My view and thoughts on everything!

Season’s Greetings from the Land Down Under! I hope that you were all on Santa’s ‘nice list’ and had a great Christmas Day with family and loved ones.   I thought it would be a good idea to tell you what it is like to experience Christmas here in Australia. Despite the obvious, (the weather) there isn't too much that is different between what Christmas is like in the UK and here in Oz. In fact, unsurprisingly, it is virtually the same! For example, all the major department stores put up snowy Christmas scenes in their store windows. This includes fake snow in the shop windows, carol singers, a portly Santa and so on. It can be quite surreal to walk into a department store and see these 'winter images' when the temperature is 35C and sweat is dripping from your brow! All around Australia, major cities and towns will erect Christmas trees decorated with baubles, angels and tinsel etc. I have to admit that this can look strange when you are in the tropical part of A...

"Nowadays I am in the yellow (or Back of the Pack group) along with Superman, Tellytubbies, Smurfs but alas no Borat!...the guy next to me had strapped his mobile phone to his running shoe!" Every August an event takes place in Sydney. It's certainly not a small event either, and it's certainly not a gathering of Star Wars fans. What it is is the annual City to Surf race. For those of you that do not know, the City to Surf is a 14 kms (8 miles) fun run from the Sydney CBD to the world famous Bondi Beach. It is generally an easy paced route except for the aptly named 'Heartbreak Hill' that is situated at the 6 kms mark and rises gradually for the next 2 kms. Having run the City to Surf on a number of occasions I knew what to expect. I had only started training 10 days prior to the run. Better late than never is what I say! Anyway, my wife (aka the infamous 'No Worries') and I had other matters to attend to. Somehow, I had to finish the race fairly early...

"It is quite surreal to walk into a department store and see these 'winter images' ... Try cooking a roast turkey with all the trimmings when the mercury is nudging 40C! It's not a pleasurable experience at all!" This morning I took my two daughters to the local supermarket as we had to pick up a few odds and ends. Although it is our local supermarket I had not visited it for a few weeks. Partly because I had been overseas, and partly because, well, I hadn't! Anyway, as I walked into the store, straight away my eldest spotted some Christmas candy sticks (sort of striped walking sticks - but obviously not on the same scale!). Immediately she said 'Dad, I think we should get some for Christmas". My reply was "not today, Christmas is many weeks away yet." When we got home, I realised that Christmas is not a long way off at all but only five weeks away. My second realisation was that I need to start seriously thinking about the family Chri...

"she was the only leader who could spell ‘existentialism’....he made Vladimir Putin and our Johnny streak down the corridors of the Intercontinental Hotel while singing ‘achy break heart’! At last the APEC circus has departed good ol’ Sydney town and we can now get back to normal. All bar one of the leaders have paid their $4 for an airport trolley, loaded up their luggage, submitted the departure tax and have left Australia with their cuddly koalas, kangaroos and beef jerky. The leader who has pulled the short straw, however, is the Canadian PM who has stayed on for more talks with our PM John Howard, and also to collect more Australian soft toys (I recommend the wombat!). The main conversational topic around the hot water urn in most offices revolves around what happened during the last couple of days of the APEC summit. The reason for this is that all the meetings were held behind closed doors. Well, my avid readers, I can divulge what went on as I was privy to some confiden...