Sarah Megginson

kristy hinze and baby dylan

2012-01-18T10:50:00.000+11:00

Kristy Hinze gave birth to a little girl, Dylan (my secret favourite girl's baby name that I will never have the nerve to actually use!) last September. Photo's of her gorgeous four-month-old appeared in the latest issue of WHO magazine and it got me thinking, as I always do with celebrity mums, whether they have even slightly similar parenting experiences to us "regular people".

Kristy's a supermodel so she was independently wealthy to begin with, and then she married a billionaire. They have mansions and $100m yachts and housekeepers and personal chefs, so she obviously won't be caught up in things like, say, the endless mountains of washing that most parents of newborns cope with.

But what about the other stuff? Even though she likely has a night nurse, does she still wake up throughout the night and tend to her baby? Did she have any trouble breastfeeding? Does she think about sleep training and does the baby share her room, or sleep in the nursery already? Does she fret about starting the baby on solids, worrying that four months is too early and six months is too late and the experts warn about allergies if you start too early – or is it too late? – and now some pediatricians are now saying that rice cereal is not the ideal food to start babies on, but really what else should you start them on...

Or was that just me?

I'd love to read an interview with a celebrity mum just once that goes beyond "How I lost my baby weight!" and delves a little deeper...

no tattoos before you're 30

2012-01-13T11:24:00.004+11:00

Well, I've broken this rule. I've got two tattoos and I'm contemplating a third. I got my first, super original tattoo – a Chinese character on my ankle – when I was 18. Although it's not very attractive and a total cliche, every time I glimpse it I remember what my life was like as a carefree teenager, so I don't regret it.

My next tattoo was a tiny turquoise star etched into my foot in Las Vegas in 2006. My bestie Chrissy had a matching star inked in the same spot, but in pink. They're so teeny, the tattooist even said, "The minimum charge is forty bucks and that covers a star about twice the size, if you want to go bigger?" Normally I'm all for a free up-size but I didn't think having permanent pen applied to my skin was the right time to prioritise "good value"!

But getting to my point: Sydney journo and author Sam de Brito wrote a book, No Tattoos Before You're 30 a few years back (around the same time I was getting that second tattoo, actually!) and it offers some sage advice. I was flicking through it in a shop yesterday and landed on this page, below.

On a related side note, my husband sometimes loses his shit at other crazy drivers when we're on the road and I usually gently remind him, you never know what their day is about. Maybe they just lost their job, or their wallet. Maybe they're sad or depressed. Maybe they're just an arrogant douche, but whatever it is, I'm not going to ruin my mood - and that of the people in the car with me - because of someone elses actions.

So back to Sam. The page I landed on was a great reminder to not get caught up in other people's "stuff", because it's almost never about you...

what matters most?

2012-01-09T17:14:00.003+11:00

It's the start of a new year so like a lot of people, I've been up to my elbows in stuff that would fall under the self-development category this week: getting my new diary up and running, "spring cleaning", making plans for 2012, setting some goals for the year ahead and thinking about potential holidays.

It's great fun and very motivational but sometimes, when you sit in that "forward planning" space for a little bit too long, you can become a tad obsessed slash one-track-minded.

So this wonderful quote, posted by my friend Ben on his Facebook page today, was a perfectly timed reminder that there's more to life :)

“I suppose the thing I most would have liked to have known or be reassured about is that in the world, what counts more than talent, what counts more than energy or concentration or commitment or anything else is kindness." Stephen Fry

this is what 25c buys:

2012-01-07T19:52:00.000+11:00

At Kmart today I bought Lila this top - on sale for 0.25c! Outrageous!

seniors in the city

2012-01-06T10:22:00.000+11:00

How awesome is this! Just when my mood was dipping to an all-time, world-weary low (the news has been so, so sad recently that David has banned nightly news bulletins in our home; I cry too much), this wonderful video from New York has added a splash of colour to my day. What fiesty, fabulous old broads!

most powerful images of 2011

2011-12-24T11:57:00.040+11:00

As the end of the year approaches, we tend to reflect on what has happened over the last 12 months. Buzz Feed recently released the 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011 and delivered a shocking reminder of how much tragedy has unfolded this year..

They're not all sad images, but I must admit I had shed a few years by the time I reached the end. Photo 30 (below) really punched me in the stomach, and made me want to sell everything I own to send the money to needy communities in South Africa. Instead, I pledged a monthly donation to UNICEF for their work fighting famine in Somalia and bought a few OXFAM Unwrapped Christmas gifts. It doesn't feel like enough. But in 2012, I will dedicate some time to figuring out how I can give back more.

On a lighter note, Buzzfeed also posted this collection of cute dogs... sure to put a smile on your dial!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

seriously, David Jones?

2011-12-22T20:39:00.002+11:00

How about you run a spell check before you print your labels? For a prestige brand, it's a bit ridiculous... (click on the pic for a bigger view)...

god is cool with it

2011-12-20T11:28:00.000+11:00

“Some people say homosexuality is a sin. It’s not. God is perfectly cool with it, God feels the exact same way about homosexuality that God feels about heterosexuality. Now you might say, ‘Whoa, slow down. You move too fast. How could you have the audacity, the temerity, to speak on behalf of God?’ Exactly, that’s an excellent point, and I pray that you remember it.”

- NYC-based comedian Ted Alexandro

lila's phone antics

2011-12-09T22:26:00.001+11:00

Today my baby girl Lila turned 13 months old! My little bear is getting so big and expressive. She can bust out a whole range of tricks like high-fives, fist bumps, twinkle stars and dancing on cue. And now, she can use my iPhone.

One of her fave games is pawing through my handbag and painstakingly removing every item, each of which she inspects thoroughly – paying extra attention to zips, buttons and embellishments – before spreading it all around her like she's taking apart a bomb. The game usually ends with her clutching my phone, holding it up to her ear and saying "Hello Lila!"

Last week she figured out how to press the button to turn the screen on. Then a few days ago, she learned how to swipe the screen open. I only realised when my cousin, Venita, called and apologised for missing my call earlier... except, I hadn't called. Lila had! I handed over my phone and watched her play, and within a few seconds she had successfully swiped open the screen. Clever little muppet!

I looked through my phone history and she'd called four people, it turns out, before indulging in a little net browsing. This was apparently my last viewed website... looks like I need to pay more attention to her phone habits, or I may end up with a sky-high phone and data bill.

baking adventures

2011-12-06T23:15:00.002+11:00

Hehe, this is how my escapades in the kitchen often turn out...

spirited

2011-12-05T15:05:00.000+11:00

One of my favourite TV shows, Spirited, (starring one of my favourite actresses, Claudia Karvan) is filmed on location at a hotel in Double Bay. It's just around the corner from where we live in Sydney. A few months ago we headed over to that hood for an early dinner – Lila was about six months old at the time and we wanted to squeeze in pizza and gelati before putting her to bed – and you can imagine my delight when we happened across the whole cast and crew!!

There in the flesh was my all time favourite Australian actress (tied with Asher Keddie), acting up a storm outside the Stamford Hotel. We rubber necked for a few minutes, trying to catch a glimpse of the stars without looking like stalkers, then went on our merry way to dinner.

I was watching an episode of Spirited this week on IQ only to discover...

... Our car is famous!!! That's our blue Camry in the background of a pivotal scene between Susie and her mother. So happy, I could faint.

most productive day EVER!

2011-10-29T19:04:00.005+11:00

Today, with the help of my fabulous helper Aimee, I experienced the most productive five hours of my life. While David was at work, Aimee and I played with Lila, in between knocking off the following tasks:

- Swept and mopped whole house
- Washed and hung 4 loads of washing
- Brought in and folded 2 loads of washing
- Cleaned out laundry cupboards and refolded towels etc
- Swept up the back yard
- Cleaned out and reordered my entire office
- Did the dishes
- Made Lila's food for the week - chicken and veggies with lentils and pasta, yum
- Made mini-quiches for dinner tonight

I also squeezed in an hour of work and returning emails, while Lila had a lovely nap in Aimee's arms (cute!).

And now, I feel like I've totally earnt the glass of pink bubbles that is chilling in the fridge – and the four hours worth of TV we're about to catch up on via IQ tonight! So excited. Happy days :)

oh, no

2011-10-25T11:49:00.000+11:00

My friend just introduced me to this great blog, full of interweb fails and funnies. I forsee many wasted hours...

that awkward moment when...

2011-10-20T22:12:00.000+11:00

Via Sydney Writers Centre.

working in your grace zone

2011-10-18T21:58:00.001+11:00

Do you ever get the feeling that all the moons are aligning, and that things are unfolding in your life exactly as they were meant to?

This happens to me quite a bit. Like earlier this year, when David and I were trying to buy a house, and I got a job offer to edit a book. The topic? How to negotiate in real estate. As well as picking up a great new client, I picked up a new strategy in that book that helped me negotiate a further $10,000 off the purchase price, well after contracts had been signed. I've also been working with an inspiring property investor client in Melbourne for about five years, and the tidbits I've gleaned from her over the years have been invaluable.

My husband's been working loooong hours this year and I have been too; throw a new baby into the mix and you can see why a few months ago, we decided to book an island holiday stat or we would go insane. Not two days later, I kid you not, an editor called and asked if I was free to write an article: "Tropical island retreats". Seriously?! Yep, I got paid to research and write about our upcoming holiday. We're going to Fiji, FYI. Can. Not. Wait.

But perhaps the biggest, most significant, actually life-changing serendipitous moment happened just recently, when I was offered the opportunity to work on a new book. I was feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and burnt-out from a really big project that dominated July and August, and my first reaction was to turn down the book. My personal to-do list was about 8 pages long, I really needed a break and I felt like work was overtaking my life. And, wouldn't you know it? This new book is all about nailing the work/fun balance, simplifying your life, clearing mental clutter and operating at your peak. Un-freaking-believable.

