James has been in the wars a little of late.

A couple of weeks ago he got into a little bit of an incident after school. At the time I got an SMS from Amanda letting me know that he’d had a run in with a bully followed by a MMS with a photo of the damage that had been caused.

It seems that he’d been pushed over by someone and landed face first into the bitumen, scraping a large area of skin on his face and nose.

He said he didn’t know who did it but it later became apparent that another kid was throwing sticks at James at the suggestion of his sister.
James, who has one heck of a temper, attempted to throw them back at the other kid but missed. He then went to throw them at Emily and it was at this point that he was pushed, landing on the ground.

What really upsets me is that Amanda didn’t think to call me regarding this. In fact, I didn’t find out until the next day when I went to make a phone call and found that there were messages on it.

I was pretty upset most of the next day and worried about him but did not hear anything else from Amanda so I ended up calling the school to get more information.

This happened on Tuesday and I didn’t hear anything else from Amanda until she dropped the kids off on Saturday.

Moving forward one Saturday and James and Thomas were riding bikes when they collided. Thomas was fine but James got his leg punctured by something on the bike, a bolt perhaps?

It was pretty serious, enough to have someone who lives near to the park pick James up and carry him back, and enough for me to drop what I was doing and drive him up to Joondalup hospital.

We got in fairly quick through the Emergency department and when the doctor had a look he said that the skin layer had been torn right through but there was no damage to the muscle underneath which was good.

It was pretty gross watching him push his finger in under the skin and feel around for damage. Kind of like watching those horror movies where something is crawling up under the skin.

He then cut away the torn skin leaving a hole about 2cm in diameter and then stitched him back up.

Yesterday he returned back after a week at his mothers and I found out that infection had set in so he was on antibiotics and needed to have the dressing looked at every couple of days so this morning I attempted to get him into a doctor. Something that proved very difficult as many places had closed over Easter, including the big 7 day medical centre in Morley.

There is another doctor at the major shopping centre in Morley so we went over there only to find that they had no more appointments. I explained to the receptionist that we had tried the big centre and that my local doctor was closed and that the wound really needed to be looked at so she squeezed us in as the last appointment before they closed.

It’s bad enough that I couldn’t get an appointment at my own doctors on a Saturday (I actually phoned early in the week to try), but it’s even worse that the major medical centre in the area was also closed over the weekend just because it was Easter! Are they trying to say that people don’t get sick at Easter? Probably not as I suspect this is just another indication that there are more job opportunities than actual people able to fill them.

Ok, so the trouble with Telstra continued although, in fairness they have been very helpful fixing up the problems.

For many years I have been able to access my fixed and mobile phone account online but with the changes made to fix my account back to how it was, for some reason I have lost access to that account (and my online phone list) so I had to set up a new account.

I was also charged a reconnection fee for my fixed line (although that will get credited) because apparently they had my street address listed as number 59 which doesn’t actually exist on this street. It turns out no one actually noticed that error and seeing as my phone bill goes to my PO box, my address had been wrong for the last three years.

Finally, it looks like I will get credited for the over-charges for the last couple of months so all is good.

Telstra bashing is quite a popular sport here because the partially government owned telco is still a monopoly in many areas so, despite a couple of decent sized hiccups with my account I am happy with the end result, I just wish I hadn’t had to spend so long on the phone fixing it all up.

While on the subject of Telecommunications, the touch screen on my two year old PDA smart-phone died recently making operating it very difficult so I’ve upgraded my handset and it’s even costing me slightly less per month (albeit only 50cents).

My new phone is a Palm Treo, which I am very happy with. It’s running version of Windows mobile 6 and apparently, “As part of the deal to bring long-time competitor Palm into the Windows fold, Microsoft opened up the Windows Mobile source code for Palm’s modification. This makes Palm the only Windows Mobile licensee permitted to modify the core of the OS, so that enhancements can be built into the OS rather than bolted on as additional layers. ” Source: CNet

It was nice to just be able to synchronise my new phone with my computer and receive all my outlook contacts and appointments from the partnership with my old phone.

While we’re on the subject of technology, my digital camera died a couple of weeks ago. I have no idea what happened, it was working fine and then stopped.

It powers up to go into preview mode and I was able to transfer the photos to my PC but clicking it to camera just causes the unit to power down.

Thankfully the camera is still under warranty but annoyingly, the only place in Australia to get it fixed is in Sydney and we’re looking at a 4 to 5 week turn around.

