Isn't he cute?

adopt your own virtual pet!

Christmas is on its way...

Look what my clever mum made! I told her to enter it in the craft section of the local show, but she didn't think it was 'good enough'. I think it is!

16 left!

A carabao

This is a carabao - it's kind of like a cow except it has big horns and a slightly different body shape. You see these everywhere on farms in the Philippines. Forget the tractor - get one of these! It'll pull your plough, let you ride on its back, and be a cute pet as well! Mooo!

.:D:. .:F:. .:O:. .:!:.

On Saturday I went shopping at the new Direct Factory Outlets at Essendon Airport. It was a good day, I didn't spend much, only $AU13.80 (some people spent hundreds!). That was for a pair of shorts at $10.00, a bucket of chips at $2.70, and a packet of Mentos at $1.10.

It was doubly worth going because on the way home my bus ticket got drawn out in a raffle and I won a hamper full of nice towels, and bath stuff. Bonus!

Going... going... almost gone!

I huffed, and I puffed, and blew the wallpaper away!

(Actually, I soaked a rag in warm soapy water and soaked up the ripped off bits and peeled and scraped and peeled and scraped and soaked and soaked and peeled and nearly cut my foot open with the scraper then i peeled and scraped and ... you get the picture.)

I've discovered that the wallpaper had a few things to hide, including a dodgy yellow paint job and a big hole smack bang in the middle of the wall.

But I'm proud of this effort - who says us girls can't be handypeople! I just have to get mum to finish off the top because I'm too short to reach it.


Anyway, within the next few days this wall will look all pretty and clean, ready to paint. Now to buy the paint... I'm so excited!

*J*J*J* Why we have candy canes *J*J*J*

Most people know that we have Christmas because we celebrate the birth of Christ. But not so many know the significance of some of the symbols of Christmas.

Take, for example, the candy cane. It was invented by a candy maker who made it with a special message in mind...

The candy cane actually represents Jesus and tells of what he has done for us.
It is a hard candy, because Jesus is known as the Rock of Ages – a solid foundation upon which you can build your life.

The candy cane is shaped as a J for Jesus, as well as the shape of a shepherd’s staff, because Jesus is known as the Good Shepherd, someone who cares for you just as a shepherd cares for his sheep.

The candy cane is white to represent the purity of Jesus – that is, he never did anything wrong (he never 'sinned') in the entire time he lived on earth, he never did before that, and never will. Only one person has ever been sinless – Jesus. And only a sinless person could take our place and be punished for the things we've done wrong.

The red stripe on the candy cane represents the blood of Jesus that was spilled when he died on the cross. And three thinner stripes are often present, representing the whipping that Jesus got from the merciless Roman soldiers.

All this is great news - because it means that you and me can have a friendship with Jesus, if we will just say to him that we're sorry for the stuff we've done wrong in our lives, ask for his forgiveness, and a brand new start. Ask him to be your best friend, and begin a new life, living for him. It's that simple! Jesus gives us a clean slate, a slate that keeps getting cleaned because when Jesus died he died for the sins that we've done not only now, but in the future as well.

I reckon that's a pretty cool message for a piece of candy.

God sent me flowers today... I saw them alongside the footpath.

I got some books I ordered on Ebay in the mail today. I bought three books about public speaking which I'll use for a subject I'm studying next year.

The guy I bought them from threw in a fourth book for free, which was really nice of him.

I always say a big 'ThaNks GoD!' when those things happen, because I believe God cares about the little things in our lives just as much as the big things. All these little 'blessings' are him saying 'I love you' every day.

SO satisfying!

Ooh yes.

Finally I get to rip off this horrid wallpaper from our kitchen wall. We've decided to paint the walls now that the weather is warming up - which means we have to first get rid of the wallpaper.


Someone did a good job - they chose the ugliest wallpaper they could find, and then stuck it as hard as they could to the wall! (NOTE to all Do It Yourself home decorators: before doing something outrageous to your house, think of the person who in ten years is going to have to undo the unfashionable damage you have done!)

Normally to remove wallpaper (according to a few DIY websites), you first sand off the waterproof surface of the paper before soaking the rest off using water. But sandpapering turned out to be much too exhausting for me... (or maybe I've just got no muscles), so I'm trying to peel off all the waterproof layer instead.


I'm still going, and will likely be for a while. Wish me well! I'll see you in ten years...

Can you guess this mystery object?

Hey bloggers: Can you guess what this wierd looking thing is?


Bonus: can you guess where this photo was taken?

I'll give you all seven days to try to figure it out. Then I'll tell you what it is!

Have fun!

17 to go!

Yep, time is marching on, and it's 17 weeks to go!


