my shoe experiment

about 2 months ago i bought some crocs. read my old post here. when i bought them, i thought they looked cool and were comfy.

shortly after buying 6 pairs, i decided i’d wear 1 pair for a month straight & see what happened. well… it’s been 2 months this week and i have worn them pretty much every day. they are still very comfy although i think i’ve worn down some of the reflexology nubs on the inside of the shoe. they have developed some wrinkles where they bend but no rips or tears. the bottom of the sole has some worn down bits but in no way are they thin. and the big test was the smell test…. 2 months straight is a long time but the crocs say they never smell b/c of the material used. they’re right. no icky shoe smell at all.

i bought the boy a pair of the shoes at the same time & he came home last week saying how a friend of his had bought some (unprompted) and had spent the evening telling everyone how comfy they are.

2 things i love about the shoes.. when a stone gets in your shoe, just shake and it falls out one of the holes along the sides…. (and my fav thing)… when it rains you get rain drops falling into the holes on top of the foot. which feels bizarre but nice. like being bare foot but not really. and no grass sticking to your feet. refreshing.

btw, in au, you need to buy from crocs au.

i’m sleepy.

redesign, moods & art

ok… new design to the site. swapped over (finally) to wordpress. i’ve played with wordpress before & really like it. the only thing i do not like is that a separate install is needed for each instance. the switch means comments are open again (i closed them after getting spammed awhile ago). couple things i need to fix design wise (like add the calendar) so if u notice it’s looking screwy, that’s just me playing.

i decided to do a bit of a redesign too. i’ve always called this blog ‘jen’s mba’ but i’m finished with the mba so i wanted to change the name & (sparse) design. the image at the top is a mix of melb & nyc imagery. i just need to figure out a new name. any ideas?

2 links…
moodteller. surveying live journal’s mood feature to see how the community feels. kinda fun but would be great to see long term tracking. the longest i saw was a 2 week tracking period although they are linking it to events like the london bombings or katrina. one to watch.

in nyc, an art event (i love the new trend of everything being an event… a rain event, a wind event…. i’m off to a work event later (meaning actual work)). this artist has put sticker balloons on advertising around the city & has invited people to make comments. there’s some great ones in there.

weird timing of news

i’m watching the 11am news while trying to figure out what’s wrong with the publishing (oh… nothing… i just had 2 index files so it wasn’t reading the .php one), when they do a breaking story about a jetblue plane in LA dumping fuel so it can land with faulty landing gear. this was surprising as i had just looked at cnn right before (doing my morning reads of cnn, the age, etc). i reloaded & still there was nothing on the cnn site.

now… about 15-30 minutes after i first heard about it on the news here, they do a break in to annouce the plane landed safely. so i reload cnn & see now they have one of those red ‘breaking news’ things at the top stating it made a successful landing but there’s no story behind it.

sometimes it just amazes me how i’m about 9 hrs ahead of LA & i find out about stuff faster on an aussie tv station than i do on the american web sites.

this is a test

i’ve moved everything over to wordpress & the beginnings of a new design should appear. i’ve imported all the posts over but it doesnt seem to be publishing the new stuff. if this is working, you should be able to add comments now.

another tram post…

sunday morning, on my way to work, i was involved in a tram crash. apparently a car tried to turn in front of the tram & the tram smashed into the driver’s side door. i say apparently because i was at the back of the tram & didn’t see what happened but when i got off the tram that’s what it looked like.

the tram hit the car quite hard. hard enough that i flew off my seat and landed on the floor about 3 feet away. it was pretty surprising to be reading a magazine 1 second & the next be on the floor next to this woman’s feet. my water bottle went a bit farther than me so i retrieved it & sat back down. without going into detail, all the passengers got off the tram & we all walked away. where the accident happened was about a 4 min walk to where i needed to transfer to my other tram so that’s where i went. it wasn’t til after i was walking that i realised maybe i was hurt.

on monday i went to see my osteo & it seems the jolt screwed up ligiments in my neck. great…. so now i’ll get to find out what it’s like to try to get them to pay my medical bills because my insurance won’t pay.

PARTY!!!!!

drink after 11p???

saw the bbc was talking about 24 hr licensing of pubs/bars. sez november is when the law goes into effect but i wonder how wide spread it will be? anyone know?

update

there’s been more news about the american who was being detained. he’s back in LA now. read about it
here. a few choice bits…

Mr Parkin’s bill for almost $11,700 includes $4,235 for his airfare back to Los Angeles and $6,675 for the return airfares of his two corrective services escorts as well as their accommodation in Los Angeles.
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Mr Parkin told reporters in Los Angeles today that his five-day stay at the Melbourne Custody Centre would cost him another $777.

and he can’t come back to AU for 3 years.

Parkin said authorities never made it clear why he had been arrested.

Parkin said he was not “deported” from Australia, but the correct legal term was he was “removed”.

of course he is appealing the ‘removal’ decision.

if you’re interested in moving here

it seems immigration is having some expos overseas to encourage skilled migrants to come over. the dates & locations are here. they’re EU right now with london coming up next week.

trams

melbourne’s public transport consists of buses, trains and trams. the trams are concentrated in the ‘inner suburbs’ and the ‘cdb’ and the main one i use. think SF but more elaborate (both in the tram & the coverage of service).

i thought i had posted previously about the trams but i just searched my blog & didn’t find what i was looking for. there are several things i think suck about the tram service and the ticketing system lists right up there. most stops do not have a ticket machine (it’s rare to find one) but all trams have a ticket machine onboard. these machines only take change so god forbid you don’t have enough change. if you don’t, you’re expected to get off the tram, find change & then get back on. seems silly (esp as when i used to take the tram early in the AM, there are no shops or anything open between my house & my stop to get change). we were talking about this last nite at dinner & apparently when they first put the machines on the trams, the machines that accept bills were double the price of these so they went for the cheaper option.

there’s no gate or entry point on the trams where you need to show a ticket so lots of people do not pay for them. the only way they can enforce ticket purchasing is by having inspectors who randomly get on the tram & check your ticket. if you do not have a valid ticket, you get a fine. i’ve witnessed these many times and am often disturbed by the inspectors behaviour. enough that i’ve called and complained.

on the news yesterday was this story. 3 inspectors held down a skinny kid until the police arrived b/c the kid didn’t have a ticket & refused to give his name & address (which they require for the fine). this is standard procedure for them… the whole name/address, threatening with police. when i got a fine (about 18 m ago), they threatened repeatedly to call the police because i did not have any kind of identification with my AU address. but the whole physical restraint. amazingly horrible.

to complain, go here

to watch some mobile phone video, check here

taxes in AU

after pointing out some bad bits of AU, thought i’d mention a good one. i tend to be vocal about the things that annoy me.

i have always been impressed with the ATO (au tax office) which is the IRS equiv. granted i’m not earning much money and i don’t have any special considerations but to file my taxes, i download e-tax, a program from their website. the program takes you step by step and explains (fairly well) what the different things are. even for someone like me who hasn’t grown up with the terminology used. i had less confusion with my returns here than i have with the american system which i’ve used for ages.

after i did the whole thing on my computer, i transfered it to the ATO. and (here’s the best bit), i had my refund deposited into my bank account in ONE WEEK. amazing!