My youngest sister Nicole managed to get her temporary contract position changed to a full-time job! Excellent!
And my younger sister Lisa just exchanged contracts on a new place in North Hobart! Not even 6 weeks after us!
Wow. We're all growing up.
An entire episode of Border Security and not one Chinese tourist/student busted trying to bring undeclared food in to the country. Kathleen has a love/hate relationship with that show. She hates the fact they imply that all Asians try and circumvent the system, but loves watching the internet relationships fail when the protaginists meet for the first time.
Last year, BS was on at around 9.30pm, where is became a sleeper hit. This year, it's on in prime time. 7.30pm. Where it comfortably wins it's timeslot. Can you believe it's the third most popular TV program in Australia today?
On Sunday night, we discovered the hard way that using the fan-forced oven while the computer is on is just a little bit too much juice for our new apartment's power supply. One minute I'm typing something typically erudite and insightful, the next, I'm sitting in the dark, looking at a black screen.
Huh.
Kathleen had the presence of mind to light a candle, and we dug around in the linen cupboard for the master switches. Flicking those on and off, a couple of times, made no difference to the light levels or lack thereof.
I eventually had to go down to the rubbish room at the bottom of the building (we're on the third storey) to access the mains. And there, on a bank of white panels, each marked with the number of the relevant apartment, was ours. Unlike the others, it was set to OFF.
I flicked it to on, reset the master switches again, and regularly scheduled power was restored.
But it is interesting that there's nothing stopping me from turning off somebody else's power.
Just thinking out loud there. I'd never do something like that.
Or would I?
Poor Kathleen's worst nightmares came true on Saturday afternoon when we invited a few Hawthorn and Sydney supporters around to watch the game on Saturday afternoon. Not only did we watch "Four entire quarters!" (her words), we watched SBS' World Sports, followed by the Simpsons. Great for me, but she wasn't so impressed.
Even though Hawthorn got belted again, it was pretty good to have friends over to the new place. We did watch them rather intently, though, just in case they dropped food on the carpet.
Last weekend seemed to fly, probably not helped by the fact that we hardly seemed to be at home!
On Friday, we went to see Kung Fu Hustle. Don't let the fact that Kathleen fell asleep halfway through - "I was tired!" - distract you from the fact that it's one of the most original Hong Kong movies you're likely to see.
Steven Chow's previous movie, Shaolin Soccer was the highest-grossing HK movie of all time, and one of the first scenes, where he squashes a soccer ball while yelling "No more soccer!" seemed to indicate he wanted to do even better this time around.
On Saturday, we went to Yukis for our anniversary.
Our ten year anniversary! Can you believe it? Ah, it seemed like only yesterday that we met in Information Systems class in Grade 12!
I was the knowledgable, yet suave and sophisticated, computer expert. She was the bouncy, cheerful girl in the front row. It was love at first sight...
This is not a photo from 10 years ago.
And then on Sunday, we went to Centennial Park, along with what seemed like half of Sydney, for a picnic. Unfortunately, Sydney's eastern suburbs seem to become a carpark on a sunny day. What a crazy city!
For the last few months of our stay in Surry Hills, Hiscoes sent about a letter a fortnight to Kathleen. She'd made the mistake of signing up for a temporary member pass. They took that as being a firmer sign of commitment than she wanted to make.
At first, she ignored the letters.
Then, they became more insistent.
She relented, and dropped in for a solitary class.
The letters increased in frequency.
We'd put them straight into the recycle bin.
And finally, we moved away.
But we arranged to forward mail sent to our own address.
And so it is that we have just received our first piece of Hiscoes junk mail at the new place.
We ran, but we can't hide.
Not dead, just had a busy weekend which left me too tired to post anything, and this week and last week - in fact, the entire last month - has been coompletely crazy at work.
As if to prove that Japan is not the only country blessed with a spring cherry blossom, the last week has seen the first buds appear in Wollstonecraft:
Walking to walk takes me past North Sydney Demonstration School, which is always interesting at 8.30 in the morning as the parents drop their sprogs off.
On Friday, I walked past as dad was in the courtyard, playing downball with his young son. Awww, all happy families!
Except, Dad was wearing his suit. And hanging onto his styrofoam cup of coffee. At the same time as he's playing. It certainly shows an admirable ability to multitask, but gee, dad! Let yourself go! Get into the game. Put the coffee down for a minute, it'll wait.
Your son won't.
Took Thursday off last week to babysit the builders who came around to do the built-in wardrobes. They did a pretty good job, too.
One of the interesting things I've noticed after having 5 people through the place (one painter, two builders, a painting quoter, and a locksmith) is that they all express surprise at the number of bedrooms.
"Wow, this place has three bedrooms?" they ask. Invariably the next question is always the same. "Soooo, how much did you pay, if you don't mind my asking?"
I always feel a little weird about that question. It's like someone coming out and asking how much you earn. So I always understate how much we paid, for one simple reason:
It makes us look like master bargainers, getting such a steal!
The side-effects of pregnancy sound great! I can't wait!
Steph has picked up some tickets for the footy this weekend. Should be a good game. Both of us are looking forward to seeing the cocky Sydney fans get taken down a notch, though the fear is that the fair-weather fans here will stop watching their team when they start losing.
Looks like it's snowing in Hobart today!
My sister Lisa sent me an email this morning:
It is even snowing at work - at the Casino!!!!!!!! So wish I had been able to take photos to prove it to you!!
And about an hour later sent me some photos one of her coworkers had taken:
The Times has a great article about the creater of Pacman, and how he wanted to create a new type of video game, one that appealed to everyone. Most of the arcade games at the time revolved around a space/tank shoot-the-alien theme.
The whole thing actually started with me walking around games arcades watching how many boys were playing and the fact that all the machines were about killing aliens, tanks or people. Girls were simply not interested, and I suddenly had a motivation for my work: I wanted game centres to shed this rather dark, sinister image, and it seemed to me that the way to raise the atmosphere of a place is to entice girls to come in."
The whole purpose of Pac-Man was to target women and couples, and get a different type of player involved."
Iwatani and his team of six developers were given a remarkably free rein in coming up with Namco’s greatest hit. He puts this down to the fact that the industry was then in a primitive state, and that his bosses, who were generally ignorant of the market, had little choice but to trust the instincts of a 24-year old geek.
"So there I was, wondering what sort of things women would look for in a video game. I sat in cafés and listened to what they were talking about: mostly it was fashion and boyfriends. Neither of those was really the stuff of a good video game. Then they started talking about food — about cakes and sweets and fruit — and it hit me: that food and eating would be the thing to concentrate on to get the girls interested."
Here are some of the photos from the new place:
On Saturday, we were cleaning the kitchen when this parrot flies up to the window sill and pokes his head in for a quick look:
andrewandkathleen was meant to be a place to chuck our photos and diaries of our time in Japan. Since then it's transformed into a way of letting our friends and family know what we've been up to!
We've been together since high school, married since 2005. We've travelled and lived in different cities and different countries and are now trying to work out whether we're settling down or having a rest!
