Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Boss-a-nova
You know that "persistence is a greater force than resistance" line from that other post? Well my boss called me last night to say that he's leaving and taking another job. (And I then had a call from his boss today to remind me that - had I been in Sydney - I'd be replacing my outgoing boss automatically, and to ask if I would reconsider my previous refusal to move back. I politely declined, of course). Anyway, the main thing is that my boss is moving on and he's certainly been a difficult person to work with in many ways. It's a very interesting development...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
DC talk
So this week I'm over at our new DC (distribution centre) on the other side of the City, providing training to new staff around some of our systems. It was an early (3:30am) start today, picking up a colleague from the Airport before our first training session, but we needn't have been too worried about getting there too early. As it turned out, through cancellations and crossed wires, we had exactly 1 attendee between us!
I'm spending the next couple of days there, and hopefully we'll have a little more success on the training front. (I'll be spending a lot more time there in the next few weeks to support their opening - I was there last week hosting about 180 suppliers as they toured the site and got to learn a bit about what we're trying to do with the place. Most were very impressed.)
After another morning of training this Thursday, I'll be driving up to Wodonga to one of our other sites to carry out some...drumroll...filming! Wayyyy back in May 2006 I pitched a concept for a training DVD that I would film, edit & produce. After 27 months of petitioning, it looks like that's a step closer, with permission granted for filming at three sites so far, and tentative permission to set aside a little of my regular work week to work on the training project (though with lots and lots of compromises and disappointments along the way though, and probably a lot more to come). Not what I wanted, and all completely self-funded, and all conditional upon lots of work in my fast-dwindling free time, but it's a start I guess!
It's funny (OK, not really funny) to look back at how long ago I first talked about this idea on this blog...if you're interested in looking up the specific post, try Feb 1st, 2006, but if you just want a snippet of what I said then, here's an extract: "
However, in an effort to do something positive about my otherwise-bland role at work, I have this week come up with an idea to pitch a DVD to my bosses - sort of a corporate training thing. If I can pull it off, and convince them to give it a go for a trial volume, I'd finally be combining one of my passions with my work: a blend that I never thought possible (and since I can't afford to leave a well-paying, albeit boring role, to pursue a satisfying but financially-dubious life in media creation, some sort of blending would be a brilliant way to evolve from one role to the other). I'll put the pitch to them (via DVD I think - that'd be uber-professional!) sometime in the next 3 weeks. Very exciting, very scary: will keep you posted, of course."
Ah, such high hopes, such optimism, such...naivete. Oh well, as a friend at work is oft reminding me, "persistence is a greater force than resistance".
Matt
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
News Brake
Today is the last day I’ll read the newspaper. I just can’t stomach it anymore.
On one hand, I can’t stand the non-news puff pieces that elevate the trivial to the level of significance. I can’t tolerate the further dumbing-down of a nation through the persistent manipulation of issues, emotions and imagery. I’m beyond outrage at the complete inability or unwillingness of ‘journalists’ to ask real, probing questions, or to actually analyse what they're seeing, what they’re handed or more likely, the presskit they downloaded off the internet. I wonder if there’s a country on earth that has a less-professional, less-rigorous or more-sensationalist media industry than ours. Gossip and trivia, 24/7. I long ago stopped watching TV news and current affairs shows, of course (though I'm painfully aware that this puts me in a minority), but today marks the last time I'll read the "news"paper too.
Perhaps more than just the stupefication and spin, I just can’t stomach another story about the murders, neglect, rapes, abuse...oh I can't even list it all. In today’s paper alone, there is the 67 year old grandfather who killed his wife and two grandchildren…with an axe of all things. My mind cannot but visualise how this would have had to have occurred – an axe is not an elegant weapon (if such a thing exist), and I can’t at least ‘soften’ this news with the knowledge that they may have died quickly and without tremendous suffering. These deaths will have been absolutely brutal. Then there’s coverage of the vile man who killed his 3 children by asphyxiation in his car. I wonder if there has ever been a more dangerous time to be a child. It is a daily parade of kids being beaten to death over days and weeks, or raped repeatedly, or tortured, or starved to death.
