Bluetastic

I'm adorned with a bit of blue this eve. I've been in a crappy mood since I got off the phone with my sister trying to convince me to essentially "take whatever I can get" regarding job and salary when I get to Melb. Gar! I get it, she doesn't want to put me up for ever, and the economy is crap at the moment, but having my little-big sister essentially advising me not to aim high and not negotiate anything offered is just not cool. 'Specially since we're meant to be encouraging each other in our mutual ventures. In any case, personally, I'm with short-haired, middle-aged blonde woman that I did some vocational training about 6 years ago....

"Don't give advice unless you happen to have walked on water within the past eight hours"

Convincing my sister of that though....miss worrywart, meddle-monkey extraordinaire....chances of that?

Forget it.

And, on top of not being able to find my pink and purple bead box, I can't find my green bead box!* It disappeared along with the pink and purple bead box on time with the Christmas decorating madness that occurs each year (ie complete re-arranging of the house by my mother who at present is conveniently outside the realm of phone reception in Tasmania) - only this time with more disastrous results than usual. I love my pink and purple bead box and miss it dearly, but I need my green box! I'm surrounded by other beautiful colours, but they're not what I want. Reds and yellows are too hot for this weather. Blacks and whites are too stark. Browns are alright as an accent but not as a main colour. Orange is, well, orange. (Seriously, does anyone like that colour in abundance?) And blue is a great colour. It's soothing, it's smart - but I just finished a piece using heaps of it. If I use for another piece, I'll OD on the colour blue!

Universe: give me back my green bead box!!!!!

I should be applying for jobs. I don't want to apply for jobs. I'm sick of applying for jobs. Now that my contract's done, I'm going to be applying for jobs every day until I get one.** That's both annoying and lame.

You know what else is both annoying and lame? Two out of three of my old, dear friends from university dorms that have been my buddies for six years bailed on me for drinks last Friday that I took pains to book them in for a month in advance. Screw 'em. I love 'em still, but screw 'em. That's the last time for the forseeable that I'll be making the effort to get together down the one-way-street that is my relationship with those two gels.

*sigh*

There are positives here. I'm getting out of this crappy, crappy town. Next week in fact. I have a darling sister who is usually very supportive and kind, despite being a Nervous Nellie. I had my very first facial ever today and it was a pretty cool experience.^ It may have been somewhat placebo-esque as far as appearance and epidermic health is concerned, but my face loved it and felt all smooth and spongy afterwards. I also went grocery shopping for the week today and I have enough food to last me until I head south. And I had a really nice dinner last night with my now ex-colleague who is just...well...human candy. She is sugar and spice and everything nice, plus a little bit of wicked. We parted which was kinda sad, but we parted friends.

And, hey, I don't have a loser boyfriend. That is always a plus.

This sookarific post has officially come to an end.

Tomorrow's another day.

Bring it.


*Yes, I have several bead boxes dedicated to one or two colours. I used to keep all beads and bead related products in a good-sized fishing tackle box, but the beads outgrew it.
**Or get a pet monkey that has minimal needs and a six-figure salary working as an actuary. It could happen.
^Nonetheless, if I hadn't got a 75% discount on the price, it would have been no way Jose.

Maladministrated Vocables

I am enchanted to advertise the actuality that my final day of work is momentary. Thus I perceived that there would be no better potentiality to exploit Macquarie Thesaurus software on the apparatus used for my post for the purposes of amusing oneself.

It has been gratifying. The indulgence is all explosive.

The Lesser Known Brand of MP3 Player

My ip-Pod has taken a hit. It was contaminated by an alien brand of speaker/alarm clock that it was attached to, and I'm not sure that it will recover. I was in a state of shock this morning when I discovered its critical state. However, the shock subsided, and the wonder of rediscovery emerged as I beheld the previously acquired lesser known brand of MP3 player - The Inbuilt Random Synapse Firer.

This product has many admirable features. That's not to say that it doesn't have its drawbacks. For instance, the volume doesn't go as high as other MP3 player brands, but, as with other brands, this can be augmented by linking the device outputs to vocal outputs. On the plus side, it's very user friendly and has an effective and excellent algorithm for selecting tunes (whatever that may be, the exact formula remains a mystery to us fans).

Some examples of fine tune selections that were produced for my entertainment so far today include the following tracks;

Day-O - Harry Belafonte
Fourth Floor - The Waifs
Iko Iko - The Belle Stars
Ordinary Angels - Frente

And the day ain't over yet! I look forward to the fabulous selections to come.

