Friday, September 26, 2008

zuzucooks, this one's for you, or: I Hate Melbourne's Trains

Melbourne Central is a shopping and transport hub on the east side of Melbourne's CBD. One would expect, wouldn't one, that at 7:50pm on a Friday night (note: not 4am on a Tuesday morning; a high-traffic time at a high-traffic venue on a high-traffic day) that one would not encounter this:


(The screen flickered as I took the picture and I was too scared of being set upon by Connex staff for being a suspected terrorist taking photos of Melbourne's vital infrastructure that I hightailed it away before getting a clearer shot. Both trains are on the Hurstbridge line - the next train is in 20 minutes and the one after that in just 50.)

See, zuzu, even though Melbourne is in fact bigger population-wise than Chicago and also operates on a stupid spoke-and-wheel system, this kind of kind of rubbish is far from unusual and
, embarassingly and infuriatingly, is totally to be expected. It's hardly fitting for the kind of international city Melbourne wants to and could be. Actually, it's not even fitting for a poxy crumbling backwater riddled with stinking swamp mosquitoes and jungle vines growing over rusted decaying tracks.


On a slightly more cookering note, below is a reason why you shouldn't bake your ceramic dishes on high and then put them in the sink and run cold water over them.



3 comments:

Cindy said...

Oh, I hope that dish wasn't an especially beloved one! I broke one of my own casserole dishes (a cute 70's one that belonged to my mum) in precisely the same way.

Lizzy said...

Hahaha, okay you got me. But at least you have a system that tells you when the next train is coming! In Chicago you can't even run off for a 15-minute pint, you have to stand there guessing whether you will beat the sunrise home.

I can't believe that happened with ceramic--I thought only glass baking dishes were deadly! Yikes.

Love your blog!

Miss T said...

It was just an el cheapo dish from Coles ... but the cracking made me a bit fearful for my safety! At least I didn't have to wash it up ... but Cindy how awful to lose a kitchen 'heirloom'!
Lizzy ... fair call - we do have good signposts unlike NYC, and I did manage to pop into the supermarket in the 20 minutes I knew I had!

Miss T