You'll find me about 11,000 miles away.

I've written before about the date written using the British Date convention - mm/dd/yy and about the significance of certain dates. Today is another one of those special dates that will not occur for a very long time. Today's date is consecutive even numbers: 10/12/14 and will not happen again until 6th April 2106...another 91 years 3 months and 24 days. Hopefully I'll remember to look at the clock at 18 minutes and 20 seconds past 4pm, or using the 24 hour clock it will be 10/12/14 16:18:20

You have been warned It's always pleasing to find signs in public places with exemplary punctuation and word use. Just as pleasing as having sentences written in a sarcastic way interpreted as being sarcastic. Else where on this blog you can find examples of chinglish (Chinese-English) and other language mistakes that I have a love/hate relationship with. I saw this amazing example today by Sydney Harbour and Foreshore Authority. Sign attached to 5 barriers Taped to 5 plastic barriers, the sign warns the city's citizens that there is "no parking", which is a reasonable request. But then it goes on to further advise that "offenders will be infringed ". Despite seeing those Copyright Infringement Notices from ISPs where you download something illegally then get notified that you have infringed some copyright , I've not seen the word used in a different way. Especially warning that an "offender will be infringed". Among the diction...

Earlier this week I went to a presentation about Mona Vie. Mainly out of interest, as most of the things I had read online contained the words "scam exposed", "why I quit this scam", "scam or real deal?, "scam exposed" or "pyramid scheme". Pretty much all negative things and I'm also sure that looking up "pyramid scheme" in a thesaurus would list the "scam". So my cousin and I rocked up to this presentation, and I wasn't expecting that much. Sit down, watch a slide show, listen to the usual passive-aggressive pseudo-motivational soft-sell preaching, see a lot of people in suits, pretend to be interested, maybe eat a few snacks available, and so on. But I have learnt not to trust my expectations. I wasn't disappointed. We arrived in this office building, made our way through small groups of people and got to a meeting room with probably 60 people there (not an exact figure, but it helps with the maths). Lo...

My water heater blew up yesterday evening. Properly blew up. Massive expensive-sounding pop. Smoke and shit. The offensive industrial odour of greasy, burning plastic. A combination of circumstances that makes you mutter a random selection of coprolalia (aka Tourettes) inspired swear words. I'd imagine that if you set fire to a pyre made of bodily-effluent infused mattress, a pile of rotting leaves, rusty coat hangers and dead hedgehogs it would probably smell the same. Aside from that, I knew the boiler was on the blink, I've had freezing fucking cold water for 2 days now and even though it's summer and 30 degrees, unheated water from the shower head is still like waters fresh from the fucking Arctic,....cockmunching dickwhistles.  I called a boiler engineer last night, but got no answer. Today I managed to get one, coming tomorrow. I can already guess that it's going to be expensive. Cold showers are not actually that bad in the morning. There's some pseud...

Using the British-English date format today is 11th December, 2013. Which can be written as 11/12/13. I was talking to my dad a few weeks ago, on 10th November 2013 and he mentioned that the day before was the last day for its kind for a long time.  This mysterious, pessimistic view of the date confused me until he told me it was 09/11/13 and it would be 90 years or so (1st March 2105.....in 91 years and 223 days I think) until the next time there are 3 consecutive odd numbers in a date (01/03/05).  I found this amazing and a bit humbling. It makes you wonder about your existence. The dates will just keep on going, forever. It sort of makes you wish you had celebrated the date properly. Like it would be something special. 11/12/13 will be consecutive numbers. The last time this will happen for basically the rest of my lifetime. The next time will be 01/02/03...1st February 2103.  So if I am able to live to 120, I will make sure my great-great-grandchildre...

