Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2011-11

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Terry Remin spends some time in Sydney
• Jean Sterling writes about their experience with a GPS
• Gerrit deLeuuw sends a number of Irish jokes
• Catherine Nesbitt´s story is about consequences
• Pat Moore forwards Murphy´s laws for computers
• Don Henderson sends an example of careless listening
• Jack Peaker sent this story about a box of chocolates
• Sites are suggested by Bruce Galway, Catherine Nesbitt, Gerrit deLeuuw, Nevil Horsfall, and Pat Moore

Terry Remin attends to personal business in Sydney on her way to

A NEW LIFE

While I was in Hawaii, my Dad e-mailed me that he was planning to be in Australia visiting relatives, so we planned to go to visit relatives who had a cattle ranch just outside of Brisbane, and then go to Fraser Island. Unfortunately, Queensland was under torrential rains and floods, the worst seen in 50 years after a drought of 10 years. We were not sure if we could get there, or get out if the rain continued, so we abandoned that thought. After some discussion, we decided to go south through the Snowy Mountain range down to the southern coast of New South Wales and back up the coastline to Sydney. We could leave on Saturday and be gone for 10 days.

I spent the week investigating cell phone companies, acquiring a cell phone, and opening a bank account. Everything seemed to take so much time as I had to do it all by bus, as well as find the right places to go. Public transportation was quite expensive, so I bought a one- week pass for $40 and I could go on any bus, train or ferry.

I found a company that had a BlackBerry I was able to buy outright for $250, which included free e-mail and internet for one year, as long as I kept the prepaid active. It was also unlocked so I could buy sim cards in whatever country I went to as well as at home. It was perfect ... now I could have e-mails in my hand just like I wanted. The bonus of that was that I only had to pay for internet when I needed to surf the web or when I knew I had e-mails that I couldn´t answer on my BlackBerry.

I opened a bank account and they are paying 5.85% interest on my savings account! It looks as if my idea to bring some of my money over here was a good one. The debit card also acts as a credit card, with no service charges unless I use it out of the country. You can do international money transfer through your internet banking here, but my bank in Canada said I couldn´t do it through my Canadian one. What a pain! It meant I had to send someone to the bank in Canada to request the transfer. Fortunately, I had arranged a power of attorney before I left.

I arranged a rental car online because the local places quoted me over $100 more, but the one that had the cheapest car was in downtown Sydney. I was actually petrified of driving on the wrong side of the road downtown in an unfamiliar city, so I decided to go there the day before and familiarize myself with where it was, etc. I was so glad I did that because when I mentioned my fear, I was told it could be arranged for me to pick up and drop off the car in the next suburb to where I was staying. I was so relieved.

I went and deposited all my travellers´ cheques in my new bank account and discovered I had way more money than I remembered, so I went shopping to buy some new clothes. I got quite a laugh in the subway. I was looking down, marvelling at the wooden escalator. I had never seen a wooden one before. I was delighted to find there was great "end of the year specials" on and managed to pick up a few pieces before the stores closed.

The next morning I picked up the car and went around to the hostel to get my luggage. I managed to pick up my Dad without incident, and we got instructions about how to get out of the city, and we got set up online for the toll bridges. They have cameras that take photos of your license plate so you don´t have to stop at the toll booth, and they charge your credit card ... wonderful!

To be continued.

Jean Sterling´s tells a story with a moral:

THE GPS LADY

It´s often said that men don´t like to ask for directions. And indeed, why should they - they wouldn´t follow them anyway.

A few weeks ago our oldest son, Bill, flew into the Gainesville airport, which is about 90 miles from where we live. Our middle son lives in Gainesville, and we are somewhat familiar with the city, but we had never been to the airport.

Not to worry! I told the GPS lady that we wanted to go to the Gainesville airport, and she told us to "drive .2 miles and turn right," and we were on our way. Everything was fine until we got near Gainesville and John started to override the GPS lady. "No," he told me when she said to turn right, "keep going straight." After we did this about three times she began to get a bit testy with us - her "recalculating" did not sound quite as friendly.

