Just got home about 20 minutes ago and was listening to the cricket on my drive home from the city.

They announced that there is a severe thunderstorm warning.

And right now i’m just watching the cricket on SBS (the Aussies have just taken “bad light”) and I can hear the thunder outside.

And now followed by some rain, and still ongoing periodic thunder.

And looks like the Bureau of Meteorogology have issued a severe Thunderstorm warning for Melbourne on their website.

This is what they’ve written:

TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST
MELBOURNE SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
for Damaging Wind Gusts, Large Hailstones and Flash Flooding
For people in the greater Melbourne area including Geelong, the Bay and the
Mornington and Bellarine Peninsulas.
Issued at 12:05 am EST on Saturday 10 September 2005

Severe thunderstorms on radar are now just 45km northwest of Melbourne and
heading south to southeastwards.

In the interests of community safety the SES suggests some simple precautions:
- Secure any loose objects in the vicinity of your home, then:
- Stay indoors if possible
- If you are outdoors, avoid sheltering under trees
- Listen to the radio station for the storm updates
- Switch off computers and electrical appliances
- Do not drive vehicles through flooded areas

As I type the rain is coming down more and more heavily.

I always find it interesting to look at the latest radar images of Melbourne to see how the weather is going. See where the rain is exactly, and how much of it is to come.

This Saturday, 10 September, is Software Freedom Day, and there will be events happening in Melbourne. From 11am until 5pm there will be free software demonstrations, including an area with Linux for kids, at Computerbank Victoria (483 Victoria St, West Melbourne). The local group page has more details about the event.

This is not just for geeks; if you are interested in having some fun and possibly learning something in a rainy Saturday afternoon, just show up.

For the last 2 months, the Age’s “Cheap Eats” guide has become almost like a second guide book to Melbourne for me. As time has gone on, I have become aware of a sub-category of Cheap Eats, and that is “Cheap As Hell Eats”. This is category that covers restaurants that offer 2-3 course meals for between $4-10, stunning bargains I reckon. For example, the Post-Deng Cafe in Little Bourke St. does a lunch time special that gets you three courses for next to nothing, or Teriyaki’s on Smith St, Collingwood who do three courses for ca. $7.00, or Cafe Zum Zum off Elizabeth St. who do 3 varieties of curry and rice for about the same; very tasty and very filling. So if anyone has any pointers for the same, feel free to let us know.

Perversely, to even the balance, after having had one of my cheaper meals in Melbourne, I went out for one of the most expensive meals I’ve had, last night at Vue de Monde, Shannon Bennett’s newly located restaurant.
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i was in town recently with my friend haha
and some visiting artists from brisbane

we went for a coffee
(see if you can guess where from the picture ;)
when we were approached by luke
who introduced himself as a creative writer
and offered to recite a piece
in the hope of a donation of a few dollars

here he is performing a piece
about writer’s block

click for full view

One of the problems of living in a building is that you rarely get to meet your neighbours. When you do, it’s usually because one of them is making too much noise and you have to ask them to stop.

So when this morning, while waiting for the elevators, I saw two girls that I had never seen before lining up besides me, I wasn’t surprised at all. I’m pretty sure I don’t know all of the people who live in my floor, even though I’ve been there for over one year already.

The elevator comes, we walk in, one of them pushes the button marked “G”, the doors close… and you can hear the deafening silence of an elevator not moving.

Hmm, this might make an interesting story, I think. Three strangers, coming from three different countries (which is par for the course in Melbourne) share their life stories while locked in a stuck elevator at 8.30 am in a Tuesday morning.

Alas, no. After a few seconds I pushed the button that opens the doors, and they opened. We called the other elevator, it came, we arrived safely at the ground floor and went our separate ways. We’ll come back to the same floor at the end of the day, but who knows when we’ll meet again?

Before going in to see “Brazil” as part of ACMI’s “Freaky Fridays” season (it was great to see on the big screen, by the way, but then I’m a big Gilliam fan), I got a chance to wander around ACMI and see the new “White Noise” exhibit. This is a new digital art exhibition where a bunch of world-reknowned digital artists depict “nothing”. It explores some interesting ideas, and is very intriguing visually. It’s on at ACMI in Fed Square until the 23rd of October. And it’s free.