Coca Cola prices: Then (2008) and Now (2012)

Years ago I saw 2 Litre bottles of Coca-Cola selling for an all time high price...at $3.14 I snapped a photo :P I have held onto it for all these years. Here it is.

I always figured if I held onto it long enough that it would be an interesting look back. And now it is. I still remember thinking how expensive this price tag was back in May 2008 when I took it. The other day, in the same supermarket I saw what I thought was an odd "special". It just didn't seem that cheap. I lifted the tag and guess how much a 2L bottle is in March 2012?

Have a look for yourself...

As you can also see, the price tags now have unit pricing...and the quality my camera produces has improved :D These prices are in AU$ - In US$ this product would cost $4.01 according to www.xe.com at the time of writing.

Do you think this is overly expensive? Please note that this is on a regular store shelf, it is not provided chilled.

Orange Candle

I'm not sure what it was that made me discover making candles from oranges on the internet, but it happened and I'm writing about it now...what interests me often interests you :)

Basically you have to carefully peel an orange so that you have two halves, intact, and without the orange 'meat' inside.. The 'stem' of the 'pith' (is that correct terminology?) acts as the wick of the candle which is burned anyhow refer to the pics below, they are pretty self explanatory but I'll provide some comments for each in any case. Enjoy :) Feel free to point people to this entry if you think they might like it. Perhaps something for Earth Hour 2012

Halved Oranges (if you don't know how - Google some techniques) with air vent cut in top half

Some oil is poured into the bottom half with the natural pith 'wick' make sure it gets saturated but not drowning in the oil

The natural wick after being lit

With the top half 'lid' on top

Some oranges have some pretty natural patterns, I think they resemble Halloween Jack-O lanterns

And you can always get creative with the top 'lid' half - Just be careful. I made mine look like the Sun :)

Extracting Juice from Oranges

I finally have my juice extractor at my place. I always figured it took up too much room and it was a pain to prepare product for and cleaning up afterwards.

Well as I have been drinking a lot of orange juice lately, I figure the long life stuff on the shelf is sort of weird when fresh is available, and that the fresh stuff is a bit steep for what you get. I'm talking about $5-6 for 1.5L-2L of so-called fresh Orange Juice in the chilled section of major grocery stores/supermarkets.

A 3kg bag of Valencia Oranges was like $3.50 or something, so I decided I could perhaps do better myself.

What do you think? I'll let the pictures I took (below) do the talking :) Make sure you keep an eye on my blog (I know you all do anyway right? ;P ) as I have some other pictures associated with this entry.

I cleaned these up a bit, removing the pith...though the machine would have taken care of it :)

Ready for Juice Extraction

The end result 

General Annoyances September 14 2011

I am having a bad day. No scratch that, the last week or so has been really testing. At work, at home, on the news, out and about...certain things are really starting to tick me off - I'm a nice guy and just let it go but I really need to vent. Here are some things that really make me RAGE

#1 People that have conversations in the entrances of stores. It obstructs entry to the store! I went to my local newsagent the other day and there were two women both with MASSIVE prams/strollers talking right in the door way. I just wanted to check if the new Rolling Stone Magazine was in, there was a little gap they allowed for people to squeeze past them but the shop is one of the busiest in my town. There were people trying to come out so I let them have the right of way. Finally I got in, found the magazine (and that they published my letter :D) paid for it and went to leave...they were still there. EGH! So I went to squeeze my way out but there are people coming in, here I am standing in no man's land in the store feeling like an idiot. I finally got out onto the street and felt like that guy that escaped from prison in The Shawshank Redemption.

#2 People that barricade supermarket aisles with shopping trolleys. It seems whenever I go to the supermarket to grab a few items every aisle is deserted except for the ones that I use. Now I consider soft drink a staple, they never move it from the dedicated aisle and the prices very rarely change...yet whenever I go to get some there's someone with a trolley skewed across the aisle seemingly inspecting each and every bottle and the prices...WHAT THE HELL?!? You walk up to go past and they never seem to notice the person coming up the aisle that won't be able to pass. I know sometimes I'll 'hog' an aisle when it's empty but I sure as hell know when someone's coming and get out of the way. I swear these people expect people to be blocked and have them say 'excuse me' before access is granted. Jerry Seinfeld made a joke about this once...EXCUSE YOU! I've done nothing wrong.

#3 Narrow checkouts, MOAR PEOPLE WITH TROLLEYS! These days I use self serve checkouts 99% of the time. If I don't it's because suspiciously there's a bigger line up to self service than there is for someone to do scan and bag groceries for you, or because I have too many items to try to juggle in the minuscule space provided at the things HMMPF! Anyhow the new phenomena seems to be that the checkouts have very narrow spaces where customers stand...I mean really it looks like two trolleys couldn't simultaneously go through at the same time...yet people insist on trying like they failed how shapes work when they were still a toddler. Again being stuck behind one person, in front of another with someone to your back at a checkout is really, really, uncomfortable.

#4 Trolleys in parking lots. Oh boy this one really annoys me. You go to the supermarket in your car. You manage to avoid hitting children running around, elderly folk that don't look before crossing a non-designated area and other vehicles with operators oblivious/uncaring to road rules. There it is a car park remains! You get ready to line it up and go in and...someone's left a shopping cart right where your car was to go. DAMN IT! This one really ticks me off because my works car parking lot backs onto a supermarkets parking lot. Some days there are more shoppers parked in "our" spots than there are workers, it's irritating but I can accept that, but it's when people just ditch their shopping trolley really annoys me...like it's so hard to walk the 10m to replace the thing? Come on now.