Saturday 24th November.

16 days to go.

Election Day back in Oz! Hopefully I will not have to put up with election crap on telly all night. The telly here is bad enough here as it is. In the King Sol we have about 6 channels. The local one broadcasts “Australia Network”, mainly ABC stuff from NSW, and some local content. We have EM TV from New Guinea, again some OZ stuff (They had the Sri Lankan test on over the last couple of weeks) and some NG stuff. BBCworld is also shown. Now these 3 are consistent.

The same shows each day and time etc.

The other 3 however are anyones guess. One is a movie channel, and I must say, at all times. They have short breaks where they may show a 15 minute piece on an actor or the making of a movie in between actual movies, this is fine. The second of the 3 channels can be either “The History Channel” “Discovery Channel” or “Channel V” depending on who is in charge of the set top box in the office I suppose. The third channel is a mixture of TV shows, they have Friends, Sienfeld, The Simpsons and some Sitcoms I have not heard of. Occasionally this channel becomes a sport channel or a music channel too. Now the swapping of content is not a major problem, whit is though is that they get switched off, or I should say “Signal Scrambled” as the message says on the screen. Now this does not happen in between shows, I think it just happens in blocks. You know like you get a trial to see if you like it. I have been sitting and watching a movie, say 120 minutes long. The screen stops and then the Signal Scrambled sign comes on, with 10 minutes left of the movie!

Why do these insignificant things annoy us? For me I guess it is the fact that if you say you are going to do something, or that you supply something, you then have an obligation to do it right, not half arsed like this. I believe the local attitude is “well you got that much, it is better than nothing, why are you complaining.”

On the news today it said that the GG has announced that Parliament must sit on December 13th. Now we wait and see what happens. Unfortunately for me it is just after I leave. I might ask to stay another week, or at least until the next flight after the 13th, which by my calculation will be the 15th December.