Entries from June 2005 ↓

Hmmm, the US dollar has dropped again. Might have to get cash early.

Not far from our apartment there are trees. Minus most of their leaves at the moment but never-the-less the poor birds still roost in the tree-tops with no protection from the elements. And as they roost, they shit. All over the unfortunate car parked right underneath the tree. I have walked passed this one particular tree at about 5.30 a few times recently and the car in the crap zone is usually drenched by that time. Like the spotty Dalmation dogs, you can’t tell if there is more poo than paint colour or vice versa!

We have these actual texts at work referred to as ‘The Orange Book’ and someone when cleaning out their old copies thought of me this morning So now my window sill is nice and orange – all the other non-orange books have been banished to the other window sill. A bit like the separate containers I have for orange and non-orange pens.

The boys went to Amityville Horror, the girls to Madagascar. Well, us girls and hundreds of chattering kids and harassed looking parents – which we obviously expected on a Saturday afternoon. It was a pretty funny movie and the main characters were fantastically matched to the voices of the actors. Especially David Schwimmer as the hypochondriace giraffe Melman. There were quite a few hilarious bits for the adults and we also could not help laughing when night fell in one scene and all the kids starting calling out “it’s finished” to their parents. The bigger laugh (which we felt terrible about) was when a small boy in the row in front of us slipped right off his father’s knee and crashed to the ground and barrier in front of the seats. There was all sorts of knocking and banging of his head and other body parts, followed by those few semi-silent gasps to intake as much breath as possible prior to the “WWWAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH”. It wasn’t funny, it really wasn’t … I think the poor little fella was asleep – what a wake up

Well, I’m a juror. On a real live trial. Since Thursday. During the third morning in the jury assembly room my name was called out. 50 of us were then escorted to a court room where we sat down the back and waited for a second ballot (using the same spinning wooden box with names drawn at random). My name was called out 8th … I began the walk, as I’d seen the others do, from the seats at the back to the jury box while the lawyers scrambled through sheets of names to look up my address and occupation and shout out ‘challenge’ if they didn’t like what they saw on the sheet or who they saw walking towards the jury box. Alas, they did not challenge me. So I’m a juror.

Obviously I can say nothing about the case especially as it’s not yet over. It’s scheduled to be a few days long. However I can say that it is one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had. All of a sudden I’m whisked away from the normal life I know to this life of small windowless rooms full of people who are supposedly my peers who I don’t know and have never seen before, listening to people I’ve never heard speak, on topics I knew existed but never thought I would ever hear about in the flesh and blood, drinking water out of polestyrene cups and eating Griffin’s Krispies. While I sit there (with my open mind) it seems sometimes like being in a movie and sometimes not. I don’t know what to expect at each turn, which is fairly freaky for me. On the day the jury deliberates we are not allowed to be out of each other’s company, even if that means spending night in a hotel.

So life is fairly strange right now. I see all the images of the trial in my head, constantly, yet I walk around as though everything is normal and I speak of it to no one. It’s my civic duty.

Have just got back from my 2nd stint at the district court. The answer phone last night told me to report back to the court at 9.30 this morning. They were balloting for another 2 trials. This time I was in the jury assembly room and I actually got to see them do the ballot – all the names went into a brown wooden cylinder with a little door that was mounted on a stand and spun around to mix up the names, and the court official drew the names out at random one by one.

All the same people were there as Monday, minus the very old Chinese guy, people who went to the wrong floor and the 24 jurors already on a trial. Even the guy in the flannelette shirt was there, in the same shirt with almost the same bag of lunch! This time we were all treated to a very loud and opinionated guy who undertook to tell the poor person next to him all about tyres and how he used to be on the road selling them, what roads are made of, laws regarding beating people up in the UK and various other topics on which he was an expert.

There was lots more waiting around this time because the people not selected in the ballot had to wait until both juries for both trials had been selected in case they needed to come back to the larger pool again. I’m not sure why this was not the case on Monday though – as soon as the first ballot had been done, those not selected were allowed to return to work. So I spent 3.5 hours on backtoback hard airline lounge type seats, unable to lean back because of the bushy hair on the woman behind me, reading my book and a bit of the newspaper. The highlight of the morning was the little snack offered at morning tea time – packets of cameo creams – I managed to get one but did not go in for coffee out of the huge tin of Nescafe instant. So I’m off to Fuel in a sec …

I received a summons to attend jury service at the District Court starting yesterday for 3 weeks. I made my arrangements with work and trotted off at the appointed time looking as much like a piece of furniture as I could to avoid being selected.

