Voting

This weekend just past, I had to vote in the local government elections in New South Wales, Australia. Voting is compulsory here or you cop a small fine. I think it is currently $50-55.00 AU for local government elections. Many chose to pay the fine, while others cast a ‘donkey’ vote, or one that was useless deliberately. Some put down the US president as a choice, while other doodled on the ballot paper. Some others probably tried to vote correctly but did the wrong thing. Many votes were passed in as invalid.

In the local government area where I live, I can’t say that I knew much about the various candidates – with the exception of one whom I regard as a waste of space in local government. Needless to say I didn’t vote for him. I found myself simply voting along traditional lines because I knew no better.

Most candidates are viewed as clowns or worse in elections here, which is quite a shame. Serving one’s country in government should be seen as an honourable profession. However, it is not and those who actually have something useful to offer turn away from the process because of the joke that government is often perceived to be. Those who really can make a difference are choosing to avoid serving in government and that is a real shame.

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Books and Cataloguing

I once had all of my books catalogued and organised. I guess the ones I had up to that point still are – but now, with ebooks and other traditional book additions to my library, the number of books/ebooks I own has probably doubled at least. I should have continued to catalogue and organise them as I added to the library, but alas I did not. I have been working away at doing it now, on and off, for a little bit in recent months. I’ll get there eventually, but it takes a bit of time.

I use Goodreads online for cataloguing and a database on my computer for offline cataloguing. Both have their purpose, and one acts as a back up of the other. If I can get this done, it will be very helpful in using the library for research and study purposes, and also save a lot of time in the long run.

Read Today: Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

I finished reading this book today.

At the BookShelf

Treasure Island was the first major novel of Robert Louis Stevenson. It was first published in 1883 and has remained a much-loved book. First penned as a story for boys, it was as a young boy that I first came across Treasure Island. It was the first real book that I ever read – certainly of my own choice. If I remember correctly, the copy I had was a small book, not much bigger than my hand and illustrated throughout. The illustrations weren’t coloured as such, but I think I may have started to ‘colour them in’ as I read the story several times. The name of the ship, ‘Hispaniola,’ came back to me in one of my first compositions at school. In that early attempt at writing I wrote a story about piracy and a ship called the Hispaniola. I believe I was written into the story, along…

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