Palm Springs

Our accommodation in Palm Springs

The pool area

The surrounds

Blue sky, cool weather

Shopping at Palm Springs

Shopping at Palm Spring

Strand Arcade Auckland

Re-purposed religion. Church to shopping

St John's Church in Paddington has been disused for as long as I can remember, boarded up with signage indicating some future redevelopment.

Well that redevelopment has been achieved.

Once a Church, now a fashion store

From the other angle

Once the Manse now a Real Estate agency

224. I should have known better

The car park in the Westfield Bondi Junction Shopping Centre is a shocker. I've known people who 'lost' their cars there and others who had panic attacks having found their car only to be unable to find an exit.

It is not as though there aren't sufficient exits. There are numerous exits. And numerous entrances too. The problem isn't so much 'the' car park; rather that the car parking facilities comprise a collection of disparate parking areas. The Westfield complex was constructed across a number of properties, most of them demolished to make way for the juggernaut.

A number of below ground pre-existing car parks were linked and incorporated into the new complex together with new underground facilities. There are apparently 3,297 parking spaces. That seems a lot, yet it is not uncommon for the car park to effectively be full. Actually, overflowing in my opinion.

I have learnt the hard way never to enter the car park when the entrance displays indicate fewer than 120 spaces are 'available'. In reality that means all spaces are occupied and more than that number of cars are inside and underground and in effect trapped trying to find a supposedly vacant space or a space that is about to be vacated. Trying to escape that queue of crawling cars in search of a space is almost an impossibility. The traffic lanes are too narrow for safe passing.

So, what am I getting at with this background information?

Well, I approached the car park today with the display indicating 224 available spaces. More than a hundred above my threshold figure. I felt uneasy. It still would be a tight fit but having driven to the Centre I was keen to complete my transaction. Against my better judgement I drove in.

Fifteen minutes later I was trapped in one of those endless queue of cars futilely searching for a space. Reaching an intersection of traffic I made a late decision to turn into a right hand lane but the angle was too tight to achieve in one turn. I stopped and reversed right back into the car turning behind me. I never saw it.

There we were trapped with others banked up angrily behind us. I had to manoeuvre down to a lower level with my tailgated accomplice following until we could find a tiny lay-by area where we could stop, examine damage and exchange details.

I was expecting a blast from the good looking young man whose car I had hit but as it turns out the bump must have been gentler than the noise accompanying it. Neither car displayed any damage. We both smiled, I apologised profusely, we shook hands and then we retreated to our cars to make our separate relieved escapes.

Only 224 spaces available. I should have known better.

Daylight robbery, Westfield Bondi Junction

As the notice says, my local shopping mall has introduced ticketless parking. The signage I've seen so far at the parking entry points don't set out any conditions for parking but there is signage once you enter the shopping precincts that sets out what to do when you have parked less and more than the two hours offered free. There is no mention in those notices about multiple entries on a day.

I used the system entering and departing the parking station without difficulty on Wednesday having parked at the centre for under an hour.

I visited the centre again yesterday making two entries. The first was from 8.15am to 9.30am and I entered and departed the centre without difficulty. I returned for further shopping at 1.35pm and made for my departure at 2.10pm. The barrier would not rise and to my shock the screen showed I owed $35 for parking.

A queue quickly developed behind me as I pressed the assistance button and impatient drivers pressed their horns in frustration. Eventually a disembodied male voice answered my call. Cutting to the point of the story he told me that customers are entitled to two hours free parking for the day and if a reentry is made on the same day the fee for the subsequent entry is calculated from the time of the first entry.

If this is true then it is daylight robbery. In two visits I spent less than two hours parked at the centre. Even if the rule is that a subsequent entry on one day attracts a fee the fact is I spent only 35 minutes parked on the second entry. I was being charged, apparently, for 5 hours and 55 minutes of parking when I had only been physically parked for a total of 1 hour and 50 minutes.

I argued the point with the disembodied voice and was allowed to depart without payment.

Checking online later I found this information on the centre's website;

HOW IT WORKS

1. There is no boom gate at entry, so you can drive straight into the carpark. On entry to the car park there will be a digital clock displaying your time of entry; remember the time you entered as you will not be issued with a ticket.

2a. If your visit is under 2 hours, proceed straight to the exit. The parking system will recognise your licence plate number and the boom gate will open automatically.

2b. If your visit is over 2 hours, head to one of the many pay stations, enter your licence plate number and pay the parking fee. Drive to the exit where the system will recognise your parking payment and the boom gate will open automatically.

If you exit the centre, there must be 2 hours between exit and re-entry in order to receive another ‘2 hours free parking’ period.