NB I am extremely busy and.....concerned in and about the near future, but the posting will continue.

Ceremonial Extension

In light of recent events, and thoroughly keeping the spirit of Australia Day, I have decided to extend the finish line my 26 for 26 posting marathon extraordinaire until the 26th of February. To do otherwise would, of course, be un-Australian.

*nods*

In other news, my flight is booked!

Karma Part 1 - Existence Of

I find it extremely amusing when people utter the self-righteous phrase "I believe in karma." Almost as though it is an idea that requires an enormous leap of faith. To those people who probably are far too enlightened to follow this blog; let me assist in casting aside any doubt you may have - we're not exactly talking about a concept of great mysticism. A commonly accepted root definition of the term is as follows;

Karma is a fundamental concept which has no direct translation into English. It has multiple levels of applicability and can approximately be defined as the natural order of action and each action has an associated result (often called fruit of the karma). (more)

Each action has an associated result. Hmm. I don't know, it seems pretty far-fetched. Let's go over this again. Natural order of action, the organic sequence relating to action. Action(s) occurs, consequence(s) ensue. Sounds an awful lot like....

*pauses for dramatic effect*

That's right - it's cause and effect people! Wow! I'm just in awe of the supernaturality of it all! Things are, like, totally related to each other!

I have more to say on this topic, but at the moment, I'm just too overwhelmed by the divinty of it all to be able to be able to continue at this point!

Stay tuned for Part 2.

I'm Lea-ving On A Jet Plane...

The command decision has been made. Rather than hide out here like a rabbit in a warren gathering carrots, come the end of January -and my current contract- I'm leaving. I'm going to take a week after I've finished to pack my necessities and tie off any loose ends that may be dangling precariously and I'm just leaving. I'm going to get on a plane* and I'm going to savour the feeling of being lifted up from the earth into the sky. Then, shortly afterwards, I will find myself in good ol' Tullamarine and be on a SkyBus with my luggage. My talented and hard-working sister and boyfriend are going to put me up in their 3-bedroom apartment until I get a steady income and, subsequently, a lease of my very own. Because they are just very beautiful people.

I am so stoked about this. My sister lives in a great neighbourhood. So many options. Five minute walk from the train. Two blocks from an Asian Bakery. Around the corner from a branch of my bank. A train's distance from Federation Square, Melbourne Central, hundreds of great bars and restaurants, and probably the place of my future employment. A train-and-tram's distance away from St Kilda and IMAX. Seriously cool.

Once I have a reliability of cash flows, I will find a nice 1 bedroom apartment in one of my preferred suburbs that won't break the bank, but hopefully has a decent kitchen and a bath tub. I will return briefly to Canberra to pack up the rest of my things and haul them to my new place. I shall then proceed to unpack, organise and decorate my apartment with various things, put it together with creativity from a combination of acquisitions to date and new purchases. I will both further my healthy routines and nurture my semi-regular bursts of creative pulse. It will be lovely.

From there, the adventure will continue. To where, who can say? There are too many cool-looking branches to see the top to the trees. Time to get in and swing amongst the vines some.

That's the plan that will be executed within the foreseeable.

And it's fucking good one, if I don't say so myself.


*Which will cost me < $40, because Tiger Airways rule.

2009: Fine Or Divine?

Resulting from my deliberations on and relating to the subject, I have identified three goals for 2009. Whilst these could be described as New Year's resolutions, I think of these more as a guide as to what kind of journey I wish to have rather than boxes to be ticked as at 31st December 2009. These noble quests are as follows...

1. Moving to Melbourne and establishing myself there.
   
2. Achieving a higher quality of general health and fitness.
3. Practicing smarter and better methods of wealth creation.

Bring it awn!

Ring The 'Gong

I set out for the 'Gong for NY's in the manner described in here. It was very spur of the moment, only deciding on the day that I was going to go. Booked accommodation with good ol' reliable YHA, packed what I needed, printed out driving directions, jumped in the car, and we were off!

The drive to get to the city was very liberating. And easy! I so didn't even need the dirs to get to the city itself. For the many readers of this blog who are likely to want to drive from Canberra to Wollongong, directions are as follows: face the car north, follow the signs pointing towards Sydney, take a left at Moss Vale and follow the signs to the 'Gong - done.