I know that simply tuning off, or tuning out, may sound cowardly. It’ll certainly seem naïve. “You can’t just turn a blind eye to the reality around you” “You can just stick your head in the sand”. But what am I achieving by watching or reading this? What can I achieve? I find myself consuming “news” like anyone else, and none of us do anything about it. Worse still, nothing is so shocking or jarring that we as a society haven’t become bored with it by the next week, and moved onto something else. Does anyone even remember the boy who was found cut up and floating in travel bag in a suburban Sydney lake? We were outraged – or purportedly outraged – at the time, yet we couldn’t even keep talking about it for a full two weeks. We demand action, inquiries, justice: but we lack the resolve or the stamina (or dare-I-say, the attention span), to follow through.
I read the paper in the morning and I am paralysed by grief and overwhelming sadness. I cannot keep these things at arms length or stay dispassionate about them – and I’m sure that the moment I do manage to accept them, I’ll have hit a dangerous new low. Is it better to turn off, or stay tuned in until the individual cases no longer bother you? Instead of 'getting used to' these horrific stories, I cannot focus on anything else. When I read about the 18 month old decapitated during a dispute in a supermarket in the Middle East, I stopped functioning for a few hours at work. After this morning's news of the axe murders, I achieved almost nothing of real value – I just couldn’t think straight. I was thinking of everything, and thinking of nothing, at the same time.
But worse than the momentary immobilisation is the fact that I DO get over it. I am hit by a new tragedy, it floors me, but then I process it and move on. I get to a place – sooner than is probably healthy – where I have assimilated it into my world. No matter how uniquely tragic and unimaginably horrible this new violence may be, I am able to accommodate it. Is there anything so horrible that I couldn’t process it, given a day or so? And if there’s not, what does that say about me? Shouldn’t there be some things that I can’t process? I think I know the answer.
I know that in a life-or-death situation, say in a war zone, I would see things that would make my stomach churn, and I would need to quickly come to terms with them and move on – either for my own survival or for the benefit of those I was fighting with and for. But in a supposed “civil society”, and in “peace time”, what may be a necessary survival mechanism seems to border on criminal negligence.
I can of course function by shutting out these images and essentially becoming colder – and I guess that's what I always do in the end. I focus on the only possible hope left in the situation, but even handing these victims over in my mind to God’s providence and comfort seems like abandonment on my part.
How does everyone else handle it? How do you watch the news, read the papers, and take it all in? How do you even process the daily carnage? And when this is juxtaposed with glib and endless crap about footballers and starlets and their useless contributions to the world – somehow managing to make the vileness and awfulness even more appalling, how do you continuing watching/reading? I don't think I can juggle this in my mind anymore, so I have to switch off.
I'm not always like this - rarely in fact. I can usually focus on the many lovely, wonderful things around me. And I usually, when I get over myself, can get back to the state of mind that C.S.Lewis talks about in his essay about living in the Atomic Age (I've talked about that here before, so I won't rehash). I'll get back there soon, and my state of mind won't always be this fragile..
Still, the state of the world remains the same no matter what the state of my mind: and if you don’t think this world is sick, you’re just not paying attention.
Matt
On one hand, I can’t stand the non-news puff pieces that elevate the trivial to the level of significance. I can’t tolerate the further dumbing-down of a nation through the persistent manipulation of issues, emotions and imagery. I’m beyond outrage at the complete inability or unwillingness of ‘journalists’ to ask real, probing questions, or to actually analyse what they're seeing, what they’re handed or more likely, the presskit they downloaded off the internet. I wonder if there’s a country on earth that has a less-professional, less-rigorous or more-sensationalist media industry than ours. Gossip and trivia, 24/7. I long ago stopped watching TV news and current affairs shows, of course (though I'm painfully aware that this puts me in a minority), but today marks the last time I'll read the "news"paper too.
Perhaps more than just the stupefication and spin, I just can’t stomach another story about the murders, neglect, rapes, abuse...oh I can't even list it all. In today’s paper alone, there is the 67 year old grandfather who killed his wife and two grandchildren…with an axe of all things. My mind cannot but visualise how this would have had to have occurred – an axe is not an elegant weapon (if such a thing exist), and I can’t at least ‘soften’ this news with the knowledge that they may have died quickly and without tremendous suffering. These deaths will have been absolutely brutal. Then there’s coverage of the vile man who killed his 3 children by asphyxiation in his car. I wonder if there has ever been a more dangerous time to be a child. It is a daily parade of kids being beaten to death over days and weeks, or raped repeatedly, or tortured, or starved to death.
