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After an excellent week away I’m back home and ready for work tomorrow night. However the old body clock is totally reversed and I’m currently running on normal hours. Doesn’t matter as it was wonderful to rise with the birds for a change and experience a full day of light ! In particular the last couple of spring-like days has been a bonus. And full marks to reader Vacuity for correctly guessing the location of the most recent video shot a South West Rocks.

Regarding videos there'll be more to come over the next few days. Whilst the Nokia N95 captured video and images in high quality, their rendering through the Vox video player deteriorated somewhat when uploaded from the phone. So I'm keen to demonstrate the device's capabilities when presented from a PC, or in a different media player.

Before leaving last week I had a drink with a couple of mates. On learning of my travel plans one exclaimed, "You drive for a living and then get behind the wheel for a holiday - I don’t get it ?" I laughed at his perfectly valid observation, "That’s right. I should be flying to Bali to sit on a beach for a week. If it wasn’t for the dodgy perceptions of a middle-aged bloke holidaying alone in Asia, I probably would." Sad but true.

However the operative word here is ‘alone’, for the defining motivation of my vacations over the years has been to seek out the company of friends living in glorious locations. Coupled with this desire is the journey itself, the act of getting there being as enjoyable as the company itself. In particular there are many areas I’ve worked in over the years, veritable paradises well worth revisiting. That's Australia, a hard place to leave.

Back again

Currently I'm away and over the next week will be posting regular video travel blogs. They can be found here, hopefully, if my new toy does what it's supposed to do.

Have a great weekend.

UPDATE : New travel vlog posted today, Thursday afternoon, an adventurous piece-to-camera ! Thanks for the positive feedback and normal posting resumes tomorrow.   

Update 2

These past few days has been an endless succession of rain, red lights, computer crashes, lost files and...the odd passenger. All in all I've little to report, or at least to reveal due to doubts about Apple's Quicktime video player which seems to have an issue with corrupted code. Whilst I've knocked up a couple of short movies in Quicktime I'm reluctant to post them least readers encounter the same problems with the player. So until I can join YouTube that's the state of play to date. Regular posting pending...sorry about this but dems the breaks; one lives and learns. Grrrr....

Update

A quick update to explain my absence. Currently I'm consumed with images and videos shot on the new phone camera. A refresher course was needed in editing and making movies, compressed and optimised for easy viewing. It ain't easy and bloody time consuming but I hope to post some decent content in the next few days.   

SpeedCam(4)

My regular shift report has been sidetracked by an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald about speeding fines in the Cross City Tunnel. Previously I've had a full spray on the matter and so left a final comment.

Hopefully there will be enough reader feedback at the Herald, a la the Lane Cove Tunnel fines, for the Govt. to have a change of heart. One can only hope...

Ratbags

Lately I've been wondering if there is not a bigger bunch of ratbags than teenage girls. To witness, just add alcohol for instant bratdom.

Girls who want to be eighteen, if only to gain entry to pubs, not that being sixteen stops them. Or seventeen year old girls pretending they're twenty one year old worldly women. Or eighteen year old girls behaving with a mental age of fifteen.

They can be found on weekend nights roaming in drunken packs, mainly around the Eastern Suburbs or North Shore. And, ironically, the more privileged their background the ruder their demeanour. Wearing impossibly short skirts and tottering in ridiculous high heels they yell and screech like banshees. Glamours they are not.

For many of these teenage girls, life is one long soap opera. "He doesn't love me !" wailed a distraught 'glamour' on Saturday night in the cab. Then at the destination she flung open the door and promptly threw herself onto the roadway, refusing to move.

Luckily her friends warned me not to drive off until they pulled her feet from under the cab. Phew. "Sarah ! Get up, get up !" they bellowed into the sleeping neighbourhood.

