What we have here, is failure to communicate

Some men, you just can't reach . . . .

My kids have recently found a love of playing my old CD's. We had boxes of them stashed all over the house, some in the roof space, some in the office area and some under the house off the garage. These ones were lucky to survive the moisture issue down there, they do smell a little, may have a bit of mould but what doesn't kill ya makes ya stronger! Well they are all cleaned up and sorted with a working CD player and the kids are learning music from my generation doesn't suck, and actually is quite good. They are now realising the cool music from their idiot box shows they watch, is not new, but old fart music. I guess many of the people making these shows are my generation (or have good taste in music). Shows like Stranger Things have highlighted music of this era. I'm glad there is more airtime for this music and that my CD's are getting a second life, just not sure how long that life will be, as they are back to school and uni in a few weeks.

Yeah, I know that quote is from Cool Hand Luke, but it's also at the start of the Gunner song Civil War.

It's been a while

 It's funny when you think about how much time we all have spent in our own homes this past year and I still didn't make the time to write a few lines on this blog, I know its dead, but for some reason I just keep adding something every few years.

With all that has been going on in the world there is so much we could be talking about, the dodginess of some, the amazingness of others during this pandemic. Sadly I've been less inclined to visit, or even call friends and family, than again I think I'm really a hermit on the inside and could quite happily live away from civilization, maybe that's why I don't find the lockdowns and limitations resulting from this pandemic a problem, aka, fuel the inter hermit! I get the feeling a lot of people have similar feeling, driving up the desire the flee cities and urban centres for space and a little more self-sufficiency. Gardening and self-sufficiency have been on my mind for long before this past year, unfortunately its been in a fight with my desire to provide my kids with good access to academic education. I know farm / country life brings its own useful educations but a good academic educations should set them up nicely for the future, assuming society goes on, and we don't descend into the world built for prepper and survivalist.

When I read over what I've just written I realise how scattered my thoughts are and that I really should replace the batteries in my keyboard as it keep dropping keystrokes and it's not always that easy to work out what I was meaning to type, maybe I should type this in an app that automatically fixes spelling issues, then again, auto correct creates its own set of problems, not to mention the Americanized English that would change my 's's and remove my 'u's etc. And like some of my old lecturers I like to make up my own words, like 'dodginess' or should it be 'dodgyness', I wasn't very good in English at school but I'm thinking the rule was the 'y' becomes an 'i' in these situations. And dodginess is a bit of a dodgy word in more ways then one! But I like it.

This post alone is more than I've written in the past 8 years combined, and it's nice to see that my unintentional drive to post every two years is still functioning. Maybe one day I'll tweak it and post every year, more likely it will go the other way and I'll post every 4 years. On that though, good day, evening or night to you.

Found this is Canberra, had to take a snap or two

Another Two Years Later

I'm such the hard core blogger, averaging two years between blogs recently (cough cough, recently and every two years don't seem to mesh). Every time I log into blogger there seem to be changes in polices or procedures, mmmm guess that relates to me only logging on every few years, maybe I'll write two blogs this year, but please don't hold your breath. That said I'm avoiding doing work so I should sign off and get my butt into gear, chat later, most likely in 2019 ! ! !

We are still alive

Yet again it's been quite a while since our last blog or website update, so recently I've moved  and streamlined our website, that is, cutting out family stuff that was only on there because we were living overseas, I need to sit down and clean some more, maybe even make use of some newer technology, the site is over ten years old now, in technology terms that like horse and buggy verse the modern car, mmmm I think I'm still at the horse and buggy technology level, not in the game at the moment so falling a little behind.

Mad Man and House Renovations

Movin’ to the country, mmmm guess not, maybe it’s time to have a major home reno to accommodate our growing active kids, ‘we’ the parents are seeking a kids free / toy free / Lego free zone (and I still like Lego), you know that spot where one can sit down in a quite comfort, we can’t even get quite time on the toilet, mmmm need to install locks! Well if we reno maybe I’ll have something more to blog, but even less time to do it. Anybody know any good Architects in Sydney’s Inner West area. I may need a new job, not only for my sanity but to pay for the renovation. Anybody want to hire a slightly insane person needing new challengers, house trained, relatively tidy, not too smelly, has brain and can use it (slight fried but willing to return form extended vacation). Thinking maybe I should move from IT / IM into woodworking or gardening, start working with my hands in a positive fashion with obvious physical results. What will happen, what will I do, I just don’t know. Maybe I should add to that slightly fried brain comment to include rather scattered.

