Old Estonian women

I went to children summer camp fundraising dinner at Sydney Estonian House and ended up getting a lift to my house from 86-year old Estonian woman Maud. She recently had come back from her 6-week visit to Estonia (she goes there every other year or so) and was bit stiff from Monday's gym visit (she had not done any regular exercise in Estonia afterall). Also, she kept telling how Qantas regular flyer program has gone international and I can gather Qantas points flying e.g. Finnair, Cathay Pacific and other airlines. What can I say? Cheers Maud :)

Also I gained insight into the mystery of strong-voiced Estonian woman, wearing large bronze brooch, going to the microphone at Q&A session of Jaan Tallinn's singularity talk ("Intelligence Stairway") at University of Sydney, greeting: "Tere tulemast Sydneysse, noorhärra Jaan!" and bluntly proceeding to ask: "I am going to ask a question about something else. In Estonia you have this really advanced election system where one can even vote online with ID-card. But in Australia, we have the offices where one goes, so everyone can go to many places and give multiple votes. Could you help to build the better system here?"

Her offtopic question was cut from video of Jaan's talk. It is bit sad as Jaan appeared politely dumbfounded and nicely smiling while trying to answer :) I had no idea about the election practices in Australia, but bit of googling revealed that her concerns are not without foundation. There is no central electronic system to keep track of who has already voted, so multiple votes can be cast in pleasantly anonymous envelopes at different polling places, especially if document checks are taken lightly. Some estimates of multiple votes in 2010 elections were at ~30000, official reports state that this is not a problem because there is no evidence of widespread or organized multiple voting.

The woman asking unexpected question was Tiiu Kroll-Simmul, conductor for Sydney Estonian Women's Choir ”Heli”.