Movin' on Up - or Should That Be In...?

So this past weekend I finally bit the bullet and moved out and into a small, one-bedroomed flat in Nundah. This has been a good move for me but has proved to be somewhat expensive as I this is the first time in my life (how sad is that) that I have lived on my own in Australia, and therefore the first time that I have ever needed furniture, kitchen appliances and so on. This is no mean feat to try and set up on an extremely limited budget, particularly when one is having to pay quite a lot in terms of bond and the first few weeks rent, so as a result, I am 4 days into the current pay period and have less than a 1/4 of my pay left to last me for 10 days. Especially not good when you consider I still don't have everything I need, and its school holidays - so I'm being expected to take nephews and neices to movies and outings and so on - and I don't even have enough to fill the car, or pay the groceries - let alone all of that. Oh well. Mr Visa will have to help out - again...!

But it is nice to finally be in my own place! When I get proper internet access there, and when I get things unpacked and so on, then I will finally upload some shots.

Meanwhile I am currently reliant on the free wifi at McDonalds, which is fine except that everyone here in the food court is looking at me like I'm a knob or something...

Gabrielle Emily Head: A Dedication

Yesterday was my lovely niece Gabrielle's dedication at the Salvation Army, North Brisbane. It was a lovely day, despite the weather being inclement, because both Nanny and Grandma were able to be there, as well as the whole family. Nanny hasn't been well, and it really was the first time she's been properly out of the house since Mal left. It was lovely too because my Aunt, Kathy, was able to be there too, making the family as complete as it could be.

After the service we had a sausage sizzle at Beck's in-laws, which was lovely.

I volunteered for the task of preparing the video presentation for the service, a task I enjoyed very much but because I am somewhat out of practice with my editing, found took an inordinately long time to complete. Essentially I worked on it every night for a week - and then on Saturday completely abolished all but 2 or 3 clips, and re-worked the whole thing using one of several animoto clips I had prepared to 'give me an idea of how the flow of the photos would work'. Anyway, here it is, hope you enjoy:

And this version has the little 'coda' I wanted to show - but it would've detracted from Gabby's day...

A Very Expensive Lesson

Recently I was housesitting for a friend. It was a great experience, and certainly one that I would do again, especially as in this instance, the flat is really a very large one, and very close to a relatively big shopping centre, which meant that I spent quite a lot of time leisurely window shopping (well, sort of window shopping - I would look in the window, then go in and buy the item!).

My friend was really very generous in the housesit, giving me free reign of all the things in her flat, even having stocked up a few essential items in the grocery department and so on, and letting me have free reign of her foxtel etc. She even offered, very generously, the use of her computer and internet, with its very fast connection. Fantastic!

There's only one catch to all this. You see, in Australia, the internet companies are really very monopolising, and I am not aware of a single one (perhaps someone can enlighten me) that offers, for personal use, unlimited downloads. Each provider sets a phenomenally low limit - 2GB, 4GB - in usage per month. Now you think about it, in this day and age, it is really not very hard to reach and overtake those sort of limits with the size of files these days. So, not wanting to overstep the mark with regards to this, I asked my friend what her limit was. 4GB, she told me. Ok, sweet - I know not to use the computer very much then.

But alas, during that time, in the UK the BBC was showing "The Apprentice", my all-time favourite show. And I had been very lucky in finding a very special thing, called "My Private Network", that allows me to connect to a UK based ISP so as to fool the BBC into thinking that I am accessing their site in the UK, and thus allowing me to watch (streamed) their recent TV shows. This meant that I would be able to keep up to date with the happenings of the show.

Alas, although my friend's service is quite fast, the time of day I was accessing it meant that the rest of the world was watching too, and so you would get 1 or 2 seconds of show, then it would 'buffer' again. For those who don't know, 'buffer' means 'send a little spinning wheel around the screen, pausing the picture and waiting for a good 30 seconds before resuming again for no apparent reason'. So it essentially rendered the watching of this show virtually impossible.

However, the BBC have recently introduced the ability to download their programmes - not to keep, no, they expire in a week or so - but it means that you don't have the stupid buffering thing going on. And, helpfully, they let you know what the size of the download will be before you do it.

So, knowing my friend has a limit of 4GB per month, and having been given carte blanche to use the internet, I allowed myself the very small luxury of downloading during the course of the 2 weeks, 2 episodes of this programme - the sum total of about 1.2GB all up. That's ok, that's within her limits - sweet.

No. Not sweet. For when she returned on the Sunday she informed me that her ISP provider had emailed to say she had gone 2GB over her limit! 2GB! And all I can think of is having used only 1.2GB for the total amount of time I was there!

But that's not the worst of it, no, not by a long shot. She then informs me that the cost for this is charged as an excess fee, at the rate of - you ready for this - 15cents per MB! 15 cents per MB! Seeing as how there is something like 1024MB in 1GB - this is a problem - at the rate of 15 cents per MB, I'm looking at at least $184! For 2 episodes of "The Apprentice"! And I can't even keep them - I only had them for a week each!

