Democracy

My workmate was telling me about voting process in her homeland, Russia. It's a tad different from over here where you can wander into a polling station wherever you like in your electorate, announce your name without providing proof of identity, fill in your flimsy piece of recycled paper with a pencil and drop it into a cardboard box guarded by a pensioner with a poking stick. Over there you need to show up to a particular polling station with your passport and registration number for that area. The ballot papers are full of anti-counterfeiting measures like we find in our currency, and you have to sign for them. Vote counters have a representative from each political party peering over their shoulders as they tally it all up and because of all the extra security results aren't usually known until the next day. It all sounds like they take the democratic process very seriously!
But then on the ABC I was watching a doco about the Russian oligarchs and how they were basically running the country for a few years there and it suddenly doesn't seem quite so democratic... But according to my workmate most Russians don't even know what was going on in that time and it made me realise how comfortable and trusting we Aussies are with our pollies and those in charge. We THINK we have this democratic process going, where even if we don't like what we get, at least a majority wanted it, but we could all be being duped so easily. All we'd need is a rubber or a match and poof! there goes a whole electorate's votes!

I may pop

I'm at work and just need to have a vent. Sometimes you get a new comer to comuters who just drives you nuts. You ask them to just click with the left button once on My Computer for example, and it takes them a whole 30 seconds just to get the cursor in the right place cos they go aRound and aRound the screen with big big circles, the mouse is falling off the table and then they try and 'hover' the mouse back not realising that the mouse doesn't actually work unless it is touching the desk surface. ARGH!! It's SO frustrating. But you just have to smile and keep going, pretending that everyone struggles so much with the mouse issue...

A holiday

I'm heading to Vietnam again!! Heheeee. Yesterday arvo MM comes over all a brim with excitement; Jetstar have cheap as tickets to Ho Chi Minh, wanna go? Well, it'll be the last week of uni... why not! So now I have tickets to Vietnam happening in the first week of June next year. A long way off yet, but I guess it has to be to be so cheap! We're going diving, and we're going T-shirt hunting and it's gonna be SO MUCH FUN :) Yipeeeeee.

Now we just have to decide where we are going in January...

BDO 07

It's warm again. Ah. And we are back with a Labor government again too. Ah. Well, these days it's pretty much the same thing, Liberal/Labor, whatever. But perhaps there'll at least be some slight changes in areas where it counts. Worth it just to see Costello spit the dummy and storm out in disgust too, especially after Howard gave him so much support in his loser speech. That's what they call it; The Loser Speech. I didn't set out to watch election coverage, I was actually quite happy to watch Channel 10 for a change because they were the ONLY network not screening full coverage of the vote counting crap. I did flick over and have a peek during the ads for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Harrison Ford- yes please) and from what I could tell there was a whole bunch of people who thought they were pretty damned important gassing on about nothing on Channel nine, the ABC and SBS, while channel 7 went with the 'farce' option and had some useless gits who usually host a morning chat show (badly) gassing on. I don't know what's worse to watch; idiots who know nothing about politics or people who know quite a bit about politics but are still idiots.

I snoozed off straight after Star Wars and slept in until 11am this morning! That's crazy, I haven't slept that long for ages. Must have needed my rest. I rode up to mum's yesterday and did the voting thing. Visited my grandparents, ate some cake, and rode home again. It was a good day for a ride, not too hot and only a slight breeze. This afternoon MM and I are going for another ride, but this time down to the beach, hopefully it'll still be warm enough to swim by the time we get there. I haven't been to the beach yet this year so should be great! If only for the ice cream eating potential. Friday night i got extremely drunk at a 21st in North Adelaide and ended up calling BVR for a friendly chat. I can't exactly remember how pleased she was to hear from me, but all I have to say in my defence is that it wasn't really so late because I caught a lift home with people who weren't staying out late. Will stay away from champagne for a while I think... But the slight hangover did make me think of my bro who is at schoolies in Victor this weekend and if he's hungover too...

In other news, most exciting; I HAVE BIG DAY OUT TICKETS!!! Yar!! Yippeeeee. I thought they were sold out in Adelaide, as did most people I think. But Triple J gave a little hint one morning last week and on my lunch break I headed down to Big Star Records and there they were! Oh, there's gonna be some serious dancing happening that day!

Another lost thing

Yesterday went really well! Only about 8 kids came out, but that turned out to be a good thing since it made everything run more smoothly and they could all participate a lot (and I learnt all their names really quickly which makes controlling them a lot easier too). I asked them if they had fun at the end and they all shouted YES at the top of their lungs so I guess I did alright! Hopefully that might tempt more kids out next week as well, but a group of 8 is a good number I think.

The vego touchers repeated requests for vego sausages on the BBQ at the fields finally paid off last night. Yum. They knew how to cook them too which is great - most meaters just throw them on the hot plate for ages like they do with real sausages thinking that they need to cook em, but they only need heating through cos they're not raw meat! Bit of sauce, bit of bread, bit of a pale ale - nice was to end an evening. Except I left my bike helmet behind! I caught a lift home because it was quite cold and late by the time we left and in all the packing the bike into the car excitement I completely forgot about my hat! So I had to bus it in this morning :( And now I can't even ride my bike up to have a look and see if it's still there. Boo me.