(The highlighting of the last sentence is mine.) So, the disembodied male voice was wrong and so was the system that calculated a fee for my second entry of the day. Westfield better sort out the teething problems and also get their staff speaking from the same page otherwise their customer numbers will drop and their traders will not be happy either.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

A friend is undertaking a course in Design and has unilaterally offered her thoughts on ways of improving the design of my apartment.

All from the goodness of her heart of course and nothing to do with improving or rehearsing assignments for which she might be marked later. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Actually I don't mind playing along because she has some interesting suggestions and my apartment could benefit from some design improvement.

Today we looked over mirrors, cushions, lamps etc.

Friend is somewhat taken with this mirror for my apartment;

but I have a preference for this;

No decisions yet - and no rush to redecorate either.

All that glitters

Three levels of shopping mall

Ovals

Westfield Bondi Junction

Impulse buying

My good friend Mt is a very careful shopper. She cannot purchase a pair of shoes for walking the dog without first researching the internet, visiting shoe shops in three cities and trying shoes on for fit and comfort for hours on end. I admire her thoroughness but am also bemused that despite all this effort she sometimes is dissatisfied by her eventual purchase. Mt put just that sort of effort into buying her first car for 17 years - a demonstration car - and then traded it in for another a few months later.

I, on the other hand, am different. Very different actually. Yesterday was an example.

I went into town to have a $10 super zero buzzcut and (figuratively) came home with a $4,750 lounge suite. It will be delivered on 6 March. I saw a sofa and two armchairs in a furniture store. I handed over a plastic card and said 'send me one set please' and that was that. No research. Very few thought processes.

The sofa looks like this;

and the two armchairs are similar.

I think that's called impulse buying.

My station in aisle 6

I was idly scanning the digital radio stations last night when I came across a station I hadn't noticed previously, Coles Radio. Heigh Ho, I wondered is this the supermarket beast's background music in my own home? (No, I didn't really think 'Heigh Ho' but you get my meaning.)

Listening for a few minutes confirmed this was indeed a broadcast of the music played in the background at Coles stores, advertisements for store specials and all included.

No, I don't think I will save the station as one of my pre-set favourites.

Here I go again....

....banging on about Telstra.

Why am I whipping my least favourite corporate organisation, so called service provider, yet again only days since this?

I could blame Andrew because it was his comment that made me think I should update my modem but that would be unfair. The fact is his suggestion was timely and relevant but as always in my experience obtaining a service from that communication beast is excruciating.

In brief, I phoned Telstra to enquire about obtaining a new modem and was told I had to contact a Telstra store directly. I visited a Telstra store and was told I had to order a modem by phone. The man in the store with the 'triage tablet' in hand gave me the number to ring. Returning home I rang that number three times only to hear 'your call cannot be connected'. I rang the general enquiry line and finally spoke to someone who took my order and promised a new modem would be delivered within five days.

A modem was delivered after two days - yay, a tick for Telstra - and I connected it relatively quickly. Then I tried to activate the modem but the relevant screen simply would not accept my request. Back to the telephone enquiry line and after some to-ing and fro-ing I was informed that a code called the mac number had to be registered and this would take about 24 hours to achieve. Don't ask me why, I just don't understand.

And now, after 36 hours with no internet access, I am connected again.

Now to see how this modem performs.

Lets go shopping

It's a funny thing but every time Mt and Ll visit Sydney they come with a shopping list of things to purchase; things they believe they cannot obtain in their home cities. A visit to shopping centres always is the first item to be ticked off the list before other activities - cultural and otherwise - that are the primary purpose of their stay.

A certain giant shopping mall in Bondi Junction - let's call it WBJ - was the focus of activity on our first full day together. Fd and I quickly adjourned to a coffee shop so that Ll and Mt could track down as much from their shopping lists as possible. Inevitably - it always happens - they didn't achieve all their desired purchases but they succeeded with enough purchases to be content with their day. In the meantime Fd and I were spared the agony of hours of trailing after them from shop to shop.

Tonight we had dinner at The Prophet restaurant. It is a bit of a Sydney institution as a Lebanese restaurant that has been around for years. My visitors had never eaten there and they rarely eat middle eastern food. None of us is expert but we enjoyed the dishes we ordered.

Odds and sods

We started off the day at the Chelsea Market a converted factory in the meat packing district that contains an atmospheric shopping mall of food, fashion and crafty type stores. It is not a vast centre - unlike so many things that are large here - but it is worth a visit and a purchase or two.

Chelsea Market

We found an exciting restaurant nearby for brunch; Bubby's.

