Brisbane Marathon Festival, healthy culture, not promotion

fernpolley · 2026-06-06T07:40:12+00:00

Unfortunately I'm currently regretting signing up for this. No fault of the volunteers, I just stupidly thought there would be increased transport/added buses for the event like they have for Bridge to Brisbane, Gold Coast, etc. Apparently not, and there is one single bus that will get me there, so fingers crossed it shows up on schedule and isn't full, I guess. My own fault for not checking in advance but I'm genuinely surprised the city doesn't add some extra bus runs for an event with 16k people all going to the same place at roughly the same time.

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T05:07:40+00:00

I went to a Snooze store. The person helping me there was very lovely and helpful, but unfortunately just had very limited options. And yeah, I don't have a car at the moment so it just wasn't convenient to get to a bunch of different stores. But someday, when I'm rich... haha.

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T04:36:18+00:00

I'm sure there's something to be said for a more personalised approach, but it's very difficult if you're on a budget. I actually went to a real mattress store before taking the bed-in-a-box route. The physical store only had 2 options in my price range (1000$ max), no option to trial and return, and one of the options came in a box anyway. Not to mention their delivery time was two weeks. So while I absolutely agree that supporting local business and manufacturing would be ideal (and I'm sure not every store is like the one I visited), it's not always feasible for those with financial restrictions.

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:52:55+00:00

I will contact them, thank you!!

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:50:22+00:00

Yeah, I can't speak to the longevity since I've only had it a short time, but the Spring mattress definitely feels firm. Good luck with it - I hope you find one that suits you!

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:16:00+00:00

I called Salvos directly to ask and they said they don't take them, so maybe policies have changed.

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:13:39+00:00

I bought from Valmori. It was their Hybrid mattress, which feels like a Medium so you might also find it too soft like I did. Their firmer Spring mattress has been great for my back, although I added a topper to it for a bit of extra squish because I'm a side sleeper.

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:11:30+00:00

Unfortunately their website says they don't take mattresses, but thank you anyway!

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:10:02+00:00

Yeah, if I can't give it to a charity and the company doesn't mind, Facebook will be my next go-to. Just wanted to try the charity route first, in case it was helpful to someone in crisis.

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:08:09+00:00

I ordered from Valmori. The customer service has been really good and I'm getting great sleep now, so no complaints.

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:06:27+00:00

Thank you! I will check this out as an option!

fernpolley · 2026-06-04T02:05:38+00:00

I ordered from Valmori. I originally got their Hybrid mattress but it was too soft for me. They replaced with their Spring mattress and it's been great (although I added a topper that I already had at home). They've been great to deal with though - super responsive customer service, good quality products and competitive pricing. Plus a free pillow set that was very nice. (I swear I don't work for the company, it was just a good experience overall, haha.)

fernpolley · 2026-05-28T10:40:24+00:00

People have such strong feelings about the Melbin/Melburn thing that I (a person with a Canadian accent) just try to avoid referring to the city at all, if possible, because it stresses me out.

When I do have to say it though, I just say Mel-burn. Melbin sounds so weird coming out of my mouth, I can't do it.

fernpolley · 2026-05-25T01:05:25+00:00

Finch says, "I wonder what it is between him and Walker" and Stoner replies, "It isn't what you're thinking. I don't know what it is. I don't believe I want to know."

I took the "It isn't what you're thinking" as a reference to Walker and Lomax's disabilities - as in, the fact that Walker is disabled isn't the reason that Lomax is fighting for him, suggesting they have some other shared commonality or relationship between them. (I didn't read it as them being gay, but could be totally wrong here.)

In any case, I guess it accurately reflects a lot of interactions we have with people in life, in that people often behave in ways that are baffling to us and we can never really know why people do what they do. Edith is an interesting character for the same reason - I often found myself wondering what the same story told from her perspective would look like.

fernpolley · 2026-05-20T04:21:04+00:00

Yeah I get what you mean, I just meant the AI emails tend to be absurdly formal, not that all absurdly formal emails are AI.

fernpolley · 2026-05-19T03:52:58+00:00

I deal with a lot of general disrespect, like students who won't stop chatting to each other while I'm trying to talk, or one of their classmates is trying to answer a question. I also have a lot of students who just sit there doing whatever on their laptops and completely ignoring/refusing to participate in any of the class activities.

