Today at work I heard the weirdest and most ingorant thing I’ve heard in a while. As most of you know, I work in a hotel. This morning I got to talk a little bit with an American lady, who was waiting on an airport transfer with her husband. Her flight was at 10.35am and our conversation took place around 7.30am. She was getting a little worried about her flight. After all, in America you need to be at the airport for two hours in advance, even for domestic flights, because of security reasons. In Australia you only need to be at the airport 30 minutes prior to departure.

And this was what made this lady so nervous. Because how could they possibly do the security checks in 30 minutes. Or… are there now security checks in Australia? “Well,” she said, “surely you have security checks in Australia. I’ve walked through Melbourne and I saw many many Muslims, so I better hope you have security checks at the airport.” What the…??????

I think terrorism isn’t America’s biggest threat. Surely more dangerous than terrorism is ingorance. Who wants to join me in a war on ingorism?

Australia has been battling a severe drought the past few months, and we are urged by the various governments to consume as little water as we can. Yesterday electricity was added to the list. Bushfires are still tormenting large parts of the state of Victoria, yesterday causing one of the main power supply lines to the state to switch off, leaving half of Melbourne without power. Trains and trams were severely effected and over 1200 traffic lights in the city went black.

With all this going on the state government has kindly requested we take it easy with our power consumption and has hinted at the possibility that electricity wasters might be fined up to $10,000. Considering that it was 31 degrees at the coolest of the night, and the mercury has climbed up to 36 already again for today, I wouldn’t mind turning the aircon on, but I guess I’ll try to be a good boy today and save power.