Shorthand Birthday Greetings>>>>

Well HAPPY BIRTHDAY Dad. I miss you lots and can't wait to see you soonish. Hope you had a good day and love you lots.

Rob x

Happy Birthday Paul, wishing you a wonderful day. Hope to see you soon, take care in the meantime! Miss you,

Kylie :)

Rich and Cam's Cafe

Our friends Rich and Cam have opened a really awesome cafe/collectables store. They have asked me to take some publicity shots. They opened yesterday so I went down and took a few snaps - a chef was there who does kids cooking classes and he asked me to do some shots next weekend. Stand around with a camera and people seem to jump on you!

Trip to Byron

Camping. Big bag of nuts. What else do you need?

Talking of Kylie's boots.

So as you know Kylie has started her first year of Architecture, diving straight into 2nd year. She seems to be doing pretty well. She appointed herself as student rep., has landed a pretty good scholarship, and has entered a mentor program with the guy that designed the new gallery of modern art in Brisbane (down there).

She is in the middle of handing in a massive project at the moment - I haven't seen her come out of her cave for donkey's.





She is a working machine.

Sent Charlie an e-bluey.

Kylie was wearing her new safety boots and carrying some of her plans. I was um... wearing an England rugby shirt. The banana taped to the wall is to represent Ben, our flatmate, who used to dress up in such a costume for his role as B2 in the very successful tv show Bananas in Pyjamas. Highlight of his career unfortunately.

My Bike.

I found a bike a few months ago and spent about $60 getting everything I needed to get it going. My college is right in the CBD so there is no way I can park the car. However the bike turned out to be a total death trap! The back wheel was distorted, the rims were so rusty that it just chewed straight through the brake pads and for a racing bike it was about as light as a Harley Davidson.
This all culminated in me getting wiped down the side of a Land Cruiser after a lovely lady overtook me and then turned left! The brakes were less than impressive. I was ok, just a big friction burn down my arm - I swore at the lady but she was bawling her eyes out so I just cycled off and then scraped my other arm on a sodding signpost!

So I bought a new one! I ordered it from a bike company in Sydney that only sells direct from the factory. It only cost $400 and took 3 days to get to my house. And it is a beauty. Economic fall out has been pretty spectacular though.

J School

Well here is the crew. This was at Course Director John's house. He threw us a Barbie after watching question time in his lounge and writing some stories. I introduced everyone to Pimms and Lemonade (empty jug centre stage). Started the ball rolling on what ended up to be a pretty messy night. Left to right - Sandhya (Bombay or Mumbai "to you whiteys"), Me, Clare (Auckland), Grace N (Melbourne via Salisbury via India), Cait (Nebo Heart of Darkness outback Australia), Luke (NSW Hunter Valley but not the nice bit), Grace W (Brisbane), Delphine (Marseille and seriously loaded) and James (Brisbane and a lot like Pearny).



The course is going really well. My feedback has been good - John told me that I definitely have a talent for writing! and I will be going on my internship soon. (Maybe up to Cairns which would be great). I am loving shorthand. It is a huge cognitive challenge and lots of people are questioning how useful it is but I am really throwing myself into it.



Here is my desk.


And books. John is mad into classics and philosophy so we have been studying Plato's Republic and having a look at the foundations of democracy. We have also had a look at ancient Rome contextualised with a bit of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Et tu Brute? Everyone on the course hates this stuff but I quite enjoy it. I think he feels we should all have a wide general knowledge base and is trying to do something about our ignorance. We also have tests on world affairs, world geography, touch typing (just realised I wasn't) and he makes us read alot! I have to read the paper back to front everyday, as well as watching set tv programs such as media watch, as well as ploughing through an almighty reading list of classics. I took it easy on the first one and read John le Carre. Thomas Hardy next...

How are you doing? Its Rob here from the other dry place. Thought I would just knock you together a blogday card as you are hard to pin down to one spot.

Hi Dad!