My iPhone goes Walkies

A few weeks back I left my phone at home. This a very rare event, happening about once every five years. And of late I'm usually listening to music on it, so I'd notice if it wasn't on my belt!

Apple has this thing now called Find My iPhone, which tells you exactly where your phone is using it's GPS. Kind of creepy actually. I fired it up out of curiosity to see if it would tell that my phone was at home, it also lets you send messages so I was going to buzz it because Deb was at home.

I fired up the website, and my phone was.... On Nicholson Street heading south! I thought it was playing up, but no, it updated quickly with my phone heading further south. I decided much to my delight that Deb, who had the day off, was bringing it to my office... Until I realised she was past it already!

Eventually it stopped at RMIT. Ah, I thought, she's meeting her supervisor. Indeed I was right, and little while later I watched the phone icon moving towards my office, in fact I was about to track her arrival to our front door!

Best girlfriend ever!

Of course, she turned up at a moment of utter chaos. I hardly got to show her my collection of Nerf guns before I was snowed under with questions from other co-workers about work stuff. Still at least I was reunited with my phone ;-)

The Footy

A few weeks back, my dad suddenly decided he wanted to go to a football match with his two sons for his birthday. He's never ever had this urge before, and I'm so disinterested in that particular sport that I've only been to four matches in my entire life. And one of those was a Community Cup match, where I was more interested in seeing TISM play than the game itself. Said game also included a male umpire dressed as Wonder Woman, who got tired of the flow of play and so kicked a goal at one point! One of the teams also fielded an 11 year year old, and the finally score was something like 12-18...

Needless to say, Australian Rules is not my favourite sport. I know more about, and have watched far more, NFL, and indeed I'm a more diligent attender of Roller Derby games!

Now, this sudden urge to see a football match took place on a Thursday, for a finals game that took place on Sunday (it turned out, he thought it was Saturday!) which meant that there were not a whole lot of tickets left by the time I got onto the site to buy them.

Standing room only in fact! But he was keen, so I bought the tickets.

It was going to be a cold, slightly rainy day. I pictured us being stuck out in the weather, amoungst a bunch of rowdy drunks, squished together like sardines, next to some kind of machinery room! Hey, what am I to know, I'm not a regular...

It wasn't as bad as all that, we were undercover, need a fried chicken shop. We could see most of the field, except for some of the goals near the city end, which where behind a big solid cement pillar!

As for the game itself... I'm still not convinced that game has rules. I understand the general principle - a bunch of blokes kick a red ball at the posts at the end of the field, scoring various points values depending on when set of poles the ball goes through. But otherwise, it looked like anything short of actually beating someone up was allowed!

My brother was a fan of one of the teams playing (Essendon?), which was a pity, because even I could see they were considerably outplayed by the other team (Carlton?) and indeed we left before the end because the game was so clearly out of reach - I think the lead was something like 50 points or more at that stage.

I really liked the crowd, what a bunch of maniacs! Lots of standing up and yelling things that I could not follow at all. Seemed terribly important to many members of the crowd, particularly one guy who was frequently standing and yelling helpful advice to the players! Or possibly abuse at the umpire, I hear that is also traditional...

The MCG is an impressive building. We do love our sport in the is town...

Oh, in a side note, it turns out my friend Jess was in a far nicer part of the ground, in an actual seat, for the same game. Still, there was 91,000 people there, I bet I knew someone else there too!

I hear the season will be over soon. Joy. I'm on a train right now to Geelong, and their team is playing in Melbourne today. Spencer "Southern Cross" Street station was full of people in their jerseys when I left just now. Geelong will be quiet indeed :-)