This is a jeepney, a really common form of transport in the Phillippines. This jeepney is pretty plain by standards; most are painted brightly all over, with all sorts of slogans, sayings and statements.

You can fit as many as 30 people in a jeepney (surprisingly), and forget about seatbelts.

Last time I went to the Philippines, it cost about 5 pesos to use a jeepney (about $AU 0.125) depending on how far you want to go, although I believe that now the fare has gone up due to rising oil prices. And how do you pay the driver? Simply pass your money along the bench seat toward the front.

Beware when you're stepping of the edge, often the drivers will start moving off before you're on the ground!

Dungeons and ...?

If you were to be locked in a dungeon deep,
What three things would you bring to keep?

By the way...

There is no light, and no door,
Just stone walls and a concrete floor.


I reckon I'd bring,

1. A Bible
2. A torch with really long-life batteries
3. A book entitled "Escaping From Deep Dark Dungeons, for Dummies".

What about you?

My Friends #2: Lucy, Fergus, Isobelle, Chook 1, Chook 2, Chook 3...

These are our chooks. They don't have names, but my ducks do. Lucy's the mum, and her adopted kids are Fergus and Isobelle. They are here because we got some eggs from one of my friends and stuck them under Lucy while she was sitting. She squashed one duck, leaving two remaining, Fergus and Isobelle.

Chooks and ducks are cool pets because you get eggs from them, and the occasional offspring. Lucy is sitting again at the moment (she's a great sitter), and she's got about 10 eggs down there so we'll see what happens (wouldn't want to count my ducklings before they hatch.. ahem..).

Chooks and ducks also have some pretty quirky perks: when you go down toward the backyard and yell "heeeeeeere chookie chookie chookie", they all run to the fence to meet you; when Lucy is broody, instead of quacking she squeaks at me; and if you don't close the chook pen door at night you might find the chooks perched high up in a tree. The only way to get them down then is a broom.

Once we had a chook called Allie - she was a buff pekin, and she was so tame she'd flap up and sit on our shoulders. She'd even sit on my brother's head. One day, some kids played rough with her and she broke her leg. After that, she just sat in the corner of her pen and couldn't eat. So we had to put her down. Anyone walking past our house that night would have wondered what on earth had gone wrong - the whole family carried Allie out to the front yard in a box, bawling our eyes out, and tenderly laid her in a special hole we dug in the flower bed. Funny how attached you can become to pets...

Computer annoyances

Does anyone know anything about setting up networks at home?

I'm trying to hook up two computers, both on Win XP, using a crossover cable... All I get is a message on the LAN icon - "network cable unplugged" - when I can see with my own two eyes that the cable is definately plugged in!

This is a wierd thing to blog about... but I'm getting desperate!

Best things ever invented #1...

... The 'Appear Offline' function in MSN Messenger.

My Friends #1 - Susie

This begins yet another series, this time about my friends. Every once in a while, I'll blog about someone who occupies a special space in my life.



This is Susie, my obese cat. We've had her for nearly four nears, which makes her nearly 12 years old.

Susie likes being around mess and under tables, as you can see, and she is forever checking if anything has found itself into her food bowl.

Susie is an inside cat because we live on a busy road. But I can guarantee that if you go to the back door, she'll appear from wherever she was hiding and wait for a chance to escape outside. She never does get out, so the next best thing is to sit at the front door looking out at the birds, or to find a warm, sunny window sill.

Her favourite hiding place is inside the linen cupboard, if someone happens to leave the door open. Otherwise she can usually be found on my bed, cuddled up in the folds of my quilt. She has another hiding place, but we don't know where that is. She reserves that for special events, like kids coming over, or having to take medicine.

Her favourite food? She absolutely loves Dine, but she only gets that at Christmas and other special occasions. She also likes Snappy Tom, and the dry food the vet recommended to fix Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease, which she had a while ago (if that stuff's in the house, she won't eat anything else). Despite being an inside cat, Susie does get a chance to hunt.. she is thrilled if she manages to catch a moth or a spider (yuck!).

Susie has a few funny quirks... She doesn't scratch furniture (which is great!), she prefers cardboard boxes instead. After a no.2, she goes all silly and runs around the house full-pelt, stopping occasionally to scratch boxes, or for a quick lick. And when she first came to our house, she never used her water bowl. We couldn't work out where she was drinking, until one day we caught her in the shower(!).

We call Susie all sorts of things (affectionately), like Louie, Poosy, Puddy, Fat Thing, Suie, Snooty, etc, etc... depending on her mood and ours.

I lurrve Susie... I dread the day when she finally croaks coz I'll be sooo upset... but I'm sure she's got a few good years still in her.