And finally.. Technology that just isn’t working. My boss got a TomTom GPS when he bought a new vehicle for the business but couldn’t get it to work so he let it sit on the filing cabinet in his office for the last 15 months.

I took it home and had a play with it but I was also unsuccessful in getting it to work. It was asking to have the SD card inserted, upon which it was promptly asking to have the card removed, drawing a big red X through the representation on the screen.

I tested it with a new SD card and also tested the original SD card in the card reader on my notebook but to no avail. It appears that the SD reader on the TomTom is faulty.

While the device is still within the TomTom two year warranty period my boss has no documentation for the unit so we could be left with an expensive paper weight!

It was a quiet start to 2008. The last few years my kids have been with me and I have done something to see in the new year. This year I was at work.

It was really quiet and we were closing up early so I managed to get home before midnight.

So basically my new year celebrations consisted of listening to a “party mix” on the radio, watching the Sydney fireworks on TV and drinking tea.

Woohoo! Go me.

(I should note that it was actually very pleasant and with this post, I am almost up to date!)

As you are probably aware, I found that there were many problems with my new job and I was just not happy with it. For me, family is far more important than money and this job was taking me away from my family for too long, especially on weekends.

The money wasn’t really that good anyway so at the end of October I wrote a letter of resignation.

It wasn’t accepted so I am still working at job X but, as a compromise I now have Saturdays off to spend with family and I don’t start work until Sunday evening. I have also had two pay rises since then which has made the job a little more viable.

Things have been running more smoothly since then and I have actually been enjoying the job however the last couple of weeks we have had a couple of minor incidents which have niggled me again. Staffing issues!

I really don’t understand people. Our workforce is quite young being teenagers and early 20somethings and it’s quite clear that none of them appreciate work. It seems that people feel that work is something that you turn up to and get money without putting any effort into and, if you don’t like the job then you can always leave.

Of course, if you decide you want to quit a job you should make absolutely no effort to actually inform anyone, if you don’t show up for a few shifts then they will phone you and ask and you can tell them then!

It’s clearly the side effect of an employees job market where there is, in many cases, more work than people available to fill the positions.

Of course, when people just don’t bother showing up for work it puts added pressure on the people who have turned up to work.

So, I am currently still at Job X…

I’ll re-think this after the wedding

On Friday we were picked up at our hotel by Popie and Ari and headed up to the mountains to visit a palace there. Unfortunately we got well and truly lost on some back roads and spent ages stopping and asking directions.

Eventually we made it back to the main road and arrived at the palace only to find out that, to visit you needed to obtain permission a month in advance. Oh well, such is life.

We then headed back into Denpasar by which time it was getting into the early afternoon and I was starting to get tired and a little cranky and all I really wanted to do was go back to the hotel and have some lunch.

As it happened though we stopped at a restaurant near Denpasar and I reluctantly joined everyone for lunch there.

It was definitely worth the stop. I had some of the best ayam goreng (fried chicken) that I ever tasted, and that’s a pretty tough call because Lia makes really REALLY good ayam goreng.

I was feeling a lot better after I had eaten.

After lunch we returned to our hotel where we finally had time to just relax and do nothing. It was nice to go for a swim and just chill.

Next to our hotel was a restaurant called the kopi pot and, as kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee and, as coffee is one of my few vices I felt it would be nice to go and have dinner there.

It was a good choice as they had a wide selection of western and Indonesian foods. I was thinking about eating western food originally but elected to go with the rendang (Indonesian beef curry). It may surprise people that it’s not that easy to find Indonesian food in Legian. Many restaurants cater to tourists serving Indonesian styled cuisine with western influences, Italian or Japanese.

We had just got to the restaurant when Popie called us and invited herself to dinner.

After dinner we relaxed a while before starting to pack up our stuff. Popie and Ari came to the hotel around 10.30 to take us to the airport and after saying our goodbyes we headed in to find that our flight was leaving early and was, in fact, already bording.

After being on so many flights that were delayed we had on that was early and what a different experience that was. Normally you have to spend a couple of hours in an airport waiting for your flight but this time we were on the plane within half an hour of arriving at the airport and the flight was in the air about 15 minutes after that.

Ironically, we actually had plenty of money so we could have spent quite a bit of time looking around the multitude of shops inside the departure hall, we just didn’t have any time to look at anything. Last time I was in that airport I was stuck with travellers cheques that no one would cash and not enough money to even buy a coke.

It’s probably for the best though, Airport shops never represent value for money!