also, dear apple: pull your finger out. you're pissing me off.

 journal  5 Responses »
Oct 262010
 

Dear Telstra: Perhaps you genuinely have no idea. If so, let me enlighten you. You do not, in point of fact, offer value for money. Your plans are pretty much an offer to empty my bank account for me. 500MB data (which is only a temporary "bonus", and you normally offer 300MB), when every other telco is offering at least 1.5GB on commensurate plans? Stop resting on your "we own the infrastructure" laurels and start catering to a demographic that isn't 50+ and beaten into submission by your "telecommunications cost money and there's nothing you can do about it! mwa-ha-ha!" attitude.

Dear Optus: Er, 'no'. Don't think I haven't noticed your coverage map can't be zoomed, and is presented in a format that makes it impossible to determine coverage at any detail finer than a continental level. That's not helpful. Also, your caps look excellent value, but only if you don't bother examining what's excluded (i.e. pretty much everything) from the cap value. I for one would prefer you offered a more modest cap which included everything, rather than these over-inflated plans designed to lure in yet more customers with promises of a service your already strained and congested infrastructure simply can't deliver.

Dear Virgin: Much as I'd sorta prefer a middle-of-the-road path that you don't offer, I can see the value in splitting your plans to cater for those who prefer to talk vs those who prefer to gobble data. Good on you. But, seriously, are you KIDDING me with that excess data charge? $2.40 per MB is pretty flagrant, when the other telcos only see fit to charge $0.25 – $0.50 per MB. Also, are you aware of just how bad it looks, that calls to your own customer service centre are excluded from your cap value? The point of a cap is not to have so many hundred dollars worth of untouchable value. Kindly to consider including everything in the cap, even if you have to do it at inflated rates.

Dear 3/Vodafone (since I can't tell you apart by your plans): Your plans look … reasonable. Your prices are high, but everything comes out of the cap at least. 3's plans are better, if only because there's no mention of the "bonus" data that Voda seem to be peddling to make the plans look better than they are. I don't understand why 3 can't roam onto Voda's network, and I'm afraid I could never consider signing with a company whose ability to respond to enquiries through their website is non-existent (yes I'm looking at you, Voda). Also, your early exit fees? Can bite me.

Picking between you all is like a finely-orchestrated torture which makes me choose precisely which kind of pain I'd rather endure for the next two years.

the week that was, the week that will be

 ficlets, journal  2 Responses »
Oct 202010
 

I feel bereft, but I'm not sure precisely why.

I find myself standing in the centre of the room — the lounge room, the bedroom, the bathroom; my cubicle at work — and casting about me. As if, whatever it is I've lost, I must have dropped it somewhere nearby. But there's only the usual detritus of a time-poor monkey: a broken thread from a random sleeve; a hairband; two south korean coins, each worth one hundred won; the carcass of a clicky pen, done to death by too many commutes. There are notes to myself, on post-it notes and on torn scraps of paper; CDs pulled from their shelves; and a bemusing range of highlighters, including various shades of pink (or is one supposed to be purple?).

None of this looks like equanimity.

But what does equanimity look like? Maybe it's there, and I simply don't know to recognise it. I could ask Mr Balloons — I spotted him the other day, hanging over the edge of his balcony in his familiar glitter-eyed slump, smoking something sweet-smelling and chatting with great verve to, um, nobody visible. But his particular brand of calm is a little too brittle for my taste.

No, the equanimity I want is rooted in confidence, and is a far more robust thing. Not necessarily brawny, but at least resilient. A whippet might have the right form, all sleek and full of coiled power, but it has a gaze and gait too cautious, too unsettled. A snake, then, all elongate and elastic.

Wait. I know what equanimity rooted in confidence looks like. Or what it used to look like, when last I saw it.

It's small, too young to be made ugly by the fur-ification of adulthood, and black, and it has fangs that can pierce a human toenail. Should it sense your presence, it will turn to face you, and rear up to present those fangs and — despite the alarming disparity in size between you, the time-poor monkey, and it — it will charge. Because you and it both know one irrefutable fact: its venom puts it above you on the food chain.

It's a baby funnel web spider.

And it's not native to my flat, or my cubicle at work, or any of my new haunts.

No wonder I haven't been able to find it.

This is new territory. Everything has a new shape now. Even me. Especially me.

it was something to behold

 ficlets, journal  Comments Off
Oct 132010
 

Today I saw an old man walking an old dog.

