Since 2002, I’ve been writing here about life, the universe, and everything. My interests include genealogy, history, and the arts. More recently, since July 2023 I’ve been writing about my experiences as a below-the-right-knee amputee.
Swedish class was reasonably entertaining again tonight. As we’ve moved into “intermediate mode”, Marianne has begun to do most of the class in Swedish. Well, almost all of the class actually. Slowly and deliberately she delivers the instructions about what we’re going to do in Swedish, and sometimes with an English follow up. For me, one of the most powerful moments was when we did some dictation. “Oh my goodness”, I thought to myself, “I’m…
One of my favourite personal interests is family history. My earliest memory of this interest goes back to high school when we all had to do a “family tree”. Ever since then I’ve been fascinated. Although my interest is ongoing, I go through periods of great breakthroughs, and periods where nothing happens. I made a brief reappearance on ABC radio today, talking about the significance/role of genealogy in my blogs. If you heard the segment,…
“Bloody weather! What do you think?”, was the text message I sent out to the three friends I’d organised to spend the day with on the annual “Mardi Gras History Walk” and “Fair Day”. Two out of three responded in the affirmative, hopeful the weather would clear. The third, however, responded initially with “Would it be bad to stay in bed?”. I was on his side for a fair while, and then peer group pressure…
I had completely forgotten it was Valentine’s Day until someone mentioned it at work. I’ve been really busy the last few days preparing for something major at work today. All in all, the preparation turned out to be worth it. But somehow in the last few days I lost track of time. That’s my excuse for why I didn’t spend Valentine’s Day out and about at a restaurant gazing lovingly into someone’s eyes. Instead, I’ve…
I’ve had an amazing, almost completely exhausting day working with creative people. Although in some industries the word “creative” is in the pejorative, in the industry in which I work it’s a great thing. In the industry in which I work – hopefully – everyone is very very creative. I mean, you all need all sorts of people in a workplace, but essentially you’re hoping that people want to make interesting wonderful, creative, meaningly things,…
The last time I caught a train to Parramatta I caused a controversy on Facebook. “Why are you doing that?” “What’s going on?” was the shocked and surprised response of many people who may have mistakenly confused me for an inner-city urbanite. It’s partly true, but I have spent two-thirds of my life living in regional Australia, including about 5 years in remote areas. Anyway, I digress. Tonight we travelled to Parramatta Riverside Theatre to…