I got this project through a fabulous publishing and branding agency in Surry Hills, The Messenger Group, helmed by the ever-so-talented Lisa Messenger. Lisa is one of those amazing women who is not only clever and successful, but she's also incredibly warm and genuine - and she has a social conscious. Lisa's blog is essential reading for me, and tonight when I read her latest post, it really resonated:

"Working in your Grace Zone = doing just what you have been purposed to do. It feels easy, there is no striving, things fall into place and you know you’re there because your heart feels satisfied. Everyone has their own special job to do. Just do that!"

Writing is in my Graze Zone, for sure. I'm so fortunate that I get to wake up every day and write for a living. If I could go back 10 years and tell my 19-year-old student self that I would end up earning a living as a writer, she would explode with excitement. On days when I'm feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and burnt out, it would pay to remember that!

an autobiography in five chapters

2011-10-13T22:01:00.002+11:00

You know what was great about newspapers? Forced clarity. Writers were forced to wrap things up within a certain word count because they simply ran out of column. The internet has turned us in to a bunch of wafflers, because there's no need to self-edit when you can publish indefinitely. So these days, I'm super impressed when I read really beautiful, purposeful, stirring, concise prose that creates a compelling story in a limited number of words. It's so inspiring. This lovely story is one such example...

By Nyoshul Khenpo

Taken from “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying”, by Sogyal Rinpoche.

Chapter 1)

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in. I am lost…

I am hopeless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2)

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I’m in the same place.

But it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3)

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in…

It’s a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter 4)

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter 5)

I walk down another street.

steve jobs, 1955 - 2011

2011-10-06T21:14:00.000+11:00

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose"

Steve Jobs

Apple Co-Founder

1955 - 2011

30 gifts to 30 strangers

2011-09-22T20:48:00.000+10:00

Isn't this just the best! Such a heart-warming reminder of how lovely the world can be sometimes :)

owls!

2011-09-15T20:44:00.000+10:00

I was a little bit excited about owls when I was pregnant last year. We didn't find out whether we were having a boy or a girl, so owls were a really good option for decorating: gender neutral, soft natural tones, cute and cuddly... it ticked all the boxes. So, I bought owl prints for the walls, and my sister-in-law made us these gorgeous owl rattles, and my friend Verity made us a beautiful owl blanket. In my jewelry box I also have a couple of owl pendants and owl earrings (obsessed much?), so when I spied this ring at Sportsgirl today, I decided to complete the owl trilogy :) Super cute!

I want a house manager

2011-08-20T12:31:00.000+10:00

I'm addicted to Real Housewives reality shows and all of their associated spin-offs - Bethenny Getting Married, Bethenny Ever After, Pregnant in Heels, the list goes on. I love being able to dip into the lives of the extravagantly rich and sometimes famous, and even though the drama is often crafted to create good TV, it's nice to be reminded that everyone has crap going on in their lives regardless of their bank balance.

There is one thing I am seriously envious of, though, when I'm watching these programs. It's not the 15-room mansions or the staff of live-on nannies, nor the private jets, expensive cars and fabulous parties (although all of these things would be lovely)... It's the house managers!

Oh, what I would give to have someone in my life to download my life admin to - to take care of all of those annoying tasks that clutter up your brain when you're trying to fall asleep at night. When I'm loaded, that's where I'm going to spend my hard earned.

I did a little googling to see what kind of jobs House Managers actually do and came across this job site that matches homes with all kinds of help. This family is looking to add their fourth housekeeper to their team. I'd settle for a cleaner who whips through for a vacuum, mop and dust once a month..

Seeking a full charge housekeeper for a large busy home in Brentwood. There are three others housekeepers on staff. Must be a team player and have amazing organizational skills. Main responsibilities include cleaning the upstairs, including the master bedroom and bath, kids rooms and bath, nannies room and bath and closet organization. Must have an amazing skill set and know how to work with fine clothing items and furniture. The family lives in Malibu most of the summer months. Monday - Friday 7am - 3:30pm. Salary DOE.

my oprah cover!!!

2011-08-18T21:05:00.000+10:00

Clearly, I've got too much time on my hands... You can get your own Oprah cover here.

9 months old

2011-08-09T20:17:00.000+10:00

Today we met John Edward!
He was super lovely and so sweet towards Lila.
Who, incidentally, turned nine months old today.
My little muffin is growing up way too quickly!!

caramel slice, how I love thee

2011-08-07T22:21:00.000+10:00

We were meant to spend this weekend with our good friends Linc and Michael in the Blue Mountains, but Michael is suffering from tonsillitis so we had to postpone. As well as being super excited to see our friends, I was also looking forward to the eat-fest that is a weekend spent in their company. I've blogged about it before; when we hang out, the food is simply amazing. Gourmet cheese platters, delicious gooey homemade desserts, breakfast spreads that fill you up until the early afternoon... the works.

So today, I decided to bake. I made caramel slice, which I thought would be difficult, but it was actually pretty easy. And it's freaking delicious.

The good news is... now I can make caramel slice! Yum!

The bad news is... now I can make caramel slice. Uh-oh. It was so much better for my thighs when I had to shell out $3.50 for a small square from Toby's cafe at Bondi Junction...

* Disclaimer: Photo may or may not be of the slice I actually made. There's a chance I might have been too impatient to wait for the chocolate to cool and so slightly massacred the tray of caramel slice when I was trying to cut it. Maybe. Still tastes good, though.

pooped

2011-07-11T19:26:00.000+10:00

Lila on the weekend, looking as tired as I feel. We both have colds. Which means, we're both not getting much sleep. Brilliant!

a bit of perspective

2011-06-27T07:19:00.005+10:00

Over the weekend, a few things bothered me.

1. Crappy drivers. I've braved the roads quite a bit this weekend, including a trip half way to the Blue Mountains to meet my friend's gorgeous new baby, Henry! So many drivers in Sydney are fkd. I got honked for merging; honked for not merging quickly enough. Honked for driving too fast and too slow. I've honked way too many other drivers in front of me, who missed lights because they were too busy texting or playing with their phones. Pay attention to the road, people!

2. Health insurance. My premium just went up, again. We now pay $61 per week, and that's not even top cover! I was looking at my files the other day and when we joined my health fund in 2004, we were paying $90.35 a month. Now it's $264.30 per month. I understand that seven years have passed so an increase is to be expected, but the premium has tripled! I think I'm going to chop down our coverage/move to another health fund... which of course means I'll need an emergency knee replacement the day after I make the move.

3. Software malfunctions. A program on my work laptop inexplicably shit its pants this weekend, right when I really needed it. I'm quite the gumby when it comes to IT so I feel really out of my depth when I have computer issues.

But then, it was Red Nose Day, and SIDS has been all over the news. David found me weeping over the newspaper yesterday morning, reading about a woman whose six-month-old boy passed away in his sleep one morning. I've sobbed through a few other excruciating stories, like this one and this one, about parents who've had to cope with losing their babies.

And suddenly, I don't care about idiotic dish-rag drivers and the seven loads of washing I've got to fold and our impending $80,000 power bill from all the heaters I have cranked at the moment!

It's such a cliche, but Lila puts everything into perspective. As long as she's safe and healthy and happy, everything else is secondary. Having a good whinge on the interwebs helps, too :)

new york has legalised gay marriage!

2011-06-26T09:14:00.001+10:00

Or as KenTremendous puts it on Twitter:

"HUGE NEWS: human beings now being given extremely basic civil rights in New York in a way that adversely affects no one!"

poor, sad bunny

2011-06-22T13:19:00.000+10:00

We bought a bunny for our dogs to play with a couple of years ago. Snoopy retrieved it last night and I noticed that it's missing two ears.. and one arm. It's now more a ball with feet than a bunny rabbit. It looks so sad! I guess we need to keep an eye out for pale pink fluff during the next poo run?!

hair fail!

2011-06-17T17:48:00.000+10:00

I bought a really fancy hair conditioner a few months ago. Like, super fancy - it was $50 for a 500ml bottle of conditioner!! This might be normal for some people, but for a bargain hunter like me it was quite the luxury purchase.

I'd just had my hair cut, coloured and styled on one of those thrifty Ouffer deals for $49, so I figured I was financially ahead of the game already. At the end of my appointment when the hairdresser recommended various Prive hair products, I plucked the conditioner and boldly declared, "I'll take it!"

It was an organic foaming conditioner with no salt (apparently regular conditioners have sodium in them, which strips colour) and Elisa promised it would last twice as long as my regular conditioner.

At home a few days later, I saw my conditioner on the "special shelf" in my shower - that is, the shelf that David's not allowed to touch, lest he accidentally squander one of my obscenely expensive impulse beauty buys. I excitedly lathered up my new hair wonder cream, and it was awesome!

My hair dried curly, rather than frizzy. It was shiny and felt so smooth. I was sold, so much so that I thought, "I'm going to go back and buy the shampoo!"

Then, a mere 8 washes later, I realised I'd been using it wrong. You're meant to pump a small amount of foam and then lather it between your hands, at which point the product expands and you can wash your hair. I was pumping a LARGE AMOUNT into my hands – the equivalent of probably 5 or 6 hair washes – and slathering it all over.

So, after eight washes the bottle was near empty. I squeezed three more sessions out of it, and then the dream was over. The bottle lasted me a whopping five weeks. Moral of the story: I should stick with Herbel Essences.

the joy of rusks

2011-06-07T21:23:00.000+10:00

a plastic sheet to lie on

2011-05-14T09:14:00.001+10:00

I had a brilliant experience giving birth to my little girl, Lila. When I say "brilliant", I don't mean it wasn't painful, uncomfortable and traumatising to my body - it was all of these things, and more!

But it was pretty textbook fabulous in how all of the events unfolded. I woke up at 4.30am with cramps. They were stronger by 6am. By 7.30am they were 3 minutes apart, and at 8am my water broke. I raced to hospital and had barely climbed onto the bed before "real labour" (the painful bit) started, and she was born at 11.08am.