All of a sudden there was a loud electronic caterwauling. "Wow! What´s that? John exclaimed, and I found myself wondering if the GPS lady was having an electronic tantrum. Suddenly I remembered - it was the cell phone! Since I hardly ever turn it on, I had forgotten how unearthly and loud its ring tone was.

"It´s the cell phone!" I said, and John quickly reached for the MP3 player (he never messes with the cell phone, and I do only rarely). By the time we located the phone, Bill had given up. I pulled over to the side of the road, and sure enough the missed call was from Bill. We called him back, and he told us he was on the ground at the airport. Very unusual - the plane was actually on time. We told him we would be there soon, and we were - we did what the GPS lady told us to do (which mostly involved retracing our steps) and arrived at the Gainesville airport in a timely fashion.

The moral? Don´t mess with the GPS lady!

Gerrit deLeeuw sends these Irish jokes just in time for

SAINT PATRICK´S DAY

Patrick walks into a bar in Dublin, orders three pints of Guinness and sits in the corner of the room, drinking a sip out of each pint in turn. When he has finished all three, he goes back to the bar and orders three more.

The barman says, "You know a pint goes flat soon after I pull it. Your pint would taste better if you bought one at a time."

Patrick replies, "Well now, I have two brodders. One is in America, and de odder in Australia, and here I am in Dublin. When we all left home, we promised dat we´d drink dis way to remember de days we all drank togedder."

The barman admits that this is a nice custom and says no more.

Patrick becomes a regular customer, and always drinks the same way: ordering three pints and drinking a sip out of each in turn, until they are finished.

One day, he comes in and orders just two pints.

All the other regulars in the bar notice and fall silent.

When he goes back to the bar for the second round, the barman says, "I don´t want to intrude on your grief, but I wanted to offer my condolences on your great loss."

Patrick looks confused for a moment, then the penny drops and he starts to laugh.

"Oh no," he says, "Bejesus, everyone is fine! ´Tis me ... I´ve quit drinking."

~~~~~~~

Paddy spies a letter lying on his doormat. It says on the envelope "DO NOT BEND."

Paddy spends the next two hours trying to figure out how to pick the bloody thing up.

~~~~~~~

Paddy shouts frantically into the phone, "My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart!"

"Is this her first child?" asks the doctor.

"No," shouts Paddy. "This is her husband!"

~~~~~~~

Paddy is driving home, drunk as a skunk. Suddenly he has to swerve to avoid a tree, then another, then another.

A cop car pulls him over as he veers about all over the road.

Paddy tells the cop about all the trees in the road.

Cop says, "For gods sake, Paddy, that´s your air freshener swinging about!"

~~~~~~~

An old Irish farmer´s dog goes missing and he´s inconsolable.

His wife says, "Why don´t you put an advert in the paper?"

He does, but two weeks later the dog is still missing.

"What did you put in the paper?" his wife asks.

