Okay, maybe the newly remodelled Westfield Doncaster Shoppingtown (you can Google it if you care; I'm not going to give them a link) is cool inside. I wouldn't have any way of knowing. I lost an hour of my life and a fair amount of petrol there and never even got close to going inside. I will not be returning, which is a shame, because we used to go there frequently and I really enjoyed it. However, what I experienced today is not something I want to risk experiencing ever again.

Anyway, we went in the afternoon, after what should have been the lunchtime rush. Yes, I know it's a couple weeks to Christmas and things are busy busy busy. I get that. I'm not fussed about that, I mean, I get that you go somewhere, you see there's not really any hope of parking, and you go elsewhere. Fine, I do that all the time.

However, what happened to us today was we drove around (painfully slowly) for about twenty minutes and then said, "Well, look, we're not going to find anywhere to park, let's go," and then spent another forty minutes trying to get the hell out of the carpark. Yes, really. For a while, we were so badly gridlocked that we actually turned the engine off for periods of time while waiting to be able to proceed. Furthermore, there were a lot of cars that were parked completely illegally (when I see that, I really want to just get out my keys and walk along scoring the paint on every damned one of them). The illegal parking just contributed to the gridlock, as it turned what should have been a two lane channel into a single lane. Oh, and there was a whole big area of parking that was blocked off from use. Why? Well, there was a non-existent car wash there. Seriously. Reserved for a car wash that did not exist.

So, basically, it was an hour of my life that I'll never get back. Wasted petrol, wasted time, by the time we finally got the hell out of there, my blood sugar was very low (we were planning on having a late lunch... we ended up going elsewhere and having a very late lunch, indeed), and one of the kids was complaining that she needed to go to the toilet.

The thing that really irritates me is the incredibly poor design of the parking garage. The parking aisles all exit to a single lane to get to the exit. I have to wonder if the engineers who created this mess have ever actually parked a car on a busy day? Hey, I bet it looked great on paper and blueprints, but in practical application it SUCKS. Poor design irritates me beyond belief. I mean, this was a $600million remodel, and it took a couple of years to complete, and yet they think that "state of the art parking" means a multi-level rat warren of painfully slow moving traffic and - wait for it - you pay for your parking! (Happily, you only pay after the first two hours. This is good, because it could take you that long just to find a parking place at all, or to decide you won't find one and try to leave.)

Unbelievably bad design. I don't care how much they brag about it, it sucks. I wish I could grab all the design engineers and all of the upper management and stick them in cars and make them drive around that hell hole for an hour or so.

I used to think that the parking situation at Chadstone was really bad, and it kind of is. You can drive around a long time before you find a place to park. But the thing is, you don't sit in a gridlock for the better part of an hour. I have now elevated Westfield Doncaster to the worst parking situation I've experienced in Australia (that's ten years of living here and visiting a lot of parking garages, including in the heart of the city, multiple suburbs, and at very busy times of the year, indeed!). In fact, come to think of it, it may be the worst parking situation I've ever experienced. The only worse one I can think of would be something like leaving a parking lot after some event (concert, for example), when everyone's trying to go at once, but that's about volume, not about incredibly poor design (which the owners are bragging about as if it's great!)

As I said, I won't be back. It's a real shame, because it looks like the internal remodel is pretty cool, but honestly, if you can't get in to see, what's the point? I can't be bothered. I'm sure that after the holidays the traffic will be better, but do I want to risk it? Nup. Plenty of other shopping centres in Melbourne, ones where even if I can't find a place to park, I can at least leave the carpark without being gridlocked for the better part of an hour. Poor design, frustrating experience, I'll take my money somewhere else. (I doubt very much that the management of Westfield will ever read this, much less care what I wrote, but I wanted to write it just in case anyone else felt the same way and wanted to read my rant.)

I love, love, love Melbourne Today. It's a photblog, and it's got some great shots of Melbourne. It really captures the character of the city. I was just catching up with it, and my heart was just going pitter-pat the way it does when you're in love and you're suddenly reminded how very much you love the object of your affection. I'm still in love with Melbourne after all these years. I fell in love in February 1997, and it has never stopped, although, as with all longterm love affairs, it does ebb and flow. That blog makes it flow, for sure. Marvellous, marvellous Melbourne, I love you. (Don't be jealous, Chicago. I still have tremendous affection for you, but you know, it was always a weekend thing with us...)

SYDNEY is shedding 22,000 citizens a year to all parts of Australia, and for the first time the people deficit covers all key groups, from students and young singles to families and retirees.

(Just a personal note, you couldn't pay us to live in Sydney. Literally. Andrew has been headhunted by Google more than once and the pay and compensation package is impressive, but there's this huge drawback, and that is that we'd have to move to Sydney. He and others have suggested to Google that they should open an office in Melbourne because this is where all the good information retrieval people are, and almost none of them are willing to leave Marvelous Melbourne and move to (sucky?) Sydney. It's interesting to see that lots of other people feel the same way. I mean, people prefer Hobart to Sydney, what does that tell you?)

