Stuck in the Wilderness

AUSTRALIA POST - "WE DELIVER"?
Not. Bloody. Likely. I can usually find something to say about anyone given half a chance; be it good (rarely), bad (sometimes) or downright sarcastic (frequently). Today words fail me, they truly do fail me. I'd call the genetic defectives at Australia Post "incompetent", but that doesn't even begin to notch the tip of the iceberg, and merely gives them a performance benchmark to aspire to. Our (laughingly mislabelled) Mail Redirection Service that started back in late December 2007 has yet to result in the successful delivery to our letter box of a single letter. Not one. We've received junk mail already. It's late February, and we still have to drive some 10 kilometres (to a building that closes at 1:00pm each day and isn't open on weekends) in order to collect our mail, provided that it's been redirected that far. Sometimes even that level of lacklustre customer service is too much for the poor widdle fings that pretend to work there, and so our mail goes even more astray.

This self-same "service" is also responsible for no small amount of stress and grief for Jennie who happens to be studying for her Masters Degree through an interstate university, which is stressful enough in a house of 4 oversized children (ages 37, 8, 6 and almost 2) without the added bucket of crapulous joy that comes with having her reading material sent to her via Australia Post (to the old address, supposedly still under mail redirection). Her reading material was sent out on January 10. It was (finally) available for collection from Hoppers Crossing Mail Delivery Centre on February 22. In the mean time, seeing as her reading material had failed to arrive, Jennie has contacted the university and arranged for another load of books to be sent to our current address. Sitting on our doorstep on Monday was the second batch of books that were mailed out after the first batch was a no-show. That's right, on our doorstep...

Huh? I was under the impression that mail wasn't being delivered to our address for the following reasons:

1. We may not be on a mail delivery route just yet,
2. "It's not worth the contractor's time to deliver it to your address", and/or
3. It's against Australia Post OH&S Policy for motorcycle deliveries to be made along any road where the speed limit exceeds 70 kilometres per hour.
   

Reason 1 was provided to Jennie at our "local" post office on 5 January. Reason 2 was provided to Jennie at Hoppers Crossing MDC on 9 January. Reason 3 (my personal favourite) was provided to our neighbour Peter (lives just down the street from us) about 2 weeks ago. Do these jerks have a wheel that they spin in order to generate an "Excuse of the day"? What else is on it? Sunspots? Locusts? Incusions of David Hasselhof impersonators?

Calling Australia Post's customer service line results in little more than more platitudes and the feeling that I've been well and truly "serviced" without the benefit of lubrication...

If you like you can help me out by calling the Hoppers Crossing Mail (Non)Delivery Centre on (03) 8342 6902 and ask "Why can't Doug get his mail?" (Concerned callers outside of Australia may call +613 8342 6902 and ask, "Why can't Doug get his mail?")

Sorry...

I was fortunate enough to be able to watch history unfold this morning, and for once it was positive, it was joyous, it was memorable for all of the right reasons. It's amazing what power five little letters ("s", "o", "r", "r", and "y") can have. Watching Kevin Rudd in his first order of business before the Parliament on TV this morning moved me in a way I had never suspected possible. Even now, hours later, I still feel the buzz, the goose bumps, that came with the applause that followed his gesture to the most marginalised in our society.

It's one thing to chain yourself to history for 11 years of stern-faced denial and call it "leadership"; it's quite another thing to display it in full measure; and this morning Kevin Rudd, the Honourable Prime Minister of Australia did precisely and exactly that. Leadership is looking at the mistakes of the past, acknowledging them and working to fix them. Leadership is looking past ideology, petty squabbling and the blinkers of party politics without fear or rancour, looking at what needs to be done and then working to do what's needed. A brave man walked into the Parliamentary Chamber this morning, a great man walked out of it.

For the first time in a long, long time I am optimistic about the calibre of leadership coming out of Canberra but I'm not going to be carried away by the sense of occasion, it's day one and the future waits in judgement.

