The launch of the old Sony Playstation 2 brought a lot of things with it, including a game called Crash Bandicoot, which had a bandicoot character wearing blue pants jumping around smashing stuff. In terms of its appearance, it actually looked very little, if at all, like a real bandicoot apart from the nose slightly. In terms of its character, its probably about as completely opposite as you can get given how shy the real ones are. They really don’t go around smashing stuff in real life, only ever coming out at night and completely oblivious to the built up human world around them.
I saw this first hand thrice. The first was a corpse lying outside the front gate to work being pecked to crap by crows a few months back. The second was one we slowed down and barely avoided 2 days ago. The third was roadkill (from another car, not the one I was in!) a minute after the second. We stopped for a second to confirm it and it was indeed a bandicoot lying on the road, until the next 2 cars came along and lets just say things got a touch ugly what with the blood and guts and stuff.
The long nosed bandicoot is native to the eastern side of Australia and I happen to work right where there’s an endangered population of them in Manly’s North Head. They’re not an endangered species but the bunch of them that live in North Head, they can’t actually get anywhere and their numbers keep dwindling mostly due to cars running them over and the hamlet of Manly with its surfers, fish and chips and chicks. The only way out of North Head is a single long, winding road that I trudge up and down on a daily basis. There’s actually a board up on the roadside that tells motorists how many bandicoots died. It was 7 in ‘07 and 7 in ‘08. Right now, its 1 in ‘09. Pity then, that most motorists are still speeding up and down the road, unaware of the possibility that they could be spilling blood in the night. C’mon mateys. Give the cute little fellas a fighting chance.
Imagine that, with the nose intact and the rest a smodged pool of dark red. Bit like tomato paste after you cook it out slightly, lathered over some pizza dough. Only the pizza dough was grey and furry.
I’ve always had a thing for Volkswagen, after all, I spent a good coupla years driving a Golf all around Singapore. Memories of balsa & foam models, girlfriends, pizza, sleeping on the wheel, knocking into curbs and the like surface in abundance and not always together. One thing that does stick out beside the trivialities is the fact that the Golf was a really great and fun car to drive. I could really throw it around and it managed to handle it rather comfortably. Including that one time I went 160km/h on a 80km/h road. This is not a confession. I only truly realised how awesome Europe’s best selling car for eons was, when we swapped over to a Mitsubishi Pajero Mini, with a pathetic, less than a litre engine and loose rear wheel drive steering.
In any case, I was on the bus today and I managed to catch a glimpse of not one but two VW Eos on the road, stuck in traffic. One was classic silver and the other champagne gold. One had two skinhead chumpy dudes whilst the other a rather more elegant lady. What really caught my eye was the styling of the car itself. In either permutation, it managed to look quite classy, drawing a distinction from everything else around it. Granted everything else included a lot of Toyotas but still. Its not the flashiest one around nor quite the most expensive but it looks good. Plus, its a bloody convertible so its always gonna be awesome. Heck, even the skinhead chumps didn’t look that chumpy.
I’m not the only one getting hot under the collar. It was actually awarded the best exterior design award by a local car mag right here in Oz. The pictures don’t truly justify the understated beauty of this gentle fawn. Your eyes would do well to feast upon one in all its clanging metal flesh.
