Planet Properties

Do you think they have called? Pah. They said they would call on Monday this week, and it is now Tuesday.

Planet Properties - It would seem it is too good to be true.

Emma called earlier today and said "Oh, there isn't enough money in the owner's account to draw the cheque, so we will have to wait until Monday/ Tuesday and we will keep you informed." I asked her how much it would be for and she said it would be for $137:50. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but that isn't the whole amount - they seem to be missing $50. Would that be the same amount as the amount for cleaning the blinds, which they still haven't sent us a copy of the receipt for? I may have to pass this over to Ed again... he is the strong one - I am the polite and retiring one.

Planet Properties - Is this too good to be true?

Many of you will recall the palaver of us living in Petersham under the reign of Planet Properties estate agents (Varying from inept to idiotic to plain morons, imho and experience).
Having moved out nearly 3 months ago, the agents claimed money from the bond for flea treatment (weird, as there were no fleas when we left, and certainly no fleas when we arrived in our new place, so don't quite know how we managed that) to the tune of $137.50 and $50 for cleaning the blinds (which were damaged by damp, and therefore not our responsibility to fix).
We took all this in good faith and were just pleased to be out of there, until we faced continual refusals on the part of Nick Arena to forward copies of the receipts to prove they'd actually done the work.
Anyway, after much to-do, the lovely Emma (very helpful, and my impression is that she gets to clear up all the mess made by everyone else) gave me a call to tell us that we were going to be reimbursed for the money they had claimed from the bond as they still hadn't done the treatment, and the tenants had confirmed that they were not having any problems, and they wouldn't be able to perform the treatment now anyway, as it was so long since we had moved out it would essentially be unethical. They are going to draw a cheque today to send us the money. A longer version of this story is available on request :-D

Could this in fact be the longest encore in the world ever?

On Sunday evening, we went to The Forum to see Xavier Rudd play. Before that, we dropped into the local Duke of Wellington for a swift cheeky half... sorry, pot (for those of you who are not Australian, this is like a half a pint, only smaller, and is specially designed to look like a thimble (see, thimbles again) in anyone who is not a midget's hands). Unfortunately, I can't search for a link to the Duke as work has blocked all sites to do with... well, everything, it would seem. (Perhaps understandably, if I am searching for a pub during my lunch hour, some might argue.)
Anyway, the Duke is apparently a Melbourne institution, and is the starting point of most people heading to the MCG for an afternoon (or evening) of footie (Australian Football League). Ed and I were welcomed into the pub by the all-too-familiar smell of stale spilled beer and ageing vomit, and passed the closed bar on the left to head to other bar. At the other bar, having squuezed between some lurching idiots, I ordered my two pots, to be promptly accosted by another lurching idiot, who was, by some way, the most drunk person I have been chatted up by in a very long time. We had a nice chat about where I was from, who I was with, whether I'd been to the footie, and how dodgy the result was between the Saints and the Doctors (look it up, man! It was dodgy!). On reflection, perhaps my comments about the dodgy results were not too well made, as he was wearing red, white and black (the colours of the Saints), but he was clearly in that stage of concentrating so hard to actually stand up and form sentences of more than one word, that co-ordinating his eyes to focus and his brain enough to understand what I was saying was probably too much for the poor fellow, and I made a sharp exit beneath the smelly armpit and outflung arm of another drunkard to the (relative) safety of the other room and Ed.
Where we had rather a lovely 15 minutes of discussing the merits of the pub, and the fact it was definitely a beer pub rather than a wine pub, as the bar where we had ordered had no wine glasses, and the other bar (the closed one) had only three! Ed promptly christened that bar The Wine Bar.
Anyway, meeting up with Jim, we headed off to rather delicious Thai place along Russell St (apparently crack central? and also home to lots of gangs? You heard it here first. Hah.) where we ate yummy food and drank lovely iced tea.
And then we headed back to The Forum. Which is, quite distinctly, one of the most amazing buildings in Melbourne. It is neo-Gothic on the outside (OK, I am blantantly making up the architecture names here, but it has gargoyles and everything on the outside, so it must be neo-Gothic, alright?!) with amazing gargoyles and a superb tower with vaguely Islamic style windows, topped by an enormous dome with lights on it (see, extraordinary). You must just remember to look up, as the front entrance and whole of the lower floor is quite bland in comparison. Once inside, it's almost neo-Classical with elements of Art Deco (see, making it up), with beautiful statues, Art Deco lamps and candelabra, and the most gloriously blue ceilings with tiny lamps, so when lit up it looks like a night sky. I wandered around with my mouth open for quite half an hour once inside, pointing and going "wow" inanely.
The support act was someone called Karus (or something) and was ok (had a set of lungs on him, I can tell you), although we were a little confused as we had been told it was a hip hop support act, and he was more country and western yee-har, only less so.
After he'd gone, some security dude from Camp Sovereignty came on stage and spoke at length about the "unfinished business", "unresolved issues", genocide and stolen land, and then a group of Aborigines camp on stage in their loincloths and tribal paint and performed some excellent dances. And then an older dude who was positively enormous and had the most gigantic and amazing beard that could have harboured entire flocks of birds did sensational impressions of animals on the didgereedoo (or ukade in Aboriginal, I believe). He was excellent. (Maybe more on this later).
Then Xavier Rudd came on and played for about an hour with a really cool mix of mellow and upbeat tunes. The lights went down and we all cheered for an encore and he came back on and played No Woman, No Cry. Now, in my humble opinion, all versions of this other than the original should actually be banned, so this was not a good start to the encore. A couple more extremely mellow songs went past and my feet are hurting a little, but it's cool, cos I know it's not going to last forever. However, he continues playing. And playing. And playing. The songs become more and more dull (they are way beyond mellow and interesting now), and then he decides to play a version of Let it Be (this should also be banned), and we finally get to leave the establishment an hour and a half later! The dude has played a longer encore than first set - what is the go with this? Plus, he'd played all his good tunes in the first bit, and just nicked a couple from other people in the second bit!
Now, I'm not saying he's not a great performer - he is - and he was clearly having an amazing time on stage, but he really needs to sort out his play list, or write some more good tunes or something. Most amusing parts of the second bit were his stories. One story (bearing in mind he's quite a mellow dude) goes that there was a sacred hill in QLD, and it was invaded, and the original dwellers eventually stood up for themselves and said "OK, you try to come up here again and we'll stick spears in you." Pacific, man.
Next time: quite while you're ahead!

Anyway, question for you for today is: How long was the longest encore you have ever seen?