Words of Wisdom

Youth is wasted on the young.

Saturday 25 February 2012

Whine Whinge Whinge: Ahhhh That Feels Better

I'm in the mood for a right royal dummy spit!
(NB :if the meaning of this quintessentially Australian expression escapes you, see image at right).

I don't know whether to start with the speeding fine, the unethical 'event' photographers or my husband's iphone failing to send me emails!
 grrr  >:-(

Let's start with the latter as I ought to have posted a '52 Weeks of Me' photo sometime this week. As I have not yet retrieved my camera from Kindergarten Friend's place (despite trying to organise a pick up on at least two occasions) Himself once more helped me to take a photo (on his iphone) and emailed it to me. He has now emailed it three times and to two different email addresses and I still have not received it!! What recourse do you have for this phenomenon? Would do you call when your electronic bits do not make it through the ionosphere?
Where is the salesman you can shout at?????

The speeding fine is just downright irritating; irritating because I have been pinged on the same section of road once before when I hadn't really realised that it had a 50km speed limit. This time, even though I now knew the limit, I had not even cracked the 60km/hr mark (the old speed limit and the one still in force on major roads) when they got me!!!!! AND.... a $312.00 fine! Not $150, not $250 but $312!!!
Revenue raising.........>:-(

Then there's the photographers: I'm sure that, nowadays, the same things occur world wide but when we went to Formals in the 'old days', there were a few happy snaps taken by my dad with his Minolta SLR in our lounge room (as shown on the right here). Now of course, there is a whole industry around Formals, including the 'formal portrait photo rip off'! It goes like this: as the young people arrive they are lined up like so many sausages in a factory and marched past the ubiquitous sky blue cyc (with stars) to primp and pose in 101 variations on an awkward position. They fill in a form with their name and address and are given an idee number for later use on the website.

Armed with their idee number they dance the night away and then dash home to call up the photographers website and check out their glory. They then post a whole bunch of the online photos (with the copyright watermark in place) on facebook; howl with laughter over their own exploits and forget the photos were ever taken, especially when the dress you're wearing looks like this and you would like to rethink your hair and make up. But no, you cannot forget them! They turn up on your doorstep!! Unsolicited, the photos arrive in a package, addressed to the irresponsible, underaged teen, who promptly puts them on a bookshelf and forgets about them. Until you find them and check the paperwork, only to discover that the photos are 'worth' $169.00 all up (there are about 10 of them) and the 'return by' date expired over two weeks ago!! (suspiciously close to the arrival date I think, but that's another story).


Himself informs me that this is actually illegal but being a good and conscientious citizen, I paid the dosh................ and wrote them a nasty letter.


I'm sure it will make a huge difference to their business practices.


NOT.


But I felt better. Oh and I didn't pay the whole $ 169.00, I only paid the 'early bird' discount price of $147.00. So there! I dare them to challenge me on it!!
I am such a rebel.

1 comment:

Stacy said...

There are places around here that I swear set the speed limits just so they can trap motorists that go too fast. They are painfully low. I have yet to get a speeding ticket (I did receive one warning), and my friends and family are shocked by that fact. I am a consummate speeder on freeways. Residential, though, I always try to keep it to 0-5 over the limit.