I'm Still Here

Apparently, at 6pm local time*, it was judgement time. It must be true, because a TV evangelist said so, and this is someone that makes his money from knowing all about God and stuff. A shit load of money in fact.

Well, I was at work at 6pm, and not one of my colleagues disappeared in a heavenly tractor beam. What does that say about the people that work there. Or maybe it's just we fillers that are heathen.

I must admit though, around 5:45 pm I heard a voice from above say, "It's time to go Ivy." I was half way to my knees*** when I realised that it was one of the service staff being paged to the back door where those that had finished for the night were being let out of the store.

Not that it would have happened, but I would have been really pissed off if I had be taken up tonight. I would have missed this weekend's episode of Doctor Who. Which reminds me of that episode where all those little smiling blobs of fat where taken up to the space ship.

Sorry if I've offended anyone, but if there is going to be a judgement day, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be predicted by a TV evangelist. I'm also pretty sure the TV evangelists won't be among the chosen.


* Gotta love the local time bit, nice touch. It's like explaining how Santa Claus** can get all around the world in one night.

** I wonder if Santa and God use the same list... and check it twice.

*** Not to pray for redemption, I was filling custard on the bottom shelf.

What are the workers doing today?

Okay, that's a bit unfair to those that had to go to work today, especially since I had to go to work this evening anyway. But, while a lot of people were at work this morning, Donna and I were 'yaking it up.

Those of you that are regular readers, especially those that are smart enough to subscribe to this blog so they don't have to keep checking back, will remember that we bought a kayak a couple of months ago.

Well, while I was at work on Saturday night, Donna checked the tides and the weather, and decided we were going kayaking this morning. I'm not going to argue with that, especially since I've been itching to go for a paddle for a couple of weeks. I haven't been out on the water since the 17th of last month, that's four weeks ago.

Our intention was to get up nice and early, ahead of the high tide at 8am, drive out to Wellington Point, shown here on Google maps, paddle out to King Island, which is the sandy bit to the north of Wello on the map, and cook up a nice breakfast of bacon and eggs on a portable gas cooker on the beach. Well, it was a bit bumpy when we got to Wellington Point, plus the fact that we didn't get up as early as we'd planned, so didn't have the gas cooker, eggs or bacon with us. So we headed to Tingalpa Creek instead. Tingy is where Donna and I had our first experience of kayaking together, and it's also where we tend to paddle if it's too windy elsewhere, since it's pretty well sheltered. Actually, it's the only place Donna has paddled so far, we need to get out more.

As you can see from the picture below, it was a really nice day for a paddle. That pic was taken as we headed east toward Moreton Bay. We turned right before we got to that channel marker you can see. You probably can't see in the pic, but there's another kayaker way off in the distance. Those clouds were starting to look quite spectacular, from where we were, but didn't amount to much, I thought we might have got some rain from them this afternoon, but we didn't. For those of you that know the area, you could see Manly Boat Harbour off to my left from there.



After we turned right and headed back up the creek, we noticed a few birds soaring around looking for a feed, mostly Brahminy Kites, but we were lucky enough to see an Osprey (see below) up close, plus a couple of kingfishers. Not to mention the odd fish that jumped out of the water nearby every now and then, and the ever present herons and cormorants (also known as shags).



Now if you think I'm having a bit of a dig at the poor buggers that were at work this morning while we were out being at one with nature, you're partly right. But while those poor buggers were on their way home from work, I was on my way to work (for a three and a half hour shift). I did however take every opportunity to mention to my colleagues that I had a lovely morning on the water.

And here's the been there, done that piccies, just before we had a nice cuppa, put the 'yak up on the roof rack and went home. If you're wondering, it's a Q-Kayaks Sprite II, made in New Zealand.

By the way, I took a GPS with us and our top speed was 8.1 kmh, that's not bad for something that's arm powered.



And now for a shameless plug.

If you live in Brisbane, or the Redlands, or you're coming here for a holiday and you'd like to have a similar experience, then check out Redlands Kayak Tours. I'm biased, since my niece Katrina and her husband Tony own the business, but they'll give you an experience you won't forget in a hurry. Hey, they got Donna and I into kayaking, so they must be doing something right. In fact, we bought the kayak off them.

Dreams

Have you ever had one of those dreams that seems so realistic you can't remember in the morning whether it was a dream or it really happened?

I had one just like it last night... Apparently.

I work in a supermarket as a filler in the dairy section. As a casual, I usually get a call in the morning asking me to work that evening. If it's not a big load, they don't need the whole team on, so sometimes I get the evening off. If I'm lucky, I sometimes even get two evenings off in a row.

Our store is closed over the Easter weekend, except for today, Saturday. So if I don't work today, that's four whole days off in a row. I don't think I've had that many days off in a row since last September.

Anyway, I woke up this morning and thought, "Damn! I've got to go to work tonight".

I distinctly remembered walking up the back stairs yesterday afternoon and Donna telling me that work had got the load figures for today and I was working. Not that I mind too much, since it's double time and a half today, and the customers would only be in the store for a third of the shift before we closed at 6pm.

Something was nagging at me though. I hadn't heard the phone ring, so how did Donna know I was working. Also, no-one would have been at work yesterday, so how would they have got the load figures. When I checked the phone, the last call from work was on Thursday morning.

But I could remember so clearly the conversation I'd had with Donna yesterday, so I was pretty sure I was working tonight. Then Donna said to me, about half an hour ago, "Work haven't called yet, maybe you've got the night off."

Yes!!! It was a dream. I don't have to work till Tuesday, and it's double time and a half then too. Although, it's not too late for them to ring yet. Fingers crossed.

