Happy Halloween...!

Well not much has happened since my last confession, except I’ve ripped the end of my index finger on my left hand, and this typing is actually painful. Do you realise the privations that I put myself through to bring you all this blather? No I thought not….but I DO.

Today we put down a deposit on a 3 bed house for rental….that is for us to rent to someone else. It kept me awake a bit last night, cos its ‘negative cash flow’…i.e. the rent is less than the mortgage, and it’s a fair bit less….so we’re taking a long view here. Neither of us have any kind of pension, this despite my having paid into a ‘with profits’ Scottish Widows pension for 14 years…. I’d have been better off if I’d just put the money in a bank to be honest…or almost. I hope they choke on it…nice aren’t I? He he.

Today is halloween...and the girls got very excited. The next door neighbours kids, Anya and Sophie came over and they all went out to get lashed up on toxic sweets. The MOST toxic sweets that they got however were from their NANA! We ARE the spawn of the horn headed geezer here honest! The only benefit is that they don't make so much noise when their teeth are stuck together!

(I’m still in pain here by the way!!)

Anya is the ‘White Witch’, and Sophie and Phoebe are both ‘Sister Witches’ and Matilda is a ‘Spider Girl Witch’. Phoebe waddled round the whole thing with the broom between here legs….ha ha. Looks spooky though eh?

But what about this picture that I took…of a ghost. Can you see it looking in at the window?

I was just passing by tonight and I saw it, and had my camera....which i perched on the window sill of the truck.

I this was from the truck too...last night.



and finally, here's a funny thing I found....



That's it, so HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Concrete, brakes, surf and dancing...what more could you ask for?

Well, we’ve just had a lovely weekend and a busy one. On Saturday, we took delivery of a cubic metre of concrete for the pad of a shed that we’ve bought to put all the things in from the garage that we’ve made into a room. The bloke sold us a bit short however and we ended up putting bricks into the pad to raise the level of the concrete over them. It looks OK now though and the shed should arrive on Wednesday, and I’m looking forward to that, so that the room can become a play room proper….that is when its not my OFFICE!!!!

I’m sitting in it now, and really enjoying having a bit of space to myself whilst the others all chat and watch the TV. I’ve got a fan mounted on the wall near me, and my funny little light that I got at IKEA. As you can see, it needs a clear out. The roller shutter is still on one end, but Bernadette has ordered a made to measure sliding door for that space. It won’t be here for a while though so this is it for now.

After the concrete was done, I replaced the rear pads on Daile’s car and we set off for the Gold Coast, where Daile had thought it might be a nice idea for the kids to see some sea. Amazingly enough we’ve not actually taken them to the beach since we came here, and Phoebe has been asking to go there since she got her fantastic sunglasses from Joe and Sarah. (She wanted to sunbathe!!!) (Ha, and that with a Mother that panics about sunburn). Our kids always look like they’ve been painted white when they first start off out there…with all the cream that they get blathered with. Daile would tell you at this juncture that the incidence of skin cancer is higher here than anywhere else in the world….so with good reason eh?

We had a lovely time in the surf, and the I went to take some pics for Molly of reflections (for a project she’d doing), with Daile’s little camera, (not wanting to bring mine onto the beach), whilst the kids went shell hunting and Daile kept an eye.

Then we went to Carlene’s for supper and had a really nice evening. We’ve been there all day today too, and the girls are really getting good with the swimming. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that they’re having swimming lessons…think I may have. Anyway, they’re capable of retrieving ‘jewels’ from the bottom of the pool now, so quite a marked improvement. Late in the afternoon we had a bit of a love in. Ian had arrived back from the game, and the team he coaches had won. (Gold Coast Blazes). He started to play some music up loud, and the Phoebe responded by dancing her legs off. In the end we all joined in…and here’s some pics to give you an idea.

The last pic is of some distant lightning that was coming in. Its reached here now and its about to piss down as I write.

So there you have it.

Hush hour

Some of you may remember that I mentioned about the problem with the main access highway from Ipswich to Brisbane, the 'Ipswich Highway'. There are plans to widen, re-build and generally not address the problem of too many cars...remember? Well out of interest, I went to have a look at the highway on that site that I found for you last night...and guess what... It's not busy. Just aflter 8 am and look at it:



What do you call that? NOT congestion eh!
Even the centre of town isn't THAT bad. Perhaps they decided not to go to work today......

And'y finally gets around to writing the next load of smelly brown stuff...

