Yesterday I resigned! After eighteen years of owning a permanent position with the same organisation, I bit the bullet. I will soon say goodbye to my salary, superannuation, annual leave, long service leave and an accumulated 34 weeks of sick leave. Those are the benefits I can think of immediately but there are various others, … More Love Your Luck
Somewhere over the rainbow Way up high There’s a land that I dreamed of Once in a lullaby A few weeks ago I saw the recent NZ film Hunt for the Wilderpeople at the cinema with Karen. An indigenous teenager from one of Australia’s most remote communities, she laughed loudly and often, sometimes at inappropriate … More The Magic is Always There
Every Night & every Morn Some to Misery are Born Every Morn and every Night Some are Born to sweet delight Some are Born to sweet delight Some are Born to Endless Night ~ William Blake, c. 1803 Adele Bloch-Bauer was the youngest daughter of a wealthy Jewish banker, born in 1880 in Vienna. She … More The Pursuit of Happiness
Darwin mentioned the word love 95 times in the Descent of Man. He mentioned survival of the fittest twice. Five months ago, days after Paula’s major corrective surgery, Samantha and I left Seattle, bound for Phnom Penh. A week later I returned home to Australia. The last time Samantha or I saw her, Paula was … More Our Fields of Gold
If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you’ll end up doing nothing for nobody. These words appear at the end of a short video currently doing the rounds on Facebook. In it, a young homeless man in a ripped t-shirt stands on a cold Manhattan street, holding … More “Just Stop”
Beheaded in Rome in 304AD at the age of 14 for refusing to renounce his Christian faith, Saint Pancras became the patron saint of children. Quite fitting then, that London’s St Pancras Station is a place where you will see tiny children taking overseas holidays, following their adults through the throngs of travelers with their … More Toddlers Toting Portmanteaus
Back in familiar surroundings, my days are going to be less blog-worthy for a while, but I’ll write when something of interest happens. Yesterday was blog-worthy so here I am! As a well resourced country Australia has the facility to respond in an influential way to emergencies of international importance. A current example is the … More Africa, Asia and Australia in a Day
Cambodia has an impressive total of 28 national holidays per year. That’s another 5+ working weeks of days off added to the annual leave people can take. Not that most people are entitled to annual leave given that less than 20% work in occupations which follow the labour laws. Most people work seven days per … More Millions of Monks
When I was about ten years old I used to visit a young mother because I liked playing with her baby. I don’t remember how I came to know her but she lived in a house on a street between my house and St Josephs Primary and I remember stopping in to visit them on … More Imperfect Souls
The other night we went to Sandan Restaurant in Sihanoukville for dinner. Very young apprentice waiters and waitresses, many quite hesitant and nervous, served us under the watchful eye of a slightly older, more confident and experienced young supervisor. Occasionally the apprentices would approach us independently and occasionally the supervisor would accompany them to our … More Templed Out
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