Bubby's High Line

We ordered pancakes. Mine were described as the house specials with a compote of blueberries on the side. Naturally the serving was enormous and I wasn't able to eat it all. My drink in the jar was a Peach Lemonade.

Bubby's Pancakes

And we moved on.

Meat Packing District

Meat Packing District

Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal

The subway is less glamorous.

Grand Central subway

Tonight we had a meal at the Cafe Edison before the theatre. The Cafe is attached to the Hotel Edison near Times Square. The hotel seems from outside to be a bit seedy but it has a lovely art deco lobby.

Hotel Edison

Hotel Edison

Finally we attended our last show for the visit. 'The Country House' is a new play staged by the Manhattan Theatre Club. It is about a family of theatre people who get together on the first anniversary of a member's death. It is a comedy with a dramatic conclusion and I suppose the main attraction is Blythe Danner (Mother of Gwyneth Paltrow) as the name star. It is the weakest of the shows we have seen this visit; entertaining enough but nothing special.
★★★

LAX

The bookings were made many months ago and the countdown seemed slow until this week but finally departure day has arrived (if you get my gist).

Departure from Sydney Airport was delayed nearly an hour because of congestion in outwards immigration (there I go again) and a different form of congestion with birds sucked into an engine, thankfully of another plane, not ours. Despite the delay we still managed to arrive at LAX (Los Angeles) before we had departed Sydney. It was about 2pm 30 August as we raced down the runway for takeoff at Sydney and it was 10.20am 30 August when we touched at Los Angeles today.

Having mentioned congestion at Sydney Airport I won't nonetheless accept criticism of our facilities without argument given the even worse crowding here. It took nearly an hour to navigate the snake queue for Border clearance and once there you are photographed and they take a print of every finger and thumb. After baggage collection and customs clearance I walked along a series of tunnels and into the public area.

I looked without success for any information on the options for getting to my hotel but there was no such assistance apart from several cursory overhead signs which frankly are of no help. I did notice there are upgrades of the airport in progress and maybe these facilities will come with time.

In the end I joined the taxi rank. An Iranian cab driver drove me efficiently - as best I could tell - to my hotel. He was a friendly fellow but the journey was somewhat ruined by his persistence in questioning me on how he could get to Australia for work. Interestingly he mentioned that his cousin had gone to Indonesia and from there by boat headed for Australia but that he had been taken to Manus Island. The Government may have 'stopped' the boats in its view but not the interest.

Anyway - enough of politics; this is not a political blog - on to the vacation.

This is my hotel right in the centre of (luxury) things on Rodeo Drive.

Brand names on every corner.

Brand names side by side.

Even on Rodeo Drive brand names have clearance sales; like Brooks Brothers here offering 60% off for the Labor Day holiday.

But even on Rodeo Drive there is the ominous sight of a vacant store.

So what purchase did I make as a memento of my stay on Rodeo Drive? What do you think about this subtle little number?

Only kidding!

Trying to slip it on

No, this is not a safe sex message.

At the risk of boring you with 'old men's' issues can I complain how difficult it is to find men's slippers? I've just spent a couple of hours trawling department stores and the range of men's slippers they have on sale is, quite frankly, pitiful.

Half a dozen supposedly different styles but mostly variations of the one theme and even when I found a pair that vaguely attracted my interest they had no pairs available remotely near my size. And just in case you are wondering I do not have a pair of King Kong size feet.

I might have been attracted to these slippers, if the wearer came with them...

Chace Crawford wearing Etro dress slipper

...but no, they don't look at all the snugly warm pair I am looking to wear these cold winter evenings.

I'm not keen on them but perhaps I will have to resort to purchasing the dreaded...

Ben Affleck wearing Ugg boots

...Ugg!

Visitors

In real time I haven't posted for a week because friends arrived from interstate to stay for three nights and then we four took a 38 hour cruise up the coast to Brisbane. So I'll catch up on those days with a few short back dated posts starting with this one.

Ll, Fd and Mt were booked to fly in at 9.40pm on of the last domestic arrival flights for last night; Sydney Airport's curfew banning flights (other than freight services) after 11pm. The flight was delayed about tenth minutes and I spent that delay waiting at the McDonalds adjacent to the domestic terminals to avoid the limited and excessively priced parking allowances. Interestingly McDonalds was crowded. I don't know whether the other patrons were also sheltering from the policed parking or  if the restaurant is normally this crowded on a Tuesday evening.

This morning the four of us spent time at Westfield Bondi Junction as both Ll and Mt were looking to purchase shoes. Only Ll found a pair to her liking.

