Like many schools, my school has some classrooms that are divided by a doors that you can collapse and make one larger room. While getting ready for the tremendously successful Art and Technology Show, I was putting the wall back in place, and it is possible that I was not entirely conscious of where both of my hands were.
But I noticed pretty quickly when two of the segments of the wall joined on my right hand. It hurt so much that I did briefly wonder if I might be severed the ends of my fingers, but it wasn’t anything so dramatic. But it was bleeding so I took myself to the general office to get a something to slow it down.
As it happened, the hurt enough for me to go into shock, so I had a little lie down on the floor of the office which Krista and Jenny clean up and hand and looked after me for about a hour, until the colour returned to my face and I could stand up without waddling.
It certainly throbbed for a whole and, three days later, those fingertips are still a bit tender. But it’s all okay. But I did work a couple of half days after that since it took a bit of out of me.
We’ve been interested in having an EV rather than a petrol-powered car for a while now but we figured that it would be a while until the prices came down. I hadn’t driven one myself until recently, but I was a passenger in my brother’s EV about a year ago and it was impossible not to be impressed by how quiet it was and how eye-wateringly fast the acceleration was.
After my friend Shannon bought a hybrid, we thought about EVs again. The news that both MG and GWM has models for less than $40,000 helped. So we went and test drove the GWM Ora here in Geelong. It was fun to drive. Really zippy and features out the wazoo.
Like many families, we have had two cars, but they are rarely both in use and it’s almost never unavoidable. So we traded both of the cars in and, for less than $20,000 got ourselves a brand new, red Ora. It is sold in some markets as the Funky Cat and it does have gorgeous and playful lines.
Part of the calculous is that we don’t have to pay registration and insurance for two cars and that’s money saved right there. The new car also comes with 5 years of fixed-price servicing, at only $99 each time. Finally, it is just cheap to run.
Our Kia Sportage cost about $70 to fill and the Mitsubishi Mirage was about $35. Each of them did about 500 km on a full tank, and the new Ora says that it does 400 km, but realistically it is slow to charge to 100% charged.
I charged it the other day from about 20% to 80%, and it soaked up 37.44kWh
If we charged it at home off the solar power only (which would be easy to do on a sunny day), it would have cost us $1.80 in lost earnings from what we would use instead of uploading to the grid.
If we charged at home on off-peak power, that would have cost $8.23
If we charged at home with peak-priced power, that would have cost $12
If we used the fast charger over in Waurn Ponds, it would have cost $16.84.
This would have been the fastest option, of course.
And using the charger at the community centre 800 metres away, it was free.
So, whichever way we charge it, it is much cheaper than putting petrol into it.
It is slower than filling the car with petrol, but we would almost never do more than 300km in a day so charging it overnight would be cheap ($12) and entirely manageable. And, if push comes to shove, we could change it on the road and perhaps pay $16.
So, as you can probably guess, I am very happy with our new car.
Like almost everyone else, we stream music from our phones in the car, but I was looking at all the songs that I have on CD and I decided to make a USB drive to give us some choice for when we are not connected to the phone.
There was so much space on the drive, that my only real criteria was whether I thought it would be an album I might enjoy while driving.
