So, what do you want to know?

Currently I’m in Forest Hill, London, UK visiting my sister and her family for the entire month of December. This is my 3rd trip to the UK in a decade which is as surprising to me as it is to you, I honestly thought that after the visit for Mel’s wedding in 2006 I wouldn’t be back here until 2050, but parents spending your inheritance early has some perks!

We’ve more or less staying in England this time around with a weekend visit to Manchester for a Champion’s League match between Man City & Bayern Munich (2-0 BTW and it was excellent! Manchester is a surprisingly beautiful city even if it is bitterly cold), a week long visit to Norfolk staying at the Cranmer Cottages, and a 3 day visit to Berlin to see Michael & Sarah Isaak (which I know is not in England but I did say “more or less”) and we did go to Berlin Legoland which incredible! I could spend days there. I’ll put up some photos.

2011 has been a good year, we’ve successfully managed to not get cancer, lose any children, get divorced, or become destitute, “but for the grace of God go I”. Highlights have been moving Salt Youth Group to a different time and the much bigger church hall and managing growth to fill the space. Bazz is still a champion minister to work with. My friend’s are more gracious than ever. I continue to love & cherish the wonderful people of All Saints, and their generosity to me continues to highlight the generosity that God himself has displayed. On the flip side, we’ve had a number of close friends and acquaintances struggle with faith in Jesus, not a bad thing in itself but some look like they’re losing the struggle, some even giving up, and that always shakes me and Fi… I’ve had 3 valued friend’s and youth leaders move away, and that comes with mixture of joy and sadness in itself (joy for them that is).

2012 is unknown, which is a dumb thing to say because the future is always unknown… But what I mean is that 2012 is shaping up  as vastly different from the routine of life which I’ve become accustomed in the last few years. I’m heading off to Moore Theological College for 2 year to study a Bachelor of Theology. Depending on you’re opinion of Moore college (& I’m discovering people have very strong opinions), you may see that as a good or bad move. I’m obviously anticipating that it’ll be a good move in helping me further know God, his Word, his Son, his Spirit and how I can be a better minister of his gospel to his people.

In my favour, I have been given a credit for the entire first year of the course because of the Diploma in Theology I’ve already obtained through Youthworks College; I also know 3 Moore College staff personally from church and they’re really warm, wise and lovely people; All Saints is supporting me financially, I love the Bible and have 7 years of full-time ministry behind me. Not so advantageous is that I’ve never studied at degree level, I’m coming into the second year of a course that I last studied 3 years ago, and I feel mildly retarded.

You can pray for me about that.

In other news, I bought Scala & Kolacny Bros off the UK iTunes (they did the version of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ for the Social Network film) and it’s great! They cover Coldplay, U2, Alanis Morrisette, and Metallica among others. Hauntingly beautiful. And I’m listening to “Les Fleur” by 4hero on repeat as well.

For Christmas I got a remote control helicopter from Hamley’s Toy Store on Regent Street (after crashing the first one & getting a free replacement I’m getting quite pro), the Pearl Jam 20 DVD (YES!!!!!), special edition of Kick Ass on DVD, QI board game, a book, and loads of food and love.

Oh yeah and I just bought 2 motorbikes (back in Sydney from a friend of a friend), crazy! They’re both 1983 Honda CX500s. One is complete stock and registered, the other is a 95% complete cafe racer project which I’ll finish off and road register. I then plan to sell the stock one to dad and keep the cafe racer. C R A Z Y.

Thankyou, you’ve been a wonderful audience.

Need anything from the UK?

See you in the New Year!

I passed my interview exam thingy (which Howie obviously knew about very early on, based on the email he sent me) and I’ve now got a permanent job doing the same job I’ve been doing for the past year or so, only now I’m getting paid at the rate you’re supposed to get for that job. I almost had a few minor (major?) meltdowns in the two weeks they took to tell me, but I think we’re past all that now. I’ve been frantically rushing about trying to get all of the cool stuff that I’m now entitled to before someone in admin realises that they might have to actually spend some money instead of telling everyone that they’re meant (in theory) to be supporting that they don’t need the things that they’ve asked for to achieve the goals that their job demands. I suppose their job is to be horrible and stingy, and they seem like they’re pretty good at their job.

