Category: Life

This is my own life, in which I hold a masters degree.

Ballroomage

Ballroomage
Caleb and Kirsty take to the floor today together for the first time at the Embassy Ballroom. Choreography ensues.
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UPDATE: great results:

  • Juvenile Level 1 New Vogue 1st
  • Juvenile Level 2 New Vogue 3rd
  • Juvenile Level 1 Standard 1st
  • Juvenile Level 2 Standard 2nd
  • Juvenile Level 2 Latin 1st
  • Juvenile Open Latin 3rd

Geraldton's Batavia Blow-ins

Wow. Someone’s finally woken up to the Batavia story and written a feature film about it.

I headed up the newsroom for 98FM in Geraldton for a while in the early 90s. Not a week passed that there wasn’t some angle about the Batavia, or the wreck, or the ship’s discoverers, or some new snippet of information about the grisly history out at the Abrolhos islands. A story of duelling museum curators may not sound like much, but in a place where wind and wheat rule, it’s news.

So, Hollywood is coming to Cow Town. The Guardian won’t know what to do with itself.

Now, if only someone would do something about getting the (far, far more interesting) Catalpa story onto the big screen, WA would be all set. Who needs a resources boom?

No, I Asked For A NICE Coffee, Lou

No sooner had I twittermoaned of the dearth of decent ice coffee recipes on Perth dairy shelves than Pauline suggests ‘Brownes Dome Supa Shake’. Ainslie dutifully finds one (somehow) and brings one home for me.

Not bad. Not bad at all. I’d put it in my top 7 or so.

For the benefits of other Australian ice coffee aficionados (or ‘iced coffee‘ as Wikipedia puts it) herewith find enclosed a useful reference guide.

I rate Ice Coffees on the ‘three Cs’, and out of 5 Moos.

  • Coffeeness – does it use a flavour that actually tastes like coffee? And a coffee flavour that actually tastes good when it is cold?
  • Cowness – the ‘fresh milk’ factor. Was a real cow involved in the production, or has the UHT demon turned it lactic-flaccid?
  • Creaminess – this is the X factor – the thing that separates a good ice coffee from a normal coffee that has just been left in the fridge.

Continue reading No, I Asked For A NICE Coffee, Lou

How The West Was Wrong

“Rudd Got Burke To Arrange Function” screeches the front page of Monday’s West Australian print edition.
Seriously, it’s garbage like this that reinforces my resolve to dissuade my children from becoming journalists. If, as I suspect, they will ignore me, I hope they have success in rescuing the profession from the gutter.
The headline is not just a misrepresentation of the truth, it’s also in conflict with the story itself.
Interesting to note that the headline cannot be found in the electronic archives of the West. Someone has had a change of heart, it seems.
Thank goodness we also have access to The Australian in Perth, which reprinted more than just two emails to give a more complete version of the (non-)story.
Sometimes I’m so embarrassed by my former association with this morass of mediocrity.

The Take Over, The Break's Over

… in which David catches up on a few weeks of news items , for the benefit of casual and new readers.

(insert lame blog hiatus excuse here)

It seems like only 8 weeks since we jumped the car, praying that we had crammed enough sustenance and entertainment into the trusty Forester to last two, possibly three weeks of homelessness and cross-country travailing.

I’d done a few weeks of research into the many and varied challenges that might come our way, and it all seemed to whittle down to two things

  • is there petrol out there – and if so, where?
  • is there wildlife out there – and if so, will it keep away from my speeding car?

Despite all my carefully laid plans, we were forced to leave early, and we headed out from ‘Bancroft’ in Sydney with only a direction in mind. West.

I’m pleased to say that the most traumatic part of the trip was when we bought a bag of oranges only a few hundred meters from a quarantine checkpoint at which we were required to hand them back. We saw very little wildlife, the petrol was plentiful (and expensive : $1.88/l at Norseman!) and we completed the journey in just 4.5 days of solid driving. A great adventure.

On arrival in Perth, we had a few days of bunking with family before beginning to camp in ‘Griffin’ – our 2008 home in Perth. We enjoyed a few days of box-free existence before our movers delivered hundreds of cartons which, at the time of writing, still grace some of the less-trafficked areas of the house. It’s a nice place, and by the looks of things, we’re lucky to have a rental property secured.

Caleb, Allanah and Charlotte have returned to their former schools, replete with stationery and uniformery, and are also setting back into their DanceSporting routines, too.

Ainslie had the misfortune of breaking her wrist a second time before leaving from Sydney, and returned home just in time to attend her older sister’s funeral.

Me, I’m back at work , and have suffered through trips to New York, Dallas, Melbourne and Sydney while all this has been going on.

There’s been a lot of changes, and a lot of sad and bad news over the last few months. We’re taking stock, and deep breaths, and looking forward to a big re-settling year in Perth. Bring it on!

My new year’s resolution? Once again, it’s to be writing more. This year, it’s more about music and relationships. I’ll be blogging less (if that’s possible) and emailing more, and getting some of these musical ideas down in writing or soundwaves, somehow.

I hope you’ll accept this humble entry as a blog-amnesty, and we can get on with the news-at-hand.