A rare moment of rest in between contractions

I had no drugs, no intervention, no complications, it all just happened very easily. I feel super lucky and grateful, because I know it doesn't happen that way for everyone. I have friends who have endured 30-hour labours, or frightening complications like placenta previa, and some who had emergency C-sections when things didn't go to plan. Super scary at the time, but they all delivered healthy, perfect babies! Thankfully, we live in an incredible country where medical expertise and resources abound.

So spare a thought for the mamas in Afghanistan. I learnt this week that 86% of women in Afghanistan give birth unattended by any health professional whatsoever! (On a side note, baby boys in Afghanistan are so preferred over girls that some baby girls go nameless for two years after their birth, because of the disappointment! Completely heartbreaking.)

A lot of these women give birth on the ground. In the dirt. With no clean facilities, no medical help, not even a clean scalpel to cut the umbilical cord. It's no wonder that hundreds of thousands of woman and babies routinely die in third world countries due to infection and other complications.

It makes me feel like such a brat for the things I worried about during my pregnancy, like will I get stretch marks? And how will I lose the baby weight?!

Lila, aged 7 weeks

There is something we can do to even it up, just slightly. For a mere $2.50, you can send a kit to a pregnant woman overseas to help bring about a safe delivery. The kit includes:

a plastic sheet for the mother to lie on, to prevent the mother and baby from coming into contact with the ground
2 gloves to prevent the birth attendant from transmitting germs to the mother and baby
a scalpel blade for clean cut of the umbilical cord
soap for clean hands to prevent the birth attendant from transmitting germs to the mother and baby
5 gauze squares to wipe secretions from the baby’s eyes and the mother’s perineum
3 cords for clean ties to the umbilical cord and to prevent bleeding from the umbilical cord

The kits are distributed through Birthing Kit Foundation Australia. Best of all, 96% of all donations are used to create and send the kits, so hardly any money gets lost in admin expenses. Everyone's a winner :)

the many faces of lila

2011-04-25T20:25:00.000+10:00

David's been really busy the last few weeks, as he just started a new job with NOVA. So while he's been off interviewing Good Charlotte, Simon Pegg and Russell Brand, Lila and I have been hanging out at home and playing with iPhoto!

the easter show

2011-04-22T21:32:00.000+10:00

I have a love-hate relationship with the Easter Show. There's so much to love. Showbags! Carnies! That sideshow game where you shove table tennis balls down a clown's mouth so you can try and win a plastic snake!

But the last time I trekked out to the Royal Easter Show, I was... underwhelmed.

To begin with, entry cost almost as much as a meal at a decent restaurant! A quick check reveals that the entry price is still phenomenal: $34 per adult. That's a nice pasta with a rocket and parmesan side salad, and maybe a cheeky glass of wine too.

Once you're in the front gate, the sideshow games are five bucks each. A dagwood dog is another $4.50. Rides (if you want to brave that carnie craziness!) are another $4-6 a piece. It's a pretty expensive day out! Imagine going with kids; a family of four could easily churn through $300 for the day.

But none of that matters, really, because I haven't mentioned the most important part: the showbag pavillion. Showbags are the treat I lust after the most. When I was little my sister took me the show and she bought me 9 showbags!! I felt like the absolute luckiest girl in the world.

I think that now as an adult, going back to the show and stocking up on showbags transports me right back to the 8-year-old girl in me. When you're young, having oodles of treats all just for you is just about as awesome as it gets. I especially loved the Bertie Beetle showbag; it was $2 back then and it's still $2 now. It's been $2 for the last 15 years!

When I reminisced over the the showbag pavillion this morning, with its endless lines of Cadbury bags and Twisties treat packs, it was almost enough to make me want to brave the crowds (with a pram and a 5-month-old!) to head to the Easter Show. Almost. Instead, I decided to go to the grown up showbag pavillion: Coles! "Snack" chocolate family blocks are half price this week! I was so excited, I bought four delicious, indulgent blocks. Happy Easter to me!

marriage

2011-04-19T20:55:00.002+10:00

baby buddha

2011-04-08T08:43:00.000+10:00

Since Lila was born last year we've taken literally thousands of photos of her cute little head. We email the really good ones to relatives and friends, and delete the blurry or unflattering shots, and the very best ones get printed and hung... and maybe posted to Facebook!

And then there's this photo. Her most flattering shot yet! It made us laugh so much we couldn't delete it, and I decided to share it. My little buddha :)

the giant air travel rip off

2011-03-18T13:58:00.000+11:00

My brother is coming to visit next month as he has gallery exhibition in town (fun!), so he just sent me his itinerary. I was astounded by the number of "add on" expenses he paid on top of his fare!

He booked with Jetstar, the low-cost airline. His flights were $79 one way, $89 back, $168 total.

Then there was a $3 per flight "standard seat selection" fee ($6 return - premium seats are up to $18 each) and a $7 per flight credit card surcharge - that's $14 for one return flight! On his return fare of $168, that's almost 10% for the credit card fee! That should be illegal.

Optional extras that he didn't selected included a $4 per flight "priority boarding" fee, which allows you to board the plane prior to everyone else.

And he's only got carry on luggage: if you want any check in luggage, that's an extra $10 per flight.

So all up, you can pay $7 credit card fee, $4 priority boarding fee, up to $18 seat selection fee plus a $10 luggage charge. Jebus!! In total, that's a whopping $39 in extra fees... each flight!! And you haven't even paid for an in-flight coffee yet.

You can also opt to hold the booking for up to 48 hours for a fee of $5, during which time you arrange payment.

Plus, you'll pay for your snacks on board: $3 for a chocolate bar, $4 for a muffin. You know the drill.

Of course, you don't have to pay any of these extra charges if you elect not to. You can even avoid the credit card fees if you pay by direct deposit. But all of these hidden charges can sneak up on you, and transform a cheeky cheap flight into a pretty pricey trip. Suddenly, Qantas is looking pretty fabulous!

random acts of kindness

2011-03-11T19:32:00.000+11:00

I read a beautiful post on MamaMia tonight, about Random Acts of Kindness. I've been browsing the comments for over an over and I really should be in bed, because Lila's been asleep for two hours, but the stories are so sweet and uplifting!

There were loads of awesome stories, but this one was my fave:

When I was living in Sydney I noticed an elderly woman would often be on my bus every Friday with a huge suitcase she could barely carry. She also couldn’t see very well and would always have to ask the people in line at the bus stop which number bus was pulling up.

One morning I went to the end of the line and carried her suitcase on for her. She was so grateful she nearly cried. She told me that every Friday she took 3 buses to visit her husband in a nursing home and the suitcase was filled with things to make him more comfortable and games for them to play together.

After that, I made sure I left the house 10 mins early on Fridays so that I’d be there in time to meet her getting off her first bus and help her on and off the second. It was practically no effort on my part but she really appreciated it. When I was moving and told her that the next week would be my last bus trip she was so sad. She met me the next friday with a big bunch of flowers and a beautiful good luck card. I held it together but had a little cry when I was on my own later!

My Mum is the queen of the random act of kindness. I remember once I had to pick her up from the train in Sydney after she came up from visiting my brother in Melbourne. When I got to the station she was sitting on the bench holding a baby while the mother slept on the seat next to her.

Turns out the poor mother had been on her own for days and the baby had been sick. Neither of them had slept much and Mum witnessed her struggling for the whole trip. When they got off the woman’s husband called to say that his car had broken down near Newcastle and it would be hours till he could pick her up. She was so exhausted she just burst into tears. Thats when mum took the baby from her and told her to get some rest – she protested but as soon as she sat down she was out to it.

I bought Mum some lunch and she entertained the baby for two hours while the woman slept. Her husband arrived soon after and was so grateful (although he was probably a little confused).

words for sale

2011-03-01T11:38:00.000+11:00

When I tell people what I do for a living, the first thing they usually ask is "What do you write about?" My answer? "Everything!" My main jobs are writing about real estate and investing, and editing an entertainment magazine, so they couldn't be more different! But I also freelance for a bunch of other clients, writing relationship features for Cosmo and Cleo, riffing about car refinishing and paint for Dupont's magazine, creating corporate copy for my business clients... the list goes on.

And that's what I love about my job. It changes all the time, and I never know week to week what I'll be working on next. I love the variety and the fact that one unexpected phone call or email can throw up a new challenge and boost my bank balance.

It's not for everyone, though. As a freelance writer, there are parts of my job that are really boring or tedious, like chasing up invoices or following up leads. My friend Iain, who edits a HR magazine, reckons it's not for him. But he wrote an article about my job anyway! Thanks, Iain, for making my career sound way more exciting than it really is :) You have a way with words!

seriously?

2011-02-03T10:52:00.000+11:00

One of my favourite guilty pleasures is reality TV, and over the last few months since Lila arrived (particularly when she was first born), I've been watching it by the bucketload. Nothing takes the edge off an hour-long breastfeed sesh at 3am like a fresh episode of Rachel Zoe or Real Housewives!

This week I finished watching the latest cycle of America's Next Top Model, and all was well... until I realised that this glamazon, Alex, is the token "plus sized model". Seriously?!?!?!?

copulating flies

2011-01-23T18:46:00.000+11:00

David took a photo in our kitchen this week... of two flies having sex!!! Ew!!! Pretty amazing photo, though.

queensland floods. just devastating

2011-01-14T12:08:00.001+11:00

Like most Australians, I've been glued to the TV the last few days as the tragedy of the Queensland flood crisis unfolds. It's so devastating to see your home state torn to shreds in a matter of hours, and the stories that are coming out of it.. well, I've been in tears more than I've been not crying the last few days!

They say that once you have a child, you'll forever be more sensitive towards negative news stories to do with children. Good lord, is that true. I'm sensitive by nature, so I was always upset when I heard that something bad happened, but now, wow.. it hits you like a truck.

