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Wednesday, 10 April 2002 |
The nice folks at Jalna, the makers of the best yoghurt in Oz, phoned up and we discussed this situation of my favourite of their products being unavailable in all the supermarkets in Perth, with the chief culprits being Coles and Woolworths.
It is so rare when you send an email via a corporate website that you ever get a reply, much less a phone call. I can think of dozens of firms large and small who simply do not bother to answer customer enquiries. You know what I am speaking about, IBM (and all you others too). Each unanswered email is a customer you have suddenly lost.
These guys at Jalna have won even more loyalty from me now.
2:06:27 PM 
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I met a Romanian-Australian guy yesterday at Edith Cowan University, Alin Huma, who was there looking for collections of images of Perth to publish in a little book he is working on. I showed him the terrible scans of part of A Poverty of Desire that I published on the Web years ago. He seems interested.
I shot A Poverty of Desire partly during the time I spent at the university. Odd that it has taken a return visit there to finally find a publisher.
12:25:11 PM
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It turns out the studios of Channel 31 are located in the Media buildings of the Mount Lawley campus of Edith Cowan University. I went for a walk yesterday afternoon and took a detour through the university, where I used to teach in the Media department years ago.
They are still teaching the same old things there. It is as if the last fifteen years have never happened, and as if the Internet and the digital media have never existed.
Nice to know where the folks who help make my day are broadcasting from, however. Thank you Channel 31 for Deutsche Welle and the BBC World News. I can’t live without them.
11:45:15 AM
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Perth has entered the moleskin months, that time of year when you drag your warm winter clothing out of the box where it has been vacationing over the summer months, and parade around in it.
The winter clothes I wear the most are of course my RM Williams black moleskin jeans, especially since I am usually to be found standing or sometimes sitting in front of the computer, or pacing up and down my unheated workroom. Bare feet, warm legs and lower body, Patagonia vest or pullover on the upper part over a Patagonia Silkweight black t-shirt.
I must get a new pair of moleskins. I found one of the old ones has shrunk too much to wear comfortably although the other two are still OK. They take ages to dry in the winter, so you need several pairs. The Patagonia gear, on the other hand, dries incredibly fast, a matter of minutes hanging up in a room with no breezes.
11:40:04 AM
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My friends Santi from Berlin and Thomas from Århus and I have a running joke that is based on the realities of living on Perth. It works much better when we meet in fleshspace, because you can make the gestures and faces that go along with the words.
Zis does NOT EXIST!
Like all the best jokes there is a note of desperation in it. It grew out of the response you get when you ask about something that you know exists in the civilised world, and even in the rest of Australia. The person you are speaking with gazes down at you with lovingkindness in their eyes, and in the sweetest of tones assures you that the thing of which you speak simply does not exist. (You poor little deluded mental patient, you.)
You learn never to ask about anything you seek, if you don’t want that kind of response. Of course, the thing in question does exist, and most likely has even existed on Perth at some point, but as it is not right in front your respondent’s eyes just at that very moment then they simply do not want to know about it.
Having dismissed it from existence for all time in their minds, they now seek to do the same in yours. If you are naïve, or have never travelled beyond the bounds of Perthspace, chances are you will gratefully accept their dictate of nonexistence.
10:36:55 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
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