This is Bourke St, looking east. Bourke St is a single city block worth of road that has been cut off from traffic, except for police and trams. For those of you who live in cities without trams, they are about 20 feet long and weigh in excess of 3 metric ton.
This is a person, who for the purposes of this article, shall be referred to as "tram girl." I saw tram girl as you see her now, wandering up and down Bourke St, with a very loud megaphone. Her job for the day - and to quote "I am not making this up" - was to wander up and down yelling at people with said megaphone to get out of the way of the trams.
Did I mention that they weighed 3 ton +? And that they are 20 foot plus long? And that they are bright green? And that their tracks run up the middle of the street? And that they have a bell?
Yet there obviously sufficient numbers of people getting run over by trams to cause the Public Transport corporation to feel the urge to employ an extra staff member to make sure that the rabid Christmas shoppers don't shove each other underneath the wheels in an effort to get that extra bargain. No loss - thats one less pram to destroy my ankles.
Did I mention I hate present shopping? I'd much rather take people shopping and see what they like and then buy them that. Everyone is satisfied then. They get something neat and I don't angst for two hours over "I hope they like this". Ever noticed that people tend to buy you things they like, and that they are hoping will overlap with your tastes?
Anyway, back to the chase. If I have to go shopping, there are only a few places I'm happy to go. Brunswick St, Ackland St and Royal Arcade.
Not sure why I like Royal Arcade - there aren't many shops there
that I like to go into. Maybe its just
Gog and Magog. Maybe its the fun
of blinding the gothicesque heading for Morticia's with the
supernova flash on the camera. Dungeon is ok, but its a little ... close.
Especially with the CCG children.
The reason? The bin in the photo is on wheels and seemed to be semi-autonomous. It spent its time wandering around pestering people, demanding rubbish, and threatening them in its green mesh way.... well, ok, no it didn't, it just wandered back and forth.
Observed evidence suggested it was part of a government sponsored project to seperate geeks from the rest of the population. On seeing this bin, much thought was given to the possible ways it could be created, how you would send it around on a preset path, but also give it sensors so it wouldn't bump into people. We also speculated on how you would prevent it from being stolen or moved, which would confuse its program.
Of course, in the end, the more prosaic, but probably cheaper
way of creating a control chip for such a complex robot was
noticed.
Other incidents of the day trip included street artists of the music and visual media (Performance art in my own home!).
In case you care, we ended up going to Ackland St and buying a lot of books. Yes, I like them. Too bad.