Last week there was a guy in the supermarket buying a bulk pack of 6 spreadable cheeses,.....and paying in 5, 10 and 20c coins. There was a small gathering of shoppers in a loose sort of queue, staring at the lone checkout attendant making the cashier desk look like a busy bar. It was annoying but it was made more amusing by enjoying the intense frustration of other customers. Soon his colleague arrived to help him out. The blatant hilarity of this situation was enough to make me open my backpack, search around for my phone, get it out, unlock it, read a message, then snap a picture. I should have taken a picture of the angry, bewildered faces of the angry horde eager to pay for their wares. The lady to my right was buying just a single box of cherry tomatoes. Some days I do this on purpose. I take 5c and 10c coins to another supermarket and use the automated checkout machines. I try to pick a time of day that's not too busy but busy enough so that there's a queue for...

I finally got an Instagram account. Follow me @r4v3yk Some pictures....graffiti, sunsets, scenery and quirkiness of life - all with an "insta" prefix, of course, and the odd hashtag. No selfies if I can help it.

In many European languages, the months of the year are mainly based on the Roman name for the month, for example "octo" is the number 8 in Latin. October was originally the 8th month of the year in the Roman calendar and retained its "octo" name when it was moved to become the 10th month post 46BC. The Julian calendar was introduced in 46BC and this lead to some interesting changes. For instance, there was a whole month dedicated to leap year, called Mercedonius. This month occurred every few years, but was abolished by Julius Ceasar when he introduced the Julian calendar. But not before he and others had abused the month by adding it earlier or later, or just "forgetting" to add it at all. So each month has a history of how it came about. An interesting history. Recently, I've started to notice that the months are again being renamed, but in a far less interesting way. It started with Movember. A time of month just before Christmas where you can g...

I saw this scene on Friday night in Sydney. I was standing at an intersection, a really busy intersection near China Town, waiting to meet some friends,...but they were late. So I had lots of time to stand around and wait for a break in the stream of pedestrians to take this picture. It still came out a little blurry, but I can describe it. On the left, a table of water bottles with a metal tin and a sign saying that the water bottles are $1, and then another sign saying it is unattended and that you should be honest and pay if you take a bottle. On the right of the picture is a guy kneeling on the pavement, possibly homeless, with a sign asking for money. Almost immediately this struck me as some sort of strange social experiment. Embrace your inner philanthropist by giving money to a homeless guy, buy yourself water for $1 and give no money to the homeless guy, steal a bottle of water, steal a bottle of water and give it to the homeless guy, or even buy a bottle for $1 and ...

A few weeks ago I came back from a trip to China, and I've mentioned previously about how incredibly pleasing it is to see that China retains its craziness. I'll explain. I first visited China 9 years ago. At this time there were motorbike taxis, everywhere. Really cheap, convenient and quick, but really, really dangerous. Having big legs and being generally bigger and fatter than most Chinese, each time I tried to get a motorbike taxi I would be sized up and you could see an instant of doubtful mirth flash across the eyes of the rider of the bike.  Most times you would wear no helmet and have to literally cling onto any crevice deeper than your finger nail would fit (if you were lucky, there would be a small luggage rack at the back of the bike). The driver would then proceed to hurtle in between cars and along highways and undertake huge buses and drive the wrong way across a busy intersection into oncoming traffic. And the adventure wasn't over when you reached your...

Yesterday, I received an email from what I guess is Füri's Australian distributor,  McPherson's Consumer Products Ltd . They said they were sorry to hear about what happened they kindly offered to send out a replacement or closest possible replacement product for the knife. I hope they send me out a paring knife that cuts vegetables. You can read the full story here .

In one of my old jobs I somehow was given the position of Fire Warden for the building floor that my office was on. This wasn't a posting that I had any particular interest in, but no one else volunteered, there weren't too many responsibilities, it would mean I get out of the office for Fire Warden training and I thought I would get some sort of qualification.  Only 2 of those 4 were true in the end. Fire? Fire! FIRE!!.....RUN A few meetings for Fire Warden Training were scheduled over the next few months, unfortunately on our level too, so I didn't get to go anywhere. After the first meeting had begun, it became clear that there wasn't going to be any qualification (like a First Aider qualification which is slightly more useful). Just some pretty obvious fire safety and organisation procedures to remember, and some droll training meetings. These were made slightly more bearable by the fact that a few of the other prospective Fire Wardens were quite hot (haha.....

