Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Kangaroos and crows

Kangaroos have no road sense. None, nadir, zilch. A kangaroo will watch you driving towards him, passively curious, and then suddenly, he will casually jump in front of you.

Crows on the other hand, are the masters of playing chicken.

Just tonight I was heading home, I had spent the last twenty kilometers following a slow coach sitting on 80k. (The speed limit is 100k for those odd people who think in miles.) I am a patient person, no road rager, but I have driven seven hours in the last two days, its ten to six in the evening, and I am only ten minutes from home. I just wanna be there.

The road is winding, with only one overtaking lane, on a hill – why do they do that? I plant my foot, get to the crest of the hill to find a granddaddy roo taking in the moonlight – on the white line.

Now, lets get on thing straight. Kangaroos are not small. It is not like running over an echidna, or a possum, when you just feel the bump and cringe a little. This old boy was solid and tall. I could only hope the car I had overtaken had seen it too, and was pulling back to leave me room to avoid him.

Well, I lived to tell the tale.

Crows on the other hand, have amazing radar. As a new driver I always used to think they weren’t going to get out of the way. But, they do, miraculously, at the last second. Nevertheless, I did hit one once…but that is another story.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Words gone mad

Words, Words, Words – can’t help but love ‘em. I treasure those sentences that make me stop, reread, my mind reeling, my heart leaping.

And yet, in work life I am haunted by nonsense like, “community capacity building” and “needs based planning”, (which begs the question, how else would one plan?)

Yesterday, a fire raged while the emergency services “invested substantial resources” into the fire. It was hard to tell if they were feeding it, or concerned with the ensuing paper work.

On the upside, a company recently accused of causing food poisoning for customers in their restaurant protested that, the illness was more likely caused by “any number of viruses available in the marketplace.” I can’t afford to be sick, so I don’t think I will buy any of them.