The Joys of Outsourcing

I arrived at work yesterday to find out the other people in my area are sick, woohoo time to surf the internet all day and watch cat video’s, but alas I decided to work, I should have saved all my jobs for today, I’m having trouble finding things to do today, so busy yesterday when there was nobody to see and today looking like I doing nothing when everyone is back at work. Speaking of yesterday’s work, I received a call from the national office, their world was falling apart, what have I done to wreck their server, say what! Breathe slowly and explain to me what’s wrong, p.s. I haven’t touched your server. Okay I’ll logon on and have a look, mmmm, the system services password is not working, something not right here, admin password works, do some investigation, find out the IT contractors have been messing with the system early in the morning, they didn’t know the passwords, so I guess they reset them and created their own, oh really did they, slap them over the head, reset the password so they match the password saved in the services and look everything is now working. This is the problem with outsourcing and spreading your IT across several entities is people have access to mess with thing they should be messing with and don’t understand that their little changes can have big negative impacts, I love my job, repeat three time, mmmm I could repeat a thousand times I don’t think it will help me in my mind space about work, is it too early for a drink, my tea is just not cutting it, maybe I need to change from black to camomile or something that is soothing.

What the heckden - Movin' to the Country

I’m not a very prolific blogger these days, I don’t think about it, I’m easily side tracked by daily life, kids, house life, work and transit don’t leave much down time. Something needs to change, work needs to change, so over my work, need something different as I’m just plotting along doing what’s needed to keeps my work duties under control. Maybe it’s time to stop working for the man and become the man, the big question is what should I be doing. I’m a bit too old for lollies tester plus I don’t think my body could handle of the damn sugar. I don’t have the time or patience to be a gamer anymore, plus the kids would make it had to concentrate, my backs too dodgy to be a bed tester even know I like sleeping when I have the time. I think I want to buy the farm, flee the city and just mosey around on the land, toil the soil and watch the greens grow, maybe some reds and oranges too, what the heck or as my boy says ‘what the heck then’ or maybe it’s just ‘what the heckden’, lets watch all the colours grow except eggplant, I just don’t get eggplant, lovely colours they grow but the taste is just wrong, celery is just nasty too but okay when hidden in soups and stews, bring on winter so we can eat soups and stews again. When we were living in Singapore, also known as the land of endless summer I would ramp-up the air-con so it was cold enough to eat stews without sweating. Heart-warming winter food, you gotta love them.

Working to Make More Work

Do we create job for the sake of creating job, or to give people a chance to work? Why do most of us seem to work in offices, what happened to our outside working lives, we still have farmers, builders, miners etc but there are just so many damn office workers theses days. I work in an office supporting effectively other office workers, and some of those workers are also supporting more office workers in a strange bad cycle. So workers creating work for others but not really producing anything, when I think about it the organisation I work for doesn’t really produce anything, well other then prolonging people’s lives and bring new lives into the world, so actually making the need for more work to be created for all the new and healthy people, so in fact my organisation doesn’t produce anything other then the need to create more jobs for the masses it helps to increase. That’s enough of the ranting of a mad man wishing he was in a blue box.

Happy 2nd Birthday Possum - Back but not in Black

First of all Happy 2nd Birthday to our little possum, wow how much you have grown this past twelve months, running and mostly keeping up with the siblings, talking and talking, following in your mother's mouth steps, but ever so polite about it, when asked if she would like to go to bed, she responds, ‘No thank you’, she has the cute factor going and knows how to sucker us in with a ‘I Love You Daddy’. As Isabella is at school and Lucas at preschool five days a week Kayla is sucking up all the solo mummy time, but I think she also misses her playmates.

