Xmas Eve

Had Xmas dinner with my parents. They celebrate Xmas Eve rather than Xmas Day, which I believe is a European, or at the very least, a Portuguese thing.

Dinner was nice though, and spending time with my parents was awesome. Despite living in close proximity, I actually spend more time alone, than with my parents.

We swapped presents around midnight, and I ended up getting a little black dragon chest, and a very awesome graphics tablet. So now I can sit on the PC and actually draw, rather than jerking around with the mouse.

Here’s the test image I created… And yes, it’s supposed to look like that. =P

Boxing Day

I spent Boxing Day with Lisa and her family, did the whole present thing, and just enjoyed catching up with them all. I really felt their absence this Xmas, with my parents, the whole affair is quiet and not very chaotic. With Lisa and the family, there’s noise, cheer, and Xmas wrapping fights. I got a selection of whiskey from Debbie and the family, a mug from Dwain to drink said whiskey, and a videogame from Lisa.

Sunday

On Sunday I headed over to the movies with a friend, Em. We had a bit of a chat and went to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. I’m of two minds about this movie… Very awesome concept (it’ll sound cliche, but give it a chance), but the ending was really weak.

They have either planned on making sequels, or the screenplay writer decided to go home early near the end of the script.

It was enjoyable though.

Monday

Heh… Monday just rocked.

I wake up early in the afternoon after a long night of PC gaming, and whiskey appreciation, to find no one at home at my parents. Odd. I give mum call, no answer. She calls back soon after, and I’m talking to her while she is as high as a kite!

All of a sudden, a paramedic is talking to me. Mum has had a fall, she’s a bit off her face from painkillers and at the Austin. Great.

I quickly got dressed, and headed off to the Austin hospital.

I get to emergency and they let me in to see her. Thankfully she’s no longer off her face (although it was very amusing) so I can find out what happened. This was around two in the afternoon.

The nurse treating her was absolutely attrocious. Firstly, she doesn’t seem like a very nice person. Very caustic in attitude, and a little fake. I hardly saw the nurse attend to mum, even as she was frantically buzzing away to be helped to go to the toilet.

Three hours pass, I have only seen the nurse attend to mum once.

I understand that they have a busy work life, but this nurse was attending her other patients a hell of a lot more frequently than mum.

Around 5pm (after having been there since 11:30am), mum is finally taken for an x-ray. Thankfully, neither her leg or hip is broken, but she is still in tremendous pain. Mum is given a walking frame, told to wait in the waiting room for the doctor to speak to her, and she would be free to leave.

Mum hasn’t eaten, and I had only had some cereal. So I head off to the selection of cafes, get something to eat and drink for the two of us and make my way back. As I’m approaching the waiting room, I can hear this pained kind of moan. Strange, I thought. Mum comes into view, she’s sitting down and hunched over the walking frame. That moan was coming from her.

She is as pale as a ghost, and visibly trembling. I ask her what’s wrong, and I get told that she just feels “sick” and really tired. Mum really didn’t look good. So I go to talk to the triage nurse, she tells me that she’ll inform Irene, the nurse who “treated” mum.

She doesn’t come, and mum just keeps looking worse.

After a while, I notice the physio who had been assigned to mum. I wonder over to her, she looks at me in a concerned manner and asks what’s wrong. I tell her about mum, and she informs me that she’ll get the nurse.

This time, and I bet because she was probably dragged away, Irene comes to attend to mum. Mum informs her about how she’s feeling, as best as she can, and mentions that it feels like her blood pressure is playing up. The nurse tries to convince mum that it’s nothing, it’s all in her head and that she should go home.

I go outside to give dad a call, see if he can pick mum up (he was on a fishing trip), I try not to alarm him so I remained pretty vague.

As I enter the waiting room, mum is being attended to by an intern. Her blood pressure had dropped.

I made a point of complaining to the intern about the nurse.

Mum was re-admitted for another couple of hours, and the nurse only came to see her as mum was leaving and she still insisted that it was only in mums head.

We finally left around 8:50pm.

Nicole and Anthony came past to see how things were around 9:30pm, and I had a couple of drinks with Nicole. After they left, I spoke to Lisa for an hour, and headed off to bed. It was one of those days I just wanted to sleep away.

Mum’s fine though, thankfully she didn’t hit her head when she fell, no broken bones - just a torn muscle and a lot of pain.

I often wonder how this event (one which has happened in many religions before the establishment of christianity) became such a huge commercial phenomena. Every year we all go out in droves looking for that perfect present to give someone.

I remember reading about how, during World War I, the Germans initiated an unofficial cease fire with the British to sing carols, and have a good time.

Imagine how brave, or incredibly stupid, you’d have to be to stick your head out of the trench, and start singing ‘O Tannenbaum’. Insane.

