The Mazda Cleaning Mitt

Australians love cleaning their cars.  It is one of our core values, which John Howard refers to in his recent memoirs.

Yesterday I received in the mail an unusual gift.  It was cleaning mitt for keeping my car spick and span.  Attached to it was a note from the manager of a car dealership here in Canberra, which regularly services my vehicle.  I think the gift of the mitt was a customer loyalty reward.

Oddly the package containing the mitt came from Hong Kong, yet, as I say, it still managed to have accompanying it, a signed note from the Canberra service manager.  On the back of the package, with the soft cleaning mitt inside, was a customs declaration, presumably so the mitt could more easily enter Australia (after its long journey from Hong Kong), by explaining to any inspector who perused the package that it contained a Mazda cleaning mitt and not contraband.

The mitt seems to be designed to encourage the cleaner to place his or her hand within it and then commence washing the vehicle.  Unfortunately the mitt didn't come with any instructions so I'm not sure whether it washes either or both inside and/or outside of the car.  I'm pretty sure the mitt is designed to fit either left or right hand, and one size fits all (short of gargantuan).  Upon first opening the package and pulling out the mitt, I thought, at a pinch, I could also use it as a rather amorphous puppet for entertaining children.  However children are quite sophisticated nowadays, so if it was to be used for this purpose, it would need to be done judiciously, with very young children.

Apart from servicing my car and occasionally giving me loyalty gifts, my Mazda dealership also cleans the vehicle, usually both inside and out, as a way of showing how much they appreciate my business and inducing me to return for future tender loving vehicular care.

However, at my last visit for a car service, the one that prompted the subsequent gift from Hong Kong, while sprucing up the exterior of my blue Mazda 6, they neglected to clean the interior, as they had done many times in the past.  I was slightly disappointed, but given the wash and clean was a bonus, not detailed on the service sheet, I decided not to mention the apparent oversight, after I picked up my car.  Nor did I bother filling in the post service appraisal survey to chide them for the lack of an interior clean, after the post service appraisal survey was sent to me a few weeks later (from within Australia not Hong Kong).

The ironic appropriateness of the cleaning mitt after the lack of an interior clean did not escape me.  Maybe at my next service, if they forget to change the oil, a month or so later I'll receive a few litres of oil, via the post, from some exotic location.

The last time I gently criticized Mazda via their post service appraisal survey (for an inaccurate speedo issue), I received a flurry of letters and phone calls followed by a small Lindt chocolate in the mail, as a rather touching way of begging forgiveness.

I can't say which of the Lindt chocolate or the cleaning Mitt I appreciate more.  One is worth about $8 while the other is worth about $15 and comparisons are odious.  Suffice to say, with the recent lifting of water restrictions stopping car washing I can't wait to put my new Mazda mitt to work!

Optimism

My son William rang this morning and suggested the Grand Final this year will be a repeat of last year with Geelong playing St Kilda.  He asked me if I agreed.  I replied "No, I was optimistic and believe Collingwood will beat Geelong and make it to the Grand Final."  I wondered if William, as a Collingwood supporter of about two years, had somehow inherited a genetically encoded long suffering Magpie barrackers' pessimism, learnt after many final and grand final disappointments of seasons past.  As a dad, it's almost my responsibility to be optimistic to sons who look to me for some sort of example, yet when it's left to my own personal perspective, pessimism is a 'safer' option - that way hopes don't get dashed.  At the end of our phone call, William asked me what optimism meant and I explained how it represents positive hope.  Thinking about this later, 'hope' is what you have to have if you follow any sporting team.

Men on crutches and taxis

When I trained to be a cab driver in 1989, most of the advice was common sense.  However one piece of wisdom was a total surprise.  Without a hint of equivocation, my trainer said "Be very careful when a passenger approaches your taxi on crutches".  The message was avoid these passengers if you possibly can.

Before being told to be wary of those on crutches, I'd had a sympathetic view of the limping lame bravely making their incommoded way between points A & B.  But thinking about the warning it made sense.  Crutches mean the person they are supporting is uncomfortable.  Getting in and out of the cab with crutches is difficult.  Retrieving the crutches at journey's end is awkward.  Having had an accident in the first place, that lead to crutches, is characteristic of a risk taker, who after the accident finds himself with his mobility limited causing frustration.  And being out and about in need of a cab, but with limited ability to manage movement, indicates denial or at the least non acceptance of the inability to walk.

