I have moved

On to a better hosting site:

spacenohyphen.wordpress.com

I depend.

Some of you may remember my high-horse credentials of not using my iPhone, Facebook and Twitter for a week earlier this year. I concluded that I need a phone, but thank-god-I-have-one-to-fall-back-on!

Now I don't. It's been lost/stolen/whatever. I left it in studio 2 of SYN (Student Youth Network) and now it's gone.

To my lost phone from another mother:

My dearly beloved iPhone, you are battered with a cracked screen and hippified with a tesla plate on the back so as to not fry my brain (according to Mum), but you are mine.

It was so close to my heart and hip most of the time. Perfectly organised into three slides of apps and icons. The first one was the essentials (date, time, notes, settings, tweetdeck, googlemaps, facebook, safari etc) the second was the delish apps (urban spoon, ethicalshopper, shazam, netbank, tram tracker, papertoss, gmail, ABC news) and the third the rejects apple won't let me delete (organiser, compass).

Oh so many contacts from Brisbane, Melbourne and beyond, important phone numbers I really should have saved somewhere else.

And how will I cope with my dodgy alarm clock now that you, oh iPhone, with your magical tones, are gone.

I can't tweet, update or google 'it' at the swipe of your screen, I can't check tram times or emails or bank balances.

You, iPhone, are irreplaceable!

And I want a new one, but it won't be the same. Minus $500- $900 is what I will be if I am to get another to replace the old.

I just keep on wishing you'll reappear and my woes will be over.

Monday, I've told myself, is as long as I'll go without a 04 number to call my own.

But if you're out there cracked-teslar-platey-iphone of mine, please find your home again in my cupped hand.

Election!

This week has been a busy one. Juggling election saturation with the first week back at uni with work and with SYN has meant it's my studies that miss out.

But, using my consistence, I am able to justify the hell out of that.

For SYN, I've been doing two shows, Below the Line \, which airs from 8:30 am - 10 am on Saturdays, along with Panorama, 4:30-5pm Fridays.

On the Below the Line page you catch pretty much all of last Saturday's show including interviews with Labor's candidate for Melbourne Cath Bowtell and the Greens candidate Adam Bandt.

Also, Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon came to SYN at around midday on Saturday to announced the locations of 10 new Headspace cetres to help young people with their mental health. Before her press conference, I talked to her along with Headspace's CEO Chris Tanti about the announcement.

That's all folks.

I think they listened!

So yesterday I was looking for an election, and that's what I got!

And even more websites have popped up since then.

The ABC, so far, are taking the cake with their Election Pulse site, full of tweets, bets, polls and a countdown.

The Australia's site is okay but just doesn't have the interactivity of the ABC's but I'm sure will improve as the campaign goes on.

The ABC's 24 hour news channel is also set to start up at 7:30pm next Thursday (22nd July), meaning the media's election excitement will be available any hour of the day.


But perhaps the best place to follow the election, straight from the journalists' mouth (in 140 characters) will be twitter, which has already show speedy potential for information dissemination of politics.
This morning, @latikambourke, @annabelcrabb, @samanthamaiden and @lyndalcurtis just to name a few. But if all else fails, the hashtag for the election has pretty much beend decided on: #ausvotes (or #aus2010)

Other fun tags are #mofo (Labor's 'Moving Forward' slogan) #gospeltruth (Tony Abbott's 7:30 report bungle)

More to come, I'm sure :)


Also, SYN's Federal election coverage is sure to begin this Monday on Panorama 430-5pm weekdays, and a special election show Below the Line, possibly on Saturday mornings.

Election time, let's inform the politicians.

We're all ready for a Federal Election. Everyone, that is, except for those who can call it.

With bets over when the election will be called, held and who will win already in full swing.

Not only are the bets in, but most media sites already have a section dubbed 'election 2010' or thereabouts. Now, the election could, theoretically, not be called until April 2011. While this may be extremely unlikely (both as a betting man, and logically), they may all have it wrong. It also would mean that the Labor party lost their chance at another catchy slogan, that of Kevin11.

And it's not only journalists who are ready, wikipedia already has a page dedicated to the yet-to-be-announced election. And, as we all know, if it's on wikipedia it must be the truth.

So my question is, election 2010, where the bloody hell are you?

If we, the Australian public are ready, and pretty much decided. If the media is already gung-ho with their twitter accounts, web pages and ABC's news 24/7 is nigh where is the cherry on top?

Julia Gillard, a PM for all waiters.

Well, it is clear and for all to see. If you work in hospitality, under a Gillard Government wait staff everywhere will be treated equally.

While most of the media reported on the hint of an election within the next week, Ms Gillard has really made it clear that maltreatment of waiters will not be tolerated.

She said in a speech in Adelaide today, "It's wrong to view yourself as better than the person who waits on you in a restaurant".

And if the PM says it, it must be right. (or at least a core or non-core truth)

Nostalgic list/ideas of people I could have been.

As with any middle-class white female, reflections upon my childhood leave me with few things to lament about. No trauma, hard life tales of woe or split up parents. But as a human being, as we all do, I want you and others to empathise with the hardship I have felt from past decisions. Hardship in this case being in the context of a cushy and not-really-so-hard-when-you-look-to-the-third-world kind of way.

So, there's not being allowed to watch TV as a child, meaning piles of pop-culture references from the Simpsons, Seinfeld and whatever else was on TV in the 90s.

Being allowed to quit piano, hockey, acting and dance to cut off my potential of being a musical master-child, goal-defending padded goalie, the next botox-infused Australian maiden of the screen.

I'm sure I had so much potential to be the genius kid that is envied for being so damn good at everything.

But on the flipside I am glad my parents allowed me to make my own decisions about education. As I am pretty sure my decision to go to a co-ed public school ensured a safe passage to where I am today (as opposed to the single sex private school my mum wanted me to go to). Nothing against the latter type of school, but my impressionable 13-year-old self would, I believe, may have made decisions in (hindsight of the possible) that may have resulted in a significantly different person.

There are many parts of life where, unknowingly, we make decisions that effect us in ways we would never have comprehended at that moment. You meet someone, who knows someone who could change, screw up or enhance your life.

Bleedingly obvious? Yes!
But by-god it certainly continues to astound me.

(and I hope it astounds you too!)