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.

I was told that today was their last day of interviews, so results would be out by this evening, but still no word as of midnight. Most people are left to sweat for 12 hours or so. One bloke found out by the time he’d travelled back to our office from the place where the interviews are held. I’ve been waiting over a week.

I have no fingernails left, and my stomach is turning.

Yay nerves.

We started with a huge bit of luck that gave us a great result in a job that we were under pressure with. We were following up one possible line of enquiry, when a person who was completely unknown to us happened to be in the room. A short time later someone was very unhappy, and our bosses were extremely satisfied.

From there I went to my exam. While I was driving there I noticed someone who we wanted to chat to. A quick phone call later and some colleagues were on hand. The gentleman decided that he’d rather not chat, and made himself scarce. In the meantime I’d had to quickly drive a few suburbs for my interview/exam. Being late wouldn’t do. As I was arriving, I received a phone call telling me that the interviews were running ahead of schedule and that I was now required inside on an urgent basis if possible.

The actual interview/exam went reasonably well, except for the fact that I completely froze on a couple of occasions, and forgot the answers to some very basic questions. The panel were very generous and gave me a few prompts that assisted greatly. Despite that, I think that it went fairly ok, and the panel seemed positive as I was leaving. I vaguely remember them using some positive sounding phrases, but beyond that I can’t be certain (everything was a bit of a daze). The results won’t be officially published for another week or so, but hopefully I’ll get some good news then.

I arrived back at work and heard that the gentleman who we’d been wanting to speak with was still managing to avoid us. A few moments later I heard one of my colleagues speaking to us via a wireless communications device, mentioning that the gentleman had been seen running away from a person’s house (where he had apparently been hiding) after being located by some residents there. A rapid car journey later and I was able to see the gentleman being ‘spoken to’ by a large canine who also works for our organisation. It turns out that the gentleman had been unpleasant to both the canine and his human friend and was now paying the penalty for his incivility.

I don’t believe in karma, but occasionally a little bit of balance/justice is brought back to the world (this is not the sort of gentleman that you might want to bring home to meet your mother, unless you were particularly unfond of said mother).

I was slightly buzzing by the time I finally left work (after the usual unpaid overtime). I was even able to leave the massive study guide folder at work instead of dragging it home to make me feel guilty for not putting in sufficient hours of study for this exam. Phew.

The decision was therefore made for pizza and wine, accompanied by an episode of QI.

Now I just hope the littlest one decides not to scream again tonight, and let us all get some sleep… for tomorrow we work on house foundations. My days off are probably never going to be relaxing, are they/.

I sure do know how to par-tay.

Very, very nervous.

Having said all of that, it’s very rare that I can hear a Bob Brown quote in the news without feeling frustrated and annoyed. It’s nothing personal. I’ve never met the man, and for all I know he could be a lovely bloke who saves orphans from burning buildings in his spare time. He just seems to be a professional whinger, and it’s very tiring. The quotes I read are almost always complaints against some policy or other, and over-the-top claims of how this particular decision is going to be the end of the world. Again.

Take this story for example. It’s quite possible that Mr Brown has a point, that hosting a(nother) large and (semi) permanent US military group on our shores might annoy some other nations in the world. Mr Brown suggests that the issue should be debated before the policy is announced publicly. If he stopped there, I might think “gee, that’s a point, maybe the matter should be discussed in parliament, rather than a decision being made in isolation.” The initial statement seems to suggest that Mr Brown would prefer not to upset our nation’s neighbours, especially the ones who are most influential on a global scale (e.g. China).

But then Mr Brown does his usual trick of making his sensible argument fade away into a rant with this quote:

”China has nuclear weapons that can be lobbed on Australia.”

Yep. That’s a helpful statement to keep things sensible and peaceful.

That’s my issue with the man. He’s a politician. He’s been elected on a number of occasions, to represent a portion of our society. A lot of people have placed significant trust in him. He’s speaking to journalists, with the intent to use the broadcasted words to influence official national policies. And yet, he just throws around statements like that, seemingly without recognising that this sort of quote is also unhelpful at keeping international peace. I’m not saying his speeches are equally upsetting to a foreign nation as allowing American troops to be based in our country (assuming that the military presence affects our relationship in a negative way at all – I don’t know if it does). I’m just saying that for a man who claims to be all about peace and mung beans*, he also seems to be slightly inconsistent.

I also know that he’s not the only annoying/inconsistent/hypocritical politician/person around. He’s just someone who sets my teeth on edge for some reason. He has the ‘fingernails on chalkboard’ effect on me, the way I’m sure I do upon many people also.

I’m assuming he’ll be able to sleep at night perfectly well despite this fact, and I certainly don’t begrudge him that. I just wish I was able to agree with him more, because I really don’t enjoy the current two-party system, that seems to be a choice between two very similar viewpoints, disguised as opposing forces. The major party politicians seem much more interested in getting re-elected (and ensuring their pension plans are safe) than actually helping their society. Of course, that’s just my ill-informed opinion, and I really don’t count for very much at all.

In any case, it’s almost day time, and I should be off to bed so that I can go back to work again this evening.

* I have no evidence that Mr Brown has ever claimed to be all about beans of any sort, especially not of the Mung variety.

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.