coins for centenary

Ok weird little things amuse me so bear with me if you don’t think this is blog worthy or amusing.

Later on in the year the Royal Australian Mint is issuing a comemorative coin to celebrate the Centenary of the Australian Taxation Office.  Its going to be a 20c coin issued in July.

It amuses me that the Federal Government has not seen fit to issue a gold coin for the Centenary – just a shitty little silver coin that is almost useless these days.  Sums up the Tax Office just perfectly.   Fuckers!

until later

Jacinta

teaser tuesday #100209

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Robin Hobb is one of my favourite fantasy authors and this is the first book in a new series that follows on from the Liveship Trader series (you should read that series first – it’s very good).  

“She already disliked both of them.  The man because he had no respect for Skymaw and was too stupid to understand her, and the woman, because she had seen the dragon and now she coveted her.”

The Dragon Keeper
Robin Hobb
Harper Voyager
69% on Kindle for PC.

Robin Hobb writes wonderfully and I have been looking forward to this series.  This book suffers a little from having to set up a complex story line for the rest of the series and I wonder if there is too much unnecessary information being used to pad out the story for commercial reasons.  I rated it 3/5 but I expect the books that follow to be much better.

a rare day out

Wanna know a secret?

Our tourist marketing people would kill me if I told you ….

Don’t tell anyone …

We get the best days for visiting the Reef in the low tourist season.

During the peak tourist season the winds blow so much that a day out is often spoiled by shitty wind that makes you feel like crap on the boat ride out and back and when you snorkel you feel that you are caught in a washing machine.  The photos on your brochure … well they are taken at other times of the year…. days like today.

Sudbury Cay – great for swimming

Birdlife resting at the cay.  Can you picture yourself swimming here?

Snorkelling anyone?

Have a great week everyone.  I have an office job by day too so its back to another five days of drudge.

urban dictionary blows my disguise

Facebook has had a meme today suggesting everyone look up their name on Urbandictionary.com to see what definitions pop up.  I didn’t take it seriously until Kelly also posted about how, in her opinion, the dictionary has got it right.  Well, if Kelly thinks they can get it right well best we take a look!!

Ha ha, look out everyone, an outside disguise (hmm, perhaps adopting an accountant look) but hidden underneath a whole different persona.

Damn my cover is blown!!

The only problem … Guy A and Guy B … what makes those two little turkeys think they can afford a sweetheart like me!  Ha, expensive tastes and no patience with try hards – not actually written in the definition but take those points as read.

Have you looked your name up?

teaser tuesday #100202

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“They walked and walked, at first along tiled and bleakly lit corridors under electric lighting, and then along dusty carpets in dark shuttered places, and up a stone staircase and then further up a winding wooden stair, cloudy with dark dust.  Maud and Roland neither looked nor spoke to each other.”

Possession, p 81
A.S. Byatt

(Booker Prize Winner 1990)

I am starting this book tonight as I only finished Wolf Hall last night (all 650 pages).  A.S. Byatt is a new author for me and I am looking forward to trying something new.  The edition that I have is a part of a series published in 2009 of prior year Booker Prize Winners.

Thanks for stopping by and please excuse the way I have headed up this post …. guess who is an accountant who likes to keep things in order ? 

Jacinta

Nan’s dvd player

My Mum gave my grandmother (Nan) a portable DVD player for Christmas last month.  Apparently Nan does not sleep well anymore and in my home town there isn’t much for an 86-year-old to do at 3am.  Nan enjoys watching detective mystery shows (Midsomer Murders, Inspector Frost etc) so we figured that watching DVD’s while sleep eludes her would make her happy.

We weren’t sure how Nan would go with the player as she is a bit forgetful these days so remembering which buttons to press and when was going to take some time.  Mum showed her how to turn the player on, how to pause or stop and how to recharge the battery and wrote down a quick guide to the essential functions.

