Life snapshot

Wednesday shopping. Phyllis drove. He is competent at driving, quite good really, but I still had my foot on the passenger side imaginary brake pedal at times.

After shopping, Kosov drove with his learner plates displayed. Kosov did drive a car in India, and has an Indian driving license, 'bought' by his parents. 

He was a left foot braker in India, which really isn't the right way to drive. I don't think our driving test people would accept that now, although I know it still happens with local drivers born overseas. It can be easy to tell as they ride the brake with their left foot as they drive and their rear brake lights are lit. I am seeing this less than it used to be. 

Kosov's driving has steadily improved. He is far from competent yet, but doing much better. I had prepared myself to compliment him, and so build his confidence.

I don't fully understand what happened, but when it came to turning into our carpark entrance, he went past where he was meant to turn and then went up onto the footpath. I yelled 'stop', and he did. I told him to get out and I would reverse the car back onto the lane and drive to our building's garage. 

I now know he confused his left and right feet, and was braking with his left foot and accelerating with his right foot. Before he should have turned, he was already getting the turn wrong. There was chatter about when to press the button to open the carpark gate. Maybe that distracted him. Look, his speed was only about 10 km/h but had someone been standing on the footpath...

More driving Thursday, and it was clear the experience yesterday had rattled him, as he drove less confidently. While at about 20 km/h, I warned he and Phyllis that I was about to test the electric handbrake It worked well enough, and I can stop the car with my intervention. He did make a serious mistake today, but without consequences, and nothing like yesterday's. I do feel preparing him for a driving test is going to be a long haul.

Naturally he was mortified, and kept apologising. Phyllis kindly said nothing at the time. What my mind was occupied with was what happened and how to ensure it didn't happen again. 

Not too much has happened this week. Ex Sis in Law and her husband flew off to Bali this morning, and had to leave home at 3am. 

This afternoon my Indonesian neighbour invited me out for coffee, he being the father of his daughter who has twice locked herself out their apartment, and called on me for help. 

He grew up in poverty in Indonesian Borneo, with an abusive father and an uncaring mother. Somehow through sheer will and being smart, and some luck, he ended up being a being a highly desirable employee, working in the tech area of public transport and other areas and became a rich person in Australia. In the last few years he spent time working in Indonesia. He is very handsome, for a fifty one year old. There came an opportunity to ask him if he had Chinese heritage. Indonesia has a population of Chinese heritage people but mostly a native Moslem population. His heritage is Chinese. Sorry if this offends you. It is the way my mind works, and I established that he is not circumcised. Wouldn't mind seeing it.

He has a house too, in an expensive outer eastern Melbourne goes up for auction today. I need to do some searching. Maybe it's a middle suburb now. What were outer suburbs seem to have become inner suburbs.

Whatever nonsense I've written, it was a nice catch up with my neighbour. He was kind to me when Ray died.

Chopsticks at home

It's a bit like typing on your phone. From my observations, the kiddies, which are now reaching their forties, type on their phones with their thumbs. My thumbs don't work like that and yours probably don't either. It is very much a digital natives against people who have learnt digital later in their lives. We boomers poke at our phones with our forefingers. 

I'd like to tell these young people with their extra special thumbs about what what it was like to send an SMS in 90s, where you pressed the 1 key three times to make the letter 'c', then once on 1 for an 'a', twice on the 6 key to make 'n', then once on the 8 key to make a 't'. You then have the word cant. I forget how we did punctuation. I was quite fast at phone writing then. I fell behind. My first phone was an Ericsson 218. The large battery was detached from the back and put onto a charger. My version of a power pack back then was a spare battery. When I bought my next phone, I sold this one for $100, quite a sum in the late 1990s. 

I was also behind the eight ball when it came to using chopsticks. Now young Australians are very adept with chopsticks. I suppose I learnt to use them in my mid twenties but I was never very proficient with them. I could use them to the point where I wouldn't starve. 

When Ray cooked an Asian meal, the Asian styled crockery would come out. A large bowl for the food. A bowl with a lid for the rice, small bowls to eat from, Asian china spoons, and....chopsticks. I would use them for a while and towards the end,  use the Chinese spoons to finish off. My hand shaking doesn't help with the use of chopsticks and now if I eat Asian food out, I ask for a fork and spoon.

We stopped doing so a few years ago but we used to also make Chinese green tea in a Chinese teapot but I can't remember what cups we used. Well, now I think about it, I can. They were small without handles but where are they? Maybe at the back of this shelf that I can no longer reach as my height shrinks. When unloading the dishwasher, I used to be able to put the Chinese crockery up on this shelf but in recent years, I could no longer reach so I left the crockery on the bench for taller Ray to put up. I'll have to get the steps out to see what is up there, but then why should I bother. 

I am away for a couple of days for a great niece's birthday party. Catch you all next week sometime. 

A Victorian Disaster

Trans I think means someone transitioning from male to female. I know nothing about trans but I do know what it like to be born a certain way, in my case gay. I offer to trans the same as what I expect for myself, that is respect. 

Let's start with the editor of the Tasmanian newspaper the Launceston Examiner, the editor having written a letter to the the editor with a nom de plume protesting against a trans being in women's sports changing room. Total fiction and he has resigned.

Then a public speaker from England arrived on our shores to preach hatred against trans, one Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull. Apparently a women's group felt uncomfortable about trans too and turned out to listen to her hate speech against trans. The speaker also goes by the name of Posie Parker. She has been proved to be associated with neo Nazis and our local neo Nazis were there to support her.

A brand new state politician with extreme anti trans views attended the speech, one Moira Deeming. I believe she wasn't to know neo Nazis were in attendance. She had already made her views clear before she was pre selected for election, yet she went on to be approved. By her attendance at the speech, she has nearly destroyed the state opposition conservative party. 

Moderate opposition leader Pusetto said she must go from from the party. There were no ifs and buts.

After a very long meeting the party decided she would be suspended for nine months and then reassessed. 

Of course Pusetto has attempted to explain this away but it has wounded his leadership to such an extent that some, including me, think he has lost power within his own party, with the party beholden to the extreme anti social acceptance intolerants.

Mainland Australian state governments are all now Labor, as is our federal government. What is it about modern Australia that conservatives don't get? It is only when Labor really screws up or becomes very stale that the conservatives might be elected.

Meanwhile Ms Posie Parker went on to New Zealand to preach her hatred. In Auckland protesters overwhelmed her and lol, someone threw tomato sauce at her, with a direct hit. Guards rushed her through  protestors out to police car for protection. I think her Wellington appearance was cancelled.

I ask, why was a speaker of hatred ever given a visa to visit here? Australia has banned speakers of hate in the past. Why not her? Her visit has almost brought down two politicians at least.

Meanwhile a gay couple in Indonesia has been thrice refused a tourist visa to Australia. They wanted to visit Sydney for World Pride and Mardi Gras, but immigration said no. They are work professionals in Indonesia, have plenty of money and have travelled Europe and Japan, ten countries over ten years and never overstayed anywhere.

Loving couple, denied. Speaker of hate, most welcome.