When I heard about the four-year-old boy who drowned while rescuers were trying to get his family to safety, I bawled. Lost it.

And the 13-year-old boy, Jordan Rice, who asked rescuers to take his little brother and mum first. They were able to save the 10-year-old boy, but by the time they came back for Jordan and his mum, Donna, it was too late, and they were swept away and drowned. It all happens in a matter of minutes - seconds, even - and it's almost too hard to comprehend. When I was speaking to mum about all of this, that's the word she used: incomprehensible. It's just so heart breaking.

But, there are some beautiful stories of bravery, courage and survival that have emerged, so I'm trying to keep them top of mind. Like this awesome guy, who waded into the chest-high water to save a frightened horse:

Mia Freedman has just uploaded an awesome post about how we can all help. After seeing the above video, I instantly donated to the Equine charity and RSPCA :)

I'm so uplifted to see how people have been responding to this disaster. Offering accommodation to strangers, minding pets, volunteering to cook, helping with rescue efforts, donating cash... Australia is a county that rallies, and over the last few days, I've never been prouder to be an Australian.

the strangest places

2011-01-10T22:37:00.000+11:00

Every now and then I do a google search of my name to find out where it's popping up on the interwebs. Vain, I know. Usually a few real estate websites show up first with articles I've written about property investing, and then there's a listing for a marie claire article I wrote about the contraceptive pill, and then links to this blog.

Googling my own name is not just for vanity's sake - it's also proven quite profitable! Once, I found my name on an online story for Cosmopolitan Brazil. It was a reproduction of an article I'd written for Cosmo in Australia, but they hadn't paid me for the reprint, so I chased up another fee. Bonus!

Tonight, I googled my name for the first time in about a year and this strange entry popped up:

I'm officially, albeit very loosely, connected to the Neighbours juggernaut!! As a long term fan of the show, I couldn't be more pleased!!

ted williams

2011-01-06T13:41:00.001+11:00

Since this video was uploaded, Ted Williams - a homeless man from Columbo, Ohio - has been offered a full time job with the Cleveland Caveliers, and has been given a home! Amazing stuff.

socialising on social media

2011-01-04T22:56:00.001+11:00

Alan Sorkin, director of The Social Network, recently made these comments about social media. So spot on!!!

Referring to a young woman who recently posted a Facebook status update about eating too many chocolate desserts and vowing to hit the gym...

“I thought this girl was reinventing herself as Ally McBeal. There’s a great beloved American character of the thirtysomething single woman making it on her own in the city that we’ve had since Mary Richards.

"Now in that wall post, she wasn’t talking to somebody, she was writing at somebody—and she was writing for an audience. That’s what I do. I don’t call that socializing. I call it acting and performing. I feel that socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.”

what's the carbon footprint on that?

2010-12-27T09:48:00.000+11:00

I bought a lemon from an IGA store this week in Robina on the Gold Coast - and the sticker on it showed that it was from California!!

Don't we make lemons locally in Australia?

I can't believe that it's more cost effective to ship lemons to Queensland, Australia than it is to buy local produce. What the?!

ready steady cook

2010-12-15T22:07:00.000+11:00

My husband is a national TV star! Of sorts! Okay, not quite, but he was on the daytime TV show 'Ready Steady Cook' today. He did so well and came home with some delicious new recipes :)

adventures in freelancing

2010-12-10T15:22:00.001+11:00

paint by numbers

2010-12-07T18:09:00.000+11:00

My life is all about numbers at the moment!

How many hours has she been asleep?
How long since her last feed?
How many nappies have we got left?
How much weight did she gain this week?
Did I get 4 hours sleep last night, or 5?
Is that her third poo in the last hour?!

Thankfully, I like numbers (tax time is my favourite time of year).

And Lila's super cute! Here she is in cartoon form :)

seven days

2010-11-15T19:01:00.000+11:00

Our little girl has finally arrived! Lila Elizabeth was born Tuesday November 9 at 11am. She changes sooo much every day! Here's her first 7 days:

devastation

2010-11-05T08:53:00.000+11:00

I visited my cousin and her beautiful new baby daughter, Zoé, this week. My cousin had made delicious freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, and they were so good I asked for the recipe. On the way home I bought all of the ingredients to make a batch. Happy days!

Last night I whipped up the mixture and popped two trays of cookies in the oven..

And then promptly forgot about them.

This photo actually makes them look better than they did in real life. The tray was black. All of those chunks of delicious cadbury chocolate, now charred and unsalvageable... just devastating.

** In my defence, once I popped the trays in the oven, David took over the kitchen to make dinner, so I kind of forgot that I was baking. And I'm almost 39 weeks pregnant, so I'm invoking the "baby brain" excuse.

daytime tv

2010-10-28T12:33:00.000+11:00

I'm officially on self-imposed maternity leave now, which means I'm allowed to watch daytime tv, completely guilt-free.

I was watching Dr Oz this week and he said that during pregnancy, your brain actually shrinks by up to 8%!! You don't lose brain cells, but the ones that you do have, get smaller.

And then, after you give birth, your brain re-wires really quickly so you can adapt to taking care of your new baby, and it apparently gets even more powerful than before you got pregnant.

How amazing is that?!

work/life balance (if such a thing exists)

2010-10-12T11:56:00.001+11:00

TED talks are always inspiring. This one, delivered by Nigel Marsh in Sydney recently, is particularly awesome.

It's all about the work/life balance, something almost all of us are trying to figure out these days! New technology has brought work into our homes and home into the workplace, so the line between work and play is becoming increasingly blurry.

When you work for yourself full-time, from home, it's hard to see that line sometimes: I try to close my email on a Friday night and not open it again til Monday morning, but that rarely happens!

Nigel's talk goes for 10 minutes and it's really insightful. He delivered a few gems that I had to rewind and watch again:

"The reality of the society that we’re in is that there are thousands and thousands of people out there, leading lives of quiet screaming desperation, where they work long hard hours at jobs they hate, to enable them to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like."

"Governments and corporations aren’t going to solve this problem for us. Stop looking outside: it’s up to us as individuals to take control and responsibility for the type of lives that we want to lead. If you don’t design your life, someone else will design it for you, and you just may not like their idea of balance."

"It’s particularly important that you never put the quality of your life in the hands of a commercial corporation... as commercial companies are inherently designed to get as much out of you as they can get away with. It’s in their DNA, it’s what they do – even the good, well intentioned companies."

the not-so-glamourous life

2010-10-08T10:14:00.000+11:00

I've written before about my love of "behind the scenes" celebrity stories. Maybe it's because I work in the media and I know how much effort goes into projecting the "right" image, so I enjoy seeing what goes on around the shiny red carpet moments.

It's also because I'd love the chance to enjoy the life of a wealthy celebrity, even for just a day - to have a cleaner and a gardener, and a house big enough to require a cleaner and a gardener. Filled with furniture that we didn't have to assemble ourselves. And maybe even an Oprah-style personal chef.

Articles like this one, though, serve as a gentle reminder that sometimes, no matter how much cash you have or how bright your celebrity star is shining, you have to do stuff that is decidedly unglamorous.

During an interview to promote her new movie Life As We Know It, Katherine Heigl talks about her baby daughter, Naliegh. More specifically, she talks about her baby's bowel movements.

“In the beginning, when they’re little, it’s not that bad,” Heigl says.

“But now she’s almost 2 and she really needs to get potty trained. This is now grown-up kind of pooping.

"Yesterday I was in an airplane, and they didn’t have one of those fold-down changing tables in the tiny bathroom. I had to lay her across the toilet and kneel below her. It was brutal. And the smell was... I was thinking, what did you eat? So now, I’m committed to potty training.”

first world problems

2010-10-07T08:45:00.000+11:00

I work from home and as a result, I have a really awesome commute each day. It's about 20 steps from the kitchen, where I eat coco pops standing up at the bench, to my office, which is down at the other end of the house.

In my last job before I became a freelancer I used to catch a train to work, which took about 45 minutes each way door-to-door. Even that wasn't that bad, by Sydney standards. I have friends who have commuted two hours each way to get and from work each day... that's 20 hours a week of smelly armpits, questionable sticky seats and sharing your personal space with strangers. Ick.

So yes, my morning commute is brilliant and I'm super grateful for it.

But I do have one little gripe about my morning routine: the internet.

Every other day, it just decides not to work.

I get to my desk, settle in with a cup of tea, launch the internet and attempt to log in to gmail, and then... nothing. Sometimes, I get that evil apple colour wheel of death. Usually, though, the computer just has a giant think before declaring, "Page can't be displayed as you are not connected to the internet."

Sigh.

So I have to amble back down the hallway to the living room, bend down to unplug the modem - which is no easy task at the moment, with 8 months worth of pregnant belly - hold it for 10 seconds, re-plug it into the wall, then waddle back to my desk and reconnect to the internet.

The whole process takes all of two minutes, so it's really no big deal.

In fact it's such a first world problem that it barely deserves to be mentioned, let alone griped about on the interwebs.

But, I work by myself. I don't have co-workers to commiserate with as we make our 10.30am coffees in the staff kitchen, and I don't have an IT guy to complain to. So, I'm whinging to cyberspace. Thanks for listening :) I feel loads better now.

As you were.

why some mum's have no friends..

2010-09-29T18:16:00.002+10:00

say what now?

2010-09-17T11:30:00.000+10:00

Sometimes gmail freaks me out.

I checked my emails a few minutes ago and noticed this message at the top of the page, where lines of advertising are usually displayed:

WTF?

In broader context, it looked like this (how jaunty is my email background, PS - so much nicer than boring Outlook! I reminds me of Super Mario Bros games):

Just as I was thinking that gmail had completely lost its marbles - or I had - I glanced right and saw the end of the message. Apparently, it's just a friendly (and totally weird) recycling tip. Case solved. Phew!

parky's law

2010-09-14T16:40:00.000+10:00

Have you ever heard of Parkinson's Law?