Both Isabella and Lucas seem to be loving school, Lucas took to the five day routine without any trouble, actually I think he loved it from day one, when I think back when Bella went there we had to drag Lucas out every day as he was keen to stay and play, now it’s Kayla’s turn to be dragged out, another two years before she can stay all day.

I guess my blogging is a little slack again, being it’s a year to the day since my last lashing, I’m not blogging because it’s Kayla’s birthday, I just happen to look at the blog yesterday and realised it’s been a full year and thought I should have a short rant to keep the blog alive, need to put more mental effort into keeping it alive, the kids are growing so quickly and are always coming out with funny stories I could be passing on to my one friend who reads this blog, are you still out there buddy? I guess I should spend some time updating the website with some more pictures too, but at the moment I would rather spend my free time sleeping, mmmm if only I could sleep at work, I wonder if Sleep City are hiring bed testers.

Happy Birthday to my Baby Girl

One year ago today and in another country my little family welcomed our newest addition. Miss Kayla, also known as Kaylee Boo and possum among other weird and wonderful names. Over the year she’s grown and learnt much, except how to sleep through the night! She is starting to walk on her own, climb stairs then fall back down them, eat and disperse food all around without assistance, she can unroll a full toilet roll or empty a full jumbo tissue box in less than 37 seconds, and she loves her baths, especially when she can splash like a wild beast drenching both of her older siblings sending them scamping out of the bath for safety, the splashing habit might be my fault, well the result my training her to survive a Greek Orthodox christening, which she did without too much drama. Hopefully the next year will see her communication skills change to quiet talking, walking without the crashes, she's already working out how to safely descend the stairs, usually by standing at the top and calling ‘mumma mumma’ and waiting to be carried down the stairs, sometimes her older brother or sister help or sideswipe her usually resulting in her falling down and tears, thankfully our staircases are only two and three stairs each.

Feeding Myself 'Kayla' Style (Some food even makes it into my mouth)

The Marginal Seat

Where I live its state election time, where we get to choose who will help lead our state, sadly my seat is a marginal seat so the two leading groups are flogging us with their dribble, and the real bad thing is our main choices are Dumb, dumber,  who and what! Let say ‘Dumb’ is our incumbent member for Labor or ‘Keep Verity’ as she is campaigning and her biggest challenger ‘Dumber’ in the Green corner Jamie “Snake Oil Salesman” Parker, but let not forget the dark sheep of this marginal seat sitting in the Blue corner falling in the ‘Who’ category is James “Why Bother Campaigning’ Falk and the ‘What’ category is for all the leftovers who kindly put up the hand that usually only make up a couple of percent of the total votes, god bless them, gotta love the little guys. Anyhow Labour, the Greens and even the little independents are dumping loads of printed material into our letterbox and guarding the entrance to all our local transport stops so you can’t go anywhere without being accosted, I'm tempted to vote for the Liberal guy just because he hasn’t been attacking my letter box or trying to waylay me on my way to work, good way to save our taxpayer dollar by not printing promotional lies, oops campaign material or slowing my daily commute. Thankfully the election will be over in a few weeks and then it will only be a year or so before all their promotional material and signs have been cleared away, I always love seeing my tax dollars wasted, maybe it time we stop the waste and get rid of state politics altogether.

NEWS FLASH - Blog Name Change

NEWS FLASH . . . We have renamed our blog, no longer is it ‘Notes from a Tiny Island (Nation)’ its now ‘Notes from a Big Brown Land’. And No, the Tiny Island Nation has not had a Big Brown Dump taken on it, we have moved from Singapore back to Australia, and no I don’t believe anyone has taken a big brown dump on Australia either, it’s just that Australia is damn big and usually rather dry, thus usually rather brown.

You Say What's FTP, Okay I'll Update to the New Format

Well over a year has passed and I've finally got around to changing my blog to the 'new' required upload format, thus I can post blogs again and boy is there alot I can yak about, but I can't be bottered tonight, Good Night.

