Wind, rain & umbrella's

We had allot of wind & rain in Perth today, as a strong cold front crossed the coast. At times there were heavy downpours accompanied by gale force winds. In the city there were people everywhere with umbrella's.

With the wind & rain together, trying to use an umbrella could prove a challenging task.

You've probably seen the movie, "Mary Poppins", when all the umbrella's are blown inside out by the wind. Well today I actually saw this happen for real.

There was a gentleman standing on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the road holding an umbrella tightly with both hands. He was trying to walk one way while facing into the wind to keep his umbrella from blowing everywhere. At one point he turned to face me & gave me a smile in amusement.

All of a sudden a big gust of wind came up & pop, that was the end of his umbrella. He turned back to me & with the same smile yelled a four letter word which I will not repeat. He then gathered up what was left of the umbrella & made a dash for shelter.

Now while I don't like to laugh at others misfortunes, it was rather funny to watch, obviously the man saw the funny side too.

As for me; well I keep an umbrella in my car just in case, but I would rather wait for the rain to ease or make a dash for shelter, and as I saw today, wind, rain & umbrella's could be a recipe for disaster.

It's all on

Ok, it's time to share the news. After much thought & prayer Jo & I have decided to make the move to my home country of New Zealand.

A number of reasons have led us to this decision, but we feel that it is the right time & it is where God is leading us. Who knows what will happen when we get there, but I can say that it is all very exciting.

We talked with a few family members & are beginning to make some plans, starting with a passport application for Chloe.

We have set a time line for early January 2008. Sooner would have been better, but there is so much to organize before we can go plus a few family things happening before Christmas, then Christmas itself. Too much.

Stay tuned for more.

AFL Round 17 Tips

I did suitably well last week with 6 correct tips out of 8. Let's see if I can stay up there this round. Here are my tips.

Western Bulldogs vs West Coast Eagles - West Coast Eagles

Carlton vs St Kilda - St Kilda

Fremantle vs Geelong - Geelong

Collingwood vs Brisbane Lions - Bribane Lions

Sydney Swans vs Richmond - Sydney Swans

Hawthorne vs Kangaroos - Kangaroos

Essendon vs Adelaide - Adelaide

Port Adelaide vs Melbourne - Port Adelaide

There's something in the air

There could be some major change happening in the months ahead for Jo & I. I'm not going to say anything more at the moment until we know more, but stay tuned. (No, Jo is not pregnant again)

AFL Round 16 Tips

A better result last week, I scored 4. Here are this weeks selections. Even though I'm a day late posting them & a couple of games are finished already, I promise I'll be honest.

Geelong vs Western Bulldogs - Geelong

Collingwood vs Essendon - Essendon

Adelaide vs Fremantle - Fremantle

St Kilda vs Hawthorne - Hawthorne

West Coast Eagles vs Sydney Swans - West Coast Eagles

Brisbane Lions vs Carton - Brisbane Lions

Richmond vs Port Adelaide - Port Adelaide

Kangaroos vs Melbourne - Kangaroos

Getting around

Wow, I havent blogged at all this week, too much else happening.

I have been doing something new this week. For weeks now I've been driving 40 minutes through Perth's peak hour traffic each way to & from work. Unless I'm on the freeway before 6:15am, it is usually about a 40 minute trip & comming home at night it's peak hour as well.

My job as a courier, I am on the road all day & sometimes by the end of the day I feel a little weary during the drive home.

I decided to try the public transport system this week. From home I drive to the train station, catch the train into the city, then bus from the city to work. All in all it's about an hours trip, which even though it is longer than the car, I can relax & not worry about arguing with the traffic. Also, I don't have to worry about being tired on the way home.

I bought myself a Smartrider, which is a pre-paid card which the fare is deducted from. I recon it saves me about 10 dollars in fuel & wear & tear on the car as well. Why not check out the Transperth system for yourself if you live in Perth. You can visit their website here.

