One thing I can’t stand at the moment is all the talk about World Youth Day. It should really be called Bunch of Catholics that descend on Australia to wreak havoc and some of the people who descended are coincidentally Youth day.
The other thing I can’t stand is the fact that it’s called World Youth Day; the least they can do is call it Catholics only - no other denominations allowed World Youth Day. The whole thing is a joke. The sooner it’s over the better.
Today’s my birthday… More to come.
(AKA Highly recommended movie of the week)
I had an opportunity to clock off work early to check out the new Martin Scorsese masterpiece Shine A Light at IMAX Melbourne earlier this evening. In case you have been living under a rock, Shine A Light is a short documentary coupled with concert footage of The Rolling Stones filmed at the Beacon Theater in New York.
The first 20 minutes tracks the planning of the filming of the concert, rehearsals and ‘meet and greet’ with former President Bill Clinton. The documentary scenes of the film are presented in a 5th of the overall size of the IMAX screen with the concert footage taking the whole screen which truly gives you this large than life perspective of The Rolling Stones.
There is a lot to see in the one and a half hours and the song selection put together by Scorsese and Jagger is nothing short of awesome.
My only recommendation would be if you do decide to check it out at IMAX (it’s also playing and some of the big chains) make sure you get in early so you can get a seat at the back. Me and the posse I went with arrived late and had to get seats up front.
This week has been a very frustrating working week. After putting a fairly solid effort getting a pitch and proposal together for a high profile client, everything seems to be starting to fall apart internally.
It always seems to be the way: the more people are brought in the more people think they’re the chief. No matter how much planning, document writing, gantt chart creation someone wants to come in with their two cents worth of micromanagement, their thoughts on how things should be done (oh no! Lets not build things in a structured and organised manner, let’s just pick random components and build them in a random order so everything appears to fit into a unrealistic time line. That sounds far more cheaper and efficient).
I’ve lived this project for the last three months and in the last week I’ve become completely over it, I hope we miss the submission deadline so I don’t have to go through with building this thing.
The power has been out in our area since 7:30, I’m using my mobile broadband to get net access.
From what I can tell they’re brining on different parts of the grid back online one at a time. We experienced a brownout which meant a scramble to disconnect the mains supply to prevent any damage to our electrical stuff.
Update: thank the god’s the power is back online. The TV, however, won’t turn on. Ruh-roh.
Forgot to renew the domain name.
While looking on Seek, for a potential new job this evening, I came across a posting for the following:
Business Analyst / BA | Keane Australia Consortium PTY LTD
We are currently seeking a number of Business Analysts to join our expanding and exciting team. Excellent career exposure. Located in the CBD.
You mean to tell me that Keane require more people to work out what’s wrong with MyKi? At least we now know why it’s going to cost 500 million.
Kids really are perceptive creatures, I mean when you get down to it, when a kid says something that you think at the time is cute, it really is what you have been thinking all along.
Take for example this: while browsing the front page of The Age web site with my 6 year old cousin sitting next to me she hid her face in horror when I stopped at this picture of Wolfmother lead singer, Andrew Stockdale.
When I queried as to the reason why she was so shocked, apparently Stockdale looks a lot like a “not nice man” she saw in a dream… I mean the photo is pretty unflattering.
It got me wondering, how would she react if I showed her a picture of Pennywise from the Steven King flick IT. After a quick look on the ‘net I found this picture:
Well no reaction really, her dad introduced her to the world of horror movies last week beginning with IT.
I thought you’d be dying to hear about my week. No? Going to tell you about it anyway…
Like I mentioned this week was going to be a bit of a hash but I turns out it had it’s up and downs. On Wednesday I had to deal with the ATO in relation to a letter I received about not filing my taxes for certain years.
After being on hold for an hour and finally getting through to a human being, it turns out that the letter issued by H&R Block was in fact, incorrect.
I had got a TFN in 2001 and hadn’t used it until 2003 meaning I hadn’t filed any income paperwork for 2001 and 2002. Based on the requirements set out by the ATO, irregardless of whether you worked for that particular year you still have to file advice that you didn’t make any income (including Centrelink, Youth Allowance, etc). Since I’ve never received any benefit from our great Gov’ment, it’s a rather simple matter of filing two pieces of paper and a statutory declaration. The ATO lady was rather nice and the whole experience was very pleasant. She told me that she was expressing the papers required and an express envelope to send them back in. This was to avoid any potential penalties of fines.
This advice goes against H&R Block’s which for both years stated that no paper work was to be filed for both years. To prove the point I even have the info written down by the “Tax Accountant” who did my parents taxes in 2001 and 2002.
Being a bit flummoxed by the situation and wanting to show H&R Block the error of their ways, I decided to ring up their “head office” which is based in Brunswick.
Continue reading ‘The ATO’
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