Parkinson's Law simply states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

My God, can I relate to this.

In other words, whatever your deadline is to complete a certain task, that it the amount of time it will take to do it. If you set yourself a deadline of 24 hours, you'll work productively and efficiently to complete the task within that time frame. If you set yourself a deadline of one week for the exact same task, you'll dither and get distracted and take a full week to complete it.

This explains why I NEVER make a dent in my epic to-do list, which is full of exciting jobs like "do the filing" (the stack is now about 2 feet high) and "clean out email account" (who can be bothered?). Perhaps I need to adopt the Pomodoro Technique? It sure looks fun!

my new obsession:

2010-09-13T09:43:00.000+10:00

Discount deal websites. They're multiplying at an alarming speed and I'm spending a motsa on ALL of them! These sites offer deals that I can't resist, like half-price facials & massages, discount hair cuts and deluxe car washes at 70% off. I'm in bargain heaven... but my credit card is not :(

At last count there were six websites - I visit them almost obsessively to see what the next "deal" is! Sad but true...

cudo.com.au
jumponit.com
ouffer.com.au
ourdeal.com.au
scoopon.com.au
spreets.com.au

look out rihanna!

2010-09-08T09:01:00.001+10:00

Will Smith's daughter Willow has recorded a hip-hop/pop song.

She's all of nine years old..
But the song is really, really good!
Easily as catchy as Rihanna.

They start so young these days...

fabulosity

2010-09-06T10:14:00.003+10:00

I love "behind the scenes" stories about anything, but I especially love peeks into the world of celebrity.The version that we usually see is so shiny and polished and PR'd, so I devour anything that gives a genuine glimpse into how their world really operates.

Like this story, about a Cosmo shoot with Baby Phat designer - and creator of the term "fabulosity" - Kimora Lee Simmons. The title of the article is: "The Disastrous Day We Shot Kimora Lee Simmons", so you know it's going to be juicy. Is it. Total gold.

my favourite moment

2010-08-24T10:09:00.000+10:00

I love this post on MamaMia last week - it's all about your favourite moment of the day. Mia writes:

I gave a corporate keynote speech at a conference a couple of weeks ago and one of the other speakers... was talking about the moment in your day you love most. The one that makes you happiest. Makes you exhale. Feel grounded. Curl your toes with delight. Something that’s part of your everyday routine.

For her, she said it was the moment she got into her office each day at 7:30am when she had her latte and raisin toast at her desk. Nobody else was around and she got to drink that coffee and eat that toast while getting ready for her day. It only lasted a few minutes and she didn’t even realise how important it was to her.

Until it was gone. When she had a baby and took maternity leave, she found herself getting stressed and falling into a hole. When she tried to work out what it was that was missing, she realised it was her morning moment with her raisin toast and latte. Suddenly, she was lucky if she grabbed something to eat by lunchtime and never in peace.

When she explained this to her husband, he very sweetly bought her a cappuccino machine. She was touched but it only helped her realise that is wasn’t the toast and coffee itself, it was those moments of solitude while having her breakfast. It was also the fact that someone else had made it. Having worked that out, she better understood what she needed and was in a better position to try and make it happen.

It got me thinking about my favourite moment of the day. When I worked as a journalist for a publisher in St Leonards my favourite moment was around 10.30am, when I'd nip across the road to the cafe to buy peanut butter on toast.

Whenever I make it at home I apply a scraping of butter to moisten the bread and a light smear of PB, but the cafe ladies favoured extravagent lashings of spread. The over-sized slices of lightly-toasted brown bread were drowning in butter and then slathered with peanut butter, for the princely sum of $2.50. It was magic. Mmm now I'm hungry...

These days I work from home and I think my favourite moment is when my husband gets home. He starts at 4am and arrives home around midday, so I usually break for lunch when he gets home and we eat together. We make tea and coffee and sandwiches or eggs and toast, and watch a little Oprah or Dr. Phil while we catch up on our days. Then he goes to bed for an afternoon nap - did I mention he starts at 4am? - and I go back to work for my "afternoon shift". It's a lovely routine that will likely be shot to shit once the little one arrives in a few months, but at least we can enjoy it for now :)

gladys for a girl, bruce for a boy?

2010-08-17T14:25:00.000+10:00

This week I've been researching an article on Baby Names, which is a bit of a bonus, as David and I are currently workshopping names for our own little muppet. We don't know whether a boy or girl will be joining us in November, so we'd like to be prepared with a shortlist for both.

Sadly, I've discovered that ALL of the names I love are popular, and they regularly pop up in top 10 lists. Why does that happen?!

It's a "chicken and the egg" type of deal: I wonder whether we start hearing these names more frequently, so they subconsciously become more familiar and we start to like them more? Or is it just a matter of coincidence that every pregnant woman between 2008 - present has loved the names Jack, William, Ella and Olivia?!

I did a little re-con and discovered that my folks weren't too original - check out the number one pick for 1981!

(# 27 is also my middle name, Katherine).

I thought I'd check out the lists from yester-year to see if I could pluck any inspiration from the most popular names in 1929. Unless we decide to call our baby Shirely, Lorna or Norma, we're out of luck - although Elsie is quite cute!

4 sisters, 4 babies, 4 days...

2010-08-12T08:56:00.000+10:00

Four sisters from the same family each gave birth last week - within four days of each other! Can you imagine the birthday celebrations in that family in the years to come?!

Sisters Lilian Sepulveda, 27, Saby Pazos, 29 and Leslie Pazos, 24 gave birth in the same suburban Chicago hospital on Friday and Saturday. The same obstetrician Dr Jean Alexandre Jr. delivered all three the babies.

A fourth sister, Heidi Lopez, gave birth on Monday in California.

Apparently they didn't plan to have babies at the same time, with Saby sayin it was "a surprise for everyone".

The grandparents must be over the moon!

For the record, the babies were named Abel Brian, Ashley Mishell, Emily Marie and Jonathan.

struggle-town

2010-08-09T11:20:00.000+10:00

I try to keep an open mind and appreciate that everyone has their own opinion.

I understand, for instance, that some people are uncomfortable with homosexuality. I don't understand why they feel this way, because in my view there is nothing "wrong" with it - loads of my friends are gay, including some of my besties, and it's just not an issue.

But others have their reasons for not getting on board, often to do with their background, upbringing and/or religious beliefs, and I get that. Each to their own.

What I struggle with is ignorance. And ignorant-sounding people - like Wendy Francis, the Queensland Family First politician, who spat these statements into the Twitterverse over the weekend:

The rigid conviction and certainty that she has in stating that "legitimising gay marriage" is akin to "legalising child abuse" just... boggles the mind. (You can read the rest of her musings here.) It's uneducated, and ridiculous, and kind of makes me want to pull my hair out with frustration.

But instead, I'll take a deep breath and try to remember that everyone has their own opinion, and we don't all have to see eye to eye... and I'll distract myself with this cute website.

I can't wait for this election to be over!

stuck in my head

2010-08-06T09:36:00.000+10:00

This song is stuck in my head!! Well it's not so much a song, it's a remix...

And this is the age we live in. It started with a news bulletin. The context and subject of the news story is no laughing matter; a woman was almost assaulted in her own bed when a stranger climbed in through her window and tried to attack her. Thankfully, her brother heard her screaming and busted in, frightening the attacker off.

The TV news bulletin about the fracas has gone viral, because the victim's brother, Antoine Dodson, was so animated:

And now, Antoine is EVERYWHERE!! It is out of control. He has his own wikipedia entry, Facebook fan page, official website... there's a line of t'shirts... and a group of clever dicks has even remixed a song from the news bulletin! It's actually really catchy...

The TV station has done a follow up interview with Antoine and he looks like a really lovely guy. He's much calmer in this interview :) Hopefully he's making at least some money off of all of these ringtone and tshirt sales!

sometimes I don't get the fashion industry

2010-07-28T14:15:00.000+10:00

I love dressing up and wearing pretty make-up as much as the next girl, but sometimes the fashion industry perplexes me.

These are the highly-airbrushed, glossy, polished images I'm used to seeing in the world of fashion:

But this? Not so much:

Frockwriter reports that this pic was taken by photographer Dario Salamone and as part of an editorial in The Ones To Watch, an emerging talent website operated by models.com. The subject is Russian model Alonya Zubakina and the shoot is "a story shot on film about the darkness of the sacred and the sublime of nature, inspired by the power of natural lights, relics, votives and Alonya's beauty".

Okaaay. I actually see an undernourished pale teenager in desperate need of a cheeseburger, but whatevs. You say potatoe...

'sharing' is code for 'stalking'

2010-07-27T16:59:00.002+10:00

This is why technology terrifies me!! All of these social media websites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and FourSquare are designed for "sharing", but really that's code for "stalking". Which is all well and good, because you can control (to a degree) how much information about yourself that you reveal to perfect strangers.

But FourSquare actively encourages genuine stalking, because it provides your exact location to whoever wants to know - in real time!

It's all too much "sharing". As journalist Leo Hickman writes in his article for The Guardian:

"Louise has straight, auburn hair and, judging by the only photograph I have of her, she's in her 30s. She works in recruitment. I also know which train station she uses regularly, what supermarket she shopped at last night and where she met her friends for a meal in her home town last week. At this moment, she is somewhere inside the pub in front of me meeting with colleagues after work.

"Louise is a complete stranger. Until 10 minutes ago when I discovered she was located within a mile of me, I didn't even know of her existence. But equipped only with a smartphone and an increasingly popular social networking application called Foursquare, I have located her to within just a few square metres, accessed her Twitter account and conducted multiple cross-referenced Google searches using the personal details I have already managed to accrue about her from her online presence.

"In the short time it has taken me to walk to this pub in central London, I probably know more about her than if I'd spent an hour talking to her face-to-face."