The cab driver's greatest vulnerability to those with crutches is when they are both seated.  For here, driver and passenger are on close and almost equal combative terms, but with the passenger having two free hands, while the cabbie's upper limbs are occupied with a myriad of tasks.  Ill fitting crutches only make things worse: if they are too short the lame have to drag their leg and if they are too long the afflicted is forced to almost stilt walk.  Unlike the wheelchair bound, a cabbie should never help the man with crutches into his seat in the cab.  Show unending patience, make it clear you are sliding the seat back as far as it will go and most importantly never turn the meter on till the infirm passenger is belted in and ready to go.  But sometimes all this is not enough and you will still be blamed for every bump in the road.

Journey's end is the time to render assistance, taking the crutches from the back seat and insouciantly offering them to the hopping man, as he resumes his supported upright convalescent mode of self locomotion.

But when they are drunk, those on crutches are the worst passenger, who should only be transported in a horizontal state, by some sort of combination of hearse and ambulance.

The grump

When I encounter a grumpy person who is working in customer service I often try and present a happy demeanour.  I believe this serves three functions (1) It means I won't be dragged down by their lack of positivity; (2) It serves to possibly forestall something worse than grumpiness from the grump and (3) I may bring some happiness to the grump's apparently down tempo life.

In some ways I prefer to encounter grumps.  Amway up tempo personalities or the "Awesome" sayers worry me.  To bring these excessively glass half full types down to a more realistic level by giving them a serve of negativity risks over doing it, and making them surly, even angry or threatening.

When I meet a well known grump and the grump is uncharacteristically chirpy and cheery it can be quite off putting.  "Are they medicating?" I wonder.  A "you seem very happy today!?", which may be appropriate to those with the normal range of moods, is an observation or a question that can't be put to a grump because they are likely to revert to grumpiness.

The grump is valuable for reminding me of my own foul moods and how these should not be allowed to form a habit or pattern.  The grump is to be admired for not seemingly caring whether people like them.  The grump gives voice to the pressing burden of life we all sometimes feel.  But for the most part the grump closes the door to the joy of life.

Travel memories and nefarious name changes

After you travel through a place many times, the picture of it in your head becomes more consolidated.  That location mapped in your mind starts to develop its own set of thoughts and feelings, reinforced again and again by recollections of earlier transits.  For instance, when I start to approach border cities, bestriding the River Murray, from the south, I now always think of a recently retired Collingwood long kicking centre half forward.  However, I never think of that footballer, soon to try out in the NFL, when I approach the same place from the north.  But when I pass through a Victorian town demanding the State Government stops stealing its water, the name and image of a woman I knew at University invariably moves to front of mind no matter what direction that hamlet is approached from

On this theme, there's a road I travel two or three times a year and it goes through a small town with its own small public swimming pool.  Public swimming pools in villages are often things that show small communities are managing to do something between survive and thrive.  I thought I recalled the name on the wall of the pool, a male name and surname, which presumably honoured a founder of the pool.  Then one day, on another trip through this place, the given name seem to have changed, while the surname had stayed the same.  Was this really true?  And if so, why had it occured?

I've decided I can't innocently ask a local to confirm my recollection, but I could surreptitiously closely examine the wall of the pool to see if there are tell tale screw holes, now filled in, that might have at one time secured a different given name.  Only then can I speculate on motives for such a name change.  A building I once worked in was named after a formerly revered public official.  However once it was discovered that this man had harassed staff, naming of an errrection in his honour was made nugatory and the building took on more prosaic street numbers and name as its identifier.

A national icon

Dropped into today to the Canberra tourist attraction with the most statues by a country mile, the War memorial.  Very much a quiet day there, it being winter and between commemorative events so all volunteer guides seemed under utilised.  Lots of Asian tourists - it must be strange for Japanese tourists to visit the place.  I stood behind some who were taking in a small display about the Atom bomb. They may have felt the way I did when visiting the Japanese war memorial in Tokyo, that is unable to read a thing & getting a general impression of veneration for the home side.  My 8-y-o son and I discussed whether there should be an actual atom bomb on display, but we agreed it could pose a radiation hazard.  As you gaze from the front steps down to parliament houses, old and new, it's easy to theorize that the two sets of buildings opposite each other separated by lake and 3 kms might have something to do with the obscene amount spent on defence.  Wandering between medals and machine guns, I thought nothing of what my son from the war gaming generation thinks of the edifice and trappings of the war memorial - as it happened, while we sat in the cafe he was more interested in why there were holes in the outside wall and what different sorts of birds were doing poking around in them.  Outside on our way to the new underground car park, we noticed a large number of rabbits scurrying around, having made their homes in holes under the ground cover outside one of the buildings - it seems the war on rabbits by way of the calicivirus has not been a great success, with bunnies hopping around, feet away from bronze statues of Weary Dunlop and Simpson and his donkey.