Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Poo truck's here!

by Suw on January 28, 2004

We don't have mains sewerage here – too far off the beaten track, apparently. Instead we have a local mini sewerage plant that serves just these eight houses. That's an improvement on the old system, where the waste would just sit in the cess pits until collected fortnightly by the council, but we do still have to suffer every few months the arrival of the poo truck to take the waste away.

So, this morning is poo truck morning – everything and everywhere now smells of poo. And all my nice smelling incenses, candles and oils are packed away. Oh, poo.

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Two degrees of separation

by Suw on January 28, 2004

Between lil ol' me and Steven Spielberg. The link? Why, the inimitable Joi Ito of course (pics).

They say that the power of networking lies in the weak links, the people you sort of know who know someone you need to know. If this isn't a weak, yet potentially rather spiffy, link, I don't know what is.

But don't worry, Joi, I promise not to hassle you about my script at all. Until it's done, that is.

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Well, that was interesting!

by Suw on January 28, 2004

Mum teaches of an evening and has a rule that if it snows, she doesn't go. No one would turn up anyway.

This week's forecasts of snow have, though, been met with some derision and the repeated refrains “Oh, they can't forecast snow!” and “It never snows here anyway”. Which is true. It really never does. I think the last time snow fell out of the sky was two years ago on Boxing Day, and then it was no more than a few flakes that melted on impact.

This evening's forecast of snow was, therefore, met with some derision. Mum got ready for class and left the house with the temperature at 4C, way too warm for snow, and the wind coming in from the west, which is entirely the wrong direction for snow. It only snows here when the wind comes from the northeast.

(Can you see where I'm going with this yet?)

So Mum leaves for class. Pretty much the moment she's gone, the temperature plummets to -1C, the wind swings round to the northeast and strengthens to 'howling gale' (that's a technical term, btw), there are flashes of lightning and grumbles of thunder, and all snowy hell breaks loose.

I mean, really. It was blizzard conditions.

Dad and I sat in the lounge watching the snow beat against the patio doors. Never seen it accumulate so quickly here.

“There'll be a key in the door any moment,” I said, and sure enough there was. Mum said the roads were lethal, and there was no way she was going any further. She couldn't see a foot in front of the windscreen, it was so bad.

The lights flickered, the phones went temporarily doolally, and it was all terribly dramatic.

Then, just as suddenly, it was all over. We were left with almost 2cm of snow which fell in all of about 15 mins, but which is now melting. Chances of repeat performance before the end of the night – nil, I'd say.


See! It really did!

Ok, so it's not much by American standards, I know. But we really do hardly ever get snow here. It's a major event! Honest!

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