Almost Another Spelling Mistake

I was going to make some witty remark about famous oriental desserts after I saw this menu at our local noodle take-away the other evening but after my previous Homoeopathy post I thought I 'd better check Google first. Yes, it is indeed one of the ways you can spell Pad Thai but hardly the most popular. Pud Thai scores 140,000 hits against 1.6 million for the more popular Pad Thai spelling.  If the menu didn't have teriyakl chicken on it as well I'd be very confident that it was deliberately spelt that way...

Spelling aside, the Red Treasure Box was lovely although the two chillis didn't really indicate that much of a challenge.

Priorities

I spotted this sign at the Brisbane Grammar School (BGS) rowing shed a couple of weeks ago.  Rowing presumably now has a higher priority than the correct spelling of Latin.

Double Take

I did a double-take when I saw this sandwich board in Indooroopilly the other day.  'Surely that's wrong', I said to myself, but no, there are two ways you can spell the word, one with the extra 'o', the other without. The former gets 3,650,000 google hits, the latter 4,930,000.  You learn something new every day. Pity, because if it had been a spelling mistake it would have been a doozy.

Cheap Apostrophe's

Yes, summer's here and it's time for the annual markdowns and the disintegration of whatever limited grammatical awareness remains.

Planning for the Podes

I've spent quite a bit of the last couple of weeks planning our summer trip to the UK and northern places (if we're in the antipodes, up there must be the podes, OK ?).  One of the few benefits of spending half my life in airplanes (when did they stop being aeroplanes ?) and airports is that I've got a very healthy frequent fliers' point balance so we've used those to get us to the UK and back.  Now that the Dear Handbrake is not stuck with the usual school holiday dates we can pretty much come and go when we like although we nearly left our run too late to get flights when we wanted them so we're heading off about a month after we originally wanted.

We land in the UK a week and a half before the summer school holidays start so after a few days rest with the family we're off for a week to Iceland before the airfares go berserk.  We've included a couple of days at Heimaey in the Vestmann Islands for something different. Horse, puffin and guillemot are on the culinary 'must try' list for our Iceland trip.

Being the Francophiles that we are a trip to France is almost mandatory so we'll be doing Provence or parts of it anyway - Marseilles, Arles, Nimes (oh bloody hell, Nîmes if you must) and Avignon to see the pont.  It's a part of France that neither of has been to previously.  Time to see if Peter Mayles was telling the truth.

A bit of a jaunt around Cornwall is also called for and I'm holding out for a long weekend break in Stockholm which seems to have the casual tourist edge over Copenhagen or Oslo.

Ireland is now sadly off the list, something had to give.  One thing's for sure - I'm going to be totally stuffed at the end of it.

Hans' Five Commandments

A few months ago I walked past this van parked in a quiet street on the south side of the river some distance from the city on one of my long walks.  I accidentally deleted all the photos of that day but recently retraced my steps.  It was in good condition when I first saw it but it's a bit of a mess now, a smashed driver's side window, a couple of flat tyres and the rear door prised open. I can't imagine why, maybe Hans has upset someone...

Yep, Telstra Again

It was only a matter of time before I mentioned the word Telstra. Regular readers out there (all 2.5 of you) will be thinking, "Oh no, what now ?". But yes, they've done it again. They've exceeded even my wildest expectations of ongoing corporate stupidity and chaos. Read on...

Some months ago one of their door-to- door reps asked the Dear Handbrake if we wanted Cable ADSL at the same price as our current ADSL broadband delivery method. Exactly the same terms and conditions. So when he called back while I was home we signed up for the deal. That was on the 28th July. It was to be installed within 20 days. I thought no more of it for a few weeks - after all it wasn't going to cost anything and our internet system is reasonably fast anyway (I remember dial-up).

Today they phoned up trying to sell us Foxtel. The Dear Handbrake and I barely watch TV (Morning Show and News being about it) so I said, "No thanks - but you can tell me what's happened to our cable broadband installation...". After some investigation it now transpires that cable broadband isn't available hereabouts and never was. But I think I'd already assumed that since it was 3 and a half months ago.

Then he said, "Your mobile is just out of contract, would you like to renew it ?" To which I replied, "I did that a few months ago - just before you announced you were trashing my old website in your quest for a smoother and better customer service delivery." He checked. I was right, I had renewed it.

I have shares in Telstra. I worry sometimes. Am I alone ?