To me, Xmas holds no religious significance. And I really only celebrate it because my friends and family do too. Don’t get me wrong, I generally have a good time. I enjoy spending time with friends and family, giving each other gifts, eating, drinking and just having a good time.

But in the next one hundred, or even one thousand years, how will this event be viewed?

However, I’m going to try and not come across as a grump this Xmas. Xmas and I have a lot of bad blood, and it’s hard to ignore the memories, or rather the rememberance of feelings, that past Xmas’ have brought. Most people say that I live in the past, and maybe I do, but if we don’t correct the errors of days gone by, then how will we stop them from repeating in the future?

If I don’t post again before Xmas, I hope you all have a fun and safe Xmas.

It’s essentially a rythm game with fake instruments. They had the kit consisting of drums, a guitar and microphone - and wow. Lots of fun.

We basically just sat around playing Rock Band until four in the morning, with a movie inbetween.

I gave singing a shot, and man, was I horrible! Seriously, I was terrible. I couldn’t hit the notes that the game wanted, but it was still fun. It’d be interesting to see how I’d go with more familiar songs.

Playing the drums was really draining. Some of the beats are constantly changing pace, and it’s insane.

Good work out for the leg muscles though, haha.

I found myself more at home playing the guitar, but we were all doing the songs on easy, so I shudder to think what we would have been like on the harder difficulties.

Nicole really got into the drums, and Anthony was quite good at hitting those vocal notes.

We also watched ‘Hancock’, which at times was really amusing. All in all, it was a good popcorn movie, and atleast Will Smith didn’t suck in this movie like he did in ‘I Am Legend’.

Right now, Melbourne weather is being a bit bipolar. Cold, then hot, then cold again. Meh.

Enjoy your weekend!

Dad got to see her before she died, thankfully. Whether this was good for him, we’ll have to wait and see. I feel for my parents.

I know that dad is hurting, and I also know that he won’t talk about it. Being that way myself, it can make you feel all sorts of things, one of which is alone. I’m not too sure about what to do, but I’ll be glad when he’s back from Portugal.

Mum is hurting too, she lost her own mother quiet young due to cancer. So dad’s mum was, in essence, a mother to both my parents.

And me.. Well, I feel numb about it all. My grandmother was such a nice person, caring and quite with it even in her old age. She went through a lot in her years - she gave birth to nine children, had a son go missing for 20 years, bury a daughter and husband. The things she went through would make anyone crack, but she kept on going.

I feel like, with most of my relatives, I never really got to know her, but it doesn’t mean I won’t miss her.

I originally met Em and Mark through Anthony and Nicole. At the time, Em and Mark were a couple, and I got to know both of them through various outings with Anthony and Nicole. Usually for drinks and time infront of one console or another.

They turned out to be really cool people. But the world, well, it’s a very mysterious place.

You see, I met this girl, Angie, years back through a mutual friend (Jennifer). I must have been 18 at the time. I lost contact with Angie over the years, until recently.

Here’s the strange thing… Angie, Em and Mark, all know each other through Bohemian Soul! Bizarre? I think so. It’s a massive trip out.

So anyway, Em turned 26, and she invited some friends for a gathering at the Inn. We had a few drinks, chatted and listened to, what I thought, was a pretty cool band. They almost had that funk/rock sound, and a bizarre name that I probably couldn’t say if I tried.

Eventually we all moved outside because loud music isn’t conducive of (audible) chatter.

Em has some pretty cool friends, it was nice to mingle with creative types that shared interest in the arts.

Catching up with Em and Mark was awesome, I hadn’t spoken to them properly in a very long time.

So to that, I say, “Happy Birthday, Em!”

Again.

For the fourth time.

So today, I’m reconsidering my choice. Fat lot of good that’ll do as I’m broke, so even if I decide to have a few more cigarettes, I won’t be able to buy them!

I started smoking again because I missed the ‘feel’ of it, you know, that sensation as you take a drag?

To be frank, my reasons for not smoking are purely monetary ones. I owe my parents a bit of money, and rather than paying it off steadily, I’m increasing it. It could be worse, right? Atleast I’m not paying interest. But that’s not the point - I feel guilty, not only in asking them for more, but also just in the knowledge that I owe them.

While I obviously don’t want cancer and the other lovely diseases and ills brought on by smoking, I can’t help but ask myself why.

Why quit for the money, and not for my health?

Why quit at all?

And I just don’t know.

Most importantly, a year down the track, will I be smoking again?

We shall see.

The Rudd government is planning (and already doing trials) for an internet blacklist. A mandatory filter, at ISP levels, that will censor whatever the government damn well thinks is illegal or harmful to children.

They had also tried to sell this plan with an option to ‘opt-out’ of this blacklist.

There are two sets of blacklists. One that blocks content that would be deemed harmful to children, and the other, the one you can’t opt-out of, blocks content deemed illegal by the government.