Cah-Reepy!! I don't like it one bit.

Do you want to know the scariest part?

Louise thought she was "being very careful" with what she was posting, she confessed when Leo eventually interviewed her. "I never thought I was revealing personal information, and I only use my maiden name when using social networking apps," she said. Still, she says she'll keep using FourSquare, she's just going to be more measured about how she goes about it.

God, social media is exhausting. I'm nearing my threshold. The term implies fun but it's beginning to feel like a chore; each website and widget is just another thing on the to-do list that needs to be "managed". I think my attitude may be a sign that I'm getting old, but I can't help it - I'd take a cup of tea and a game of scrabble over an hour of FaceStalking any day!

this week I...

2010-07-20T11:22:00.001+10:00

Went to the premiere of Killers! I walked past Ashton Kutcher on the red carpet - he's tall and he has that impossibly creamy "movie star" complexion. I hate walking the red carpet at things like that: hundreds of disappointed eyes scan over you, willing you to move out of the way of their view of actual famous people. Way too intimidating.
Interviewed Arj Barker! For Ultimate magazine. He was really funny.
Developed a new craving! I want scones with jam and cream right now. I don't know where to get scones in Bondi Junction so I'm going to try and bake them.
Starting reading a great book! It's called Perfection and I can't put it down.

breakfast of champions

2010-07-19T11:52:00.000+10:00

We had a beautiful, relaxing stay in the Blue Mountains this weekend, courtesy of our lovely friends Linc and Michael. We used to be neighbours when we all lived in the same complex in Pyrmont a few years ago; we bonded over nightly walks on the rooftop garden with our pooches, and since then have discovered that we have many many more things in common, like a mutual love of food, wine, movies, music, travel and gadgets! (Linc already has an iPad; David is exceptionally envious. He "forgot" to pack our laptop charger cable and as a result had to use Linc's iPad all weekend... coincidence? I think not!).

Every few months we hustle the dogs into the car and head up to their place for a weekend of fun, and so it was that on Friday we dressed in our warmest winter woolies and drove up to Katoomba after David finished work.

It was AWESOME. So relaxing. The air was fresh (and freezing!), and there was no traffic noise! And we had the most lovely, lazy weekend where we literally lazed in the living room and chatted and watched TV from the moment we arrived til the moment we left - except for sleeping, and Linc dissapearing to the kitchen every now and then to whip up a pavlova (!!), or to top up our drinks.

Poor Michael had to go to work, but we all had breakfast together on Saturday before his shift started and it was what I imagine staying at a deluxe BnB would be like. For breakfast they presented a spread of homemade bircher muesli with berries and yoghurt, toast, juice, fried eggs and hot chocolate. It looked so good I had to take a photo. It tasted so good, I think I'll have to go and make fried eggs for lunch. Right now.

out of control

2010-07-11T10:11:00.000+10:00

Sometimes it's fun to waste time online on random sites like Engrish.com and Lamebook. It's a bit hit and miss, but these made me chuckle thismorning:

poor david.

2010-07-08T12:23:00.003+10:00

Just when I thought I was cruising through this pregnancy with limited emotional side effects, the hormones have kicked in. Yikes.

I've had soo many physical reactions - vomiting, nausea, migraines, leg cramps - that I thought I might be spared the highs and lows of hormonal fluctuations. Hmm. Not so much.

The last few days I've been a little bit difficult to live with, and David has handled it so well. I won't go into the nitty gritty - they're boring and involve such things as getting to the post office before 5pm (there were tears) - but he has calmly responded to my outbursts with gems like, "Why don't I go to the post office for you, while you catch up on an ep of Desperate Housewives?"

It's made me wonder how pregnant women cope in seriously serious situations. Like this women, Elizabeth, who concealed her pregnancy from her boss so she could continue working. Her job? Reporting from the front line as an embedded journalist in Iraq.

I can't even imagine doing that job under normal conditions, but with pregnancy hormones and crazy cravings and irrational reactions to seemingly normal situations?! I would go bonkers. And so would everyone around me.

season finale

2010-07-06T10:09:00.001+10:00

Last night we watched the final episode of Roseanne, and it was so sad!

I know, the show finished 13 years ago, so I'm over a decade late, but I've just started watching Roseanne again now that 111 Hits plays it all the time.

The first time I watched it, I was 9 and I didn't get most of the jokes, but I always laughed along with my siblings anyway. Now that I do get the jokes, they're pretty funny! Except for the season finale...

The last episode wasn't funny. Dan died. I cried!

It turns out that the WHOLE SERIES - all nine seasons, complete with interchangeable Becky's - was a figment of Roseanne's imagination!!

It's revealed in the final episode that the matriach of the Connor family struggled to cope with everything that life threw her way, so she vented all of her frustrations by writing. Thus every episode of the series, we learn, was based on Roseanne Connor's musings.

In "reality"...

Jackie is gay
Becky is with David
Darlene is married to Mark
The Connor's never won the lottery
and Dan has died of a heart attack!!

The shock is still SO RAW that I had to blog about it this morning. You television writers, you play with our emotions so...

children = unhappiness? doh!

2010-07-05T08:27:00.000+10:00

This is just the kind of article you want to read when you're five months pregnant.

The gist: "New research suggests that having children makes us unhappy - it's just that none of us feels able to admit it".

AWESOME!

In his new book The Happiness Equation, behavioural economist Dr Nick Powdthavee finds that although most parents would claim that children enhance their lives, in actual fact, they don't.

He believes this is because "there is a discrepancy between what we think makes us happy and what happiness data shows actually makes us happy. When you measure how happy parents are on a happiness index, they report either an insignificant difference in happiness or lower levels of happiness compared with non-parents."

A big part of the problem is the cult of parental perfection. "In the past 20 years or so, parenting has taken on this crazy emotional investment," says Dr Simon, "popularly referred to as helicopter parenting, in which children are at the centre of their parents' lives. Our parents wouldn't have dreamed of spending so much time with their kids."

The best comment in the entire article - because it makes me sigh with relief - comes from economist Bryan Caplan, from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He's an economist, so I don't really get why he's being quoted in a story about children and happiness, but his advice is spot on:

"If you enjoy reading with your children, wonderful. But if you skip the nightly book, you're not stunting their intelligence, ruining their chances for college or dooming them to a dead-end job. Watching television, playing sports, eating vegetables, living in the right neighbourhood: your choices have little effect on your kids' development, so it's OK to relax."

sleepy snoopy

2010-07-04T11:02:00.000+10:00

Shocking revelation: it's really, really cold in Sydney at the moment. It's turning me into a really unsociable hermit, because all I want to do is snuggle up on the couch with my sleeping bag/snuggie and watch endless episodes of Law & Order: SVU and Desperate Housewives!

So on Friday night, we did just that - and it was AWESOME. I made mini-quiches for dinner, and then we cracked open a block of chocolate and watched the last three episodes of the last ever season of 24. Best. Night. Ever!

Snoopy had a great night too. We've put little sweaters on the dogs because they get so cold they sometimes shake (aw!), so I let Snoopy have the other end of the couch and he snuggled up under the sleeping bag as well. He's such a cute little muppet :)

julian smith

2010-07-02T10:34:00.000+10:00

This guy is hilarious!! Definitely adding Julian Smith's site to my mental favourites list. Here's just a couple of random gems from his video collection:

if it was my home

2010-06-28T08:18:00.000+10:00

Some clever dickens has created a website called "If It Was My Home", where you can input your location and find out what the BP Oil Disaster in the Gulf would look like if it covered your home.

In my case, it obliterates Sydney and stretches North to Forster - a 3.5 hour drive - and South almost to Canberra!!

Heartbreaking, and devastating. It's getting worse by the day - it started gushing over two months ago, and still there's no solution. How suuuper depressing...

what a news cycle

2010-06-24T09:43:00.001+10:00

Holy crap! The last 24 hours have been massive. I usually try to avoid the news because it's often sad and depressing, but last night it was hard to avoid the breaking news that our Prime Minister is on the verge of being ousted! What the?!

I mean, I knew Rudd wasn't all that popular, but a challenge for the leadership is pretty intense. And now, suddenly, we have a new female PM. Creating history, yes, but the whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. It's politics and all, I get it, but all of that behind-the-scenes scheming and bitching and conniving against our PM just seems so... underhanded. unAustralian.

It feels a bit icky because, a) Rudd ends his prime ministership so unceremoniously, and b) having our first ever female PM is a pretty big deal, but there's so much negativity and deviousness surrounding her appointment. The Australian people didn't even elect her! I don't know. I just prefer it when things play out nicely :)

In other news - the World Cup!! Australia won, but it wasn't enough to qualify us to move ahead. Boo.

And then the tennis! At Wimbledon, John Isner and Nicholas Mahut played for seven hours to reach 59-59 - a Wimbledon record - before they had to turn in for the evening due to crappy lighting.

I'm not sure who wrote this article, as it was republished on SMH's website via the London Telegraph, but the writing perfectly captures the exhaustion of the match. They'll pick up today where they left off at 9pm last night:

Isner, physically deteriorating by the minute, was now moving about court in between points like golden syrup off a spoon - slower, even - from the effort of bending his 6ft 8in frame to retrieve backhands skidding inches from the ground...

Mahut - incredibly - still looked sharp.

John McEnroe, watching courtside, suggested doctors should be present.

"These guys are going to be tired the next day, next week, next month," Roger Federer said.

tea-cup

2010-06-22T20:45:00.000+10:00

I spent the weekend on the Gold Coast visiting friends and family, and my mum jumped on the opportunity of having me close by: within an hour of landing at Coolangatta airport, I was waste deep in boxes of my old stuff that she's been storing for me for years.

I spent an hour or two sifting through boxes of old school books, photos, soft toys and clothes, sorting the goods into piles of "keep", "bin" and "charity". Thankfully the "keep" pile was the smallest.

