Dianne,

I’m at kl intl airport waiting for my flight back to wintery Korea. I had a very decent Thai dinner for $2 and there’s free wifi. Even before getting here I was near moved to comment on the atrocious state of tullamarine airport. Another contrast is Malaysia airlines compared with qantas. I can easily say that MH has been the best I’ve flown with, Singapore the only other that’s comparable. Malaysian have been friendly, polite and they comunicate well. They make the mistake of letting qantas staff handle their check-Ins at Melb. and despite them having English as a first language they’re really bad at communicating. I was sitting at tullamarine thinking about varous aspects of public infrastructure in Victoria and it was enough to make me wonder if this is part of Australia—is this a first world country? Yes of course it is I hear you say Dianne. Then what is the problem? I never thought I’d say this but it’s the unions. They are like idiot children when eating: they always want more, more, MORE without regard for those around them or even for their own wellbeing. As a consequence, public projects like whatever the hell it was they did to nunnawadding station cost squillions and take ages. I’m not saying cut peoples’ wages but they should take a look at blue collar work that gets done in other countries—and realize how lazy they’ve become. From what I’ve seen here and in Korea, people still take pride in their work and the extra effort they put in pays off in creating infrastrucure that the whole community can take pride in.