31 July 2005

Hallelujah I'm a Bum!

Last Saturday we stumbled across The temple of peace in Toowong Cemetery. Built by Richard Ramo, it's dedication was attended by thousands of socialists and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or Wobblies. Hallelujah bum again!

23 July 2005

Who do we love now? HOVERBIKES!

Something that we found is definitely good with Brisbane is the amount of cycleways in the city. There's a particularly good one that runs along the river from Toowong in the west to New Farm in the east.

So we bought new bikes this week I got a Scott Aspen and Lisa a Jamis Cross Country - We can recommend Epic Cycles for anyone looking at buying a bike in Brisbane.

I managed to stack mine the first day I had it. But beside that little mishap (my kneecaps rue that mistake), we've been having a great time biking around the city, clumps of slow moving and pretty dim-witted pedestrians that clog the entire width of shared tracks aside. It's a very refreshing change from inner-city Sydney!

15 July 2005

birdie paradise

The budgies love it up here although we put them on the balcony the other day and turned our backs for five minutes and there were two Butcherbirds (like a small Currawong) standing on the cage looking at the tasty snacks inside. So the budgies only go on the balcony when we are there to supervise now! The previous occupants must have fed the birds because on Sunday we had three Kookaburras perched on the balcony waiting for use to give some some food, which we obliged them. Its birdie paradise except for the abundance of crows - they are ubiquitous - even more than Currawongs in Sydney.

10 July 2005

Chow Time

On pleasant surprise in the colonies is the food here is of a pretty surprising quality. We have managed extra-vehicular activities to several food service establishments, all of which have proven to be excellent value-for-money and tasty to boot. An added bonus is the service staff. There just doesn't seem to be any of the "oh i'm sorry your acting career isn't taking you where you want to be right now, but I'd like my meal sometime this week?" attitude that there is back in the Home World.

08 July 2005

A message to citizens of the colonies

Premier Beattie assures Queenslanders that the terrible bombings in central London won't be occuring in the obviously next most important target - Brisbane. Citizens of the colonies - do not panic. The authorities here are on high alert.

07 July 2005

A new life awaits you

So here I am. 15.45 Thursday afternoon Eastern Standard Time, sitting in my new house in the Leafy Suburbs of the off world colonies. Books and equipment sit strewn around me, empty boxes and new ones still wanting my attention. A room full of junk to be sorted. My connection to the mothership is restored, for the time being, thanks to the wonders of radio-broadband, having been offline all week during transit time.

Here, on the planet Auchenflower, in the Brisbane system of Galaxy Queensland, time appears to run slowly, much more slowly than back on the HomeWorld. Space has been stretched to breaking, a cosmologist's dream come true; the open Universe's last moments on a locally observable scale. Everything is enlarged, lumbering, as if spacetime has been engorging itself on the souls of the strip-mall inhabitants, driving perplexed in circles around the oversize roundabouts. The city has a familiar look, but a slighty disembodied sheen - no a glare - appears to cover everything.