Aftermath

The last week has been slightly more interesting than most here in Canberra. Mostly because of the big-ass storm that tore the city apart on Tuesday night. Well, actually it was quite limited in its destruction, but it's managed to affect two of the three things that I centre my life here around.

First of all the storm caused major damage to at least 60 buildings on the ANU campus (depending on who you talk to). Including all the bits that are central to each of my subjects of course; though I've gotta feel sorry for the researchers and, more importantly, their research students who've had PhDs, Masters & Honours projects destroyed or delayed. There are plenty of photos around (the ABC reported hundreds being emailed around before 10am). So I've blatantly ripped the links to flickr and the ABC's own collection from Maddy's post.

Secondly, I was rostered on for the Wednesday at work and thus got stuck trying to protect everything in the store until things stopped leaking.
Good news: Only two of our direct competitors are still open after JAG and Country Road both had their ceilings fall in. (You should see CR, the entire thing just dropped all over the product, even yesterday they hadn't started cleanup)
Bad news: Vicki's workplace was totalled...really...the assessor came in and said "Save what stock you can, the rest is a write off." Thus hard, but fun, work was produced with many people being paid to tear down shelves and stock, put a hammer through it and through it out. Bit of a shame really as plenty of it was just superficial or packaging damage and it could've gone to a charity. Oh well...insurance companies suck.

Thankfully, however, the Film Group had to delay the second showing of Casino Royale (my last chance to see it without giving money to the Bond traitors...at least for a while), but still showed the Dr. No/GoldenEye Bondfest last night which was awesome. I'd never seen the original before and, quite frankly, it was good to see a Bond film made with a low budget.

So, every student I know...at least the undergrads...are over the moon about assessable tutes etc being cancelled for the last few days, Vicki and myself have made some awesome profits and our house is still intact (touch wood). Altogether, some pretty good bright sides.