"No good deed goes unpunished" - Paul, 9:13

Being nice is supposed to pay off yeah?

I extend the courtesy of a lift to the movies to Paul, since he has driven me many a-place. Get to Paul’s house but expensively photographed on the way. 8.20pm. Head towards a screening of Ocean’s 13. Perfectly on time. Car suddenly refuses to accelerate, then dies and refuses to start again. Hazard lights on. Walk back to Paul’s house. It’s bitterly cold out. Try to jump-start my car with cables connected to his. Fail. It’s not the battery – the lights still work. Call home. Call RACV. Wait. And wait. Dad arrives. RACV man soon after. Car needs towing. The ignition coil isn’t “switching”. Tow truck arrives. I thank Paul profusely and he goes home. Movieless. Tow truck follows Dad and I home.

If I hadn’t offered Paul a lift…

Dale.

An Annoucement

Square brackets are in.
Gone are the days of rounded ones.
So use square brackets; they're much cooler.
In the future, when people are only using square brackets [or parenthesis if you will], promise that you will think of me.
It can be my legacy to the world.

Thank you all,
Dale.

And Wah-lah! Pt.2

My McDonalds uniform consists of:

• Black pants.
• Black shoes and socks (although I normally cheat on the socks – there’s yet to be a sock inspection to my knowledge).
• A belt.
• A short-sleeve, blue, button-up shirt.
• A cap.
• And a name badge.

Why am I telling you this? Because it was very, very cold on Thursday night when I had to work. So cold, that the freezer downstairs almost paled by comparison.

‘But Dale, you work inside the store. Surely it must be warm in there.’

True, my perceptive friend. However when you’re working drive thru you have to open the window every time a car comes to cash their order, and every time I did so it was like a blizzard flew in and chilled me to the core. Most of you will know that I don’t have a lot of fat on me; as far as insulation goes I’m not very well equipped. So every time my headset beeped my heart sank and I dreaded every second leading up to the inevitable sliding open of the window and frosty blast of wind to the face.

It was painstakingly busy Thursday night too. Puzzlingly, everyone seemed to be ordering sundaes. Sundaes are THE MOST annoying thing to make. The topping dispensers are temperamental at best, and it’s a given that the poor soul who has to make the sundaes ends up with caramel/chocolate all over their hands. I felt so sorry for the girl at the next window who had to make them all. Sorry, but extremely grateful that it wasn’t me!

It was the last time that I would be working with Simone on Thursday night, too. She’s grown on me I’ll admit. I helped her with her manager’s close (stayed back until 2 despite finishing at 12), and did a few other things to help out everyone else. We blue-toothed each other some songs before we left, and even took a picture together… Which I may or may not have decided to put up. We have a lot more in common than I first thought. And I’m not just saying that because she said I looked really hot on MySpace. :)

Last night I went to Paul’s house, which was good. We watched movies and I tripped down the stairs; all the components of an enjoyable evening. I’m a clumsy oaf by the way. His dogs like me. I like his dogs. Oh and we had Warheads. Paul dipped one of his in his coke to try and make it less sour, but it had the opposite effect and super-soured it. Quite hilarious actually. :)

Dale.

Et Voila!

Finally, another Daley News post! And this is not just any post, no, it’s a jumble post; containing the wonderfully random and debatably silly content you’ve come to expect on here.

Once again my apologies for the mini-hiatus (wow, off to such a good start with vocab already). I’d say it won’t happen again, but that would probably be a lie, because well, I’m just plain lazy sometimes. So I won’t say it won’t happen again, but I will say that it possibly may not potentially occur once more. (Clearly there has to be at least one jumble sentence in a jumble post!)

I saw an IMM on Tuesday night, and again today with Paul. It’s called Summer Storm. It’s a German film, which means subtitles, but that didn’t detach from its success in engaging me. Thank you Luke for lending it to me! Oh right, what’s an IMM? It’s an “incredibly moving movie” – thought of the… acronym(?) just before. Anyway, back to the movie. I think the best way to describe it is as a very rich film. Laden with all kinds of themes – growing up and struggling with identity formation, overcoming obstacles to self-happiness, and chipping away at the “us versus them” mentality of society that divides most communities. There are a few very moving sequences (Luke, I really like the part at the youth hostel when they flash to each of the main characters and then to the places of significance over the course of their trip) and also some great moments of comedy. I recommend it to anyone who likes stories about development and self-examination.

Okay, reading this over it seems that Literary Studies is having somewhat of an impact on the way I watch movies! To summarise: Dale think film good. *thumbs up*

Public transport shits me. To tears? Not quite, but almost! Buses take forever and don’t connect with trains on time, trains are about as reliable as Tony Mokbel on the day of his trial [sidenote, although I quite like the newer ones that are really quiet and have those fancy doors and the prim and proper English-sounding lady announcing stations etc.] [Secondary sidenote, to those who thought the first sidenote was going to be about my clever reference to a current event – good try, you were almost right]. Believe it or not I actually have a point to this done-to-death rant about public transport. I got on the 1:50 train from Glen Waverley at 1:40 and sat there until 1:50 when an announcement from the train driver said:

“Due to vandalism, this train will not be running. Please de-train.”

Now, I was mightily frustrated – why couldn’t they tell us this when the train arrived instead of getting our hopes up? Did they enjoy crushing people’s punctuality ambitions? And blah blah blah, but something took the edge off my anger. The train driver had actually said “de-train”. It may very well be a word in train-driver circles/literature, but to me it was just plain funny. Does one de-car every time they get out of a car? Or de-house upon locking the front door? I imagined the train driver using such logic in his everyday life and laughed. One ‘word’ had somehow alleviated my annoyance. It could very well be a useful technique for averting passenger frustration, even though I’m pretty sure it was not the train driver’s intention, but it worked. On me at least. Not sure how many people share my sense of humour though…

To be continued...

Dale.