Time for a Belated Introduction - Part One

Assuming that I've completed my biographical notes for this blog, and also assuming that you have read them, you'll know that I am in my late 30's, married with 3 (boisterous but lovely) children and that I work in the banking and finance industry. If I didn't update my biographical details (the most likely scenario), or you didn't (or couldn't) read them (possible, but my money is on my own laziness), then you know that now, so it all works out okay in the end anyway. Those of you who actually know me in real life can skip this blog entry, I promise you won't miss anything.

Born as half of a set of twins in Melbourne, Australia in the middle of 1970, I grew up to be the talented and oversized underachiever that everyone around me now has to put up with every day. I'm happily (and surpisingly) married to Jennie, my long-suffering companion since our mutual bout of insanity in 1997. My only excuse is that the wedding was in Canada and I was suffering from this 3 week bout of jet-lag ... Nahh, that's not going to fly. Jennie at least has the "I was drinking beforehand" defence, I was terrifyingly sober for the event. At least the ceremony was painless enough. What came after that... is another story. To give some measure of the family that I married into, it was decided after the ceremony to turn the dance floor at the reception into a mosh-pit, and then put me in the middle of it for some "Welcome to the family!" inspired rib damage. There weren't any breaks, but my newly minted in-laws sure did try (and try, and try again).

Jennie and I share our lives with 3 amazing children who have the good fortune to have Jennie as their mother. Graeme, Nathan and Oscar are like children everywhere, they have this inbuilt gift for provoking emotional whiplash in their parents at the drop of a hat - One minute you're contemplating terrible and bloody violence on all of them in exchange for the merest promise of a few moments of peace and quiet, the next minute you're wrapped around their little finger thanks to the unspoken menace of The Unprovoked Hug, (To those who do not yet have children, beware The Unprovoked Hug for it will own you, and your children will be born with that knowledge. You have been warned.) Graeme (8) looks more like Jennie than me, Nathan (6) looks more like his Uncle Ted (my brother) than me, and Oscar (1.75) looks like a mix of his older brothers. Where that leaves me, I'll never quite know...

My hobbies range from the solitary (No, not THAT! ... Well, not every day ... Sometimes it's hard to pick up a book and remember where you left off. Whatever were YOU thinking? On second thoughts I really don't want to know, let's just let it lie, shall we?) to the nerdy with equally nerdy friends, to the solitary AND nerdy online with friends that I never see in person. I'd be a strange, brooding loner locked up in some dingy little flat with nothing but an equally strange, half-feral cat for company, but I really like messing with people's minds too much for that sort of thing, so I am compelled to be strange, brooding and somewhat social. I relish my current role in customer service as each day is always alive with the promise of new victims... Errr, opportunities to serve our valued customers, as well doing my part to maintain the level of workplace sarcasm and abuse... Ummmm, cheerful and productive morale that our team is justly known for.

I spent most of my formative years in a suburb of Melbourne called Abbotsford, a charmingly picturesque place with only the occasional, badly misplaced and rather self-conscious looking tree to spoil the rugged beauty of inner city life. Oh, there was also this incredible stretch of grass that went on for as far as the eye could see, but we weren't allowed to play on Hoddle Street, not least of which right down the middle of it on the median strip. Primary school was especially fun for me; I still remember the giddy delight I felt when the two houses next to our school were demolished to make way for an expansion of the school grounds. At last we children could play on something else apart that expanse of bare asphalt, and so we got to play on an equally bare expanse of gravel as well. Even now, more than 25 years later, I still bare some of the scars of those happy, happy days.

My musical tastes are varied, indiscrimate even, but invariably involve me being the auditory slave for any passing female vocalist. While it helps if you're a Candian female vocalist, it's hardly necessary. Jennie is Candian and loves to sing in the shower, which explains in part why I fell in love with her in the text only medium of IRC back in the mid 90's (If this is my last blog post then this part will double-up as a suicide note, although being clubbed to death by my wife could also be described as 'Death by Natural Causes', not that I'm suggesting anything by that...)

NON-STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Jennie's voice isn't that bad, honest! But if she thinks that I'm going to let this blog slide by without at least one cheap shot, she's even more deluded than I would have dreamed possible.