I’m a skeptic about frequent flyer points anyway. When Ansett collapsed in late 2001 I lost 58000 points in my private account, mostly through use of my diners club card as main credit card. So when I was trying to get some points from Qantas over my emirates flights to Italy, I was hoping that …
Author Archives: Ernest Zanatta
Why climbing Ayers Rock is wrong
I’m conservative and I still call it Ayers Rock. I visited it in 2005 and my heart skipped a beat when I first saw it. But did I try to climb it? No way! Aside from the fact I am not some sort of insane mountaineering type, there were signs all over the place from …
St Kevin’s schoolboys live up to my expectations
You know, of my contemporaries, I’ve never met a St Kevin’s old boy whom I liked, to borrow from Wil Rodgers. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/school-life/st-kevins-college-students-caught-chanting-offensive-lyrics-on-melbourne-tram/news-story/06d056348a763898a83b8da6a0636dea This latest news report about their behaviour just confirms my views about most people who attend that school. Privileged and self entitled spoilt prats….
Remembering the satellites…
I just looked outside in the glooming dusk and saw a bright star moving fast, and silently. I assume it was the international space station in low earth orbit. It moved too fast to be a star, and too high and quiet to be a plane. We don’t get excited about satellites anymore. We take …
Dubai Airport takes on a surreal carnival atmosphere
It’s about 1am and I’m in Dubai waiting for a connecting flight. Aside from the temples of material excess which are the duty free stores, there is even a Hard Rock Cafe in the terminal, and some guy with a guitar doing a performance not too far from that. This is way over the top …
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Do the trains run on time in Italy?
During the past month of rail travel between cities, I often heard announcements about whether the train I was on was running on time or late (the announcement usually said it was running on time) and that was so unusual to my ears that it reminded me of the infamous saying about Mussolini making the …
Homesick
I’m about 28 hours from the start of my journey home and I am feeling pretty homesick now. There are a lot of things I miss. Aside from the obvious – ie my family, friends and my own home, here are some of the less obvious things that I take for granted: Speaking English: after …
All Is True
One conspiracy theory I will not entertain, even in jest, is the Shakespeare authorship question. The original advocate for someone else being the author died in a lunatic asylum (Delia Bacon) and an early advocate for the Earl of Oxford was an eccentric unfortunately but perhaps approximately named Looney. What saddens and appalls me is …
Why the moon landings are real and the Roswell UFO is not…
I like to stir people up by being provocative. I get ample ammunition from my frequent purchases of ‘alternative news’ publications (ie the looney conspiracy stuff about UFOs, vaccinations, Chem trails, 9/11, Obama’s citizenship etc). For example, this past July during the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, I was calling it the ‘moon hoax’. And …
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I blame Vespasian
The Emperor Vespasian was the son of a tax collector. This explains a lot. As a form of revenue collection, he introduced a urinal tax. When his son Titus objected, according to his biographer Suetonius, Vespasian grabbed a coin from the pile of revenue from this tax and held it under his son’s nose, exclaiming …
Lost For Words! 