really miss it.

There will now follow an interruption of service whilst I turn my clinically dead Vista desktop into a clean and healthy Windows 7 machine.  Time to hunt down all those application and driver CD's filed not-so-neatly around the office and hope my favourite open source apps are compatible with the latest OS.  Once up and running I'll be using the new drive imaging and backup tools in Windows 7 to ensure a running start should the unthinkable happen yet again.

Unlike the Great Hard Drive Disaster of 2007 I do have my photo collection, music and most other goodies backed up but I have lost a little working file of unposted stuff, which may never now see the light of day.  Hopefully that's not the tip of the iceberg... see you on the other side!