2 Billion

If you live in a Commonwealth country, and probably a few other countries as well, you've probably seen in the news that 2 billion people are expected to watch the upcoming royal wedding on TV.

Now, think about that statement for a moment, something your average journalist is not capable of doing. The population of this world we live on is around about 6.7 billion at the moment, might be even as high as 6.9 billion. A recent survey in the states, that's the US of A, recently found that only about 30% of Americans plan to watch the royal wedding. The rest either couldn't give a monkey's, or don't know who Will and Kate are (don't you mean Will and Grace?). What's 30% of 6.7 billion? Ooh yes, it's about 2 billion.

Now if you do a quick Google search on how many people on Earth have access to TV, I did it this afternoon, a very, very rough estimate is that about a sixth of the population are so cursed. One sixth of 6.7 is about 1.1. If you don't believe me, do your own research. The reason these sort of myths abound is because people won't do their own research.

Another statistic I came up with today, is that around 99% of Americans have access to TV. I'm pretty sure that no other country in the world has that kind of saturation. Most so-called developed countries are in the mid to high 80s. So saying that 30% of the world's population is going to watch the wedding is really stretching it. If we extrapolate the 1.1 billion figure, as someone has obviously done with the US survey results, we come up with a figure of 330 million people planning to watch the royal wedding. As I said, that's really stretching it, but that's still a sixth of what they're news media are reporting.

If you want to use another statistic, Donna says she wants to watch the wedding up until Kate arrives, but that's it. So that's 50% of the population in our household, does that extrapolate out to 3.35 billion people watching it until Kate arrives?

Don't get me wrong, I wish the happy couple well. If I watch any of the coverage, I'll be counting how many times some idiot journalist quotes that 2 billion figure.

I should mention here that I studied journalism at university, so in some way I'm qualified to call some journalists idiots. I resisted the urge to graduate. I should also mention that I twice picked up the TV remote instead of my calculator to do my sums, so if my calculations are out, it's because Alan Davies was on the tele and distracted me. He's always on the tele these days. That said, I'm not that far out.

Cheap Chinese Knock-offs

When we first took our kayak out for a paddle, we took a small pair of binoculars with us. They're a nice little pair that we've used all over the world since Donna got them about five years ago. There's so much birdlife around our waterways, you'd be mad not to take a pair with you.

Because the pair we have is not cheap, we figured it would be a good idea to buy a couple of cheap pairs that we wouldn't worry too much about if we dropped them overboard. To that end, I logged onto eBay and had a look at a few. One set in particular was a pair of Tasco 8x21 with a buy it now price of just under $10 a pair. Tasco are a pretty good brand, they were just the sort of thing we were looking for, so I ordered two pairs, including postage for less than $30.

Bargain!

They finally arrived yesterday, but they won't be going out in the kayak with us.



This is the pair Donna took out of its packaging.

We grabbed a pair each and sat out on the back verandah to see how well they worked. It didn't take long for me to realise that my pair wouldn't focus properly. I could focus on some trees about 50 metres away, but adjusting the focus knob didn't change the focal point, it just went completely out of focus. By this time, Donna had already had a quick play with hers and put it in its pouch, remarking at the time that it didn't fit very well. I grabbed hers to see if they were the same as mine, and as soon as I removed it from the pouch one of the lenses came off in my hand. Shortly after, the focusing knob broke as well.

As you can see from the picture, there's no Tasco logo on them, that's because they're a cheap and nasty copy of these. In fact, they're not even marked as 8x21, they're marked as 10x25.

Am I going to try and get a refund? No, it's not worth it. I won't be buying binoculars that I haven't tried in the shop from now on though. Oh, and the person I bought them off, that's the first time I've ever given negative feedback on eBay.

You bought a what?

A boat.

Not a big one, a kayak to be exact.

Donna and I have been thinking of getting a kayak for a while. We live so close to the water here with so much opportunity for fishing and boating, that it's a wonder we haven't bought one years ago.

Our niece Katrina, and her husband Tony, told us recently that they had a couple for sale, one of them was a two-seater Q-Kayaks Sprite II. They've also just recently started up a business called Redlands Kayak Tours, doing guided kayak tours in our area, with everything included, even afternoon tea.

What better way to try before you buy, than to do a tour in the boat, especially since neither of us had kayaked before. So, with Wednesday being a public holiday and none of us having to work, we met up with Katrina and Tony and Katrina's mum and dad, Carol and Ray, for a paddle up Tingalpa Creek.



Tony took the above picture for their website at our turn-around point, around 3 kilometres upstream from where we started. That's Donna and I in the double kayak in the middle, Ray on the left and Carol on the right.

By the time we got back to our launch site Donna and I had already decided to buy the kayak. We're now looking forward to lots of exploring on the water. As Ray said on Wednesday, kayaking is the best way to get out on the water, it's cheap, you don't need a trailer as the boat can be carried on the roofrack of your car, you don't have to pay registration, there's very little maintenance to do, and while it's not being used you can hang the boat from the roof of yor garage or sit it on a couple of padded trestles.

If you live in Brisbane or the Redlands, or you're planning on visiting, why not look up Redlands Kayak Tours and come and explore the southern Moreton Bay. It's also a great way to try kayaking if you're thinking of buying one and haven't done it before.

Shark!!

When the flood waters started to recede last week, there were reports in the news that Bull Sharks had been seen swimming around the streets of Goodna, a suburb of Ipswich. They're often reported a fair way up the Brisbane river, even under normal conditions, and Goodna is on the Brisbane River.

I'm starting to think the reports may have been more than just rumour, after we came across this out the back of my step-daughter Jess's house in Ipswich during the clean up.



She and her husband live next to the Bremer River, which runs into the Brisbane River, and ended up with about a foot of water in their house.

I don't think it's a Bull Shark though.