I know that simply tuning off, or tuning out, may sound cowardly. It’ll certainly seem naïve. “You can’t just turn a blind eye to the reality around you” “You can just stick your head in the sand”. But what am I achieving by watching or reading this? What can I achieve? I find myself consuming “news” like anyone else, and none of us do anything about it. Worse still, nothing is so shocking or jarring that we as a society haven’t become bored with it by the next week, and moved onto something else. Does anyone even remember the boy who was found cut up and floating in travel bag in a suburban Sydney lake? We were outraged – or purportedly outraged – at the time, yet we couldn’t even keep talking about it for a full two weeks. We demand action, inquiries, justice: but we lack the resolve or the stamina (or dare-I-say, the attention span), to follow through.
I read the paper in the morning and I am paralysed by grief and overwhelming sadness. I cannot keep these things at arms length or stay dispassionate about them – and I’m sure that the moment I do manage to accept them, I’ll have hit a dangerous new low. Is it better to turn off, or stay tuned in until the individual cases no longer bother you? Instead of 'getting used to' these horrific stories, I cannot focus on anything else. When I read about the 18 month old decapitated during a dispute in a supermarket in the Middle East, I stopped functioning for a few hours at work. After this morning's news of the axe murders, I achieved almost nothing of real value – I just couldn’t think straight. I was thinking of everything, and thinking of nothing, at the same time.
But worse than the momentary immobilisation is the fact that I DO get over it. I am hit by a new tragedy, it floors me, but then I process it and move on. I get to a place – sooner than is probably healthy – where I have assimilated it into my world. No matter how uniquely tragic and unimaginably horrible this new violence may be, I am able to accommodate it. Is there anything so horrible that I couldn’t process it, given a day or so? And if there’s not, what does that say about me? Shouldn’t there be some things that I can’t process? I think I know the answer.
I know that in a life-or-death situation, say in a war zone, I would see things that would make my stomach churn, and I would need to quickly come to terms with them and move on – either for my own survival or for the benefit of those I was fighting with and for. But in a supposed “civil society”, and in “peace time”, what may be a necessary survival mechanism seems to border on criminal negligence.
I can of course function by shutting out these images and essentially becoming colder – and I guess that's what I always do in the end. I focus on the only possible hope left in the situation, but even handing these victims over in my mind to God’s providence and comfort seems like abandonment on my part.
How does everyone else handle it? How do you watch the news, read the papers, and take it all in? How do you even process the daily carnage? And when this is juxtaposed with glib and endless crap about footballers and starlets and their useless contributions to the world – somehow managing to make the vileness and awfulness even more appalling, how do you continuing watching/reading? I don't think I can juggle this in my mind anymore, so I have to switch off.
I'm not always like this - rarely in fact. I can usually focus on the many lovely, wonderful things around me. And I usually, when I get over myself, can get back to the state of mind that C.S.Lewis talks about in his essay about living in the Atomic Age (I've talked about that here before, so I won't rehash). I'll get back there soon, and my state of mind won't always be this fragile..
Still, the state of the world remains the same no matter what the state of my mind: and if you don’t think this world is sick, you’re just not paying attention.
Matt
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Bed-jay-im's Birthday
OK, so it's not an official birthday exactly, but guess who's 1 month old today?
The first month has flown by, and we've been blessed with a little boy who loves to sleep, loves to eat, and has been really healthy, happy & contented (in fact he's sleeping soundly in my left arm as I type this). As this pic - taken a few minutes ago - attests, he's getting bigger by the day: in fact, on Monday he had put on 1kg since leaving the hospital! Jessica just loves her little brother - as you might be able to tell from the photo above. We are very, very blessed.
(OK, here's a few more pics...)
The first month has flown by, and we've been blessed with a little boy who loves to sleep, loves to eat, and has been really healthy, happy & contented (in fact he's sleeping soundly in my left arm as I type this). As this pic - taken a few minutes ago - attests, he's getting bigger by the day: in fact, on Monday he had put on 1kg since leaving the hospital! Jessica just loves her little brother - as you might be able to tell from the photo above. We are very, very blessed.
(OK, here's a few more pics...)