I used to laugh at Melbournians complaining about the cold. Seriously, it rarely gets down to freezing temperatures, even in the outlying areas, and I don't think it ever snows (okay, maybe once every twenty years there are flurries and the snow melts upon hitting the ground). We do get a hailstorm or three every year, but that's not usually in the winter.

After spending as many years as I did in upstate New York in the Finger Lakes region (from which we get the chilling words "lake effect snow" which has to do with the way the many, many small, cold lakes affect the weather and cause there to be lots of snow and ice and other horrid stuff along those lines), and also spending many, many years in the American Midwest (icy cold winds whipping down off of Lake Michigan, whee!), I understand about cold. Really, I do.

So, yes, I used to think, "Hah! Melbourne's not that cold!" and it's not, but.... After living her for seven years and becoming more used to the climate, I get it now. Melbourne winter cold is wet, grey, rainy, and cold. It's not a frigid, dry cold like you get in the Midwest or the Northeast of the United States. It's nowhere near as cold, but it has this way of sort of surrounding you, and creeping up on you, making you feel wet (even though you're not), grey, cold, and on the miserable side. It's a dreary, mucky, insidious cold, rather than a hard slap in the face type cold.

And it's been cold here lately. Wet and grey and cold, like a bowl of cold scrambled eggs with a side of cold cooked oats.

Yum.

Well, I hope you were all watching the opening ceremonies for the Commonwealth Games. They're being held in Melbourne, and there were some gorgeous shots of the city at night (okay, so it was dressed up with tons of fireworks and other cool stuff, but it's still Melbourne!). It really is a gorgeous city, with a river right through the middle of it and lots of tall buildings and a big stadium appropriate for, well, opening ceremonies for a big deal like the Commonwealth Games.

And it didn't even rain!

I have written previously about Melbourne's infamously changing weather. The joke is "four seasons in one day" (although, really, Melbourne only has three seasons, as there's nothing I'd personally refer to as winter, although Melburnians seem to think that there is). We also sometimes get patches of some other season in the middle of the season we're supposed to be having.

You can never "put away" your seasonal clothes in Melbourne. You just never know when you're going to need a jumper (sweater) or a pair of shorts...

Anyway, this past week has been very Melburnian weather, indeed. It was very hot, then it was quite cool (I'd say cold at night, although not so cold that I needed a hot water bottle or anything; I did have to put on a jumper - see above - and wear warm slippers around the house for a couple of those days), then it got hot again yesterday, and I do mean HOT, but with a really big downpour in the evening. Today it's quite warm but not terribly hot and it's a bit humid, which is unusual for Melbourne (the humidity, not the warmth). Tomorrow's forecst appears to be for rain and thunderstorms, and it'll be a bit cooler (but still warm).

You know, I just realized how extremely boring my life must be for me to be blogging about the weather... Eeek.

I learned something today that I didn't know (that happens pretty much every day, mind you, but I don't usually blog about it).

Melbourne has an ice hockey team. I had no idea. I did hear that the team is coached by an expat Canadian and most of the players are also expat Canadians, but apparently a few Aussies managed to learn how to not only skate but also chase a frozen pellet of rubber around a rink, hitting it with a stick.

I like hockey. Once I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out...

Well, it's decided to be summer again. Two night ago, I was sleeping with a hot water bottle at the foot of the bed because I was cold. Today, I was so hot and sweaty my hair was completely damp except for the very topmost layers, and we've got the fan going in our room.

Like I've said about Melbourne weather, if you don't like it, just wait. It'll change soon enough...

Well, last night there were apparently terrible storms. We slept right through them, but today there were BIG tree branches down all over the place and some traffic lights were out and various other generally bad things.

According to The Age, Wild winds and the biggest downpour on record have created havoc for Melbourne's commuters this morning, with roads flooded and many trains cancelled.

Andrew managed to get to work, but he had to drive to another train station further toward the city to get a train (being the nice bloke he is, he gave a lift to a couple other commuters), because a train from farther out was unable to get in due to the tracks being flooded.

Anyway, we got 120 mm of rain, the highest level since records began being kept in 1856. That's a hell of a lot of rain! Of course, it's needed because we had a drought not so long ago and the water reservoirs are pretty low (we actually have water restrictions, though it's not too terribly restrictive).

EDIT: Just heard on the news that it was apparently quite awful in some places, and there are actually deaths attributed to the storms. Trees fell through people's roofs, someone was swept away in floodwaters, it's all pretty awful from the looks of it...

It's bloody cold here! Two days ago, it was incredibly hot, and now it's bloody cold!

Melbourne weather, four seasons in one day and sometimes sudden patches of some other season in the middle of the one we're supposed to be having!

Andrew heard on the radio news that it was the coldest on record for the date and that in the past two days we've had the normal month's average rainfall, so that should give you some idea.

Bloody cold and bloody wet. Brrrr.

Although, this being Melbourne, in a few days it'll probably be back to something else again. That's the thing about Melbourne, if you don't like the weather, stick around, it's bound to change (sometimes in the same day).