And then I stumbled across a box of vintage crockery that mum had accidentally stored in the spare bedroom closet. The box was full of beautiful mother-of-pearl tea cups, saucers and dinner plates, but unfortunately most of them were cracked and broken.

It turns out they once belonged to my dad's parents (my grandparents), who died many many years before I was born. This box was full of the "good china" that his folks would dust off when special guests came over. I rescued one complete tea-cup set and carefully carried it home with me to Sydney; hopefully my brother will be able to piece back together the rest of the cups and saucers, as I'd love to inherit the whole set one day :)

kind of amazeballs!

2010-06-16T07:17:00.000+10:00

For anyone who's ever played Frogger, Tetris, Pacman, Galaga...

the boys

2010-06-16T07:04:00.000+10:00

There was no room for me on the couch last night.

sally sensitive

2010-06-10T10:30:00.000+10:00

I'm such a Sensitive Sally, truly, and now that I'm all pregnant and hormonal, I've gotten much worse.

Yesterday we had an epic travel fail: we missed our Delta flight from NYC-LAX, even though we arrived at the airport 2 hours before our departure time.

We'd checked in online the night before and when we arrived the morning of our flight, the attendant told us we were well overweight (how rude!).

So we were faffing about in the check in area, re-packing and re-weighing our bags, and evidently we didn't check our bags through in time - we were six minutes late. We had been loitering in the virtually-barren check in area for almost an hour and there were staff everywhere, none of whom warned us about the strict one-hour bag check in policy. But still, they wouldn't budge. Cue fuming!

As if that wasn't annoying enough, the woman behind the desk was sooo incredibly rude and patronising when informing us that we were six minutes late and would need to wait four hours for the next flight - plus pay a $50pp fee.

When I asked why there weren't any signs warning about the baggage policy, nor any warnings from the dozen or so staff members milling around, she curtly replied there were "plenty of opportunities to get that information online". Cue the big fat, salty, uncontrollable crocodile tears. Sensitive Sally strikes! (P to the S > never flying Delta ever again!)

But we made it, and today we're in beautiful sunny LA, and we've had a gorgeous day. Breakfast by the pool, some ping-pong, a quick dip in the pool and a drive to the Disney Ice-Cream Parlour on Hollywood Blvd for delicious Banana Split Sundaes. But wait! Sensitive Sally strikes again...

So after paying for our parking after our delicious dessert treats, my friend spotted some cash on the ground. A decent amount - more than $20, less than $200. There was no one around, and we were in a big car park attached to a touristy shopping centre, so there was nowhere to hand it in.

But now, I feel soooo bad for the person that lost it! It feels like dirty money. We've kept it, with vague intentions to do something good with it (don't know what?!), but I can't help but wonder who it belonged to, and how crap their day is as a result of losing it. Odds are, the money fell out of the pocket of a tourist, and while that sucks (after all, I'm a tourist!), at least they're on "holiday money" and they're in "holiday mindset" so they'll rebound pretty quickly. I hope so. Ugh!

I feel plagued with guilt! Would you feel guilty in this situation?! I need to go and work through the anxiety with a quick swim... we'll be returning to Sydney Winter in mere days, so I'm soaking up the sun while I can! :)

max + winnie

2010-06-02T01:10:00.000+10:00

Meet the two cutest puppies in all of New York City: three-month-old Max and eight-month-old Winnie. They're the fur kids of our friends Mike and Lana, and they are too adorable for words - so I'll let the pictures tell the story instead :)

a tale of two cities

2010-05-27T02:30:00.000+10:00

In the last few days we've visited two vastly different supermarkets, and they really represent the ying and yang of living in New York City.

The first was Dean & Deluca, a supermarket chain of the gourmet variety. To call it a chain is a bit misleading - when you step inside the heavy double doors of D&D SoHo, it feels less like you've walked into a grocery store and more like you should check in with a maitre d'!

Here you'll find handmade licorice, imported cheese, truffles and caviar competing for shelf space with freshly baked pastries, jars of grilled veges and slabs of wagyu beef. Playing softly in the background is classic orchestral music, to help you relax while you mull over the pro's and cons of a $15 jar of olives.

We bought some brioche bread and croissants to have with the Brunette Praline spread we picked up last week, but with a little more time and money I could have walked out with bags of produce.

And then, there's Walgreens. In the US there are "drug stores" like Walgreens, Duane Reade and CVS selling cut-price wares on every corner. They're like a cross between a supermarket and a pharmacy in Australia: you can find everything from toothpaste and lipstick to cereal, milk and bread, and you can get your prescription filled, too. They're super cheap and best of all, the never seem to close.

Walgreens is where I went to buy cereal this week, having run out of the box of Raisin Bran I bought on my first day. It's hard to buy cereal in the US because most of the cereal boxes actually contain candy treats disguised as breakfast food! Check it out:

Golden Grahams. Reese's Puffs. And Cookie Crisp!

Cookie Crisp is literally a bowl of chocolate chip cookies. It was apparently created to recreate "the great taste of chocolate chip cookies and milk” in a breakfast cereal (?!). When they launched in 1977, their tagline was:

"You can’t have cookies for breakfast, but you can have Cookie Crisp!"

Seriously! No wonder more than 63% of Americans are overweight or obese.

Still, I think I have to try them. But for dessert, not for breakfast!

sex & the city 2!

2010-05-25T13:24:00.003+10:00

Tonight we braved the well-heeled (literally!) crowds and lined up with thousands of screaming fans along the red carpet of the Sex & The City 2 world premiere at Radio City Music Hall.

I am a HUGE SATC fan - so much so that I turn off the TV as soon as a SATC2 trailer comes on because I want to know as LITTLE about the plot as possible before I see the film. I did it last time and walked into the theatre not even knowing that Big and Carrie were getting married. I mean, what's the deal with giving away the whole movie in the trailer?! Soo frustrating!

Anyway, David has become a default SATC fan because we watch it so frequently in our household. At first he would put up with it because he liked seeing New York City in the background... and then he got caught up in the storylines. More than once I've gone to bed and heard the signature theme song blaring from the lounge room as he settles in for another episode, so he's kind of a bonefide fan these days.

SO! The Premiere. We turned up to Radio City Music Hall on 50th street at around 5.30pm, and the street was pretty quiet. There were oodles of ladies, dressed in beautiful dresses and sky-high heels, lining up against the wall, but there was nowhere near enough drama for a movie premiere of this magnitude. A quick chat with a chubby security guard revealed that the red carpet premiere was on the other side of the building, on 51st street - this was the line for people who were actually seeing the movie.

We traipsed around the corner and, WOW!

The red carpet was dressed with elaborate chandeliers and beautiful lighting. There were about a million glammed-up reporters and photographers and then on the other side of the road were thousands of squished fans. We joined the harem.

The first 30 minutes were boring and event-free, and I seriously considered bailing in favour of a hot fudge sundae from McDonalds in Times Square. Then we squeezed our way up the line until we were smack bang in front of the E! News press pit. By 6.30pm the stars were starting to strut the red carpet, and the crowds went crazy. This is where having a 6 foot 3 husband comes in handy!

I was predictably hot and nauseous and fatigued and dizzy all at once, so I stepped back a little from the heaving crowd and let David work his magic. He pushed his way to the front and took some AWESOME photos!

Thankfully I'm reasonably tall too, so I was able to squeeze a few glimpses over the top of the crowd. SJP looked classy but pretty understated in her bright yellow frock - I was expecting more drama! Kristen Davis looked gorgeous with a high bun and pink frock: she rocked this look in SATC one ep when Charlotte was all inspired after watching an Elizabeth Taylor documentary, and she looked hot. Cynthia Nixon was just stunning (she's grown her hair long!) and Kym Cattrall looked ridiculously hot for a woman of 54.

Anyway, you can judge for yourself with our pics, below (click on the photo for a bigger version). The clothes!! The hair!! The impossibly smooth skin!! And that's just the guys.. hehe. It was totally worth lining up, and I'm more excited than ever to see the movie now. Woohoo!

shopping!

2010-05-24T01:44:00.000+10:00

Maybe I've gone just a little bit overboard with shopping since I've been in the US. But in my defence, I don't know if I'm having a boy or girl so I've had to hedge my bets. And also, everything here is so freakin' cheap!

My fave find so far (please don't judge me) is a baby tracksuit I bought from The Oprah Store. It's soft and teeny and lined with pastel polka dots!! What can I say, I'm an Oprah tragic..

what happens in Vegas..

2010-05-15T14:44:00.001+10:00

..stays in Vegas, or so the saying goes. But that only really applies if you get up to really crazy shenanigans, and since my recent trip to Sin City was completely PG, I think it's okay to dish the details!

So after a 26-hour journey door-to-door from Sydney to Las Vegas, Nevada, my friend Tania and I finally checked in to our suite at Caesars Palace. We booked an el-cheapo basic room, but when we checked in at 1am on a Friday night they didn't have any basic rooms available, so we were upgraded to an amazing junior suite overlooking the pool. Cha-ching!

Only downside? One section of the pool area transforms into a VIP pool party on the weekends - complete with European (neked!) sunbathing - so the bass starting pumping at 10am. After falling into bed circa 2am I was hoping for a whopping big sleep-in, but you don't really go to Vegas to rest and relax, I guess..

The next four days were spent shopping, eating, dancing, walking, exploring, sunbathing, swimming and reading. Yeah, it was really tough. We also saw Jerry Seinfeld doing stand-up one night, which was hilarious! The only thing missing was "drinking", which I had planned on getting involved in quite routinely - after all, it's Vegas, and the drinks are FREE in Vegas! FREE!!

But alas, it wasn't meant to be, as I managed to get knocked up between booking the trip and arriving on The Strip. Nothing shuts down a conversation in a nightclub quite as quickly as "Can I buy you a drink?", followed by "No thanks, I'm pregnant!" The men sprint away from you as fast as their legs can carry them.