Nan seemed to enjoy watching the DVDs we bought along with the player and when she came to lunch on Boxing Day she carried the player with her and while we watched cricket she enjoyed a DVD in the quiet of the lounge room.  She still asked Mum a few questions on how to use the player but there seemed genuine interest and enjoyment.

Yesterday I asked Mum how Nan was coping with her DVD player and she laughed and told me that it seemed to be going well as when they drove to Armidale (40 mins drive) for a doctor’s appointment last week Nan said very enthusiastically,

“I’ve got this little DVD player now, I don’t know who gave it to me but I really like watching the shows.”

How’s that for a result?

stationery junkie returns

The only thing better than stationery is ….. more stationery!  

Personalised stationery is my latest luxury and a shipment of goodies were delivered last Friday and I have cuddled it ever since.

If I had been clever this afternoon I would have taken this photo while the sun was out and you would be able to make out the detail of what I purchased.  *sigh*. 

However I now have a lovely set of correspondence cards and two mini note pads all with a message from me as well as a design that reflects my personality.

“Apparently there are more important things in life besides shoes …yeah right!”

on the top of the cards I have had printed

“a note from Jacinta”

and on the notepads

“a note from JD”

I purchased these from the wonderful Julie whose runs Melbourne based Note Couture.  Julie was fantastic in helping me get my order sorted (I stuffed up my online account setup) and I was blown away by the quick turnaround of my order (normally nothing gets to Cairns in a hurry).  My order was packaged beautifully  and now I am planning another order, this time for business notes (a quick thank you or congratulations to a client).

I am thinking that lots of people are going to get personalised stationery for birthday and Christmas gifts this year

my school website

Our local news paper has devoted five pages to this Australian government site today.  With all the hype surrounding it I also guess that your local papers (Australian’s) have also ran features and published tables on your local school’s performances.

It appears that we aren’t doing so well up here in Far North Queensland.  Statistics (drawn from the published statistics ) suggest that two out of every three students in our region are performing below national averages across the five tested core skills.  Even when adjusted for “educational disadvantage” we still don’t scrub up so well.

Educators are not happy with the public release of this information and I do, to a point, understand their point of view.  However parents are desperate for straight answers on how their kids are faring at school.  I know this, I argued with the system for years for straight answers.   Perhaps educators might realise this and start to provide meaningful feedback.

For years I was stonewalled at every turn in trying to get straight answers and useful feedback from my son’s teachers when he was at school.  I was continually told “He is doing all right.” What the hell does “all right” mean?  It was impossible to gauge whether he was performing to his ability or whether he was just holding a place somewhere in the middle of the masses.  I found reading Matt’s school reports particularly frustrating as the teachers would use generic phrases to describe progress and effort.  It’s a special language that the education industry has developed and I fear that it is used to blandly disguise mediocre effort and results on behalf of the school, teacher or student.

I am interested in education generally as my future employees and customers and the prosperity of our region depends on the strengths and abilities of the next generation coming through.  If we can’t perform better then we can be sure that our region will not flourish.

Are you a parent with kids at school, have you had a look at the site and does it provide any additional information to help you in considering what is best for your child going forward?

teaser tuesday #100126

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“The king does not want to wait and it is a matter of which councillors can be found at short notice.”

“It is fifteen years since Wolsey kicked him out of his post as Lord Chancellor; or, as the cardinal always put it, relieved him of worldly office, so allowing him the opportunity, in his last years to embrace a life of prayer.”

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, p280.

My friend Clarissa blogged about how much she was enjoying this book so it made its way onto my “to be read” list.  Rob’s two beautiful girls Naomi and Lea then gave us A&R vouchers as Christmas gifts so all the planets aligned to allow me to enjoy this book sooner rather than later.

My Country

My Country

 

(a poem by Dorothea Mackellar, 1904)

 

 

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies -
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

 

 I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

 

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

 

 

Enjoy Australia Day

because it’s great to be Aussie.