Friday 30 May 2008

Home Sweet Home

My little family is all together at home, Lucas has given his new bed the thumbs-up. He likes to sleep, which is a good thing, Wednesday night he slept for 7 hours, last night about 6 hours. I’m told that I started sleeping through the night very early, so maybe Lucas is taking after me, and in reality I know that this is not likely the case but you can’t blame me for being hopeful. Isabella has been a little wild and grumpy today, happy that mummy is home but not so happy that mummy has to spend time with Lucas. I guess it will take time for our little family to settle down. Back on the Lucas front he has a little jaundice, yes another yellow five fingered funny, Isabella had jaundice rather bad, resulting in an extra day in hospital, thankfully Lucas isn’t so bad but we have to watch it closely for the next three days or so. Its 9:30pm here and the house is quiet and in darkness (except for the glow from the computer monitor), Isabella has finally gone to sleep, getting her to go to sleep this past week has been a challenge, so much easier when she was trapped in the cot. Since the house is quiet and everyone else is sleeping, it is time for me to commune with the Sandman. Good Night.
 Lucas Testing Out Daddy's Comfy Chair

Coming Home Tomorrow

The good news is mother and son should be heading home tomorrow. Marika is keen to get out of hospital; I’m keen on them coming home too.

Enjoying the Sunshine – Do You Like My Hair

Thursday 29 May 2008

Meet Lucas James

He has a name, my first choice was Luke Skywalker but Marika was exceptionally fast to veto that name, one of his cousins decided he should be called Boris, however after discussing our various name options with young Lucas we all agreed he was a Lucas. And the extremely good news today is our little boy was out of NICU and back with us before lunch time today. Okay his stats are: born Tuesday 27th May 2008 at approximately 2:30pm Singapore time, weight 3.47 kg (7.7lbs), Length 55cm (21.7in), son number one, child number two, he’s a little bent and goofy looking at the moment (I can say that as I’m his father plus I’ve been told he looks like me) but of course to us he’ll always be our gorgeous boy. Isabella seems to like the idea that she has a little brother, although she’s not so keen on her mother staying in hospital. Mummy and Daddy are elated with their new arrival however nappy changes for boys are different to that of girls; we’ve already experienced the sprinkler attachment in full action (clean bedding was required for both mother and child). Enough yapping from me, I’ll upload some pictures for you viewing pleasure. I’ll try and add further updates and pictures over the next few days. 

Isabella Holding Lucas

Lucas James Sleeping

Wednesday 28 May 2008

Baby Boy Bywater Born

Talk about lots of B’s. Today about 2:30 pm Singapore time we officially welcomed a baby boy into our family, weighing in at 3.47kg with a length of 55cm. He surprised us with his size; we thought he was going to be about the same size Isabella was at birth. However Isabella was a quarter kilo lighter and 5 cm shorter and she even baked for a week longer. The bad news is he has to spend his first day and night in NICU, so no cuddle and bonding time for us and thus no name yet, all because he’s a ‘Grunter’ (the doctor’s official description for his condition). For those lucky enough not to know what NICU (pronounced ‘Nickyoo’) stands for, it is ‘Neonatal Intensive Care Unit’. Needless to say I’m guessing our sleep tonight won’t be very restful.

Yummy Oxygen, Just What The Doctor Ordered

P.S. Spelling and grammar in this Blogs over the next few weeks may be poor. Hopefully the spelling and grammar skills will improve with sleep.

Monday 26 May 2008

The Final Count Down

Life is good as we try to prepare ourselves for the arrival of baby number deux. My mother arrived from Oz a few days back in readiness for ‘the arrival’, thankfully number deux wasn’t in a hurry to get out before Isabella’s babysitter arrived, aka, mother or Grandma as Isabella knows her. We have a doctor’s visit tomorrow; hopefully then we’ll know if a ‘natural’ birth is an option. Our medical history is indicating that natural is not likely this time round but we will see. Even though we’ve already had one baby, somehow I just don’t feel prepared for the arrival of the next, mmmm how do you care for a newborn, bathing etc and oh that lack of sleep thing that accompanies newborns. We are trying to educate Isabella about the new arrival but I don’t know how much is getting through, hopefully more than we realise!

Monday 19 May 2008

Final Subject - Subject Hell

Today is a bad day, well not really, it marks the start of my final subject for my studies. It’s a core subject that I’ve not wanted to do, mainly because it has an essay based final exam worth nearly 50% of the final mark. I’ve never done well in essay based exams; usually I’m lucky to pass. Multiple choice, short answer and essay based assignments, I say bring them on, but essay exams can just go and get #@*!. I had this nightmare essay exam during my undergrad studies that was two hours long, we had to write four essays (ten to choose from) where the lecturer wanted each roughly between 400 and 500 words in length, what a bitch to mark! I have shocking and slow hand writing and spell like that of a seven year old. During my prep work for the exam I worked out that I would only be able to physically hand write two essay in two hours. In the exam I almost finished three, sadly I couldn’t even read my own hand writing. Oh yes I did fail that subject and it was a pre req for another subject I wanted to do. Luckily for me I noticed that you only had to have taken that subject, it said nothing about passing the subject so I was able to take the subject and I received a very good grade for it too. The subject co-ordinator later changed the wording so that you had to pass the crappy pre req subject. Me, I was all smiles as I didn’t have to undertake that rather tedious subject again! A few other people failed the crappy subject and the average mark was a pass.