I’m now on holiday for a couple of weeks, which is lovely. We’re heading south in the morning for a few days’ camping. That could be a lot of fun, or it could be terrifying, now that we’re three instead of two. I’m not quite sure how babies deal with tents, but I’m quietly optimistic. And if it doesn’t work out, we can always head home a few days early.

Speaking of home, we’ve finally found somewhere to live instead of the two rooms in my sister-in-law’s house that we’ve been in for the past year. We’re going to be renting the ground floor (self contained unit) of a house that belongs to a friend-of-a-friend’s father. The father will be our upstairs neighbour, but I’m told he’s nice enough. We’ll have a couple of bedrooms, a loungeroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. I don’t know what we’re going to do with all that space! I’m sure we’ll fill it up very quickly…

The house has progressed slightly, in that we now have a concrete slab to build on (thanks mainly to some incredibly generous friends who donated hours of their time, and dozens of blisters on their hands!). The timber frame is (in theory) going to be delivered/assembled at some stage in late January/early February, and the windows get delivered shortly afterwards. At this stage the estimated finish time is late 2012. I don’t know how we’re going to survive that financially/emotionally, but I suppose these things always take a long time. I’ve watched a lot of episodes of Grand Designs over the years, so I’m aware of how often these projects blow out in terms of budget and timeframe. I don’t want that to happen though, and we’re certainly at the low end of the ‘grand’ scale in terms of our ‘design’. It’s nice getting a little bit excited by the thought of loungerooms, or vegie patches, or treehouses though. I’m trying hard to visualise things, but it’s difficult.

I don’t think I’ve realised just how stressful 2011 has been, actually.

In a fairly short space of time, we decided to buy/develop a property with friends, then sold our unit, and bought said property, whilst contemplating far more debt than I’ve ever had before.

We lived in a small part of a house with family, who were generous enough to allow that.

We battled with Council, and had to do a lot more manual labour than my soft hands are used to.

We had a baby.

I took on a heck of a lot more responsibility at work, and studied for/sat an exam which had fairly significant consequences for me career-wise.

I think that it’s quite reasonable to assume that I haven’t been the most pleasant person in the world to be around throughout this year (not that I’ve ever been very nice, really), so I’m especially grateful for all the people who have been incredibly patient and generous towards me despite my long list of faults. My wife is rather kind to me, so I suppose I ought to show her slightly more gratitude than I tend to.

I’m absolutely exhausted at the moment, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I’m hoping that the next few weeks can be a real time of refreshing for me, and for our family relationships. Hopefully 2012 will be a tad more settled, and will allow us to be more of the people that we should be.

A few weekends ago we went on a family trip to Melbourne to visit our good friend Stephen Fry. The trip down was uneventful – the baby even slept through the majority of the flight once a pillow had fixed the ol’ “seatbelt buckle digging into the back and causing tears” problem. The hotel was decent enough, and as usual, Melbourne captured my heart via my stomach (and/or tastebuds).

We started Friday in a hipster-filled laneway in the middle of the city that was home to a wonderful little restaurant that served great food and lovely coffee. I had a tomato ragout dish with a poached egg that made me whimper (in a good way). I was fairly tempted to pair it with a bottle of wine, but managed to resist the temptation and just drink ‘sensible’ coffee. We found the same place a couple of times throughout the weekend, but I can’t find it on GoogleMaps. I suspect it’s somehow related to Diagon Alley.

In the evening before the theatre we rushed through a really nice Japanese meal, which I wish I could repeat again without the pressure of realising we’d left dinner a tad late, as the show was due to start. The theatre was a similar style to the State Theatre in Sydney, which I particularly like (mainly because I’ve seen some great acts there over the years – Dylan Moran, Ed Vedder, Sufjan Stephens, and Neil Finn come to mind. I think they were all at that venue?). The show started with Mr Fry wandering out onto stage and telling us how QI had come about. He seems to be genuinely fascinated by the little facts that they dig up, and spent about 45 minutes just chatting about previous trips to Australia, various QI related trivia, and being generally charming. After that he brought the guests out one at a time, eventually bringing on Alan Davies (after initially claiming he was too ill to attend, which I almost believed, having read his tweets about being incredibly unwell.).