ISPs are up in arms about this, not only because of cost, but it would also severely cripple our internet speeds.

Tax-payers should bloody well be up in arms, too. This filter is currently looking to cost $125.8 million to implement!

Once set up, this filter is out of the hands of Joe Citizen, the government will then be able to add sites to the blacklist. This is in a similar fashion to the Chinese firewall, that has basically further oppressed it’s people.

What does this all mean?

Drugs are illegal - therefore, no school research, no research for a drug user to check up on some facts to avoid overdosing, and it has the potential to accidently block drug awareness and help websites.

And dissidence? Well, that would be considered illegal in the eyes of the internet filter. It will all start with extremist sites, then it will lead to anything that remotely goes against government policy.

Euthanasia will no longer be something we can read about, too.

P2P networks? Nope.

Violent games? May be on the agenda.

Buying exported video games that are refused classification, what will happen then?

If I suddenly post ALLAH AKBAR! Will this site be blocked to Australians? Or any other forum? Will we be pushed to censoring ourselves so that our favourite message boards suddenly don’t appear anymore?

Stephen Conroy - you’re a fucking wanker.

I got up surprisingly easy on Saturday morning; I’m known for being a very heavy sleeper. We had a light breakfast, then piled into the car and headed for the Great Ocean Road.

From Sunbury, the Great Ocean Road is a fair way - we must’ve spent 3 hours in the car before we reached Erskine Falls. Erskine Falls is a small waterfall an hour or so from Apollo Bay, and it’s an awesome sight.

The path to the waterfall was a rather steep descent, my legs were trembling with fatigue and I wondered how I could possibly make it back up to the car. The waterfall was definitely worth it, though. We spent a small amount of time admiring the waterfall and the rock pools before making our way up to the car.

My legs burned with effort, and my heart was pumping like you wouldn’t believe. But I made it back to the car, eventually… As I type this, the muscles in my legs are still sore.

Next stop was Apollo Bay, which would lead us to the Otway Tree Top walk further inland. We stretched our legs in Apollo Bay, had some lunch and ice cream, asked for directions, then it was back into the car for a few more hours.

Once we got to the Otway Forest, after initially missing the turn off, we were in for quite a treat. Like the Erskine Falls, there was a warning about snakes being present. You’ve got to love Australia! Where else can you find such lethal wildlife? Sharks, snakes, jellyfish, spiders and the Blue Ring octopus. I should be in tourism.

Entering the Otway Forest was surreal. There was a path to follow, yet we were surrounded by dense vegetation, it was truly unbelievable. The canopy provided a cool environment and shielded us from Saturday’s harsh sun.

Eventually we got to the metal bridges that would lead 35 metres up into the tree tops (although not above them, the trees were massive!). It was such a humbling experience being among vegetation that was older than I am, and that would easily outlive me.

The highlight of the Tree Top Walk would be the tower near the end, climbing the stairs we were 50 metres above the ground overlooking the forest. I can’t say it enough, it was spectacular.

On our way home, we went past a town called Colac, where we drove past a very distraught woman (and police) in nothing but her underwear. She was clearly hysterical. Something very terrible must have happened to that woman, but I do not know what.

Anthony had clocked up over 500km of driving in the one day. Insane.

Sore, and sleep deprived, we all made our way home. I really needed the company of my friends, and am grateful for it. The Tree Top Walk was just icing on the cake.

So as promised, there are some new paintings on display in the gallery.

There’s another (bigger) group exhibit coming in late October, which I want to be a part in, so it’s back to painting I go.

It went well, and there was a fair amount of people there.

Anthony and Nicole came over before the opening night was to begin, but I wasn’t very talkative as I was stressing out about the Exhibition. Sorry guys! Nicole took some photos of Jazz, and the Exhibition. I’ll post some photos when I get copies.

So yes, I was stressing. I was stressing about the people that would be there, or wouldn’t be there; I was stressing about the speech; and I was just stressing in general! Haha.

Had dinner there, which I highly recommend, as the Old Fire Station’s food is quite palatable - actually, it’s damn nice. Sunk a couple of bourbons, which didn’t help the nerves at all.

Angie and Jennifer showed up not long after the night had started, which was good as I was unsure whether they would attend.

Unfortunately, Lisa and Debbie couldn’t attend. It would’ve been good to see them, as I haven’t done so in some time. But it’s understandable given that they would’ve been up to their arm pits in small children.

Eventually I started calming down, and by the time I had to give a small speech I was eager to get it over and done with.

That was such a huge weight off my shoulders - I felt so much better after the speech was done, then I started enjoying the night for what it was.

Thank you to all who showed up!

I did have some photos of my new works, but it seems that the digital camera has malfunctioned, and I can’t even access it, let alone copy files over. Ugh.