Holidays and swimming

Feels like a lifetime ago now but we have just been on our first family holiday! Now its not like we haven't been on a holiday before and its not like we haven't had a great time, In fact we feel lucky to be able to travel around the world visiting family, But it was fantastic to get away and be just the three of us for a change. We took the opportunity to do very little with our time just relaxing. In fact we did nothing but Sleep Eat Drink and visit the swimming pools on the resort we were staying at! The upshot of all of this is that Christopher can now swim un assisted. I don't really remember learning to swim my self. I have a distinct recollection of being in swimming pools with arm bands and lots of memories of swimming proper as a young child however the transition from one stage to the next is a blank! Having watched Christopher's transition from non swimmer to swimmer I think I may under stand why I don't remember. I blanked it out! Learning to swim is a fairly hard task and while Chris did love it in the pool it was certainly a fairly harrowing experience for him to start swimming on his own. All in all though we had a fantastic good time.
Unfortunately my camera finally gave up the ghost so I don't have any pictures to upload but if your interested this is where we stayed.

Guitar upgrades?

Well it is no real secret that I am in fact a geek, but some times I hate myself for it. I like to know how things work and have no real problem taking stuff apart to get it to do what I want. Some times it goes well and other times it has been an expensive mistake! This weekend I visited a music shop to buy some geeky music stuff and in the process found out that my guitar has software in it. If I had taken the time to think it through I would have realised, But as it is an acustic guitar all be it a fairly hi-tech one I have never really thought about the software and just played it. After returning from the music shop with a special cable, I plugged the guitar into my PC and “Flashed it” (upgraded its software). The upside is I can now change some of the settings (graphic equalizer, compression and mike position from the PC) the down side is I have just upgraded software on an acoustic guitar. Now I can’t stop my self thinking of the guitar of more of a computer than a musical instrument not a place I really wanted to be… never mind it still sounds good plugged into an amp and that’s all the really matters. Or is it?

Travelling travelling travelling….

This year I’ve been travelling a lot for work. In fact right now I am sat in a hotel room outside of Lisbon. I think that this is the 10th weekend that I have spent away from home so far this year. I have flown between Australia and Europe seven times, by the time I get home it will be eight. As each trip has taken around 30 hours that means that I have spent in excess of 210 hours on long-haul flights this year alone. Travelling for work is not glamorous. Jetlag sucks. I really really really want to go home.

Christopher’s fifth birthday

Well Christopher has just had his fifth birthday and his third in Australia. Having done a large family get-together at home with far more people than was sensible in the first year, then moved on to a large family get-together in a "birthday centre" in the suburbs of Sydney for the second, this year we changed again and probably not for the better. We booked his party at McDonald's! Not something that I think either Vicky or I had ever expected to do. Having said that Christopher had an absolutely fantastic time and so did his friends. The whole event didn't break the bank or house which I guess is important.
Unfortunately I didn't get to find out how good or bad a McDonald's party actually is as I have been suffering from my 495th bout of flu of this winter. Probably the worst I've had so far this year.
It seems that for the last two a half years since we arrived I have been continually getting colds/flu's and other unpleasant illnesses. I think it is largely down to the fact that I didn't grow up in Australia and as a result have never been subjected to the various strains of bugs and viruses of the Australian continent has cooked up over the millenia, as a result I don't have any immunity to them. It'll seems to make sense as Vicky seemed to have much the same problem for the first couple of years when she arrived in the UK.

Christopers first recording session….

It's going to be a bit of a short post but Chris has just cut his first ever track. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star....

The workings of a child’s mind ...

As all parents probably know already, kids listen to everything, store it and throw it back at you when you least expect it. It tends to happen at just the wrong time, so as to cause people to look at the parent and ask themselves “what are you teaching that child?” .Well just recently Chris has come out with a cracker. Vicky and I think we have identified the various information/misinformation that has contributed to his humorous comments.
· Discussion on whether the baby will be born on time or late...
· The euphemistic phrases
o “she’s got a bun in the oven”
o “Not quite cooked” (relating to a friend’s baby that was born very premature)
The setup.... Christopher is asked do you think the new baby will have dark skin like your mum or white like your dad?
The response.... (Which was delivered in a superior tone suggestion that the question was fairly stupid) went like this....
“That depends on when it’s born!” when asked why the response came “If the baby is in mummy’s tummy for too long it will get burnt like in oven! The longer we leave it in the more brown it will be”
Not a bad piece of logic I think, and probably too early to go into genetics etc...

Number 2 is on the way

Well its a bit of a short post for a big thing but Vicky is pregnant and has now passed that all important 12 week stage. Christopher is very excited and we took him along for the first scan today! We went to a clinic the specialise in pregnancy scans, who had what I can only describe as some very cool gear (42" Plasma Display to watch the scan on). Any way suffice it to say that after the various measurements etc were taken the doctor was able to confirm that it is definitely a baby and all indicators point to a healthy one at that.

Back again ....

OK so the original idea of doing a blog did not go so well but that does not stop me from having another go. Since starting the blog last year we have been very busy doing stuff. The square foot garden was a success and yes we did get to eat loads of veg.. mainly tomatoes, lettuce, radishes and snow peas. The fish that never actually got a mention are doing OK to (If you consider eating each-other as a positive then they are doing great.)
Work for me has been hectic but good . I have spent a considerable amount of this year training for a new role in the company. It has seen me rushing around Europe far more than I would really like especially considering that I live on the other side of the world now. It is no small irony that in the first half of this year I will have visited more European countries than I did in the thirty years I lived back home in the UK. I have flown back and forth three times already this year which probably gives me a Carbon footprint that’s analogous to clown shoes.
Vicky has changed jobs and after contracting for a while has now gone permanent. She is still a project manager and is generally enjoying the new job. She is now seconded to a company called Cochlear (an iconic ausie company) and we are both now commuting from the south of Sydney where we live to the north were all the work is.
Chris is growing up fast and we have just enroled him in his first school which he will start at next January.
All in all things are going well and if I can keep up the momentum there should be plenty to put in the blog.