Upon arrival the jury assembly and ante room were absolutely crowded and stinking hot due to all the sniffing and coughing bodies wrapped up in winter coats and scarves. We had to line up and check in. Boy, what a cross section of people – a random selection off the electoral roll I suppose. And what a mix! 

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  old, young and the very old Chinese guy who had some kind of police infringement notice who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was hard of hearing,
  
  
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  the casually dressed from students to retired folk,
  
  
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  well dressed housewives
  
  
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  men in very snappy suits
  
  
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  women equally as snappy with their low foam low fat trim caps from Starbucks (obviously trying to look like Ally McBeal in case that increased their chances of rejection),
  
  
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  all different races,
  
  
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  half a dozen people who had reported to the wrong floor – they should have been on level 6 for high court jury selection
  
  
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  a guy with very greasy hair in a flannelette shirt clutching his New World plastic bag of home-made lunch,
  
  
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  the ‘busy’ woman who sighed every 5 minutes to indicate to someone that she just didn’t have the time for this,
  
  
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  the designer guy in baggy paper denim jeans and pointed black patent leather crocodile shoes who kept darting in and out with his cell phone,
  
  
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  young Asian males texting, gaming, pxting or whatever with their cell phones,
  
  
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  a handful of middle aged men in their ‘Barkers’ gear who had been to Whitcoulls on their way to the courthouse and bought the latest John Grisham, Lee Childs or Tom Clancey book to read,
  
  
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  a guy who had been on a jury before who told everyone how many more people there were this time, and how everything was taking so much longer than last time,
  
  
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  a gran who thought that because she promised her daughter she would look after her grandchildren that she would get excused on the spot,
  
  
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  every other kind of person in between,
  
  
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  and me.

After giving us helpful (used) booklets to read, and showing a video, two staff shouted out instructions – one inside the jury assembly room, the other relaying it from the door way to those of us overflowing out into the ante room. We were advised that the 3 week trial was not going ahead, and that we should fill out forms to be reimbursed if we had cars in a car parking building or had paid for childcare. And the piece of information we all wanted to hear – they were going to do 2 ballots of 35 people to go into each of 2 courtrooms for a further weeding down to 12 people for each jury. I was not called in the balloting process, so returned to work at about 11am. I think I earned $31 from the Department for Courts for that little outing.

Each night this week those of us rejected are to ring the jury answer-phone service to find out if we’re required the next day. Needless to say, I’m at work today, wearing orange, no need to go near the court house. Will find out about tomorrow after I get home tonight.

Another friend has joined the long list of people I know with iPods. I’m just not an iPod (or any portable musical device) type of person. I can see the attraction of them, and they’re funky clever little things if you like personal music when you’re walking or working or travelling or whatever.

Perhaps I can’t cope with listening and doing because I need my wits in typical iPod situations:

• At work I benefit enormously from overhearing what’s going on around me. I don’t find it a distraction – well maybe when writing a difficult report or paper but there are deathly quite times at work in the morning and over the lunch-hour which I can use. Also I’m so jumpy I need to hear people coming.
  
• I enjoy walking, even to and from work, and pass the time by looking and listening to what’s going on around me. I also do a lot of thinking when I’m walking so need an empty head. My experience on these journeys is that if you ever encounter a person with ear phones you have to give them a wide berth as they are prone to changing direction without knowing anyone else is near by that they are going to step on – I’m always the one that gets stepped on or knocked or forced onto the road because with busy ears it seems vision is affected. Also I’m afraid of getting run over, even by a bike, because I couldn’t hear what was coming.
  
• Anyway, what on earth would I listen to? I very rarely buy CDs, I have a few old favourites to listen to in the car and actually allow the Mister to fill up the CD-changer (as long as not banging drums or repetitive rowdy guitar solos …). Plus I’m such a crooner that I would undoubtedly be unable to control the urge to ’sing’ and just embarrass myself “who painted the moooooooooooon black … la laaaa laaa la“ Yick!

However, perhaps I should reconsider based on the ‘cool’ vibe they give off – people wear them prominently as a clothing accessory, and as I’m learning, they are ‘the’ thing to have. And they do come in orange …

I’m saddened to report that ever since I have had to pay $3.50 for my Fuel, the quality has been substandard. One of the (experienced) baristas suggested to me that it was in my head – that perhaps I ‘perceived’ this was the case because of the psychology of a price rise. Well, it’s not (the coffee he was making me was fine!). In this case the regular barista from Hunter St is away and there has been a parade of newbies and last minute stand-ins and management who have lost their touch. A shame. But I will hold out until his return before making my final judgement. And perhaps send an email to the founder.

Been a bit tardy with my blog over the last 18 hours due to being moved into the corner spot at work … my computer was delayed a day and was stuck right out in the open with no privacy … quite the opposite now