The next bloody idiot award goes to .....

ANZ

Charging me $25 for going over my account balance by $10 at the ATM. Do they have figured out that instead of saying "sorry you don't have enough funds" they just give you the money and charge $25 without warning.

They probably have some analysis that shows that customers:

1. don't blame the bank when the customer goes overdrawn
2. don't leave because of this

They then came to the conclusion that this was money for nothing and they could not resist.

This may be true in the short term, but here is at lease one customer that will not buy more from ANZ because of this. In fact banks have found it very difficult to get customers to buy other products outside the basic normal ones. While customers trust banks and are not unhappy with the service they are reluctant to buy other products from them. In part, in my opinion, because of the types of behaviours in billings and fees that I recently experienced.

I've Loved You So Long

Last night I went to see this film. Today a melancholy has descended. Why?

The film is powerful as described in the reviews and Kristen Scott Thomas puts out ones of the best performances I have seen in a while. Actually all the actors do a great job.

The story is nothing really special, nothing that we haven't seen you. The prison of the mind blah blah blah.

Why the melancholy? Certainty there is something here about the futility of life and the meaningless of it all. Scott Thomas captures the feels so well and reminds me of some thoughts I would rather forget. For today this film has really struck a chord that will resonates on.

Customer

Listening to a talk about the music industry yesterday.

The quote to remember - "When you have come to think of your customers as the enemy then you know its not going to end well."

In the example, the music industry resisted online downloading and tried to stop it rather than recognizing it as a great opportunity. They got court out by thinking that they controlled the distribution channels. The technology created new possibilities that they failed to anticipate. This is not usual. Most new Technologies do this to some extent.


Does this apply to financial services also? Perhaps in a slightly different way. Certainly it feels like banks use there position to control what customers can do and they change things in quiet a disrespectful way. Will it change? will technology come the rescue of the ordinary bank customer? Will the any new players end up like the old ones, corrupted by money and laziness?

Movies from the Film festival part 1

Young @ Heart

• What a great film, I hope that I am like this at there age

Grow your own

Crossed Tracks

• Nice little thriller

Quiet Chaos

• A man who world falls apart. after the wifes death

Black Ice

• Finland reminds me of Canada

Fugitive Pieces

• A bit self indulgent for me

Bloody Idiot award

Bloody Idiot Awards:

I decided there needs to be an award for people or organizations that are so out of tune with current thinking and culture that the only thing that I can think of is to call them a bloody idiot.

First award goes to Optus for charging you to pay the bill. They charge for all internet and electronic billings but not for cheques.

Second award goes to anyone who thinks Wikipedia is a bad thing.

Respect

Respect is a word rooted in our internal beliefs about the value of another human being. It is a word to describe the fundamental nature of a relationship between humans.

Goal 1: Showing respect at ALL times. A patient, agendaless respect

Goal 2: Receiving respect at ALL times, Expecting to receive respect at all times. Staying respectful in cases of adversity and stress


Footnote:
Does one receive respect?

Broome reflections

To remember

Big Sky and long flat beach into the Warm warm Indian ocean.
The super friendly and service oriented people
Waiting to long for dinner and getting a couple of free pints
The sky observation lession
The free ride to the airport from the scooter guy
The pearls, the expensive pearls. No deals here

In the end there is really not much to do here, but it is a nice place.

Over the Fence Film festival

Generally a disappointment, but some good movies

Movies included, the good:

• You Better watch out
• Shit Happens

Movies, the mildly amusing:

• Animal Instincts - fighting animals
  
• The Long Wooden Tobacconist - Quebec
  
• The note - The letter tells and guides the story
• Edgar and Elizabeth -kind of sweet, not no real ending
• Silencer
• Nobody likes a Mime - two mimes meet and one gets revenge on the other
  

Movies , the not so good:

• That Cow film
• Bubbles
• Bad Timing
• Peanut butter fish pockets
• Richard
• No regrets, No remorse

Heart of Gold Film Fest

Quiet a little surprise

Highlights for me

Cheat Neutral
Validation - everyone needs validation

Very Good

Butterfly Man
Bloody Footy
Estranged - wrong number
Fancy - Umm FANCY!
In the Mood
Big Girl

OK

Fast Spin Fling
Sad Dog

Painting

Been Painting the living room.

Painting the board walls is easy, fast and very rewarding. In 15 minutes you can stand back and you have changed the room. The feel and feeling you have in the room is very different.