Back to the beginning

Those of you who know me well enough, will know that I'm a fan of the reality TV series Survivor. I can tell you there have been 14 seasons of the show, of which I have seen 13 of (only because season 4 wasn't shown on NZ telly at the time), & I can name most of the winners.
The interesting this tho, is that I never actually saw the pilot episode, so for some reason I started watching season 1 from about the second episode.

A couple of seasons back I missed the final episode of Survivor: Cook Islands due to the fact that I was on holiday overseas. I was searching everywhere trying to find out how to get hold of this episode, then my sister directed me to the website, tvtorrents.com. All the popular shows out of the US are listed on this site and are available for download; that was my solution.

I can download the latest episode as son as it has been aired in the US, which means the current season which is now being aired on Australian TV, I have already seen the entire season (don't worry, I won't tell you who won), how cool is that.

So now I have decided to go back to the beginning & start watching the original season of Survivor & put it on CD. I'll start from the beginning & work my way through 14 seasons.

Hopefully season 15 Survivor: China will be available for download soon.

Desktop Cleanup

I've just spent a few hours this afternoon attempting to organize a few of the many cluttered files on my computer.

Over the past few years, as you use the computer for different things, whether it be letter or document writing, photo imaging or whatever else you do, your hard drive gets cloged up with stray files & other bits & pieces that you really don't need.

Now you could spend hours going through your files deleting things you don't need or want, but after about an hour and a half I barley scratched the surface. From the last virus scan I think there are about 250ish thousand files on my hard drive.

I think the best way to clean it all up would be to re format the entire hard drive, and while I really don't know how to do that properly, I do have a couple of mates who are computer geeks & I'm sure one of them would be willing to help me out.

Do you have the same problem with your computer getting clogged up with junk? How do you go about cleaning up your desktop? Are you able to re format you HD, or do you just leave it to those who know what they're doing? That's one profession I'd like to pursue.

News Bloopers

The only bad thing about live tv, is that you can't edit out the bloopers. Check out this video clip from YouTube.

AFL Round 15 Tips

I failed miserably last week, only scoring 2 from 8. Hopefuly this week will be better. Here are my tips for round 15.

St Kilda vs Adelaide - Adelaide

Geelong vs Collingwood - Geelong

Port Adelaide vs West Coast Eagles - West Coast Eagles (I'm not confident)

Melbourne vs Brisbane Lions - Brisbane Lions

Sydney Swans vs Carlton - Sydney Swans

Hawthorne vs Richmond - Hawthorne

Fremantle vs Kangaroos - Fremantle

Just be who you are

Do you ever find yourself doing something just because someone else does it? I have to admit that I tend to fall into that trap quite regularly.

Take my job as a courier as an example. It is often quite busy & sometimes there is not time to stop for a break. Even during the lunch time swap, we are sorting our afternoon run out, loading our vehicles & then out the door. It was the same at my previous job too.

Now I've never really been one to buy my lunch on a regular basis, I always try & take my lunch from home (my lovely wife makes it or I grab something out of the pantry), simply because I don't have the money to spend every day & I find it annoying to have to stop somewhere on the run to buy food.

I 've spoken to a number of other drivers who all say they buy their lunch on the run because they don't have time to sit down for a break.

While I did think about doing this a couple of times, I decided not to. I have my own reasons for doing things the way I do them & I actually enjoy sitting down for 15 minutes to have a lunch break & not having to worry about whether I have enough money or where I'm going to stop to buy food.

I think sometimes we see what the majority of people are doing & think that we should change our ways also.

So what about you? Do you find yourself moulding your life to fit the crowd or are you happy to be the odd one out? I guess it comes down to being confident in who your are & not trying to be someone else.

Parenting with confidence

One of the greatest callings we can have in life is that of being a parent, especially for the first time. Unfortunately new babies do not come with instruction manuals; it would make life a lot easier if they did.

