We’ve had a real “Aussiefest” lately. On Friday night we had South Australia’s own Vilis pies and pasties for tea and washed them down with a robust drop of Barossa’s finest shiraz in the form of a 2001 Yalumba. We listened to the continuous call team yesterday as they broadcast the entire Knights-Eels game live and we jumped around the lounge room hear in time with the pulsing roar we could hear from Energy Australia stadium as the Knights when in to score; it’s pretty surreal sometimes as we look out over our Chinese neighbours sedately playing tennis at the courts below and look out across the river to the temple opposite as we listen to the crowd screaming in Newcastle. A strange, dislocated but exciting feeling.
We’ve continued our torrent hunt from Australia and had the misfortune to download an episode of Dancing with the Stars. The horribly annoying Darryl Somers at his very worst: surely we couldn’t be seeing this? I’ve read that this is one of the most popular shows in Australia..but our first taste of this show will be our last I’m afraid! One show we continue to enjoy is the new Chaser ..it’s more like it.
We had a great lunch out yesterday, again at Wendel’s and the photos for this week are taken there. I had a surf on Thursday afternoon on the afternoon in between two of the most boring days of “professional development” I have ever experienced. Cassy, luckily, had no formal component scheduled and was able to get lots of practical stuff done with her team. I, on the other hand, endured another self-proclaimed guru, this time on the topic of guided reading. As I listened to the droning presentation, I wondered to myself how anyone could not know what this woman was preaching about and decided that if they didn’t know, they never should have been hired in the first place. I wondered, not for the first time, about this strange system of “experts” that the Americans seem to gushingly support: they feed on each other to the extent that they start believing their own hyperbole. Anyway, I found this one, as I’ve found most of the others, to be lacking in substance and to be a very poor presenter.
ABC Asia pacific had decided to only show one NRL game each weekend as they are now broadcasting Super 14 games as well, but after rallying a few of the boys to write and complain, we’ve actually had that decision reversed! From next weekend, they will show a delayed telecast of the Friday game “early” on Saturday morning as well as the usual channel 9 Sunday game. I don’t know what “early” means yet, but at least they listened: power to the people!
Not much to report this week. We’ve got our hotel bookings confirmed for Hong Kong for a few days in early April; we’ve actually been to Hong Kong about 20 times over the years, but never once left the airport, so this will be a new experience! We’ve upgraded to business class for our June/August trip back home after we got a pretty fair upgrade offer, so we’ll hob nob it for another trip before we move back into reality in economy. My Mum continues to provide us with all the news from Newcs and beyond in her regular packs of clippings from the Herald: it really does provide a highlight for our weekend, especially over a long lazy breakfast: I’ve just read that an apartment has sold for 4 million dollars at Silk House; my New York colleague, the great Gurecki commented that this was more like a New York price, and one of the reasons he is still without any property! That’s it…write an email if you’re reading this..let us know you’re still alive.