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Daylight Saving?
So this blogging thing isn't getting any easier.
Not the typing itself, but the finding of the time for the typing. And the overcoming of the guilt about the using of the time for the typing, when it (the time) finally can be found.
At the moment, life seems to be characterized primarily by a long list of "To Do" items, an inability to get through even 10% of that list, and an overwhelming sense of guilt and failure about that inability (coupled with a nagging suspicion that the list wasn't an exhaustive one to begin with: it unconsciously left off many of the things that I need to get done, and consciously left off most of the things that I want to get done if I can just get through the things I have to get done). I guess a lot of people have exactly the same frustrations, and I don't pretend that it's anything unique to me: this angst and anxiety when your mind is constantly racing from task to task but your body, or other obligations, or the circumstances, or the clock, or the calendar, won't allow those tasks to be completed. So while I can't justify spending any time writing this post, the end of Daylight Savings tonight - and the setting back of clocks - means that I've 'gained' a free hour anyway. Now if I can just wrap this up in 30 minutes instead, I might even get back in front!
My petty anxieties and frustrations aside (that was easy, wasn't it?), these last few weeks have seen some actual, serious health issues in my family. My Mum was diagnosed with cancer, and just a few weeks later my sister Keren had a stroke. Mum had a full week of treatment this week in the City, and Keren has been slowly regaining some stamina/balance/normality as of this week. Both diagnoses were a real shock, and neither is 'out of the woods', but in both cases things could have been immeasurably worse than they are (or appear to be). And on a more positive note, Keren & Jeff announced while in hospital that they're expecting another baby, which is awesome (and I never use that word - on principle - so I mean that it's fantastically good). Congratulations again Guys!
Considering my posting frequency of late, it's likely that by my next blog post we'll have a new addition to the family ourselves. Mel's very healthy, and very big, and our little guy is very, very active. The big day is less than a month away now, and things seem to be tracking very well. Mel is very tired, and gets quite uncomfortable, but at least her consulting work seems to have dwindled in the last few weeks so she hasn't been having to juggle quite so much. (there are suggestions that she'll have ooodles of work in the second half of the year - which may even mean enough work for both of us - but there's something about chickens and hatching and counting, so we'll just wait and see (and hope).
The impending arrival has meant that Jessica moved out of the 'nursery' and into her own big-girl bed and big girl bedroom last week. We scoured everywhere for a bed and side table and tall boy and mattress etc, and ended up finally finding a beautiful set - the last one anywhere, and only the floor stock. (do you know that there was a $1400 kids bed in one of those places? It was very nice, but seriously...) So she's all setup in her big girl room now, but we keep putting her down at night in her cot in the nursery, I think in large part because we like the idea of her not being too big too quickly. Not just yet, anyway: can we have just one more week?
Jessica is very sweet about the impending arrival: she is frequently stroking and kissing Mel's belly, and talking about her brother. It'll be very fun taking her in to the hospital for the first time to see what happened to Mummy! We think a lot about how the dynamics will change in this house, how we won't have quite the same amount of one-on-one (and two-on-one) time with Jessica, and if that will have any detrimental impacts (it's been lovely to be able to spend so much time with Jessica each day, and to get the chance to be really active and interactive parents). But I somehow think that we'll be alright, because it's not a simple mathematical equation of us needing to halve the amount of time/care/attention/love. We can scarcely remember life before Jessica, and life has been enriched exponentially - and in ways we could never have imagined. While we may have some adjustments to make - and a lot of sleepless nights on the horizon - I figure that the arrival of our little guy will surprise us yet again.
Anyway, I can hear that Miss Jessica is awake and crying softly in her room (it's 2:09am - which I guess is now 1:09am). Time to go. (and no, it took longer than 1 hour, so I'm officially further behind in my To Do list - despite all the empty promises of Daylight Savings).
Matt
Not the typing itself, but the finding of the time for the typing. And the overcoming of the guilt about the using of the time for the typing, when it (the time) finally can be found.
