My Tea Routine

Tea is in my blood, my family's blood.

Not just the drink, being brought up in an alcohol free household, Tea was the social lubricant that we used. The centre piece of any social interaction, usually across the bench in the kitchen. The kitchen was the heart of our house, it was where all important discussions happened.

Normally made in a pot. There was always a warm pot of tea going whenever someone was at home. on the coldest days we would even keep the kettle hot on the combustion heater. Each pot would make 4 cups of Tea. Always milk and Raw sugar to satisfy taste. It was never fancy brands or flavours, just black Tea. We didn't drink from dainty teacups, I drank from a nice dark purple mug (not pretentious). This cup is long gone.

My grandfather also had a "half cup" which was able to take about 2 cups of tea. I often find myself mimicing his loud AHHH he used to let out after he would take in a large mouthful of tea.

So how do i have my tea? It's simple just allow the teabag to draw, remove bag then add sugar and milk. The one rule i have to say, NEVER EVER EVER leave the teabag in when u add the milk, this gives it a funny taste (tanins react with the fat in the milk).

All in all a cup of tea brings back fond memories of good times, connections with family members no longer around. The warmth of a great pot of tea for me has no comparison.

i have experimented with other teas such as darjeeling, green and earl Grey, even coffee both instant and proper coffee, but i always find myself coming back to uncomplicated, basic black tea properly brewed.

I am not wanting to take on coffee drinkers as i don't mind coffee but coffee to me was not the social ue in our family.

I hope you enjoy Tea too.

Do the stars make you feel Patriotic?

A few weeks ago i went to my sister in laws house, it is in a beautiful location looking out on flood plaind that are currently filled with water, it attracts a fantastic array of birdlife including pelicans, we were even visited by a swarm of green frgs than night as well.

The sun set off over the horizon which was an absolutely beautiful sight to see.

As the light went i could see starts begin to appear, it reminds me of the rhym about wishing upon the first start at night. The darkness set in and as there is less light pollution you can make out more stars than the standard constellations.

To the south is a very familiar constellation, namely the southern cross however unlike the flag, in the early night, the cross sits upside down with the two pointer stars (Alpha and Beta Centauri) point south. It's such a significant constellation as it gave navigators guidance.

As someone who has always been inetrested in science, as well as science fiction i have always been in awe at space and the size of it but it never occured to me stars light years away could be claimed by a nation. I was to find out i had forgotten something.

I pointed to the sky and said to my eldest, "there's the Southern Cross". From the background came a comment that made me cringe. It was from a friend that is a local girl and with a very different view of the world to myself. Her comment was something to the effect of "I'm very patrotic too".

I Bit my tongue because we have different views of the world. Firstly for me the southern cross is not the only constellation is not the only constellation i look for in the night sky, When i look up i usually look for Orion, it is such a dominant constellation and can be seen by pretty much everyone in the world.

This in a way is symbolism of my own feeling of my place in the world.

I'm Back

Hi there, I have to apologise for it being so long between blogs.

The end of the year and the start of this one has been mad.

Last year was a case of study study study as i have finally completed my Diploma in Massage (jumps for Joy). This was rather a lot of work (I honestly studied less for my Engineering Degree) but I got there and now have a peice of paper to prove it :) So I now am a qualified remedial massage therapist, Senior member of the Association of Massage Therapists (AMT) and i am waiting on some health funds to come through (woohoo).

Tied in with all this have a been a few events that have been rather significant.

