Getting More Than I Didn't Bargain For

I only just noticed at breakfast time that there were seven crumpets in my pack of six!

Getting More Than I Bargained For

Earlier this year, I decided to finally bite the bullet and shell out some dough¹ for my first lot of bookcases, nine years after I moved into my apartment. In addition to the imaginable space constraints of city living, some bright young architect must have decided concrete shoeboxes look best with walls that are broken into odd-sized panels that do not sit flush with each other. To maximise the use of available wall space, every bookcase has to be of custom dimensions and, being Mr Mean, the very thought of the additional expense compared to buying ready-made pieces suited me poorly. Only when I was caught between crooked blank walls (not by design, but only a reflection of the quality of Meriton construction) and an ever-growing mountain of archive boxes packed with (predominantly brand new) books that I can't stop buying but didn't read – for the simple reason of “out of sight, out of mind” – did it occur to me that it had merit as a value proposition.

I was happy to discover that Knotts Pine, a store that markets itself as “(selling) quality furniture at the best value prices”, can build a limited range of styles of pine bookcases to order, so I put detailed specifications (nothing fancy, just carefully set out dimensions after measuring several dozen items in my book, movie and CD collections as well as my index finger after soaking it in hot water to allow for possible swelling) on paper and requested a quote for the four bookcases/media shelves.

That was a bit over three months ago. This morning, the order was finally considered completed and delivered, with my having arrived at a satisfactory resolution with the store management after tens of phone calls, three separate deliveries (and a few that were promised but never actually happened), and some on-site repair work by one of their tradesmen on staff.

I now have five, not four, bookcases in all — three of which are as ordered, another one being an unexpected twin, and the last of them is, um, “a little bit special”. For the total price I paid, not taking into account the amount of time spent chasing the order up and my shrink's fee, these came at a bargain.

Thanks, guys.

¹ I almost confused ‘dough’ with ‘dole’, which would not have been surprising given my employment status, except that I'm not getting the benefits. Instead, I'm spending my ill-begotten gains from my being-paid-to-look-busy-so-they-have-staff-numbers-to-shed stint at a large Australian telco.

Message For Maralyn: Perfect Private Schools

I am really sick of Maralyn Parker. She's from The Daily Telegraph . I know, I know what you're going to say. Like any kind of sensationalist publication I shouldn't read it for the articles. But the thought of looking through the Tele for Maralyn's double page nudie shoot, makes me want to read it for the articles, OK?

Anyway, whenever I so much as read the headlights - I mean headlines - that was such a disgusting image you put in my head - stop it! - or heaven forbid, the following tagline, I know what she's going to rant about. Faster than you can say "Mean", she'll pour out some rant against independent/private schools and their funding, not that I've ever seen a factual economic report from her as to how the education system would be vastly improved if funding were stripped of all private schools, given to public schools, the private schools became really unattractive and no one paid extra funds to schooling any more (so everyone relied entirely on a publicly funded education) and all those kiddies who went to private schools went into the publicly funded system, which have now just had a few more chairs bought for them and their leaky roofs repaired for them out of their new-found public funding, but now have to have hundreds of classrooms added onto them, teachers found for them, libraries enlarged and so forth.

The hope is, of course, is that the government will allocate a huge amount of money to government schools to make them as smart looking as private schools, or close to (because Ms Parker's always moaning about how disgusting it is that some private schools have such excesses as rifle ranges when some public schools have tiny libraries), yet some poor rich sucker of a private school kid's parent is still going to shell out close to $20,000 per year to send his/her kid to a school that's only marginally better than the one down the road that's going for free.

Hey, if I were a millionaire, I wouldn't have come by my money by making poor deals and being that dumb about money. The Royals don't live in Australia.

If I shelled out twenty grand for a school, I'd expect twenty grand per year better than the freebie hall down the road. Whatever that means.

Though rifle ranges aren't my thing. Give me a really good theatrette with free musicals each year, an awesome library ... and how about a school zoo? And a chocolate cafe, like a Max Brenner, and slippery dips!

Many a school can be enhanced by an extra slippery dip or two. I prefer them to the hopscotch.

Ideas, anyone?