The drive to get from the outskirts to my accommodation was somewhat uncool however. The roads of the inner city are styled far too much like Sydney for my comfort. If I had a dollar for every 'No Right Turn' sign and unmarked dead end roads, that particular avenue of income would have funded my accommodation for the two days. I cannot phrase it better than this: extremely annoying. I even got pulled over by a couple of cops for illegally turning right at one point. I didn't get a ticket though, as I managed to present a very convincing image of a dumbass tourist trying to find their accommodation - not exactly a challenge. Got there eventually, put the perishables in the fridge and collapsed.

Having recovered from the excitement, I set out to explore the city and venture out to one of the zillion beaches. Wollongong is a very trippy place. I'm convinced that the city's founders and all the inhabitants were on drugs. How else do you wind up with a suburb named "Fairy Meadows?" The best way that I can describe it though, apart from a town founded on drugs - surfie town. Lots of raucous dickheads with less than coherent English roaming around looking for waves (and drugs). I heard various parts of the Aussie vernacular that I can do without, the term 'youse' being one. Youse is the uneducated Australian plural of the term 'you' - very cringeworthy term. More so when you observe an individual using the term when referring to a singular entity. ('Ay, youse! Gyet ovah heeere!) Although I had pleasant interactions with a few of the residents, and acknowledge that it's not exclusively populated by ignorant yobs, on aggregate, the general population of Wollongong concern me.

The beaches though. The beaches. So amazing, beautiful, spectacular, zen-like. Did I mention that the beaches were pretty? Most of my stay was spent at the beach. Over the course of the two days, I went to the following beaches; Corrimal, North Wollongong, Port Kembla, and Wollongong City. They each had their own flavour to them. Corrimal was the best, with North Wollongong a close second. I made good use of the new swimming cozzie that was one of the 'practical purchases' made in one of the best stores in this hemisphere. Unlike the beaches around Bateman's Bay, these beaches actually have waves, so there was less swimming, and more movements of the 'let's not get dunked' nature. I built a couple of sand castles, read on the sand, chilled. Lovely.

I spent NY's at the Nan Tien Temple watching the Chinese dragon dance, or, as I like to call it: Budda Vegas. That place was spectacular. The reason I call it Buddha Vegas: the sheer size of it, with all the lanterns were lit and the roof of every single shrine was lit up with lights, it was a bit plastic, shiny, overcompensating for a religion that is concerned with impermanence and the illusions perceptions of reality. And the whole business of buying blessings - weird. But who am I to judge? It serves a purpose, it's a gigantic billboard for Buddhism in OZ and it caters to a lot of Chinese Buddhists of the Mahayana tradition. Despite noting the shininess of it all, I really enjoyed my visit there. The shrines were amazing. The calligraphy room was fab. I loved the Buddha Babies (child-like statues in the likeness of Buddha). There were literally hundreds of them scattered across the vast compound. They were so cheeky and cute, I just wanted to cuddle them. Especially the ones near the lotus flower pond.



The dragon dance was really cool. Lots of Chinese and Chinese-Australian kids banging their drums and shaking their dragon clad booties. I watched it with a really nice Italian woman that I came across and had a good conversation with. I could have watched it all night. But it ended all too soon, and then came the 'pilgrimage' from the pagota to the main shrine, which consisted of the following:

All stand in a line. Shuffle along for a few steps. The gong sounds. Stop and genuflect on the ground at nothing in particular for a few seconds. Repeat the process.

Myself and the Italian woman were rather of the opinion "Fuck that" and each went on our merry way. If that practice gives something to people raised in Eastern traditions: more power to them. I occasionally sit on my ass in a manner resembling meditation posture, however, the only time I get down on my knees is if the ball's coming fast and low in a volleyball game.

Afterwards, I didn't feel like to going to bar and chatting with assorted randoms as I had thought I might. Instead, I ventured around the city a bit and contemplated the year behind and the year ahead. I woke up without a hangover on January 1st, checked out, went to the beach for the last time, had a relatively uneventful drive back to Canberra, sighed, and went to work the next day. Some people I know were somewhat appalled when I told them that I went away for NY's by myself, but these individuals clearly haven't experienced Christmas with my folks and the subsequent need for some time to oneself. I probably would have invited one or more persons to come with if I had a bit more lead time, but I'm content with how it all flowed as a mostly solo thing. I needed that time to myself and not having to worry about the wants or needs or anyone else.

Enter 2009.

