I’m fairly sure I just timetravelled.

I just got an email on my phone, from Eon, my electricity supplier.  It said my latest bill was online.  So I logged on and looked it up.  I went through it in detail.  I tell you this so you can be assured I didn’t imagine it.

Then my phone beeped again.  It was an email from interflora trying to sell me flowers.  The thing is, I recognised this email, I’d received the exact same one about half an hour earlier, right before the Eon one.  I muttered to myself about Interflora spamming me, but when I looked, there was no original email from Interflora.  Nor was there an Eon one.

Realising that it’s probable i had deleted them from my phone, I loaded up Outlook on my laptop.. no email from Eon, and just the one from Interflora.

Seems like i received the two emails, then flashed back in time half an hour, and am now going through the process of receiving them again.  I expect the Eon one to arrive any second now.

Am a little disappointed that in the movies timetravel usually involves high adventure, danger and excitement.  Whereas mine involved a spam email and an electricity bill.

Last weekend my friend Flick was home alone.  She went to bed, woke up in the morning, and found a mans black sock in the middle of her bedroom floor.

It hadn’t been there when she went to sleep.  There was nobody else in the house.  (She did a thorough search).  There was no clue to how it got there.  It had just appeared.

This weekend I was home alone.  Sat on the sofa watching tv, spotted something on the floor under the other sofa.  Something that hadn’t been there the million others times I’d sat there and watched tv.

I carefully fished it out from under the sofa, using a long pole, cautious in case it was a huge spider, snake, or vampire.  It wasn’t.  It was much more terrifying…

It hadn’t been there last time I looked, there was nobody else in the house.  There was no clue to how it got there.  It wasn’t one of mine.

it was a mans black sock.

There’s something sinister going on

Background info:  In Australia you have to pay for bank accounts.  They also charge you for using any cash machine other than the ones belonging to your own bank, and for a variety of other day to day bank activities.

The story:  I phoned my bank, and at the end of the call, they moved into their sales pitch.

“Have you heard about our great new savings account deal?”

I explained that no, no I hadn’t.

“it’s a free account, there are no monthly charges, and no charges to transfer money between this and your main account, so it’s a very useful account to have”

I double checked that there would be no charges, and no fees, it wouldn’t cost me anything

“That’s right, there are no charges, and no fees, it won’t cost you anything”

So I agreed to get the account, I doubted I’d use it as I’m not real good at saving money.  But I’m new in this country, and need to build up a good credit profile.  After signing me up the rep said he just needed to read through the terms and conditions

“mumble mumble .. savings account .. mumble mumble.. no monthly fee.. mumble mumble.. transfer fees will be applied to your other account.. mumble mumble”

I interrupted, and asked him to repeat that last bit

“mumble mumble..”

the bit before that..

“transfer fees will be applied to your other account”

I pointed out that a number of times in the conversation so far he’d told me that transfer fees would NOT be applied.

“yes, that’s right”

I made a puzzled noise

“Transfer fees won’t be applied to THIS account.  Not at all.  Not ever.  They’ll be applied to your other account instead”.

Brilliant!

I muttered about him being a big fat liar. Realising that I was onto his scam, but not content to give up the fight, he then tried to catch me out in a different way.
“You won’t ALWAYS be charged a transfer fee, it’s only for assisted transfers”
I asked what one of those was
“An assisted transfer is one where you phone up and ask a member of staff to transfer the money, or you go into the branch.  Basically one where there’s human interraction.  If you do it online, or through the automated phoneline then there are no charges”.  He paused for breath.  “Right, that’s your account all set up and ready to go.  Would you like me to transfer some money now?”
That’d be an assisted transfer right?
“yes”
Then no, no I wouldn’t.

Due to a quirk in the billing system, I have free electricity until tomorrow.

Sleeping with all the aircons on tonight!

In the last few entries I’ve glossed over the dangers of crocs etc, concentrating more on the dangers of hose pipes and ceiling fans.  However, with all the flooding currently ongoing.  Deadly snakes and crocs are getting washed out of their rivers and creeks, and ending up in people back yards.

A quote from the local paper:

Several crocodiles have been seen swimming through local streets, while a deadly brown snake shocked drivers waiting for the water to recede on the Bruce Highway south of town.
Resident Patrick Barrett said the town was surrounded by crocs waiting out flooding in the cane fields.
“Every night we see them, you can just see their eyes.
We know they are out there.  You can hear them groaning during the night.”

Sounds like the plot to a schlock horror movie, a town cut off, crocs surrounding the place, waiting for the floodwaters to get high enough to invade, locals huddled in their houses, being kept awake at night by groaning noises and the occasional flash of a glowing eye, watching, waiting.