Around a year ago I bought a knife set made by an American company called Füri. They were nice knives I thought. Notice the "were". They're no longer nice knives. Below is an email that I wrote to them a few weeks ago. An email that they as yet, haven't answered. So I thought I'd post my letter online. The email was entitled "Füri-ous at knife breaking". I hope they understood the pun of their company's name. Hi Füri, Just over a year ago (March or April 2012), I purchased a 9cm (3.5 inch) Pairing knife. It was in a set along with an 20cm Cook's Knife. I decided to buy Füri brand knives as I was looking for some good quality kitchen knives; knives that enhance my enjoyment of cooking. However, last week I was cutting through a potato (chopping it into cubes for a soup) with the 9cm Pairing Knife, when the knife just snapped! I've attached some pictures. A clean break in the knife - no twisting or bending. A clean bre...

I saw a news story today on Yahoo, of a gay marriage in China . I was like "oh that's unusual in China; a gay marriage" and usually these things don't interest me a great deal, but then as I was skimming over the article I saw a line about "old men", the word "sex" and something in inverted commas ( 两名老年男同性恋者在支持者的见证下举行“婚礼 ...) Well,...things just got interesting. Screenshot taken from Yahoo.cn News website. Isn't his dress lovely... When I translated the sentence I was shocked. I laughed to myself. Translated, that sentence means Supporters witnessed, two elderly men who have sex with men, held a "wedding".  I asked my girlfriend if there was no such thing as the word "gay" or "homosexual" in China as it seems quite a strange and slightly disturbing and overly descriptive choice of words. No beating about the bush here. No friendly sounding words like "gay" or "homo" but just short of dec...

Intro About 7 weeks ago, I got made redundant. 29 years old and facing redundancy. I guess it could be much worse. I could be twice as old, have little savings, kids and wife and these feelings of desolation and sadness would be compounded, and I guess that's why lots of people decide that only an extreme, fanatical immersion in religion or alcohol or even suicide is the answer. I like to think I would take a very positive attitude towards it, and hopefully have a lot of helpful friends and relatives to turn to. I decided that instead of weeping into my semi-naked lap and enhancing the ambidextrous skills of moving the mouse and typing one handed (with my left hand), not washing, alcoholism and eating instant noodles, I would do something productive enough like writing a diary. Take Anne Frank; she managed living in an attic for the most part of World War 2, I bet keeping a diary helped her deal with the pain. If someone could get through the suffering and emotional ...

Mr Shouty One Saturday evening on the train home, we saw this guy. Absolutely crazy. Attention seekingly crazy I think. It was like he had the mental age of a 10 year old, apart from the vulgar vocabulary of an MS-13 gang member. Many times I was in stitches and all I had was my phone to write these gems down. My shaking fingers couldn't use Swype fast enough. One of his first jeers to the whole train was "Do you like Hungarians?" He had sat down in a seat momentrily before by pushing his way up to the top floor of the train carriage and then hauling a middle aged Asian lady out of a window seat she was about to sit down in. Below is a list of his random proclamations. If it's May 1st, I want my fuckin money Do you believe in Jesus Christ? I got the cross in my pocket Where do you think the dead go...they're like Michael Jackson [ asks me ] mate, why is this train so slow?  [He looks around the train, then looks my girlfriend. She is Asian] ...

A few weeks ago I watched a documentary about the London Underground and there was this comment about one of the passengers losing a shoe underneath a train. Apparently, this is a common occurrence, as when people run for the train, their shoes fall off. This struck me as quite a strange thing to happen - in nearly 5 years of catching the tube everyday for work, I never saw someone lose a shoe. It's probably possible though. Once at Farringdon station, a train station in London, I did see some guy get his head stuck between two closing doors of a Metropolitan line train, literally 1/2 a metre in front of me. What made it really amusing was the fact that he was dressed in a suit, slightly balding, wearing glasses and heavily laden down with an engorged laptop bag, a bag of shopping and a newspaper. He was standing in front of me on the platform and as the train pulled in, nothing untoward looked like it was going to happen. The train came to a standstill, the doors opened, h...