Fall Down, Go Crack

Our sweet little girl fell off a climbing toy at pre-school yesterday and managed to fracture her left arm, so we spent the evening at two different hospitals, seeing several doctors, taking a few x-rays, and calling in a specialist to put her arm in a half cast. We have to see him next week for a full cast, woohoo she’s going to like that., NOT! She doing okay, a little tender as expected and some things are just too much to handle. Lucas is trying to give her hugs and of course the cast on the arm is just too inviting not to be attacked, so we are trying to keep Lucas entertained and the cast arm hidden from his view, its working, some of the time but Lucas is just an inquisitive little guy and just wants to know what is hidden inside that magical cast, what goodie is big sister Isabella keeping hidden from him.

I'm not wired, I should have been in bed three hours ago

No, No, Don’t Buy a Car in Singapore

After nearly four years living in Singapore without a car, we have succumbed. I guess I just got sick of dragging the kids around in the rain and it does rain rather regularly in here, I guess that’s just part of the joy of living in the tropics with 30 degree temperature day in night out.

Anyhow back to the car, if you want to remain sane and not spend extremely too much for a car, don’t even consider buying a car in Singapore. I’ve been looking off and on over the past six months for a car, even checking out the auctions and let me tell you, car auctions here are not the place to pick up a car cheaply. I even saw some fool buy a year old car for more the he could have purchased a new one, way to do your research buddy! Mmmm maybe there were drugs or something stashed inside that made him go the extra dollars, or maybe it was just too many hits to the head. To get an idea of the price of cars here, at minimum you’ll be spending double what it would cost you in Australia, and sometimes as much as four times the price. This is partly due to the government controlling measures using taxes, more taxes and varying registration tax (the COE that goes up and down with demand as limited number are available each period). The other factor appears to be greedy car dealers. Based on costs and taxes, I figure on some cars the dealers are making upwards of 50% profit. For example the Mazda 3 2L Hatchback, in Oz the retail for A$25,000, in Singapore they retail for S$89,500 (A$74,000). So I’m guessing after importing costs and taxes and COE (registration) the car’s wholesale costing is no more then S$65,000 so that’s roughly S$25,000 profit of which they have to pay wages etc which can’t add up to very much for each car sold. In other words they are roughly making in profit what the car sells for in Oz, so I’m thinking greedy little buggers. Are car salespeople like real estate agents just dodgy the world over, willing to lie and cheat to get a sale.

Okay I know it’s another rant, I guess I’m just disgusted at the way car salespeople operate here, and in general the whole car industry here, maybe I’m just bitter and twisted as it is costing so much more than it should.

The Boy Is A Walker

Little Lukie has been walking for a while now, but up until yesterday he had still favoured crawling, not so far to fall I guess! But yesterday and today he has mostly been walking everywhere, even for short trips like a few steps to pick up another toy. Isabella and Lucas were very different in their starting to walk days, Isabella started around 14 months, it was like she decided she wanted to walk and that was that, one evening she just stood-up and walked around the house, none of the building-up a few steps here a few steps there it was just a whole bunch of steps all around the house and she didn’t look back, good bye crawling I’m a walker now! Lucas on the other hand was a few steps here and a few more steps there, and more and more steps walking around the house but he would keep reverting back to crawling. He been walking / crawling like this for nearly two months now, however as I said the past two days now he has been mostly walking so I’m hoping the crawling faze has finished, crawling is so nasty on his clothes, then again Lucas in general is nasty to his clothes, why put food straight into your mouth when you can first squish it through your nice clean shirt, it works just like a sieve. Funny how kids can be very very different but at the same time nearly identical.

Look 200 Posts, Say Good Bye To Laconic Man

Well maybe don't say goodbye to Laconic man!

Money, What Money?

Isabella came walking out of her room today with a coin wallet in her hands, she walks up to me and asks for her money, my surprised response was,

‘Money! What money, do you have money somewhere?’

To which she replied,

‘Yes, up there on the shelf in daddy wallet’.

So just what are they teaching my little girl at preschool?

Things of no Reason

One day I was walking down the road and saw a man, a man I don’t know, a man I had never met or even seen before and a man I will most likely never see again, so I just kept on striding without a second consideration.

The End