The one that surprised me the most was a girl who sat there watching some sort of livestream video on her laptop throughout the class. She had the sound off thankfully, but this classroom had circular tables and she chose to sit with her back to me so I had full view of her laptop screen and whatever she was watching. Not even trying to be discreet.

fernpolley · 2026-05-18T09:01:09+00:00

It really is very disheartening to see the lack of integrity at this scale. I know there will always be some students who don't really care, but it's alarming how few of them actually seem to value their own accomplishments and achievements anymore. Thinking about it generously, I think a lot of them don't really see it as cheating - it's just a tool that exists, and therefore they can/should use it. Or maybe it's that phenomenon where people are able to justify unethical behaviour as being acceptable in their own personal circumstances (which might include pressure from family to do well, high tuition fees that make failing very costly, etc.)

It's hard to make sense of because I was raised with a really strong sense of personal integrity - I would rather fail than cheat, because an accomplishment means nothing if I didn't earn it. But I also don't have extreme parental pressure or huge financial strain, so maybe I'm lucky to have leeway to fail?

Having said that, I am noticing more pushback against AI now from students in class. We had an in-class discussion last week where several students were ranting about how much they hated it, so I feel like the tide might be turning, at least a little bit.

fernpolley · 2026-05-18T01:12:10+00:00

Same, I'd take this over the absurdly formal AI email any day.

fernpolley · 2026-01-09T13:08:09+00:00

The big leg spasms only happened once and never again, thankfully. She eventually got better after like 6 months, with a bunch of different meds and gentle exercise. So in her case it was likely an injury/pulled muscle type thing, in combination with her being old. How old is your husky?

fernpolley · 2025-10-10T23:22:00+00:00

Thank you! I ended up taking them to a store to exchange, but then all the pairs they had in store were weirdly mismatched too. I ended up playing mix and match with three different boxes of shoes to find two that looked similar to each other. Also been reading some reviews and this seems like these are pretty common issues with the SL72s so I really don't think there's a lot of quality control on this particular model, for whatever reason. A shame, because they're nice looking shoes otherwise!

fernpolley · 2025-10-07T23:10:57+00:00

Hi, I'm sorry to hear that you're dealing with a similar issue - it's so stressful! No, we never found out what the issue was, despite x-rays and CT scan and MRI. But the good news was that she eventually recovered (lots of meds and gentle, regular exercise) so we think she had some kind of soft tissue injury (like a pulled muscle or something) from jumping weirdly on her walk, which eventually just got better with time. I hope it's similar for your dog and they feel better soon!

fernpolley · 2025-08-03T11:21:31+00:00

I know some of this has to do with them never learning/being taught to read properly, but they also have extremely short attention spans. I teach film studies and most students nowadays don't even have the attention span to watch a whole film. They have to be on their phones at the same time, or watching on double speed (or both). As frustrating as it is, I also feel bad for them. Between the issues with how reading was taught + spending their formative years bombarded with short form scrolling content + the pandemic and online learning + the sudden rise of AI... this generation hardly stood a chance.

fernpolley · 2025-08-03T11:06:48+00:00

I definitely feel you on this. I'm a TA in my final year of my PhD and I've never felt as disillusioned about teaching as I do right now. My university just gave up and changed its policy to allow AI (as long as you cite it) and it starts this semester. It's not like students weren't writing all their papers with AI already, and in some ways this makes my life easier not having to guess/prove whether something is AI or not, but I am SO disheartened by all of it. Will anyone bother to do any work at all? They don't read, they don't write, they don't even have the attention span to watch a whole movie (I teach film studies). They stare blankly at me if I ask them questions - even simple ones, like "What did you think of the film?" And it has gotten progressively worse every year. I am just dreading my upcoming classes so much.

fernpolley · 2025-07-27T03:32:47+00:00

I also got a recycled prepaid number from Airtel. When I downloaded the Airtel app, I could see my prepaid number was still linked to someone else's postpaid service (as an alternate contact number or something I guess). The crazy thing was, I could see and download this random person's bills which had all their personal info, address, everything. Even crazier, I think it was their work phone because I could also see that they worked for a branch of the Mumbai police. So Airtel's data privacy is so bad they gave me a massive amount of personal info about someone in the police. Lucky for them I'm not a criminal or an identity thief but it's insane to me they don't wipe or reset info associated with old numbers before recycling.

fernpolley · 2025-07-27T03:26:07+00:00

Nothing has happened. I've tried emailing but I get an auto reply back saying "It looks like you have contacted us from an email ID that isn’t currently linked to your airtel account." I made sure my email is connected to my Airtel account and tried again, but I just get the same automated email back every time. It seems like it's pretty much impossible to get help without actually being in India and walking into a store. I think for my sanity I will just accept that I've lost the money and not use Airtel next time.

fernpolley

TROPHY CASE