The Aussie guests were reasonable, but nowhere near as funny or interesting as the usual cast of the show. The only real disappointment of the night was Jono Coleman, who seemed to think that we’d all come to see him perform his ‘hilarious’ joke. He only had one joke [if you can call it that], which was to constantly link every topic of conversation to Lara Bingle. There was no context for it, and no one else on stage seemed to find it amusing. In fact, after Mr Fry had asked who Bingle was, and had it explained to him, he seemed completely confused as to why Coleman kept mentioning her. Everyone else in the room was similarly confounded. Coleman would buzz in on every question, and say something inane, often talking over the other guests who were actually attempting to make relevant jokes, answer questions, or mention a related interesting fact (i.e. play the game that they were there to play). On at least one occasion Alan Davies appeared to get so sick of Coleman that he turned his back on him and just concentrated on the other guests. That didn’t seem to phase the moron though, and he just carried on trying to segue Lara Bingle references into every question.

The rest of the show was good fun, even if most of the questions had been recycled from old episodes of the program, so we had heard the ‘proper’ answers before. It didn’t stop some great tangential conversations over the evening, and it was great entertainment that finished all too quickly.

The rest of the weekend was spent wandering around the Queen Victoria Markets (buying and eating a lot of cheese); seeing the Tutankhamun exhibition at the museum; and generally eating and drinking a lot. A particular highlight was a lovely meal in a Nepalese restaurant. We caught a train out to see Puffing Billy , but when we arrived we were told that we had just missed the last ride of the day. We compromised by having our picnic lunch (with a fairly average ‘organic’ wine) under a shelter out of the bucketing rain, and waited for the steam train to return. It did. We had some photos. I giggled at the catering girl who rolled her trolley full of dirty dishes off the edge of the platform onto the tracks. Then I felt guilty for giggling and felt that I should offer to help, but her boss got in there instead. I probably would have been a third wheel anyway.

We also got an extended holiday, courtesy of Qantas. Luckily I had been playing with my phone and found out about this early enough to contact the hotel and arrange for us to be able to stay an extra night while we found alternative transport. We didn’t actually get told by Qantas (via a text message) that our flight had been cancelled until a couple of hours before the flight. If we hadn’t known already, we would have checked out, and would have spent a night in the airport, as apparently there was some sort of horse race on in town, which meant that a lot of hotels were full. Me being a massive gambler had no idea that the race was on, and didn’t factor that into my planning. In fact, I had been impressed with how dressed up the average Melbournite got, when wandering through the city. I also feel justified now in playing with my phone constantly, despite my wife telling me that I’m disengaged, or not listening, or whatever it was she was saying while I was reading tweets. Who knows what other problems I can solve in the future…?

Richard Branson was kind enough to let us squeeze onto one of his overcrowded planes a day later, and we got home safely. Although the Virgin Australian flight attendant seemed to resent having a quiet baby on his flight, and gave us dirty looks the whole time, despite only about 30 seconds of crying over the whole flight (phew). I was able to coordinate the necessary changes to my work roster via text message with my supervisor, instead of the epic process I was used to when I was in my previous role. That decision was definitely worthwhile.

There you go, Howie. You finally dragged a blog out of one of us.

Man, that sounds awful.

For this reason I am a tad sad and disappointed.

On the up-side, some nice things are happening. Our house is about to start being built (although I believe the Howies have called dibs on at least part of the premises?). Our little one is growing up rapidly and is starting to do things. I’m really enjoying my work. The wife has been doing well with her driving lessons, and is excited to start driving in her very own car soon (I think it’s name is ‘Frog’). We’re going on a little trip to Melbourne next month to see QI being filmed live (I assume that means we’ll also be hanging out with Stephen for a day or two?).

YY?

Y wish.