It can be very distressing for both baby & mum & dad if you struggle to recognise what they are trying to tell you, or even how to console them. One of the biggest problems we've had has been to do with feeding, settling & getting baby to sleep.

There are many helpful resources out there for parents, but one organisation we've found useful is the Ngala Centre.

Today Jo & I took Chloe in for a day sleep programme which teaches parents different techniques, & gives good advice on all aspects of caring for baby. The main goal of today's programme was for the child nurse to observe what we were doing, & then work with us to better care for Chloe in those areas.

We learned a lot from the programme & are starting to put some of those techniques into practise. Obviously they won't be the same all the time, & things will change as she goes through the different stages of growing up, but we are starting to understand what to look for & how to help her.

I think Ngala is a useful resource for all parents of young children up to age five. If you're having a struggle like us & allot of other parents, why not check out their website; it's well worth a look. You'll find their contact details & help line number there.

If you've used Ngala in the past I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on them. Feel free to leave comments in the comment section below.

A wonderful invention

Jo & I went shopping for a pram yesterday. We have just got a new baby capsule for the car, so we now have the pram to go with it.

The other car seat that we have is good, but when baby is asleep you can't really remove her from the car without disturbing her, as you have to physically pick her up.

This new baby capsule (pictured above), has handles on it, so rather than picking baby up, you just remove the capsule from the car with baby still in it; and it's comfortable enough for her to sleep in when mum & dad go out.

Here's the cool part; the capsule & pram actually connect together, so when you remove capsule from car, instead of having this heavy thing with a baby in it to carry, you simply connect it onto the seat of the pram & off you go.

I'm quite sure these have been around for sometime, but when you discover them at the right time, they truly are an amazing invention

AFL Round 14 Tips

Last week I scored 5 in the tipping, here are my tips for round 14.

Essendon vs Geelong - Geelong

Collingwood vs St Kilda - St Kilda

Western Bulldogs vs Port Adelaide - Port Adelaide

Adelaide vs Hawthorne - Hawthorne

West Coast Eagles vs Brisbane Lions - West Coast Eagles

Sydney Swans vs Fremantle - Fremantle

Carlton vs Melbourne - Carlton

Richmond vs Kangaroos - Kangaroos

My Little Car

Over the last few days, my little car (1989 Mazda 121) has been showing signs that it might be time for a visit to the workshop.

I've started to notice over recent days that it has been coughing & spluttering allot. At first I thought it just because the engine was cold (after starting off from home at 6:30am), but then when it coughed & carried on doing 90km/hr on the freeway, that idea was thrown out the window. It has gradually gotten worse, & then tonight driving home, I wondered if I was going to make it home; praise God, I did.

I've been putting off getting it serviced, because my Brother In-law who is a mechanic, has been flat out & hasn't had time, but I think now I cannot put it off much longer; I'll have to book it in to a workshop to see the auto doctor.

I must say though, my little car has done very well. It has recently clocked over the 307,000 km mark & still goes very well. I bought it about 3 years ago, and at that stage it had 264,000 km on the clock, so it has done me well. I'm not quite ready to part with it yet, as it is fairly cheap to run, & I probably wouldn't get much for it anyhow.

I'm quite confident that after it's been to the doctor, it will revving to go again, & if I treat it well, hopefully it'll give me another 40,000 kms.

Three years today

Today is June 30 2007. For most people, June 30 means the end of the financial year. While this is true, for myself included, it also marks an important date in my history.

It was 3 years ago today that I asked my lovely wife Jo to marry me; I remember it vividly. We were at a church social group meeting & of all the things to discuss, that night we were talking about dating & relationships.

I had already purchased the ring, & had it hidden in my draw in my office (at church). After the meeting was over, I summoned Jo into my office because I had something to show her. Once we were in my office, I opened the draw, pulled out a red rose, which contained the ring, got down on one knee & popped the question. Without hesitation she said yes & that was it.

So now when June 30 comes along, the horrors of tax time might be present, but the joys of love & engagement are resurfaced all over again.