Eucalyptus Country

Last weekend, I got to the Gold Coast airport for my flight out to Newcastle and remembered I’d forgotten something to read. They had a very small bookstore in the newsagency so I thought I’d have a browse through the shelf for something to read on the plane. They had a pretty small range and their prices were what you would expect of an airport store so needless to say I didn’t buy a book and opted for a magazine instead.

But I digress. Among the travel literature books available, I found the title Air Disasters: Dramatic Black Box Flight Recordings by Malcolm MacPherson. Either someone has a sense of ironic humour or it’s part of a standard shipment to all newsagencies but I was amused by the presence of that title in particular in an airport. Surely, that’s the kind of stuff you really don’t want to be reading when you’re 30 000 feet above sea level and flying in something that looks by outward appearances as though it has no business being in the air at all. I’m not remotely afraid of flying, I quite enjoy it actually. I even watch the TV shows with explicit details on how different flight disasters have occurred with no real fear that it would happen to a flight that I was on.

Having said that, could I sit happily reading about dramatic flight recordings at 30 000 feet?? No….I think I’ll pass and stick to the Cosmo.

I wonder how many people actually buy this. It was the only copy left!

Eight and a half years.
One hundred and two months.
Two hundred and four pay periods.
Four hundred and eight weeks.
One thousand six hundred and thirty-two shifts.

No matter how I look at it, it’s a long period of time to stay in one place. Most of my friends I went to uni or school with are on their second or third careers and some in their 5th or 6th company and have held some 20 odd different positions. As for me, I’ve stayed with just the one job, with the same department across only two hospitals. Albeit, I stayed begrudgingly at times and if there had not been bills to pay, there were many times I would have walked.

Yesterday, I said goodbye to the workplace which has been my home for the past seven and a bit years. When I first started there, I was a rookie with only a bit under two years of clinical experience under my belt. It’s astonishing how much changes in that period of time….some of them have started families, others moved into management or inter-state. And gradually that pesky itch kept growing – the need to do something new and find another challenge to cut my teeth on.

It’s been a long time coming but now it’s my turn to head off to the big bad beyond again and try something new. But doing that involves saying goodbye to people who have become good friends. I will miss them very much in this next chapter of my life but I know they won’t be very far away at all.

The message on the front of the card they gave me yesterday reads “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau“. They are words to live by and I hope I can do exactly that.

It's never been this clean...may it serve the next owner well.

The last couple of weeks I have been engaged in an exercise of futility called “getting my package from FactoryFast”. What started out as a simple online order for a foldup keyboard has turned into a test of my patience. I waited 2.5 weeks to get it and when I finally got the package, it turned out to be a surge protector. The ensuing process of trying to return the incorrect product and have the right one dispatched has made me insanely angry, particularly when they are incapable of returning a simple email. The anger I feel towards these incompetent twits intensifies anything else that usually annoys me (too many things to list really).

So imagine my surprise when Australia Post rocks up on my door this morning with two packages I did not order. I still don’t have my keyboard but my rage has become slightly diminished when I opened them to find two surprise birthday presents.

Linda has given me some lovely pot pourri, part of which I have put in the ceramic holder my aunty gave me a few years ago. My bathroom and dresser drawers are smelling sweet now! I think Di must have been on the same train of thought because I found another drawstring bag of pot pourri in the second package as well as a photograph box to put on my desk.

So a big thank you from me girls….it was most unexpected but very much appreciated and lifted my sense of the doldrums completely. xxoo

Proof there is a cupcake card.....plus I wanted to share the kitty cuteness!

When I first heard about K-Rudd’s latest spending spree, I was quite angry. Fair enough give the old age pensioners a bonus for Christmas because I don’t think they get adequate funding as it is. They deserve a bit of play money, even if it’s only to make things just a little less stretched for them. It would also have been nice if they had just raised the fortnightly payment level but hey, that’s just getting picky.

But to give the parents of every child $1000?? That seemed a bit extreme. After all, there’s already a multitude of payments in place to support non-working and working parents. Good news though, if you’re having a baby this year, you’re doing it at the right time! You’ll get the baby bonus AND the Christmas bonus – lucky you! And even better, K-Rudd wants you to go out and spend, spend, spend! Forget about paying off your personal debt with the money, that won’t help boost the economy! Go out and spend it on frivolous purchases instead. You can now impulse buy that plasma, gaming console and entertainment system – just think of the play money you’ll have if you have more than 3 kids!

That’s when it hit me. I have four kids that I usually buy for every Christmas, which means their parents will be coming into at least $4k, maybe more depending on what the definition of “pensioner” is. So I should stop complaining about working so hard to support the system that supports anyone bar the people who work hardest to contribute to it. You see, K-Rudd has given me a Christmas bonus anyway.

My other half and I both work hard to provide ourselves with the lifestyle we currently enjoy. My other half in particular pays a mother load of tax every year because he paid his own way through university by taking out a government funded student loan. The HECS has long been paid off but that loan will be with us for a long time to come. So what I have proposed is this….because we have been contributing to tax on a PAYG scheme, effectively we have contributed to a very small portion of his sister’s bounty that she’s got coming. So no Christmas presents for them this year from us…..K-Rudd is footing the bill this year!

So allowing for withheld present money, that gives us around $200 thanks to K-Rudd’s Christmas bonus. Considering it’s a fairly small amount in comparison, I think we will just do something incredibly boring like putting it into the mortgage or putting it into savings for a rainy day. See? K-Rudd was right to ignore the working childless Australians – we are just far too sensible to be of any use in boosting the economy.