• My wife went on a cruise in October and the whole group had an absolute ball until they came home and one of her friends lost her 18 year old son due to misadventure the very next morning (he decided to climb a power pole not far from where we live). That was all very traumatic for all concerned.
• As far as a previous blog my wife had lost her jewellery at a gym, quite a substantial amount and the gym was rather unsympathetic and unhelpful. It then took us $1300 to find out that we didn't have a legal case :(
• My Wife works for the state energy company which the state government was orignally going to sell off completely. The Unions were powerful and rolld the premier, the tradeoff was to sell off the retail side which has a weaker union, this was unopposed and the state government got a payout. The handover date is in march just before the next election. There is apparently a 5 year guarentee on their jobs but that doesn't say they will have the same work conditions. I know that the company that has bought them out has hours that only go to 6pm whereas they curently go to 8pm. It will be interesting to find out what will happen.
• On Christmas eve the pool pump decided to die which was not great timing (although we did manage to keep it blue for a month without the pump until the end of year came and went.
• We received a phone call on New years eve from our bank asking to verify a funds transfer...someone had hacked into our internet banking and transferred our mortgage payment out. The bank was great and we managed to sort everything out. We have had to add extra security to our internet banking including a security token. This got a bit scary. Ive antivirus already but I was advised of an anti spyware/anti phishing program and when i ran it, there were ablut 300 programs. The kids when they on the internet click on all sorts of things, i may have from time to time opened up an email or opened up a twitter link. It's hard to say where it came from. SO now i am more wary. i rund anti spyware pretty much every day.
• The oven died a couple of weeks ago, no it isn't old, it's one of those new fandangled wide ovens we put in when we renovated our kitchen almost 3 years ago. Thankfully before the 3 year warranty runs out in march (it has already been through an element). A switch shorted out the switchboard.
• The end of our street which has forever been a nightmare especially at school times. It was originally going to be a set of lights, then the state government decided to change that to a roundabout (expletives here) then it was changed back to a set of lights. Well works have started and it's a mess at the end of the street.
• Oh and i forgot my password and tried hard to remember what it was. I remembered only a few das ago :)

So with the return of school, i have a little more time to blog.

I'm not sure what the next year will hold :)

A Cautionary Tale

If I said to you how you identified yourself, what makes you “you” what would you say it was? For some it’s their dogs, cats, their signature jacket, their car, their job etc. These are all items that you identify as you, they are external items that you couldn’t be without. Probably an item that makes you feel like you belong to a group or perhaps stand out from the crowd.

My wife, worked hard to accumulate her jewellery, over the years after we achieved a level of financial security she gradually acquired items, putting them on weekly payments, once one item was finalised, she would run out and put another item on payments. She bought items to celebrate her 40th birthday and only just recently she bought a bangle to celebrate losing a significant amount of weight. She wore them with pride. She tended to them cleaning them regularly making sure they always looked pristine. She loved them. I remember every morning she had her routine as she put on her jewellery to go to work.

Picture from her 40th birthday march 2009

We had a little personal valuables insurance (I know I work for the insurance company) but not enough to cover it all if it all got stolen all at the one time. I talk insurance all day so I guess I failed to update it, check it, get it changed to include all the items. For this I am feeling a great amount of guilt at the moment.

Sadly on Monday on the way home from a difficult day at work, I was home for the night as I was rostered off, she decided to go straight to the local gym which her work pays for. Lisa always wears her jewellery to work so she decided to store her jewellery in a locker which is supplied by the gym which you set your own code and according to the instructions it is a 4 digit code.

Anyway she made sure it was locked before she left to do her workout.

When she came back she grabbed her stuff, she wanted to go home and have a shower so she didn’t check her jewellery as she didn’t want to put it on before having a shower. she can’t remember if it was locked when she returned, she put in her code before opening it, not checking to see if it was locked or unlocked before opening it.

When she grabbed her keys she noticed a compartment which she never opens was opened but at the time didn’t think anything of it.

She got home and had her shower and was getting ready to have an early night, she went to take her jewellery out and put it in her container on the dresser…not there. She freaked out, ran to the car which is the only other place it could have been. Purse gone too… Oh dear, major sinking feeling.

To Be Continued

My dubious claims to fame

This letter is inspired by Thea’s blog where she chronicles her dubious links to famous people.

I firstly should say I need to break these down into a few sections.

Family
I am related although have never met Jo Silvani (Bailey) (wife of Carlton legend) and I understand there is also a link somewhere to Kevin Rudd although that family link is not quite so salubrious after last week.

Twitter
Well you know how twitter goes, you start off wondering what out is all about, then before you know you are addicted to it. When you start you follow famous people, then as they reply to some people you follow them. I know @Carolduncan and @Aaronkearneyaus don’t see themselves as celebrities however they are well known and well respected in Newcastle, I have met both they are as you would expect, down to earth and friendly.