"Here boy!" he replies.

~~~~~~~

An American tourist asks an Irishman: "Why do Scuba divers always fall backwards off their boats?"

To which the Irishman replies: "If they fell forwards, they´d still be in the bloody boat!"

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this one:

NINE MONTHS LATER

Jack decided to go skiing with his buddy, Bob. They loaded up Jack´s minivan and headed north.

After driving for a few hours they got caught in a terrible blizzard. They pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who answered the door if they could spend the night.

"I realize it´s terrible weather out there and I have this huge house all to myself, but I´m recently widowed," she explained. "I´m afraid the neighbours will talk if I let you stay in my house."

"Don´t worry," Jack said. "We´ll be happy to sleep in the barn, and if the weather breaks, we´ll be gone at first light."

The lady agreed and the two men found their way to the barn and settled in for the night.

Come morning the weather had cleared and they got on their way. They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing.

About nine months later Jack got an unexpected letter from an attorney. It took him a few minutes to figure it out but he finally determined that it was from the attorney of that attractive widow he had met on the ski weekend.

He dropped in on his friend Bob and asked, "Bob, do you remember that good-looking widow from the farm we stayed at on our ski holiday up north about nine months ago?"

"Yes, I do." said Bob.

"Did you, er, happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house and pay her a visit?"

"Well, um, yes," Bob said, a little embarrassed about being found out. "I have to admit that I did."

"And did you happen to give her my name instead of telling her your name?"

Bob´s face turned beet red and he said, "Yeah. Look, I´m sorry, buddy. I´m afraid I did. Why do you ask?"

Jack´s response: "She just died and left me everything."

(And you thought the ending would be different, didn´t you?)

Pat Moore forwards

MURPHY´S LAWS OF COMPUTERS

1. When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.

2. When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it´s probably obsolete.

3. The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.

4. When the going gets tough, upgrade.

5. For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction.

6. To err is human ... to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human; it is downright natural.

7. He who laughs last probably made a back-up.

8. If at first you do not succeed, blame your computer.

9. A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

10. The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.

11. A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want to do.

Don Henderson sends this example of the truism that

WHAT YOU HEAR MAY NOT BE WHAT WAS SAID

Hector was passing by Bubba´s hay shed one day when through a gap in the door, he sees Bubba doing a slow and sensual striptease in front of his old red Massey Ferguson.

Buttocks clenched, he performs a slow pirouette and gently slides off first to the right, then to the left. He then hunches his shoulders forward and in a classic striptease move, lets his braces fall down from his shoulders to dangle by his hips over his corduroy trousers. Grabbing both sides of his checked shirt, he rips it apart to reveal his tea-stained vest underneath, and with a final flourish, he hurls his cap onto a pile of hay.

"What on earth are you doing, Bubba?" says Hector.

"Jeez Hector, ye frightened the livin bejasus out of me!" says an obviously embarrassed Bubba. "Me and the Missus been having some trouble lately in the bedroom department and the therapist suggested I do something ´sexy to a tractor´!"

Jack Peaker sent this story away back in 2006:

A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

For all of us who are married, were married, wish you were married, or wish you weren´t married, this is something to smile about the next time you open a box of chocolates:

Sally was driving home from one of her business trips in northern Arizona when she saw an elderly Navajo woman walking on the side of the road. As the trip was a long and quiet one, she stopped the car and asked the Navajo woman if she would like a ride. With a silent nod of thanks, the woman got into the car.

Resuming the journey, Sally tried in vain to make a bit of small talk with the Navajo woman. The old woman just sat silently, looking intently at everything she saw, studying every little detail, until she noticed a white bag on the seat next to Sally.

"What in bag?" asked the old woman.

Sally looked down at the white bag and said, "It´s a box of chocolates. I got it for my husband."

The Navajo woman was silent for another moment or two. Then speaking with the quiet wisdom of an elder, she said: "Good trade."

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Bruce Galway sends a link to a video of a novel way of getting a tractor out of the mud:

Bruce also suggests this site for an idea of what birds see when they are in flight:

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this link to a flash dance in West Vancouver´s Park Royal mall promoting United Girls of the World, a non-profit organization:

Dick Chenot writes: Take a look at this; perhaps it´s new to you and your readers: the fun theory:

Gerrit deLeeuw suggests this site for fans of Johnny Cash. A 15-year- old boy was discovered singing on the streets of Seattle. Interviewed on the Good Morning America show, he sings Cash´s classic "Ring of Fire":

Nevil Horsfall forwards a link to an unusual rendition of The Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore:

Pat Moore suggests this site, which shows how our country ranks with others in a number of areas:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to

http://members.shaw.ca/vjjsansum/freedictionarytestpageV2.html