The dog was a golden retriever, his long coat still clean and glossy, but his head hung low and his mouth hung open and his eyes had more of a droop than his heavy, plodding paws. The dog wasn't walking fast, but he was still at the end of his leash because the man was walking even slower.

The man's head hung to his right shoulder. Above his pale grey pants with the crisply-ironed crease falling out and his pale blue shirt, he wore an imploring look and a pout.

Combined, I think they were averaging about a kilometre an hour, but still the man held the leash as if the dog was pulling him along.

Every now and then the dog would pause, laboriously cock his leg, and fail to produce enough scent to trouble even the most assiduous of his neighbourhood rivals. The man would suffer through this ritual with a mute roll of his eyes.

I wonder how long they've known each other? Long enough to accept that even the things they loathe about each other make them perfect for each other.

 Posted by at 6:59 pm

seriously. wtf?

 journal  4 Responses »
Oct 092010
 

I live on the third floor of an apartment block.

There are no flats above me, no one in the block (to my knowledge) owns a cat, and I don't see how any neighbourhood cat could get to my balcony.

Which is why I'm utterly at a loss to explain the BONES LITTERING MY BALCONY.

is that a lamb rib?

okay, seriously, is that teriyaki chicken? who the fvck is eating teriyaki chicken and dumping the bones on my balcony?

The bones appeared singly over the past month. Since I can't see how a cat could get onto the roof of the apartment block (there are no adjoining blocks with rooves high enough, and no trees the cat could climb that would deliver it so high), I'm forced to consider alternative theories.

Like cannibal birds.

I see a lot of birds sweeping in and out of my view. They love to roost on the roof, however briefly. Mostly pigeons, mynah birds, and ravens. And since the advent of the bones, I am now wondering if they're not EATING THEIR OWN KIND UP THERE.

but the year is slipping away, and i miss the words

 journal, writing life  Comments Off
Oct 032010
 

There's an interview with Paolo Bacigalupi up at Techland and, quite apart from the fact that I am now livid with jealousy over what is apparently the coolest surname meaning EVER, towards the end of the interview Bacigalupi has some powerful things to say about writing:1

For me … having the raw ability … it was meaningless, ultimately. It was the willingness to write four novels and fuck them all up and keep going that was the definer … the willingness to accept failure and not let it stop you, and to not let that define you.

And I feel like it doesn't get talked about, that idea that nobody accidentally gets published. You don't accidentally fall into writing a novel. Just the process of actually writing a novel is too damn hard for anybody to accidentally fall into it. And if somebody says, "yeah I just did it," they're probably lying. They wanted it and they went after it is what they did.

…Discipline comes from within, not from without. I think of it as being, there are those people who are waiting for the thing to arrive, and then there's people who are going out and making it. I think about it as almost theft. You almost have to steal the book from the rest of your life. There's so few things that are going to support you in the process of writing a book. There's always more child care. There's always some emergency that has to happen. There's always some reason why, you know, you have a deadline at your regular job and so you have to stay up late, and you can't get your writing done. If you're going to write it's always stolen from somebody else's time, or some other responsibility.

Life's been a bit hectic lately, complicated by such fun things as being stalked by RSI and productivity targets at the dayjob, not to mention a ludicrous quantity of errands, and it's been stealing my writing time and energy. Worse, I've been letting that happen — because the stories I have at hand are being uncooperative, and procrastinating on them is far easier than wrangling them into submission.2

Carving time out of your day and life to write is a lesson I've already learnt — but it's also one of those lessons I continually have to re-learn and re-affirm. It can be a hard fight, to carve out that time for myself and my stories, but the hardest fight is to do it consistently and incessantly, every day. Life lets me steal a pocket out of any given day without too much trouble — but when I try to steal a pocket out of every single day, life fights back. Sooner or later, life lands a suckerpunch, and I'll miss a day. That's when the slide starts, and I find myself skipping two days and promising myself if I just have the rest of the week off from writing to knock over all these errands I'll be able to start again on Saturday with a clear head.

Finding time to write, it seems, is one endless game of snakes and ladders. Only without the ladders.

Today I'm going to dodge those pesky snakes, though.

  1. And/or investing in the creative process, since it has a far wider application than simply writing [↩]
  2. Well, okay, to be fair to me: calling life a bit hectic lately is a touch of an understatement. But still. [↩]