Tania's friend organised us entry into a nightclub called TAO - where we bumped into one of the Kardashian's, I think it was Kourtney? - and WOW, was that an eye-opener! Scantily clad models pouted and posed from elevated paltforms; nearly-nude girls writhed around in baths overflowing with rose petals; and the waitresses only wore underwear - like bras and knickers, garters and for the over-dressed gals, a corset. Ce-razy!

Our fancy wristbands entitled us to free bevvies all night, so I made my way through an array of juices before collapsing into bed. Holidays are hard work!

Next stop was Chicago, where we checked into Hotel Felix, a newly-overhauled complex that was completely green: it was redeveloped using recycled materials including the carpet, and it embraces as many eco-friendly and recycling/reusing processes and products as possible.

It was the perfect antidote to crazy Vegas, where smoking is almost mandatory - my suitcase stank of cigarettes by the time we left, and my nose and throat were scratchy from the omni-present smoke that loitered in every casino, foyer and restaurant. Four days was plenty!

Chicago was amazing, but I'll fill you in on that next time - I'm off to bed :)

reddy + dre

2010-04-28T20:48:00.001+10:00

The weather has turned cool in the last few days, and now it's all about ugg boots, snuggies and hot chocolate in our tiny 100-year-old house. Even the dogs are finding it chilly - I've popped a Bam-Bam style coat on Dre (thanks Linc!), but tonight he and Reddy snestled up on the couch together for extra warmth. Tré adorable!

doesn't add up...

2010-04-23T09:50:00.000+10:00

This woman is apparently six months pregnant. What the?!

gmail

2010-04-20T10:43:00.000+10:00

Gmail is getting too smart. I just sent an email, and this message popped up:

STOP READING MY EMAILS GMAIL!!

cheeserific

2010-04-18T16:06:00.000+10:00

I want this burger right now! Hard to believe, but it's actually vegetarian. It looks sooo good, I'm salivating.

glamour + style

2010-04-16T10:55:00.000+10:00

Michelle Obama is so glamourous, stylish and impossibly polished. She always looks so impeccably put together, like a perfectly-styled doll.

It's heartening for us unpolished plebs to see that it wasn't always this way... There is hope yet!

is the internet killing literature?

2010-04-15T09:32:00.000+10:00

I read this article on SMH today, and it really struck a chord.

I use my blog to post interesting or entertaining links, pictures, stories or videos, but it's not all my own work. It's like an online scrapbook of other people's stuff that I find interesting, with the odd post about something I feel like writing about. How self-indulgent!

So when I read this interview with writer Cate Kennedy - who fears that our collective addiction to the internet is killing our ability to produce quality literature - I was intrigued. Because, like many journalists and writers, I've always felt that everything I've done so far in my life is simply leading up to the point where I write and publish that incredible, compelling, New York Times best-selling novel. The very same one that sets the literary world on fire, sells 3 million copies, and allows me to retire in the Greek Islands.

I've often wondered whether google is making me dumb, or at the very least impatient (I want the answer to everything right now!). Cate has confirmed that she considers the internet's constant flow of unprocessed information and chatter ''toxic to fiction'', which she believes requires quiet, slow reflection by writers and readers.

''We're decontextualising, pasting bits of other people's work on our blogs and creating unoriginal mash-ups,'' she says.

Yep, we sure are. Well, I am, anyway..

The flip side of the coin is, at least I'm writing/slash/creating something every other day. Without a blog I don't think I'd write anything "for fun" outside of work, so surely that's a good thing for my own creative development?

Cate's not so sure. As a judge of the Vogel Award for young novelists, she says she reads many manuscripts where "they're not reading or thinking about the impact of the words on the page."
Cate will deliver a speech called 'Can Literature Survive the Digital Age?' at the Sydney Writers' Festival on May 21; I hope she's got good news!

john mayer's fantasy inbox

2010-04-13T01:03:00.000+10:00

24 hours of global flying

2010-04-11T12:02:00.001+10:00

This video represents all of the large aircraft flights in the world over a 24-hour period, condensed down to about a minute. It is best viewed in full screen mode - it's just incredible! It makes you wonder how, with that many planes in the air at any given point, there aren't more crashes?! Amazing.

I especially love the part where he's standing...

2010-04-10T10:55:00.002+10:00

tight ass friends

2010-04-09T09:37:00.000+10:00

There's a great post on MamaMia at the moment about tight asses. I think everyone can make claim to a tight ass friend, and while the offenders may think that they get away with it, thriftiness rarely goes unnoticed! I've had many long-winded rants with friends about the frugal peeps over the years, because it drives me CRAZY!!

Everyone has different values and whatever when it comes to cash, but I can't help but equate a person's money behaviours with their generosity and thoughtfulness as a human being.

There are so many thrifty scenarios that give me the irks, and when a friend displays particularly loathsome tight ass qualities, I'm afraid it sticks in the memory bank for life. The same goes for generous acts too - if a friend buys me a treat simply because they think I'll like it, or shouts lunch "just because", that gets logged in the memory bank as well!

I've had plenty of thrifty friends over the years, and I've learnt to take cash with me when hanging out with the worst offenders. If I'm not packing small notes, then I know I'll end up stiffed with the entire bill while they hand over $7 in shrapnel and promise to fix me up next time.

But the absolute worst is getting stuck with thrifty people at a group dinner. One night in particular comes to mind, when six of us went out for dinner, including a notoriously tight friend. When the bill came we all chucked in our cash, and he/she waited until the end and said, "Put whatever's left on my credit card".

Of course by then, "whatever's left" was about $9, because we'd all thrown in an extra few bucks each to cover a tip. When I pointed this out, he/she replied full of faux sincerity, "Oh no! Well it's too late, I've already given them my card and I've got no cash on me..."

I made a big deal of rummaging through my purse to find another $10 to cover the tip, but I think this person was so busy inwardly celebrating their cheap night out that they didn't notice. Needless to say, these days we keep a closer eye on the bill when dining with this person - and I can't help but have a different opinion about them since that transaction. (It was one of many similar scenes, but for some reason this one night sticks out as being the straw that broke the camel's back!)

I think Jill, a commenter at MamaMia, sums it up best:

"I had a [thrifty] friend that I’d known since high school. She wasn’t going to change and couldn’t understand what my problem was at all. It reduced our friendship to a dollar value, which really sucked. In the end I realised she had different priorities than me. Money was hers, not my friendship."

watch out whitney...

2010-04-08T10:56:00.000+10:00

This Taiwanese guy really gives her a run for her money! The good stuff kicks in around a minute in, but the real gold happens after 1:50..

2010-03-31T11:37:00.000+11:00

The girls recently came over to spend a full day cutting and sewing for SHARE, an amazing program my friend Verity started.

The SHARE Project provides primary or secondary school students in rural communities in Kenya with access to reusable fabric sanitary pads. Without them, the girls either stop going to school when they get their period (because they get teased by the boys) or they use unhealthy traditional methods to manage their cycle (like stuffing their pants with dried cow dung).

So last Saturday, Verity, Lauren, Agnes, Jacinta and I set up shop in my living room and spent the day cutting up old towels, sheets and fabric scraps, before sewing them together into washable, reusable sanitary pads.

It's a pretty incredible program run by a pretty incredible woman - if you're keen to get involved, you can donate old sheets and towels, or your time to cut them up into patterns, your sewing skills if you have them, or plain old cash, right here!

credit card woes

2010-03-29T09:32:00.001+11:00

I hate credit cards. I'm working as hard as I can right now to pay off the last dregs of our credit card limits, and I CAN'T WAIT until the glorious day that I cancel our last credit card and cut it up for good.

My latest credit card woe is so frustratingly typical of banks!

A few weeks ago I bought some currency on an ANZ Travel Card. I took my cash into the bank and was about to hand it over when the teller noticed my ANZ Qantas Frequent Flier Visa in my open purse (I'm so security-conscious!).

"You know, you can pay the cash straight onto your VISA, and then buy the ANZ Travel Card currency using your credit card," she said. "That way you'll earn frequent flyer points on the transaction."

Beauty! I'm in. I paid the cash onto my card, bought the currency on my visa, and felt super smug about my Qantas points win. They take me forever to accumulate so this transaction was a total bonus.

Then today, I got my statement. That little transaction cost me a $20 over-limit fee. What the? When I called up about it, Penny explained:

"You made a large purchase and a large payment on the same day, but with your credit card, debits will ALWAYS be processed before credits. So even though you paid X to the teller, AND THEN bought your currency, the bank will view the transaction as: large purchase (you'e now overlimit!!!) followed by a payment."

Penny reversed the overlimit fee as a goodwill gesture, but the whole thing smacks of unfairness. Her advice for the future was to make a cash payment and wait a full day for it to be processed, before making any large purchases. Convenient, right? It's just so typical that a bank will process a purchase instantly so they can start charging interest that very second, but somehow their technology won't allow a payment to be processed for 24 hours.

Ugh. Vent over. I'm going to make myself a strawberry milkshake to get over it :)

resentment

2010-03-26T10:40:00.000+11:00

I saw this on the back of a van yesterday...

In case you can't read it, it says: "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."

the obesity epidemic

2010-03-22T10:36:00.000+11:00

Yikes. Watching this video gave me a heavy heart, in the same way that the Texas-sized rubbish swirl makes me want to curl up into a ball and cry.

As Jamie Oliver says in the footage: if he stood up and said, "I have the cure for AIDS" or "I have the cure for Cancer", we'd be fighting and scrambling to get it. And here we have an entirely preventable health epidemic, obesity, which can be addressed through diet changes... but we continue to scarf down fast food and "edible food-like substances", as Michael Pollen puts it, in vast quantities.

At 20 minutes it's a lengthy video, but worth watching if you have the time. It'll make you want to eat a fruit salad, stat.