from the library with love

here i am in one of the UQ e-zones, having left the apartment and the chain-smoking flatmate for the day, in search of an environment more conducive to boring-arsed neuroscience report writing. and i may have found it. although, granted, it's not hard to beat my home study space - wedged between a construction site, a main road, and Channel 10 in surround sound. ne'ertheless, i have work to do...

i fear for this city

so tomorrow we vote.

If you've been relying on the media to inform you of your choices, you'd be forgiven for thinking that there are only two candidates for Mayor, or perhaps three if you caught the ironic mention in the Sunday Mail of the difficulty the Greens candidate has getting media coverage.

Actually, there are six candidates for Mayor. There'd be seven if the porn star hadn't stuffed up her electoral enrolment. If you want to at least know their names; go to Brisbane City Council - Election 2004 - Candidate information.

i experienced the joy of a survey the other night; asking my views on Tim Quinn and Campbell Newman. the "do you like these candidates" question was easy; the "who will you vote for" question wasn't. sadly Tamara Tonite isn't running so I have nobody to vote for. but that's trivial compared with the fact that i think both of the most likely candidates are a bad option for our city... but one of them is going to be running the place for the next few years.

yikes.

32 Degrees in the shade

Queensland is one gigantic hothouse.
Brisbane is the hub of that. It is steamy and humid. I am a kiwi by origin and I've been here nearly 11 years and I still find it sticky. I love the weather but I hate the humidity.
I am starting to get used to it slightly though.

The worst part about the humidity is the sweat. I sweat easily and lots so walking anywhere in a business suit in Brisbane during the day turns me into a wet shirted uncomfortable person.

The weather though is perfect. 9 days out of 10 it is beautiful weather and the 10th day it is perfect. Even the rain is nice (most of the time.) The rain is warm and fast and heavy. It can be sunny one minute and belting down a topical shower of enough intensity to strip leaves off trees and paint of rooves (not quite) and 5-10 minutes later be sunny again. This is a fairly infrequent thing however. I compare to New Zealand where it might rain for 5-8 days almost non stop. Here it might rain continuously at most for 1-2 days. And that's a long wet period!
We recently had 3 weeks of rain most days for an hour or so a day and that is the wettest I have ever seen it here.

The heat is nice. Most times the temperature is around 27-35 degrees C summer and 21-29 C in winter.

I love Brisbane!

Brisneyland

The Cube Collective invites contributions from young and emerging artists and anyone and everyone with something to say about Brisbane.

Respond to any one of the following questions:

1. Your quintessential Brisbane experience?

2. 32 degrees in the shade?

3. All my friends are leaving Brisbane?

Contributions can be made in any medium: text, photography, visual arts, graphic design, cartoons, animation, video, or any art form that can be represented in hard copy or CD-Rom form. Each contribution must address one question and multimedia entries are encouraged.

Get creative, kiddies! :-)

Struggling with the unfamiliar challenges of budget management, I've found myself three times in the past week down in the Broadway Food Court, making cheap dinners out of late-afternoon marked-down lunch leftovers. I know it's not the best way to eat... but really, I couldn't make a pizza for two dollars...

Hello. I am new to Brisbane... but I have noticed that most people seem to be new to Brisbane. That is, that rarely do you meet someone who has lived here their whole life - it appears to me a most transient city - fluidly populated. I suppose that coming from the rough-tough streets of South-West Sydney (famous for its gang-rapes, dodgy hospitals, and Mark Latham) - where low-income housing forms the enclosure for our shameful working class - anywhere will look dynamic by comparison. And then, I base this observation on a handful of chance conversations with fellow students. But it was surprising to find everyone complaining about the Summer heat. I would have thought that some of the more long-term inhabitants would be used to living in a sauna by now. Still, the bright lights of Bris Vegas have drawn me in - is there a seedy underbelly I am yet to discover? Ooh... Meanwhile, look for me riding along the bicentennial bikeway in long black (work) pants: drenched in sweat.

Ecogeek

Speaking of Commodore 64s, this is the funky junk sculpture that adorns the door of eco geek, the dead-computer-fixer-uppers at reverse garbage in West End, where as well as a $50 working computer, you can get foam, doorknobs, fabric bits, interesting wood and lots of other repurposed junk stuff. And they have a bike shop too.

BrisBurbanBanner

I thought it was time for a change of banner. While the old one (still accessible here) celebrated Brisbane's burgeoning night-time economy, this time it's a celebration of the suburbs - which is where most of us live, after all.

Feel free to make new ones and email them to brisvegasbloggers{at}hotmail{dot}com so I can rotate the eye candy more frequently.

brisvegas public transport: using cutting edge technology!

Gallery: Commodore 64 is Alive! - Analogik, Brisbane, Australia. We probably shouldn't complain, since that particular system isn't so bad. The real problem is the fact the buses don't actually turn up when they're supposed to. That, along with the high price, slow service, psychotic drivers and unairconditioned rattlers which tend to catch fire.