The song ‘Waltzing Matilda’ has apparently been offered up as a potential national anthem. So much hype is attached to this 1903 song by Banjo Paterson that there is even a museum in Winton, Queensland called, appropriately enough, ‘Waltzing Matilda Centre’. Strewth…I’d have NEVER thought of that…give that man a job at Saatchi and Saatchi. Banjo was a young solicitor when he wrote the now infamous tune, and he was holidaying in Winton with his fiancé, later to bust up. In fact he wrote the words in 1895 but not the tune, which was written by Marie Cowan later….and with a few modifications to the words to get them to fit….! If your interested go to here.. http://www.matildacentre.com.au/EducationCentre_WaltzingMat.asp . …and here… http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/#Words

Here he is:

Quiz: - So anyone know what the swagman was called? (Answer at the bottom of this entry).

Matilda was a slang for ‘swag’ and 'waltzing it' was to sling it over your shoulder and walk. The term is thought to derive from a German expression Auf die Walz gehen meaning to take to the road. Another use of the name Matilda, is for a bed roll…which is a bit of a come down from the Teutonic Mathilde, which means ‘Mighty in Battle’. Our very own Matilda embodies the Teutonic meaning as you all know…ha ha.

Interestingly, there’s some debate here about the cost of fuel, and shock horror, they’ve reached between 108 cents a litre and about 124 cents a litre. Oh they don’t know the half of it eh…. That’s about 50p. There’s a search site that tells you where the cheapest petrol station is to you…and the cheapest one to us right now is in a place called ‘Kalinga’. Guess what the fuel company is called! ‘Matilda’ (See pic)

Here’s another good idea: The Ipswich council (the one that runs our current area) hosts this site http://www.toiletmap.gov.au/toilet.aspx?type=toilet&id=de4670c9-e55d-474d-afb5-9f071baad449 which shows the public toilets in Kalinga. Good eh? Another good one is this: http://media01.couriermail.com.au/multimedia/2007/04/070400-traffic-cams/traffic.html which shows what the roads are like at any one time….this is what our nearest camera is doing at the time of writing (about 2.45 am)…

Which makes me realise its time for bed. Been busy today building stuff with bricks…but I won’t bore you with that, save to say that its like trying type with sandpaper stuck to your finger ends…

Goodnight.

Answer to the quiz: The swagman was called ‘Andrew’ - How do I know this? Cos the song says it… ‘andy sang as he tucked that jumbuck in his tuckerbag….’ Of course in the Esperanto version he’s called ‘Kies’….Oh you knew that already…sorry.

Here it is in Esperanto for those of you who didn’t know that.

Valse Matilda

Gaja vagabondo kampis apud bilabong

kie la Coolabah ombris por li

kaj li kantis atende gxis bolos en la billipot

Vi vagas valsa Matilda kun mi

Venis sxafido por trinki en la bilabong

kaptis vagulo kun gxoj` plena kri`

kaj li kantis sxovante la sxafon al la mangxosak`

Vi vagas valsa Matilda kun mi

Aperis farmisto sur pursanga al cxeval

Venis gxendarmo unu, du, tri

"Kies bela sxafo, tiu en la mangxosak"

Vi vagas valsa Matilda kun mi

Tuj la vagoulo saltis al la bilabong

"Vi vane kaptas vi min," diris li.

Kaj fantomon vi auxdos pasante cxe la bilabong.

Vi vagas valsa Matilda kun mi.

A.B. Paterson

Trad. En Esperanto: Ralph Harry

Lethal animal....

....I believe they also have these in the UK?

The AXE factor?

Its Saturday night, and there’s a weird noise coming from the next room…which is the rest of the house singing along to a bizarre PS2 game that is a karaoke thing in which you can have ‘battles’ to be the best singer when you sing along to some famous track or other….its not my thing at all…but DAILE!!!! I had NO idea that she’d be into it. I mean we all know how she’s shy and retiring don’t we…I mean would YOU have thought that she’d go for it? I KNOW!!!! Its funny cos everyone else gets a bit pissed up before they do it…but Daile’s just on the rosie lee..and nothing else. It’s quite impressive really. Have a look…Luckily for you, its just a picture with no sound…..

Ahhh bless

Andrew and I have been putting a side onto the garage lean-to today, so that we have a proper room for the kids toys, and…more importantly…for MY toys! Also this will probably be where Josh stays when he comes out next year. After we’d finished, or at least got as far as we could, I then continued to lay a line of bricks to put the sliding door on… whilst the others all sat and watched. It must have been quite entertaining cos there were always a couple of people in easy chairs watching me lay this line of bricks. Not THAT many bricks…the total was only about 20 odd, but it took me about 2 and a half hours to do it…. They sort of did a rotating shift…always passing occasional comment to encourage me…. I reckon that they were all giggling behind my back….Ha ha. I ran out of light, and mortar, and then it was tea time so I stopped.