Saturday 10 May 2008

The Boo Is Two

Today marks our little daughter’s second birthday, yes we survived the first two years and have marched head first into the terrible twos, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Stop, Straight into the Terrible Twos for all of us. I don’t think she understands the concept of birthdays yet, but she’s seems keen to try it again, I think it was the new toys and chocolate cake, and she gets to try it all over again tomorrow when we have some friends over to help us celebrate. Mmmm our little princess has just wandered out of her bedroom and isn’t keen on going back to bed, and I’m buggered and thinking about heading to bed myself. I’m guessing she is a little wired on today’s activities and chocolate cake, mamma is now reading her a bedtime story, hopefully sleepiness will soon return for Miss Isabella. Back in bed, hopefully she stays there for the rest of the night.

Sunday 4 May 2008

Iemma Defies Own Party To Sell Off Power

So the NSW Premier Morris Iemma has said his responsibility is to the people of NSW, and he will progress with the sell off of the state's electricity industry, continuing “down the path the government has started”. Okay what is the Government, my understanding is the (voting age) people of the state of NSW voted in the Labour Party, well enough of their members (and Labour supporting independents and other) so that they had over 50 percent of the vote. So the Government isn’t Iemma, or Costa et al, it’s the Labour party currently represented by Iemma and his ship of fools. So I’m thinking the ALP conference should be attended by those in the party, so when the party members voted on the electricity industry privatisation with a resounding get stuffed 702 votes against to 107 votes in favour. I would have thought this meant the Government was saying NO to privatisation of the electricity industry. Am I missing something here? Or is Iemma & Co missing something, maybe that their days are numbered, mutiny is knocking at the door and max the axe is waiting to strike them out. Which brings me to another question, who would be the new premier? Can we call in the state’s Governor to sack these guys?

I can see the so called industry benefits of privatisation, but the idea of privatisation, going from public to commercial interest, that is to companies that are there to make a profit doesn’t bode well for the little people, especially those in regional areas also known as no profit zones. Oh yes service 85% of the population on the costal regions, screw the 15% in the bush, it’s not like they are doing any good for the country, say if they were doing something like being primary producers (farms producing fresh fruits, vegetables and meat or even sustainable building products) or mining for those resources we just seem to be unable to live without like coal, steel and other precious minerals. Oops they are undertaking those activities in that marginal 15%. That’s okay they can all move to the cities, there’s plenty of spare space there and Australians can just start importing all those goods from other (low cost) countries. What’s a trade deficit? Getting back to my point at hand, privatisation for certain industries shouldn’t be allowed, I’m a believer that important state / country utilities & industries like power, water, roads & public transport should be government owned whether that be at state or federal level should be the only question. That leads me to another question, do we really need state governments, why not just have federal and local, cut out a chunk of the middle layer costs and in NSW case a chuck of relatively useless bureaucracy.

Oh ranting can be fun, and hopefully not too misguided.

Saturday 3 May 2008

Spam Turns 30

Today marks the 30 year anniversary of spam, not that is was called spam back then, and it wasn’t really that bad, just an email to about 400 people inviting them to a new product launch, oh how bad this monster has grown. Most people know my thoughts on spam and spammers, oh so many culprits and not enough damn bullets. And the real sad thing about spam is that there is a sucker born every minute that buys into it, oh why oh why is this so, yes there is not enough chlorine in the gene pool.

Friday 2 May 2008

Public Servant Accessed Porn Sites

As I was saying in my last blog, I spend too much time reading the paper. Today’s interesting article comes from Japan. A public servant has been demoted and given or should I say has taken a pay cut after getting caught surfing porn sites. Which is not really that interesting until you find out that he is reported to have visited 780,000 sites during office hours in only 9 months! This got me thinking (minds out of the gutter boys), that’s a mammoth quantity in such a short time, 9 months of office hours is roughly 190 work days or 1520 office hours or 91,200 minutes. So using some simple mathematics that’s approximately 8 ½ sites per minute or a new site every 7 seconds. One would have to assume he didn’t have much spare time for work and one very strong but sore mouse finger. You’d have to give him top marks for stamina and commitment, shame about his work productivity.

Thursday 1 May 2008

Poor 'ole Westpac (and other banks)

I’m spending way too much time reading the online newspapers, so much so that I’m just getting confused. For example a few days back I thought I read an article about the poor old Westpac bank having to raise it interest rates on home loans to help pay for their bad investments choices, like they also did a few months previously. Yes like most banks they feel they needed to charge the poorer people trying to pay off their home loans with higher interest rates and charges because they made bad investment choices, mmmm does that mean us with home loans also made bad investment choices by taking out home loans in the first place. Anyhow by an article in today’s paper I assume that raising the interest rates has not only saved the poor old Westpac bank from the poor farm but paved their driveway with gold and many other precious gems by increasing their profit forecast by 10% to A$1.83 BILLION, I guess they have one hell of a great farm as their profits make some small nations GDP look like chump change. Well I’m glad the poorer home loans holders (i.e. those with a negative yearly profit forecast) have been able to help out the Banks in this their hour of need. God bless Capitalism! Don’t worry home loan holder, Westpac are also looking to shift 3000 odd jobs from Australians to cheaper overseas labour locations in India and China, thus saving a whole bunch of dosh so they’ll be able to reduce our home loans interest rates. This little cat not going to hold his breath waiting for them to drop the interest rates, this little cat thinks it’s more likely they’ll announce further increases in their profit forecast, maybe they would like to round it off to a nice even A$2 billion next time.

Good night, sweet dreams and thank you for reading my 2 cents worth, or was that A$1.83 billions worth!