Erm...

Oh, by the way, you might have noticed that within the space of a few days I've blogged about really nice hot weather, and then really heavy cold rain. Obviously the weather is really unpredictable at the moment! I never know what to wear each day...

Big 'Ol Fat Rain

It rained heaps today. Not teency weency little rain, not a little sprinkle, but as Forrest Gump calls it, Big Old Fat Rain.

All the roads around the place were flooded... couldn't get my car through some of them.

It's exciting to watch everything flood, but I suppose a few people got their loungerooms wet today, which isn't good.

The farmers might be happy, though. For all those non-Victorians, we're going through a drought at the moment, and on stage 4 water restrictions, which basically means we can shower and wash the dishes but that's about it (slight exaggeration). We can't wash the car except with a bucket, and we can't water the garden except for every second day between a certain time period. And forget about watering the lawn. So quite a few broke farmers have been desperate for rain... and they got it today. I just hope it didn't ruin their crops.

18 long weeks yet...

Children pose for a photo, at night

For some reason, kids in the Philippines just love to have their picture taken. They also get really excited about seeing white people!

I tried out the few Cebuano words I knew on these kids, who found my pronounciation absolutely hilarious. The only words I knew at that time were "she's beautiful", and "he's handsome", apart from the usual 'hello', 'goodbye' and 'how are you?'. So that caused a bit of a stir.

The American influence is obvious in this photo... Peace man.

Let the holidays begin!

Rah rah rah! I am finally on holidays after handing in my last assignment. Now I can do what I want to do for a change! I'm gonna.... um... and then I'm gonna... uh.... Well I will find something to do!

THIS is the way I like it... El Scorcho!

I'd like to welcome my good friend Hot Weather to the stage...

Things are warming up here in the state of Victoria... finally! I was beginning to worry we'd have a colder than normal summer.

I lurrrve summer - gimme 40 degree days any time. There are so many good things about summer - Aussie barbeques, swimming pools, bee stings, thunderstorms, t-shirts, fans, icy poles, the beach, Christmas, and hot nights - it's grrreeat!

What's your favourite season?

Saving daylight... but what about sleep?

It's that time again... last Saturday night we all put our clocks forward 1 hour, and woke up Sunday morning feeling like we'd been hit by a truck.

Why do we persist with this monstrous practice? I actually enjoy waking up to a beautiful warm day. Instead, it's light outside until the late evening, and I find myself going to bed way too late because I haven't realised what time it is!

I decided to find out who thought up this crazy idea. According to Wikipedia, Benjamin Franklin first jokingly suggested it, although not quite: he just said that people should get up and go to bed earlier. The first person to seriously propose it was William Willet in 1907, in his pamphlet "Waste of Daylight". He said this:

'Now, if some of the hours of wasted sunlight could be withdrawn from the beginning and added to the end of the day, how many advantages would be gained by all, and in particular by those who spend in the open air, when light permits them to do so, whatever time they have at their command after the duties of the day have been discharged.'

Not every country has daylight saving, only about 70 of them, and that does not include Japan (?!). Russia had to be different - they go two hours ahead instead of one. Most equatorial and tropical countries do not observe daylight saving, because their daylight hours don't change that much with the change of seasons. And for all the multitudes living in Antarctica, daylight saving is observed. Here in Australia, we began observing it during World War 1.

Funnily enough, despite the inconvenience, daylight saving has had some benefits, at least for two busloads of people in Israel in 1999. A group of Palistinian terrorists decided they would bomb a couple of buses. But they stuffed up - Israel switches back to standard time before the Palistinian West Bank, so the terrorists set off the bombs one hour early. The only victims then, fortunately, were the terrorists themselves.

In the light of that, I guess we better keep observing daylight saving in the hopes that in the future it might stuff up a few terrorist operations, and a few more people will arrive late at meetings so that we can laugh at them, and all of us will have an excuse for being tired at least one day of the year.

19 weeks and counting...

This is the second installment of the countdown to my 3rd trip to the Philippines. Hope you're enjoying it!


Village, southern Philippines.

This village is tucked away in a beautiful spot by the sea. Don't expect to find a Jollibee here, because it's a good four hour's bus-and-jeepney drive from the nearest airport. However, once you've tasted the fresh seafood, you'll forget about burgers... when we went to visit friends here they cooked us a huge catch of tasty prawns over a fire inside their hut.

As you can see, many of the huts are built on stilts over the water. Imagine falling to sleep in a hammock with the sound of waves gently coming in to shore? Not to mention lazy walks along the white beaches beside the clear water... There's some great looking shells in this area (you can take some home if you can convince customs to let you keep them); and I even saw a hermit crab.