More tomorrow….when we’ll be putting up the sliding door.

Late night choccy run....

I’m becoming immersed in the property thing. I’ve now got quite a few books about it, as is my way, and I’m trying hard to make some sense of the rules here, the predominance of negative gearing and the admittedly more long term view of the property situation. I’m impressed with the amount of literature on the subject here, and have been happy to find that there are SOME authors whose opinion of the readiness to prostrate ones lifestyle to furnish negative cash flow from property investments is similar to mine. (Cautious) However the ready availability of property in the UK for which rents can be levied that equal or exceed the mortgage costs is not the case here. On the other hand there is a plethora of tax breaks that are designed to encourage property development and renting. For example it is possible to buy a new property here, and offset the cost of the house (but not the land) against your income as a depreciating asset over the early years of the mortgage.

I’ve also been trying to do other stuff, such as apply for jobs, and list my CV with agencies. To date however I’ve not ACTUALLY done this! (Although Daile is helping right now by looking for suitable stuff and e-mailing them to me). Nor have I submitted the plans for the house to the Logan City Council. I’m a little concerned that I’ve not done these things, since they are priorities, but I have been busy….

One job that I’ve been doing a lot of work in preparation for was a job as a ‘trade manager’ at a major hospital. However, having spent a day an a half on research in order to answer the questions on the screening form, I hit a brick wall. They asked for specific information about the mandatory maintenance tasks that pertain to the fire system of a hospital. Now I’m not that bad at finding stuff out on the Internet, but I could find nothing about that. Finally, with a little help from Bernadette (who works in a hospital), I was able to boil it down to the contents of a single Australian Standard called AS 1851-2005. However, to get a look at this, you need to pay for it…and the price is a ‘healthy’ $175. If anyone feels like trying to get it for me, I’d appreciate it…but don’t spend too long. I discovered that there is an obligation on the government to provide copies of the Australian standards at public places such as Libraries, so I went down to the local one and asked. They said that they had access to a digital copy of one that was ‘similar’ – but it turned out not to be. I’m a little frustrated that;

1. they are asking for knowledge of information that is obviously designed to filter out those of us that have never done that job….and
2. that the government see fit to make a law about the things that have to be done in terms of maintenance of fires systems in a public hospital, and then have the audacity to charge you to find out what the law is!

Aside from that…for those of you that have been trying to make contact via Skype, we’ve still got some issues: Daile’s computer is still playing up and the wireless bit is constantly falling over…mine is having a terminal problem with the sound card and the link to the microphone, meaning I can’t be heard, and Wayne’s has been hijacked by a virus that has changed his Skype password! Why? We’re considering getting Daile a new computer….or her having this one and me getting another.

….and lastly, Matilda has had a fairly good couple of days at school. She’s able to read all the ‘sight words’ that she’s been asked to read for her year….AND all the words that she would have been learning next year….so they’re trying to get some books in that are at her level. She can also do all the maths they would have been teaching her. Interestingly, this seems to have upset her…and she’s worried that she’s ‘not doing it right’. Turns out that she’s learned a form of writing that is different enough in appearance that the other kids have been telling her that she’s doing it wrong! The teacher has, I understand tried to put them right. Difficult innit? She and I went out tonight by ourselves to get chocolate….which seemed to help. God I’m such a bad influence!

Be sure to click on the image to read it.....

Happy Birthday Holly!

Hope you have a lovely day Holly, lots of love from Daile and Chris, Matilda and Phoebe...

'Sk-orts'

Well today Matilda has gone to school for the first day. We thought she might play up a bit, and she did…but not too bad. She was worried that she would get ‘picked on’ by all the other kids, and that she’d be no good at anything. Its funny that she should be worried about that, since she didn’t have those kinds of problems at all at Hobbayne, and was really happy there. The other thing that seemed to be worrying her quite a bit, was the idea that she’d have to wear a dress or a skirt. I got the impression that she’d have made a big big stand on that, so it was a relief when we found that they have the option of culottes…which they call ‘sk-orts’! Can’t think why they don’t call them ‘sh-irts’…Oh…yeah…NOW I can. They also have rucksacks that are nearly as big as she is….and can carry laptops and all sorts. The bags are equipped with insulated compartments that you can keep your food cool in, key tags, pencil cases that Velcro out… and are a really unpleasant maroon colour. Without the colour, and the school badge, I’d have been thinking of getting one for me…! Anyway, here’s a picture of the girl….looking awkward, like she does so well. The shoes are old, from UK and STILL too big for her….even though she’s been wearing them for 6 months.


