Journey Notes

The Thanksgiving weekend is here, and we have three American guests, who will have a Thanksgiving party at our house. These are: Christine, Alfredo (Ariana’s boyfriend who arrived here from Puerto Rico on Thursday); and Rob, Alfredo’s best mate, who is married to Rebecca, a friend of Ariana’s. (Rebecca is also of the owner of the flower shop that provided the lovely bouquets for our wedding. And Ariana and Alfredo met for the first time at Rebecca’s wedding. Small world.) Christine got a turkey this morning, and the girls and Alfredo went shopping for groceries, while I cleaned up the house. And just on time, the landlord showed up to inspect — the roof! This was because from Monday until Thursday we had a roofer here, who hopefully fixed the roof for us, so we have no more water running down the walls when it is raining hard. We won’t know until it rains hard the next time. Shouldn’t take long though, because we have a La Niña climate situation in this part of the world, which makes it relatively wet in the Western Pacific region. The drought in the country still hasn’t broken, but we’ve had plenty of rain in Sydney itself. Summer is definitely here, and I’m now wearing a singlet all day, and no socks in my sandals, yippee!

By the by, the landlord likes a lot what Christine has done regarding furniture, and the general beautiful set-up of the place — he though the place looked better than when they lived here, and even asked if he could invite his wife in, who was waiting outside in the car — of course he could — and she liked it too. Oh, and come to think of it, so do I 🙂

The Thanksgiving stuffing will be a feast tomorrow — and maybe, just maybe, we will have something else to celebrate also, because today is election day. The latest polls indicate that John Howard will be booted out in no uncertain terms — but it’s not over till it’s over. Christine and I are going to the neighbours this evening, where they will be holding an election party — I do hope there is something to celebrate. John Howard has lied to us for long enough, and it’s about time we had someone new lie to us. Well, that does sound a little cynical doesn’t it!? Can’t help myself though, if elections could change the system, they would be illegal. More tomorrow — maybe.

Here we go again, I’ve trained my word recognition program in the meantime, and it’s going really well already! I suppose other than telling you how I’m going with the word recognition program, perhaps you want to know a few things about my life!

Well then, it’s been a hot day here in Sydney, and I have bitten the bullet today to applying for the position of the research group leader, which is almost vacant, now that Roger is considering to retire. I’m not looking forward to the paperwork, but to have a bit of a say in what happens scientifically is a big carrot indeed. But all that is assuming I will get the position, which is by no means certain. and even if I do get it, it’s likely that because of the paperwork that someone else has to do in the meantime, it will be a while before I know.

Also, we have a federal election coming up on Saturday, and the chances are decent this time that John Howard will actually be booted out! (Not that I’m too hopeful for a real change in this country though — I’ve seen it all in Germany in 1998 when Helmut Kohl call was voted out after 16 years in power, and some people actually thought things would now change. Needless to say, they set themselves up for disappointment.) However, John Howard is tough as a cockroach — I still like cockroaches better — and therefore, I will believe he’s gone only when I see it. Our neighbours have invited us for a post-election party on Saturday night– it would be a relief to get out of the 1950s at long last!

I am trying something new. I got myself the Word Dragon speech recognition software, and I intend to use it to blog in a time-saving and efficient way, and if it’s a lot of fun, I’ll hopefully use it more than I did the keyboard. My dad complained the other day that I hadn’t posted in more than two months. Now I hope that with the play factor, the novelty factor, and me always having something to say, the blogging will get a little better, and more frequent too.

A very interesting question is also whether I can run the English and the German version of Word Dragon on the very same computer. I intend to get myself a German version and dictate a few blogs in German also (that way I don’t have to fake an Australian accent).

Till next time.