Light & Fluffy Post #1

It has been brought to my attention by the poisonous snakes that I've been putting far too much thought into my blog posts. As such, this is the first of a series of light and fluffy blog posts that will make up the 26.

Fair warning, these pictures are advertising. *spits on the sidewalk* They also promote inaccurate and judgemental gender stereotypes. If the gracious and glorious author of this blog had done up the images, the lines would have a different configuration.

But, they are also not without humour value.

Wish You Were Black 'Manitarian Association Brochure

Introduction
The Wish You Were Black 'Manitarian Association (WYWBMA) is a newly formed community service initiative to help a segment of the population who have not typically received support, but suffer nonetheless. White boys and men....answer the following questions to determine whether you need our help.

The Test

1. Are you in a bad way?



2. Do you want what you do not have?



3. Do you desperately want to be able to dance but you just can't?



4. Do you desperately want to be able to dunk but you really can't?



5. Do you desperately want to be a hip-hop artist but a melody comes out each time?



6. Do you dream about being a Black Panther?



7. Do you laugh a little too loud and a little too long at stand-up jokes by black comedians at the expense of white guys?



8. Would you be OK with being blind if it meant that you could be Stevie Wonder?



9. Would you kill for bass tones of Barry White?



10. Do you want to be dark and/or mysterious?



11. Do want to be....more....in a physical sense?

If you are a white male and answered yes to four or more of the above questions, chances are you have a case of "wish you were black" complex. This is the opposite of the "Michael Jackson" complex, but with the same potential for irrevocable psychological damage. You want it so bad it hurts. Chances are every time you look in a mirror you find yourself confronted by your non-brutha' status and it depresses the crap out of you. For those of you who are too far gone in denial of your condition, snap out of it man! You wish you were black. Don't try to hide from it any longer.

So where to from here?

The Next Step
Congratulations for recognising where you're at and having the courage to face your problems! Now that you are acquainted with the horrifying reality of your social malady, you can accept it. No longer need you, the afflicted, suffer in your private WASP-y hells! Funding for relief activities by the WYWBMA outreach program to help those in need. Hallelujah!

Register yourself as a sufferer and access a wide variety of treatments available to those who notify us of their need for support. There are the two general streams 'A Guide Back to the Light' and 'All The Way To The Dark Side' described in this brochure. There are also customised treatments based on your special circumstances available - contact us to discuss your options.

A Guide Back to the Light
For those who can still entertain the notion of living life as a self-accepting white man on some level, we can assist you in finding your way back to The Land of The White Honkies. You can implement some of the strategies on your own if you're feeling strong.

And here's how!

• Distance yourself from other tryhard WYWB complex sufferers. Carry a baseball bat around with you if necessary - WYWB sufferers can be very assertive.



• Destroy all music in your possession of the following genres; blues, soul, real R&B, contemporary R&B, reggae, rap, hip-hop, jazz, swing, ragtime, rock 'n' roll, funk, disco, gospel and most world music. Yes, even that by white or near-white artists. Stay away from the slippery slope.



• At once, listen to this, this, and this. It's all part of the treatment. When you start to get past the numbness and start tapping your toes, you'll know that it's working.



• Rebuild your music collection from the following genres only; country, western, bluegrass, classical, romantic, baroque, yodelling, and choir (remember, no gospel! Christmas carols, however, are acceptable). This may prove a challenge to sufferers of the WHWB complex. If needed, our support workers can assist you in this matter.



• Vote Republican. They're not going to win an election any time soon anyway, and by voting Republican you will automatically get a little whiter.*



• Play lots of golf. Note: this is not a suitable activity for an individual who idolises Tiger Woods.

If this is insufficient in getting you on your way back to being happily white, you may need to resort to more drastic measures. Even if you're not from New Zealand, we may recommend that you go All Black.

All the Way to the Dark Side
Are you truly a black man trapped in a white man's body? Is an escape from wishing you were black a futile prospect?

Don't despair - we're here to help. We are fully equipped to provide the following treatments to ease the transition....

• Race reassignment surgery. In the vein of Black Like Me, we will fry your skin for this treatment. There may be some dangerous side effects of this procedure, but, surely it could be nothing worse than the pain you're currently inflicting on your friends and family.
  
  
• Speech coach. We'll fix your bastardised vocalising and have you -izzling it up in no time!
  
  
• Hairdresser, to arrange an appropriate mini-plaits or dreads style for you.

