Author: Dave

Sit-rep

Today Simone got official confirmation that next year she would be at the Princess Alexandra hospital for the first six months and at Greenslopes hospital for the second six months.

As for me, I will be at the QE2 Hospital.

Overall this means we will be back on the south side, and looking to blow some of Charlotte’s inheritence on reacquainting ourselves with our favorite restaurants and hang outs around town, should any of you out there wish to join us.

Also, there will be the possibility of an Australia day BBQ, work schedules permitting. More plans closer to the time.

Ouch..

Somehow I managed to completely miss today’s share market plunge until quite late this evening.

ASX down (another) 8%.

Dow at 8.5k

And the aussie dollar having lost 40% of it’s value against the green back in the last month.

What comes to mind is the old Toyota ads, with liberal quanitites of “Bugger”. All quite highly worrying really. Inflation seems stable, and interest rates are on the way down, but still quite unsettling (and I’m in the enviable position of having pretty minimal exposure to the share market at present…).

Functional decline

This week Simone and Charlotte are in Brisbane seeing Simone’s parents and brother and sister in law.
As such Jack and I are reverting to the bachelor lifestyle (when I actually make it home from work with enough time to do anything other than just have dinner and go to bed).

Part of that has involved going out and renting DVDs, a thing which I don’t seem to have had time to do in ages, and since I’m on my own I’m getting some that Simone would not normally want to watch (namely 300 and (strangely) Evan Almighty).

Having watched 300 I was somewhat disappointed. I suppose that so many people had raved about it that perhaps I went into it with expectations. Anyhow, it was pretty to watch, but I already knew the basis of the story (from greek history/mythology), and so there wasn’t much surprise, and I found the voice over really irritating.

Anyway, as a result I suppose that I will no longer be able to perform certain household tasks. Ah well..

Excerpt

While I was in NZ on holidays recently I found a Top Gear book, and one particular bit particularly amused me:

The default supercar for the post-war European male is, was, and probably always will be, the Porsche 911. Although finely honed and all too ordinary today, it was a unique proposition a few years back, both in terms of its looks and its handling. Or rather, the lack thereof. Porsche ran a sort of accidental eugenics programme for the best part of thirty years, by producing a car that appealed to one of society’s least likeable types, and then promptly wrapping him around a tree.

Pentapod

As she continues to rapidly grow up (she’s onto eating solids and really likes beans and pumpkin (not together obviously)) Charlotte has almost mastered sitting up unsupported, and is making valliant efforts to push herself up onto all fours. We are already getting the house locked down in the expectation that she will start crawling any time. At the moment she can’t quite support herself on her arms and legs so she rests on her head as well, creating a sort of ostrich appearance, head in the sand like. She ends up looking like some strange five legged creature (in a pale pink jumpsuit).

Shirking responsibilities

One of the things I have been finding most irking of late is the frequency with which you hear variations on the phrase “We understand the importance of climate change, and fully support the carbon trading scheme, but…” coming from the mouths of industry lobby groups and company CEOs.

The bit that usually comes after the … is something like “we feel that <insert their personal industry or company here> should be exempt, because <insert some lame excuse here, usually along the lines of “we wont make as much money”>”.

No one it seems wants to acknowledge that the reason we’re in the global warming position we’re currently in is due to everyone taking a make-as-much-money-as-possible-and-damn-the-broader-consequences approach, and that the reason they’re having a carbon tax imposed on them is that they showed no willingness to show restraint or change by themselves. Yes it will cost them money. Yes the costs will be passed on to the consumer. Yes it may decrease Austraila’s competitiveness internationally. But it may just spur other countries to follow suit, and compared to the slight rise in cost of living, can you concieve how much it would cost to recover from the CBD’s of Sydney and Melbourne getting flooded when the sea level rises a foot or two?

As someone put it, if I’m right we’re going to be ahead of the game, if I’m wrong we will have created several thousand jobs in carbon minimisation research and implementation.

The great uncrossing of legs

Over the last few days we have been very pleased to hear of a few new arrivals.

James and Chantelle had a little boy, Jacob, and Tash and Dave also had a (second) little boy, named Jesse.

What with all our friends having little boys Charlotte will have no shortage of boys to stomp around in the mud with and climb trees with, and later in life we will have plenty of options for her arranged marriage (although the price will have to be right… anyone can see that she’s at least a five camel girl 🙂 ).

So congratulations go out to them and their little collections of frogs and snail and puppy dogs tails.