Work has been quite hectic for me lately. Loads of things happening, and I was recently informed that my interview/exam for a permanent position in my current role will be held in November. That means I have a month or so to prepare, and the study guide is about 6 inches thick… nervous. I’m enjoying the ‘new’ role though, and I think I’ve made the right decision to move ‘upstairs’. I also enjoy wearing suits. I am such a dandy.

The baby is doing really well. He’s started smiling on cue, and is sleeping for extended times at night, which is nice. Phew.

We finally got a development approval for our house, and after paying over $10,000 in ‘contributions’ to the local Council, we’re getting closer to being allowed to start the actual building process. If anyone would like to help me build a fence around some trees that need to be preserved on-site next weekend (Saturday 10th September), you’re welcome to come and assist. My building prowess is fairly limited, and I suspect I’ll resort to bashing some sticks into the ground and crying until someone vaguely talented in this area comes to help. It’s nice to know that we’re potentially only a few weeks (months?) away from having the concrete slab laid. We’ve been torturing ourselves by watching numerous episodes of ‘Grand Designs’ in the meantime, and getting inspired whilst simultaneously judging people for their ‘poor’ decisions.

We’re currently house-sitting for a couple of weeks, so we have a pool. Pity it’s so cold right now, or I’d be writing this in my shorts whilst drinking a poolside cocktail (there’s a nice mental image for you all. If it makes you feel any better, I’m actually wearing ugg boots and trackydacks.).

Any other news?

I found out the other day that they’ve re-booked me onto a course that I didn’t want to do. This is after they also told me that I wasn’t eligible to do it, and that my boss would never allow me to go. When I told them that I hadn’t applied to be on it in the first place, and that I was glad that I wouldn’t be going, they somehow decided that I must be playing hard to get, and confirmed the booking. In doing so, they screwed around my roster for the next two weeks (I still don’t know when I’m working this week, except for tomorrow), and also dropped someone off the course who was eligible to participate, and who actually wanted to go. I’m so glad that our organisation is so efficient.

On a similar note, it seems that while I was away they had an awards day, and that my name was read out for one of the awards. The person who organised the awards (and invitations etc) asked me (after the fact, at a social function) why I hadn’t been at the ceremony. When I explained that I hadn’t been informed about the ceremony or my award, they seemed surprised, and asked me who should have told me. Yep, that’s right. This would be bad enough, but it turns out a few people had been called in to work at the last minute (on their day off) to attend the ceremony, then did not receive any awards. Again, stellar administrative skills from a person who apparently wanted a ‘desk job’ instead of what they had previously been doing. You’re welcome, people of our State. We deserve a payrise, though, right?

If it sounds as though I’m slightly disgruntled, I’m not, I just find the whole situation slightly amusing. I’m still very happy working for this particular organisation, and genuinely enjoy my job. There’s a fairly good chance that my job is changing slightly at the end of the month, when I am told that I’ll be taking a different role. This will mean I get to wear a suit and tie to work each day, instead of the same clothes as everyone else. It also means that I have to do a lot more study over the next few years, but I’ll be working a lot more regular hours for at least the short term.

In family news, the boy is doing very well, and is still surprising me with how competent he is at sleeping and eating. Even if I had hoped he would have learned a few more tricks by now, at least he’s doing his core tasks to a reasonable standard. I’m grateful for the time I’ve been able to spend at home with him in these early days, and I’m a little bit sad that I won’t get as much daily interaction with him now. I know that there are many people who have to work jobs that don’t let them see their family for weeks or months at a time, so I shouldn’t complain too much. I just want to be a part of his life, especially in these formative years when he’s changing so much on a daily basis.

Anyway, I suppose I should eat something and get an early night, right?

I had accepted a number of friend requests over time that I wasn’t happy with, and felt that ‘un-friending’ them might lead to upsetting them. The fact that I didn’t really want to be their Facebook ‘friend’ suggests that in actual fact I needn’t worry too much about upsetting them, but there’s another insight into my fragile pschye. I suppose I could have just done it anyway, but in the end the decision to throw the baby out with the bath water (please note that this is a metaphor [Is it? Or is it an analogy? I always get those two mixed up] and that my son is currently safe and well, and isn’t in a drain somewhere) was easier than potentially offending a few people whose opinion really doesn’t matter all that much to me.

