Floppsy Comes To Stay

One thing I probably haven't mentioned - well I haven't - is that we gained a new addition to the family: Floppsy The Rabbit (pictured here with the surviving Guinea Pig Matilda)

Floppsy was a stray into the yard of a wheel chair bound elderly lady who is a friend of Niki's parents... she couldn't look after her, so we have taken her in. Of course if anyone has lost a rabbit in the Glenbrook area, let me know, but otherwise unless someone comes looking for Floppsy she'll be staying.

She is a very placid and domesticated rabbit though... happily gets patted by the girls and is much less skitish than Matilda.

Iraqi Hangings

One thing that caught me by surprise whilst on holidays was the execution of Saddam Hussein.  I believe I was probably one of the last person to know he was hung because I was away on hols without news, internet or spoke to anyone and it was only on the happenchance I bought a newspaper at the kiosk to read by the pool that I found out about his death.

At the time I was surprised at how quickly it came as I presumed it would have been drawn out with appeals and counter appeals.

I also felt instantly a bit cheapened that this guy was executed for only one charge.  Not meaning to denigrate the lives of the 147 people or so that were the victims in this once charge, I am sure that it would have been better to have ALL or as much as possible explain the extent of his tyranny.  To be charged on one assault on a village in the 1980’s and then have the book closed kind of defeats the concept of making a statement or example of him to others.

Now his henchmen have gone to the gallows and one was inadvertently beheaded (or was he?) in the process.  Why I bring this up today is that now Tony Blair in the UK and other leading bureaucrats from the UN et al have condemned the executions for their barbarity.  I am sorry, but storming a country twice in 10-15yrs and slaughtering thousands of civilians in the process and killing a large number of your own troops on a search for non-existent WMD’s is in itself a war crime and a barbaric one at that.

To turn around and say that the deaths of Saddam and his cronies is barbaric and in-humane kind of misses the point and just shows how much of a mess we are in.  The West has turned barbaric but I guess we have the best spin doctors to make it sound like a “worthy cause”.

Sad.

Day 2 - Running Late :-)

Yes, it has only taken me one day to oversleep, miss the late train and hence am now on the 7:52am!  Geez, I need a holiday :-)

The girls are still on holidays of course, and it was hard to leave them this morning… would have loved to go with them today as they have started their once a day for a fortnight swimming lessons.  Both had a really good time yesterday and although they can both swim without floaties or anything, they’re not real flash on the formal strokes.  So Niki thought it would be a good idea for them to get some formal training and they loved it… of course they also got green swimming caps, so that made it all the more enjoyable.  If there’s clothes involved – they love it!

The first day at work yesterday was fine.  I didn’t win the beard growing comp, but I did OK… thank god I could shave it off this morning though, feels so much better!

2007 Off To A Cracker

Well, here we are… Glenbrook train station, start of the year.  In 2006, the station was attended to by a chirpy guy called Bill who knew your name, processed your ticket requests no fuss and it was a sleepy hollow of niceness in a grim world of bureaucratic CityRail.  I arrived early this morning to buy my first ticket for 2007.

But Bill wasn’t there… there was a young guy wearing a tie and a badge numbered instead of a friendly name like “Bill”.  I asked politely for a “Monthly to the City” and he asked me to fill out a 2 page form!  “What’s this?” I asked.  Young Whip told me that any ticket greater than 28 days required this form to be filled in as a record for CityRail in the event the ticket is lost.  I replied “But I have a receipt?” and he said, “yes, but that’s YOUR evidence, we require a form”.  I then said the fateful words “Bill never asked for these to be filled in, is this new?”…. well all I got then from the terse tie wearer was “Well Bill was slack on a number of things around here, and I have already had some run ins about that…”

I now felt that poor Bill was stuck in the basement of the CityRail Gestapo building in town doing “paper work” for the rest of his days…. As I filled in the form, Young Whip proceeded to do his end of the transaction.  $204 please he said… “What the!  It was $172 before Xmas!!”  He said that it no longer goes on weeks and days and I have to take it to the end of the week if the 28 days doesn’t fall on a Friday which in this case it doesn’t.  I have ended the ticket on 16 Feb so that, on a daily rate, is $204.  Fark me!  I realised that I was getting greater than 28 days, but shit you’d ask first wouldn’t you…  I paid the 28 days on my Mastercard and he gets out the old fashion slider machine and I have noticed that there are now 5 people behind me waiting.  I would bet that half of them would be after a monthly… It took me 6 minutes to fill in the form and do the credit card manually.  I wonder how long this “by the book” attitude will last before we return to Bill style station management!

Welcome to 2007 dear readers…

Woman drinks so much water she dies...

Shit hey... and I am sure there is a joke in here re the Water Restrictions...

Woman drinks so much water she dies - CNN.com

PS - holidays end today! Back at work tomorrow! Regular posting resumes :)

Twenty20 Cricket

Went to the Twenty20 cricket last night with Niki, Kate and my nephew Alex.

The night was a great "event" but not much of a cricket match. Seriously, England are soooo crap. Coming out needing 11 an over and they play dink shots and reverse sweeps... pathetic.

We had front row seats in front of the Noble stand on the fence and Alex managed to get Nathan Bracken's autograph on his signature bat and we had a couple of balls hit straight at us. Also had Jimmy Anderson slide face first into the fence right in front of us in a fruitless attempt at fielding.
The sixes though were plenty in the Aussie innings and the music pumping was good, but a few less KFC ads and why did they dress an entire bay of people in KFC t-shirts and make them wear KFC buckets on their heads? Marketing... why do we need it.

Overall, a fun night, was over in 3hrs and was great for the kids... not for the cricket purists though ;-)

New Car

Thought I'd post a pic of our new car... also trying to get farking Picasa to work with the new Blogger again... grr.