Then last night two drunken 'glamours' begged me to stop at Maccas on their way home to an exclusive suburb. Being my last fare I relented, if only for some peace for the remainder of the journey. At the drive-thru one girl insisted I order her a Happy Meal, "...with the toy !" I kid you not. She was eighteen years old.

Upon alighting they duly left drink containers and rubbish on the floor and over the seat, despite being asked not to. Thus I had no qualms in gathering up all the rubbish and dumping it on the front lawn of their parent's mansion. Glamours; pass.

Feel free to nominate your 'favourite' ratbags in Comments.

(NB: whingeing cabbies do not qualify as ratbags per se - it's expected of us)

Punishing

Glorious spring-like conditions yesterday stayed right through the evening, yet the regular Saturday night crowd barely materialised. Up until 11 pm most drivers were lamenting their disastrous takings, unable to account for the quiet night.

Finally one driver I spoke with on a City rank had no doubt about the problem. "It’s because of the interest rate rise this week," he claimed. But he was particularly sensitive to a rate rise. In order to pay a $1300 weekly cab lease he was working 16 hours per day, the only way he could support his young family and pay a mortgage. Punishing.

In other news last night the cab radio broadcast this message,

TAXI FARE RISE 6% EFFECTIVE 27 AUGUST. (more here)

Test Snaps

Old Fella

continued from yesterday...

The old fella patiently waiting at the rank climbed aboard thanking me profusely and claimed he’d been waiting forty five minutes. I explained how the women had attempted to commandeer his cab but he was pretty philosophic about it. "Well, that’s people for you. There’ll always be people in life like that."

He was a seventy six year old widower and suffered from an long-standing neck injury. But rather than receiving treatment he’d only attended the hospital at the doctors' request, to serve as a ‘guinea pig’ for anatomy students. This was his second such visit in a week, a $20 cab fare each way making for an $80 sacrifice from his pension.

When I expressed surprise that given he was doing them a favour, they might at least have arranged his transport, he just shrugged and chuckled, "What can you do ?" So I changed the subject and asked, "How you going at home, you managing okay ?" "It’s getting harder all the time," he said, "but you’ve just got to keep going, haven’t you ?" Other than a daughter who did his weekly shopping he was fending for himself.

The least I could do was supply written details of the half price taxi vouchers for pensioners, plus the subsidized Homecare cleaning service and MediAlert security button. News of these ancillary services cheered him up somewhat and he promised to have his daughter organise the applications.

By the time we arrived at the old bugger’s house, he was in better spirits and obviously relieved to be home. Before alighting he offered me a handshake in gratitude, a claw-like arthritic hand with beautifully smooth skin. This coupled with his wave goodbye had me feeling like I’d received a bonus, and so the remainder of the shift was a breeze.

Rank Rats

One group of passengers who really annoy me are taxi rank rats. Those people who on seeing a line of waiting passengers walk away from the rank to pinch an approaching cab. When they hail me it’s a real struggle not to give them the finger, but then there’s much satisfaction in pointing to the rank as I pass by, thus highlighting their cheating.

However the most despicable rank-jumpers are those who steal taxis from either the elderly, women alone or with children, or the incapacitated. They are utter bastards, as are the many cabbies who will stop and pick them up.

There once was a taxi regulation which stipulated no pick-ups within 200 metres of a cab rank. A rule expressly created to protect those waiting in line from selfish rank jumpers.

Yesterday afternoon I encountered rank rats outside Concord Hospital. On approach, twenty metres short of the rank, two women aged in their thirties hailed me. Slowing down I intuitively checked the rank and, sure enough, waiting there was an old man on a walking stick, feebly waving to me.

Another woman emerged from the footpath crowd and marched across the road hailing me. As with the first hailers I pointed to the old man waiting at the rank, when what I really wanted to say to her was, "Imagine that’s your father, waiting to get home during the afternoon rush hour with no one to help him secure a cab."

Rather than acknowledge my pointing finger she feigned ignorance and looked off into the distance for the next approaching cab to steal. Rank rat.