Monday, August 04, 2003

Sunny Monday
Yes, after weeks of feeling that winter was definitely on its way, and now that all our visitors have gone home, the sun has come out to play again. Yay!

This all adds to the festive atmosphere, and makes things like free live music in the park very attractive lunchtime distractions. It also makes it hard to go back to my office in the attic in the afternoon.

Last night we saw Daniel Kitson's show, a made up story. I thought it was going to be stand-up, but it wasn't (guess I didn't read my programme in enough detail). It was funny though. Not hilarious, but funny, and quite clever. And an amazing feat to perform - an elaborate tale of interconnected lives, precisely timed with a filmed backdrop, and with some quite complex linguistic moments that any lesser mortal would have surely tripped over. And the venue is circular ( a bit like a big top) so he was constantly whirling around, but managed not to fall over or tie a knot in his microphone cord. I was quite impressed.

And now something I'm less impressed with. When you pay for things by SWITCH (what is commonly known as EFTPOS in more advanced civilisations), you don't enter a pin number. No siree. You just sign the till receipt and walk away with the goodies. This system seems way too easy to defraud - steal someone's wallet and you can really go shopping! The banks have seemingly just cottoned on to this, and there are rumours of PINs being introduced this year. What??? No!!! That's a crazy idea! In an effort to win the public round (they really don't want to change), there have been lots of articles in the press about how PINs are actually a good thing, and with a wee bit of effort you might just be able to remember the number. Mind you, Ingrid and Nick weren't even issued PIN numbers on their SWITCH cards (I'm not going to get into the inefficiency of banks here, it's too long a story), so they would have been a bit stuck.

Speaking of inefficiencies, gotta go do some (laborious, painful) internet banking. See ya!

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