The Same Plant, Different Flowers

I caught the train into town today for work.

I like being on a train, staring out the window without having to steer or control anything. This is what I suspect dying will be like. A sleepy little tour of my life. There's my old house from 2014. There's the station I used to wait to catch the train from in 2015. There's the cafe I used to stroll to with Nash in 2021. There's the bridge I used to walk across and have to turn my headphone volume up as the train went by in 2024.

I guess I have been alive for long enough in the same place that now trips to town on the train feel like a machine learning exercise. One of many hundreds of runs where I go through my day in Adelaide and I can picture a thousand Brads going off in different directions after leaving the concourse. Off to Pinky Flat with my drink bottle for primary school something or other. Into government house's gardens to accept my IT award. Into the SA Museum courtyard to catch a Triple J broadcast. Into many office buildings. Into the same dentist chair a couple of times.

At lunchtime it was a bit drizzly but also a bit sunny in the way September can be and I walked through the Botanic Gardens where I have been many times over my years and never got sick of. I saw a lot of flowers.

I don't get free coffees in the office any more. I mean, I do, I just have to press a button on a machine myself now instead of going down to the cafe and claiming them. Apparently I also need to clean out the grounds tray when it's full. That is something I have absolutely no problem with, but is hard when you haven't had to disassemble the machine before and you don't want to tug anything too hard and break something before you get coffee out of it. Luckily the coffee machine is in a kitchen shared with other tenants and a small startup person saw me struggling and helped me out - probably thinking at the same time how these poor tech giant employees can't even change the coffee grounds tray.

Well I guess today was machine learning.

I also learned that lavender can be white!