In actual fact, I've now been informed that the total bill for this '2GB over limit' malarkey is a whopping $279! But what I don't understand, is how 2 episodes, which should be about 1.2GB all up, is nearer to the full 2GB!

The moral of this story is, if you are housesitting for a friend, and are going to use their internet - find out if they are near the end of their billing cycle or not, and then - DON'T USE IT! AT ALL!

What a total waste of money... and a very expensive lesson...

Camping With The Boys

So this past weekend I decided to get in a little family time with my sister Mel and her tribe, so I stayed over for the weekend.  Now there's staying over the normal way, and staying over my way.  We did, of course, my way.

Which involved me bringing my tent over to Mel's property to set up camp in the backyard for 2 days with 2 little boys.  It was absolutely fab, we had a brilliant time.  The boys and I set up the camp, then Kevan and Lach built a little campfire for us to cook dinner on - we had a sausage sizzle - and then Mel brought out some marshmallows which we proceeded to roast over the campfire.  After this we even had a little sing song!  What a fab evening we had!

Bethany though, at one point in the evening was getting a bit fractious, so we let her out of the high chair (yes, a campfire with a high chair) and took her over to the tent.  She thought it was just wonderful, she was jumping up and down on the mattress and flinging herself face forwards into the sleeping bags.  So funny to watch.

Later on in the evening, Mel, Kev and Bethany made their way back to the house, and Lach, Haz and I settled in for the night.  It was really quite funny - there was Lach on one side, with my iPhone, playing Wolfenstein 3D and generally making himself gloriously sick, and on the other side, there was Harry, with my iPod, watching Home Alone.  What a social bunch we were!

Slept quite well that first night, except for one thing.  Whereas both boys had blow up airbeds, I had a piece of thin foam on top of a doona to sleep on.  Suffice to say it was somewhat thin for my rather robust frame.  Coupled with the fact that I was squeezed in the middle between the two boys, and you get the picture.  Nonetheless, sleep did eventually overtake me, and I do recall my eyes having been closed for at least a short period of the evening.

The next day we had a glorious fried breakfast before heading out to Mel's church for the service.  That over, it was back to Chateau le Goff for a spot of lunch, and then the hard work began.  The clean up.  

Not the clean up of the camp - no - I mean the house.  A houseful of boys and a very little girl can only mean one thing - disaster zone.  So the boys were each set tasks and we set to it - the dangling carrot being the reward of Cold Rock and Gamezone if we were successful.  Suffice to say with that as our reward - we were!  So off to Cold Rock and Gamezone...

...and back to the last night in the tent.  However, there was just no way I could have another evening on the foam, so we stopped off at Beck's to pick up their blow up mattress, which, being as its a queen size, Harry and I both slept on.

It was considerably colder the second night, but we were snug in the tent.  The boys had started the evening off on their own in the tent, as Mel and I were in the house watching Die Hard 4.0 - don't worry, the boys had the walkie-talkie should the boogey man come whilst I was absent.  I got back to the tent to find it was 10pm and two little boys were still playing with iPods and iPhones...

I think it was probably just after 11pm before we truly got off to sleep.  But a lovely weekend camping it was too, even if it was in the backyard...!

The highlight (after the camping and campfire of course) was our little video series, In The Wild.  I haven't finished the edit here, but I have included footage of the lovely Bethany attempting to (not) say Lachie's name... enjoy...!

Nanny and the State Of Origin

My poor Nan has been really unwell lately.  I won't go into details, but essentially the poor lady is, and has been for quite some time now, housebound.

So last Wednesday, as I was house-sitting for a friend in Strathpine (in the attempt to find a quicker commute to school - alas, that didn't happen!  Gympie Road is the Devil's Road....), I decided to pop in on Nan on my way home.  During the course of our conversation, I happened to ask what she was doing next week for State of Origin.  "Why, watching it here on my own" was the reply.  Now, seriously, I can't have that.  She hasn't managed to be out of the house in literally months now.  If she has to watch the game at home, then she shouldn't have to be alone.  And seeing as its the first time I'll get to watch the game in real time (as opposed to a delayed telecast some 8 hours later at the Walkabout), I felt it highly appropriate to suggest to the rest of the family that perhaps this year, we all go watch it at Nan's.

Unfortunately, for those in my family with young ones (i.e. - all of them) that just was not a possibility.  So, I decided I would go myself.  I phoned Nan in the afternoon, suggested a take away option for tea, and picked up some gorgeous Chinese (food, not man!) en route to her place.

We had a whale of a time!  We had a nice little catch up whilst eating dinner and watching Two and a Half Men (seriously, what is the attraction of that show?), and then we enjoyed the pre-game wind up (although Nan did spend half of the time chatting to her mate Enid, or Edith, or something - on the phone beforehand).  And then we thoroughly enjoyed yelling our advice to the ref, the coach, the team - and the opposition - at the TV for the duration of the game.

Fortunately Queensland won, quite convincingly too -  28-18...  Now its on to Origin 2, and then 3... be still my beating heart...

My view of the game - note my gorgeous blundies in the foreground

Nanny giving Mum a score update at half time

Enjoying the game

Billy Slater's awesome try