At the moment, life seems to be characterized primarily by a long list of "To Do" items, an inability to get through even 10% of that list, and an overwhelming sense of guilt and failure about that inability (coupled with a nagging suspicion that the list wasn't an exhaustive one to begin with: it unconsciously left off many of the things that I need to get done, and consciously left off most of the things that I want to get done if I can just get through the things I have to get done). I guess a lot of people have exactly the same frustrations, and I don't pretend that it's anything unique to me: this angst and anxiety when your mind is constantly racing from task to task but your body, or other obligations, or the circumstances, or the clock, or the calendar, won't allow those tasks to be completed. So while I can't justify spending any time writing this post, the end of Daylight Savings tonight - and the setting back of clocks - means that I've 'gained' a free hour anyway. Now if I can just wrap this up in 30 minutes instead, I might even get back in front!
My petty anxieties and frustrations aside (that was easy, wasn't it?), these last few weeks have seen some actual, serious health issues in my family. My Mum was diagnosed with cancer, and just a few weeks later my sister Keren had a stroke. Mum had a full week of treatment this week in the City, and Keren has been slowly regaining some stamina/balance/normality as of this week. Both diagnoses were a real shock, and neither is 'out of the woods', but in both cases things could have been immeasurably worse than they are (or appear to be). And on a more positive note, Keren & Jeff announced while in hospital that they're expecting another baby, which is awesome (and I never use that word - on principle - so I mean that it's fantastically good). Congratulations again Guys!
Considering my posting frequency of late, it's likely that by my next blog post we'll have a new addition to the family ourselves. Mel's very healthy, and very big, and our little guy is very, very active. The big day is less than a month away now, and things seem to be tracking very well. Mel is very tired, and gets quite uncomfortable, but at least her consulting work seems to have dwindled in the last few weeks so she hasn't been having to juggle quite so much. (there are suggestions that she'll have ooodles of work in the second half of the year - which may even mean enough work for both of us - but there's something about chickens and hatching and counting, so we'll just wait and see (and hope).
The impending arrival has meant that Jessica moved out of the 'nursery' and into her own big-girl bed and big girl bedroom last week. We scoured everywhere for a bed and side table and tall boy and mattress etc, and ended up finally finding a beautiful set - the last one anywhere, and only the floor stock. (do you know that there was a $1400 kids bed in one of those places? It was very nice, but seriously...) So she's all setup in her big girl room now, but we keep putting her down at night in her cot in the nursery, I think in large part because we like the idea of her not being too big too quickly. Not just yet, anyway: can we have just one more week?
Jessica is very sweet about the impending arrival: she is frequently stroking and kissing Mel's belly, and talking about her brother. It'll be very fun taking her in to the hospital for the first time to see what happened to Mummy! We think a lot about how the dynamics will change in this house, how we won't have quite the same amount of one-on-one (and two-on-one) time with Jessica, and if that will have any detrimental impacts (it's been lovely to be able to spend so much time with Jessica each day, and to get the chance to be really active and interactive parents). But I somehow think that we'll be alright, because it's not a simple mathematical equation of us needing to halve the amount of time/care/attention/love. We can scarcely remember life before Jessica, and life has been enriched exponentially - and in ways we could never have imagined. While we may have some adjustments to make - and a lot of sleepless nights on the horizon - I figure that the arrival of our little guy will surprise us yet again.
Anyway, I can hear that Miss Jessica is awake and crying softly in her room (it's 2:09am - which I guess is now 1:09am). Time to go. (and no, it took longer than 1 hour, so I'm officially further behind in my To Do list - despite all the empty promises of Daylight Savings).
Matt
Monday, January 14, 2008
Last Post?
So, among my friends and family at least, it looks like I'll be the first to post anything in 2008. And we're almost three weeks in!
In fact, looking at the apparent drop off in blogging's popularity more generally, I may indeed be the last to post anything in 2008, too! We'll soon see I guess, but I hope not.
What's happened since my last post, then? Well, lots, but I'll try to keep it brief. Firstly, there was Christmas Day. We hosted my side of the family - a good portion of it anyway - and had a lovely lunch and dinner. I say "lunch" and "dinner" as if they were two separate meals, but as is oft the case, the two meals seemed to roll into one. Somewhere in between we managed a family-wide game of cricket at the park: it was heaps of fun, and something we'll have to build into a tradition...
(And Jessica got a fancy new trampoline, which she loovvves).
