It might be a nice Spring.

(I uninstalled Instagram a few weeks ago).

I’ve been working long hours lately. Attending a lot of meetings, juggling many projects. It can be taxing, but also rewarding. There’s something satisfying to look back at the end of a day and see the progress made, emails sent, the calorie breakdown, the steps, the word count, the ticks in the habit tracker app, the work delivered, and of course the numbers on the payslip.

But it’s not big challenges that bother me. It’s the little things, like smoke alarm chirps, dripping taps, and an inability to eat grains and firm vegetables on my right hand side for like two years that really stress me out. These are the sensory torturers which await me when I return home. The drip, drip, drip in the sink. The beep, beep, beep from my tooth. I try to be a good handyman, but if September 2008 didn’t prove that wasn’t for me, five years of not having a property manager has confirmed it.

So now that I am thirty-five, and my precious time on this forsaken planet continues to filter through the hourglass, I have concluded that perhaps working hard and earning money should lead to me spending that money on other professionals who may be juggling many projects, attending lots of meetings, are stressed, etc. And it just so happened that two appointments I made - with the plumber and the endodontist - happened to fall on this day in September 2019. This morning the plumber came to crack the code of how to remove the tap without breaking it, took the electric drill out, delivered, and then took a whole bunch of my money. And then this afternoon the endodontist tried to crack the code of my pressure sensitivity by removing (part of) the tooth without breaking it, took the electric drill out, delivered, and then took a whole bunch of my money.

It’s too early to say if my tooth is fixed yet. The anesthetic wore off after dinner. But the taps are now silent, which I hope is a good omen. Maybe this system of earning money and spending it works. Perhaps this is the free market, the way of things. I can accept all this. The only part which bugs me is that the plumber charges more per hour than the dentist.

I took some photos while walking along the Torrens this September morning. Vanessa asked me if I was planning a duck entry. I said no...

... I'm planning a duckling entry!!

We saw no ducklings and were rained on several times.

It was sunny when I left to find a place for breakfast today. Receiving my flat white in a laneway cafe at the exact moment the hail started outside felt like peak Melbourne.

Here is an example of an implementation of an architecture:

I'm privileged to currently be in Melbourne for a week of training for work. It's been good so far, but it is unfortunate that I have to miss five days of peak Jasmine flowering and aroma season in Adelaide.

Now, you might think that surely I should be missing my family, or my bed and chair, my gyms, and my blender and yoghurt more than some smelly flowers. But I'd miss those things at any time of year. I wait nearly twelve months for these weeks with their little burst of sweet fragrance on my way to work.

Fortunately I found some Jasmine growing in a laneway in Southbank. So it's okay, I can just go there every morning before training for a sniff.

I keep the kitchen clean with this scourer-sponge.

It's forbidden to use the scouring pad on the stainless steel cooktop. Occasionally it comes close when I'm cleaning the bench adjacent. Sometimes I'll let the scourer brush the edge of the metal. Nothing forceful, barely touching the surface. It gives me a little rush.

Maybe - not often - I lay the scourer against the cooktop. Not pressing down, no movement. Just contact, knowing that at any moment I could grind that rough pad against the shiny, smooth surface. I could scrape along the length of the steel, back and forth. I hold it until I lose count of the seconds. Then I lift it up until it's almost but not quite touching. I slide it away, leaving no mark, until the cooktop ends.

That's how I keep the kitchen clean.

How good is Melbourne nightlife, you can buy a crepe at 10pm on a weekday from a street cart. But not at 10:30 that's too late.

I love my Merino socks. Not only are they warm and soft - perfect for winter - but they also repel moisture, and they don't retain odour, which makes them almost self-cleaning.
However, seeing as I wear them literally every day of winter, you do need to wash them sometimes. I have a rhyme which helps me remember: It's time to wash the woolen socks, when it's the Spring Equinox.

A mint condition set of Pokemon Series One TCG from 1999 sold at auction this week for $107,000.

$107K is a lot of money. But you know what? All the good times I had during the sleepovers and shindigs with my high school friends, shuffling and battling and turning my full set of series one Pokemon cards into something far from mint condition was worth even more to me than that.

Oh wait, that's US dollars!

Shit...