As the shopping expedition was over well before we initially expected we made a spur of the moment of decision to take the train to end of the southern line, Cronulla, as an excursion. The journey from Bondi Junction took about one hour and ten minutes. That is the beauty of being a senior citizen, your $2.50 all day Pensioner Excursion ticket allows this type of unplanned travel without any concerns for cost.

It was a brilliantly sunny day but extremely windy making the temperature seem particularly cold. None of us was familiar with Cronulla and after wandering up and down a few streets in the cold we decided to make our lunch stop a cafe named Charlie Lovett. As cafes go it didn't look remarkable at all and we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the meal we received. Ll and I shared a most enjoyable pizza. Fd had an omelette which was like a Pizza in appearance. Mt ordered something vaguely healthy but I can't recall what.

The return journey was about fifty minutes because some of the stops on the way down were bypassed on the return.

Dinner tonight was at Una's, an essential visit for Ll and Fd whenever they stay with me because they love the European menu and giant servings. Of course we ate too much. We always do when we eat there.

'If that is what you want to believe'

I bought a new camera yesterday for a forthcoming overseas trip. A compact digital camera. I already have a fancy digital SLR camera so it is not essential for me to have purchased this latest camera but I had two reasons for doing so.

First, the compact camera is easier and lighter to carry around day after day and suitable for those quickly taken snaps when you are on the run. Second, the camera has GPS capacity so the photographs I take with it will be labelled with the location. The second factor was the clincher in my decision to have an additional camera available on the trip.

The salesman tried to sell me a 'care protection service'; in effect an additional warranty. I've seen/heard enough consumer information programs on television and radio to know that these 'services' are a money earner for the retailer and an unnecessary duplication from the consumer's perspective of what the retailer is liable to provide under existing consumer law.

The salesman was quite insistent. It wasn't enough for him that I answered 'no' to each of his three proposals that I purchase the 'service'. He then asserted that without my purchase of their 'service', the retailer would not replace the camera should it require replacement. I responded that in those circumstances they would be required to replace the camera and if they refused to do so I would not hesitate to refer the matter to the Department of Fair Trading.

The salesman wasn't deterred. 'If that is want you want to believe' he told me three times. I think he might have continued to push the 'service' if it wasn't that I told him that I would walk away and he would have lost the sale. I'm glad that he then backed off. The camera had been discounted 30% and was significantly cheaper than the price for that camera at the other outlets in the shopping mall.

One promise fulfilled; one not...

The replacement jeans promised by the retailer when I notified them of Australia Post's apparent mis-delivery of my purchase have arrived.

Well done Just Jeans.

By the way, no response yet from Australia Post to my formal complaint about their mis-delivery.

An update on online shopping

So far there has been no response from Australia Post to my complaint about the misdirected delivery of my online jeans purchase.

Now there is a surprise.

Some days after submitting my complaint it occurred to me belatedly that I should also complain to the retailer, if only so that they have feedback on the 'customer experience'. To their credit they  despatched another pair of jeans last Thursday, without cost to me, and have given me a number to call them to confirm successful delivery.

My faith in online shopping will be restored when the jeans arrive.

By online, buy often etc

There is a lot of discussion about online shopping versus in person shopping at retail outlets. Are shops and stores suffering because of an inability to match online prices; should the Goods and Services Tax apply online and if so at what level?

I've been shopping online for ages. That is; if you regard using my computer for theatre bookings, flight bookings, hotel reservations, car hire, travel insurance as online shopping. Even more so if you take into account online banking and payment of bills as online shopping. But I don't think that is what most people consider to be 'shopping'. I imagine most people think of online shopping as something you purchase online that has to be delivered to you.

I dipped my first toe in the water of online shopping about ten days ago. It has not gone well.

I tried on a pair of jeans at a store, found they fit well and that I liked them and decided I wanted to purchase multiple pairs. Unfortunately the store only had one pair in my size and two other stores in the same chain had none.

I went online to locate other stores in the chain that I could visit and found the jeans, in my size, available for purchase online. Not only available for purchase online but available for purchase $30 cheaper than the pair I purchased in the store.

Well, I thought, what better opportunity to start online shopping than this? I ordered and paid for the jeans online. I received an immediate email confirming the purchase and informing me I would be notified of the progress of the delivery of my purchase to my home. How wonderful!

True to the promise, two emails followed 'tracking' the delivery. Terrific, I thought.

Then something strange. A third email. My purchase had been delivered. But it hadn't. Not to me anyway. It was signed for by someone at Alexandria. I don't live at Alexandria. The delivery address was not Alexandria.

Now I'm in a formal complaints process with Australia Post to ascertain, who in Alexandria has taken delivery of my purchase, why they have done so and how do I get my purchase delivered to me.