• Assistance with selecting a modified version of your name that fits your status as a brutha.'

And more!

Contact us for more info, and take a moment to read the words of some of our many satisfied customers!


Testimonials

"WYWBMA really made my life worth living again, I really can't thank them enough."
-That guy in Philadelphia who had more Bob Marley paraphernalia in his apartment than I have even seen before or since

"I'd recommend WYWBMA to anyone who is experiencing racial dissonance."
-Bob Seger

"I'm really looking forward to my surgery - I'll finally be a whole person. Thanks WYWBMA!"
-J Tibby, formerly known as Justin Timberlake

*Not a lily kind of white, more like a sickly, nasty bleach white. But white nonetheless!

Brain Jam

I would like to let one and all know that I refuse to be one of those people that doesn't post on ze blog at work because they feel too much like a slacker doing so. I am a supreme slacker, and I am entitled to fit the mold of the Australian public servant in this respect.

Of course, the other difficulty associated with posting at work is being on a different thought train. I'm dealing with voluminous data here, so when I try and turn my brain towards the concept of, 'hmm, what do I feel like writing about,' my skull starts to make noises similar to the following....

Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl
Ker-chink-ker-chink-ker-chink
Da-doof-BOOM!
Crash.

And then I get distracted by something that my brain tells me to do. There is a serious traffic jam in my creative brain of ideas that want to be expressed but get compressed by the pragmatic brain. Since when was it not an acceptable excuse, either for myself or boss, that, sorry, these laptops aren't going to get delivered, because I have to write a very important blog post about white blokes who wish they were black? What kind of world do we live in?!

Won't somebody please think of the children!

I will impart one tidbit before I cease my resistance against the tide of Work. I came up with an idea for a story last year that involved two madly dressed women who sold pair of glasses that were tinted, not with colours, but with emotions, such that that it would stream the thoughts, ideas and mental states of the user through the filter of a specific emotion (or combination of emotions), with some very entertaining and thought-provoking events unfolding as a result.

The story of the two eccentric women selling emotion-tinted glasses will be told. I don't know exactly how, where or when.

But it will.

2008: Sighting 'Hind

2008. What a year! What fun we had! We laughed, we cried, we snorted, we defecated. We experienced the following things, in a nutshell:

January: Coming back to Canberra from New Zealand.
That was pretty crap. Part of it was the fact that it was the end of a holiday, but the whole business of having an awesome overseas experience, and then having to come back to a town and job that I was thoroughly sick and tired of - blech. Unhappy Jan. Prior to this unfortunate return, it was determined that one would move to another city in Australia for the next leg of life's lil' journey. But was it to be Melbourne, Perth or Brisbane (all very sexy cities). In the meantime, it was back to work, and saving money to move.

February - May: Same crappy job, different Fascist supervisor. **Warning Explicit Language**
Aww. Mah. Gough. The bossy, presumptuous, control-freak, head up-her-ass, esteemed colleague who I'd been trying to train through the almost insurmountable barrier of both her and my arrogance, got promoted in a rather untimely fashion. I won't go into intimate details of her fucked-up life view, wildly inappropriate behaviour and our delightful encounters due to the ever-shrinking quality of the world. Suffice it to say that our relationship did not improve as result of the change, and the goal of sticking it out until the end of financial year and bonus time became significantly more challenging.

June - July: Death is better than my job.
Hating job. Hating town. Having some success at saving money but it is slow going. Still debating the goodness of one Australian city over another. In possession of a great ball of inertia and distinct air of irritability. A lot of restructuring (Nazi-ising) happening at the company. Spat the dummy when supervisor chose to instruct me to perform jobs that were the specific and clearly understood domain of a more junior employee, being the twig that broke the camel's back. Left not a moment too soon for my sanity (unfortunately, only a few scattered remains were salvaged), got jipped out of my bonus by the bastards I'd been employed with for 4 and 1/2 years, despite having worked up to and including June 30. In other words, the whole business of gritting my teeth and sticking it out in Pseudo-Hippie Hell for more $$ - completely and utterly pointless. Nonetheless, singing hallelujah to be the fuck out of that place and away from the soul-sucking management. Yep, still singing. If I'd stayed there any longer, I probably would have started bashing my head against the desk until it was bloody.