I was also religiously checking both Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis, and felt that I needed to cut down on the amount of unworthy religion in my life.

I’m still Tweeting like a mad Twit though.

It’s quite easy if you have a group of people that you know quite well, so you can just speak with them, but if you have a similar level of (non) relationship with virtually everyone in the room, it becomes a lot more complicated. Suddenly you’re forced to wander like some sort of nomad, looking for a familiar/friendly face in the crowd, and then try to sidle inconspicuously into the group without looking too desperate. Working out whether or not to participate in the actual conversation is a social minefield, especially if the topic at hand is one that is either foreign to you, or seems to be particular to the established group of people. Speaking too soon can make you appear even more ignorant or rude than you actually are (which would be quite impressive for me), however hesitating too long can mean missing the chance to actually engage, and being ‘awkwarded’ out of the circle.

The mixed group of familiar and unfamiliar people can be both a blessing and a curse. Either you get introduced to a whole new group of people, or you intrude upon a private conversation and potentially alienate one of the few ‘allies’ you had in the room. At one of the functions this week I sat down near one group and commented to a girl I know vaguely that she looked a bit upset “like you’ve just had a domestic, ha ha”. Turned out she had just finished a telephone argument with her partner and I had hit rather a raw nerve. I left that conversation fairly quickly. [NOTE: this girl usually has a 'sour' face, so seeing her look upset is not particularly unusual. I'm not that stupid.]

The bar can be a place of refuge, as you have a purpose for being there (getting a drink), and there’s usually a constant flow of people to have brief conversations with. The downside to this can be that you end up needing to use the bathroom every few minutes, or else become regrettably intoxicated. I shall leave that last option alone for now, as I’ve fallen prey to it on a number of unfortunate occasions. (Sorry)

On the whole, ‘proper sit down’ events are slightly easier because they take a great deal of the pressure off you in terms of choosing your conversational partners, and if in doubt you can just concentrate on eating your meal and occasionally commenting on it’s quality/quantity. Of course, if you get grouped with a group of people who have a pre-existing tight relationship you’ll end up eating silently and ignored all night. If you get grouped with the inevitable ‘weird’ table, then you’ll know what the host feels about you, and you’ll probably wish you could be silent and ignored.

I’m sure most people aren’t as neurotic as I am, and just enjoy themselves, but spending time alone at these events has given me plenty of time to think about them. The modern smartphone can be a great asset if you can’t leave, or else (as I did this week) you can always pretend you’re going to check the parking meter and sneak home after an hour or two.

A fairly impressive experience.

To elaborate, I think I’ve been fairly well prepared. As usual for me, I haven’t had a ‘Eureka moment’, so much as a gradual acceptance and growth. I realise it’s (very) early days, but I think we’re balancing things as well as possible so far. Sleep is reduced, but I’m a shift worker, so I’m basically used that that already. I need to think about the welfare of someone other than myself, but I’d like to think that I’ve been attempting to grow in that discipline for a little while now (hopefully I’ve progressed slightly over the past decade).

The birth went reasonably well as far as such things go. The only details I’m willing to share on the internet are the soundtrack (Sigur Ros; Elbow; Mumford & Sons) and the fact that my wife was brave/foolhardy enough to forego the use of any painkilling drugs throughout the process. I was able to be as involved as I was allowed to be, and had very much a ‘front-row’ position. In terms of how I coped, I’m sticking with the phrase “strong stomach” instead of the possible alternatives (“emotionally dead”/”serial-killer-in-the-making” etc).

My son (who is apparently fond of the music of Muddy Waters) is currently in hospital being given a fake tan (I assume that was the purpose of the giant lamp over his bed), but apart from that is remarkably healthy. For that, and for many other things, I am incredibly grateful to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am sincere about that, despite the phrase being sullied by awards ceremonies and footballers on a regular basis. At least Kanye didn’t interrupt proceedings at any stage to suggest that a different child should have been born.