But after that initial feeling it is not so great. It is obviously missing something. It is not finished.

There are the edges. The edges demand patience and concentration. (Aside: I Don't really like to use masking tape it generally does not stick well and create a complete seal and so when the tape is removed if edge is always fuzzy. I like the old fashioned approach of painting the line)

In order to get the edge straight and clear you need to be up close and use skills and techniques learned from previous painting experiences. However you also need to stand back regularly and ensure that the line is straight, you need to get some perspective to ensure the line has not strayed from the line needed.

It occurs to me that this is not unlike running a business. You need to get into the detail because it is in the attention of the little things that success is found. However the detail without knowing the line of travel can be misleading. Time and time again the businesses I see do not get this.

Another thought, 1 day later I am examining the wall, overall it looks great, but as I get closer I notice some fluff off the paint brush and the occasional rough patch. This reminds me that when i was painting the wall I realize what a poor job the last paint job was. Look close enough at anything and you can see the problems. Even the wall begins to seems dented and not square.

Stand back, enjoy beauty of what you have created.

Today's Wonders

Watching a train enter a tunnel. There is something inevitable and smooth about the train seemlessly disappearing.

HQF - High Quality Foam on the morning coffee. Soft and firm and ceamy. Yummy.

What time is it at the South Pole?

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=468

Seems odd, perhaps there are only 2 times, winter and summer

Flight

OK I guess I basically have some understanding of the concepts of evolution and it generally makes good sense, but when I think about something specific, it is more difficult to understand. Flight, for example, how did flight start? Lots of theories are around, most seem to be simply that theories based on the possible, with little evidence.

Flights seems like such a binary thing. Either the bird can or cannot fly. How do you go from arms to wings or even gills to wings, in the case of insects?

There is evidence about adaptions once flight has been achieved and it is easy to image how selection improvements might improve flight.

There are plenty of theories about what happened and why it happened. But how did it happen really? What is the process by which a gill becomes a wing. It would seem to be a multi- generational set of changes that are more that random genetic variation. What forces where at work? What are the intermediate stages. It occurs to me that for Evolution to be successful all the variations that ultimately lead to flight must also be beneficial in their own wright. That is if, say full flight is 10 generations from gills in a insect. Each of these generations must have been at least moderately successful. Successful enough to be able to ensure survival to the next generation.

Can it really be that animals descending of trees developed gliding and ultimately wings? Fossel records seem currently to be missing the transitional species that would provide the clue to the path taken to flight. Why are these transitional species missing? Is is because in fact fossel records are extremely incomplete? Is if that these transitional species existed for only a short time?

More I think about this the more mystifying it appears to be. Evolution must certainly be a complex and amazing process.


http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/flight/converge.html

Release me

I am the wilderness locked in a cage
I am a growing force you kept in place
I am a tree reaching for the sun
Please don't hold me down
Please don't hold me down

I am a rolling wave without the motion
A glass of water longing for the ocean
I am an asphalt flower breaking free but you keep stopping me
Release me
Release me

I am the rain that's coming down on you
That you shielded yourself from with a roof
I am the fire burning desperately but you're controlling me
Release me
Release me

Memories or Melbourne

• Pha Lap and other legends
• The whole town dressed up and partying for the week
  
• The Melbourne Cup
• MCG and MCC
• The Mornington Coast
• The Ridge and Tgallant and Ten Minutes by Tractor
• Victoria and South Markets
• Jan, friendly and direct and Imaging Philip Island
• Disappearing in the Dendenong Ranges. Rhododendrons and Broad Mountain Vistas from Yering station winery

Ganhi on Happiness

"Happiness is when what you say, what you think, and what you do are in perfect harmony." -Gandhi

Leaders

“A leader has the right to be beaten, but never the right to be surprised”

– Napoleon Bonaparte.

The human condition

Alternating Bored and Scared and sometimes both.......

What do we value

Do we value art oddly?

We appear to:

• Old over the new
• Dead over living
• Technical proficiency over passion

Art is expression of emotion, why have we imposed these values? Do we need to do this to help us know how to react?

Existentialism

Existentialism

A philosophical movement of the 19th and 20th centuries stressing individual freedom and human choice;

Existentialism is based on the idea that human beings shape their own existence and give meaning to it through their own choices and actions.

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).