Edgewater

This is a building in Melbourne, on the beach in St Kilda near Luna Park. I've always found it very evocative - even 25 years ago it still had the same feel to it of faded 60s glamour. Melbourne doesn't really have a beachy thing about it at all, nor for that matter a high-rise feel, so this building and others like it along the beach seem like they've managed to escape from Melbourne in some fantastic way, and I always imagined they'd be full of people who led interesting and possibly debauched lives. Doomed novelists, sensitive women poets, larger-than-life cabaret artistes, that sort of thing. Over the years I've had friends who've lived in pretty much every building in St Kilda but noone had ever lived in there, which added to its mystique. For me, anyway. I did once manage to get in, when I was looking for a flat. (Buy or rent? I can't remember.) It was scuzzy on the inside but not in quite the same agreeable way, and the only people I saw were clueless surfers (why so far from the surf beaches?).

Money

I was at a supermarket yesterday in a nice leafy Melbourne suburb. I only had one or two things so I cleverly avoided the "12 items or less" line, and not just because it's grammatically suspect. You see, it's not really the scanning that takes time, it's the end transaction. Especially if people use loyalty cards and credit cards. Also, in this particular supermarket there's sometimes 2 cashiers in the fast lane, but invariably as soon as you get on the line one of them goes.

So I got behind a woman who had quite a few things in her trolley. As I'd suspected, they were all scanned quite quickly, so I was quite a ways ahead of where I would have been had I got on the fast lane. But then, of course, it all came unstuck.

The cashier finished scanning, and said to the woman, "sixy-five dollars seventy" (or something like that). The woman looked surprised. She then swung her handbag around in front, rummaged though it incredulously and found a purse. She opened the purse and looked inside. There were notes and coins in there, which seemed to throw her.

I wanted to lean forward and say to her "It's money. It does three things. 1) it's a medium of exchange, 2) it's a a unit of account, and 3) it's a store of value". There's an eipsode of the Simpsons where Homer reminds himself "Money can be exchanged for goods and services". And you have to figure that if Homer can intellectualise that, anyone can.

She didn't look as though she had anything wrong with her, but she was spectacularly unprepared for the business end of the shopping trip, the bit where you hand over money. I've been behind people like her - or, possibly, her - at ATMs too, where having gotten to the front of the line they look helplessly at the machine for a while before remembering they need to get their ATM card out and stick it in the slot (meanwhile, I'm hovering behind, incandescent with rage, flicking my ATM card between my fingers).

I need a massage.

Deli

I spent 5 or 6 years in New York, and it seems like a lifetime ago. But sometimes I get reminded of the city I used to love... On the way to my oldest son's under-11 cricket match today I spotted this, and I think that nearby there's a Carnegie Hall too.

Outback

Whenever there's any talk about communications infrastructure in Australia - broadband, mobile, anything - it's always constrained by the idea that whatever is provided has to be provided to everyone. Which means that we can't get high-speed broadband (or, as it's known everywhere else in the world, "broadband") in the densely-populated suburbs of Sydney until and unless it's provided to farmers in the remote reaches of the interior.

This is ridiculous - they've chosen to live in the middle of nowhere. It's part of the deal. They get vast empty landscapes, lots of quiet. We get coffee, newspapers, excitement. What next? They want equal access to avant-garde theater? Experimental cocktails? Fabulousness?

On a barely-related note, a week or so ago there was a news story about the distribution of obesity in New South Wales, by local government areas. The skinniest part of the state (meaning the local government area with the lowest proportion of adults who are obese) was, of course, the eastern suburbs. Where I live. Closely followed by the North Shore. Highest was around Newcastle. Then you have Penrith and whatnot. It's almost too good. The SMH sent a reporter to Windsor and interviewed a woman in a supermarket who said something like "there's not a lot of pressure to look good out here". Or maybe she didn't - the reporter may well have just made it up. Then for a couple of days, there were lovely mean-spirited letters in the papers from skinny people in the eastern suburbs and the north shore along the lines of "westies should lay off the chips and the coke".

Obama

There was a profile of Barack Obama in the New Yorker early last year, which I read and loved. I read it again today (prompted by D, who reads this blog, funnily enough). It's a lovely piece of writing, and there's a sentence in it which is just so exquisite that I remember when I read it the first time, almost a year ago, I felt an almost physical pleasure. I'm sure you'll think I'm mad. She (It's Larissa MacFarquar) writes, nine pages into the profile:

When most politicians speak to a crowd, they give the impression that that is what they live for; Obama at town-hall meetings appears engaged but not fervently so, as if there were several other things that he would be equally happy doing that day.

It's perfect, isn't it?

(For the avoidance of doubt, I'm an Obama fan. A politician who can write! Whahey!)

Bachelor cuisine

As you no doubt have picked up, I have exquisite taste in food. I'm adventurous and have a finely-wrought palate. But when I'm fending for myself, as I am tonight, it's like the worst parody of bachelor food you can imagine. Here's a sample.

Ingredients:
a can of (cooked) lentils
about half a can of spinach
quite a lot of tabasco sauce (or similar)

Method:
put it all in a bowl, give it a cursory stir, put in microwave till barely lukewarm. 30 seconds is fine.

Total Preparation time: 2 minutes, if you're quick. Yumminess: 9/10.

Ana

When I had my tennis lesson during the week I was discussing with my coach, Jono, the relative merits of the leading women players. It turns out that I'm not the only one who thinks Ana Ivanovic is the standard by which all other women must be judged. He had even had lunch in the same room as her, which is something I expect I'll never forgive him for.

His idea for how to resolve this impasse (does she pick Jono or me?) was that he and I have a tennis match. You'll be relieved to hear I didn't fall for it.