1989 ABBA Gold A Brief History … Live A Few Small Repairs Afterglow A Hard Day’s Night All You Can Eat Awake Is The New Sleep Baby Animals Barricades & Brickwalls Beatles 1 Beatles For Sale Best Of David Bowie 1969-1974 Best Of John Lennon Better Times Big Canoe Bitch Epic Blue Horse Born at the Right Time Bruce Springsteen Greatest Hits Career Moves Chinatown Chutes Too Narrow Comedy Come On Feel The Illinoise! Come On Feel The Lemonheads Cover Girl Crowded House Crowded House Live Album Cry Cry Cry Dear Children Deeper Water Drag Electric Soup End Of The Summer Enzso Epic Theatre Eternal Nightcap Everyone Is Here Farewell to the World Fine Young Cannibals Finn Goin’ Your Way Gossip Graceland Grown Man Harley & Rose Hell Among The Yearlings Hello Love Help Hidden Things Hold On To Me Home Home To You I Don’t Think I’m Pregnant Infamous Angel Ingenue In Time: The Best Of R.E.M. Intriguer It’s A Shame About Ray Jagged Little Pill Joe Jackson Live Joe Jackson Live 2 Just A Note Let It Be Life’s Rich Pageant Lucky Charm Magical Mystery Tour Many Great Companions Money For Nothing More Love Songs Mortal City Mrs. Robinson & Being Around Must I Paint You A Picture__ The Essential Billy Bragg My Better Self Mystery Girl My Third Husband New Beginning No Angel Nothing But A Dream Oh, Inverted World On How Life Is Out Of Time Out There Live Please Please Me Post Queen: Greatest Hits Radio Songs Red Dirt Girl Revival Revolver Rhythm Of The Saints Rubber Soul Shaking The Tree_ 16 Golden Greats Shelter Me Sink Or Swim Social Studies So Damn Happy – Live So Much Water So Close To Home Songs From The Rain Songs From the South Soul Journey Spellbound (Disc 1) Spellbound (Disc 2) Steady On Stop Making Sense String Of Pearls Summertown Tea & Sympathy Tea For The Tillerman Temple Of Low Men The Beatles (Disc 1) The Beauty Of The Rain The Best Of David Bowie 1974-1979 The Best Of Spandau Ballet The Best of the Commitments The Blues Brothers Soundtrack The Boy With the Arab Strap The Captain The Captain – Bonus Disc The Cat Empire The Concert In Central Park The Definitive Monkees The Definitive Monkees Limited Edition The Definitive Simon & Garfunkel The Green World The Harrow & The Harvest The Honesty Room The Honeymoon is Over The King Is Dead The Lemonheads The Life Pursuit The Merri Soul Sessions The Moon Looked On The Platinum Collection [Disc 3] The Raw And The Cooked The Very Best Of Elton John (Disc 1) The Very Best Of Elton John (Disc 2) The Very Best of the Beach Boys The Waifs Time (The Revelator) Time On Earth Tim Finn Together Alone Tracy Chapman Two Shoes Two Wings Ultimate Collection Up All Night Urban Hymns Vagabond Lullabies Vika and Linda Wanted Man Ways & Means What’s the Story (Morning Glory) What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have (Bonus Track Version) Wincing the Night Away With the Beatles Woodface Words And Music Wrecking Ball Write About Love
My friend Shannon is visiting us again, and it’s been twenty years since she was last here. This time, we did a bit more touring, and I want to preserve some of my memories and impressions, so here goes. This might be terribly dull.
Shannon and I started off with Ballarat and Sovereign Hill. I have been there twice already this year, once with Finley and another time with Nicky, so there wasn’t much that was new to me. But Shannon is interested in this sort of thing as much as I am, and it was interested to see it through her eyes. And I always enjoy being there, even without excellent company.
I don’t have anything especially profound or interesting to say about Sovereign Hill, but we did stay in a place called Craig’s Royal Hotel, which is quite grand and elderly. I know this is almost always the case, but I am always struck by how much smaller hotel rooms are in person compared to the photos. And, on an unrelated item, the mass of poker machines in such an old and grand establishment was a bit jarring. But such is life in hotels these days. I can say though that it was a good place to stay and I’d recommend it.
Then we drove to Swan Hill in my little car. I was a little bit worried about how many car would do on the open road with two people and luggage, but it was fine. The most direct route didn’t take us through any towns of decent size, but it was interesting to go through a bunch of little places and just take in the changing country side.
We did stop for lunch in Kerang, which was larger than I was expected. The cafe had newspapers covering some of the walls, some from as early as 1980, and this was interesting in its own way. I was particularly interested in these computer jobs in the early 80s.
Things had not been busy and Sovereign Hill on a Sunday, but it was really quiet at the Pioneer Settlement on a week day that was not in school holidays. We worried that it might be super dull, but we ended up there for about three hours and all the little shops and whatnot ended up being quite interesting. We even went for a trip in a terribly old Dodge, which was good fun, and looked at various bit of farm machinery. Not high excitement, to be sure, but interesting enough.
We did the paddle-steamer trip mid-afternoon, and we really enjoyed that, too. It was pleasant and leisurely way to see the river. The experience of the Pioneer Settlement was gently paced but I really enjoyed it.
We went back at night for the sound-and-light show. I had seen something with the same name there in the early 80s when I was on a school camp, but this was entirely new and updated, as you’d expected after more than 40 years. I think the advertising material called it something like awe-inspiring and it certainly wasn’t that. But it was interesting, well presented, and just the right length. Surprisingly, there were about 50 people there.
So that’s about it for that part of the trip. Next up, part of the art silo trail and the stick shed.