On the way back from dropping her off, I felt compelled to take pictures of the ‘leaves’ that are falling off the trees here….

….and for the last couple of nights the moon has been quite visible, but with the reveal starting from the bottom rather than the side as we’re used to. I wondered if this was something to do with us being in the Southern Hemisphere, but I’m assured that it isn’t and that its normal for it to start to reveal from the side. So if you know what this is about, let me know.

Digger

We had hoped this week, to take the kids to see the wild Dolphins at Tangalooma which is a resort on Morton Island National Park, about 20 miles out from Brisbane.. You can feed them too and its supposed to be a good craick. http://www.tangalooma.com/dolphins/dolphin_feeding.asp If you go a few weeks earlier than this, you can see the whales beginning their migrate to the South, and cold water. However, to get to feed the Dolphins, you have to book in advance, and that means being organised. If you’re REALLY organised, and RICH, you can get taken out to the island by float plane (see the pic)… http://www.akunaseaplanes.com.au/

....but it costs a fair bit more than we’ve got. Its not particularly cheap by boat, which is the conventional way out, but the plane sounds really good don’t-cha-rek? Anyway, the girls went to Lone Pine Koala sanctuary today, with Daile, whilst I went out to Andrew and Lee’s at Jimboomba, to help move some rocks and lay soil etc at the front of their house. The girls both got to hold a Koala, and as Phoebe was keen to point out later when I talked to them about their day, the Koala has big claws that dig into your neck….(see pic) (Molly and Josh, this is the same place that you went to, with the Roos and the Bats and the snakes etc) http://www.koala.net/lonepine/index.htm

When I arrived in Jimboomba, it was already down tools, cos the little digger (Kanga) hadn’t pitched up yet….so you know…. we had a beer, and a natter, and a beer and a natter…you get the picture. When the machine came we, or more accurately, ‘I’ was a little less focused than earlier. Luckily, it chose that point to rain….see pics.

Its been raining everyday at about the same time for the last 4 or 5 days, and it usually does what you see here….namely come blowing in all unannounced, drops LOADS of rain in a few minutes, and then the sun comes out again. Its fascinating to watch, and you definitely feel

moved by it every time it happens. Another thing is that the vegetation is really reactive to rain….this picture shows the garden behind their house…which last week was very largely soil coloured….and now is green….after 5 days of water. Suddenly everything seems lush instead of dry.

Needless to say, we were still hard at it by dusk, and had to knock it on the head. Tomorrow we're all going to be here for Andrew's birthday party.....

I’m loving it… er so far anyway!

I don't even care about this normally but.....

Ah yes....they now have to ROO the day! Ha ha. (I know this is old news, but I couldn't let it go unmentioned!) Let me know if I start sounding like an Aussie wont you?

Kids...schmids...ay.

Well we had Phoebe’s birthday party today, (a day early) and decided that it was easier to have all the presents today too. I’ve a feeling that she’ll want to have some more tomorrow, but we’re bracing ourselves for it. There were more adults than children, as seems to be the way with the Thomas family, which was just as well since some of the kids had a bit too much….whatever…. that makes kids behave like complete tossers. When they were off somewhere feeling sorry for themselves because they didn’t get the same as the others got, or some other nonsense, Judy and I were talking about the way that kids are so disconnected from the learning that is only really acquired through failure or through tough and difficult emotional stuff. Children seem to be molly-coddled by our social and school systems…and I do wonder whether its really the best thing for them. Not wanting to spoil this flow, I’ve added a thing that I found on the internet about this very subject, at the end of this posting.

The following are a few pictures of the day, this first one is Phoebe in her new ballet dress with her mat and her balance beam…watching the DVD that came with them. Bless! The next one is Sophie hitting the winning blow to the Pinata doll.

This is the cake that we made, and the last picture is Phoebe, with the remnants of her face paint, drawing pictures of the day (wearing her new dress from Gill...thanks Gill) … Bless!

Ha ha. Anyway, here’s the very true thingy from the web:

What You Should Know

A short list of what every kid should know
about what life is REALLY like . . .

1. Life is NOT fair, get used to it.
2. The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
3. You will NOT make $50,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a fancy car until you earn both.
4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger-flipping; they called it opportunity.
6. If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
7. Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try "delousing" the closet in your own room.
8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
11. Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
12. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.