Boxing Day was spent with the in-laws, though I
didn't get to see quite so much of that: Jessica was exceptionally over-tired but wouldn't/couldn't sleep, so I drove her around the backroads of Nar Nar Goon North until she fell asleep, then stayed in the car with her, with the air-conditioning running, as she slept for a couple of hours. Probably the result of too much trampolining the day prior!
We didn't do anything for New Years (unless playing Scrabble counts?) but on the 2nd of January we had an informal, low key celebration of Jessica's 2nd birthday.
I put my hand up to make the cake and decorate it, but neither endeavour was especially successful. The cake was pretty bland and dry, the cake surface was wildly uneven, and the icing was pretty patchy to say the least. As I was scraping the burnt outer edge from the cake with a grater, and as the four types of Wiggles-coloured-icing kept running into one at 1am, I had to keep telling myself that it's the thought that counts. Jessica seemed to be a very happy customer - refer unsolicited photo testimonial - so all's well that ends well.
By the way, did you see the new products Apple released this week?
The new Apple Mac Pro now comes standard as 8-core - yes 8 processors! It can be configured with 4Terabytes (4,000 GBs) of hard drive space and 32GB of RAM (albeit that that particular configuration takes the price from $3999 to $32,500!).
And then on Wednesday they released the MacBook Air, a ridiculously slim notebook computer that they pulled out of an A4 envelope. Crazy stuff. I can't possibly justify a new computer in the next year or two, so if anyone else is in the market for either of these, please let me tag along with you to the store so I can live vicariously through you for the da
y. Speaking of my iMac, I'm still barely scratching the surface with Final Cut Studio 2, or even the basic applications such as Garage Band etc. I so wish we used Macs at work, so that I could pick up on this stuff while I spend my 10 hours at work each day (which is where/how I learned anything I know about PC's). Alas, I can't see that happening any time soon - we're just too heavily invested in PC's for any bean counter to approve switching over. "But Boss, just think how much faster I can type up my emails on an 8-core Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM...and how much better those spreadsheets will look on a 30-inch Cinema Display!".
Speaking of Apple products, it was my niece Erin's 16th birthday yesterday. No, Erin is not an Apple product, but a bunch of us were able to get her a 3rd Generation iPod Nano (the new one with video capabilities) as her present. From the excited call last night, I get the impression that it was a good choice: it's an amazing little (and amazingly-little) device, and really quite beautiful.
The last week or so has also seen Mum & Bec moving out of our house. It was terrific having them staying here - and it really benefitted Jessica to spend more time with them both. I tried to entice them to stay by
promising more Ice Kachang, but that only bought us a few more nights. For Christmas, Stephen & Cordy & Tanya & Jasmine bought be an Ice Kachang pack, consisting of all the ingredients and a Mr Frosty ice shaving machine, and it's great fun to make up a few bowls as a special treat (Ice Kachang is a delicious dessert made of shaved ice, red kidney beans, corn kernels, lychees, palm seeds, evaporated milk, rose syrup & grass jelly - if you want to know more, Google is your friend). Mum & Bec now seem reasonably settled in the new place, but we have scheduled dinner with them tomorrow night. As we'll be having Berwick Thai, that sounds to me like a pretty decent excuse to follow up with Ice Kachang for dessert (never mind that the latter is really a hallmark of Malaysia not Thailand). Better go get some more evaporated milk in the morning.
Well it's getting late and I should get to bed. It's a school night tonight, and there's quite a bit on my plate at work tomorrow (nothing of any significance or lasting importance, of course, but work that needs to be done nonetheless). I might just go and insert some photos first, which will probably take an hour to upload knowing my success with Blogger. The photos are all on my Facebook page also, and it's much easier to browse them, comment on them, tag them etc, so if you're interested in browsing them that way, feel free to sign up. You also get to play Scrabulous (which is a Scrabble game within Facebook) and that's a lot of fun too - I think I have 12 games running simultaneously at the moment, and I'm now just waiting for those 12 people to have their turns.
Right. Bedtime. Goodnight.
Matt
In fact, looking at the apparent drop off in blogging's popularity more generally, I may indeed be the last to post anything in 2008, too! We'll soon see I guess, but I hope not.
What's happened since my last post, then? Well, lots, but I'll try to keep it brief. Firstly, there was Christmas Day. We hosted my side of the family - a good portion of it anyway - and had a lovely lunch and dinner. I say "lunch" and "dinner" as if they were two separate meals, but as is oft the case, the two meals seemed to roll into one. Somewhere in between we managed a family-wide game of cricket at the park: it was heaps of fun, and something we'll have to build into a tradition...