Late July - August: Perseverence in adversity.
I was at this point that I experienced something that I hadn't since I was nineteen and had just returned from a working holiday in the US - unemployment. I hadn't planned it to happen at that time. Should have, but didn't, and I didn't really know what to do with it. I could do anything that I wanted. Unfortunately, I still had one demon on my back: study. Fucking study. Earlier in the year, I enrolled in a post-grad property investment analysis course. My motivations for doing so were somewhat cloudy, however, I got into it, and fucked if I wasn't going to finish it. I had the exam in exactly two weeks from the day that I walked away from the fuckwits that I used to work for. Strategic action was required. I took a few days to absorb, booked myself return flights to Melbourne and booked accommodation with my sister and her boyfriend there. Called the institute that I was studying with and asked them to change my exam location from Canberra to Melbourne. Done. Had a very nice two weeks, studied some, hung with my sister and the boi and ate healthy food, enjoyed Melbourne, saw some friends down there, aced the exam. Suck on that, former employer asswipes. As to what to do when I got back to Canberra....

August - October: Unemployment, not as sexy as it sounds.
Slack, slack, slack. That is the best way that I can describe these months. I did stuff and saw people and made jewellery, bring my DIY earring count up to ~45 pairs, but, overall, this period was something of a wash. A whole lot of TV watching and sleeping and noncing about. I know that I needed a break, but what I did wasn't very restful. I shoulded myself a lot, and agonised about how I was going to get to Melbourne. Yes, we decided, as we suspected we would, that Melbourne was the next destination for the long-term voyage. We also, after some long conversations with the sister were considering entrepeneurship as a valid state of being, and spent time considering and planning items for this arena. But, to sum up, got some ideas, but going nowhere fast. Started applying for jobs wholesale after observing slow but steady depletion of carefully saved funds.

November: Love that nepotism.
A couple of friends of my parents who have their own contracting business for IT contractors found me a job. It wasn't a proper IT job, otherwise I wouldn't have been in the hunt, but they wanted to pay someone what I was earning in my previous job to help organise and keep track of a bunch of techs doing a system upgrade for a government department. I'd registered with a handful of agencies, applied for dozens of jobs, got nothing to date. Bob & Betty call me to see if I still wanted work, and I was employed the day after next. I am still employed there, albeit on a short-term contract. It's a crappy job but enough variety to not make me want to kill myself, and a really awesome team. A real breath of fresh air. And money!!!!

December: Fucking Christmas. Is it the holidays yet?
Had a bit of a spending blow-out around Christmas. For the first time in my perfessional life, I work in the 'city' centre, with handfuls of retails stores, restaurants and coffee places. Not good for saving. I now have nice clothes, but my budget from late last year is in shreds. Nonetheless, between self-spending, I got the Chrissy presents sorted, and braced myself for the festive season. My mother experienced (and inflicted) her seasonal psychosis in time for her Mega-Annual Boxing Day party. We had a respite from this last year, due to going to New Zealand. However, this year, we had the madness, with a bit of a twist. My grandad has come down to Australia for his once-a-decade visit. (Originally from West Viginia, but it's OK, he escaped to Louisianna. He's actually a bit of a dude) We had the usual Christmas at the family friends and we had the party at our place. Some nice pressies, some nice company, overall, not too much of a hassle. So far so good. But it doesn't end there. Oh no-no-no-no. Mum then has to invite people that she didn't invite or that couldn't make it to The Boxing Day Party, that she neglects to tell the rest of us about until a couple of hours before the event. The next three days filled with eating and sitting at tables with people I just don't give a crap about. Had enough of the FFF (Forced Family Fun). Not to be selfish, but I only had 8 days of respite from work, and I didn't want to spend all of it sitting at a table stuffing my face and making nice with my parents friends. I counted the pennies, and made the command decision to fuck off to beach and the city of Wollongong for the NY's. I'd never been, and wanted to visit there before going south. Got a good deal on a last-minute cancellation for accommodation. I'll do a separate post for the 'Gong, but overall; nice and just what the doctor ordered.

And that was 2008. Auf wiedersehen, year gone past. You will not be greatly missed, but you will be noted.

(24 to go.)

Twenty-Six for Twenty-Six

In honour of the New Year, Australia Day and the fact that the paint is peeling on my blog, I've decided to do a marathon.

No, not a running marathon. Pssh, silly reader. A marathon of blog posts.

I pledge, to no-one in particular, perhaps to my Inner Gossip Columnist, that I shall offer up twenty-six blog posts between now and midnight on Monday January 26th. Spread the word!

One down, twenty-five to go.