It’s funny twitter Is a community In itself, and I have met so many conversationalists and bloggers and authors.

Other twitter moments, I actually delisted many of the famous people as they tend to prattle on and some even put on their websites they don’t respond to tweets. I have had a couple of responses on twitter, on was Robert Llewellyn who played the android Kryten on Red Dwarf a British scifi comedy series.

Robert has an interview series of car pool which I follow, he even responded to 2 tweets many months ago, I made a suggestion of possible interview subjects. I was so excited to get a response.

I have also had non responses include when Martha Stewart made a comment about rubbish dumped on the roadside, I mention cleanup Australia and she tweeted back tat she had had responses about having suggestions about community run cleanup programs, I checked and mine was the only one who responded.

My last one was levar burton who played geordi in star trek the next gen (yes I know I’m a trekkie) posted a tweet, I was watching start trek first contact.I just asked him if he watched himself. He responded by saying that anyone watching first contact - the vulcans did it. Im sure he thought he was funny.

Sport
Well when it comes to sport, I have an admission, when I was young I just happened to join the Nunawading swimming club, I swam with many people over 7 years, some of those were spectacularly fast and yes very successful. Not wanting to name drop, because most would probably not remember me. People such as Rob Woodhouse, Rod Lawson (Olympians) as well as Leigh Nugent (now head coach of national team)

I have also made face book contact with other swimmers such as Adrian Radley and Brooke Hanson (I swan with her husband and his dad ran a lot of club events).

One thing that suprises me is as with the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, i am only a few degrees of seperation from most sports celebrities,not that i can say they know me or have even met me.

Work
Working in a petrol I served the likes of Dennis Pagan (AFL Coach), Gianne Rooney (swimmer) Killing Heidi (Band) and last but not least Carl Williams and Benji Venjamin of Melbourne underworld infamy.

My Special Powers

Superman can leap tall buildings, wolverine can rejenerate quickly and I have a speial power myself. Perhaps I should join the x-men, I'm not sure how my spcialpower will help others.

You see from as early as i can remember whenever i hop in a car, it doesn't matter how new or old it is, the trip starts normally until the windscreen starts to fog up. I don't really notice it myself as i generally travel with the window down or the airconditioner on.

I remembred it as i was riding in my father in laws car the other door and he doesn't drive with the door down and never has the aircon on. I get a little embaassed when this happens as i have to explain to them that i steam up cars.

I used to laugh at it because you know there's the usual joke about fogging up cars, definitely nothing happening insde.

Perhaps i always seem to be warm, i never really feel the cold.

Do you have a speial power that needs to be declared?

The Power of Twitter

Would you call me a recent convert to Twitter. I have been tweeting since late 2009. I at first didn’t know what handle to use, I have had a couple of which over time I think I have settled on the_green_egg which is a reference to my daughters name she has given herself. I have written previously in a Blog Post.

I at first was curious about Twitter, it didn’t seem to have a purpose outside my Facebook, but over the time I have been able to network especially with other bloggers, and there always seems to be someone on twitter especially at the late hours I am on it.
Through twitter I have been able to connect with people I would never have been able to connect, as being a recent (5 years now) arrival to Newcastle I have few Novacastrian contacts, my social base I left in Melbourne when we moved here. In a way it is an unobtrusive way of connecting with others in the local community.

One handy use for Twitter I found was very early in the peace I connected by following my local council and they eventually followed me. By them doing this I was able to advise them of an illegal rubbish dump site. Being someone who doesn’t like calling in things, I just used Twitpic by uploading a photo of the offending dump site. I then tagged @lakemac with the location.

Lakemac then responded very promptly by thanking me and gave me a reference number. That was on the Monday I posted the photo and by Friday the mess had been cleaned up. Needless to say I was supremely impressed. Was it the fact that my council was responding so promptly to my notification, to the fact they are connected and “up with the times”.
And to be truthful if it wasn’t for twitter I probably wouldn’t have notified the council, probably I wouldn’t usually make a fuss about something like that. Plus I might think to myself, “Oh someone else will tell them” or perhaps someone else from the council would have already notified them.

It was a legacy from a recent council cleanup where the kerbsides fill up with rubbish.