Book Notes: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What can I really say about a classic? Better than the 1971 movie, but wish I'd read the book first. I'd rather Luhrmann had let it be... couldn't finish his movie.



View all my reviews

Why are we [still] waiting for the NBN in Palmerston via Gungahlin?

One of my major thesis findings was that Australia's centrally-controlled approach to enabling, coordinating and regulating communications networks invariably takes longer than Canada's decentralised approach to connect citizens. Yesterday adds a little more proof to the pudding.

In my previous post I mentioned how it was Telstra, not NBN Co., that informed me of the availability of the NBN in my area. Consequently, and with bated breath, we waited from 1pm to 5pm yesterday for NBN Co. to arrive. Finally, after years of slow Net connections (until only just recently) in Palmerston, we had high hopes that by Tuesday next week, we would be screaming over the Net at 100 mbps. But that isn't how centrally-controlled systems work.

By 5:30pm, we had heard nothing. No show, no phone call, no nothing. I decided to call Telstra to see if we could do something before our appointment with them on Tuesday to finalise the connection. I was given a direct number to call the next day if we had still heard nothing from NBN Co.

By midday today, I had given up. I called Telstra. Of course, we had to reschedule the appointment. And the next available appointment is: 23 October. It might as well be 23 October 2050.

So there we have it: no customer service, no nothing from NBN Co. Very much like the bad old days of Telecom. 

How this plays out is anybody's guess. But if history tells us anything, as long as the fascination with centrally-controlled telecommunications policy persists, Australia can expect a visit from the "ghosts of fraudbands past" with the next iteration of communications technology, whenever that may be.

Book Notes: "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I must admit to a dose of uneasiness with the protagnist's creepy paiderastial stalking, but I put it down to a sign of the times much like one would with the stalker-story lyrics in Daddy Cool's "Come Back Again". But as Appelbaum (the translator) suggests in the notes, in basing the novel on an the author's personal experience, Mann "preserved his decorum and his wits, or we would never have had a story", so the reader need not get too morally involved in the details. At first glance some recurring grotesque characters belie the Dionysion versus Appolonian development of the plot as Aschenbach's infatuation takes over. The title, of course, does not hide the ending. Nonetheless, Mann's interweaving of Greek mythology in support of the central theme neatly presents German philosophy in this rather deep novella. I have started to watch the 1971 movie based on this novel but I must say I am glad (as always) at having read the book first - the mythological figures which one can re-imagine after my initial reading of the characters is most certainly lost in the opening scenes of the movie - but that should come as no surprise.



View all my reviews