The MON Blogs

The new Sydney M7 motorway has to be the craziest highway I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve been to Los Angeles.

Yet to be fully finished, I haven’t exactly experienced the potential horror, or possibly better, faster and safer road. It will certianly be a more expensive road, with several toll gates throughout measuring how much you’ve travelled. Sure it’s to do with the expansion of Sydney’s western suburbs, but geez! Overdone?

Basically there are multiple giant, modern (and quite scary looking) overpasses going every-which-way at various sections where it intersects. The start of the M5 near Glenfield is an example, and also at the Baulkham Hills section of the M2, however NOTHING compares with the crossover at the M4.

This is where the turn-off used to be for Wonderland, right on the corner where the Bush Beast rollercoaster used to live in its wooden, rickety glory. I believe it’s been taken away – it certainly looks like it, though there are many many roads blocking me and the old theme park (also it’s a bit hard to look whilst driving). My sister pointed out that the highway should latch on to the Bush Beast. Looking at the new overpass, it somehow seems like it has.

Here the overpasses goes into crazydrive. These massive amounts of concrete shoot off in pretty well every dircetion imaginable, with different levels of road rising up, higher than any road should go. On ground level (the M4 running underneath), there are these weird red poles that look like some sort of wiring coming out of them, although when looking at the concept pictures it seems that’s all they’re going to do with it. In the epicentre of this Grand Highway to End All Highways, is a giant red pole with some sort of dome at the top (which looks a little like the shape of a martini glass), which looks evidently like it will be a giant light to shine down on its creation.

The best part of all is that this overpass is in fact a memorial. While not as ironic as Harold Holt’s swimming pool memorial (as pointed out by Bill Bryson’s book, Down Under), this is a memorial to the Australian Light Horse regiments of World War One. What better way to honour them than with an overpass? Official M7 Light Horse Interchange website

westlinkm7 official webpage for those who are further interested.

I have a day-to-day calendar which has nice little quotes down the bottom. They’re fun, sometimes relevent, sometimes well known – but mostly a good way to procrastinate for, say, 30 seconds. However, throughout the good ol’ calendar there happens to be many many quotes by someone known as P. K. Shaw (see http://www.yourquotations.net/PK%20Shaw_quotes.html for examples). As said on some obscure internet/email (??) website thingy, “Wherever you find a book of quotes you will inevitably find something attributed to P.K.Shaw” (http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/2000-January/029564.html). Who he or she is I haven’t really known; even Google can’t help me out (you know, the definitive research tool and all). So perhaps ol’ P.K. doesn’t exist. Which makes it even more annoying, seeing as though Shaw is supposedly someone whose advice we’re meant to take. Even though I don’t like the whole ‘Anonymous’ thing, it’d probably be better to say that to make up a name, and a dodgy name at that (“Oh, yes,” I can hear those fatcats at the calendar publishing company, “let’s make a name with initials at the front. They respect that. And Shaw rhymes with sure, hohoho…well, that’s a silly point, but let’s put it that way, what ho”).

Moving on from that, I’ve also been thinking about people quoting in general. What is the deal with being able to quote something, slipping it in in a general conversation? Obviously, some are better than others at quoting stuff, and those who aren’t really good…I suppose you can laugh at. But why so it in the first place? Some of my conclusions include:

1. It’s somebody else’s idea, I guess, that you may not have though of before.

2. There’s (usually) a shared knowledge of the quote, and so in the first few words another person can tell what they’re going to say, and what the point is they’re trying to make.

3. A quote has what you want to say more elegantly, and/or funnier than what you could ever come up with

4. It’s easier than to think of that than something original (see 1.)

In this day and age…well, in MY day and age, it seems as though The Simpsons is the major thing quoted. Which is good…to an extent. Other things should be quoted too, obviously, because The Simpsons can’t always save us. Along with ol’ P. K.

So there you have it. A grand second blog post. Isn’t it grand.