(And Jessica got a fancy new trampoline, which she loovvves).
Boxing Day was spent with the in-laws, though I
didn't get to see quite so much of that: Jessica was exceptionally over-tired but wouldn't/couldn't sleep, so I drove her around the backroads of Nar Nar Goon North until she fell asleep, then stayed in the car with her, with the air-conditioning running, as she slept for a couple of hours. Probably the result of too much trampolining the day prior! We didn't do anything for New Years (unless playing Scrabble counts?) but on the 2nd of January we had an informal, low key celebration of Jessica's 2nd birthday.
I put my hand up to make the cake and decorate it, but neither endeavour was especially successful. The cake was pretty bland and dry, the cake surface was wildly uneven, and the icing was pretty patchy to say the least. As I was scraping the burnt outer edge from the cake with a grater, and as the four types of Wiggles-coloured-icing kept running into one at 1am, I had to keep telling myself that it's the thought that counts. Jessica seemed to be a very happy customer - refer unsolicited photo testimonial - so all's well that ends well.By the way, did you see the new products Apple released this week?
The new Apple Mac Pro now comes standard as 8-core - yes 8 processors! It can be configured with 4Terabytes (4,000 GBs) of hard drive space and 32GB of RAM (albeit that that particular configuration takes the price from $3999 to $32,500!). And then on Wednesday they released the MacBook Air, a ridiculously slim notebook computer that they pulled out of an A4 envelope. Crazy stuff. I can't possibly justify a new computer in the next year or two, so if anyone else is in the market for either of these, please let me tag along with you to the store so I can live vicariously through you for the da
y. Speaking of my iMac, I'm still barely scratching the surface with Final Cut Studio 2, or even the basic applications such as Garage Band etc. I so wish we used Macs at work, so that I could pick up on this stuff while I spend my 10 hours at work each day (which is where/how I learned anything I know about PC's). Alas, I can't see that happening any time soon - we're just too heavily invested in PC's for any bean counter to approve switching over. "But Boss, just think how much faster I can type up my emails on an 8-core Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM...and how much better those spreadsheets will look on a 30-inch Cinema Display!". 
Speaking of Apple products, it was my niece Erin's 16th birthday yesterday. No, Erin is not an Apple product, but a bunch of us were able to get her a 3rd Generation iPod Nano (the new one with video capabilities) as her present. From the excited call last night, I get the impression that it was a good choice: it's an amazing little (and amazingly-little) device, and really quite beautiful. The last week or so has also seen Mum & Bec moving out of our house. It was terrific having them staying here - and it really benefitted Jessica to spend more time with them both. I tried to entice them to stay by
promising more Ice Kachang, but that only bought us a few more nights. For Christmas, Stephen & Cordy & Tanya & Jasmine bought be an Ice Kachang pack, consisting of all the ingredients and a Mr Frosty ice shaving machine, and it's great fun to make up a few bowls as a special treat (Ice Kachang is a delicious dessert made of shaved ice, red kidney beans, corn kernels, lychees, palm seeds, evaporated milk, rose syrup & grass jelly - if you want to know more, Google is your friend). Mum & Bec now seem reasonably settled in the new place, but we have scheduled dinner with them tomorrow night. As we'll be having Berwick Thai, that sounds to me like a pretty decent excuse to follow up with Ice Kachang for dessert (never mind that the latter is really a hallmark of Malaysia not Thailand). Better go get some more evaporated milk in the morning. 
Well it's getting late and I should get to bed. It's a school night tonight, and there's quite a bit on my plate at work tomorrow (nothing of any significance or lasting importance, of course, but work that needs to be done nonetheless). I might just go and insert some photos first, which will probably take an hour to upload knowing my success with Blogger. The photos are all on my Facebook page also, and it's much easier to browse them, comment on them, tag them etc, so if you're interested in browsing them that way, feel free to sign up. You also get to play Scrabulous (which is a Scrabble game within Facebook) and that's a lot of fun too - I think I have 12 games running simultaneously at the moment, and I'm now just waiting for those 12 people to have their turns.Right. Bedtime. Goodnight.
Matt
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